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Tinn turns twenty six today.
.
The emergency department is nearly filled to the brim with people coming with different types of emergencies. Two people had just come in after a motorcycle crash against a tree, and Tinn immediately went to them, assessing them quickly from top to toe for any possible major injuries, while nurses hurriedly put them into oxygen cannulas and measured their vital signs.
In the beds nearby, someone was admitted with an extremely high blood pressure, someone was bitten by a snake, someone was getting alcohol poisoning, someone was having a severe case of vertigo, and a pregnant woman looks like she's about to give birth anytime soon.
Tinn can barely sit down. He's writing examination results, filling up laboratory request forms, x-ray forms, contacting the specialists and consoling families. His partner, doctor Ying is no better. She's currently in the resuscitation room, doing a chest compression to an elderly lady who just had a heart attack.
Emergency department is stressful. It is where frustration, sadness, and anxiety thrives. Nothing fuels them more than having your loved ones fall sick, and the uncertainty of whether they will make it out alive and well.
The first time Tinn worked as a doctor in the emergency department, he had to excuse himself to the toilet when one of his patients died. It was the first time someone under his care had died.
Tinn did chest compressions to them, injected medicines and defibrillated them, but in the end, the patient was still motionless. He watched, as the patient's monitor beeped, the straight line in the cardiac monitor remained a straight line, and although the skin still feels warm under Tinn's hands, he knew that the body was no more than an empty shell now.
He had shakily went down the bed, and looked at the wall clock. His voice sounded hollow to his ears, as he announced the time of death. He still sounded hollow, when he passed his condolences to the family, offering them his sorrows and prayers.
When he hugged his knees and cried to sleep at night, he sounded a bit more human. Heartbroken and guilty, but human.
Three years had sharpened his emotion and honed his skills far better than that time. Now he is able to harden his heart whenever he senses a patient's end is coming near. He is able to deliver the bad news calmly, and offer his sorrows and prayers with a much stable state of mind.
Now he is able to go home, sleep, and wake up the next day to repeat the same routine, again and again without feeling so despondent.
Today is slightly different, for today is Tinn's birthday.
He turns twenty six today. A ripe age, a year past quarter life, the age where adults were said to have their biggest crisis in life.
.
Tinn goes home in the late afternoon after his morning shifts. During his walk, he stops by a florist near the hospital to get a bouquet of flowers.
"Hello." Tinn greets the girl behind the racks, filled with big jars of various kinds of flowers.
"Oh, hi there." The girl smiles. "Are you buying a bouquet of a stalk?"
"A bouquet, please."
"Alright, what would you like?"
Tinn peeks around. "Sunflowers, and forget-me-nots. With white wrappings."
The girls pick them up one by one. "A unique combination." She notes. "You have a nice taste. Is this for your lover?"
Tinn smiles. "Yes. He likes them."
The girl smiles at that. She wraps the flower neatly, ties them all together with a white ribbon, and brings it behind the cashier. Tinn pays it, pockets the change, and walks to the bus stop.
The weather is good today. The sun is shining bright with sparse clouds, the sky is clear and blue, and with the wind blowing gently, the air feels a bit cool to Tinn's skin.
He rides the bus with the other passengers, choosing a seat by the window, and watches outside as the bus rolls into motion. His bouquet sits neatly on his lap.
Gun likes traveling. During college, Gun was a member of a band, and the band was so famous that they were actually invited to festivals across the country. Their Youtube Channel has more than one hundred subscribers, and for Gun, that was more than a lot of numbers.
"We had one hundred subscribers." Gun had said, one day in the student dorm as he lay on Tinn's bed. He was holding his phone, his face a picture of disbelief.
"Congratulations." Tinn had smiled, proud.
"We had one hundred subscribers!" Gun then exclaimed, the realization of it crashed into him, before he put down his phone and all but threw himself into Tinn's embrace.
Tinn laughed along with him. "My boyfriend is a celebrity!"
Gun flew to the north, to the south, to the west and to the east. He visited temples, universities, big shopping malls, and he opened concerts for A-listers and newbies.
Tinn tagged along with him sometimes, when his schedules in medical school were less packed.
His trip with Gun filled up his phone gallery. There are folders for trips to Chiang Mai, to Pattaya, to Surat Thani, to Hua Hin, to Bangkok. He has a folder just for the foods alone. When he looked back at the pictures in his phone gallery, it's like there was not a year in which Tinn didn't fill it with memories with Gun.
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The bus stops after twenty minutes, and Tinn steps down along with the other passengers.
He walks a little bit more.
After a couple hundred meters ahead, a familiar white gate greets him. Tinn greets the man by the gate, and goes inside, walking through the front garden filled with little, colorful flowers and occasional trees.
He walks past rows of small pools with little fishes, and walks some more, before he stops at his usual place. He puts down the flower bouquet gently, carefully, and sits down.
"Hi, Gun." Tinn smiles.
The picture of Gun smiles back at him from the grave.
In the photo, Gun was twenty. He was in college just for a year, and then he chose not to continue it, instead choosing to spread his wings further in the music industry, joining a band and dedicated his day-by-day practicing and making music. At twenty years old, the band was already a big name in the industry.
When the photo was taken, Gun had just finished a trip to Phuket, performing an opening act for a ten-year anniversary concert of a well-loved rock band. He was smiling so happily, so content and pleased.
Tinn leans back on his hands, and stares up at the sky. "How is everything there?"
"I turned twenty six today." He says softly. "Gun, I missed you."
.
Gun died from a plane crash five years ago.
It was an earth-shattering moment. For the country, for the victim's families, and for Tinn.
When the news first spread, it had sounded so absurd, Tinn brushed it off with a frown and a 'no way, must be false news'. There was no way a plane that was supposedly carrying Gun home just… crashed into a mountain all of a sudden. It sounded like it came out of a movie.
But then the news was everywhere. It was in the newspaper, it was aired on television day and night, monitoring the progress of searching and evacuation. The police, the soldier, the first responders, firefighters, everyone went down to the search, giving their best to search for any sign of living survivors.
It was all over the internet. The fans from the band were in a chaos, everyone posted a black ribbon, as if already in mourning even when the searching was still ongoing. The students from the university who knew Gun were hit by shock and sadness, his friends were crying, the teachers were crying.
Yet no one seemed to feel what Tinn felt.
Tinn's grief was initially not in the form of cries.
Instead, Tinn was unresponsive for a couple of days, to the point where he had to file for absence from classes. He was unable to read his study materials, unable to coherently talk to people, unable to remember where he was, what he was going to do, who he was with.
His friends who knew of his relationships with Gun had cried, hugged him tightly, and whispered their condolences.
"Tinn, we are here, just one call away, in case you need anything. Absolutely anything, please don't hesitate to call us. Message us, anything is fine."
"It will be okay. Be strong, be strong."
"Tinn, we're very sorry."
"We will help with study materials, no need to worry, just take care of yourself."
Tinn's parents had immediately flown over from their hometown, his mom rushing over to hug him as soon as the door to his dorm room opened.
"My son, my dear son." His mom had sobbed, hugging and patting his back repeatedly. "It's okay, mom's here. It's okay."
Tinn laid in his bed at night, unable to sleep. He laid in his bed during the day, unable to get up.
Everything in this room used to belong to both of them.
There was still Gun's toothbrush on the bathroom sink, next to Tinn's. There was still Gun's plate and Gun's mug in the drying rack in the kitchen, Gun's slippers in the hallway, Gun's CD in the shelves, Gun's clothes in the wardrobe, Gun's leftover food in the fridge from the night where he attended a festival nearby and brought home a box of cakes he couldn't finish on the way home.
"Son, let's go home, okay? Let's go back to our hometown for a while, mom and dad will take care of everything."
Tinn only nodded dazedly, as his mom and dad packed all the stuff from their room, stacked them in the moving truck, and he watched dazedly as they left the dorm complex, heading out of town.
Tinn took a leave for a year.
.
In the end, all passengers on the plane were declared dead.
No survivors, no bodies.
"Must be the crash." A news station reported.
"Must be the fire." Another news station reported.
Tinn's mom would gently pry off the remote from his hands then, and turned off the TV.
"Go rest, dear." Tinn's mom had said. "Accompany your grandma."
Tinn didn't watch TV for quite some time, didn't use the internet for quite some time, until the news were finally downsized, and slowly diminished.
When Tinn finally cried, it was like a dam broke inside him. He couldn't stop crying, folding in on himself, sobbing and heaving his breath like a man drowned. His lungs hurt and yet he cannot stop crying, pouring all his griefs out as he emptied all his sadness.
He cried at the slightest things. He broke down upon a slight inconvenience. Other times, he just silently sat, tears flowing quietly from his eyes without any sounds.
It was as if a crater just opened inside Tinn's heart. One with the shape of Gun, and would probably keep being opened, not able to be closed. It was like there's something missing, something feels not quite right, not quite the same as before.
Tinn spent a whole year in his hometown in the countryside. His mom is a principal in a local high school, and his dad owns a local farm. Tinn went for a sunbath with his grandma in the morning, took care of the farm in the evening with his dad, and did the house chores in the evening with his mom.
It was a year later, when Tinn felt better and decided he would be going back to medical school. He didn't go back to his old dorm, but chose to rent an apartment with an international student who couldn't speak Thai at all. He conversed with him in full English.
His last year in medical school was a struggle. Tinn hadn't studied for a whole year, and he paid them with studying harder. He read materials at the apartment with his foreigner house-mate. He recorded his lectures in class, and listened to them with headphones everytime he had spare time.
After he graduated medical school, Tinn went to specialize further in emergency medicine.
It takes another year for him to be able to visit their old dorm.
The room was reportedly vacated for quite some time. It was renovated a little bit by the college, and after it was done, it was rented out to new students.
When Tinn knocked and stepped inside the room, it looked different from what he once had. The flooring was changed, the wallpaper was changed, the floor plan was changed, the furniture was changed, even the lamps were changed. There were no traces of them left.
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During his residency in emergency medicine, Tinn visited Gun's family home once during his day off.
Gun's mom had frozen upon seeing who it was when she opened the door, but then her eyes welled up, and she bursted into muffled cries. Tinn caught her in an embrace, and he closed his eyes, waiting for her cries to subside, patting her back reassuringly.
He stayed there for half a day. He visited Gun's room, played with Gun's cats, and accompanied Gun's mom in her small restaurant, helping her wait tables and receive customers. He looked at Gun's old picture albums, the one he already memorized by heart, each and every page of it.
By the time Tinn was about to return, he had carefully asked whether Gun's mom want to come with him, and she had smiled, patting his arm affectionately.
"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. This house is filled with memories of my late husband and my son, and I feel happier living here, surrounded by them." She had smiled.
Tinn promised to visit her from time to time.
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"Your cat has already become a mother." Tinn tells Gun, remembering the once tiny kitten he loved to carry around the dorm room with Gun. "She had three kittens, and they are all so cute and tiny. Just like her when she was little."
The wind blows gently, ruffling the soft petals of the forget-me-nots and sunflowers Tinn had brought.
"You're my sunflowers." Tinn had told him. "I'm the sun, so you always grow towards me."
"So confident?" Gun had laughed.
Tinn raised his brows at him cheekily.
"You're a forget-me-nots." Gun had said.
"What's that?" Tinn asked.
Gun just smiled, like it was some kind of big secret. "I won't tell you."
Tinn had tackled him to the bed then, tickling him in the stomach, in the ribs, in his thighs and hips, laughing all the way.
"Will you tell me?" Tinn laughed.
"No, find them out yourself!" Gun laughed back, wiggling out of Tinn's grasp.
Tinn looked back down to the picture of Gun sitting on the cool marble.
"A promise to remember." Tinn says. His smile is warm, affectionate and filled with longing. "You're such a tease."
From above, a gentle wind blows.
Tinn stays there for a little longer.
When the sky starts to get dark, Tinn stands up and dust his clothes off.
"Well, I have an early morning shift tomorrow, so I must get home now." Tinn says. "I will see you next time."
He reaches out, and gently caresses the picture frame. Gun's smile feels eternal.
"Sleep well, my love."
*