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“Three times a charm,” they say. And in this scenario, “they” would be correct.
Because it took three freaking “trips” to a trash can (or, in the last case, a mildly unsuccessful trip to a trash bag that forced her roommate to change her bedsheets) for Delphi to accept that she was, in fact, sick and she needed to go to the ER immediately.
In hindsight, you would assume that eating reheated pizza bought at 11pm from an unknown and clearly suspicious cart is a mistake, especially if your stomach is slightly sensitive when it comes to flour in the morning and YOU HAVEN’T EATEN ANYTHING. But this girl didn’t think about it.
And now she’s facing the consequences of her own decisions. Thank god that she already paid her health insurance a day earlier, because who knows what would have happened to her if she hadn’t already.
But she did, and now she’s being walked inside this place in the arms of her roomie that’s trying to make her walk and not fall down while doing so, even though she didn’t need it…yet.
After going through the triage desk, Delphi sat in the waiting room, waiting for her name to be called. Vivi, her best friend and roommate, started—once again—scolding her for her shitty eating habits that landed her in the ER for the third time this year. That should teach her something, but everyone knows that it won’t.
So Delphi’s attention was everywhere but on Vivi’s words. Suddenly, her dirty sneakers had a new stain she hadn’t seen before, and her socks were mismatched, and so was the so-called sweats set she had on. Now that she thinks about it, did she even brush her hair before getting out of the apartment?
“You didn’t.” Vivi intervenes. So she was speaking, not thinking.
Lovely.
“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” Delphi asks while trying to get her blonde madness out of the half-done ponytail and brush it off with her fingers.
“It wasn’t as fun.” she shrugs with a half smile on her face as she looks away to grab one of the magazines that the staff had in the waiting area. “Besides, you’re not the worst one out here today.” Vivi points, moving her face slightly to the right to draw Delphi’s attention to said person.
Her gaze falls into that direction, onto the guy that’s walking in the ER with a poorly worn hoodie, mismatched shoes, and a side cap that did nothing to hide his very messy dark hair.
As she takes him in, other than his scruffy appearance, the guy’s good-looking. Even in that hoodie, his shoulders looked as wide as the pacific ocean, though hunched over—maybe because he was in pain—making him look smaller than he already was. And he wasn’t that short; I mean, she was a lot shorter, but she’s shorter than anyone.
After he went through the desk, he sat on the empty seat next to Delphi, his hand over his own belly signaling his pain quietly.
“Bad food?” she asks in his direction, attempting small talk.
He looks up at her, sees her dead in the eye, and answers with a low, painful voice: “Rat poison.”
“...What?” is all that she can say for a good minute. “Shouldn’t you be, like, higher on the priority line?”
The guy laughs for a quick second before his stomach starts to hurt again, something that shows on his face. “Okay, so maybe it’s not rat poison. I don't really know, so I didn’t disclose it with the nurse.”
Now she is confused, and this time she doesn’t have to ask because he offers the answer by himself.
“Let’s say that I ate something that may or may not have been close to an open and spilled can of rat poison. So, I’m not sure if it had rat poison or not.” he shrugs, simple as that.
“I mean, it had to have rat poison if you’re feeling this bad.”
“Maybe…”
Delphi squints at him, trying to read between the lines. “What did you eat?”
“Okay, so let’s be open-minded about this,” he starts. “I was hanging out with my friends, and we engaged in a healthy, not at all dangerous, and very competitive game of ‘Who can eat more powdered donuts in three minutes?’... and I won.” even in pain, he smiles proudly.
“How many did you eat?” her tone was a bit judgemental.
“Forty-three”
“No wonder you’re like this… That’s incredibly unhealthy, you know that?” this time, it’s Vivi’s turn to laugh beside her, earning a side shove from the blonde.
He raises an eyebrow. “Why are you here, though?”
She coughed a bit before answering. “Rather than answering your question, let me offer some free advice: don’t buy pizza from a sketchy cart at 11pm and pretend to reheat it the next day for lunch when you haven’t even had breakfast and you know that your stomach hates flour in the mornings.”
The guy nodded. “Cool. I’m guessing you didn’t take that advice, right?”
“Yep. I've thrown up three times now, and counting if they don’t see me soon. Oh, by the way, I’m Delphi.” she sticks out her hand to him.
“Changbin,” he says as he takes her hand in a handshake.
“Oh, and this is Vivi, my best friend.” Vivi waves a bit and goes back to her magazine.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Did you come by yourself?” Changbin nodded. “Why didn’t any of your friends come with you, like, if you’re thinking that it may be rat poison, it’s best if they’re here, no?”
“Oh, yeah, they don’t know about the rat poison part…”
“Why?"
“Because a lot of us played that game, if they know that the can was that close by, they’ll be freaking out, and some of them are very dramatic and hypochondriac, so it’s best that I’m here by myself. If it turns out to be rat poison, I’ll let them know,” he assures. “Besides, I can’t admit that I’m sick; they’ll annul my win, and that can’t happen. I have a title to protect.”
“Title of what?”
“King eater, obviously.”
Delphi laughs, a big loud laugh that Changbin sees as endearing—because she’s laughing hard and loud in an ER—as well as beautiful. But this only lasts a second, since the excruciating pain in her stomach hasn’t gone away.
She crouches down a bit, covering her stomach and taking a deep breath, and before she can say another thing, they both see someone with a bloody hand and an iced Ziploc bag come through the door.
“Yeah, we’ll be here a while,” he says, trying to make himself comfortable in his chair, his arm still over his belly.
“Have you tried throwing up?” she offers. “Maybe that’ll get you out of here and without pain faster.”
“I have a trash bag.” Vivi offers, not looking up from her magazine. “Just, please, do not throw up on the floor.”
“No thanks, I hate throwing up. And I ate so much that I'll end up like you, still here.”
“Ouch. But that's fair.”
“...Did you throw up on the floor?” he asks, giving her a bit of a side eye.
Delphi stops for a second and says: “Let's talk about something else, king eater. What do you do for a living?”
Over the next half hour, Delphi learns a lot about Changbin. He's a music producer with two of his best friends; they have a group called Sriracha or 3racha or something like that. She can't say that she heard everything too well, because she found out that his eyes glimmer when he talks about something that he's passionate about, and that is one of the many things that make him handsome.
He also told her that he tried to be an idol, but that whole part of the business exhausted him, so he decided to study music in the university, where he met all his friends, and now they're dreaming of opening up their own record label.
In exchange, Delphi opened up about her unsuccessful human resources career and the fact that she just recently quit her job after saving up for more than a year and now she's working to open up her own art gallery with one of her artist friends.
They laughed, and even if it hurt, they both felt that it was the most they had laughed in a very long time.
A question lingered between the lines, none of them finding the right moment to ask it, and just before Changbin was about to do it, Delphi’s name was called into one of the cubicles.
Vivi is the first one to get up, leaving her magazine on the small table to help Delphi get up, the latter getting a little dizzy over the movement.
“I hope you get called soon.” the blonde says, looking his way as her thoughts were trying to figure out if she was looking too much into the whole interaction or if there was something in there.
“Hope you get better.” he answered, battling his own thoughts just as hers. Too coward to say something; maybe he should have brought one of his friends, Chan would have said something on his behalf.
They look at each other one last time, and her name is called again. So she settles: “It was nice to meet you, Changbin.”
And just like that, Vivi escorts her back to the cubicles. Changbin looks until they disappear, leaving him uneasy and uncomfortable; not from the stomach pain, but something else.
His sight falls to the floor, just realizing he had mismatched shoes. Did he leave the apartment like that?
“Yes, you did,” a voice interrupts his thoughts, or maybe he said it out loud?
He turns to the sound, and before registering the person who talked, he sees a ripped paper with a number on it.
“I scolded her enough today; might as well help.” Vivi says, pushing the paper out to him to grab, which he does. “Just, please, text her; calls make her anxious.”
Before he could mutter the word ‘thank you,’ Vivi disappears, and with her that uneasy feeling.
01:30 a.m.
Unknown number:
its not rat poison
yayy :)
its Changbin, by the way :p
want to grab some soup tomorrow?