Christmas Lights

Chapter 1

The doctor shook her head; obviously she was unimpressed, but smiled nonetheless.

"Okay, sweet talker, I'm going to get Dr. Aeri to come back when you're more coherent. Your vitals all look okay, you just need to sleep off some of the residual anesthetics. Do you need anything for the pain?"

Your phone number.

"Miss Yu, I'm very flattered, but please just let me do my job here," she said, still smiling.

Holy shit, I said that out loud.

"Yes, you did. Now, instead, I'm going to get Dr. Jaemin, one of the interns, to check on you. I don't think you'll find him as pretty as you find me, so maybe you'll be able to talk to him. Get some rest, Miss Y—Karina."

"Wait." Karina took a deep breath, finding the strength to speak.

"Yes, Karina?"

"Can you be my doctor instead?"

Dr. Kim rolled her eyes and patted Karina's arm. "Get some rest, Karina."

She watched the doctor leave the room and allowed her eyes to droop as they were prior to her arriving. Despite the multiple injuries and her current lack of lucidity, she knew it important to listen to her (beautiful) doctor. She quickly fell back asleep.

—

The next time Karina woke up, she still had to reorient herself again to remember where she was. She still felt weak, a constant throb of pain on various parts of her body. Her eyes went into focus much more quickly than before. Her brother, Jaehyun, sat in a chair next to her bed, flipping through a magazine.

"...Jaehyun."

His head snapped up, relief flooding his face.

"Oh, thank god, you're awake." He pressed a button next to her bed and she felt herself sit-up slightly.

"What's going on?" Karina could feel the bruising on her ribs with every breath she took, but it wasn't as exhausting to speak as it was before.

"You fell off your roof last night. Remember? We were hanging out, you could never hold your whisky, Rina. I don't know why you even try. You wanted to go outside to look at the stars, so we did. Then we noticed your Christmas lights were still up, so we decided to take them down for some stupid fucking reason. We got your ladder from your shed then you went up on the roof then you fell off..."

"Holy shit, that was stupid," Karina agreed, flashes of last night coming back to her slowly. She remembered Jaehyun coming over – he was in town for a couple days. She remembered them commiserating over their shitty mom. She remembered them taking shots, Jaehyun giving her shit for still having her Christmas lights still up...the searing pain, then nothing at all.

"Yeah, no kidding. You broke your leg – it's fine, you had to have surgery, but you'll be okay. You'll still walk eventually. You also got a concussion and bruised a few ribs. You're an idiot. I used to think I was the stupid one, but clearly you are."

She looked down, remembering that her leg was in a cast. She realized that a majority of the pain came from her leg.

"Shit," she said. "Right...I think...someone told me? Did someone come in here?"

"Oh, Dr. Aeri and Dr. Kim came by. Nice people. Dr. Kim that she wasn't sure if you'd remember talking to her. Said you were still groggy."

"Oh, fuck," she replied. "I think I hit on her."

"Yeah, she said you were a little flirtatious." Jaehyun cringed. "She thought it was probably the anesthetic from the surgery making you behave strangely, but I told her that was one-hundred percent you."

"Of course you did."

She looked over at her brother, getting a good look at his face. He was wearing the outfit he wore the night before, his hair was disheveled (something he never let happen), and eyes were red and glassy.

"Wait...have you been...crying?" Karina snickered, then winced. "Remind me to tease you about this when I'm not in a ridiculous amount of pain."

"Karina, seriously, only you would hit on your doctor ten seconds after waking up from surgery, after you could've died. You're going to start picking on me for caring if you were alive?"

"You're a fucking baby," she breathed out. She was still so tired.

"Shut up. You scared the shit out of me, Karina."

She gave Jaehyun a half-smile – but it looked like a sneer because of the pain. She was touched, but she was not in the position to focus on much other than her aching body.

"I'm sorry, Jaehyun. I...didn't mean to scare you."

"Whatever. Are you okay otherwise? Dr. Aeri said the concussion wasn't bad, but you'd be a little loopy from the medication."

"I feel like everything's underwater and my brain is cotton."

"That makes no sense. I think that means you're loopy?"

Karina felt herself nod off. "I'm going to go back to sleep, okay?"

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I guess I'll go call mom, tell her that you're okay..."

She closed her eyes and fell into another deep sleep.