A second chance.
That was what I wished for.
The one thing I prayed for every night before I sleep. The one thing I prayed for, at the very night before I woke up in an entirely different life.
A new life.
My second chance.
❈❈❈
I was 30 years old wh...
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—St. Vincent's Hospital, Emergency Unit, year 2026. Treatment day 1—
I came back as an outpatient within a week after they confirmed that I was ready to go.
It was the first deal that I made with Dr. Kim and the hospital, and they agreed to let me do it since I was still fit enough to go back and forth to the hospital for treatment instead of staying at a long period of time. Although I would still have to stay in for days after my first induction chemotherapy and its other primer treatments, only to make it easier to go through their observations.
"Are you okay?" Yoongi looked at me all concerned as he helped me settle down on the bed.
"Yeah, I'm—I think I'm fine." I gave him a grin while leaning back on the headboard. I only sighed when I saw his face. "I'm a bit nervous, that's all. There are reasons why I avoided this, and—"
"You were scared, weren't you?" He gave me a remorseful look as he looked at me with pursed lips.
"Terrified." I nodded.
He smiled, before leaning down to gently kiss my temple. "I'll be here until they tell me to go. Even after then I'll only be a phone call away, okay?"
"Thank you."
The nurses came in almost one hour later. The whole process for my first therapy would take hours to go through, and they wouldn't let Yoongi stay that long.
Later that afternoon, hours after my first treatment had started, I was escorted on a wheelchair by one of the nurses along the hallway. I was all lethargic from exhaustion, with an IV tube attached on one arm and an excruciating pain on my back, and all I could do is look around with droopy eyes.
"Aren't you taking me back to my room?" I asked the nurse once I noticed that I was heading towards the opposite direction from the room I was staying in for the night.
"Oh—I'm sorry, I thought the doctor had already told you. There is a special treatment room for chemotherapy patients. You will wait there until the induction is done," she said, pointing at the bag filled with liquid that was attached to the tube that was injected into my arm. "Once there is nothing left of these and we have every drop of the liquid running in your blood, I will take you back to your room so you can rest. But we need to put you in another room for observations while the injections are in process. You will meet other cancer patients there, so you won't feel lonely. It helps motivate our patients sometimes when we let them meet and talk to each other. You can share stories and their experiences while you're there."
I kept my eyes on the IV bag, watched how they were dropping down and imagined them running through my blood. I remained silent while thinking to myself, 'So this is supposed to kill those cancer cells, huh?'
