"I'm here to see Dr. Irving," Wonho said to the nurse at the desk, who gave him a polite smile that said she'd been busy with something before he'd walked in.
"Do you have an appointment with him?" she asked, her eyes flicking down presumably to check an online schedule.
Wonho swallowed. "No, I just...Shownu told me to ask to see him..."
The nurse hesitated before scanning her screen. "Well, he isn't currently scheduled for anything. Just take a seat, I'll run back and grab him."
"Thank you," Wonho said, bowing his head forward before turning and eyeing the chairs. He knew he'd been instructed to sit, but he was too full of nervous energy to obey her polite command. Instead, he paced back and forth, arms either behind his back or in front of him as his hands tugged at each other.
"Nathan," a warm voice said, and Wonho looked over to see a man in a white lab coat approaching him with a surprised smile. "It's not like you to drop in unscheduled. Is there something you'd like to discuss?"
"Yeah, and I'm not Nathan," Wonho said, feeling like the two went hand in hand for whatever reason. Everyone else was sure acting like they did.
Dr. Irving blinked, managing to contain most of his surprise, but he nodded and turned, gesturing for Wonho to follow him. "Come into my office. It sounds like we have a lot to talk about."
Wonho swallowed before following the older man in.
***
"You said you're Shin Hoseok?"
"Yes, I'm Shin Hoseok," Wonho repeated for the second time already, frustrated. "I don't know who Nathan is or why people think I'm him but-"
"They know that you're Shin Hoseok," Dr. Irving said, his hands patting the air to calm Wonho down.
"Well, they were all calling me Nathan today," Wonho said, his lips curling downward.
"Because you told them to call you Nathan," Dr. Irving said. "Because you yourself thought that you were Nathan."
Wonho stared at him.
Dr. Irving nodded despite Wonho having said nothing as though that had been an invitation for a medical lecture. "Hoseok, are you aware that there are certain neurological conditions that may create...let's call them separate consciousnesses...in a person?"
Wonho stared at Dr. Irving. "You're saying...like multiple personalities? Something like that?"
Dr. Irving gave a half shrug, lifting his left shoulder while bobbing his head down toward the left. "That's one condition, dissociative identity disorder. It's the one glorified in all the movies, certainly. But there are other disorders similar to it in that the individual loses touch with their 'home' self."
"And I have something like that? Is that why I'm here?" Wonho asked, his eyes widening. Up until now, everything had seemed like a mistake, one big mistake, but the feeling was starting to wear off altogether too quickly. "But I'm fine. I'm Shin Hoseok. That's who I'm supposed to be, right?"
"You're correct in that you're legally registered as Shin Hoseok, but for the past few months during your stay here, you would often create new selves - completely different personalities with different names, jobs, hobbies, backgrounds." Dr. Irving paused. "Hoseok, while you were in school, did you ever hear about something called fugue state?"
Wonho shook his head. "I don't think so. In music, yeah, but not outside of that."
Dr. Irving nodded. "I'm not really surprised. It's a condition that hasn't been thoroughly researched, mainly because it's so rare. But I believe your condition is some sort of fugue state. For you, there were multiple fugue states, but it appears that you've snapped out of that and resumed your original identity." Dr. Irving paused. "So...you remember your experiences from before your fugue states, correct? But do you recall anything from during them?"
Wonho frowned. If everything was as this doctor said, then Wonho didn't really think he wanted to remember. But then he thought about the three boys earlier, each of whom had looked at him through a friend's eyes. I was friends with them, he realized with a start. They were friends with the fake me. So what does that make us now? He thought about the boy trembling on his bed, blanket wrapped around him like a thin layer of armor. "No," he answered.
Dr. Irving nodded, thinking to himself. "That's fairly common in these sorts of cases. Which isn't to say that the memories won't come back. Some might. It's just unlikely that you'll remember the entire time you spent in fugue state."
"How long..." Wonho hesitated, but the question forced itself off his tongue. "How long was I...like that...for?"
Dr. Irving paused, looking up at him from a file of paperwork. "Around half a year." He hesitated once more before nodding to himself. "Hoseok, I think it's important to have this discussion, and we can postpone it if you like, but it's something we'll eventually have to address."
Wonho twitched slightly, not likely the sound of finality in Dr. Irving's voice. "What is it about?"
"Why this happened to you."
