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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—First life. St. Vincent's Hospital, year 2027—
I shouldn't have taken it lightly when they warned me about it.
The scans, the blood tests, the physical examination, most of them I could handle. Until it came the time for them to lay me down and put a massive needle right through my spine to take a piece of a membrane from the growing monster inside me.
"Baby, it's okay," Jimin held my trembling hands with one of his while he uses the other to brush my dampened hair away from my face, where my sweat and tears came together as I tried to hold back the pain. "Look at me, baby. Just a little while longer. Take a deep breath and keep your eyes on me."
I kept my eyes on Jimin as I felt as if they were sucking the life out of me. And I was relieved that he was there, for his eyes were hypnotising me enough to make me feel as if the pain was somewhere far away.
It was quite unusual for the hospital to allow someone other than an immediate family or a member of the doctor's team to be there while they were doing these tests. But I was so frightened about the test that I had a major panic attack about it and I was also feeling terribly exhausted after going through a bunch of tests running the whole day that I was practically crying and begging for them to let me take a break. That was when Jimin came into the room and offered to help.
"Let me be there so she won't freak out. I won't interrupt, I promise," he said then, basically pleading for them to let him in, before Dr. Kim finally gave in and gave him permission to enter the room.
An excruciating pain struck me so badly as I felt them pulling the needle out that I cried out and Jimin pressed his lips on my forehead, completely ignoring the fact that I was sweating buckets when he did. "You did good, love. It's over now," he whispered to me.
I looked up to him through my tears and tried to speak, though I could barely get my voice out while I kept sobbing as the pain was still too much for me to handle. "It hurts," I cried with a whisper.
Jimin nodded his head knowingly. He was smiling at me as a way to encourage me, but his gaze was filled with sadness and pain, as if seeing me hurt had caused him just the same amount of pain. "You are brave, baby. You got through it good," he said while kissing my tears away. "Just close your eyes and focus on my voice while the nurse is finishing up. I'm not going anywhere."
He gave me a chaste kiss on my lips and my sobs slowly came to halt. The pain still lingered even once the doctor and his team had finished his job. I could hear his voice complementing me while letting me know that it was over and I could feel it when he cleaned my wound and patched me up before he left. But all I ever wanted to focus on was Jimin's voice as he kept whispering sweet things to me and on the way he was holding my hands tight to let me know that I was not alone.
His presence was my cure and it was then when I finally realised that he had become the rock that kept me together. When I felt his lips on mine as I closed my eyes, I knew then that I could face and conquer anything as long as I had him with me, for it was the love I felt and the compassion I saw in his eyes that became the only things keeping me alive.
