Chapter Text
She was not sure if she was sleep walking through life at this very moment, everything was so quite except for his erratic heartbeat- or maybe her erratic heartbeat. He was still holding her and she felt almost boneless, and her hands around him felt powerless. Why was everything so quite she wondered, was this how it feels after getting kissed by the love of your life for the first time? Does he not speak at all? The whistling tune of her ring tone broke the stillness of the room, and she still had her head on his shoulder, and answered the call from the ER. She was needed down there ASAP, a multiple TA cases were coming in about 10 minutes. The snow caused icy roads, maybe she should have picked another time to do this, but she was almost out of time at this point, and she had to do this today. She clumsily untangled from his arms and looked at him, he still looked a little lost, "I.. need to go to the ER." Silence. "Gyosunim..." she prompted, still nothing, and an other call to her, and with one last look, she ran to the ER.
The rush of the multiple TA cases kept her mind off the lack of words in his office earlier that evening, but it was now past 1AM, her phone had no messages, and Ahn Gyosunim left his office. She fell asleep in the on-call room wondering if she dreamt the whole thing, it now started to seem more and more likely, the stench of the ER wiped away any traces of his embrace, and one could even say her slightly puffed lips looked that way because of how small her face became due to the strain.
The next morning, she was convinced it was a lucid dream she had, reinforced by the mundaneness of the day starting with the professors asking her to pick their surgery, she could not stomach working with Lee Ik Jun gyosunim at the moment, and definitely not with Ahn Jeong Won gyosunim, so she picked Lee Ji Hoon gyosunim. He was a muted down Lee Ik Jun gyosunim, and was always pushing her to diversify her portfolio of surgeries. Ahn gyosunim was not meeting her eyes, which solidified her feeling that she dreamt the whole thing, she thought he was not the type to shy away after kissing someone. But here he was, avoiding her gaze as usual.
By the time lunch time came around, she was filled with dread over his silence, and lack of reaction over what happened. Okay. This was probably the worst case. She prepared for him to reject her, or like Min Ha, oscillate between indifference, and camaraderie. But he heard her confess. She saw the tears in his eyes when he kissed her, and the weight of his head on her shoulders when he held her. He hadn't said a word to her and had been over 18 hours. Did he hope she would assume it was a dream? What should she do?
She was not someone who dealt in imagination, she preferred to deal with the reality of the world, and in her eyes, there was no way that his mother was right, he never even smiled at her he rarely even smiled at her, she could count the moments on her hand, and pathetically she did count them on her fingers once after he said he'll buy her a meal. This was right after she met his mother, and she fancifully imagined he would buy her a meal because he liked her, of course he didn't follow up. She foolishly held out hope that at least he will invite her with a bunch of others like he suggested to her when she asked, but that didn't happen either. And last night she may wish it were a dream, but it did happen, she confessed, and he kissed her. She never had a relationship, but she knew he wasn't the type to kiss anybody. But his silence was frankly unnerving, and was making her feel so self conscious. Maybe she should demand an answer. Like she went and confessed to him by demanding he stay. Maybe he kissed her out of pity, just like the meal he offered to buy her in front of the anaesthesiologist who forced his hand. Even though his best friend and his mother suggested he likes her, his actions have always contradicted their stance, and she decided to stop listening to others when it came to him. She did as his mother asked, and she confessed, he didn't answer it. And she can't afford to be distracted by him. No matter what, she spent a lot of time, and money to be where she was, and she has just a year, and 13 people who constantly demanded her attention. If he stays, and teaches her, she'll learn, and regardless, she will apply for a paediatric fellowship as the shortage was so concerning even to her.