Chapter 10
I hate hospitals.
Ever since I was little, I’ve hated hospitals—their stark white walls and the smell of disinfectant.
“Are you Lee Hyuna’s guardian?”
“…Yes.”
Somehow, I’d become my sister’s guardian at a place like this.
Since we’re family, it’s not particularly strange or unusual, but the fact that I, her younger brother, had become her guardian was a little…
Something about it felt odd.
“Your blood draw is done, so she’ll be out soon. After that, you’ll go for the walking test.”
“Yes, thank you.”
After receiving a brief explanation from the nurse, I sat down on a chair in the hallway.
The large letters on the wall in front of me read:
Blood Draw Room.
Coming to the hospital to get her blood drawn the day after her wedding… My sister really had a rough lot in life.
“Honey!”
Just then, the door opened, and my sister came out,
pressing a cotton ball against one arm, its sleeve rolled up.
“Did they take a lot of blood?”
“No? About as much as when you donate blood, maybe even less.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“You think the test results come back that fast~? Is my husband an idiot?”
“Walk slowly. You came without taking your medicine today.”
Sis had skipped her morning dose because of the tests.
Since I didn’t know how much of a difference the medicine made, I couldn’t help being cautious.
“Yes, yes.”
After answering obediently, she stayed right by my side.
We walked slowly toward the next place where they’d do her tests.
“Why are you smiling?”
“It feels nicer than I expected, knowing someone’s worried about me.”
“Of course I’m worried. We’re family.”
“Say I’m your wife, not your family.”
“Yeah, yeah… My wife. You’re my wife.”
“Oh! Again. Just one more time.”
“People are staring.
“They’re jealous.”
Probably not.
“How long will it take for the test results to come back?”
“Maybe… three or four hours?”
“Then we should get something to eat in between. Want me to go buy something?”
“Let’s eat together after the tests are done!”
“You haven’t even had breakfast. I’ll go get you a snack, at least.”
“What’s this, what’s this? Why are you being so nice to me?”
Well, of course I should be nice to someone who’s sick.
But Sis seemed to be in such a good mood, smiling so brightly,
so I decided to play along a little rather than give her such an honest answer.
“Because you’re pretty.”
“Huh?”
“You looked pretty at the wedding yesterday.”
“Really? Which celebrity do I look like?”
“Um… I-I don’t know. But you look like someone.”
“What kind of answer is that!”
I don’t know many idols or celebrities these days.
But surely there’s at least one celebrity she resembles.
…She is pretty, after all.
“While I’m getting my test, think of who it is!”
“What?”
After making that one-sided announcement, Sis slipped right into the examination room.
Left alone, I stared at the door for a moment, then sat down in the chair beside it.
“Huh…”
I tried to think of a celebrity who looked like my sister… but it wasn’t easy.
Just as I was about to look someone up on my phone,
“Honey!”
“Huh?”
The door Sis had just gone through was slightly open.
And through the gap, she poked her head out and called to me.
“They said you can wait and watch from beside me.”
“You want me to watch you get tested?”
“Yeah! It’s boring otherwise.”
Well… to be honest, I was curious what Sis was like without her medicine.
Normally, she didn’t look like someone who was going to die within a year.
“All right.”
Putting the celebrity question aside for now, I followed Sis into the examination room.
Inside were a machine that looked like a treadmill and a bunch of devices whose purposes I didn’t know.
Nurses stood around it, fiddling with the equipment as they prepared for the test.
“Ms. Lee Hyuna? And you’re her guardian, correct?”
“Yes.”
“The guardian can wait here, and we’ll start your test now, Ms. Lee Hyuna.”
“Okay~”
“You’ve done this before, so you know the drill, right? It’s a six-minute walk. Don’t push yourself, and be sure to tell us if you get short of breath.”
While I sat down in the chair nearby, Sis climbed onto the treadmill-like machine I’d just seen.
I watched her as she began walking slowly at a fairly leisurely pace,
“Hoo… haa. Hoo… haa.”
Sis kept taking deep breaths, her expression deadly serious.
Had barely a minute passed?
Since I couldn’t talk to Sis, I quietly asked one of the nurses standing beside her.
“…Is this about normal?”
“Pardon? Ah, Ms. Lee Hyuna’s IPAH was discovered very late, so it’s already progressed quite a bit…”
“You can think of this as how she is when she doesn’t take her medicine.”
“So will it keep getting worse from here?”
“For now, we need to keep monitoring her. A complete recovery is possible, but at this point… that’s how things stand.”
I’d only exchanged a few words with the nurse, but in that time Sis’s condition had visibly changed.
The contrast between her ragged breathing and her completely sweat-free face felt unsettling.
Her lips, parted as she struggled to draw in air, trembled faintly.
“Even with medication, it’s really dangerous for her to walk for more than ten minutes without resting.
Please make sure she doesn’t walk for more than five minutes if possible, too.”
“Ah… yes.”
“I-I… I need to stop now…”
Panting, Sis struggled to step down from the machine.
I checked the clock. Six minutes hadn’t passed yet.
The nurses moved briskly around her, giving her a cup of water and recording her numbers.
“Four minutes and forty-two seconds.”
“How many seconds was it last time?”
“At her last test… five minutes and twenty-one seconds.”
Even from that much, I could tell her condition had worsened.
All I could do was sit beside Sis as she panted in short, wheezy breaths.
“Is it hard?”
“Y-yeah… It’s not hard, but I’m out of breath. Isn’t that weird…?”
“……”
“Haa… hoo. When I was little, Sis… I even ran in the relay at sports day…”
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s true… Hoo, haa… Don’t you remember? In elementary school…”
“I’ll try to remember, so stop talking.”
I didn’t want to make someone who looked like she might collapse any moment keep talking.
Besides, even back in elementary school, I didn’t remember Sis running in a relay.
“Fourth grade… Ah, no… Hoo, haa… Fifth grade.”
“Right. Fifth grade. I remember now, okay?”
“Hee… hehe.”
What was she smiling so proudly about?
Still, I could see her breathing gradually settling down.
“Ms. Lee Hyuna, we’re going to measure your oxygen saturation.”
A nurse had come up beside her without me noticing and clipped some kind of device onto Sis’s finger.
It was a little red-lit device. Of course, I had no idea what it was for.
I couldn’t make sense of the nurses’ conversation on the other side, either.
“Did you check her recovery time?”
“Yes. It’s similar to her last test.”
“Oxygen saturation?”
“It’s at eighty-nine percent right now.”
While Sis rested, the nurses moved busily around her, discussing this and that.
It was an unsettling sight.
And not exactly pleasant to watch.
“Normal is over ninety-five percent.”
“What?”
“Oxygen saturation. They say it’s usually above ninety-five percent.”
“How do you know that, Sis?”
“It’s my illness. Of course I should know. They say knowledge is power.”
That’s true. Knowledge is power.
But there are things you’re better off not knowing, too.
Things like oxygen saturation, which I wouldn’t need to know if she weren’t sick.
“My hands are cold.”
“Let me see.”
Without any particular awkwardness, I took one of Sis’s hands.
Cold…? Not really that cold.
“I was kidding.”
“……”
“You’re still holding it, though?”
“You said you were scared. Last time.”
I sat there quietly, holding Sis’s hand.
Even when the nurse came and removed the device from her finger.
Even as her breathing gradually settled and grew calm.
“You’ll need to wait a little for the blood test results. You can leave the hospital, but remember to avoid walking, all right?”
“Okay.”
“Next is the ultrasound… You had one in January, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you can wait until your next visit. What would you like to do?”
As Sis listened to the nurse’s explanation, she looked over at me.
Why… why are you looking at me? It’s your body and your illness.
…Still, I could sense an unspoken request in her gaze, so I reluctantly opened my mouth.
“How often do you usually get that test?”
“Once every six months is about right. Given her numbers, there probably won’t be much change, so it’s fine to wait until next time.”
“Let’s do it next time.”
“Okay!”
She’d made it painfully obvious she didn’t want to get the test.
Still holding Sis’s hand, I stood up from the chair.
After the nurse finished her instructions and explanation—that the blood test results would come by text and that Sis had to get an echocardiogram next time—we left the examination room.
“Let’s go home!”
“Walk slowly. Have you already forgotten what the nurse said?”
“I don’t want a lecture. I want to hear something nice.”
“You heard plenty earlier.”
“More. Mooore.”
We walked down the hospital hallway toward the parking lot.
My thoughts were all tangled up.
Was it because I’d realized just how serious Sis’s illness was?
That was part of it… but I also felt that, as her husband, a role I’d somehow ended up taking on, I wasn’t doing quite enough as things stood.
I’d never been a husband before, but it was clear that if I wanted to play the part, I needed to be more proactive than I was now.
“What do you want to hear?”
“If I tell you, will you say it?”
“Yeah.”
“But then it wouldn’t be fun.”
“Who gets married for fun?”
“Then! Did you marry your big sis because you meant it?”
“Well… no.”
I’d meant to shoot back, ‘You didn’t mean it seriously either,’ but I was a little too late.
Sis was already in the passenger seat.
“Think of a birthday present.”
“All of a sudden?”
“What do you want? If I ask you and then give it to you, it’s no fun, right?”
“Then…”
“You have to guess! Guess what your big sis wants to hear.”
“Hmm…”
That was a hard question.
People’s hearts are difficult to understand. If it’s a woman’s, even more so.
“You’re pretty?”
“I’ve heard that a few times already. Next!”
“You’re cute.”
“That’s basically the same thing! Next.”
This wasn’t twenty questions. What was the point of this?
Since I couldn’t get a read on her, I decided to just throw out random guesses.
“You’re lovely.”
“Hmm… Not bad, but a little more.”
“You’re sexy.”
“……”
When Sis suddenly stopped answering, I turned to look at her.
Her face had gone bright red, and she stared at me with wide eyes.
“Y-you… You look at your big sis that way…?”
“What are you talking about? You’re the one who told me to eat eel—”
“Eeeek!! P-pervert, pervert, pervert!!”
Smack-!
She smacked me across the back.
It didn’t hurt much, of course, but for some reason, I started laughing.
Thinking of all the times Sis had teased me, I did it one more time.
“You’re sexy, honey.”
“D-don’t! I said don’t say that!”
Sis covered her face with both hands and turned toward the corner of the passenger seat.
So she was weak to this kind of thing? That was unexpected.
“Shall we head home? If there’s anything you want for dinner, should I pick it up on the way?”
“……”
Was she embarrassed, mortified, or just so awkward that it made her laugh?
Sis was still covering her face with her hands.
Well… if she wanted something to eat, we could order delivery once we got home. For now, we should head back.
“Sis, your seat belt.”
“…Put it on for me.”
Her reply came in a voice as tiny as a mosquito’s.
She’d had blood drawn and gone through all that at the hospital… I might as well do this for her.
I buckled Sis in and set off for home.
I hate hospitals.
It’s a cold place with no good reason to visit often, but as I pulled out of the parking lot, I left a thought behind.
And I even used the most respectful form of speech I could.
Please take good care of my wife.
The draft’s adjacent phrasing was smoothed where needed; no significant pronoun ambiguity required a change.