Memories of Summer

Act 12: Disclosure

I am sitting across the enemy. With him wearing ridiculous furry slippers and pink pajamas, I can certainly say that I am a hell lot manlier than him without seeming vainglorious right now. To be a little accommodating to him, even if I just had breakfast, I accompanied him to the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee.

I hate how he acts all nice to me. His smile makes me want to relieve him of his front teeth.

It's just human nature that you start to hate everything about a person once you covet something that he has or in this case, someone he has.

But I must admit that he is more decent that the basement dwelling geek that I imagined him to be. He was actually nice. Sort of. He didn’t even suspect that I was hitting on his fiancée.

Your conscience stabs you a little on the side when you are faced with people like these. Unassuming to the point that he was even thanking me for 'being there'.

I didn’t mention that I was with Summer all day. Our whole conversation revolved on her but I veered far from the scene that preceded her hospitalization. I am not an asshole enough to wave in his face that I just kissed his girl prior to her losing consciousness. That would make me sound like a date rapist. As much as I am being a total tool right now, that is too far from the truth. Date rapist, no. A straight-out fiancée stealer, yes.

He ordered a cup of hot espresso, and then I learned that Summer has this conditioned called dysautonomia. I'm not familiar with it so I assumed it wasn’t really that bad. Hey, at least it's not cancer right? It sounded more like a name you would call a psychological problem.

Well, for me, as long as she doesn’t murderous tendencies it’s all good. I’m sure her beauty to insanity ratio would be reasonable. Save for Vic, most pretty girls I have met are all a little conked out in the head. I think you would agree if I say that we are all insane to some degree. Most just hide it better than some. Maybe for her it just manifests in these sudden fainting spells. To me, it manifests in my sincere urge to brain Cho Kyuhyun with the nearest oxygen tank for merely existing as Summer’s husband-to-be. Just the mention of his name grates on my nerves and raises my blood temperature by a hundred degrees Celsius.

We went back to Summer’s room and found her sleeping still. Sleeping. That’s how I wanted to see it. It worries me to no end when I try to chew on the fact that she passed out on her front door and hasn’t woken up since. Our friend on the other hand seems more accustomed to the situation. He must have seen this happen a lot of times before.

After a few minutes of watching Summer sleep like rock, we decided to sit outside the room and talk some more. Screw work. I called in sick. I’m not letting her wake up with only Cho Kyuhyun beside her. Doesn’t he have work himself? Why is he here anyway? Ok. He is the fiancé. Don’t rub it in.

Six gurneys rushing past us later, I told myself to man-up and take on a subject nibbling my brain the whole morning: their engagement. But then, he took the initiative to explain to me the real nature of Summer’s condition. It turns out that I was wrong assuming that dysautonomia is a mental illness. Good news, she is not crazy. Bad news, it is worse than anything that I expected.  

For the most part, I don’t understand it. It’s fairly new to my ears. But for starters it’s he said that it’s a sickness in the autonomic nervous system, meaning it affects temperature regulation, organ function, respiration, blood pressure, heart rate and to dumb it down, everything else that you need to live. The worst part? It doesn’t have a cure.

My heart just feels like it has been fed into a shredder as he discussed to me what Summer is going through every day. According to him, she used to say that it’s like the biggest hangover that lasts all her life. She’s always dizzy, nauseous, and vomiting. She can’t sleep thus making her fatigued. Heart palpitation, low blood pressure, chest pains, anxiety among many others are common for her too. And then there’s the frequent passing out that just scared me to death last night.

For someone experiencing all these, she looks pretty normal. She looks strong. If I had a hangover that lasts for more than one day I wouldn’t be able to smile at all. What more having it all my life? My admiration for her just grew a hundredfold but that’s overshadowed by the fact that I’m totally not ready to hear what he said next.

“She can just have a cardiac arrest one day. No sign. No nothing.”  You have to be kidding me. I just met her and now you are telling me that she can just one day drop dead and the doctors don’t have anything against it? This is bullcrap.

Suddenly, I don’t know how to feel about Kyuhyun. I’m not sure if I envy him or pity him. I envy him finding out that he has known Summer since they were young. But I pity him at the same time because I knew that he lived his life worrying every day if he’d see her still breathing tomorrow. If I were him, I’d be like that. I might even die earlier than hear out of sheer worry.

As a human being, I had to pat his back and console him. I told him that Summer is a strong girl and that he is really lucky to have her.  Very lucky. He should be happy. You know what he told me?

“How happy can I get? I’m marrying a girl who sees me as a brother and I’m not even sure if she’ll live another day.” Then he just smiled.