Outside the window was a bright and vivid spring. Lush green foliage peeked at Sooyoung while birds and butterflies caroused on the leaves; it was the only proof that the world has not turned dull and lifeless like her and the solitary white room that reeked of rubbing alcohol. Has it been weeks, months or years? She didn’t count the numbers anymore after the twentieth time the nurse installed another bag of IV solution.
She spent her fourteenth birthday in the intensive care unit and there was no sign that she was closer to going home than she was on the first day they brought her there. No matter how many Ave Marias, Glorias and Pater Noster she prayed with her brother Siwon, God seemed not to pay them any heed. Siwon said that maybe God was just busy, or maybe they haven't prayed hard enough; so, on the first day of spring he entered St. Jude’s Seminary.
It has been two weeks since her brother has gone and her condition was only getting worse: sick and lonely. What was once thick and shiny hair started to fall off and become lackluster. The lively eyes that matched them seemed to have sunk deep into her skull, dark halos mourning around it. Only her prominent cheekbones remained of what used to be the tall and pretty girl who everyone loved. Even her sunkissed skin turned pale, chapped and bruised. Treatments made her feel worse than before. Medications did not even grant her placebo effect at the very least. Her physical discomfort was only magnified by her boredom and loneliness. Her brother used to keep her company on weekends, but now it's just her and the clear glass window.
Her father rarely came to see her and when he did, he usually had a hard look on his face. Sooyoung always thought that her father was sad because Siwon, his favorite child, had to go to the seminary so that God might listen to their prayers, and yet she never got any better to his spite. He talked to her only when the silence was too much to bear. “How was your lunch?” “How are you feeling?” “Do you want anything?” Those were the usual questions; all delivered in painful monotony―Lunch was the same, tasteless like every meal she barely touched. She felt weak, lonely and aching miserably in more ways than one. She wanted to go home―but Sooyoung would just smile and nod. Her chapped lips never made a sound except occasional whimpers when the nurse introduced a syringe to her vein for blood examinations.
An old television, which had only three local channels, provided a comforting noise to the room’s vacuum. At eight, the nurse would turn off the television and all our sweet patient could do was to listen to the footsteps, gurney wheels, the steady beeping apparatus sounds and the closing of doors across the hall. Sometimes she would hear her father and the doctor speaking but they used alien words like ‘transplant’, ‘allogenic’, ‘spare’ and ‘blood match’ which Sooyoung did not understand much of. She just assumed that these were all fancy talk that meant nothing but that she will stay in the antiseptic smelling room forever.
Everything changed one spring morning when two men in white set up another bed parallel to hers beside the window. Although Sooyoung could not hear it, she was sure that the birds outside the glass pane were singing Gloria when his father came in and told her that God has answered their prayers; they found a spare who was a match to her. For the first time since she was confined, she saw her father smile. She wondered if this could mean that her brother can go back home now. Her father told her that the sparewill arrive after lunch and that he was to stay at the bunk next to hers. She didn’t know what a spare was so she simply assumed that it was another word for an angel. If he was sent by God to cure her, when the doctors obviously couldn’t, he must be an angel. And an angel he was.
Lunch was still bland but Sooyoung made an effort to eat at least half of what was served. Today was unusually brighter and she noticed that even the aide was smiling while clearing out the food. She was about to take an afternoon nap when a tall boy opened the door and sat down on the bed beside hers.
“Hello,” he greeted her with a lopsided smile. The boy was wearing tweed pants and a formal looking white shirt that hung perfectly on his wide shoulders. There was a gentle look on his eyes set on angelicfacial features. He breathed life and joy to the room with his warm presence.
So this was her angel, the young girl mused. She looked back at him, admiring the perfectly healthy lad.
“I’m Sooyoung” she told him, fumbling for words with her hoarse voice. “What’s your name?” She was unsure of how to act in front of the kind looking stranger. Was he going to magically heal her now? For an angel, he looked human to her. No wings nor halo. Not even a blinding white light around him. Instead, his face glowed to Sooyoung, or maybe that was just his cheeks blushing pink.
“I’m SK3XY-021888. I’m the spare sent for your regeneration” he answered while handing her a small bracelet that had his so called name engraved on it. Sooyoung was hesitant to reach for it but he’d already put the stainless piece around her arm that was free from the IV tube. “Are you a robot?” she asked, still bemused by the boy’s manner. Surely he is not an angel now. Angels were named Michael, Gabriel, Uriel or any other name that ended with “-el”. She has not heard yet of an angel name with strange number combinations like some automaton. Sooyoung has heard and seen androids that looked exactly like humans but she was not sure how one could help her situation.
The boy stifled a laugh at her quizzical look. He took out a dogtag from inside his white shirt and showed it to her, now sitting at the left edge of her bed.
“See this?” He pointed to the engravings at his own dogtag similar to that on her bracelet. “SK3XY-02888, that’s my name. I will be the donor for your transplants from now on, unless you get better before I culminate” he explained slowly albeit still in jargon. Sooyoung did not understand. His reply posed more questions than answer those that were already in her mind but she just gave him a nod so as not to look stupid in front of her new found friend.
The back of her hips was black and blue. She didn’t need to see it to know. She can feel every morsel of pain thriving in it. She felt the biggest needles piercing through her skin, removing pieces of her, replacing it with god-knows-what. She didn’t care to ask what they were doing to her anymore. Why bother when she felt like dying? What was new? She has always been in pain.
Oh, there was something new.She was no longer alone in pain.
Changmin was lying still in the other bed, looking out the window.
Like her, he too was in pain (although considerably less). He too felt the needles going through his skin, into his spine. Now, he too was lying on the hospital bed, but he was happy.
Changmin. He now had a name. If he was going to stay longer (like Sooyoung suspected since she didn’t feel like she was getting better or in Changmin’s words ‘regenerate’), he should at least have a name that she could remember without killing off her brain cells. The treatment sure did enough of that.
He loved looking outside the window, so she gave him that name. Changmin. She thought it was funny. He thought it was nice. No one ever bothered to give him a name aside from the one he came with from the institution. Not that he has met a lot of people anyway.
Changmin. It had a pleasant ring to it. Whenever he heard it, he somewhat felt akin to this girl who was supposedly his primary. What was so different about them anyway? Primary and spares. As far as he could see, they were really similar. So similar that he felt more compelled to aid in her recovery.
“You’ll get better soon,” he said before he closed his eyes and drifted off.
That night, Changmin dreamt of something that was outside of the boundaries of the institution where he grew up in. It was about him and Sooyoung playing in the fields overlooking the window of their hospital room. Sooyoung was healthy and happy. When he woke up, that dream became a dream of another kind.
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