Poison and Lilies
POISON AND LILIES; G
There’s something serene about being bedridden in a hospital, Sooyoung discovers after her second week there. Maybe it’s the sound of alarms buzzing and nurses bustling that don’t concern her or perhaps it’s that she gets to finish her bowls of runny potato soup in absolute stillness, not like the usual rushed way of devouring food, so piping hot it burns the roof of her mouth. (But she still eats this way out of a never-ending habit.) Or maybe it’s that she has time to appreciate the abundance of flowers that come her way, roses upon roses that have these lingering smells like that of places from a distance.
And then there’s that new bouquet of flowers in front of her early one morning - so early she doesn’t even have time to reach over and put on some incognito BB cream - so early it takes her a moment to recognize the face that’s hiding behind the flowers - not roses; lilies.
“Siwon,” she practically gasps in a breath and he smiles, placing the bouquet arrangement at the edge of her bed, leaning over to give her a half-bodied hug while she registers that he's in her room, full attention on her. He sits on the bed, careful not to sit on one of her scrawny legs and she finds herself wishing she had waxed even though there’s a multi-threaded and overused cotton sheet keeping her legs covered from his open view.
“How’s your back?”
“Oh, you know. Bare and rebellious.”
He laughs, kind of shy and taken aback - her blunt humor had always thrown him a bit off guard. She remembers how to smile back but it gets stuck in time once she takes a better look at him past the friendly smile - his cheeks sink in, swollen, and the skin underneath his eyes sag deep. Tired and worn don’t become him and even the trademark eyebrows he carries sit weary.
“How’s the show oppa? Don’t you have Poisedon filming today?”
“Yes...I tried coming here before, you know...” he pauses, “filming is just so hectic. Tiring.” it’s almost an afterthought, the idea of verbally complaining - it’s not something someone who tries to be resilient ever does. His eyes spell regret, apologetic for something he doesn't have control over and Sooyoung quietly sighs in despair.
And then it becomes silent again.
Siwon hesitates, and then decides to slide his hand up the sheet, finding her hand and cradling it with his own. Sooyoung's throat becomes dry and all she can hear is the sound of her tongue rummaging for saliva. His hand stays still for a while, before curiously twisting their fingers, looping them as one with intense concentration before thumbing the bridge of her index finger, almost as if everything about her was fragile.
“Oppa,” she tries to say, tries to gather the courage to muster up the words she really wants to let out; ‘Why are you really here?’ but Sooyoung is intelligent, she already knows from the way his palm moves away from hers but his fingers still linger in a sad attempt at not being able to let go why he came to see her of all people at seven in the morning on a Wednesday.
“I broke up with her.”
“I know,” Sooyoung looks at Siwon for the third time that morning, and wonders whether it’s an appopriate time to ask him to pass her the lilies so that she can smell them. “she told me.”
Silence, Sooyoung resolves, is beautiful. He passes her the flowers and she smells them, enjoying the faint breeze of a fresh garden in an untraceable cove somewhere pass through the hospital halls and into her room. He reaches over and holds her hand again, and this time she intertwines their fingers tight, never letting go.
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:)