One Step At A Time

Going Home

"I'm your Husband."

Three words that were difficult to comprehend for the man sitting in the hospital bed. He stares at the angelic, beautiful man who spoke the words and also at the man with thick rimmed glasses and a white coat. The two men were looking at him from the two chairs beside the hospital bed in the white clinical room filled with flowers and balloons (which apparently were his favourite).

"You are?" He knows he has been told this a few times but he now doesn't know whether it's the memory loss or simply the fact that he can't believe that someone so beautiful is his husband.

"Yes, that's right, Mr Kim-Jeon, he is your Husband." The man with glasses says.

"But he looks like an angel."

The man in the white coat and glasses looks kindly at the patient. "He is still your Husband."

The patient is Kim-Jeon Jungkook and six months ago he was air lifted to hospital after a car crash. That day everything changed and even though he'd recovered physically, the mental recovery had been hampered by the diagnosis of Dissociative Amnesia. The doctors had done as much as they could and now it was up to Jungkook's Husband to unlock the memories buried deep inside his mind. Since being conscious and able to communicate, he's seen the angel at his bedside every day and several times in the last month he's asked and been told the same thing.

Jungkook knows that he is 30 and he is a photographer, he knows that the black tracksuit he is wearing is his and that he wears a lot of black. It surprised him to learn that he wore mostly black clothing because he thought he liked colour. To begin with, the specialists attributed the memory loss to the inflammation and swelling of his brain but when that subsided, only some memories returned. He knows he has family because the people who visited him soon after he woke up, told him that's who they were and he spent time video calling them in recent months. He struggles to understand how he knows his family but someone as important as his Husband remains a stranger. The problem is that his husband looks like an ethereal being and it is a foreign notion that someone so beautiful would be married to him.

Jungkook's husband is Taehyung and he is also 30 years old. He is a photographer and that is how they met. Both fresh out of university and attending interviews for the same company. Taehyung initiated their first conversation while waiting to be interviewed and was bold enough to invite Jungkook for lunch that same day. The doctors have been sure that Taehyung was forgotten by Jungkook because he was driving to meet him the day of the accident so Jungkook's brain fused the two together.

"Are you taking me home today?" Jungkook asks Taehyung, who is sitting in the chair he's occupied every day.

"The doctors think that you will benefit more from being at home."

As nervous as Taehyung is, he's looking forward to getting his Husband at home, in familiar surroundings. Outside of visiting hours, he's been tidying and cleaning their home. Buying in all of their usual shopping and making sure that everything was where it should be. He'd spoken to the doctors at length about setting up their guest room for Jungkook because he was worried that sleeping in the same bed would be too much, given that he's practically a stranger. The doctors and psychologists had told him that he needs to be as normal with his husband as he can but he should also take Jungkook's lead. They'd assured him that memories would return and he should make a diary as they start coming back. Taehyung feels prepared, he's been in love with Jungkook since they went for lunch after their interviews eight years ago or at least that's how it felt. He hadn't thought it was possible to love someone more than he did in the first four years but he was proven wrong when he stood hand in hand saying his marriage vows four years ago. Now he worried that the man who flustered so easily... the man who offered him a latte as the alternative when he told him he didn't drink coffee... the man who threw him over his shoulder and carried him to bed... who got fired from his job for punching the model they were photographing because he tried to kiss Taehyung... the man who looked at him like he was the only thing that mattered... he worried that, that man was gone and it was a terrifying prospect.