s e o u l | k p o p - o s

123. GOT7 JB - Wish : Exhale II

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This was your final choice: life, but not as you knew it, or death. And damn it all, you couldn't tell what would be worse.

Pairing: JB x Reader

Genre: Angst, Hanahaki disease!AU

Words: 2.4k

Your heart hammered in your throat as you waited for the doctor to see you. The exam bed's paper liner crinkled loudly whenever you fidgeted in place, the only sound in the room other than the quiet rasp of your labored breathing.

It was hard, sitting alone like this. It always was. With nothing to occupy your thoughts, you inevitably ended up in a spiral of confusion, hurt, and damned foolish hope. It was going to be the hope that killed you, even before the tangled weeds in your lungs.

You swallowed with difficulty and looked at the pamphlet clutched in your hands. You'd read it cover to cover countless times already, to the point that you'd nearly memorized it. But without anything else to occupy you and help settle your nerves, you found yourself skimming through it again.

The treatment section was just as brief and perfunctory as before, but you read the description for the surgical treatment again and again, as if hoping to glean some new information from it. Instead, your eyes kept tripping over the same lines.

The surgery permanently removes the flowers from the patient's respiratory system. However, many recipients of the surgery note that they also stop experiencing the love that induced their illness.

You felt your lungs constrict, and this time you knew it had nothing to do with your illness. It was pitiful, downright pathetic. And more than anything, it was pure foolishness. But as you read that line again and again, you couldn't help but think about everything you'd be leaving behind.

Smiles, sunshine, warmth and familiarity. Wishes made and fulfilled. There was no denying that the past couple of months had been some of the worst in your life, but when you thought of Jaebum, you felt so much that you ached with it. It was practically a part of you, and even though it was a part of you that hurt, you instinctively cringed away from the idea of having it forcibly removed from you.

But failing to follow through with the procedure would surely be the death of you. And that was the thing, wasn't it? This was your final choice: life, but not as you knew it, or death. And damn it all, you couldn't tell what would be worse.

A quiet knock on the door and the sound of your name snapped you out of what surely would have become a full-fledged existential crisis.

The doctor slipped inside the exam room and quietly shut the door behind her. She looked at you with the kind of expression one might have if they were talking to a spooked animal. Your eyes felt too wide, your breathing still labored, so you figured she had every right to look at you like that.

"How are you doing?" she asked. When you didn't respond right away, she looked down at your hands, white-knuckled and all but mangling the pamphlet, and sighed. "You've expressed interest in getting a flosectomy. I take it you've read about the surgery and its side effects?"

You followed her gaze down to the pamphlet. To remove the flowers is to remove the love that nurtured them. To remove a part of yourself.

What's worse? Living without a part of yourself, or death?

Maybe if it had been any other part of you, you would have answered differently.

Your fingers clamped hard around the paper, and you bolted up from the exam bed so quickly that you startled both yourself and the doctor.