I Am The Sea || Choi San

fear

No.
No, it can't be. Not him.
The noise around her has died down, or maybe it hasn't - however, Theo can't hear anything but her own ragged breathing and the brain-melting ringing in her ears.

She falls to her knees next to San, who is coughing and groaning, his eyes closed shut.
Her hands fly to his neck, two fingers at his pulse, counting. It's fast. Too fast, but at least it's there.
Next, she lightly taps his cheek, bending over his face.
"San, can you hear me?"
He groans and heaves air into his lungs. Around Theo, Wooyoung and Seonghwa fall to their knees around the two of them, while Hongjoong orders his men to keep the ship out of the navy's reach and in motion.

San opens his eyes slowly, his hands flying up to cover his wound, hitting the wood in his body instead and he groans as it moves against his flesh.
"Don't move," Theo tells San and his wide eyes fall to hers, "I need you to stay calm. I'll help you, but you can't move unless I tell you to."
Wooyoung reaches for San's hand and holds it tightly, San's fingers slick from his blood and shaking.
On his other side, Seonghwa does the same, but his eyes are on Theo.

Theo swallows thickly, driving her hands through her hair.
For a moment, she's frozen.
She can't see. Something is blinding her, making her sight fuzzy and white.
No. Not now, she tells herself.
But it's no use, the ringing in her ears loudens, and even though she rubs her eyes until they sting, the bright white light won't disappear and for a moment everything seems to fall away.
She can hear the water, can feel the sway of the waves carrying them away fast. She shakes her head again.
Snap out of it, she wants to scream at herself, San needs help. She does not need this right now!

She can't recall anything she's been reading over the past months and panic rises up in her throat, bulky and heavy.
She can't see, she can't hear anything but the ocean, she doesn't remember anything she's learned.

And then, as if the fog has lifted, her sight clears again. The ocean seems to quiet down and reality floods back into her senses.
San's eyes are on her face, and she bites her lips, clenching and flexing her hands.
It was just a few days ago that the two of them spend the night listening to the waves, watching whales jump out of the water.

San coughs again, rattling and wet, and Theo finally springs into action.
"Yunho, I need you to help me turn him a little," she orders, "I need to see if the wood is coming out through his back."
Yunho kneels down beside her and slides his fingers beneath San's body just enough to get a good grip on his body, before he slowly lifts San's body.
San hisses and his breathing quickens, but when Theo leans down to look at his back, there's no blood stain on his shirt, no blood seeping through from an open wound.
That's good.

"Okay, before I can move you to the sick bay, I need to make sure your intestines aren't hit," she tells San and starts fumbling with the buttons of his shirt until they open.
She exposes his chest, blood smeared and bruised, and then carefully pushes apart the shirt covering his abdomen.

The wound is ugly. The wood inside San's body is erupting out of his side like a mountain out of the sea.
Theo gingerly presses down on the skin around the wound, but in all honesty, she does not really know what she's feeling for.

She has never treated a wound like this and even though the books do describe all the steps, they can only help her so far.
The panic rises in her again, and she shakes her hands out, trying to stop the shaking.
"So?" Wooyoung looks at her, panic in his own eyes, his lips pressed into a thin line. "What are you feeling?"
It would be easy to lie, to tell them that she knew exactly what she's doing. But it wouldn't be fair.

Theo takes a deep breath and scrunches her eyebrows together, her cheeks heated.
"I don't really know," she admits then and Wooyoung gasps, his voice growing loud as he answers.
"What? You're a doctor, how could you not know what-..."
"It's not like the books can teach my hands what to look for! I didn't exactly have the chance to run tests on other people before. And I'm not a doctor, you know that."