from which a garden grows / purinz

Chapter 5/06

PGHNICU nurses have a tradition when their patients get discharged.

They dress the babies up in mini caps and gowns and hold a "graduation" for them and their families.

This all began with one particularly feisty preemie born on the 18th of August in 1997 and assigned to NICU bed #3.

Chaewon smooths her hand over the Polaroid in awe; she can't believe this helpless little thing, skin and bones and not much else, is the Yunjin.

Her Yunjin.

"Yeah, I looked a little alien-y, kinda Terminator-y at first, didn't I?" Huh Yunjink-isms are always there to lighten the mood.

Chaewon would disagree, if she could.

But with all the visible wires, tubes, and monitoring stickers attached to the infant in the picture, Chaewon can't discern medical machinery from scrawny flesh.

"I came three months earlier than expected. I guess I was just so excited to see what was out there. If I had known life outside the uterus wasn't all that great, I would've shriveled back inside."

Yunjin flips to the next page of the "PGHNICU Yearbook Edition I: Class of 1997."

It's still of baby Yunjin, only she looks even sicker than she was in the previous photo.

She's on a ventilator (Chaewon didn't even know they made them that small), her tiny hands and feet are a dusky blue, and there's a gruesome incision running straight down the middle of her chest.

Chaewon recognizes the scar instantly; it's the one she's traced on Yunjin's body time and time again. Chaewon's tried asking Yunjin about its questionable origins but Yunjin's always brushed her off.

"Cool story, maybe I'll tell you someday," Yunjin would say before going back to the task at hand (i.e. pleasing Chaewon) and Chaewon would fool herself into thinking that "someday" would never come.

"I had open heart surgery, gastric surgery; I had surgery on every part of the body you could imagine. After each one came new complications. I couldn't keep any food down, I got infections, my lung collapsed, just one disaster after another," Yunjin recalls fondly.

As Yunjin continues to flip through the makeshift yearbook, Chaewon witnesses the progression of Yunjin's illness. There's one picture, taken on Yunjin's 62nd day in the NICU, where Yunjin's lost so much weight that she's nearly wasted away; she looks like she could literally fit in the palm of Chaewon's hand.

Chaewon almost has to remind herself that this ends happily, that the waiflike baby in these still images is the same perfectly healthy, lively young woman telling this story.

"...A million things trying to kill me, but I wasn't gonna give up that easily. I wasn't about to let my life end before it even had a chance to start."

Yunjin turns to the final page that has been emblazoned with graduation-themed stickers, glittery text, and signatures from the various staff members who assumed care of Yunjin during her death-defying 184-day stay.

Yunjin is lying comfortably in her car seat, chubby baby fist clenching her "diploma" with all her might. The caption, simple yet impactful, reads: "I made it."

Chaewon doesn't register the tears in her eyes until her Yunjin-the one with the unquenchable zest for life, the one who takes the concept of "live each day as if it was your last" and runs with it-is wiping them for her.

"Hey, hey, shh," Yunjin soothes, dabbing under Chaewon's eyes with a handkerchief that seemingly appeared out of nowhere, "Don't be sad. I turned out ok! Maybe a little underwhelming in the humour department but otherwise fine!"

But Chaewon can't stop crying and she doesn't know why and the fact that she doesn't know why is what makes this predicament so damn annoying.

You see, Chaewon is one of those people who has to have a definitive answer to everything. It's either "yes" or "no" or "black" or "white" with Chaewon and nothing in between.

But Chaewon's bawling for a number of solid reasons:

First of all, it's been a rough few months. She quit her job and although she's been seeking out new positions, none of her prospective employers have sent out interview offers or even acknowledged her applications. For the first time in Chaewon's professional life, she's lost. And all she can do is cry. Let herself have a good, raw, cathartic cry.

Second of all, she's pretty sure she's about to start her period tomorrow and Chaewon's cycle is just as punctual, if not more so, than Chaewon herself.

And third, the very thing she swore to herself not to do: that is, get attached to Yunjin-Chaewon has done. (Whoops!)

Knowing that Yunjin was once on the verge of nonexistence, picturing a world wherein Yunjin's parents were never able to bring Yunjin home, a world that Yunjin never got to know and a world that never got to know Yunjin, it's just too much.

What kind of a place would that be? So dark and dreary, so devoid of hope and laughter and innuendos and surprisingly toned biceps for a self-proclaimed "geek."

A Yunjin-less world doesn't sound like a world Chaewon would ever want to live in.

Because Chaewon got attached.

And it's her own goddamn fault.

"I'm sorry," says Chaewon, fanning at her embarrassed face, "I don't know why I'm crying. I guess I'm just so happy that you're ok and that- that you exist."

Yunjin leans in for a hug-one that Chaewon is far too quick to accept.

"Well, if me existing is all that it takes to make you happy, then you seem like an easy woman to please," Yunjin smiles, then pulls away to look at Chaewon. "I'll keep doing it though. As long as you wish."

Yunjin goes back in for the embrace and the couple looks just as convincing as the husband and wife swooning over their baby in NICU bed #2.

Chaewon doesn't exactly know why she's crying, but she does know this: she's never felt safer than when she's in Yunjin's arms.