Chapter 29: Everything Will Be Okay
When someone's life is on the line we tend to panic. We tend to realize just how short life is, just how delicate it is. We grieve badly, even if we aren't the one who is hurt. And we all tend to deal with grief differently. That was what the friends of Jennie Ruby Jane Kim were discovering rather quickly as she lay unconscious in the hospital bed for what was her third week because we never see it coming. How are we to know that one's day could be their last? It's quite simple. We don't know. We can never predict tragedy. It is an impossible feat to do. We like to believe that our lives will go by happy, with no problems. We will be the ones who break the mold of tragedy.
But the sad truth is that every man, every woman, every child, no matter how hard they try, no matter how nice they appear to be, will always walk through a storm. Sometimes we cannot see what storm they are fighting through, what bullets they are wounded from. Not all scars are as visible as others. And tragedy seems to affect us in ways that we don't want it to. We begin to feel hopeless. And it's while we are hopeless that we also fight to find ways to be hopeful.
Perhaps it is an oxymoron, perhaps it's just life, but while we are hopeless it is at that time we are the most hopeful, because it is when the lights are darkest, when the times are the hardest, while the storms pound the worst against us, that we crave hope.
All of these truths were discovered in one way or another by Jennie's friends.
Jisoo dealt with the harsh blow by going to the gym and repeatedly hitting things, she ran harder and faster than she had before, pushing herself to the limits was the only way to deal with her best friend being in the hospital.
Joo-hyun worked harder and harder at school, trying to make up for Jennie and where she wasn't, she took notes on everything so that Jennie would know what they were doing when she woke up... if she woke up.
Krystal, having gotten assigned to help with a criminal court case at her local law firm that she had been assigned to for her school, worked hard, staying up day and night to try and win the case, for some reason she wanted to bring justice, after all it wasn't just that Jennie was in the hospital. Jennie was a girl who did no wrong, why do the righteous suffer? So if Jennie could not have justice, she would bring justice somehow.
Ji-eun was in Spain for a modeling gig when she got the news and instantly cried, she always had had a tender heart, more so than others. She flew home on the next flight possible and had volunteered to take the night shifts when others were too tired to stay at Jennie's side because there was always someone at the hospital day in and day out.
Chaeyoung, even though she would prefer no one to know, was also grieving. She had grown to enjoy Jennie's company and had been furious at Lisa when they had broken up, she spent more time than usual moping around.
And Lisa? Well Lisa put her heart and her soul into her composing, into her music. Music is when we can wear our emotions on our sleeves and that was what Lisa did. We all cope in different ways and for her it was through her music, where her second love was, the first was in a hospital bed.
We all handle grief in different ways. We all rage in different ways. Man is not a machine, every human in existence has felt pain. But it is how we deal with pain that matters, not how we feel it, it is how we walk through the fires not what burns us, it is how we manage to steer our ships, not what type of storm it is.
•°•°•°•
Lisa slowly found herself dozing off into sleep, her head occasionally slipping from where it was resting on the palm of her hand to drop down into empty air. She was sitting in the small hospital room, taking her turn. Then again she had automatically decided to be there every day, all day if she could. Lisa found that talking to Jennie even if she couldn't hear was nice. Nice in a way that she couldn't explain. Lisa couldn't tell her just how sorry she was.
