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Dr. Sadarangani, Namjoon's friend, did make things smoother. Namjoon had him paged while they were still bringing a gurney for Jungkook. It only took minutes for Dr. Sadarangani to get Jungkook started on his first transfusion. Once he was receiving blood, Namjoon relaxed. He was fairly sure that everything else was in order.
It was not so easy for me to be calm. Of course I trusted Namjoon, and Dr. Sadarangani seemed competent. I could read their honest judgment of his status.
I heard the wonder of Dr. Sadarangani and the doctors on his team when they inspected the perfect suturing of Jungkook's wounds, the impeccable setting of his leg in the field. I heard Dr. Sadarangani behind closed doors, regaling his coworkers with tales of Dr. Cullen's exploits in the inner-city hospital in Baltimore where they'd worked together fourteen years ago. I heard the surprise he voiced at Namjoon's unchanged appearance, and his silent suspicions that despite Namjoon's claims that the cool, humid air of the Pacific Northwest was a natural fountain of youth Namjoon had been experimenting in plastics.
He was sanguine enough about Jungkook's case to beg Namjoon to look in on a few of his as yet undiagnosed patients, declaring to his interns that they would never see a better diagnostician than Dr. Cullen. And Namjoon was confident enough in his condition that he agreed to go help others.
But this wasn't life or death for either of them the way it was for me. That was my life on the gurney. My life, my everything, pale and unresponsive, covered in tubes and tape and plaster. I kept myself together as best I could.
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As the attending physician, Dr. Sadarangani had made the first call to Jaewoo, which was painful to listen to. Namjoon quickly took over for him and explained the fictional version of what he and I were doing here as succinctly as possible, assured Jaewoo that everything was going well, and promised to call soon with more information. I could hear the panic in Jaewoo's voice and was sure that he was no more persuaded than I.
It didn't take very long before Jungkook was presumed in stable condition and placed in a recovery room. Jimin hadn't even returned from his errands. The new blood pulsing through Jungkook's body altered his scent in a way I should have anticipated, but it took me by surprise. While I was aware of a significant lessening of my thirst-pain, I didn't enjoy the change. This strange blood seemed an interloper, alien. It wasn't part of him and I resented the intrusion, irrational as that was. His scent would begin to return in just twenty-four hours, before he'd even woken up. But he would not entirely replace that which was lost for many weeks. Regardless, this brief distortion was too strong a reminder that, at some point in the future, the scent that had compelled me for so long would be lost to me forever.
