Sunghoon desperately blinked back tears in his eyes, knuckles white from clutching the steering wheel too hard. He could feel his nails dig into the leather of the steering wheel, creating impressions in it. But he didn't care. His whole life just changed with an utterance of a sentence, he could deal with a slightly damaged steering wheel.
He couldn't do it anymore. He had to pull over. Tears pooled in his eyes, making it near damn impossible to see the road ahead of him. Just because he was dying didn't mean that he needed to sentence anyone else to death.
He pulled over, not knowing where he was, or what was happening. All he knew was that - He was dying. Sunghoon was dying. He didn't have that long to live and he only found out about it literally, 8 minutes and 30 seconds ago.
"What?" Sunghoon asked, mouth agape, sure than he was on a hidden camera and all of this was a prank.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Park." The doctor said, his file opened in front of him, test results neatly placed in the cream manilla folder.
"No. This can't be true." Sunghoon said, unable to process anything, "This has to be a joke. You're kidding, right? Tell me, you're kidding!"
"I'm sorry." The doctor repeated. He's delivered news like this before, he knows that processing the fact that we're not invincible, and that death is inevitable is a hard thing to come to terms with. So he sat there, waiting for the news to sink in before he said anything else.
"This can't be true! This has to be a joke! I'm healthy!" Sunghoon demanded, as if that would change his inevitable fate, "I exercise every single day! I eat right! I have never done any drugs! Sure, I drink but-"
"This has nothing to do with your habits, Mr. Park," The doctor insisted, using this information to test the waters before saying anything else.
Sunghoon relented. He couldn't keep denying it, as much as he wanted to. He needed to know. He didn't want to, but he needed to. There were a million thoughts running through his head, none of which he could make out, but he was freaking out.
"What is it, then?" He asked in a broken, pained voice, scared out of his mind.
"What you have is called Cardiomegaly, which would be easily curable, but your latest tests show that you have Secondary Amyloidasis, which is incredibly rare for people your age." The doctor explained.
"What does that mean?"
"Cardiomegaly means that you have an enlarged heart, which would usually be curable because your heart is just a muscle, but the fact that you have Amyloidasis makes things a little more complicated," The doctor explained, "Amyloidasis means that you have abnormal build up of protein all over your body. Secondary Amyloidasis means that the protein has built up to the point of organ failure.."
"There has to be something we can do!" Sunghoon begged, desperately.
"I'm sorry..." The doctor repeated, sounding beaten down himself.
"Now what?" Sunghoon asked, gripping at anything that he could, needing an answer, lost and afraid.
"We can give you medication for the pain, and possibly something to slow down the growth of proteins, but other than that...I'm afraid nothing else can be done," The doctor said.
"I'm dying?" The younger boy asked, hot tears streaking his face.
"Yes."
"How long?" He asked.
