Strings & Stitches

Chapter 28

Almost five months into her internship, yet, Yoohyeon still felt like she just started. Obviously, she had a huge progress in her performance as a surgeon, learnt so many new things and upgraded her skills, but her confidence was still nowhere near a real doctor's. Maybe, it went down even more after what happened at Christmas. Three weeks have passed, Minji was still being avoidant. Yoohyeon couldn't blame her, even though they said to forget that the kiss even happened in the first place and to behave normally around each other, it was hard to actually do so.

This morning, the moment Yoohyeon stepped into the cafeteria, she saw Minji taking coffee, which seemed a bit confusing, since the chief has the machine in her office. Maybe her coffee machine simply needs fixing, or she wanted something different for today, but whatever it was, as soon as the older woman caught a glimpse of the intern, she took a quick hold of her cup and got out of there as soon as she could.

Although, Minji wasn't the only one to avoid meetings. Yoohyeon would feel her chest tighten and breath quicken as soon as she would come across the chief, and she, too, would try to go somewhere else, somewhere far from the woman. It pained her to know that it might have been her fault, that she ruined the friendship the two of them had before, if you could even call it that.

So in the afternoon, she busied herself with everything else that would not make her think about Minji, even though that name continued to ring in her brain for an eternity.

What didn't help today, was that today wasn't just any normal day in her internship. A teacher from university would be visiting today to have a talk with her and her resident to evaluate how Yoohyeon had been performing here in the hospital. Although she had always received nice feedback from Minji herself, her resident was way less happy about her work. They really didn't get along at all.

The stress for that particular conversation added onto the whole Minji debacle, honest made her feel a little sick, as if she could empty her stomach at any given moment. Heck, maybe it would even be her last day here if the teacher decided that she had been underperforming.

It was actually great that she hadn't seen the resident this whole day. She didn't want to cause any scenes in front of her when there was such an important thing coming up, so it actually seemed that she was lucky for once today.

In general, today felt like a day when everything went against her. She had been asked to fill in a paper and grade herself on several skills before today. Yoohyeon being Yoohyeon, she had forgotten to do that until yesterday night, staying up late to fill it in. If anyone would see the bags under her eyes, they'd probably think she hadn't even woken up yet...

The time went by very slowly, and when the alarm on her phone went off to notify her of her break, it didn't come a minute too early. Instead of spending some time in the break room, a walk in the front park felt much more welcome. Maybe fresh air could help relax her brain.

It seemed that she wasn't the only one with that idea, since she saw a few interns scattered around, a few of them smoking and talking. Yoohyeon took a quick look at them, not particularly seeing anyone that she knew.

Although, she heard two of the familiar faces talking about a name that made Yoohyeon's ears perk up as soon after hearing: her resident.

Since she didn't want to be outed as a weirdo who was eavesdropping, Yoohyeon gathered her courage and actually approached the group. One of them asked if she wanted to smoke, and honestly, today was one of the days when she understood why people did that to destress. But that wasn't what she was interested in right now. "I-... I heard you mention my resident's name?"

One of them nodded his head, taking his cigarette out of his mouth "Yeah, it seems that the strongest ones have their weakest points, too. She called in sick today, it seems."

The other girl was the one butting in this time, "Yeah! It seems that this is the first time that has happened in ages."

Yoohyeon listened to them in silence, shock apparent on her face.