WHEN THE DOCTOR DELIVERED the final statement, the floor beneath Yoongi's feet was shattering into fragments, leaving him to fall into the dark oblivion. His grip on his wife's hand tightened marginally, not enough to hurt her but just enough to let her know what he was still there. After all this time, he was still beside her.
His mouth opened and closed plenty of times, but there was not enough words in the words in the universe to string together to express how he was feeling at that very moment, in a hospital room with his wife about to die. The nurses and doctors left the space, giving him the space to think. When they were left alone, he allowed his eyes to travel to her motionless body. She had been stuck in a coma for what seemed like decades, no reassurance of whether she'll survive or whether she'll wither away to dust.
No matter how many times he saw her like this, Yoongi could never get used to the sigh of his wife with a ventilator traveling down her throat to keep her breathing. He could never get used to the lifelessness in her flesh and walking into the intensive care unit with his heart in his hands, expecting the worst that never came before this. This was it. The long awaited worst.
The nurses rushed back into the room, with the doctor in tow. His apologetic stare made Yoongi spring out of his seat in fury. Fueled by the barricade of emotions that was crashing into his, he pushed back the chair, hearing it clatter onto the pristine floor and advanced towards the white clad man.
"What the fuck do you mean that you can't do anything?" His hands found the doctor's collar and he was gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
The nurses push and pull at him, but he holds on tightly as if this was his very last hope. He would have gone down on his knees if he had to. "Save her! Please, save her!" He saw red beneath his blurring vision, his life on the brink of a thin line, swaying dangerously. "Please, I can't- I can't lose her." He choked out. In his voice was the desperate plea of a man who loved his wife without limits. His grip betrayed him as security rushed into the room and separated the two men.
"Your wife is in a vegetative state and there is no hope for recovery." The doctor's words were met with deaf ears who refused to believe that salvation lay in his wife's last heartbeat.
"You can't just give up on her!" Yoongi snarled, fighting against the tight grip pinning him to a corner of the room.
"She's suffering by being in this state. This is the best that you can do for her. She has given us consent before- when she was well." The final blow.
Yoongi's knees give out beneath him, and he falls beside her cot. His eyes immediately flash down to her hands, to the worn and beautiful ring that lay there. The stones in the ring glimmered under the fluorescent lights and he was transfixed with everything about her. The pale, weak version of her lying on her deathbed contrasting with the image of her that he had in his head. At that moment, he remembered her dark hair, weaving through the wind and the largest grin on her face the night he he proposed to her. When the wind had dies down, and her tears of happiness had quieted, she nodded her head up and down wildly. It calmed down the hammering of his heart just the slightest bit.
And then his memory switched to them, walking in through the doors of their first house, hand in hand and watched the empty space be filled with the instances of their love.
He remembered her tired, yet still beautiful face as they had given birth to their first child, a girl. He could not remember where it was along the way that they had gotten so old.
Suddenly, the years he replayed in his mind were nowhere near enough. She was leaving too young.
"You're going to have to give us the go, sir. Know that she will be in a better, happier place."
Hanging his head down, his hands met her cold ones again, curling it into his skin. He never let go, not even when he was signing the papers that would kill his wife moments from now. He never let go when they injected a drug into her that would hasten cardiac arrest, that would put an end of the years of love they had lived happily.
"You have some minutes left. We will take our leave now."
Once again, they were left alone. When Yoongi dragged himself up so that he could see her face, his throat tightened, refusing him of the words that he ached to say. He thought about their daughter, outside of the disparate room with his parents, unaware that her mother was moments away from leaving.
His eyes fluttered close, and the tears collecting on his eyelashes fell down. The time where they had met for the first time and him asking her out on a date and two years of youthful romance before moving into an apartment together and a beyond perfect wedding were all leaves falling from a dying tree to litter the floor in a blanket of love. He had given her everything he could in the time that they had been together. And she needed to leave the world feeling loved. That was the last thing Yoongi could do for her.
When he opened his eyes, the words left his mouth.
"I'll make sure- that our child feels loved for every second of her life. I'll give her everything, baby. I'll give her the world." He choked out from the bedside, his hands gripping hers tightly. He hoped earnestly that she could hear him, he needed her to hear.
"God, what I wouldn't give to hear you say my name once again. Just one more time." He couldn't help the tears that blurred his vision, flooding his eyes before falling down his cheeks. He didn't want to break, not in her final moments. His eyes darted around her face in a panicked sweep, trying to remember every speck of her.
"I wanted to grow old together-fuck. I wanted you to see and spoil your grandchildren. I wanted you to see our daughter growing up into a wonderful, beautiful woman. I wanted us to be proud together. I didn't want our marriage to come to an end so soon. The time is never going to be enough." His voice caught at the end of the sentences but he forced himself to continue speaking. He would use this time to tell her just how much he would miss her.
"But thank you. Thank you for letting me love you and loving me back just an intently. You gave me the world in the years we've spent together and I'll never forget it for as long as I'll live." He smiles sadly, tears running down his cheeks and through the cracks of his lips.
"I love you so much. You'll never realize how much I love you, how much I adore you. Can't you stay a little longer? I fucking love you so-"
The sound of a flatline rang through his ears.
In a flash, she was gone. She wouldn't be coming back and Yoongi was staring at the harsh reality. His tears fell without stop, there was no reason in hiding them anymore. His sobs became louder and louder, until he couldn't hear the beeping of the monitor again. He couldn't hear the door creaking open and the little steps of their daughter.
"Daddy?"
His hands quickly went to wipe away the tears as his daughter walked up to him on wobbly feet. He crouched down to bring his hands around her tiny frame and settled her down on his lap, staring at her fondly, trying to stop the tears from falling once again.
"We have to say goodbye to mommy now. She's up with the stars."
