good morning|pjy ✔️

XXXX. so cute and sweet

Sanitizer.

Cold.

Dark.

Dizzy.

Sometimes opening your eyes is the hardest thing you'll ever do.  Sometimes realizing one of those eyes is still as dark as if it were closed is harder yet.  Junghee's eyes stung with tears as she touched where her eye should be and found a rough bandage.  In a panic, she clawed away the fabric and closed her other eye.  Junghee tried desperately to find the light, but through the previously bandaged eye was only darkness.  She reached up to feel if her eye was even still there and immediately flinched when searing pain greeted the touch. 

The door creaked open, then heels frantically clicked across the floor.  "Oh honey, don't do that."

Junghee opened her other eye to find her mother with wide eyes.  The tears in her own eyes began to well up, a single drop falling down her cheek.  "Mom I can't see out of my eye, it's all dark," Junghee cried.  "What happened?"

"Baby, it's okay.  Everything is fine, I promise," her mother replied, tears of her own gathering.  She reached out and pulled her daughter into a tight hug, still not really answering her question.

"What happened, though," Junghee whispered into her mother's shoulder.

The older woman pulled back and looked into Junghee's eyes.  "Are you sure you're ready?"  Junghee nodded.  "Okay, well . . . there was still a piece of glass left in your eye and it was moving closer to your brain.  You passed out in your apartment and no one knew what happened until I found you there on the floor. . . ."  She took a moment to sniffle and wipe her eyes before continuing.  "I rushed you to the hospital and they were able to remove the glass but they weren't able to save your eye."

Junghee choked on air and began crying harder as she ripped the blanket off of her and tried to get out of bed.  "You mean I don't even have an eye anymore?"

Her mother gasped, and took hold of Junghee's shoulders.  "No, no, there's still an eye, it's just your sight."

Junghee wasn't sure whether she should be relieved or not.  Before she could decide how to feel the door opened again and a nurse entered the room.  As soon as the nurse, Dayoung, noticed the bandage lying on the bed she rushed over and began fussing about a new one.  Junghee allowed herself to be cared for then told the other two women that she wanted to be alone.  Her mother looked a little hurt, but Junghee needed to think and she couldn't do that very well with a crying mother and fussy nurse.

Several days passed of Junghee simply listening to her own heartbeat and staring at the white ceiling.  The nurses and doctors would come in and change the bandage every few hours, but Junghee asked for them to keep visitors away.  No matter how much she felt bad about it, Junghee couldn't find it in herself to want to see anyone.  She would cry herself to sleep every night, but the nurses never said anything when they found her pillow stained with tears in the morning.

Junghee started as she jerked from a dream in the middle of the night. A cold chill ran up her back as she remembered what her mother had said the day she awoke— they couldn't save her sight.  It had been five days and Junghee was only just starting to get used to not seeing from her eye.  She was not yet over the fact that her vision would be impaired forever, but she had been making some progress.  When a fresh wave of tears made their way to Junghee's eyes, she somehow shoved them back and decided she was done crying over the situation.  No matter how many tears she soaked her pillow with, her sight wasn't coming back.  Junghee still had one good eye, anyways.  Not only that, but at least when she looked into the mirror she could tell the scar was already fading and the doctor said her eye would look basically normal.  This was not the end of the world, and Junghee knew that she could move past it despite the part of her that wanted to wallow in self-pity.