Suffocate II Lisoo

Chapter 18

J O O H Y U N

Jisoo played nearly dead for a few days, then slowly started improving.

Or so that's what we thought.

The weeks while Jisoo and my bone marrow were still deciding how much to fight with each other, I had trouble sleeping. We spent hours in the darkness, waiting for a miracle to happen. But miracles rarely happen in this life. After the transplant, Jisoo faced one problem. And that was me.

My bone marrow cells attacked Jisoo. Like I always go after everyone. Yuri explained that Jisoo might experience graft-versus-host disease, otherwise known as GVHD when my donated bone marrow sees the healthy tissues in Jisoo's body differently and attacks them. GVHD is a severe and intentionally life-threatening condition causing various medical problems. It cannot be good. To keep it down, they gave Jisoo tons of pills to make her immune system tardy.

My replacement bone marrow was supposed to make the cells that would hunt down all the mutated cancer leukocytes in Jisoo and destroy them.

But it didn't work.

It was either Jisoo. I was so sick before the transplant that they'd reduced the intensity of the chemo not to kill her or my bone marrow sucked. It could be both. But Jisoo's AML came back. Jisoo grew worse when she caught a fungal infection in her lungs, and the side effects of the drugs they gave her to fight were awful.

I was well aware of the risk factors, but when I think about my cells not working and killing Jisoo instead. How was I supposed to deal with that? The thought of having this transplant was to help my little sister. What did it do instead? It was killing her.

It was brought into a discussion that Jisoo should do another transplant, using Seokjin's cells this time since mine failed to do so despite being the better match. But Yuri added that even a reduced regimen of chemo and radiation to get Jisoo transplant ready would kill her, especially with the lung infection.

Mom leaned in on Jisoo to say yes to another try, but she knew it wouldn't work unless Jisoo miraculously got better. Yuri and the other doctors were running out of options. We were getting tired of medically torturing Jisoo to try to save her.

L I S A

To everyone's dismay, Joohyun's bone marrow was attacking Jisoo, and the drugs were messing her up. Along with the lung fungus, Jisoo was fighting mouth sores, thrush and joint pain, and a swollen liver, and there was a contest between the viruses and bacteria and fungi to see who'd kill her first.

"I'm done," Jisoo turned to me, flopping her head over on the pillow. "I want to stop and go home." Her voice was firm.

The surgical mask tickled my cheeks and nose, and the plastic hair net crinkled my forehead. I scratched my cheek with the back of my medically-gloved hand to avoid getting more germs on her.

"To die," I cracked. That's what it would be.

"This isn't living," she said. "I'm going anyway." She and I had talked about this for a wee, and she'd been sure the whole time.

It was hard to argue with, but I blinked tears anyway. "Are you s-sure?"

"How about a second opinion? Do you think I've suffered enough?"

"Too much," I looked away. "We wanted it to work."

"Me too. Sorry." She said it like she'd let me down. "Can you help me tell Mom and Dad? I don't think she'd always listen. Like, today?"

I left the room and saw Joohyun just as dead as me. "Hey," I called, and she looked up. Our eyes were tired from all the crying.

"Are you okay?"