Why Aren't You Working?
The wounds and self-reproach from the past left scars that lingered for a long time. Sometimes, they never went away.
From beside Tae-yeon, who was crying in front of him, Choi Hyun-seo slowly stroked her back. Her small, slender back was thin compared to his large hand.
“Tae-yeon-ah.”
The small, soft voice reached Tae-yeon’s ear, but she could not respond. Tae-yeon lifted her completely soaked eyes to look at the doctor.
“It’s true. I can do surgery right away or whatever else it takes.”
“That’s not so simple.”
“I can do anything. Please? Please.”
Tae-yeon begged the doctor while tears streamed down her face. If her mother got hurt in this situation, she would truly be unable to survive. She had started it all for her mother. After marrying into a contract, she had thought about it many times.
No matter how much she loved Choi Hyun-seo, if her mother had not been suffering like this, she would never have agreed to a marriage like this. Taking milk from a child she had never even given birth to to act as a mother was the most important reason—her mother’s health.
But once that essence was gone, what would remain?
Tae-yeon shook her head. She could not do that.
“I’ll do anything.”
“First, let’s do the necessary tests and look at the results.”
From beside her, who kept crying, Choi Hyun-seo took her hand tightly and stood up.
“It doesn’t look like it’ll help to keep crying here, so let’s go out.”
Tae-yeon could not remember how she had left the doctor’s examination room. Choi Hyun-seo had talked to the nurses, handled the payment, and then told her, “Go that way. We’re doing blood tests, right?”
As she walked mindlessly in the direction Choi Hyun-seo was leading, he sighed quietly. “Looking for a donor is one way.”
“You applied today. When is a donor going to appear? I’ve heard they wait months, or even years. Our mother is like she might die any moment……”
Choi Hyun-seo took out a handkerchief and gently wiped Tae-yeon’s eyes and nose himself. A playful man’s voice came from near her ear. “Is it really necessary to wipe her nose too?”
“Because she’s not a child. You know, Vice President-nim. I married because of my mother.”
Those words struck Choi Hyun-seo’s heart hard. That’s right. This woman had married for her mother. He had been mistaken all this time. He had thought she married him because she loved him from the start. Well, it was a mistake. It was not like that. They had both been a contract, and for a while their feelings had come and gone?
Choi Hyun-seo nodded slightly and smiled. “I understand, so Min I-sah-nim, stop crying and let’s do the blood test. You said you would do surgery right away, right?”
“Yes. I’ll do anything.”
They walked along the long, winding line. The blood test area, the X-ray room, everything had colored lines on the floor—red, green, yellow. Even when they reached a tangled spot, Choi Hyun-seo calmly pulled Tae-yeon toward the destination. In this situation, it was so fortunate that Choi Hyun-seo was here. Seeing his strong back made her feel as if something good would happen.
“Here we are.”
Choi Hyun-seo led Tae-yeon into the examination room. While he got a number and waited, his eyes fell on Tae-yeon’s thin, pale arm. She was already in the process of walking for her mother’s sake, and she was anxious about what would happen to her mother. Her soft heart and deep affection meant Yun-woo had surely been raised with such worry. Now, no one could say that Tae-yeon was not Yun-woo’s mother.
In front of Tae-yeon, who was ready for the blood draw, the nurse said with a worried face, “The veins aren’t showing well.”
The nurse tapped Tae-yeon’s forearm repeatedly. Her slender arm was turning red. Choi Hyun-seo, holding the needle beside her, watched the nurse keep tapping and frowned. “If you hit it like that, the vein will come out?”
“Yes, tapping like this makes it come out a bit. It seems because you’re under a lot of stress or haven’t eaten much……”
Everything she said was correct. Because of the shock over her mother and skipping meals twice, the veins would not show. “How can I make the vein thicker?”
“Oh! That’s genetic. It’s not something that happens suddenly.”
After the needle had been poked in and out three times, Choi Hyun-seo was irritated. There was no place to stab on this thin arm, so he glared at the nurse, who was getting tense and sweating. “It seems I’m not skilled enough. I’ll bring in a specialist doctor.”
After the nurse got up suddenly without puncturing the arm and left, a different nurse came after a short while. Choi Hyun-seo asked sideways, “Is she a specialist?”
The round-faced nurse smiled and answered. Her eyes looked familiar, as if she had seen many patients or guardians angry over such things, and she seemed relaxed. “Yes, ah, yes, just a moment.”
But this new nurse also failed once. When Choi Hyun-seo swept his hair back and glared, the nurse said tensely, “Please try to relax. I’ll try like this.”
She then stabbed the needle into a vein on the back of the hand that was hard to see clearly. “The back of my hand hurts.”
The nurse withdrew the blood. It was indeed painful. Tae-yeon made a face at the prickling sensation and saw the blood flowing through the thin vein. Of course, Choi Hyun-seo beside her was also watching. “Ugh, it’s hard to do the test.”
Unconsciously, Choi Hyun-seo’s words made the nurse smile gently. “It’s done. The husband must really love you. I was nervous. I thought I’d be scolded if I poked one more time.”
At those words, Tae-yeon looked back at Choi Hyun-seo. His cold face was glaring at her. Only then did Tae-yeon smile. “It’s because I can’t stand to see things that don’t go smoothly.”
With Choi Hyun-seo’s personality, he would not tolerate seeing a nurse stammering in front of him. At the company, documents brought to him were always perfect, and department PTs he did in front of him had to be perfect too. So, he would not look kindly on nurses who stumbled over something as simple as a blood draw. Tae-yeon thought that the nurse’s words about loving her husband were ridiculous when she saw Choi Hyun-seo like that. Now that she thought about it, why had they been here so long?
In fact, when she first called Choi Hyun-seo, she had just done whatever came to mind. She had thought that no matter what, he would find a way somehow. But even if it was Choi Hyun-seo, he could not suddenly get a human kidney. The fact that he had followed her all the way to the blood test room when the result was obvious was strange. “From my perspective, it seems like you really love your wife.”
“That’s just an act outside.”
As they left the blood test room together and walked down the corridor, Choi Hyun-seo asked, “An act? What the heck! Why would you say that?”
“What?”
Tae-yeon did not understand what Choi Hyun-seo was saying at first. “Just an act? I was being sincere. How many times did I stab this thin arm?”
“That’s my fault for having thin veins. Why are you blaming the nurses?”
“The nurses are at fault. It’s because they lack ability.”
“What am I supposed to do if there’s no vein?”
“Even so, you have to find it. That’s the specialist’s ability.”
It started again. The person who could not see the inability of others was Choi Hyun-seo. “It’s fine. I’m okay.”
“It’s not fine! Your arm looks bruised.”
“What’s the harm in a bruise? As long as my mother is okay, I’m fine.”
The clear water gathered in her eyelashes ran down her cheek. At first glance, it was so transparent that it could have been mistaken for tears. Seeing Tae-yeon cry made Choi Hyun-seo feel uneasy. “First, you should stay by your mother’s side today.”
“Yes. Even if it’s late, I should go home. Yun-woo will come looking for me.”
“The caregiver was already called.”
Choi Hyun-seo said it calmly. When had he called a caregiver? Tae-yeon had been too flustered to think of it. “You didn’t have to go that far.”
“I can’t stay here forever anyway. Go home, get some sleep, and come back in the morning. There are a lot of things to do tomorrow.”
He really was an incomprehensible man. Choi Hyun-seo had seen Tae-yeon off and left. But the next day, when she met Choi Hyun-seo at the hospital again, she was puzzled. But it was not only the next day. Choi Hyun-seo visited Kyung-ja’s hospital room every day to greet her and accompanied her through the tests. Tae-yeon knew well how much lethal schedule Choi Hyun-seo was managing at work. So, while she was at the hospital now, meetings were being canceled one after another and plans that had been reviewed were not ready.
Tae-yeon left her mother’s hospital room and called out to Choi Hyun-seo standing beside her. “Hey. I never thought that one day I would say this kind of thing.”
“Go ahead. What is it?”
Looking up at Choi Hyun-seo standing in the hallway in front of the hospital room with a nonchalant expression, Tae-yeon asked, “Vice President-nim, why aren’t you working? Please work a bit. Don’t come to the hospital every day.”