Chapter Text
Doctor Jang Gyeo-ul and Doctor Ahn Jeong-won were standing side by side, looking down at a small baby. The sound of the life support machines marred the peaceful scene, but the two doctors couldn’t stop themselves from looking down with pride. The little boy was fighting for his life, getting stronger with every passing day, and the health professionals around him saw his bravery in every beating of his heart.
“Doctor Jang, Doctor Ahn, you look so good with a baby! When are you going to finally give us the pleasure of having your own baby to coo all over?” the pediatric nurse asked and Jeong-won scratched the back of his neck with an embarrassed smile.
“For now, we are both a bit too busy to think about it...” Jeong-won replied, looking down at the baby with a dreamy look on his face.
Gyeo-ul looked up at Jeong-won and then down, her knuckles turning white when she squeezed the rail guards. She opened her mouth to say something, but the ringing of her phone interrupted her before she could utter a word.
“I have an emergency!” Gyeo-ul said, when her husband looked at her with a quizzical expression. “I will see you at seven. Love you!” she looked around, making sure no one was looking at them and quickly pecked him on the cheek.
Jeong-won smiled at her fast moving back and then looked down at the boy once again. He sighed, before moving away to check on another child.
Gyeo-ul hated hiding things from her husband.
Since the beginning of their relationship, in that fateful Christmas of 2019, she always made sure to be as sincere with him as possible. Especially after he told her he had been agonizing over his decision of not leaving for Italy, for weeks, partially thanks to her and his new-found feelings.
However, the problem was not telling him her secret, it was the consequences of it being known. She knew he would freak out about her health and her safety. Especially after what happened years ago with a vengeful abusing father that stabbed her while trying to get to her then boyfriend. Gyeo-ul knew he would worry nonstop about her, putting so much pressure on his already weighted down shoulders. And the fears that would plague him, thanks to everything he saw on a daily basis.
So, Gyeo-ul made the decision of keeping it a secret for a few more days, hoping for the right time to tell Jeong-won, but also to have an entire discourse ready to assuage his overprotective nature.
Keeping such a secret was much harder than Gyeo-ul could ever contemplate beforehand.
“Honey, do you want some coffee?” the question was innocent enough, but Gyeo-ul felt like it could blow up with her answer.
“No, thank you. I will have some orange juice.”
“Gyeo-ul, the guys want to go to a sushi place. What do you think?”
Raw shellfish, risk of food poisoning,no intake of medication.
“What about that knew pasta place close to the hospital?”
“Gyeo-ul, you want you beef rare, right?” Jeong-won asked, while moving around the kitchen.
“No, I will have it well-cooked.” he looked at her, surprised, but shrugged nonetheless, making sure it would be as she wished.
Jang Gyeo-ul was tired.
She felt like she could fall asleep at any second now. The voice of a fellow GS doctor droned on and on, and with every word she could feel her eyelids moving ever so slower.
“Gyeo-ul!” Ik-Jun’s elbow on her side made her jump in her chair, and his whispered wake-up call made her blush to the roots of her hair. She had never fallen asleep in a meeting like this, but by Ik-jun’s grin, he thought it hilarious instead of disgracing.
“Jeong-won is keeping you up late at night, hum?” he chuckled mirthfully and for a crazy moment Gyeo-ul thought about blurting out the truth. The only thing that stopped her was knowing that the first person to know would have to be her husband. It was his right.
Enough was enough. She had kept the secret for a week now. She knew how to tell him. She knew what to tell him. She didn’t know when to tell him. Or better yet, every time she she tried to tell him, something happened to take him away.
The first time, she prepared his favorite food, Mama Rosa’s recipe, and was going to make a big announcement, when he called her telling her he would have to stay at the hospital because one of his kids had taken a turn for the worse.
The second time, she decided to surprise him in his office, only to find him and his four best-friends in a Wii competition, with Kim Jun-wan and Lee Ik-jun yelling at each other over the heads of Song-hwa, Seok-yeong and her husband.
The third time she was going to use one of their breaks in the garden, with the sunset as a background and the chirping of birds on the trees as a soundtrack, when it was her phone that started chirruping inside her pocket. She was ready to send it flying when she saw one of her residents waving at her anxiously with a phone on his ear. He was clearly the one calling and apparently it was an emergency. So she left her husband drinking his iced-coffee still ignorant.
The fourth time, and last one, ended up being in the observation room, after she had an episode of low blood pressure and ended up fainting in the middle of the GS staff room.
Ahn Jeong-won, alerted by Nurse Sunwoo, immediately ran to the OR, to find Gyeo-ul trying to escape without being seen.
“It was just low blood pressure. No need to worry.” Gyeo-ul tried to calm him down, but his panicky expression, even after seeing she was alright, didn’t disappear.
“When the nurse told me you were here... I thought... something like last time.” he was clearly alluding to the stabbing incident and Jang Gyeo-ul felt her heart squeezing in her chest at having him worried like that for such a normal thing.
It was now or never, it appeared.
“Ahn Jeong-won, I know why I fainted in the GS room.” Gyeo-ul said, grabbing her husband’s hand and clutching his fingers. “I’ve been trying to tell you, but it felt like every time I tried, something happened. And I didn’t want to tell you in the middle of the OR.”
“Are you sick?” Jeong-won’s voice was so low she had difficulty understanding his words, but his mournful red-rimmed eyes told her he was completely misunderstanding her words.
“I’m pregnant, Jeong-won. You are going to be a father.”
He moved faster than she could perceive, and before she knew it, he was hugging her, sobbing on her shoulder. Gyeo-ul panicked for a bit, until she realized he was saying something against her shoulder.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you so much, my dearest. You are making me the happiest man on earth.” and he kept on sobbing, and Gyeo-ul kept petting his hair, and smiling widely at his reaction.