#cardiovascular screening

[drforambhuta]

The Significance of Comprehensive Health Assessments for Athletes:

Apart from specialized cardiovascular screenings, thorough full body health assessments are crucial for ensuring the well-being of athletes. These evaluations offer a comprehensive overview of an athlete's overall health condition, enabling medical professionals to recognize potential risks, uncover underlying medical issues, and apply preventive measures beyond cardiovascular health.

1. Detection of Non-Cardiac Health Issues: Full body health assessments cover various evaluations like blood tests, imaging scans, and physical exams, revealing non-cardiac health concerns affecting an athlete's performance and longevity. These assessments may uncover abnormalities in metabolic markers, hormonal imbalances, musculoskeletal problems, respiratory function, or mental health, facilitating timely interventions and targeted management plans.

2. Monitoring of Nutrition and Diet: Nutrition significantly impacts athletic performance, recovery, and overall health. Full body health assessments typically include evaluations of nutritional status, including body composition measurements, micronutrient levels, and dietary patterns. By identifying deficiencies or imbalances in nutrient intake, healthcare providers can offer personalized dietary advice and nutritional guidance to optimize athletic performance and reduce the risk of nutrition-related health issues.

3. Assessment of Musculoskeletal Health and Injury Risk: Athletes face a higher risk of musculoskeletal injuries due to the repetitive strains of training and competition. Full body health assessments may involve evaluations of musculoskeletal health, including joint flexibility, muscle strength, and biomechanical imbalances, to identify weak areas or predispositions to injury. Implementing tailored exercise routines, corrective methods, or physical therapy based on these assessments can help reduce the risk of musculoskeletal injuries and enhance athletic durability.

4. Evaluation of Mental Health and Well-being: Mental health and well-being are essential aspects of athletic performance and resilience. Full body health assessments may include evaluations of psychological factors such as stress levels, mood changes, sleep patterns, and coping mechanisms to identify potential mental health issues or sources of psychological strain. By addressing these concerns proactively through counseling, therapy, or stress management techniques, healthcare providers can assist athletes in maintaining optimal mental health and readiness for performance.

5. Screening for Cardiovascular Health: While specialized cardiovascular screenings focus on cardiac function and heart diseases, full body health assessments may include additional evaluations to screen for cardiovascular risk factors like hypertension, dyslipidemia, or obesity. By monitoring parameters such as blood pressure, lipid profiles, and body weight, healthcare providers can identify athletes at higher risk of cardiovascular complications and implement preventive measures such as lifestyle adjustments or medication to reduce these risks and support heart health.

There are many good hospitals in India offering health checkup packages for undergoing a full body health checkup. Regular health checkups can help athletes in assessing their general health routinely, as well as diagnose and treat any health problem at an early stage.

[daisychainsandbowties]

hi casper, don't die

it’s okay anon i quicksave before i do anything dangerous

[tarjapearce]

Miguel's Pick up Lines

Just fluff and nerd talk✨

Flirting wasn't something he was good for, it wasn't etched in his dna. His pasts attempts in your early stage of relationship always ended up as awkward or in a laughing fit your way.

But far from making you uncomfortable, it always ended up in you kissing the daylights our of him, appreciating his effort to keep the spark alive.

Miguel wouldn't admit it, but he was practicing his own rizz. A term he internally chuckled every time Gabriella mentioned it.

He wanted to surprise you with his art de la séduction, cause in truth he missed your flustered expression. He needed to see that sweet and lovely face of yours going through so many emotions again.

It was one of those days he'd be stuck in the lab, mentoring the new employees in their induction to Alchemax's Research Department.

In his break, he took his phone and walked to a more private area to then video calling you.

It took the connection to stablish after a couple of rings, your face appearing in the lower corner of the screen with sweet smile and a couple of flour blotches on your face. Rosie on your hip.

"Say hi to Papa, Rosie."

Rosie blabbed while agitating the spoon

"She's gonna be a good chef." you smiled ad you wiped the flour off, "Everything alright, mi amor?"

"Yeah. I'm nearly done with the induction. Can't wait to go home."

He could hear Benjamin's excited squeals as he watched the TV and Gabriella helped with food in the opposite shelf.

"I made some horchata, Gabibi's helping me here."

"I learned how to make tortillas, Papa!"

Gabi's enthusiasm brought a smile on his face

"Save me some, Solecito."

You then moved to place Rosie on her floor playground. Then went to the bathroom and closed the door.

"What are you doing?" His eyes narrowed as you smirked and pulled out the silky elastic band of your bra. Eyes widened while his tongue swept over his plump lips

"Got a surprise for you, Papa. Can't wait for you to come home."

"Too bad you're not in my lab."

"Why? Wanna show me a theory, Dr. O'Hara?" you smirked and he followed

"Would prove my Big Bang into you."

A flush crept your cheeks as your eyes widened softly at the sudden comeback, not really expecting such comment.

His chest constricted with pride on your current state.

"I think I often forget I married a hot nerd."

"I'll remind you when I get home." He chuckled when you squealed internally.

"Can't wait. See you later, Dr. O'Hara." You blew him a kiss and returned to finishing meal prepping.

You had finished your indoor workout, sweat etched to your flushed skin. Miguel leaned against the door frame, an arm raised above him.

"Did you know that high intensity workouts increases your endorphin release but it's actually the cardiovascular exercises that gives you the major boost?"

"Oh really?"

He nodded while approaching and taking a hold of your waist. Gaze raking over your sweaty look. Your pheromones tickling his nose and brain.

"Yeah" He nuzzled your neck and you squealed in between giggles while he kissed your jaw

"Don't! Let me go shower first!."

He shook his head.

"We gotta do some cardio first, mi reina. Wanna have you extra happy today"

He threw you over his shoulder and walked back to the master bedroom.

And as good as some days passed, the bad ones were always in the lurk, waiting for you to fall into their claws to not let you go until tears rolled down your cheeks.

And after thirteen years of marriage it was impossible for Miguel to not know and recognize the signs of a bad day.

You'd barely talk, and if you did, it was usually short and monosyllabic replies. You'd go into a cleaning spree, walk around the neighborhood to try and ease your mind.

He stepped in when he saw the inner corner of your lids turn red, eyes bloodshot and a quivering lip as you tried to ease a fussy and wailing Rosie. Miguel pried Rosie from your hands carefully and rubbed her back in soothing circles, to then kiss the top of your forehead.

"I'll take it from here, mi reina. Go rest up."

His heart wrenched upon seeing you sniffing and rubbing your eyes while you went up the stairs.

Miguel arrived an hour later with a tray of freshly made food, a steaming cup of hot cocoa and some tissues.

"Do you want me to keep you company?"

You nodded, teary eyed. He sat next to you and put the tray on your thighs.

"Wanna share what's up there?"

He kissed the side of your head again and begun feeding you.

"I don't know how to explain it. It's weird. All I know is that I feel exhausted and sad. I feel so useless."

"Useless?" he frowned as he fed you another spoonful to then wipe your mouth, "Decaffeinated coffee is useless. A cordless jump rope is useless."

That made you chuckle and he smiled to give you another bite of food.

"I could list a shit ton of things that are useless, but you? No, mi amor. You're the main pillar of this family. Without you everything collapses within. Like a black hole."

His arm went around your shoulders and  kissed your head softly.

"But you ain't a black hole, preciosa. Like... You're so complex, beautiful and amazing. No wonder why the universe copies you and tries to demand our attention with stars and stuff."

He smiled upon your reaction.

"I love you, okay?" He finished feeding you to then massage your feet and shoulders.

Miguel walked into your room after you were done feeding Rosie and putting her into her crib.

He removed the bedsheets out of you to replace them with his frame, sprawled ontop of you. His head resting ontop of your chest.

Your hands immediately caressed his hair, earning a lovely purr from him, melting under your touch

"You know? Your digits got me feeling a strong exponential attraction. Wanna multiply?"

Your brow quirked with a goof smile on his words as he tittered silently.

"Forget I said that."

His airy laugh got your shoulders shaking with the same amount of fun.

"I didn't understand a peep. I sucked at math, mi amor."

He took your hand and kissed the inside of your wrist.

"But... I understood the last part though."

His head snapped immediately to you and smirked.

"Rosie is asleep" you scolded between hushed laughs as he swallowed you in his arms and pecked your lips repeatedly as you giggled and squealed softly

"Let's decrease the space between our organelles, shall we?"

[villain-crown]

cheat | @jegulus-microfic | words: 520

critical care, part 1 | (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6)

a Jegulus nurse!AU

“Potter, I’ve got shit news for you.”

James snorted, finishing the last few letters of a name on the large dry erase board that announced the day shift nurses’ assignments on the medical-surgical intensive care unit. Their ward’s nickname, coined by its wealthy donor, was written at the top in half-erased red letters: Go Gryffindor! “No thanks, Marlene, I’ve got enough shit news already.”

“Peter’s cheating on us. He’s been floated to take patients in the recovery room. They took on three extra cases this morning.”

Jerking his head around, he stared at her.

No.

Peter could not do this to him. James had twenty-two sick as shit patients tripping over themselves to dive into body bags and just enough nurses to stop them from doing so. The acuity of their unit was through the roof. He would not be tested today.

“Pete wouldn't do that.” James shoved his hand into his scrubs to fish his phone out. On the home screen was the preview of an apologetic text from ✨🐀Wormtail🐀✨, reporting his marching orders to the post-anesthesia care unit. “Wow. I thought he loved me. What am I supposed to do? We’re about to start the bloody shift!”

“Well don’t worry boss, because I have slightly less shit news. They’ve sent us a nurse to replace him.” She paused. “From Slytherin.”

“I thought you said less shit news,” James grumbled, using the side of his hand to rub Peter’s name from the board. Slytherin, with its name derived from the benefactor who had funded its building, was the cardiovascular intensive care unit two floors below them. Their nurses were notoriously nightmares to get along with. “The last time they floated someone from there to here it was Snape, remember?”

“Oh yeah!” Marlene snapped her fingers. “Didn’t Sirius almost trick him into drinking nitroglycerin? It’s a good thing you stopped him. He could have actually died.”

“Yeah. Anyway, who are they sending us?”

Marlene consulted her phone. “It’s going to be… Oh! Regulus Black!”

“Black?” James repeated distractedly, writing it down.

“It’s Sirius’s little brother. Have you met him?”

“No.” James capped his marker and stepped back. “Have you?”

“Once.” She paused, then qualified that. “Sort of. I got to watch Sirius threaten one of the doctors for flirting with him. Does that count?”

That got his attention. “What? Why? Sirius has slept with half the staff in this hospital!”

“Yeah, but he’d put Regulus in a monastery if he could. No dating allowed for Baby Black.” Marlene handed over the charge nurse phone. “It’s too bad. Dorcas says Regulus is… sweet.”

James smirked. “Dorcas says, huh? I guess Pete’s not the only one cheating on us Gryffindors by consorting with the enemy units.”

“Fuck off, Potter. And I’ll give you a bit of free advice. When Regulus comes up here, you’d best try very hard not to stare. Sirius hates when people do that.”

James’s expression turned serious. “I won’t. Is there something physically… did something happen to him?”

Oddly, Marlene just smirked. “No, nothing like that. But if you know what’s good for you, don’t let Sirius catch you looking.”

[weirdmageddon]

the new zeltik video finally pushed me over the edge and made the connections between the bunch of details i noticed throughout totk seem more significant than i already thought they were. by myself i was hovering around these connections i came upon like “is this anything?” for a while, but after the video i was like “ok this is something”

alongside the theme of hands, i also noticed a secondary and more minor theme of blood and siphoning/circulation

most importantly

rauru rips into ganon’s chest with his bare hand like a badass to bind ganondorf’s heart, suck away and purify his dark magic. (btw and Not importantly ganondorf still has rauru’s finger holes in him and it’s pretty funny)

gloom seeps out from organically branching root-like structurs in the depths. if you watch closely you can see gloom slowly move inside them. they all seem to lead back to gloom’s lair where ganondorf is absorbing them. this is very evident in the cutscene where you finally make it to ganondorf himself and they show a close-up of this through thicker branches of these “gloom vessels”

gloom sucks away vitality from a person. fittingly, whenever a heart container is damaged due to gloom, you hear a heartbeat. gloom hands visibly siphon this vitality in more of a physical way. if you watch them they will sort of grotesquely pulsate when sucking the Juices out of link

is gloom ganondorf’s dark-magic infused blood? when the edge of the master sword cut mummydorf’s face, instead of blood it oozed gloom which boiled after making contact with a chip of the sword. rather than being magenta gelatin like malice, gloom is red and flat, staining surfaces like a liquid

phantom ganon is made entirely out of gloom. the compendium says it’s made from “the demon king’s own flesh and blood”. the dark clumps left behind from the gloom spawn/phantom ganon (with the depths talisman on them i guess to turn it into gloom antibodies lol??) also pulsate like monster guts

my idea is that this all goes back to those roots that pump this back to ganondorf to revitalize him. he was siphoned by rauru, now he siphons others to revitalize himself. there’s a lot of details put into this no way it isn’t connected

btw i didnt notice it at first but the landing pad for gloom’s lair is shaped like a heart like actually. it shouldve been stupid obvious

the gloom system is like a reverse circulatory system. instead of nurturing the periphery from a central location, it drains the periphery and delivers the nutrients to a central location. so like, oops! all veins. apparently after writing this i found an identical point from a forum post made ONLY YESTERDAY

“real world cardiovascular systems deliver vitality to the rest of the body from a centric location, while Gloom drains vitality from its surroundings and delivers it to a centric location”

and this “nurturance” line of thought made me remember how I thought at one point that the lightroots look a bit like hearts and the big roots are like the vessels. it wasn’t really a significant thought at the time until I made these newer connections. if we put them into my analogy, they would be the opposite to the gloom vessel system since they deliver light from the surface and emit it to the periphery (the surrounding area). i associate light with rauru, and he healed/nurtured link, so there’s just parallels and another reason that made me think of the lightroots. also the lightroots heal gloom-damaged heart containers

there are more minor but supplementary details such as

the sound of a heartbeat is featured very prominently in the E3 2019 teaser, and is literally the first noise in the game itself as the opening screens play. so it’s literally the first experiences we have with the game, both the game itself and in the meta about the game.

gaining an essence from a goddess statue, the heartbeat was not in botw (and of course neither was the miasma emitting from link’s entire body every time)

the gloom in link’s body reacts to every shrine of light blessing he absorbs into his arm and the joycons themselves pulse using the haptics

probably more shit i missed lol

the whole thing doesn’t really mean anything significant to the lore at all but neither does the hands theme. but it’s just definitely a pattern, potentially a minor theme, and deliberate choice in setting tone. i think it’s Something. im not a heavy zelda theorist tuber or anything but i’m very observant of patterns and i like to share them for deeper appreciation and contemplation/discussion

[oddinary4bts]

Love is a Laserquest | choi san

☆summary: years after your break-up, Choi San comes to you for help. In an attempt to save his life, you escape to your uncle's cabin in the woods far from civilization. Will nostalgia and longing make you fall again, or is Choi San just spinning more lies to you?

☆pairing: gangster!Choi San x female!reader

☆rating: 18+ (minors DNI)

☆genre: gangster au, exes au, angst, smut, a smidge of the one bed trope

☆warnings: guns/gun violence (mentioned), knifes/stabbing (mentioned), a bounty over San's head, death of a minor character (named Jungkook my bad), blood, injuries, stitches, probably some wrong medical terminology bc optometrists don't stitch up people lmao, a panic attack, cursing, pet names, explicit content: oral sex (female receiving) -> face riding, let me know if I forgot any!

☆word count: 16.5k

☆a/n: Here's my submission for Outlaw: The Project hosted by @ssaboala. It is coincidentally my first time posting about another group than bts, so I hope this won't disappoint! I really enjoyed writing it (even though it's really sad oop). Also my first time making a moodboard so hopefully it works haha

☆a/n pt2: thank you to @moonleeai for being my ever-so faithful beta reader, love you lots <3

☆☆☆☆☆

And do you still think love is a Laserquest? Or do you take it all more seriously? I’ve tried to ask you this in some daydreams that I’ve had But you’re always busy being make-believe

Love is a Laserquest – Arctic Monkeys

☆☆☆☆☆

The diner is silent, unoccupied. It always is on late weekday evenings, when most patrons have gone to bed, the city falling under a carpet of hushed silence only night can bring forth. It makes the diner feel like it’s straight out of a 70s movie, and it makes for the perfect study sessions too.

Night isn’t always soundless in your part of town. Hence why you’ve been trying to escape, pursuing an education that has been leaving you penniless, but with a bright future ahead. If you make it out of med school at a certain point, that is.

Tonight, you fear the peace that night usually entails has been ruined for you – there were gunshots earlier, close enough for you to see the police cars racing past as the law officers made it to probably yet another gang fight.

There’s been a gang war on your side of town. The diner has always been safe, a refuge for both sides of the war, where they aren’t allowed to fight. To carry in weapons and hatred. No, the moment they cross the threshold of the diner, the gangsters become one family, sharing struggles that only poverty can cause.

You wipe a table clean before walking back towards the counter. Your open laptop waits for you, and you quickly read the study guide you’ve made for yourself, the cardiovascular system and its pathologies forming a maze in your mind that you’ve yet to decode. Luckily enough, you still have a week before the bloc ends and you have to take the exam.

Plenty of time to cram everything about the heart in your thick little skull, you’d say.

Your lips move in time with what you’re reading, attention solely focused on the bright screen when a thump is heard right outside the door. It startles you, and you turn around to see the empty street out of the glass door.

It takes you about ten seconds to notice the dark form sitting on the ground. They’re leaning against the door, head lolling to the side. You assume it must be someone that’s ended unhoused, something that happens far too often where you live.

You’ve always been kind. When you were younger, you were told your kindness would be your demise. Yet you’ve never been able to be anything but kind, even though sometimes it might put you at risk. So you can’t resist but walk to the front door, trying to push it open.

It’s useless – the weight of the person is keeping it tightly shut, though they do straighten a little, as if coming to their senses. They turn, and the moment their profile comes into view you’re brought back eight years in the past. To a time when the world was still a beautiful place, void of violence and cruelty. To a smile so sweet it made flowers blossom on your heart, and to eyes so sharp you knew they had read your soul.

Choi San is sitting outside the door, and the caked blood on his cheek tells you enough – he’s injured. He pushes away from the door before slowly getting up. He clutches his side as he does it, yet when he turns back towards you and faces your horrified eyes, he still offers you a smirk.

You push the door open, thinking about the years between then and now. You had dated him for a few months that had felt like forever, until you had realized in what kind of business he was getting involved with. You had tried to convince him to flee before it was too late, and he kept promising that he would.

Only he never did, hiding lies with beautiful words that made your teenage self swoon, until your parents had realized and forced you to break up. It had been a nasty break-up, filled with hatred and words you didn’t mean yet had needed to say for him to leave.

You remember breaking his heart like it was yesterday.

“Choi San,” you greet him, and when he lets go of his side, you notice blood on his hand.

Something runs cold inside of you, even though he still sports a smirk on his lips.

He says your name, bowing his head. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Months, in fact. Because he does come to the diner sometimes. He usually ignores you, and so do you, so it feels strange to have him speak to you. To hear his voice as his words are addressed to you.

“What…” you trail off, glancing down at the ripped fabric of his black tank top.

He’s got a mean cut on his ribs, and it’s only then that you truly realize that he’s badly injured. Because there’s more – one of his biceps has been sliced open too, though blood is barely oozing out of it in small rivulets. The blood on his cheek is from where you assume he’s been punched with rings, and there’s already an underlying bruise under his eye.

“Got beaten up,” he states the obvious, and you immediately open the door wider to let him in.

He limps in, heading towards the nearest booth, where he plops down and lets out a pained grunt. You make sure no one is outside before shutting the door and locking it, flipping the hanging sign on it so it says closed in case a patron decides to show up.

You take a few steps towards San, hands shaking slightly at your side. Because that’s a grown man, bleeding out on the leather seat of the booth, and his eyes are shut though he looks in pain. You don’t know what you’re supposed to do. You haven’t yet started your residency, haven’t really gone from theory to practice… Yet you’re studying to be a doctor, are you not?

“Why are you here?” you ask, though you’re pretty sure you know the answer.

“Didn’t know where else to go,” he says, wincing as one of his eyes opens. He tilts his head to look towards you. “Word around the block says…” he pauses, takes a deep breath before continuing, “that you’re studying to be a doctor”.

So you are right. He’s here because he needs your help, and you’re not quite sure how you feel about it.

“Why…” You look for words, and it takes you a moment to realize that it doesn’t matter.

For all the history between you and him, Choi San doesn’t deserve to bleed out to death on a cheap leather seat in a forgotten diner on the dangerous side of town.

He has the decency to chuckle at the start of your question, which only makes him wince in pain once again.

“Don’t move,” you tell him, and it’s a little stupid because clearly, he’s in no state to move.

He doesn’t question it, and you run to the kitchen to thoroughly wash your hands and grab the first aid kit. At night, no cooks stay around, and you usually only reheat food if needed, which doesn’t really happen. You haven’t had any client coming in at night in weeks… until San, that is. So no one is there to see what is going on, which you reckon is a relief. Because you have no idea what’s going on.

You return to the booth where San is waiting, patiently. He’s clearly wiped his hand on his face because there’s fresh blood on his forehead, and you almost balk at the sight of it.

“What have you done?” you mutter, more to yourself than to him.

It seems he’s still in sync with you because he still hears. “Got involved with the wrong crowd.”

You put the first aid kit down on the table, ignoring his eyes when they flutter open, and he rests his gaze on you.

“I don’t know if I can help you,” you say as you unzip the kit and throw it open. You spare his side a quick glance. “This looks like you’re going to need stitches.”

He makes an effort of looking down at himself, though it mostly fails as he doesn’t raise his head from the seat. “Right.”

You grab everything you think you might need – alcohol swabs to clean his skin, fresh linen to bandage his side and arm, and stuff for his cheek too. He carefully observes you, with that piercing gaze of his that used to make you go crazy inside when you were young and impressionable.

You vaguely motion at him, and he cocks an eyebrow. “What?”

“Are you able to sit up?” you ask. “I can’t reach you if you’re lying back like this.”

His pink tongue darts to wet his lips, and he nods curtly. “Let me…” he trails off, resting a bloody hand on the table while he grabs at the back of the booth to push himself up. It has new blood appearing on his side, and you quickly move towards him, putting some linen against it.

As if it’s going to do anything. He clearly needs stitches, and you’ve got nothing with you to stitch him up.

“Fuck,” he curses lowly as he’s finally sitting. You just keep the linen on his side, eyes a little wide.

Your gazes connect inevitably, and time slows. You think about how he used to smile, how his eyes used to hold a softness you haven’t had the chance to see again since he’s walked out of your life.

Or rather, since you kicked him out of your life.

“I don’t think I can help,” you whisper, and his eyes flicker to your lips.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” he admits, shame turning his features into a mask of regret. “They… If they find me, I’m dead.”

Dread fills every ounce of your being. “San, what have you been doing?”

He looks away from your insistent gaze, scoffing slightly. “You don’t want to know.”

He isn’t wrong; you genuinely don’t want to know. Because he means nothing good, even with all the memories you share with him.

“Is it going to put me in danger?” you ask, as he still obstinately avoids your gaze.

He seems to freeze in front of you, as if you’ve pressed pause to your favourite show. To avoid the awkwardness, you busy yourself with grabbing one of his hands so he can hold the linen in place before you start washing the cut on his arm. It’s not deep, but you’re pretty sure it’ll still leave a mean scar, especially considering he can’t go to the hospital.

The thought has a drop of cold sweat roll along your spine. People want him dead. People want Choi San, the man you know as a young, scared teenager just trying to find a way to make his life better, dead. You remember the innocence in his smile – has he smiled at all in the years apart?

“I should go,” he says flatly. He moves to stand, but you hold him down, two hands firmly placed on his shoulders. It makes him wince, and you quickly release your grip.

“Don’t,” you tell him. “Let me at least patch you up.”

His eyes shut again as his head hangs low. “I am so sorry.”

You don’t even know who he is apologizing to, or why he is. All you know is that it causes your heart to clench in your chest, stealing the breath from your lungs.

When you were younger, you believed San was your star-crossed lover. You believed your high school sweethearts romance would grow until you’d be old and grey and at the end of a very long road. You had dreamed of a future with him, the way only teenagers can dream – with no sense of reality. Because your reality had never been to end up by his side.

His choices had been proof enough of it.

You still remember the day you first kissed. Under an August meteor shower, with just the night sky as your witness. It had been hesitant, slow and soft, just like everything with San. And you had believed the lie, trusted it with every beat of your little heart, until your parents had found out the truth about him.

Until they had broken your heart, even before you had broken his.

If the stars had known then, what was going to happen to you and Choi San, would they still have shone through the night?

He lets out a pained sound as you gently dab at the cut on his bicep. You clean the skin around the wound in and of itself, and he watches you carefully, piercing gaze not missing how your face clouds with memories.

“How have you been doing?” he asks so softly you think his words are a gentle summer breeze on your features.

You can almost still smell the summer night air of that field where you had stargazed, where you’d always meet so long ago.

“I’ve been okay,” you answer, truthfully. Because even though you haven’t seen him, you have lived your life apart from him. Have evolved without him by your side. “Better than you, visibly.”

He didn’t expect the joke. It makes him snort, and then a soft smile grows on his lips, softening the edges of his hard features. “You haven’t changed.”

You have, and yet you haven’t. Like him, you think there’s a part of you that is still sixteen, and will forever be. A part of you that remained stuck in the moment when you watched him walk away in the rain, as if even the sky had to cry for his broken heart.

“Wish I could say the same about you,” you murmur, nostalgia a melancholic song in your words.

He chooses to remain silent, because the proof of how much he’s changed is sitting right in front of you, wounded and bleeding and hurt. The hurt is behind his eyes, in the shadows of the past that have also been obscuring your vision.

“Yeah,” he lets out, barely audible.

And then silence reigns between you, because as much as you once loved him, eight years have made you strangers. You don’t know anything about his life except the dirty, obvious darkness that surrounds him, and he doesn’t know anything except that you are studying to be a doctor…

Which leads you to wonder how does he know in the first place?

You ask him, as you’re wrapping the linen around his bicep to make a makeshift bandage. You’re proud of the result, though your fingers can’t resist but linger on the taut skin over his muscle, surprised at how soft it still is.

“I’ve heard you mention it,” he admits, as you take a step away to look at the material on the table, as if it’ll suddenly make stitches appear for you to put them in his skin. “One of the times I was here.”

“You never said hi,” you reproach him, unable to hide the ghost of a bite in your tone.

“Neither did you,” he points out, and he isn’t wrong.

All you can do is purse your lips as you finally decide to clean his skin. But for that, you have to rid him of his tank top, to make sure there’s no fabric in the wound. You look at him, cheeks somehow burning even though all you’re doing is taking care of a patient.

Though he’s not a patient, and you’re not in a hospital. You’re just a server at a dusty, old diner and he’s just your teenage lover, wounded by his dangerous actions.

“Should I grab scissors to remove your shirt?” you ask, though you’re speaking to yourself more than to him.

He still finds it in him to tease. “You want me out of my shirt?” he enquires, smirk gracing his lips again. “Say no more.”

He tries moving, but you hold up a hand to stop him. “Don’t,” you warn. “You’ll make it bleed more.”

He purses his lips, because nodding. “Right.” He glances at the first aid kit, before his eyes trail to your face again. “You got scissors in that?”

There are. You grab them, before turning towards him. It feels strange: you’ve never undressed him before. You had always wanted to wait, back then, before you slept together. You believed you were too young, and San had always respected it.

“Let me know if I hurt you,” you tell him as you take a step closer to him.

He slightly leans back, furrowing his eyebrows. “What do you plan to do with those that might hurt?”

You roll your eyes, playfully, before taking the two other steps leading to right in front of his legs. You notice that they are slightly parted, allowing you to come closer, and you take a steadying breath before reaching between you, pulling at the fabric of his tank top.

“Stay still and you shouldn’t get hurt,” you whisper, ignoring the heaviness of his piercing gaze on you.

It burns right through you, and you have to tame the beats of your heart at the feeling of the warm skin of his shoulder against the back of your fingers as you bring your other hand forward, until you’ve started cutting his shirt.

It’s stuck to his side where blood has dried, and he winces but remains still and silent as you keep going, pulling on it a little harder to be able to cut. The moment stretches into infinity, because you can’t help but take your time. It reminds you of how you’d used to run your fingers on his back, under his shirt, when you napped in the field in the summertime. In an idyllic world where gangs and violence and war were mere inventions of the media, and not a reality that surrounded you.

You’d loved the field. The wildflowers, the open air, the way it was just you and him and a few lazy bumblebees as clouds lazily crossed the sky above. You were so young then, so innocent. Hands unstained from blood, from his blood.

Because as you cut, the hand touching his shirt stains with blood. You pale at the sight of it, but you keep going, pushing through until you’re done, gently pulling the fabric from his body until he’s sitting there, shirtless, with a long wound on his ribs.

You can’t help but notice his toned chest and the defined abs on his stomach. Though blood mars his skin, turning it into a piece of violence, Choi San is still beautiful. Beautiful in a dark, dangerous way that has you glance outside, making sure no one is looking.

But the streets are empty, void of life at this time of the night. At least, they mostly always are.

“You will need stitches,” you state again as if you both don’t know already.

“I can’t…”

An idea forms in your brain. It’s a stupid idea, and you don’t even know why it crosses your mind.

Your uncle has a hunting cabin far in the woods. He’s a nurse himself, and he’s always kept everything over there in case someone got injured and he had to stitch them up. You haven’t gone in forever, but you still remember the tall trees, the deep forest scent that reminds you of autumn and leaves and grey days spent reading by the fireplace.

You never went hunting, but you did accompany your father when he went, needing an escape from the city once in a while. An escape from a life that was slowly becoming too real.

Your uncle is currently halfway across the country, so you know you’d be alone at the cabin. You glance at your laptop over your shoulder – you have three days off in front of you before your next class on Monday. Indeed, the Friday class is pre-recorded and to watch online in your free time, and you figure you can always watch it some other time.

So you turn towards Choi San, almost surprised that he’s real and he’s still sitting in front of you, honey skin cut open on his ribs.

“I might know a place where you can go,” you admit, with a small voice, surprising both you and him. Because you doubt he expects you to want to help, after tonight.

“What?” he asks.

“My uncle’s cabin,” you remind him, because you’ve told him about it all those years ago. “He should have all that I need to stitch you up.”

San looks down at himself. “You’ve just cut my shirt open.”

It sounds a little dumbfounded, and you can’t help the nervous laugh that falls from your mouth. Because even though it doesn’t look too deep, the wound still is terrifying in and of itself.

“I’ll bandage it,” you whisper. “Before we go.”

He seems like he ponders for a time. You watch the debate across his features, his eyes falling to a spot on your chin. He looks sad, troubled and defeated. “I can’t… I can’t do this to you.”

You ignore his words, carefully washing his side. You avoid the cut and try to be as gentle as you can, but his muscles still flex as he clenches his fists from the pain.

He’s strong. That much hasn’t changed. Because he doesn’t make any sound as you finish washing him and then patch him up with those same careful hands. And when you move to his face, cleaning the blood, his eyes flutter shut, and he sighs softly.

He looks so much like he looked then that your heart aches, and you find yourself blinking away tears for this man who’s had it so rough he believed joining a gang would save him.

“I should have come to you before,” he murmurs. “You’re much gentler than Hongjoong.”

You don’t know the guy he mentioned, and you don’t feel like asking. Don’t feel like acknowledging his words, so you just finish with his cheek before stepping away from the peaceful aura that was treacherously pulling you in.

Like all those years ago, you reckon.

“Let me make a call,” you say, turning away from him as you move to the counter. You feel the weight of his eyes between your shoulder blades as you get your phone from next to your laptop. You call your boss, and as someone that’s never called in sick before, you feel anxiety flush through you.

Because you’re not sick. And how could you tell him that you need to take care of your ex-boyfriend of eight years ago?

Seokhyun picks up on the first ring, voice groggy with sleep when he mutters, “Hello?”

“Boss,” you greet him. You scrape your throat and spare a look towards San who’s watching you curiously. “An emergency came up, and I have to leave the diner.” You swallow the lump in your throat that’s formed from lying, and then you add, “There haven’t been any customers all night, so I was wondering… would you be comfortable with me closing for the rest of the night?”

Your boss says your name, a little reproachfully. But then he sighs, because he knows just as well as you what a good employee you’ve always been. “Are you going to be able to come in tomorrow night?” he asks.

You pull at dry skin on your bottom lip, assessing San’s state. You could always come back to the city for work…

“You know what, I know you’ve got that big exam coming up,” your boss says, sighing into the phone. “Why don’t you take the next week off so you can take care of your emergency and focus on your studies?”

If Seokhyun wasn’t a fifty-three year old married and father of three children man, you think you’d ask him to marry you right now.

“That would be really helpful,” you tell him, gratitude dripping from your voice. “Are you sure that won’t be a problem for the diner?”

“The diner won’t lose profit if it closes for three nights in the week,” he points out. “I’ll see if I can get you replaced for the evening shift on Sunday.”

You thank him again as he grumbles that it’s nothing. He wishes you good luck, and when the line goes silent, you finally meet San’s gaze again.

“All sorted out,” you tell him, offering him a nod. “Let me just close the diner, and then we can go.”

He nods, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. He observes you as you do so, quickly closing the diner like you’ve done about a hundred times before, though this time you’re far more excited to go. You grab a plastic bag to put away the bloody swabs, and though he groans in pain, San gets up to help you clean the blood that stained the cheap leather of the booth.

Soon enough, you’re ready to go, and you walk outside with the plastic bag in one hand and your backpack on your shoulders as San chuckles, looking down at himself.

“Do you have a shirt for me?” he asks as he follows you out.

You lock the door behind you before glancing at him. He’s quite the sight, naked from the waist up and bandaged like he is, and you can’t help the small chuckle you let out as you glance towards your car, that’s luckily parked right in front.

Though it’s a deadbeat car, you trust it enough to know it’ll make the trip to your uncle’s cabin, even in the middle of the night.

“My ex left some sweaters on the back seat,” you admit as you unlock your car doors and open the trunk to put your backpack and the plastic bag in there. There’s no chance in hell you’ll leave a plastic bag full of bloody swabs near your work.

You see San nod from the periphery of your vision, and then he’s opening the door to the backseat. “Your ex, huh?” he mutters as he grabs a sweater you used to love wearing and that you haven’t convinced yourself to give back to Hyunmin.

He carefully puts it on, and you’re pretty sure just the motion is going to make blood seep through the bandage. Somehow, you don’t care that it might stain Hyunmin’s sweater.

Hyunmin was a cheater, and even though you never really loved him, it took you months before you found the strength to break up with him. Needless to say, he doesn’t deserve his clothes back.

“Yeah,” you flatly say as you move towards the driver’s seat. You sit, and San follows you, naturally, as if you’ve done it a thousand times before.

As you turn the keys in the engine, San asks, “Have you dated a lot?”

You bristle at the question, shooting him an embarrassed look. “Have you?”

“No,” he replies, features fully serious.

You purse your lips, focusing on the road as you start driving. You need to put gas in the car if you want to get to your uncle’s cabin, so you make your way towards the closest one. It takes you a moment before you register how San has stiffened next to you.

“Can we…” he trails off, and he sinks in the seat, trying to hide. “I can’t be seen here.”

You immediately press on the accelerator, and your car speeds down the street as you pass in front of the gas station. You glance at San only when you’re stopped at a red light. He’s pulled the hood of the sweater over his features, and he’s doing his best to hide.

“Where can we stop?” you ask.

“Next town over,” he answers. “I just can’t be seen in Bangtan territory.”

Right. You have no knowledge of how the gangs have divided your city, but you’re not surprised Bangtan has this part of town. It’s the industrial area, and you assume there’s a lot of money to be made around here.

“Sounds good,” you gently say, and then you’re driving again, the light turning green, allowing you to speed away into the night.

You drive silently all the way to the next town, watching your city disappear to be replaced by trees until buildings reappear. San is looking outside the window, and you can’t help but wonder how he’s been doing, truly. How he managed to get injured like he is right now, and mostly, if his dreams of running away still occupy his thoughts.

He had begged you, the evening you had broken up with him. Told you he’d make enough money to be able to move with you across the country and build yourself a nice little life over there. You had wanted to believe him for so long, until your parents had opened your eyes on just how he was trying to make money.

“Do you need anything?” you ask as you finally reach the gas station, pulling into the driveway. You park next to a pump, turning to face him only to find him already watching you.

“I don’t have money to pay for food,” he admits. He shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I lost my wallet in the… altercation.”

You gently put a hand on his forearm. “Hey, my treat. We have to eat.”

He inhales deeply, letting out the breath slowly, before he nods. “Alright. I owe you.”

You reckon he’ll owe you for a lot more than just food at a gas station, but you choose not to say it. Not when you feel like someone’s watching over your shoulder, watching you drive away in the night with the person they are looking for.

You know it’s paranoia. No one followed you out of the city and into this town. It just feels too strange to have him here, with you. In your car, on the way to your uncle’s cabin, as if eight years have gone out the window. As if you can still be young and innocent.

It’s stupid, because you can’t. Time has changed him; time has changed you. And in just a few years you’ll be a doctor, and you’ll finally get out of this hellhole of a city, of its dangerous streets.

Of its equally dangerous man, that you know could probably pull you back in with one of his many well-crafted lies, one of the dreams he weaved expertly, whispering it into your ear.

You take a deep breath before getting out of the car. You go into the station, grab snacks for the next few days and then head to the counter. The guy behind nods as you approach, and you pay for the food and for gas before wishing him a good night and returning outside. San is still squatting in the car, clearly trying to hide, and you put the food on the backseat before putting gas in.

You watch his profile as you put gas in the car. Back when you were dating, his features weren’t as sharp, as glass-cutting as they now are. He used to sport a rounder face, but today you wonder if you’d get a papercut on his jaw. You wouldn’t even be surprised.

When you’re done with gas, you sit back next to him, and you quickly bring the engine back to life before pulling out in the street. As soon as you exit the city, darkness falls on the two of you, tall trees standing on the two sides of the road again. San doesn’t speak much, and it doesn’t take you long to realize he’s dozing off next to you.

“Hey, everything okay?” you ask, suddenly worried that he might have lost too much blood. Which, you reckon, you should have thought about earlier.

He sighs, glancing towards you. “Just tired.”

“Don’t…” you trail off. “Don’t fall asleep.”

He chuckles. “You’re afraid I’m going to die on you?”

“Choi San,” you warn. “Don’t you dare say stuff like that.”

He smiles, but you reckon he’s a little pale. Or at least you think he is, in the silver light of the moon up above. “I think I’m fine. Just…” He offers you a weak smile, though you’ve returned your attention on the winding road. “Just exhausted. I haven’t slept in three days.”

Worry clutches your heart, and you nibble at some dry skin on your bottom lip. “What’s been going on?”

He slightly shrugs. “I can’t tell you. I don’t want to put you in danger…”

“Am I not already in danger by just helping you?”

The silence is telling enough. And it remains for a while until San finally speaks.

“I was in a gunfight a week ago. Accidentally shot the youngest member of the other gang. He didn’t make it, and the gang has put a bounty on my head. Ateez took my gun and told me to run; I laughed in their face and said I wasn’t a coward. Then I got attacked by two guys with knives earlier, and I made it to the diner because I had nowhere else to go.”

Now the silence is deafening, heavy, and you think you’ve altogether stopped breathing. You’re struck with an image of San in the summer sun, smiling wide as he put a flower behind your ear, claiming you were the most beautiful girl he had ever met. The contrast with who he is now – a product of night, shrouded in darkness with no hint of that smile on his lips – is stark. And you wonder when’s the last time he has seen the sun, when’s the last time his life wasn’t violence like this.

When you say nothing, he scoffs, resting his head against the window as if it’d allow him to escape. Because clearly he wants to escape – he’s just told you that he’s killed someone after all.

And you don’t know what to say. Don’t know how to react to someone confessing murder. All you can do is stare at the street ahead, hoping you won’t end up in a gunfight with San. Because where would that lead you, other than in the dramatics of death?

You don’t speak for the rest of the ride. You don’t think he sleeps either, and dawn is clinging to the far horizon when you get to your uncle’s cabin, in a secluded forest that seems straight out of a fairytale. Instead of bringing you awe like it usually does, the sight of it makes you think of all the murder mysteries you had been obsessed with when you were younger, before you realized how horrible the real world truly is.

Neither of you move, as you turn off the engine of the car, and you fall into even more of a tensed silence, though this time you can hear the chirping of the early birds. It’s peaceful, so peaceful you can barely even grasp how tangible the presence of San is next to you. The presence of his actions too, looming between the two of you like a sword of Damocles.

You move first. Putting a hand on the knob, hoping to escape the heaviness into the dawn. San speaks before you can though, and your heart stops in your chest.

“I never meant for him to get hurt,” he murmurs, and you think he’s speaking to himself more than to you. “Everything went too fast, my gun was in my hand and I just… in situations like these, you don’t have time to think.” He leans his head against the headrest, eyes closing. “All I can picture since it’s happened is him falling and blood. Like a fucking blossoming rose, all around him.” He rests his closed fist on his forehead, rubbing it hard. “I haven’t been able to sleep; I’ve been sick every time I’ve tried to eat…”

“San,” you interrupt as you break and break for him. Because this is the San you know. This is the young boy that just wanted to escape and live in a better world. You can almost taste his remorse, taste his regret and shame. It’s poisonous, treacherous, a slippery slope that can’t lead anywhere good. “Let’s get you in. I want to get that cut on your ribs checked.”

He falls silent, and for a moment you feel guilty. Because what if he had more to say? You don’t even think you would have been able to listen. You need the escape, and you know he’ll permit it. Because the man next to you is a broken man, a fracture of what he could have been.

You step out of the car, blinking away tears – from the anxiety, from the exhaustion, and perhaps even from the pain you feel for him. He follows you, wincing as he swings his legs out of the car. He stumbles a little as he stands, but soon enough, he grows steady on his feet, and his attention moves to you. You climb the stairs of the cabin, lifting the rug to find the small trap that leads to the spare key. The padlock is rusted, but it stands strong as you put in the code, and a click is heard when you pull on it.

A few seconds later, you’ve unlocked the front door, pushing it open to reveal the cabin as you remember it. Not a single item is out of place, though dust covers everything, a clear indication that no one has been here in years. You let San in, before going back to the car to get the food you bought, bringing it in and putting it in the fridge. Three full gas canisters hide under the counter, and you sigh in relief – you’ll be able to get the generator on for some electricity.

You motion to the kitchen table. “Have a seat,” you tell San, who somehow looks like a lost puppy. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

He nods, remaining silent, eyes downcast. You only move when he’s seated, heading to the bathroom area of the cabin, where you startle a spider that almost makes you scream out loud. You keep it in, heart beating out of your chest as you get the kit before moving back into the main area.

San is leaning against the chair, eyes closed. He senses you approaching, and one of his eyes cracks open to watch you carefully, a little like he did earlier, at the diner. It looks so similar to how he used to look at you, when you joined him at the field, that you stop in your tracks, heart squeezing once again.

You don’t like the way Choi San is making you feel, that’s for sure.

“Take off the sweater,” you tell him, putting the kit down on the table. You put some clean linen next to it, to put what you need over it, before washing your hands with the disinfectant you find in the kit. You put latex gloves on after, and then you fish wire and a surgical needle from the first aid kit that you carefully put down on the linen once you’ve torn the packages open.

As you were doing all of that, San took off the shirt, struggling a little as it meant he had to lift his right arm, which pulled at the skin of his ribs, where the cut clearly has started bleeding again. Though, if you’re honest to yourself, you’re pretty sure he’s been bleeding this whole time, even though it probably was just some fine rivulets.

Indeed, the cut isn’t all that deep, you remind yourself. Mostly because you don’t want to even think about the consequences of the blood loss. As long as he stays awake, you figure he’s fine – he would have lost consciousness a while ago if he was losing a lot of blood.

You remove the bandage you had carefully put in place earlier, wincing at the sight of the blood that’s seeped through it. San keeps his eyes close, lets you clean his skin again in peace, and you feel sick to your stomach as you realize you don’t have any anesthetics for the pain that stitching him up will cause. Indeed, the pocket in which your uncle usually leaves the lidocaine is empty, and you remember that he’s had to use it for your dad when he accidentally cut himself with a machete last summer.

“Huh,” you let out. You chuckle nervously. “It’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

His eyes narrow, and he clenches his jaw. “Don’t worry about it.”

You worry at your bottom lip, holding his gaze as you gauge if he’s serious. When his gaze doesn’t falter, you offer him a curt nod, before getting the wire and needle ready under his watchful eyes.

You hand him some linen. “To bite on,” you explain as he just cocks an eyebrow quizzically. That makes his gaze widen a little as if he’s just now realizing how serious you were about it hurting, but he takes it nonetheless.

You think about the theory of how to stitch someone up. It was in your previous block – you watched hours of videos of it in an attempt to desensitize yourself to it. You don’t think it compares to the real thing, but at least you’re somehow confident of what you’re doing when you start.

San startles, groaning in pain, and you offer him a glare. “Don’t move, or it’ll be worse.”

A drop of sweat rolls down his temple, but he still nods. Even as you keep on stitching him, he remains as still as he physically can, though you don’t think he even notices how he’s trembling. Or maybe that’s you – you don’t even know.

Somehow, you make it through the whole thing. You think San might have passed out at some point, but he’s wide awake when you finish the knot to keep the stitches in place, looking up to meet his face.

He’s panting and tears of pain wet his waterline. He blinks them away as he takes the linen out of his mouth, dropping it on the table.

“Fuck,” he curses.

“Let me…” you trail off, mind set on getting something to at least help him cool off, because he’s clearly been heating up.

You grab a washcloth and a small bucket, and head outside to walk down to the lake. You fill the bucket halfway, and take a few seconds to observe the calm surrounding you, hoping that it can ease the nerves rolling inside your heart like dark clouds do on the horizon whenever a storm is coming. You feel it in your bones – you have a murderer in your uncle’s cabin.

You have to keep that in mind. To not let Choi San in like you did when you were a young impressionable teenager.

You sigh, closing your eyes to breathe in the fresh morning air. The sun is peaking over the horizon now, and you bask in its hesitant rays for all of twenty seconds before you convince yourself to go back in. You’ve got a patient to take care of, after all.

San hasn’t moved an inch while you were outside. The only indication that he hasn’t died on you is the groan he lets out as you put the wet washcloth on his forehead. You tap his cheek gently, as if to say, ‘suck it up, I’m just trying to take care of you’.

Which is exactly what you’re doing, isn’t it?

You watch him carefully for a few seconds before tapping his shoulder this time around.

“There’s a bed,” you remind him. “You’d be better passing out in a bed.”

He groans again, cracking an eye open. “I’ve just been repeatedly poked with a needle,” he drawls. “Give me a second.”

It makes you laugh. Because of the nerves, maybe. You’re not quite sure. All you know is that you’re laughing, and San opens his second eye to look at you as if you’re crazy. And you laugh for longer than you should – you’re exhausted after all, especially considering you haven’t slept since yesterday morning. So far, adrenaline has been keeping you going, but you can tell you’re about to crash.

“Sorry,” you apologize once you calm down. “This has just been…”

“A lot,” San finishes for you. “I know.”

You nod once before glancing at the doorway to the bedroom. It has no door, as your uncle and your dad usually come here alone and they don’t mind sharing a bed. It makes you realize that you’ll have to share it with San, which you reckon you should have thought about before. Because there’s no way in hell you’ll share a bed with him, especially after he’s told you why he’s being hunted.

There’s always the option of going into town later today so you can get a sleeping bag and floor mat to sleep on. But you’re far too tired right now to even consider driving, so you motion to the bed once again.

“Stick to your side; I’ll stick to mine.”

He smirks though he’s extremely pale. A lot paler than he was before, and you swallow a sudden lump in your throat. Because what if he dies? What are you supposed to do with him if he dies?

“You’ll have to help me to get to the bed ‘cause I don’t think I can move,” he says once his smirk dies. He curses under his breath. “I’m so pathetic.”

You put your hand on his shoulder again, reassuringly, eyes holding his. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re hurt. Everyone is pathetic when they’re hurt.”

He gulps before nodding once. It takes everything in you not to offer him more comfort because you feel like the slope would tilt forwards far too much if you did. Instead, you help him to get up, wincing as he puts most of his weight on you, clutching his side with one hand. You’re infinitely aware of how his skin is sticky with sweat, but you ignore it as you slowly walk to the bedroom.

You can only hope the stitches will hold because you don’t think he’d be able to withstand another round of them.

You finally reach the bedroom and help San sit on the side of the bed. He sighs, eyes shut tightly, and he doesn’t move for a time. When he does, it’s to stiffly lie down on his side.

“You might want to sleep on your back,” you inform him. “I don’t want you rolling around and messing up the stitches.”

He glares at you, though he looks like he’s already half out of it. You hold his gaze until he gives in, turning on his back with a deep sigh. You arrange pillows around him to make sure he’s not moving, and by the time you’re done, his breathing has already evened out.

For a moment, you just watch him sleep. You see him in the field where young love blossomed like a trillion wildflowers. You can almost breathe his pollen again, can almost feel the softness of his skin under your fingertips.

But he’s not what he used to be. Back then, you felt like you had discovered something new. Love, infatuation, affection, and desire, all in the form of the man sleeping next to you. You’d used to kiss, dance and sing to a song only your souls knew, and now you don’t think you recognize him anymore.

As much as he is him, he’s also but just the ghost of what he was. He’s trouble, danger in the shape of innocence, and you recall his words from earlier. You recall the despair, the regret and sorrow that haunted him after he told you. You can’t let him get to your head.

You reckon sleep might help. Though you’re afraid he’s going to waste away in his sleep, so you set up an alarm every hour, before climbing on the other side of the bed. You don’t pull on the covers, mostly because the cabin is warm, and you can imagine it’s just going to get hotter as the sun goes up and the summer heat slowly sizzles into the countryside.

It’s a good thing you put an alarm on. Because when it rings an hour later, you don’t even remember falling asleep. You’re pretty sure the second your head touched the mattress, you were out to the land of dreams. You groan, mostly because you’ve got a slight headache, but you power through it to make sure San is still breathing.

When you see his chest moving up and down steadily, you let yourself fall back asleep.

This goes on for the whole morning, and you only force yourself to stay up when your phone shows that it’s passed noon. As you had suspected earlier, the cabin has gotten extremely warm, so you force yourself out of bed to open all the windows, and then you use the washcloth from earlier to gently wash San’s face of the sweat.

He doesn’t even flinch in his sleep, but he’s still breathing and for now, that’s all that matters.

You head back to the main room, grabbing a pack of chips from where you had left the food earlier, and then you move outside to sit by the lake. Mostly because you need to put distance between you and San, but also just because the childhood memories of this place have you in their hold, and they’ve decided to make you miss the times when you’d swim around with your cousins before both of them had moved out of town.

One day, it’s going to be you too. You already know where you’d go – on the other side of the country, as far away from here as possible. You just want to forget all about the place you grew up in, and you know that, in a few years, you will have forgotten.

Though you’re pretty sure a certain piercing gaze will haunt you forever, especially after the events of today.

When another hour passes, you head back inside, putting the empty bag of chips in the trash before you check up on San. He’s still asleep, but this time he doesn’t look as pale as he did earlier. You assume it’s going to take him a while before he wakes, so you head to the nearest town to grab more food. Mostly to busy yourself, but also just because you know San will need a place to hide for a lot longer than just the weekend. Might as well make sure you have enough for him to survive a couple of days. In town, you also stop to eat at a small café on a small terrasse in the shade of a few trees, and then you grab the food you think you might need at the grocery store.

It’s the middle of the afternoon when you get back, realizing that you forgot to buy a floor mat. As you spy San, who hasn’t moved an inch since he’s fallen asleep, you figure that sleeping next to him tonight should be fine.

As long as his presence in your vicinity doesn’t drag you down memory lane again.

You bought some meat in town, so you head to the little shack outside where the generator is hiding. There’s a gas canister right next to it – also full – and you busy yourself for the next twenty minutes trying to figure out how to get it started. When it finally rumbles to life, you head back inside to put the meat in the fridge, which has finally come to life.

When you hear a groan, you quickly jog to San’s side, fully expecting to find him awake. Surprisingly, he’s still asleep, and you stay next to him for a full minute, thinking he might groan again, though he remains entirely silent.

If it wasn’t for his chest moving up and down steadily, you’d believe him to be dead. But now that a few hours have passed, you’re pretty positive he’ll make it, though he’s probably going to sleep through the day and possibly through the next one too.

Which leaves you in the most peaceful atmosphere you’ve been in for a while, with the opportunity to study as you listen to the rush of wind in the leaves of the tall trees surrounding the cabin. You sit outside, this time near the fireplace, and you study until your stomach grumbles, indicating that it is time for you to cook.

You cook the meat you’ve bought on the grill outside, feeling thankful that your dad once showed you how to use it. You go back in to grab a bottle of water before you eat, and you’re bent in the fridge when you hear San moan again, and this time it sounds like he’s saying something.

You gently close the fridge, making your way to the bedroom. San hasn’t moved, but his features are creased in a frown, and sweat is rolling down his temples. You wet the washcloth, gently wipe his face, and you’re about to leave when he moans again.

It takes you far too long to realize he’s apologizing. What for, you can’t really tell. Though you remember his troubled eyes this morning, you remember his story, and your heart breaks in your chest.

He’s haunted. You think the ghost of the dead guy will probably haunt him for the rest of his life. And suddenly you’re struck thinking maybe, maybe if you hadn’t broken his heart all those years ago, you could have saved him from the gang.

Maybe you could have opened his eyes.

You still remember the break-up like it was yesterday. You remember the rain, him leaving without once looking back, but mostly you remember the words you had uttered. Ghosts of their own, that feel more real now that he’s come back into your life.

*****

                “You’re going to get hurt!” you yelled. “You’ll get hurt, San. What are you thinking?”

He scoffed, shaking his head, and little droplets of water shot all around him. “I’ll be careful. We need the money if we ever want to make it out of this shit town.”

You blinked away tears, folding your arms on your chest as you tried to keep your heart from breaking. Though you reckoned it had broken when your parents had told you what they knew about San. When your father had mentioned Ateez, and you’d truly realized what it meant that he was part of a gang. San, your sweet, soft, and bubbly San, in a gang that had murdered someone just a few weeks ago.

“But that’s not a way to make money!” you screamed, hoping he’d understand. Hoping he’d hear the truth in your words, hoping he’d change his mind before it was too late. “Why don’t you get a part-time job, like me? Then we can go to college and get jobs in a nice city on the other side of the country!”

“It won’t work,” he drawled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I want to be out soon, not in a few years. I barely even have a roof over my head, Y/n…”

“Come live with me,” you choked out around the lump in your throat.

You both knew fully well that your parents would never let him come near you again.

“I can’t.”

You cried, hiding your face in your hands. You cried thinking of the field where you usually met, thinking about its beauty now fading into ugliness. You thought about the wildflowers, withered and dead as autumn had come. You thought about how you were convinced you knew what love was.

“What’s the point?” you asked then. “What’s the point of putting your life in danger? Life isn’t some sort of a game, Choi San. Worse, what if you have to hurt someone? Do you think you’ll be able to pull the trigger?”

He clenched his jaw, hard. “Do me a favour and stop asking questions.”

You closed your eyes, feeling sick to your stomach. Because it couldn’t be. Not San. Not your smiley San, who’d always weave dandelions crowns with you, as you’d pretend you were a queen and a king of that field you had found. An empty field, an abandoned farmland that was just yours and his to explore. That had been home to your first kiss, and all of those that had followed.

Now you wondered why he had always wanted to meet there in the first place. Was he trying to hide?

"If you love me, you’ll get out while you still can,” you said as your tears suddenly ended.

There was a weird sense of clarity in you, suddenly. You remembered the day you had fallen in love, the moment you had first kissed. You remembered the stars in the sky above, the meteors falling for the two of you. You remembered the music on the radio you had brought. Some Arctic Monkeys song about heartbreak, about moving on and failing to do so. As a joke, when it had ended, you had asked San, “Do you think love is a laserquest?”

His answer had been cryptic, mysterious, things that had made you believe he was the one. “Maybe. Maybe it is, and I’ve shot you in the back while you weren’t looking. Maybe I’m that annoying player that won’t leave you alone.”

“I’ll never find you annoying,” you had replied.

But today, watching the rain rolling down his face like tears, you realized that maybe, maybe you should have seen the warning behind his words. Because this betrayal, it came like he had shot you in the back – you didn’t think you’d be able to recover from it.

The past dwindled away as San spoke again, reminding you of the question you had just asked him. “It’s not a question of love, Y/n. I do love you. But it’s a question of survival.”

You laughed, coldly, and then you said, “You know what? You’re full of shit.”

“Alright then. Do me a favour and tell me to go away.”

“Go away.”

A long silence had lingered between you, voided of that summer warmth that had you falling in love. Like a piece was missing from the contract of you loving him, and him loving you. And you realized, maybe you had never really loved each other anyway.

He nodded once when you didn’t say anything else, before turning away. And you watched him walk away. You watched him thinking he was going to turn around and tell you this was just some twisted joke, the prank of the century. Only, he never turned around, and he disappeared behind the bend in the road, never to be seen again, cracking your heart open and splitting it in half.

*****

                The sun sets, like an ending to a dream. You’ve always liked the end – you think if you could choose, you’d want to witness the end of the world. The nostalgia, the beauty of endings… it’s something you understand now that you didn’t understand when you were younger. Because you and San ending, it had led to you focusing on high school. It had allowed you to get in the good college in town, with a scholarship that covered most of your expenses before you made it to med school.

There’s beauty in knowing losing San has allowed you to live out your dreams.

There’s less beauty in knowing that San has been sleeping for almost thirty-four hours now. Last time you checked, he was still breathing, but you’re starting to be afraid that he just won’t wake up. It’s irrational, you know – after the blood loss it makes sense that he’d sleep for a long time.

But it leaves you with far too much time on your hands to think and revisit the past. You’ve been doing it all day – thinking about the fight with your parents that had led to your break-up with San, thinking about that damn rainy evening he had walked away without once looking back. Thinking of the field, of sunshine and star falls and the sweetness of a first kiss. Thinking that, then, you thought you knew what it was like to be in love.

You haven’t dated anyone serious since San. Hyunmin was a distraction for a while, but you never were into it. Not like you were into San. There’s a guy in your class though, that you’ve been chatting with for a couple of weeks. He’s sweet, innocent, and the perspective of a future seems less scary with him around. He’s mentioned he wants to move across the country once too, and since then you’ve started talking more, the similarity of your wishes drawing you closer.

All day today you’ve been feeling like you’re slowly drifting away though. Slowly getting entrapped in a web you’re not sure you’ll be able to walk away from.

You decide to swim, seeking the fresh clarity only cold water can bring to you. You don’t have a swimsuit with you, but since San is half-dead in bed you figure it doesn’t matter. So you strip naked, feet making squelching sounds in the mud by the lake side as you step in the water.

The sharp cold has you holding your breath, but you don’t slow down. You’ve never slowed down in life – when you make a decision, you bring it to completion. And you’ve decided to swim, so swim you will.

The warm summer evening breeze catches in your hair as you take another step forward, the water now lapping at your thighs. You dread the moment it’ll hit your core, knowing that that’s the worst part, but you breathe in deeply, moving forward. Because there’s no moving backwards now.

When the water hits, your eyes flutter shut, and you hold in the wince that threatens to escape the mask of calm your features hold. Soon enough, you get deep enough to swim, and the movements bring welcomed warmth to your limbs as you flop on your back, tits out of the water.

Your uncle’s cabin is the only cabin in a fifteen miles radius. You know you won’t be interrupted, and so you let the water cool you down. Calm you down, hold you in its fresh embrace. It undoes knots in your back that have formed from worrying about San, but also from worrying about college.

From worrying that you will never be enough. You think it’s a normal anxiety to have, something most people must feel as they go through the trials of college, not knowing what to expect on the other side. A nice career, perhaps, though the perspective of failure is there too, looming over the horizon.

You sigh, and your eyes flutter open as your legs move mindlessly under you, making sure to keep you afloat. You look up at the azury ceiling over your head, so far away as it slowly turns gold. Out of touch, out of grasp. You watch the fluffy white clouds that are lazily crossing the sky, turning fiery in the sunset, as if they have all the time in the universe. And you wish you were them, up above. With nothing to worry about.

Without a Choi San on the brink of death lying about twenty meters away from you. You sigh, and you turn in the water, with the purpose of swimming again. Though your gaze catches movement by the cabin, and your head snaps towards it to see none other than the supposedly Choi San, standing on the deck with a hand clutching his side.

You shriek, looking down at yourself. Most of you is hidden, but you don’t know how long he’s been there. Don’t know if he’s seen you naked as you looked up at the sky.

He doesn’t move, only watches you where you’re swimming.

“Can you please look away?” you say from the water, and he has the nerves to lean against the railing, eyes still boring into where you’re swimming. You think his gaze might be so hot the water will boil, and it startles you into action.

You start walking out of the water, pointing towards the door. “You shouldn’t be up, Choi San.”

“I feel fine,” he says as you take another step forward, and the water barely hides your tits anymore.

That makes him turn around, as he offers you a little bit of privacy. You’re quick to get out of the water and wrap yourself in the towel you brought outside, and then you collect your clothes to head back to the cabin. San dutifully keeps his gaze away until you’re climbing the three steps leading to the deck, and it’s then that his eyes trail to you again.

“Thank you for the water,” he says, offering you a tentative smile.

You left water by his bedside earlier today hoping it will coax him to wake up. You’re strangely surprised that it worked.

“You should go sit inside,” you scold him, only half-heartedly. Because seeing him up and about reassures you, somehow.

He cocks an eyebrow, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. “The weather is beautiful, I’d rather sit outside.”

You roll your eyes, but you do let him walk down the stairs to sit by the fireplace while you go inside to take a quick shower and get dressed. You decide to make some food for him, though you know he shouldn’t eat too much right now, after not having eaten for a while. He has to start slowly, and you don’t even know if he’s hungry anyway.

You settle for preparing a cup of chicken noodle soup for him, so at least it isn’t too heavy on his stomach. You bring it to him outside, as he’s just calmly observing the lake.

“Thank you,” he says, voice small as he grabs the cup and the spoon.

You sit next to him, trying not to watch him eat too much. His hair is sticking to his forehead in some places, and you have the distinct thought that he’ll probably need to shower. At least there’s plenty of rain water in the bucket for the water pump.

“What have you been doing while I was out?” he asks.

You spare him a quick glance before losing your gaze in the rocks of the fireplace. “I’ve studied. Checked up on you. Not much honestly.”

He chuckles. “I’d argue that caring for someone is a lot.”

You glance at him, cheeks burning at the sight of his teasing smile. “Not really.”

He chuckles again, but doesn’t say anything more before eating another spoonful of soup. He’s almost done with the cup when he actually does speak, asking, “How long was I out?”

“A day and a half,” you answer. “I’m actually surprised you haven’t slept longer.”

You can hear the smirk in his voice when he says, “I’m made of tough stuff.”

You snicker, but you don’t say anything, just focusing on where you’re kicking at the dirt. When he’s done with the cup, he puts it down on the ground next to him, before sitting back in the chair. He stretches out his legs in front of him, sighing deeply.

“I still feel out of it,” he admits, and you meet his gaze.

“You can sleep more,” you tell him. “I’d just like to check on the…”

You don’t even have to finish your sentence. He immediately turns so his side is to you, and you have to admit you’ve done a perfectly good job with the stitches.

“So?” he asks.

“All good.” You pat his shoulder. “You can sit comfortably again.”

He’s smiling when he does so, and his gaze wanders to the lake once again. “I’m sorry I…” he trails off, and he chuckles softly. “I’m sorry I interrupted your little swim earlier.”

You have the decency to flush furiously red, and you shrug your shoulders. “No worries, I wasn’t expecting you to be up so soon.”

You fall in a comfortable silence, surprisingly so. Rare stars dot the darkening sky up above, and all that can be heard for a moment is the flap of a bird’s wing as it moves from branches to branches in the trees by the water. The breeze picks up as you watch the little bird, and the leaves dance, loudly so. You’d think it’d be deafening in the silence between you and him, but it’s strangely reassuring.

As if, after all, you found your way back to the field. Only this time it’s completely different, as if decades have passed between you. At least, that’s how it feels like.

You notice San has dozed off in the chair next to you when you were about to speak to him again. To ask him how he’s truly been, in the years between then and now. Hoping to avoid mentioning what led to him coming to you, yesterday, a whole eternity ago.

You watch him, heart aching in your chest. Aching to reach out and brush his hair away from his forehead, aching to heal the cut on his cheek with a gentle swipe of your fingers. If only medicine was so simple…

It seems the peace of the early evening wasn’t going to stay around, because you notice dark clouds rolling in the distance, streaks of lightning cutting through them. Slowly inching closer, menacingly so, and you gently wake San up with your hand on his wrist.

He startles awake, hand shooting to his waist, finding nothing there. It startles you, and you both stare at each other for a moment until you realize what he was looking for.

His gun.

“San…” you let out and he runs his hand through his hair, eyes falling shut as he breathes in and out raggedly.

“Sorry.”

“San, I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t open his eyes, refuses to let you see the vulnerability you glimpsed behind his piercing gaze. Refuses to acknowledge that he’s terrified, deadly so.

“Let’s go in,” you tell him, softly. Because you’re afraid you’ll spook him, when he’s clearly been living in fear long enough. “There’s a storm coming.”

He nods, carefully getting up without sparing you a glance. He heads inside, hand clutching his side again, while you pick up the chicken noodle soup cup before following him.

You’ve refilled the generator before swimming, so you know it’s been charging the batteries for a while now. You don’t fear ending up in the dark with San, and there’s also always the option of using the lamps and candles your uncle always leave here in case of an emergency.

The storm doesn’t roll in until a little later. You’ve forced San to put a shirt on – mostly so your eyes would stop betraying you, dropping to his toned body whenever he talked to you. You’re currently sitting on the couch, and as the rain starts, hammering against the window behind you, you pull your legs to your chest, wrapping your arms comfortably around them.

“How hard do the storms hit here?” he asks, eyes trailed to the world outside.

You follow his gaze, right as wind picks up to make the water hit the window even harder, creating a cacophony that forces you to speak louder for him to hear. “Pretty hard.”

He nods, and he glances once at you. “Fun.”

You smile, because you’ve always liked storms. Have always found them electrifying, energizing.

“Do you remember when we used to go to the field when it rained?” San asks, taking you by surprise.

Making your heart clench so hard in your chest you have to take a wobbly breath in. If he notices he doesn’t say.

“We were always in that field,” you remind him. “No matter the weather.”

It’s his turn to smile fondly. “It got so pretty with all the wildflowers. But you were afraid of the bees.”

“Bees are scary!” You laugh, and he echoes it with a soft chuckle. “You’re the one that almost pissed yourself when we saw the rat.”

That makes him laugh, and he winces in pain clutching his side. “Gosh, is it supposed to keep on hurting like this?”

It douses your enthusiasm and your smile falls. “Well, it was a solid cut.”

His eyes get lost in the void as he takes on a wistful expression. “I’m surprised I didn’t die.”

You gulp, watching his profile carefully. “It wasn’t deep enough for that…” you trail off, even though you spent most of yesterday and today being convinced he’d die. “At least they didn’t… stab you.”

“They would have if… Wooyoung didn’t shoot.”

You remain silent, not knowing what to reply to that. San interprets that as discomfort, and he quickly adds, “He didn’t shoot them. Just… in the air. It attracted the police.”

You remember the cars zooming past the diner a lifetime ago, and you nod your head. “I heard.”

He seems surprised, and his gaze finally finds yours again. “You did?”

“Yeah.” You chuckle, a little awkwardly. “I hear a lot of shootings, in the diner.”

His eyes widen, mouth falling open cutely. “You do?”

You don’t know what he expected. The diner is right between Ateez and Bangtan territory, and as much as it is a safe space, it is also near enough to dangerous grounds, and you’ve heard plenty of shooting in your time working there.

“Always,” you admit. “It can get scary sometimes… but you also get used to it.”

He looks sad. Infinitely so, like a lost puppy. That’s when the first thunder hits, so sharp and sudden you startle. Not quite as much as San, who ducks, wincing in pain as he clutches his side.

“Shit,” he curses. “Sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” you ask, in time with another thunderclap, though this time it’s more of a rumble.

You watch his chest as he breathes in and out quickly. “Just… fuck.”

Now, concern grows in you, and you gently put a hand on his shoulder. “San…”

He meets your gaze, and there’s so much white in his it makes you think of a terrified prey. And then it clicks: he thought it was a gunshot.

“Hey,” you quickly say, moving closer to him. You’re on the side of the stitches, so you still keep a safe distance between the two of you, but you grab his hand nonetheless. “You’re okay.”

“Fuck,” is all he’s able to say.

“I promise, no one’s going to find you here.”

He remains silent this time around, eyes still boring into yours. You take that as a cue to continue, because you don’t want him to panic. You want his thoughts here, with you, and not miles away in a city he should have escaped from years ago. You wish he had, knowing the atrocities that he would have avoided.

Would he have escaped with you, had you stayed just a little longer?

“I killed someone,” he says, and you balk at the silver lining his gaze. “I fucking killed him.”

You don’t know how to help. All you can think to do is cup his cheek, right as he starts breathing even faster. “Breathe with me, San.”

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes fall to your mouth. You make a good show of inhaling slowly, before exhaling even slower. It takes him a moment but he eventually follows your lead.

It breaks when there’s another sharp thunderclap, and he flinches, eyes shutting instinctively.

“Hey hey hey,” you say again, even more gentle, softer than before. You move even closer, and when a tear slips out of his closed eyes, you pull him into a hug, careful not to brush his side.

His head falls on your shoulder, and one of his arms wrap around your waist. A thunderclap later, he starts sobbing, fist balling the fabric of your shirt in his tight hold, and you let him do it. You let him hold onto you, hoping it’ll keep him here with you. Hoping it’ll keep him afloat during the storm that’s raging both outside and in his mind.

“It’s going to be okay,” you breathe, and you feel like you’re lying to him.

Because how can he ever be safe from the ghosts inside of his skull? The ghosts wandering the halls of him, tainting his soul with their presence?

“He’s never going to smile again,” San chokes out. “Everyone loved him. Even in Ateez… Jungkook was the best of us. The only one who had a shot at getting out of it.”

You don’t know how good he could have been, if he was a member of Bangtan. In your mind, you’d always seen Bangtan as the bad guys, mostly because they weren’t with San. Even when you had been struggling to evade that life, you’d still rooted for him.

It’s strange how you just realize that now, as you’re holding him while he breaks.

“You didn’t mean to kill him,” you remind San, still speaking with the calmest voice you can muster up. “You didn’t want to, San. You’re not a murderer.”

“I’m still a killer,” he says. He sounds angry, and you reckon he might be angry at himself. Might be consumed with his actions, dragged to hell before his time as his mind gets stuck replaying the events.

“Maybe,” you answer. “But,” you quickly add when he stiffens in your arms. “But you can spend the rest of your life making up for it. Repenting.”

He doesn’t respond right away, as he breaks some more, sobs rocking through him. You’ve never seen him like this, not even when you were younger and in love. It makes your gaze wet, yet you hold on strong for him. You keep your head held high, and you allow him to break in the safe haven that your arms represent.

Because to him, you’ve never been tainted. You’ve always been the ideal he was trying to pursue, albeit the wrong way.

“I don’t know how to repent,” he admits when he calms down. He turns his head, and his nose brushes along the skin of your neck, slightly tickling you. You ignore the feeling, especially as he adds, “Ateez… it’s all I’ve ever known.”

You run a hand on his back, soothingly. “It isn’t.”

Because there was you, too. There was the summer field and the twinkling stars and Artic Monkeys on the radio. There was the two of you, petal-soft kisses exchanged in the dead of night and in the brightness of day. There were rainy days, and then there was rain. There was him walking away, and you hate yourself then.

You wish you had stopped him that day, had kept him from going on to become what he’s become now. A person he clearly hates, someone that has a bounty on his head. Someone that doesn’t even believe they’re allowed redemption and you reckon you don’t even know if he is.

You only know that seeing him break is bending your will, the way the wind outside is bending the trees. All you can hope is that, like the tall trees, you won’t break.

*****

                The storm calmed down sometime around midnight. San ended up falling asleep on the couch, as you’d reassuringly ran your hand through his hair, trying to keep him with you. Though you think he’s been slipping through your fingers, into his demons.

You’ll find a way to bring him back. You have to. Turns out it comes faster than you think, as the electricity runs out and you busy yourself with lighting some candles throughout the main room. When you’re done, you put a blanket over him, and you almost let out a startled scream as his eyes shot open.

“Hello,” you say, resting a hand on your heart to tame the wild beats.

You’re about to move away, but he grabs your hand, forcing you to sit next to him. You don’t really resist, though you think you probably should. You’re weak – weaker still when he murmurs your name.

“San,” you whisper in return, and you’re aware your voice carries too much longing. Longing for a past when life’s atrocities hadn’t changed either of you yet.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologizes, and a tear rolls on his cheek.

You dry it, fingers lingering there. “It’s okay.”

“Angel…”

The nickname brings you back to laser quests and favours and warmth creeping up your stomach for the first time in your life.

“I’m no angel,” you breathe.

“You saved me.”

You hold his gaze. There’s something hiding behind his pupils. The need, to forget. You don’t think you have the ability to run his mind through amnesia, but still you brush his cheek again.

“You deserved saving.”

His eyes glaze once more, though this time no tears fall. “It’s hard to believe it.”

“Do you still believe love is a laser quest?” you ask him, out of the blue.

As if you’re a line straight of that Arctic Monkeys song you listened to the first time you kissed.

“Maybe,” he says, a parallel to that first time you had asked the question. “Maybe it is.”

You can’t resist. You lean down, and you press the gentlest kiss on his lips. His are dry, but the way he sighs with you against him is soft, for your heart and for your mind, and you kiss him again. He lets you lead, follows the dance of your lips, lets you run your hand through his sweaty hair.

Even if you shouldn’t. Even if you know everything you’re doing right now is a mistake, you still find yourself deepening the kiss, opening your lips to slip your tongue out, teasing his mouth. One of his hands finds your thigh, and he squeezes ever so slightly as his tongue finds yours, and you let out a breathy sound.

When you pull away, eyes fluttering open, you find San’s gaze. You think about the boy he was then, the girl you were then. You think about who you were, together. And when he says, “Please make me forget”, you lean again, capturing his mouth in a languid kiss.

For a reason unknown, the summer sky and falling stars pale in comparison to this kiss. Maybe because it holds longing, nostalgia. Hope that life would have turned out differently. For a moment, you picture what it would have been like, without Ateez. With you and him in the field, in your family house, in a car driving by the beach, windows down as the sun sets and you sing along to the radio, wind blowing in your hair.

You see a whole life there, with you and him marrying in the field, under the sun that had been the host of your first love. You imagine growing up by his side, attending college with him in the big city. You imagine how he would have become the owner of his own construction company, like his dad before him. You picture kids laughing, running around the house he would have built for you. You see Christmas light, late nights antics by the firelight.

You see it all, and you know you’ll never have any of it. But if you can have tonight, then you’ll grab it before it slips through your fingers. Before he walks away in the rain again, only to be a memory you cherish in the deepest corners of your heart.

“How?” you ask him when you pull away.

Mostly, you’re asking how to make him forget. But you’re also asking how it is that the feelings are still there, even stronger now, as if they’ve grown up with you, yet haven’t changed like you have. Like they are a constant of an ever-changing universe.

“Kiss me again,” he asks, begs, and you give in. You kiss him wildly, always making sure not to touch his side and the stitches.

You know sex would be a stupid idea, especially with the fresh stitches. But also because he’s barely had time to recover. But he doesn’t really give you a choice, pulling you on top of him until you’re straddling him.

You sit back on him for a second, eyes trailing to the spot where you know the stitches are. “This isn’t a good idea,” you whisper through the ragged breaths caused by the ministrations of his mouth on yours and of yours on his.

“I’m fine,” he says, and you know you shouldn’t believe him. But when he pulls you down again, large hand holding the nape of your neck firmly so you don’t escape, you want to believe him.

Want to believe the beauty of his lies, like you had when you were younger.

From where you’re perched, you can feel the start of his erection pressing against you, and you moan softly in the kiss, rolling your hips. His mouth falls open, and you capture his tongue, sucking on it once before you pull away, leaving hot kisses on his jaw.

“Sit on my face,” he says, and he sounds out of his mind. Crazed, a little like you too feel at the moment.

“What?”

“Can’t get hurt if you sit on my face, angel,” he explains, and then hisses when you suck a hickey on his neck.

You let him pull your shirt off, unclasping your bra yourself as you sit back on his lap. He cups your breasts, rolling your erect nipples between his thumbs and indexes. You moan again, grinding your hips into his, and he hisses once more.

“You want to taste me?” you ask, head throwing back as he pinches your nipples hard.

“I’d fuck you, but you’re the doctor. Can’t risk fucking up my stitches, huh?” he replies, voice low and husky.

Your core heats up, pussy clenching around nothing. This is a side of him you’ve never seen, though you spy desperation beneath it. Like he thinks he doesn’t have forever, when it comes to you.

He’s right. Because tomorrow, you’ll have to go back into town, into the hellscape you call home. What will be left of the two of you then?

So when he tugs at your pants, you give in and get up, taking off your pants and panties in one swift motion. You step out of them, blood heating up by the way he’s looking at you through half-lidded eyes, gaze burning on you.

You have half a thought that you could probably ride him instead of his face, but when you see his pink tongue darting out to wet his lips, making them glisten in the candlelight, you need to know what it’ll feel like against you.

So you straddle his face as he guides you down, large hands pushing on your thighs until your pussy is a hairsbreadth away from his lips. He blows on it, and your eyes shut with sensitivity. You clutch the cushion of the couch, hoping it’ll help steady you, but the moment his tongue flicks at your clit, you realize nothing will be able to steady you. Yet you still hold onto it, especially as he dives his tongue between your folds, lapping up your juice. He moans in contentment, before moving to your clit again. And his tongue is wicked down there, like it knows exactly what you like.

You grab a handful of his hair, grinding into his face. You’re pretty sure he’s chuckling down there, and then he unleashes himself. Sucking hard, alternating circling motions to teasing you with his teeth. You’d expect the latter to hurt, but the way he does it just makes you see stars, and your pussy clenches around nothing again.

San is deadly good with his mouth. Both with crafting lies and pulling moans out of you, and your thighs tighten against his face as he sucks particularly hard, before dipping his tongue inside of you. His nose brushes your clit, and then he forces you to properly sit on him.

The way his tongue moves inside of you, lapping up your juices while opening you up, has you on the brink of an orgasm in no time. Especially as he makes you grind again, holding you tight into place. When one of his hands moves from around your thigh to reach your clit, you cry out, head throwing back.

He’s quick to rub at your sensitive clit, and you grab one of your breasts, massaging it mindlessly before you pinch your nipple, hard, right in time with a skilled swipe of his tongue. Your orgasm meets you there, shaking through you as it explodes in a blinding flash of light. You moan, loudly, something that resembles his name, and he keeps you going, guides you through your high until you cringe with oversensitivity.

Only then does he let you climb off from his face. You stand on wobbly legs, before deciding to sit next to him, and you catch sight of the smirk on his lips. It makes you blush, right as you realize what you’ve just done.

When you realize what kind of sinful activity he’s dragged you in, this time around.

“Gosh,” is all you manage to say.

He chuckles, clearly proud with himself. “That felt good?”

You worry at your bottom lip, eyes going down to the tent in his pants. You want to pleasure him too, to take him in your mouth and make him feel good, but he stops you with a hand wrapped around your wrist.

“Don’t.”

You still and you meet his gaze with slightly-widened eyes. “Why not?”

His features turn somber, haunted, and the heat of the moment passes so quickly you think it might have been a figment of your imagination.

Were you really riding his face just a moment ago?

“Please just lay next to me,” he says, barely even a whisper.

You don’t know a lot of men that would choose cuddling over getting a blowjob, but if that is what he wants, then you’ll give it to him. You lay next to him, glad that the injured side is closer to the couch. That way, you can cuddle up to him, resting your head on his shoulder while he wraps an arm around you.

“Angel,” he murmurs after a time. “You’re a fucking angel. I think you’re my salvation.”

You highly doubt you hold this kind of power, but you don’t want to tell him. Have never been good at weaving beautiful lies for him to believe.

“We should stay here,” he continues. “Forever.”

And you wish you could. Wish reality didn’t exist, didn’t call for you to go back to your regular life like you’ve never been here with him. But you know tomorrow exists, and you’ll have to leave.

“We should have stayed in the field,” you choose to answer. “Under the shooting stars.”

“I wished for a lifetime with you, then,” he admits. “I wished I’d never have to let you go.”

You’d wished for a similar thing, but life is far too cruel to allow a world of first loves.

“Why did you…” you trail off. The question has haunted your sleepless nights for a long time after the break-up. Even years later, you’d still think about it sometimes, wondering if nostalgia would choke you up. “Why did you decide to join the gang?”

He tenses next to you. But you start tracing a mindless circle on his chest, through the shirt, and it distracts him enough for him to reply. “I thought I didn’t have a choice.”

“Did you?”

His voice holds the weight of the world when he says, “I did. And I made the wrong one.”

You want to cry, but you’re older now. You’re not the teenager who thought she was going to die from losing him anymore. You know what living without Choi San is like, and as much as it hurts, you know that it’s doable.

“You made the one you believed was right,” you say carefully. “But I do wish you had made a different one.”

He holds you a little tighter, as if that will make it so tomorrow never comes. “Me too.”

There’s an eternity of flickering candlelight on the ceiling, of the circles you trace on his chest and of your breathings forming a melody. Outside, the wind has died down, and the world is silent except from an occasional cricket braving the world after the storm.

“Where will you go, once you graduate?” he asks, taking you by surprise.

Because he knows. It’s one of the few things that hasn’t changed.

“As far away from here as I can.”

“I hope you find peace, wherever you go,” he whispers. “I hope you forget all about how we grew up in a hellhole.”

Do you feel bad for saying it? Maybe. But you can’t help saying it anyway. “I will, San.”

And like that rainy day years ago, you think you can see him walk away.

*****

Seven years later

The winter sun is strangely bright, up above. You’d think it will warm you up, but the cold is relentless, violent, and it sneaks into your coat as you walk out of the hospital. You’ve just finished a thirty-hour shift, and you can’t wait to be home.

To take a shower and forget that you’ve lost a patient today.

But you’ve saved another. A young man, with a stab wound in his ribs that should have killed him. But you saved him, stabilized his condition to the point you don’t have to worry about him anymore. Which is the only reason why you’re allowing yourself to leave now.

You’re never able to leave until you know your patients are okay. It’s been that way since your first patient, in a cabin in the woods you’ve done your best to forget.

You’d let San stay, after that weekend. He had given you the number of one of his friends, so you could get some clothes for him, and you’d gone back the next weekend. Bringing him the clothes, making love to him under the moonlight as if that would change the ending.

The following week, you had gone back to find the cabin empty. He’d left a note behind.

I hope I can find you again, wherever you go.

You kept the note. It’s in your bedside table, back at home, in the nice apartment you’ve been able to rent for yourself with all the money you’ve been making now. Enough to pay back student loans from med school, enough to reassure you that never again will you struggle.

You’ve never seen San again after. He hasn’t found you, and you haven’t searched for him. Have only looked up his name a couple of times, in the months following his disappearing, scared you’d find out that he was found dead in a ditch. But his name never came up, and you wondered if he had managed to escape, if he had managed to find a place where Bangtan couldn’t reach him.

You found peace, on your side of the country. Life is kinder here, though it still holds the same atrocities. You wonder if it’s the novelty of the city, or maybe if you’ve just grown old enough to be able to withstand the bad that the world throws your way. It’s hard to tell – you haven’t kept contact with anyone from back home, except Jae-on.

Jae-on, who’s moved with you when you’ve decided to come here, like he said he would. Jae-on, who asked you to marry him in late October, and you said yes. The ring sits heavy on your finger, and you mindlessly play with it.

In another world, you would already be married to Choi San. Sometimes, you catch glimpses of that world – a piercing gaze in the morning, a smile and a kiss to your temple. Talks about angels, children screaming in happiness. In another world, you’d be pregnant again, waiting patiently to add another piece of you and him to this world.

It’s fun to think about, sometimes, but you’ve been good at forgetting. Like you told him you would – most times, you’ve forgotten all about Choi San.

But today, you had a patient that reminded you of him. So you allow yourself to feel, you allow yourself to think about that note tucked in the bottom drawer of your bedside table, hidden under the thick socks you never use.

You allow yourself to think about the cabin in the woods, about the field where you would have gotten married had you been in that picturesque world you like to imagine. You think about laser quests and first kiss and rainy days and meteors. You think about summer, about wildflowers and him.

You’re so lost in thought you miss your stop home, and you begrudgingly get out at the next one. You’re tired, and your hands are shaking as you pull your phone out of your tote bag, wanting to text Jae-on that you’re going to be home late because you missed your stop. You walk to the other side of the tracks, sighing when you see a five-minutes wait for the next subway.

At least the sun is high in the sky, even though it is dreadfully cold. You shiver, putting your phone back in your tote bag so you can hide your hands in your sleeves again, hoping it’ll preserve them from the cold.

In your exhaustion, you forgot your gloves back at the hospital, you realize. It’s strange that you only realize now, and you reckon you really need to sleep, because your brain isn’t even working right anymore.

You sigh, glancing at the display showing the time. Still four minutes to wait. You think at this rhythm you might freeze in your spot before the next subway comes. You try to hide your face in the lapel of your coat, but a movement on the other platform attracts your gaze.

A man is helping an older woman climb down the stairs. She’s speaking loudly, which might be what attracted your gaze in the first place. You follow them as they walk down the stairs, and then when the man turns towards you, you meet his piercing gaze.

He smiles, and you realize that maybe, all those years ago, he was not spinning lies to you after all.

☆☆☆☆☆

Gosh yeahhh rereading it had me ralize that it is a lot sadder than I remembered it to be. At least we got an open ending ... :') What did we think? Should I write about other groups more often? Let me know what you think! All rights reserved to @/oddinary4bts, 2023. Do not copy, repost or translate

Taglist:

@btsborahaee

[reasonsforhope]

When Swiss cardiologist Thomas F. Lüscher attended an international symposium in Turin, Italy, last summer, he encountered an unusual “attendee:” Suzanne, Chat GPT’s medical “assistant.” Suzanne’s developers were eager to demonstrate to the specialists how well their medical chatbot worked, and they asked the cardiologists to test her. 

An Italian cardiology professor told the chatbot about the case of a 27-year-old patient who was taken to his clinic in unstable condition. The patient had a massive fever and drastically increased inflammation markers. Without hesitation, Suzanne diagnosed adult-onset Still’s disease. “I almost fell off my chair because she was right,” Lüscher remembers. “This is a very rare autoinflammatory disease that even seasoned cardiologists don’t always consider.”

Lüscher — director of research, education and development and consultant cardiologist at the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital Trust and Imperial College London and director of the Center for Molecular Cardiology at the University of Zürich, Switzerland — is convinced that artificial intelligence is making cardiovascular medicine more accurate and effective. “AI is not only the future, but it is already here,” he says. “AI and machine learning are particularly accurate in image analysis, and imaging plays an outsize role in cardiology. AI is able to see what we don’t see. That’s impressive.” 

At the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, for instance, his team relies on AI to calculate the volume of heart chambers in MRIs, an indication of heart health. “If you calculate this manually, you need about half an hour,” Lüscher says. “AI does it in a second.” 

AI-Assisted Medicine

Few patients are aware of how significantly AI is already determining their health care. The Washington Post tracks the start of the boom of artificial intelligence in health care to 2018. That’s when the Food and Drug Administration approved the IDx-DR, the first independent AI-based diagnostic tool, which is used to screen for diabetic retinopathy. Today, according to the Post, the FDA has approved nearly 700 artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled medical devices.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is considered the worldwide leader in implementing AI for cardiovascular care, not least because it can train its algorithms with the (anonymized) data of more than seven million electrocardiograms (ECG). “Every time a patient undergoes an ECG, various algorithms that are based on AI show us on the screen which diagnoses to consider and which further tests are recommended,” says Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Cardiovascular Health Clinic. “The AI takes into account all the factors known about the patient, whether his potassium is high, etc. For example, we have an AI-based program that calculates the biological age of a person. If the person in front of me is [calculated to have a biological age] 10 years older than his birth age, I can probe further. Are there stressors that burden him?”

Examples where AI makes a sizable difference at the Mayo Clinic include screening ECGs to detect specific heart diseases, such as ventricular dysfunction or atrial fibrillation, earlier and more reliably than the human eye. These conditions are best treated early, but without AI, the symptoms are largely invisible in ECGs until later, when they have already progressed further...

Antioniades’ team at the University of Oxford’s Radcliffe Department of Medicine analyzed data from over 250,000 patients who underwent cardiac CT scans in eight British hospitals. “Eighty-two percent of the patients who presented with chest pain had CT scans that came back as completely normal and were sent home because doctors saw no indication for a heart disease,” Antioniades says. “Yet two-thirds of them had an increased risk to suffer a heart attack within the next 10 years.” In a world-first pilot, his team developed an AI tool that detects inflammatory changes in the fatty tissues surrounding the arteries. These changes are not visible to the human eye. But after training on thousands of CT scans, AI learned to detect them and predict the risk of heart attacks. “We had a phase where specialists read the scans and we compared their diagnosis with the AI’s,” Antioniades explains. “AI was always right.” These results led to doctors changing the treatment plans for hundreds of patients. “The key is that we can treat the inflammatory changes early and prevent heart attacks,” according to Antioniades. 

The British National Health Service (NHS) has approved the AI tool, and it is now used in five public hospitals. “We hope that it will soon be used everywhere because it can help prevent thousands of heart attacks every year,” Antioniades says. A startup at Oxford University offers a service that enables other clinics to send their CT scans in for analysis with Oxford’s AI tool.

Similarly, physician-scientists at the Smidt Heart Institute and the Division of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles use AI to analyze echograms. They created an algorithm that can effectively identify and distinguish between two life-threatening heart conditions that are easy to overlook: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and cardiac amyloidosis. “These two heart conditions are challenging for even expert cardiologists to accurately identify, and so patients often go on for years to decades before receiving a correct diagnosis,” David Ouyang, cardiologist at the Smidt Heart Institute, said in a press release. “This is a machine-beats-man situation. AI makes the sonographer work faster and more efficiently, and it doesn’t change the patient experience. It’s a triple win.”

Current Issues with AI Medicine

However, using artificial intelligence in clinical settings has disadvantages, too. “Suzanne has no empathy,” Lüscher says about his experience with Chat GPT. “Her responses have to be verified by a doctor. She even says that after every diagnosis, and has to, for legal reasons.”

Also, an algorithm is only as accurate as the information with which it was trained. Lüscher and his team cured an AI tool of a massive deficit: Women’s risk for heart attacks wasn’t reliably evaluated because the AI had mainly been fed with data from male patients. “For women, heart attacks are more often fatal than for men,” Lüscher says. “Women also usually come to the clinic later. All these factors have implications.” Therefore, his team developed a more realistic AI prognosis that improves the treatment of female patients. “We adapted it with machine learning and it now works for women and men,” Lüscher explains. “You have to make sure the cohorts are large enough and have been evaluated independently so that the algorithms work for different groups of patients and in different countries.” His team made the improved algorithm available online so other hospitals can use it too...

[Lopez-Jimenez at the Mayo Clinic] tells his colleagues and patients that the reliability of AI tools currently lies at 75 to 93 percent, depending on the specific diagnosis. “Compare that with a mammogram that detects breast tumors with an accuracy of 85 percent,” Lopez-Jimenez says. “But because it’s AI, people expect 100 percent. That simply does not exist in medicine.”

And of course, another challenge is that few people have the resources and good fortune to become patients at the world’s most renowned clinics with state-of-the-art technology.

What Comes Next

“One of my main goals is to make this technology available to millions,” Lopez-Jimenez says. He mentions that Mayo is trying out high-tech stethoscopes to interpret heart signals with AI. “The idea is that a doctor in the Global South can use it to diagnose cardiac insufficiency,” Lopez-Jimenez explains. “It is already being tested in Nigeria, the country with the highest rate of genetic cardiac insufficiency in Africa. The results are impressively accurate.” 

The Mayo Clinic is also working with doctors in Brazil to diagnose Chagas disease with the help of AI reliably and early. “New technology is always more expensive at the beginning,” Lopez-Jimenez cautions, “but in a few years, AI will be everywhere and it will make diagnostics cheaper and more accurate.”

And the Children’s National Hospital in Washington developed a portable AI device that is currently being tested to screen children in Uganda for rheumatic heart disease, which kills about 400,000 people a year worldwide. The new tool reportedly has an accuracy of 90 percent. 

Both Lopez-Jimenez and Lüscher are confident that AI tools will continue to improve. “One advantage is that a computer can analyze images at 6 a.m. just as systematically as after midnight,” Lüscher points out. “A computer doesn’t get tired or have a bad day, whereas sometimes radiologists overlook significant symptoms. AI learns something and never forgets it.”

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, March 1, 2024. Headers added by me.

--

Note:

Okay, so I'm definitely not saying that everything with AI medicine will go right, and there won't be any major issues. That's definitely not the case (the article talks about some of those issues). But regulation around medicines is generally pretty tight, and

And if it goes right, this could be HUGE for disabled people, chronically ill people, and people with any of the unfortunately many marginalizations that make doctors less likely to listen.

This could shave years off of the time it takes people to get the right diagnosis. It could get answers for so many people struggling with unknown diseases and chronic illness. If we compensate correctly, it could significantly reduce the role of bias in medicine. It could also make testing so much faster.

(There's a bunch of other articles about all of the ways that AI diagnoses are proving more sensitive and more accurate than doctors. This really is the sort of thing that AI is actually good at - data evaluation and science, not art and writing.)

This decade really is, for many different reasons, the beginning of the next revolution in medicine. Luckily, medicine is mostly pretty well-regulated - and of course that means very long testing phases. I think we'll begin to really see the fruits of this revolution in the next 10 to 15 years.

[bouquetiere-files]

My 100-day glow up challenge checklist

Last updated: Mon 6 May

Skincare:

Daytime - tinted lip balm, SPF

Nighttime - perception acne treatment, sensitive skin intense moisturiser

Justification: my skin is already pretty good as I've been to a dermatologist in the past, but I still have very sensitive, dry skin so I really need to moisturise more. I also have pale skin so SPF is a must.

Exercise:

3x /week - glutes & lower body

2x /week - upper body

2x /week - cardio (dancing)

Justification: I really need to increase my medobolic tissue, so lifting is my main focus. While I want stronger arms, my glutes are priority for now. I hate cardio, but for good cardiovascular health I need to get my heart rate up, so I'll just do some dancing.

Diet (!TW: calories &weight!)

Avoiding wheat, processed meat, caffeine and dairy products under the instruction of my doctor.

Increase fibre through higher vegetable consumption

Taking my supplements (from doctor): vitamin D, iron and fish oil

Around 1500kcal goal, give or take 100kcal depending on appetite

Justification: calories will increase when I'm on my bulk. I won't be on this cut for long as I'm already within a healthy BMI - and I plan to stay within that (165cm, 59kg). Just loosing 4 or 5 kg could help with an unrelated medical condition I have, which is why I am cutting. My plan is to loose no more than 0.5kg a week, so by day 50-70, I will no longer be cutting. Don't hurt yourselves guys!

Mind

5 min guided meditation

4 hours independent study daily

Continue Duolingo streak

Read for at least 10 min

Justification: I find meditation hard, so baby steps. I am also a full time student, so study goals are very important right now.

Sleep

8-9 hours sleep everyday

1 hour downtime before sleep (no screens)

Justification: honestly i want to get 10 hours sleep everyday but I am just too busy for that nowadays.

And that's all I have so far, go check out my 100 day glow up challenge masterlist to see my progress and updates!

[healthy-liiviing]

10 Healthy Lifestyles

1. Balanced Diet

Eat a variety of nutrient-rich foods, including fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats.

Avoid processed foods, sugary snacks, and excessive alcohol intake.

Practice portion control to maintain a healthy weight.

2. Regular Exercise

Incorporate physical activity into your daily routine, aiming for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week.

Include a mix of cardiovascular exercises, strength training, and flexibility exercises.

Find activities you enjoy to stay motivated and consistent.

3. Sufficient Hydration

Drink plenty of water throughout the day to stay hydrated and support bodily functions.

Limit sugary drinks and opt for water, herbal teas, or infused water instead.

4. Quality Sleep

Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night to support overall health and well-being.

Establish a bedtime routine and create a sleep-friendly environment.

5. Stress Management

Practice stress-reduction techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, yoga, or spending time in nature.

Prioritize self-care activities and find healthy outlets for stress relief.

6. Regular Medical Check-ups

Schedule regular medical check-ups and screenings to monitor your health and detect any potential issues early on.

Follow up with healthcare professionals as needed and adhere to their recommendations.

7. Mental Health Awareness

Pay attention to your mental health and seek support if needed.

Practice self-care, engage in hobbies, and prioritize activities that bring you joy and fulfillment.

8. Social Connections

Cultivate strong social connections and maintain relationships with friends, family, and community.

Spend quality time with loved ones and engage in meaningful interactions.

9. Limiting Sedentary Behavior

Reduce sedentary behavior by incorporating movement into your daily activities.

Take breaks from prolonged sitting and find opportunities to be active throughout the day.

10. Positive Mindset

Cultivate a positive mindset and focus on gratitude, optimism, and resilience.

Practice self-compassion and embrace a growth mindset to navigate life's challenges.

By adopting these healthy lifestyles, you can enhance your overall well-being and lead a fulfilling life.

FOR LEARN HOW TO CREAT HEALTHY LIFESTYLE TAKE THIS EBOOK IN HERE : https://healthyus.gumroad.com/l/lifestyle

[sengardet]

Beating the heart

Natoya's steps echoed ominously on the cold concrete floor of her private gym. The dim fluorescent lights above cast harsh shadows, illuminating every ripple of her lean, muscular frame. The boisterous fighting champion that stole her sister’s title trembled as Natoya approached; wraps adorned the taller woman's fists. Lana's pale, fragile form hung naked and vulnerable, chained to the gym wall. Electrodes snaked from her heaving chest to the nearby ECG monitor playing a desperate rhythm.

Each beep of the monitor was a cruel reminder of her vulnerability, each spike in the green line a testament to her fear. Chains clinked softly as she shifted, her breath shallow and rapid.

"Ready for another round?" Natoya's voice was a low purr, layered with sadistic glee.

Cartilage crunched as Natoya's gloved fist smashed into the pale, trembling flesh of Lana’s chest. The ECG stuttered and Lana's naked body recoiled against its chains, fragile against the cold brick wall behind her. "Look at that precious little heart flutter," Natoya purred, dark eyes flicking between her prey and the wavering green line. "So proud of how big and strong it is, aren’t you? Well, doesn’t seem so strong now..."

"Such a delicate thing you are." Natoya murmured, leaning close enough to feel the heat radiating off Lana's trembling form. THUD, THUD, THUD a few jabs right to the sternum, eyes full of fury aimed at the helpless life fluttering beneath this delicate pink cage. Natoya felt the thrum of Lana's heart through her knuckles, pounding a terrified rhythm as its struggles played a desperate high-pitched song. Natoya's wrapped fist buried up into Lana's solar plexus, perfectly timed with a ragged inhale. The pathetic wheeze of escaping air was music to her ears. Lana twitched and gasped, struggling for breath. Natoya's dark eyes flicked to the ECG, drinking in the erratic flutter of Lana's heart.

Another round of punches followed, deeper and more forceful, aimed at the upper abdomen and timed not only with the breath but Lana’s mighty pulse. Pain exploded through Lana's core as Natoya's fists hammered into her diaphragm and sternum repeatedly. "P-please..." Lana whimpered between desperate gasps. "I can't... breathe..."

"Stop whining, little princess. I thought you were stronger than this!" she mocked -- her next jab stole Lana's pitiful plea away in a breathless yelp. The rhythm of her punches synchronized with the desperate rise of Lana's chest; every inhale met with a punishing blow.

"Your heart is working so hard," she taunted between hits, eyes darting to the monitor. "I wonder how much more it can take." Mercilessly, Natoya continued her assault, captivated by the bio-feedback dancing across the screen as her fists plunged into the billowing diaphragm before her. She reveled in dominating the life-giving cadence of Lana's lungs and heart. Watching the body and inner organs strain erratically at her command sent tingles of arousal through her core.

Back and forth between the heart and lungs, each punch was a calculated move. She was determined to stress Lana's cardiovascular system to its breaking point in a slow and humiliating beatdown.

"That's it," she purred, her voice a velvet dagger. "Give me that struggle."

Punished for her vital signs, Lana's eyes rolled back, her body slacked against the chains, every inch of her screaming for oxygen. But Natoya had no intention of granting it. She continued her assault, jabbing at the vulnerable cardio-respiratory system with relentless precision, ensuring Lana’s lungs never enjoyed a full breath, heart never enjoyed an uninterrupted beat.

Lana's gasps became desperate, her eyes wide with terror as her body convulsed against the chains. Sweat slicked her pale skin, making each muscle twitch more visible, each breath more labored. Her heartbeats turned frantic, a wild staccato that quickened, then slowed—struggling to keep pace with the punishment being meted out.

"That's it," Natoya purred, her voice a dark caress. She drove another punch into Lana's diaphragm, feeling the soft give of flesh as her fist invaded the woman’s guts.

The vitals displayed a chaotic dance of a green line and erratic pulses. Lana's eyelids fluttered, her head lolling forward as consciousness slipped away. Natoya paused, stepping back to admire her handiwork. The once rhythmic beeping of the ECG had devolved into a disjointed cacophony, signaling Lana's body's desperate struggle for survival.

"Almost there," she whispered, her voice dripping with sadistic pleasure.

With a feral growl, Natoya took a step back, her powerful legs coiling with pent-up energy. Lana whimpered, her slender form sagging in the chains, her chest heaving as her oxygen-starved heart fought futilely to keep pace.

"Time to finish this."

Natoya launched herself forward, her foot connecting with brutal precision against Lana's rib cage. The force of the kick drove Lana back against the wall, her ribs yielding to the assault, pressing cruelly against her struggling heart. Another kick followed, then another, each one a calculated strike designed to crush the last vestiges of resistance.

The ECG blared frantically, the peaks and valleys now a chaotic storm. Natoya's final kick landed with a bone-crunching impact, pinning Lana to the wall. The valiant heart within her pliant rib cage gave one last, desperate flutter before the line on the monitor flattened into a continuous, mournful wail.

[hanslanda77]

Crafting a Transformative Healthy Daily Routine: Your Path to Wellness

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, it's easy to neglect our well-being while tending to various responsibilities. But adopting a healthy daily routine can have a profound impact on our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Whether you're a student, a working professional, or someone seeking a more balanced life, here's a comprehensive guide to help you create a transformative healthy daily routine.

1. Rise and Shine with Intent: Morning Rituals The way you start your day sets the tone for the rest of it. Begin by waking up at a consistent time to regulate your body's internal clock. Engage in activities that promote mindfulness and positivity, such as meditation, deep breathing exercises, or journaling. Avoid immediately reaching for your phone or electronic devices to prevent a rush of information before you're mentally prepared.

2. Nourish Your Body: Balanced Breakfast Breakfast is often touted as the most important meal of the day, and for good reason. Fuel your body with a nutritious breakfast that includes a mix of complex carbohydrates, protein, and healthy fats. Opt for whole grains, fruits, yogurt, eggs, or smoothies to provide sustained energy throughout the morning.

3. Move and Groove: Physical Activity Incorporate exercise into your daily routine to boost your physical fitness and enhance your mood. Whether it's a brisk walk, a yoga session, or a full gym workout, find an activity you enjoy and make it a non-negotiable part of your day. Regular exercise improves cardiovascular health, increases metabolism, and releases endorphins, the "feel-good" hormones.

4. Structured Work (or Study) Time: Maintain Productivity For those with professional or academic commitments, structuring your work time is crucial. Break your day into focused work intervals, such as the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes of work followed by a 5-minute break). This approach enhances productivity while preventing burnout.

5. Mindful Consumption: Balanced Meals and Hydration Make conscious choices about what you eat and drink throughout the day. Consume a variety of nutrient-rich foods, including lean proteins, colorful vegetables, and healthy fats. Stay hydrated by drinking water regularly. Limit processed foods, sugary snacks, and excessive caffeine.

6. Mental Recharge: Short Breaks and Hobbies Intersperse your day with short breaks to relax your mind. Engage in hobbies you're passionate about, whether it's reading, playing a musical instrument, or practicing a craft. These moments of mental recharge enhance creativity and reduce stress.

7. Connect and Communicate: Social Interaction Human beings thrive on social connections. Dedicate time to interact with friends, family, or colleagues. Engaging in meaningful conversations or spending quality time with loved ones can uplift your spirits and provide emotional support.

8. Evening Wind-Down: Unplug and Relaxation As your day winds down, shift into relaxation mode. Limit screen time before bed to avoid the disruption of sleep-inducing hormones. Instead, read a book, take a warm bath, or practice gentle stretching. A calm evening routine sets the stage for a restful night's sleep.

9. Prioritize Sleep: Restorative Rest Sleep plays a pivotal role in overall health. Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night. Create a sleep-conducive environment by keeping your bedroom dark, quiet, and at a comfortable temperature. Establish a consistent sleep schedule to regulate your body's internal clock.

10. Reflection and Gratitude: Nighttime Journaling End your day by reflecting on your accomplishments and expressing gratitude. Write down a few things you're thankful for and acknowledge the progress you've made, no matter how small. This positive practice sets the tone for the next day.

Incorporating these elements into your daily routine takes time and commitment, but the benefits are worth the effort. A healthy daily routine can improve your physical health, enhance your mental well-being, and contribute to a more balanced and fulfilling life. Remember, it's not about perfection, but rather about progress and consistency on your journey to wellness.

[drforambhuta]

Significance of Full Body Health Checkups in Minimally Invasive Surgery:

1. Preoperative Evaluation and Screening: Holistic health assessments become crucial in preoperative screening, serving as a comprehensive diagnostic guide for surgeons navigating a patient's health intricacies. Beyond scrutinizing the targeted surgical area, these evaluations encompass diverse analyses, including blood tests, imaging studies, cardiovascular assessments, metabolic profiling, and specialized tests revealing nuanced aspects of the patient's physiological well-being.

2. Cardiovascular Well-being: An exploration of cardiovascular health unveils its pivotal role in the success of minimally invasive surgeries. Beyond macroscopic considerations like hypertension, coronary artery disease, or arrhythmias, this section extends its focus to the microscopic intricacies of vascular dynamics. Understanding blood flow, endothelial function, and vascular elasticity becomes paramount, collectively influencing MIS efficiency. Identifying and managing cardiovascular challenges preoperatively are integral, ensuring a foundation of cardiovascular well-being resilient to the demands of surgery.

3. Metabolic Factors and Surgical Outcomes: Metabolic considerations prove critical to the success of minimally invasive surgeries, requiring a nuanced exploration. Beyond broad categories like diabetes and obesity, this section delves into the intricate interplay of hormonal regulation, enzymatic activity, and cellular metabolism. Proactive identification of metabolic challenges empowers healthcare providers to implement precise preoperative interventions, optimizing the patient's metabolic status and instilling confidence in surgeons to navigate potential hurdles.

4. Immune System Resilience: A resilient immune system emerges as pivotal for postoperative recovery, prompting an in-depth exploration of its multifaceted facets. Beyond conventional immunodeficiencies or inflammatory conditions, this section highlights the intricate dance of immune cells, cytokines, and the delicate balance between immunosuppression and activation. A compromised immune system poses a direct threat to recovery, making preemptive measures based on preoperative health checkups crucial in fortifying the patient's immune system against postoperative complications.

4. Nutritional Landscape: Beyond cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune assessments, full-body health checkups illuminate the nutritional landscape as a key determinant of surgical success. Beyond essential nutrient assessment, this section explores the intricate web of micronutrients, antioxidants, and their role in cellular repair and regeneration. Meticulous evaluation of nutritional status equips healthcare providers with knowledge for implementing preoperative dietary interventions, ensuring patients enter surgery in an optimal nutritional state.

5. Psychological Dimension: The psychological well-being of a patient emerges as a multifaceted dimension impacting the success of minimally invasive surgeries. Beyond anxiety, depression, and stress, this section explores the psychoneuroimmunological axis, unraveling connections between the mind, nervous system, and immune responses. Full-body health checkups extend their scope to include psychological assessments, enabling healthcare professionals to identify and address mental health concerns preoperatively. Integrating psychological support into the surgical journey fosters a positive mindset, positively influencing the overall surgical experience and recovery trajectory.

There are many good hospitals in New Delhi that offer different types of health checkup packages for patients undergoing a minimally invasive surgery, such as a full body health checkup at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals is considered to be among the finest in the country.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Alberta government says it's taking steps to improve the health of women and children by following through on a promise to spend $26 million on research and expanding a newborn screening program.

In this year's budget it earmarked $10 million over two years to create the Alberta Women's Health Foundation Legacy Grant, to support research on health conditions such as cervical cancer, cardiovascular disease and other illnesses that disproportionately affect women.

 The Calgary Health Foundation will also receive $10 million over two years for women's health research.

The money will help address gaps in the understanding of women's health issues, according to the foundation, including specific disease risks, prevention, screening and treatment needs. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @abpoli

[mr-i-dont-care-sick]

Madness combat x android! reader

Part 2!.

hello! It's been a long time right? Well, I'm slowly getting back to writing, So I'll start slowly, It's been a while since I read or watch anything else about Madness combat, so I'm sorry if the personality isn't very faithful to the original :((

...Well, I guess we should start where we left off right?

[ Y/n POV ]

Your system loaded before you woke up, it seemed like something or someone had woken you up... After the capsule door opened you fell to the ground and looked around with your vision full of defects, It was difficult to recognize everything that was happening around you. around with so many screens of errors and bugs back and forth, the only thing that was visibly possible for you to recognize was a figure, No, two

Two figures in front of him, Strangely enough, they didn't seem to have a normal face, God, They weren't even normal to be exact! Ok, maybe you're exaggerating a little because your vision isn't the best, but you could easily notice that they weren't humans in front of you.

After analyzing them a little you couldn't recognize what those things were, Your system didn't see any possible logical answer to what they would be, You soon concluded that you won't get anything by playing guesswork, So you soon speak your result out loud recognition

“ u̵͕̭̘ͅn̶̗̐k̵͉̖͌̚n̵̑̀o̴̤̠̙͙̍w̶͚̯̱n̵̈̍͗ c̸̹̞̺͐̄̑r̴͔̃̓̈́e̴̩̊ą̸̵̢̝̻̔̽̈́t ̵͑ ̲̖̯u̶̽͝r̸̞̋̂́̇è̴̱́̈́̍ ”

The two creatures seemed to be confused. You couldn't tell if it was your voice that sounded more like a TV hiss or your analysis of them that came out loud by accident.

But it seems that today really isn't your lucky day, because as soon as you said that you noticed that you were low on battery, due to a lack of energy your vision quickly went dark and the last thing you could hear was the impact of your head on the hard floor of the place

Loading.

Loading..

Loading...

Charging complete ✓

Battery [100%]

Your vision slowly began to return to your senses. You felt strong enough to lift your hand and look at it for a moment, analyzing it and checking to see if there was any damage caused.

“ Oh, heay! I'm glad you woke up, I thought it would fail again, Your system is really difficult to understand so it would be a huge headache to try everything again ” The unknown voice says with a soft laugh next to you and you look at it for a moment, It looked like one of the creatures you had seen when it was turned on after so long, It wore a dark gray cap and had some bandages on its head, In addition to having a lit cigarette in its mouth

“ Hamm, hey, are you okay...? ” the creature seems to be confused by the long moment you were staring at it in a somewhat uncomfortable silence

You weren't confused however, nor scared or anything like that, the only thing that was going through your mind... Was how agonizing it was to see that cigarette burning in front of you, In a quick movement you take that cigarette out of your mouth. creature catching him off guard

“ H-hey! ” He was visibly even more confused by your action but a little irritated too, He tries to take the cigarette back but you crush it with your hand just like that

“ Why did you do that!? ” The Creature asks, visibly upset and a little irritated by what you did, You just didn't seem to care much about it and wiped your hand on your clothes and then looked at him with a neutral expression

“ According to information, cigarettes not only harm your health, causing diseases such as different types of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, among others, but also bring harm to the environment ” The Creature seems to be even more confused by his long speech about the bad guys with cigarettes, But soon he shakes his head and looks for something in his pocket

“ this is what I get in return? ” He speaks in a slightly sarcastic way but joking a little

“ I know I didn't ask to be turn on ” You give a direct answer and then get up from the table you were sitting at

“ Whatever, at least I still have more emergency cigarettes!~ ” The Creature says taking a cigarette box from his pocket and humming happily, opening it to get one, but you quickly pick it up again and then throw the cigarette box into the floor and step on it

“ ... ” The creature remains silent looking at his cigarette box crushed on the floor, then you look at each other in silence for a few minutes before he speaks again

“ you damned little shi- ”

(Sorry if there are any errors in English! I usually use a translator and sometimes it doesn't come out the way I want, but I hope you liked it!)

[rattusn0rvegicus]

Tbh I feel like hard of hearing people are so left out of the disabled community sometimes. I see positivity in spades for so many other conditions. And I'm glad for those people, but no one even remembers hard of hearing folks.

Especially considering that at least 25% of people over 60 will lose significant amounts of their hearing (but honestly, the online disabled community skews so young, and as a result, ageism runs rampant - I'm not surprised that most people don't really care, due to the demographics)

Some more sad lonely HoH experiences (woe is me):

Being the ONLY person who's a kid/teen/young adult at the audiologist

Missing out on SO many group conversations

The isolation other people put onto you when they ignore or "nevermind" you when you ask them to repeat themselves for the second or third or fourth time, or worse, tell you you're stupid or intentionally ignoring them

Not learning ASL as a kid because you could "get by" just enough in quiet environments and it's much more difficult to learn a language as an adult

Also on that point, not fitting in with the Deaf community either because you weren't raised in the culture and don't know ASL (plus you feel like an imposter because you CAN get by in the hearing world, just not easily or all the time)

Having speech issues (lisps, "deaf accent", etc) that make you stand out

Some kewl facts:

According to the WHO, 80% of people with disabling hearing loss come from low- and middle- income countries, and who cares about people who aren't living in rich countries in the Global North, amiright? (Sarcasm. This is sarcasm.)

About 1% of people aged 20-40 have hearing loss. (I mean, honestly, that's about the same amount of people who have many other conditions, so like. Why does no one ever talk about us, lol)

Hearing loss raises your risk for dementia. This is thought to be in part due to how we withdraw socially/isolate and get less simulation.

Other common comorbidities include depression (duh), balance/vestibular issues (makes sense when you think about it) and cardiovascular disease (this one's a mystery to me).

How to help hard of hearing people:

When going out to movies and stuff, don't be afraid to ask your hard of hearing friend if they would like to stop by the counter and see if the theatre has some kind of closed captioning device. A lot of us are aware that these exist, but we're so tired of being a "burden" already due to constantly asking people to repeat themselves.

Many theatres also have showings where the captions are on screen, so that's definitely worth checking out (even preferable!).

A great gift for your hard of hearing buddy: Raincoat with hood. Seriously, we need something to cover our ears in the rain because hearing aids are EXPENSIVE (Average cost for ONE SINGLE HEARING AID is $2000. I'm not kidding) and not all that waterproof.

Oh or a Costco membership because you can get a PAIR of hearing aids at Costco for $1600!

PATIENCE. Please omg. If you don't like repeating yourself five times, ask if you can just write it down. We'll probably say yes, because it is just as frustrating for us as it is for you.

If you're eating at a restaurant, ask your friend if they'd prefer to eat outside, or get takeout instead. All the extra noise makes it really difficult for us to follow conversations and we'll probably just sit there in the corner looking sad and lonely and ruining all your fun 😔 lol

If we say we need something due to our hearing loss (like a quieter environment, captions, etc) please respect that!

A few more tips for HoH folks:

If you're in the US, check out your department of vocational rehabilitation. They might be able to provide hearing aids for cheaper.

Lion's Club is another good one, they're an international organization that provides free hearing aids.

DeafMetal has some cool hearing aid and CI jewelry and you can get lots of fun decor for 'em on Etsy too! Fuck those boring skin tones lol

[winterr77]

ੈ✩ importance of sleep

Hello angels 💗🎀 I’ve been struggling with my sleep schedule lately so I’m writing this to remind and help anyone who is in the same dilemma as me~

Sleep is critical for a healthy mind and body, so prioritise your sleep before anything else for a balanced lifestyle !!

Below is information from a Harvard blog:

According to the National Sleep Foundation, high school students (ages 14-17) need about eight to 10 hours of sleep each night. For young adults (ages 18 to 25), the range is need between seven and nine hours. However most don’t follow this expectation and therefore experience many negative consequences.

Signs of chronic sleep deprivation include:

🎀Daytime sleepiness and fatigue

🎀Irritability and short temper

🎀Mood changes

🎀Trouble coping with stress

🎀Difficulty focusing, concentrating, and remembering

🎀Brain fog

🎀Weight gain and obesity

🎀Cardiovascular disease

🎀Type 2 diabetes.

Students who prioritize sleep are better able to cope with the stress that comes with being an active student.

“It’s a vicious circle where the more stressed you get, the less you sleep, and the less you sleep, the more stressed you get. And in the long term, that can lead to serious psychiatric problems,” says Dr. Edward Pace-Schott, Harvard Summer School and Harvard Medical School faculty member and sleep expert.

In the worst case scenario, the combination of lack of sleep and stress can lead to mental health disorders such as depression, general anxiety disorder, and potentially even post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tips for getting more sleep as a student

The key to getting a good night’s sleep is establishing healthy sleep habits, also known as sleep hygiene.

The first step is deciding to make sleep a priority.

Staying ahead of coursework and avoiding distractions and procrastination while you study is key to avoiding the need for late night study sessions. And prioritizing sleep may mean leaving a party early or choosing your social engagements carefully.

Yet the reward—feeling awake and alert the next morning—will reinforce that positive choice.

The next step is establishing healthy bedtime and daytime patterns to promote good quality sleep.

Pace-Schott offers the following tips on steps you can take to create healthy sleep hygiene:

🎀Limit caffeine in close proximity to bed time. College students should also avoid alcohol intake, which disrupts quality sleep.

🎀Avoid electronic screens (phone, laptop, tablet, desktop) within an hour of bedtime.

🎀Engage in daily physical exercise, but avoid intense exercise within two hours of bedtime.

🎀Establish a sleep schedule. Be as consistent as possible in your bedtime and rise time, and get exposure to morning sunlight.

🎀Establish a “wind-down” routine prior to bedtime.

🎀Limit use of bed for daily activities other than sleep (e.g., TV, work, eating)

Good luck angels

~winter

ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩‧₊˚