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He was like a beautiful butterfly spreadings its wings for the first time after emerging from its cocoon. Beautiful. Filled with wonder. Fleeting. And then, when the butterfly begins to falter, the color fades and the magic disappears.
In the early days, he was so full of life, so vibrant and warm. I can't remember a day when he wasn't laughing, wasn't filling the world with happiness. When he was loving me.
When he looked at me, and recognition filled his eyes.
In those days, it was hard not to get drawn in by his antics, by his bright eyes and his laughing voice. Hoseok was like the sun, but I could never get close enough to be burned by him. Loving him had been easy, too easy. From the first moment I met him, to the very first kiss, the first whispered confessions and the nights where I couldn't tell where I ended and he began, I knew he was mine. And I was his.
Forever.
I didn't know how fleeting the dream would be. Didn't know that soon enough I'd be thrown into the darkest nightmares reserved for those who love too deeply. Nightmares I'd never awaken from.
"Kihyun, why are you sitting all the way over there?"
Hoseok's voice, soft and raspy, from the pile of blankets and pillows in front of the couch, draws my attention away from the list of care requirements from the hospital visit. The words 'early onset' and 'too advanced for treatment' send my heart plummeting, but Hoseok pulls me away with another soft call of my name.
My time with him is precious. I don't know when I'll wake up next to him and meet his eyes, only to find a stranger staring back at me.
Pushing away from my desk, I straighten and drag shaking hands through hair that definitely needs a wash. I'm not smiling. I'm barely able to keep myself from falling down and crying. But when I turn to Hoseok, there's a smile on my face and the tears remain in my throat, lodged in a lump that I cannot remove, no matter how many times I swallow. I cross to the bundle, pale and thin, before crawling under the blankets to draw him into my arms.
He's cold, but that seems to be the norm these days. As he starts to fade, taking pieces of me from the light in his eyes, his body follows slowly. Even now, with his chin resting against my shoulder, I know that all I have to do is slide my fingers down and I'll be able to count every one of his ribs. But that may be my fault as much as his body's. He refuses to eat most days, depression pulling him under even as I try to keep him afloat. I could try harder, but I know that the time I have left is ticking away, seconds, minutes, hours inching by... and I really can't stand to put him in any more pain.
So for now, I hold him close, I kiss him and I let him fall asleep as the randomly chosen movie plays in the background, a dull noise that drowns out the darkness of my thoughts. As the credits roll, I bury my face in his hair and I let the tears fall. I’m too far gone to lose him. I can’t lose him, it’s the same thought that’s been on my mind since the very first diagnosis, the only thought that’s kept me going. The only thought that’s slowly being deafened by the voice of reason that tells me I’m going to lose him, and I’m never going to be ready for it.
-
He forgets my name now.
I can see it when he calls to me. There’s a struggle in his eyes. His lips move to form sounds that he can’t quite grasp. Sounds that are on the tip of his tongue and fading even as he reaches for them. He knows he’s forgetting, knows he’s slipping away from me, and the depression grips him that much tighter because he does know.
He doesn’t reach out for me in bed anymore. Doesn’t try to offer comfort in the cold nights, doesn’t wriggle closer to feel my chest against his back and my arms around his torso. It’s as if he thinks he can lessen the hurt I feel by distancing himself. It’s stupid, but I’ll never tell him how much it hurts to have him distancing himself from me. Especially when all I want is to spend these last few days with him before everything falls through our hands like mist and shadow.
-
It’s a Tuesday when he tries to kill himself.
His wrists are so thin, I don’t even know how he managed to not slice his hand off when he took the blade from my razor and pressed the edge to his skin like Jack Frost’s nipping kiss on the coldest of days. Hoseok’s a shadow of his former self, a wraith wearing the bones and skin of the man I love, but when I look at him, he’s nothing more than a ghost holding on to unfinished business. He wants so desperately to be the man he once was, the one who could remember how to tie his shoes, the one who doesn’t have to ask how to spell his name, the one who remembers the name of his lover. And I want so desperately to help him, but I already know there’s nothing I can do. The treatments are failing. The medicine’s making him sick.
He’s dying.
And there’s nothing I can do.
-
The doctors say it’s rare for someone not even twenty-five to be struck with Alzheimers, and maybe that’s why the usual treatments haven’t been working. Hoseok is so distant now. But what’s scary is how different he looks from the man I fell in love with. On the good days, when he can remember my face and always greets me with a smile and a hug, he seems a little closer. On those days, we sit and talk in his hospital room for hours, and I try my hardest to make him see that I’m okay, that I’m coping. That I don’t go home to our apartment and curl up on his side of the bed, clutching one of his shirts to my body as the pain wringes tears from my soul.
On those days, I can pretend that he isn’t losing bits of himself every single day. And that he hasn’t already lost nearly every part of me…
But on the bad days, he’s shouting and screaming and throwing things when I come to visit. He says I’m an intruder, that I’m not his Kihyun. That I’m not his… And that I need to leave and never come back. I try to show him that his words don’t hurt, that I know he doesn’t really mean them, but sometimes I think I know why he kissed his skin with the harsh bite of the stainless steel, because on those days… I sit and stare at my razor for hours, but I never build the courage to do it.
-
I know it’s bad news when the phone rings at three in the morning. I’m barely awake, but somehow I manage to pull on my shoes and a jacket over Hoseok’s favorite shirt that I’ve taken to wearing almost all the time at home, all while his doctor tells me in a very calm, very slow voice that I need to come to the hospital.
That I need to say goodbye.
Hoseok looks so beautiful when he sleeps. Like Snow White in her glass coffin. Like an angel suspended in time. My angel. The atmosphere is heavy as I step into his hospital room. It’s been nearly a week since I last saw him. Since his last outburst and like a coward I avoided seeing him because I was afraid. But now, as I find my way to his bedside and drop to my knees at the sight of my beautiful angel hooked up to so many machines meant to sustain life, meant to prolong and preserve in the hopes that a cure might be found, or a treatment might miraculously work, I hate myself for not coming sooner.
The doctors tell me his brain is shutting down and I’m unlikely to get a response from him because he’s comatose.. His synapses and pathways are disintegrating, and they don’t know how much longer he’ll be able to hold on. Numb, I barely register the condolencenses and the hand on my shoulder that’s meant to be comforting, and I know I’m crying even before they leave the room because a nurse presses a tissue into my hand before closing the door behind her.
“Hoseok, I’m so sorry,” my voice is raspy, thick with sleep and tears as I reach for his hand and squeeze. “I should’ve been here. Should have supported you, fought alongside you. Instead I—I was too afraid, and I stayed away. And I never even got to say goodbye…”
My thumb strokes along his knuckles, fingers curling tighter in his as I lean in and press a kiss to the ragged scars on the inside of his wrist. Despair drags me down like a fast flowing river, and I cling to these last few moments as Hoseok’s chest rises, falls, rises, falls…
And then, with the echo of a smile on his face and the slightest twitch of his fingers in mine, he’s free of the pain and the anger and the confusion. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I take note of the loud, constant beep of the machine that monitors his no longer beating heart and the sudden flood of people as nurses and doctors enter the room. But, like the first moment I met Hoseok, all I can see is him.
And even now, with his fingers forever curled into mine, he’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Even if in those last few weeks, he didn’t even know who I am.