I was five years old when my body betrayed me for the first time.
I remember the day in fragments, like broken glass catching the light at different angles. The house was too quiet that afternoon, the kind of quiet that made every sound feel louder. I was sitting on the living room floor with my toy cars, lining them up carefully, when something strange pressed against my chest. At first, I thought it was hunger or maybe fear from a bad dream I couldn't remember. Then the pressure grew heavier, tighter, like invisible hands squeezing my heart.
I tried to breathe, but the air felt wrong. It was there, but it wouldn't go where I needed it to go.
"Mae," I called, my voice small even to my own ears. When no one answered, panic bloomed inside me. The room tilted. My chest burned, then ached, then hurt in a way I had never known before. I clutched my shirt with both hands, fingers trembling, and that was when my mother saw me.
Her scream still echoes in my memory.
Everything after that moved too fast. My father lifted me into his arms, his heartbeat loud against my ear, faster than mine. My mother's hands shook as she grabbed her bag, her phone slipping from her fingers twice before she managed to call for the driver. I remember the smell of my father's cologne mixed with something sharp and metallic in the air. I remember crying, not because of the pain, but because I could feel their fear wrapping around me.
The car ride to the hospital felt endless. Bangkok traffic blurred into streaks of color outside the window. My mother kept whispering my name like a prayer, over and over again, while my father told me to stay awake. I wanted to obey him, but my eyelids felt heavy, like they were made of stone.
The hospital lights were too bright. White swallowed everything. I was carried through automatic doors that hissed open, past strangers in uniforms who spoke words I didn't understand. Someone placed a small mask over my face. Someone else pressed cold metal against my chest. I didn't know it then, but that was the moment my life began to change.
That was also the day I met Doctor Chanin.
He didn't look like the doctors I had seen in cartoons. He didn't smile too wide or speak too loud. He had silver hair and tired eyes, and when he knelt beside my bed, his movements were slow and careful, as if he were afraid of breaking me.
"Hello, Tirawat," he said gently. "I'm Doctor Chanin. Can you tell me where it hurts?"
I tried to answer, but my throat felt tight. Instead, I pressed my hand against my chest. He nodded, as if that was enough.
Doctor Chanin explained things to my parents in a calm voice that never wavered. I didn't understand the words heart, condition, or serious, but I understood the way my mother covered her mouth to stop herself from crying. I understood the way my father stood straighter, like he was holding the world on his shoulders.
That night, I slept in a hospital bed for the first time. Machines beeped beside me, each sound a reminder that something inside me wasn't working the way it should. Doctor Chanin visited me before I fell asleep. He adjusted my blanket, making sure it didn't touch the wires attached to my chest.
"You're brave," he told me.
I didn't feel brave. I felt small and broken. But when he placed a warm hand on my head, something inside me eased. For the first time since the pain started, I felt safe.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. The hospital became familiar. I learned the smell of disinfectant, the rhythm of nurses' footsteps, the way sunlight filtered through the windows in the late afternoon. Doctor Chanin became a constant presence in my life. He explained my condition to me using simple words and drawings on scrap paper. He told me stories when I was scared. He promised me that he would take care of my heart.
And he did.
As I grew older, I learned that my heart would never be normal. I learned that I would spend more time in hospital rooms than playgrounds, more time listening to doctors than teachers. But I also learned that life could still be gentle, even when it was fragile.
Doctor Chanin was the first person to teach me that.
Now, years later, as I lie in another hospital bed, older but still bound to these white walls, I think about that day often. About the five-year-old boy who didn't understand why his chest hurt, or why his parents cried so much. About the doctor with silver hair who chose to care.
I didn't know it then, but meeting Doctor Chanin was not the end of something.
It was the beginning.
When people ask me now what it feels like to grow up sick, I never know how to answer. How do you explain a life where pain becomes familiar, where hospitals feel more like home than anywhere else? At five, I didn't have the words for it. I only knew that my heart was different, and because of that difference, the world treated me differently.
Doctor Chanin noticed everything. He noticed when I was tired, when I was scared, when I pretended to be fine for my parents. He never lied to me, but he never took my hope away either. He taught me that being sick didn't mean my life was smaller. It was just shaped differently.
That belief stayed with me, even as my heart weakened and my hospital stays grew longer. Even now, as I wait for a new doctor to take his place, I carry those early memories like a quiet promise.
My heart may have failed me once.
But it also taught me how to feel.