Heechul sighed for what seemed like the tenth time in the past couple of minutes. He glanced down at his phone, checking the time and to see if he had any new messages. Dr. Choi was already fifteen minutes late and he was growing impatient. If today wasn’t utterly important he would have called and rescheduled because he needed to take Kibum to an urgent care; he had been coughing up a storm all morning. Thankfully Donghae had gotten a call from school informing him that a pipe had burst and classes were canceled for the rest of the week, so he’d agreed to look after Kibum until he returned home in an hour.

He sighed again, this time in relief when he heard footsteps coming down the hall and a moment later a disheveled Dr. Choi entered the room, looking quite flustered.

“I apologize for the wait, Heechul,” He said, taking a seat behind his desk. “One of my adult patients tripped and bashed her head against the nurse’s medical cart. She’ll be fine, but I had to stay with her while she got stitched up.”

“I understand completely,” Heechul said instantly, waving his hand to show that he wasn’t bothered. “Don’t worry about it, honestly. Accidents happen, trust me; I know that better than anyone else.”

“I’m sure you do being the father of four boys,” Dr. Choi responded, pulling out Kibum’s file from his cabinet. “My daughter is three years old and I have a heart attack every time she falls down and skins her knee. I can hardly imagine parenting boys, six of them none-the-less.”

“Oh, it’s definitely an adventure,” Heechul chuckled, shaking his head. “Anyways, I don’t mean to rush you, but Kibum’s come down with a cough and I need to get him to the urgent care because his chest sounds horrible.”

“Speaking of which, did you talk with the regular nurses?” Dr. Choi asked, pulling out a sheet of paper and handing it over to Heechul. “I noticed it after awhile, but Kibum seems to have a difficult time breathing when he gets upset. It’s common for patients with anxiety disorders to feel chest pain and have a hard time breathing during panic attacks, but Kibum seemed to really struggle.”

“He had asthma as a child,” Heechul replied, glancing over the medical report. “I’ll have to mention it to the doctor. Do you mind if I keep this?”

“Go ahead,” Dr. Choi said easily, nodding. “Well, I don’t want to keep you here any longer than need be so let’s get straight to the point. Kibum has been in my care a total of five months out of the year which is longer than usual for most of my patients. At this time I feel confident in diagnosing Kibum with schizophrenia.”

Heechul felt his heart stop as he stared across at the doctor in shock, unable to comprehend what had just been said to him. He shook his head, wondering if he had heard correctly. “What did you say? I thought you just said that Kibum is schizophrenic.”

“I’m afraid that you heard correctly,” Dr. Choi replied somberly, his expression grim.

“I don’t understand,” Heechul said, shaking his head again.

“It all fits, Heechul,” Dr. Choi told him. “Suicidal tendencies are completely common in schizophrenics. The voice in his head is real to him and the man in his dream is a hallucination. Kibum falls under the categories of positive and negative schizophrenia. Positive is the presence of psychosis which is delusions, paranoia, and hallucination which are all symptoms that he shows actively. The voice is a delusion, the dream is a hallucination, and the paranoia is thinking he causes tension in the family.”

“What about negative?” Heechul demanded.

“Negative is the absence of normal behavior. Kibum is socially withdrawn; he doesn’t want to be in school and