“I don’t think I can do that though…” Taemin gave a sad smile to them before looking around the empty room. “We can color or something, I guess. I just want to move around a little first.”

“Sure Taemin… Sure, we can do that.” Kibum was the first one to stand and help Taemin up as well from the bed, making sure to take the whole IV stand with them as the boy started walking around the room gathering things. But anyone who looked at them would have been able to tell the diva was not quite there, thinking things as he spoke.

And for the longest time, they sat there listening to music from a music show on in the room and drawing with all the supplies their manager had brought for Taemin during other visits. Soon though, the bag was empty and the nurse returned with another, a startling red that caught the attention of all five of them. “You ready for your first dose of chemo, Taemin-ah?” He nodded and watched as the bag was hung up, following every movement of it. “This is the first of the two medicines. Doxorubicin. It’s always good to know what’s going into your body before it is in.” She gave a smile and Taemin realized she could tell how scared he was, but so could the other members. He had a right to be scared then.

The line was disconnected from the other bag and flushed with saline, but before anything else had even happened, Taemin turned his head the other way, closing his eyes as tight as possible as he grabbed the closest hand to him. Just from the feel of how small and perfectly-kept it was, he knew it was Kibum’s, but that didn’t stop Taemin from squeezing it with everything he had in him. It wasn’t even that there was pain, because there wasn’t.

It was just that the medicine dripping down the tube steadily could very much change his life.

And that scared him.

“Hey Taemin?” He barely looked away from the TV in the room to Minho and no one else even bothered. “They’re filing you with rat juice.”

“What?” Taemin seemed almost disinterested in the fact, but the other three in the room looked from Minho to the red bag and back, eyes wide and too shock to speak.

Though the frog didn’t get the reaction he wanted from the youngest, the three older members reacted even better and he cracked a smile as he finally started laughing. “Doxo-whatever-you-call-it is called rat juice since it was found to treat rat tumors. It’s also called Red Death by some people.” He held his phone out to show them, still open to the article he was reading.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually was rat juice.” A yawn escaped Taemin’s mouth and he leaned back in the pillows around him some more. “I feel sick from it.”

Minho’s smile faded a little at that, but Jinki and Jonghyun shared a look before both turning to the boy on the bed. “The nurse said it shouldn't make you feel sick yet…? Not until we got back to the dorm later.”

“Well she was wrong.” It was possible to tell something was wrong from how hard breathing was to him all of a sudden, yet he still tried to talk to them. “My stomach hurts really bad. And my back.” Just that left his breathless, but before he was even finished, Kibum was smashing his hand into the nurse button.

In seconds she was running in, looking right at the sick boy in the bed. “What’s the matter?” Her voice was worried from the second they saw her and none of them even noticed as she pressed for the doctor to come on her pager, only that she rushed right to the maknae’s bed and pushed most of them away. “What feels wrong?” He was too busy trying to breathe properly to answer and she moved right onto the next thing as she worked on checking his stats and everything. “Nod yes or no. Is your chest tight?” A nod. “Do you have shortness of breath?” Another. “Stomach pain or back pain?” Two nods.

The nurse didn’t look up when the doctor rushed in, but the boys did. “It’s an allergic reaction to the Doxorubicin. Shortness of breath, tightening in his chest, abdominal pain and back pain, and a spike in heart rate.” The medicine bag, coincidentally finished, was disconnected by her as the doctor took over care for Taemin himself. Pressed against the wall as much out of the way as possible, the four idols could only watch it all play out with wide, fear-filled eyes.

Only after another medicine was injected with a syringe through the IV and Taemin began to breathe easier did the nurse turn around to the shocked friends. “There’s no need to worry about him anymore. It’s all under control now.”

“What happened to him?” Kibum’s eyes were wide as he watched Taemin behind her, answering questions for the doctor as the man wrote notes in the file. “He was fine until a few minutes ago…”

“He had an allergic reaction to the medicine. If you hadn’t called for me, it could have been dangerous for him, but thanks to you, it was nothing serious.” She gave them all a smile, making everyone wonder if she even realized who they were with how calm she reacted around them. “He’s going to recover for a while before we give the other medicine now though.”

“There’s another one?” Jonghyun’s question was for all of them, but in the brief second after it was asked, they all saw the slight sorrow in the nurse’s eyes before she hid it again.

With a nod, she glanced over her shoulder to the pale boy and then back at them. “We are using a combination of two medicines to try and help him faster.” As the doctor started to walk away from Taemin’s bed, she gave one last look at them and the boy. “I’ll be back in a half hour to see how you are feeling, okay?” Taemin gave a slight nod, his eyes already closed and looking half asleep.

With the two gone, it was only the band again. “These things always happen to me, don’t they?” Taemin barely cracked an eye open to look at the scared four. “You can relax again you know. I’m not dying or anything.” Yet that seemed funny to him and he gave a little smile. “At least, not at the moment. Give me a few months and I might say different.”

“You shouldn’t joke about things like that, Minnie.” Kibum’s voice was soft even as he scolded the boy, yet they listened and sat like he had said. The drama they were watching before everything was still on, but it was only noise now and someone shut it off to silence the room.

“It’s true. Don’t you always say to tell the truth?” He seemed a lot more tired now, but when his eyes snapped open, all of them had a feeling of what was happening.

Jinki stood and in the same motion grabbed the bucket beside the bed, lifting it so Taemin wouldn’t have to go far as he stuck his face in and emptied any contents of his stomach. “Do you want some water?” There was a little nod, but his head didn’t come back out from the opening of the bucket.

Jonghyun was the one that poured a cup from the pitcher by the bed, handing it to the eldest to help Taemin drink from it. After only a sip, he pulled back from the cup with a disgusted look on his face. “That taste like chemicals!”

All of them looked at the crystal-clear liquid and Jinki even sipped a little from the same cup before looking back at Taemin. “There’s nothing wrong with it… It’s just water.”

“How does that taste normal to you?” Yet he watched in stunned disgust as the same cup was passed to everyone, all of them sipping and taking a sip before saying it was perfectly fine. “It’s like drinking chemicals!”

And they left it at that, letting the youngest think whatever he wanted about it as they tried to find anything to occupy him. As the medicine took more affect, he seemed to get even happier, the color coming back to his skin and the pain leaving.

Yet, all too soon, the nurse came back with another bag for the drip, clear now. “Are you ready to get the last part of this on the way so you can leave soon? This one's Gemcitabine.”

Taemin nodded but eyed with bag with even more caution than the last one. “Am I going to get sick from this one too?”

She gave a little laugh at his innocent question, causing him to relax without even meaning to. “There’s always a chance, but they are different so you might not. If you start to feel anything strange though, just call for me again.” This time, as she held his hand in hers to connect the tube to the catheter, he didn’t look away. “Are you ready?” Taemin only nodded and she connected the two, letting him watch with fascination now that he knew it didn’t hurt. “It’s all done. This one is going to take a few hours and after it is done, you have to wait a little while to make sure all is well, but you guys can leave after that.”

“Do you even know who we are?” Taemin immediately threw a hand over his mouth at the outburst he hadn’t meant to say and the other members looked at him with amusement, laughing at his embarrassment.

But she only chuckled and nodded. “If I didn’t, I’d have to live under a rock. But this is my job as much as being famous is yours and you guys are all real people, so there’s no reason for me to be all excited about you.” She ruffled his hair to the amusement of the other members. “Unless you guys want me to be. Then I can go get any other nurse to send in here and they’d be more than happy to be annoying to you.”

“You’re fine.” Taemin’s quick response had even the nurse laughing at him a little. When her pager beeped, she looked at it and out the door quickly.

“I have to go now but I’ll be back to check up on you soon.” As she walked away from his bed, she looked at the other members. “You guys keep a close eye on him. Okay?” And she was gone.

With the mood lifted in the room, they went back to how they were before—laughing, talking, watching TV, and just doing whatever they wanted. The hours that had seemed daunting at first passed without them ever realizing, and all too soon, the five were walking out the doors with the manager.

Taemin might have been bundled up despite it not being cold and was wearing a cap and face mask to protect himself from the outside world, but it still felt great to be leaving the white room to go back to the dorm for a while. As he skipped down the path ahead of them, all of the older men couldn’t help but find his childishness funny. “How do you even have this much energy now? You were ready to pass out asleep in there!”

Taking off the mask so they could all see his smile, Taemin turned around with his arms spread wide and a teeth-showing smile that was the sun in the middle of the night. “Because it feels so great to be going home! I get to stay with you guys now and I only have to come back for treatments!”

And it was great, they all had to agree. It definitely was.