JongHyun had ants in his pants the whole ride to the hospital. Onew kept glancing at him during red lights and stop signs to check up on him. From his seat in the back Key didn’t know how to act. He was torn between comforting JongHyun and just silently disappearing out of his life.

            Everything was just so screwed up. He didn’t even know why they were going to the hospital. JongHyun had secluded himself from the outside world ever since that phone call.

            “Is everything all right, JongHyun?” Onew finally asked with a cautious attitude to his words.

            Key praised him for asking the words he’d been afraid to.

            It took a while for the zombie-like boy to offer an answer. He temporarily tore his gaze away from the world zipping by him to look at Onew.

            His eyes are so sad, Key thought.

            “TaeMin had another episode…” he whispered.

            “He’s sick again?”

            “Yeah… Really, really sick…” His body slumped down in his seat, seemingly unable to hold up the weight of his head. The fight seeped out of his feet and down through the floor of the car.

            “What do you mean really, really sick?” Key asked. He received no answer much to his disappointment.

            The hospital came into view from up ahead. JongHyun nearly launched himself from the car in his haste to get inside the building. Parking was taking so long that he was tempted to just jump out of the car, or at least ask Onew to let him out. But he chose to wait in order to stay polit. Onew had given him a ride after all. Even if TaeMin was…

            He couldn’t think like that… He couldn’t give up hope. TaeMin would get better.

                 JongHyun tried hard not to sprint off to the hospital. Unfortunately, in his panic he wasn’t able to stop himself from bolting across the parking lot and through the automatic doors to the warm interior. From the sounds of heavy footsteps thudding behind him he knew Onew and Key were hot on his tail anyways.

            “I’m looking for someone,” JongHyun panted to the first nurse he could locate behind the counter. “His name is TaeMin, Lee TaeMin.”

            “He’s on the third floor… In the ICU,” the nurse said. Her voice was so full of sympathy is sickened JongHyun. It wasn’t her best friend hanging on to the last threads of his life.

            That was one of the reasons he didn’t even bother thanking her for her help or reprimanding her for the tone of her voice. He sped off like the road runner in a cloud of dust and spinning legs. Despite having been here several times before he was having difficulty pinning down the location of the elevator and had to stop to do a couple of circles.

            “JongHyun… This way…” Onew ushered gently. He placed his hand on the younger’s shoulder and led him in the direction of the metal box.

           The three boys piled into one elevator together. The tension in the air was so thick it could be cut with a knife. JongHyun leaned against the cool metal wall, taking a deep breath through his nose to try and relieve himself of said tension and let his panic escape. His eyes closed and pictures of all the previous times he’d been in one of these elevators came rushing back to him.

            TaeMin’s mother’s words came back to haunt him.

            How could such an innocent boy have such a horrible life?

            “He’s not going to make it to his eighteenth birthday… If he has another episode he might die…”

            A dinging noise echoed inside the box carrying them. As soon as the doors started to slide open JongHyun was shoving past the other two to get out.

            He had to go through another incompetent nurse to figure out what room TaeMin was currently residing in.

            His mother was pacing outside the door with her nail being gnawed in . TaeMin’s father stood stiffly to the side watching his wife while his older brother, TaeSun, sat in the only chair in the hallway with his head buried in his hands. JongHyun was surprised to see him there; the last he’d heard of him he was finishing up his studies in Japan.

            “How’s he doing?” JongHyun blurted.

            TaeSun lifted his head to stare at him with ghost eyes and the other two that had trailed along with him. Key flinched when he saw his face just as blank of emotion as JongHyun’s had been – and still was – in the car.

            “We don’t know yet,” TaeMin’s mother spoke first. “The doctor is still in there…”

            Frustrate, JongHyun picked up the old nervous habit he thought he had quit and pulled roughly at his hair.

            If that doctor came out and told him that there was nothing he could do for TaeMin, then… Then he would…

            “How did it happen?” JongHyun asked so he could stop himself from thinking such dark things.

           “He was taking some fresh air between classes, his friend said… Somehow he fell and passed out for a while. By the time he came to and someone found him…” TaeMin’s mother trailed off. She knew JongHyun could guess at the rest of the story. She let out a choked sob and hit her head once with a closed fist. “I knew I should have kept him home! I knew he wasn’t feeling well and I let him go anyway!”

            Her husband wrapped his arms around her in an attempt to soothe her. JongHyun had to turn away in order to maintain the final scraps of his sanity. Usually a trip to the hospital wasn’t all that big of a deal. TaeMin went in for a few hours, got some IVs, got some pills and left that night or sometimes a couple days later depending on how bad the episode was. No matter how long the stay, though, he would always bounce back with that big smile of his and tell everyone not worry.

            Now… Now…

            A couple tears squeezed themselves out of the corners of his eyes. JongHyun quickly wiped them away. He couldn’t cry here… That would have to wait until he was alone. He had to keep strong for the ones who were truly feeling pain at the moment – TaeMin’s family.

            JongHyun took up the habit of pacing back and forth. He could feel Onew and Key staring at him like they wanted to intervene and do something. The only thing that could help JongHyun now, though, was the doctor coming out and telling him what was going on with TaeMin.

After what seemed like hours of agonizing waiting the doctor and his team moved into the hallway with the small crowd. The nurses dispersed, spreading out to their stations and leaving the doctor to be the messenger.

TaeSun rose to his feet, gluing to his parents as they awaited the news about their treasured family member.

            JongHyun stood ahead of his two friends and fixated his eyes on the doctor. He pulled off his gloves before addressing the family and friends.

            “TaeMin’s been stabilized. His heart rate is back to normal, his blood pressure had gone down, but…” he trailed off.

            It was like you could feel everyone’s hearts stop beating in their chests. The air got vacuumed out of the room, leaving the anticipating people gasping for breath. Arteries burst as they clogged themselves with fear causing their hearts to clench and squeeze in on themselves until they got stuck on the pricks of their rib cage.

            Why couldn’t he have just stopped talking before the ‘but’? JongHyun thought bitterly.

            “But what?” TaeMin’s father finally inquired.

            “He’s in a coma… At the moment we had to put him on a life support machine that will pump his lungs for him. We may be able to take him off of that later on, but the chances of that happening are slim…” The doctor’s voice faded like it would in a movie. His eyes acted as the camera, fading into a black screen. Or in this case, JongHyun felt himself slipping into a dark abyss that him into a continuous downwards spiral that engulfed him whole. And all that he could hear as he was pulled further and further down into this suffocating grasp was the doctor’s words, “He’s in a coma. He’s in a coma. He’s in a coma.”