Due to the nature of Leigh's injuries, I am sorry to announce that she has died and this fic will no longer be continued.

Just kidding.  Have some happiness and fluff.

Deer Luhan,

The irritating beep won’t go away.  Make it stop.

Leigh

I wasn’t sure how long it had been there for, but the irritating beep was persistent and annoying.  And I wanted it to go away.  It didn’t.  Not even when I tried asking it.

In fact, asking it just brought more noise.  There was a loud yell of “she’s awake!” and then there was chaos.  I didn’t dare open my eyes.  There was too much going on.  And everything hurt.

And then it didn’t hurt so much, so I went back to sleep.

It was hard to concentrate.  I felt tired and woozy, and my left eye hurt and was a bit blurry when I tried to look at anything with it, and there were too many familiar faces I couldn’t put names to at once floating above me, and just to confuse me even more, one of them had said that some of them had been there yesterday and I’d spoken to them then and that I’d actually been awake on and off for a couple of hours today and I didn’t remember a thing.

Not to mention that the nurses didn’t understand a word I said when I tried to take the itchy stratchy thing out of my nose, even though I’d asked them nicely.

The tall handsome one – though, actually, there were many tall handsome ones – turned away from the bed and repeated what I’d just said.  The nurse gave a firm no and I whined in distress.

Then it clicked.

“Krisssss!”

Tall Handsome turned back to me.  “Yes?”

“You’re Kris,” I told him.  “Like Krispy, but Kris.”  I grinned.

One of the many brown-haired ones turned to Krispy Kris in concern.  “There isn’t coffee in the drip, right?”

“No, her brain would actually be working if there was.”

I tried to raise my arm to point at Brown-haired One, but somebody grabbed it and held it down.  Still, it didn’t stop me from looking at him.

“Yoooou’re a hamster!”  I turned my megawatt grin on him.  He looked a little disturbed.

“Xiumin, actually, but yeah.”

I twitched my fingers.  “Closer, closer.”

He looked to Kris, who repeated what I’d just.  Xiumin approached.

“Xiumin!”  I giggled a little to myself. Now he definitely looked disturbed.  “Now go away.”

Xiumin understood that, but he was still thoroughly baffled as he pulled away.  I giggled again.

“Xiumout!”

“She’s been like this since yesterday,” Krispy said apologetically.  “It’s probably the morphine.  Or the fenatyl.  Or whatever she’s on.”

“She looks like she’s high,” Xiumin muttered.

“She probably is.”

I hummed happily to myself.

“She definitely is,” corrected Krispy.

I would have corrected him – after all, I was in hospital and hadn’t been able to move for a while, so when would I have got the opportunity to do drugs, especially when I’d only woken up two hours ago? – but the itchy scratchy thing in my nose was getting irritating again, so I wriggled my hand free and raised it to pull the thing out.

“Hey, hey, hey.”  My wrist was caught midway and a Lady Gaga pokerface that wasn’t Lady Gaga pulled it straight and gently laid it back on the bed.  My elbow felt extremely uncomfortable.

“Just one nostril?” I wheedled.  “Please?”

Pokerface looked at me for a moment and then swallowed.  He looked extremely upset as he shook his head.  I turned back to Krispy.

“Hyung,” I whined, “why does this hyung look like he’s going to cry?”

There was silence for a long moment.

Then an androgenous flower with pink hair spoke up.  “Leigh… everybody here knows you’re a girl.  We kind of all found out a long time ago.”

“Oh.”  I bit my lip, trying to process that.  There was a tang of blood, and it looked like Pokerface wanted to pull my lip out from under my teeth.  “Okay.”

“She’s still replying to everything in English,” Pink Flower Hair said with a sigh.  Krispy patted him on the shoulder.

“We’ll get there, we’ll get there.”

Then it twigged.  I turned to Pokerface.  “Honey!  Like… the gloopy stuff.  Honey.”  I beamed at him.

He sighed, a smile twitching at his mouth.

“Damn,” said one of the others with brown hair.  “Just when I thought it was going to be a term of endearment….”

“Sehun,” corrected Honey.

I pouted.  “But Honey’s like Honey-senpai—”

“Oh my God,” muttered one of the shorter ones, whacking his head with his hand.  I hummed for a moment, losing my train of thought.  There was something about these boys, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“EXO!”

“Finally!”  Several of them fist-pumped.

“And you sing.”  It wasn’t a question.  I scanned them.  One of them had a really nice voice.  Well, lots of them had really nice voices.  “Where’s the Open Sesame Camel?  Can he sing me a song?”

Almost all of them flushed the colour of a beetroot, one of them covering his face with his hands in embarrassment.

“Where’s the camel hyung?” I asked, counting them up.  There were definitely twelve.  “Wait, he’s the camel oppa.  Where’s Open Sesame Camel Oppa?”

The one covering his face came forward, dropping his hands.  He sat on the side of my bed and reached for my hand.  Sehun glowered at him, but let him take it anyway.

“Is there any song in particular that you want?”

I tilted my head to one side and then shrugged.  It was a little difficult to see him because there was a dark spot in my vision, too.

And shrugging really, really hurt.  And everything went absolutely chaotic with that little movement.  Machines started beeping wildly and then I couldn’t breathe properly and my chest felt like it was being stabbed.  Open Sesame Camel and Sehun both grabbed my shoulders to keep me still as I tried to writhe away from the pain and Pink Flower Hair, who felt like he was called Luhan, leapt up from the bed and tore out of the room, yelling something in a language I knew I recognised.  Seconds later, a swarm of doctors appeared and all the boys retreated.  I whined at their loss, but I didn’t really have much time to dwell on that, because a bubbling feeling was tickling my throat, and then itching it, and then I broke into the most painful series of coughs I’d ever had in my life.  The tangy taste of blood suddenly invaded my mouth again, this time in force.  And honest to God, it felt like my chest would burst with the pain.

Luhan and Kris suddenly appeared at my head, Luhan looking extremely concerned and Kris talking to one of the nurses who was fixing new packets to the IV stand.

“Oh, sh*t,” said Luhan, placing his hand briefly on my mouth and then taking it away.  There was blood on it.  I coughed again.  He turned to the nurse, asking something about D.O., and the nurse said something about it not being totally surprising and seeing about antibiotics that didn’t have penicillin.

That probably meant they were for me.  I was allergic to penicillin.

Then there was another unpleasant feeling that rose from my stomach, and the metallic tang became acidic.

“Sick,” I managed.

The pain was so blinding I passed out.

“But it’s supposed to be the twenty-ninth,” I said, confused.  “How is it February already?”

“You were out for ten days,” Sehun told me.

I frowned.  It didn’t make sense, so I turned my mind to easier things.

“I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while.”  I motioned to his iPod, which he had lent me the previous day.  Or it might have been the day before that, or possibly even the day I’d woken up.  I didn’t remember – the painkillers had been far too strong.  Apparently I’d been reduced to morphine at lunch time, which meant whatever the other one had been was powerful.  “Is the person who came up the XOXO title for your album a massive fan of Gossip Girl?”

There was a stunned silence from all