Silence.

When Chanyeol woke up everything was bright and white, a startling difference from the black behind his eyelids and he squinted into the light.

He’d only been asleep for a second it seemed. Yet Sehun was at his side, and his parents surrounded him on the other side of the bed, and they’d told him it had been three days. His mother cried when his eyelids first flickered open and she tightly held his sore body. His father gently his hair.

His head ached and they immediately summoned the doctor with the push of a button. When the white door slid open a bald man with circular lenses and a white lab coat entered carrying a clipboard. He explained that while his injuries were minor, he’d gotten stiches in both a gash on his back and head and he’d probably experience the symptoms of a concussion for a while. They would be monitoring him closely because the danger hadn’t come from the open wounds, but rather the shock that had caused him to sleep for so long.

He sat up quickly from the bed and when he swayed the doctor steadied him with his hands. “Chanyeol, I need you to calm down. You can’t get up so quickly, we still need to check-“

“Where’s Baekhyun!?” he demanded, tightly gripping the doctor’s collar. The man stuttered and Sehun’s hands were quickly on his pulling them off.

Chanyeol’s mother lay a soft hand on his shoulder and he looked desperately to her, tears in her eyes. “Sweetie, this isn’t his doctor. He’s in another part of the hospital, so this man wouldn’t-“

“Where is he!?”

She sighed, “He’s in the ICU, room 204B. But Chan-…What are you doing?“

He swung his legs swiftly from the bed and fought to stand on shaky legs. Sehun grabbed him and the doctor tried as well but he shook them off.

“You can’t be up yet!” his doctor urged. His mother and father rounded the bed toward him but he darted from the room and after only momentarily crashing into a cart outside the door he took off running down the hall.

“I’ll get him!” he heard Sehun yell behind him but for whatever reason he never caught up. Chanyeol liked to believe that his friend was giving him a chance to see for himself, see the damage he had done.

His back and head throbbed and he felt a thin sliver of warm liquid trickle down his forehead and drip over his eye. He felt something tear loose in his back and he was sure he was ruining the doctor’s work. He make quick guesses at which hall to follow and eventually he made it to the ICU. People and nurses he passed looked at him curiously and some hesitated wondering whether or not to interfere. He never stopped running until he stood in front of the room.

He almost passed it but 204B shot out brightly in his vision from the plaque on the wall and he screeched to a halt outside the sliding door. He stared at the handle, refusing to look through the clear window and rested a shaky hand on the door.

Whatever he found in that room…Whatever had happened to Baekhyun…Everything was all his fault.

He heard the running steps behind him halt as well and on cue he gulped thickly and slid open the door.

He almost collapsed immediately at the sight before him and grasped desperately to the door, sinking into the frame.

It was Baekhyun, but it didn’t even look like him anymore. His body was made immensely tiny by the sheer amount of tubes that weaved their way in and out of his frame and the large machines that supplied him oxygen.

Chanyeol’s hand came up to cover his mouth and grasp at his own shirt. As he stumbled forward he barely had any recognition of the face in front of him. It was battered and bruised and the right side swelled lightly, colored yellow and purple. He let out a sob as a strong hand grasped his shoulder and led him to the only chair in the room.

By then the doctor and his parents had caught up with the two and a second doctor had entered following the raucous. After whispering quickly to each other the new female doctor kneeled at his side and placed what he was sure was supposed to be a comforting hand on his thigh.

As she went into detail his mind swirled and he was lifted out of his body. He was there but it was like he was an outside observer. It was like he was starting in the middle of a dream, and that dream was slowly turning into a nightmare.

Trauma surgery showed no signs of major damage to his internal organs and besides the bleeding there was so significant loss.

It