warning: LONG CHAPTER

Jisoo stays in the hospital  for two more days to treat her minor concussion.

In those two days, the itch to practice, to work, is present. But the break from her routine is, while jarring, a pleasant kind of relief. Somehow she manages to sleep during the day in between check-ups and scans, but at night, she’s as awake as a nocturnal owl on the lookout for prey.

Joshua attributes this to her horrible job cycle. Joshua, as well as the rest of Lovelyz after they found out about it, bans Jisoo from working for at least a week.

“And I don’t want to see you practicing till you’re dizzy before your night shift. Heck, for at least this week,” Jiyeon says with worry in her eyes and hands on her hips, “you gotta rest. We need our emo sunshine back.”

Jisoo sits with her back against a fort of pillows and her knees against her chest. “Tsk.” She can’t protests though, Jiyeon, Mijoo and Myungeun had a radio schedule just before this and here they are, taking time off to visit their “not-really but YES really” member.

“Does your head still hurt?” Mijoo asks as she sets down energy drinks on the side table. The ward is a little cramped, but it’s a shared ward that she’ll be discharged from soon.

“My neck bone is stiff and hurting, and I think I can’t stand sounds of babies crying. Other than that, I’m fine,” Jisoo smiles.

“Babies crying?”

“I had to pass by the newborn centre level on the way for my x-ray diagnosis. It’s so damn piercing and it was sending shockwaves of agony to my brain. I swear I almost bled from the ears and broke down there and then.”

Myungeun frowns in sympathy and reaches from behind to get something clumsily large and familiar. “That . But you can still stand the sound of a guitar, right?”

“You brought my guitar!! Ah, thanks, I was going to die of boredom here, you don’t even know.”

Jisoo had hugged the guitar tightly, sharing a moment with it before returning to talk to her members. She sits alone in the bed now, the clock displaying  “23:48” as she strums on the guitar, a notebook splayed out in front of her knees.

Boredom has somewhat forced her to do something productive, and here she finds herself doing the things she used to do before a nightjob ate up all of her time – songwriting.  Jisoo experiments with different chords to suit her slightly more uplifting lyrics that she had just written this afternoon.

Somehow, although she’s shouldering quite a bulk of physical pain, it doesn’t feel that very bleak. Her lyrics speak of someone always getting the short end to the stick, but finding beauty in contentment, in the people that seem to make life seem brighter, and lighter. At this, she can’t help but think of a specific cat-eyed boy that always manages to squeeze in time for her.

The silouhette of a male nurse sort of knocks on her curtain to signal his entrance, and Jisoo waves dismissively to tell him to come in.

He rolls in a pushcart with something black sticking out of it suspiciously from the bottom compartment. He hasn’t looked up yet, and somehow that uniform doesn’t sit well on the nurse’s figure.

Jisoo stares for a while, until curiosity eats at her. “Aren’t you going to change my IV drip packet?” she asks, not unkindly.

Mystery guy looks up suddenly, complete with hairflip and all. “SURPRISE MOTHERER!”

Jisoo reels back in shock as her mind registers the face of the “male nurse”.

Joshua’s eyes flits back and forth at her guitar in hand.  “You know, I wanted to serenade this sick, pitiful person with relaxing guitar tunes but I guessed you beat me to it.” He reaches for the black object and it turns out to be his own acoustic guitar.

“Is…. Is this what you mean by ‘highly unorthodox modus operandi’?”

“Sort of.” Joshua shrugs. “There’s part two though.”

Jisoo’s eyes widen and her voice rises in increasing pitch. “Part Two? What’s gonna happen?”

Joshua drags a chair nearer to the bed. “Uh, I’ll need to change my clothes?”

“The toilet’s quite far away though.”

“As in, i’ll need to do it here. “

Jisoo narrows her eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

“Ah, but I am. Visiting hours are going to be over in 5 minutes, and then this old nurse, who’s more of a disinterested patrol officer, will come to each bed to check if friends and colleagues are gone.”

“You’re a friend,” Jisoo says as she swats him away in his general direction. “You need to be gone.”

Joshua feigns a hurt expression. “We’re just friends? How could you-“

“Okay, okay, maybe not that low of a level. But uh…”

Joshua finishes her sentence for her to save Jisoo from the hesitation and awkwardness that it brings. “Totally platonic, right?”

“Right!” Jisoo quickly says, a little too loud, a little too excited and a lot more unconvincing.

“So if we’re platonic, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take off this borrowed uniform here, alright?” Joshua says, his hand already going down to the second button.

Jisoo panics and grabs the hem of his shirt. “hoE DON’T DO IT-”

Joshua takes it all off. He doesn’t have an undershirt. 

“-OH MY GOD.”

She tries her best not to look. Jisoo swears she does, but that one glimpse of pelvic muscle is bound to drive her insane. She buries her head into a pillow to cover the ugly shade of chilli red on her face.

“10 seconds! Just give me 10 more seconds, I need to change the horrid pants-”

“You’re changing the pants too?” She shrieks into the pillow, her cries becoming muffled. “I swear to god-”

“Don’t use God’s name in vain, sinner,” Joshua chuckles.

Jisoo produces a sound that ranges between a wail of agony and a Himalayan war-cry.

“I’m done, by the way.”

“Why… do you look like a 40 year-old dad.” Jisoo deadpans when she sees the cheap polo and slacks that Joshua’s wearing.

“I wore this the last time I visited, by the way. This concept is called,” Joshua says with a proud flourish, “My wife has terminal cancer and as a doting husband I’m staying with her overnight for emotional support’.”

“What.”

“I need to convince the patrol woman that I’m your husband, basically. Only then can