The cat-scan doesn’t show any infection. An ultrasound doesn’t show any infection. The blood tests still show elevated CRP-levels and the doctors are just as confused as Chanyeol. He sits beside Minseok, holds his hand and caresses the cold skin to hopefully bring back some warmth. If only his love could cure his boyfriend.

There is no breakthrough, there is no improvement. Minseok is still stable with a core temperature of 28°C, silent on his bed while the ECMO provides him life. Chanyeol learns the names of the nurses in the ICU, he greets the doctors on a daily basis and sits beside Minseok every day.

His parents-in-law stop by for a couple of hours every day as well, their conversations straying into normal territory of work and plans for the future. Baekhyun and Sookyung check up on them every once in a while, to make sure that Minseok isn’t getting worse and that Chanyeol knows he can count on them in times of need. It’s very sweet of them.

Chanyeol has gone from devastated to frustrated to angry to confused. Now he’s just tired. He’s tired of being sad, tired of grief, sorrow and anger. The doctors are doing everything they can, and nothing seems to work. It’s frustrating. He’s still on sick leave from work so he can stay with Minseok every awake minute of his day.

“Excuse me Chanyeol,” Sehee, the head nurse, calls into the room and he turns around in his chair, not letting go of Minseok’s hand. “I need you to step out for a moment. The doctors want to take an x-ray of Minseok’s lungs to make sure the ECMO isn’t causing any damage.”

She’s smiling kindly and Chanyeol nods. He kisses Minseok’s cold hand, presses his fingers against his cheek for a few seconds before he leaves his boyfriend alone.

He goes to the cafeteria to get some lunch and a cup of coffee. He watches the patients and their relatives in the cafeteria while he’s there. Elderly women and men with IV-drips on tripods, pregnant women and their husbands and a teenager with their leg in a cast. There are people who look terminally ill, dressed in robes and barely standing, and patients who look like they’re about to be discharged.

It makes him feel oddly alone, even though he’s surrounded by people. Chanyeol isn’t the first person to lose someone he loves; he isn’t the first to not know whether or not the love of his life is going to survive. Still, he feels like no one around him can relate to the uncertainty that hurts him on a daily basis. He doesn’t sit in the cafeteria for long, but when he goes back, the door to Minseok’s room is closed.

Looking through the window in the door, he sees two men, one is dr. Cho, the other is dressed in a black suit. They’re talking animatedly in what look like secrecy. His hand hovers over the doorknob, when he’s interrupted by Sehee behind him.

“I’m sorry, Chanyeol. You shouldn’t interrupt right now. Can I help you with something?” she says, smile on her face as kind as always, but there’s something in her eyes, something mysterious he can’t quite read.

“Who’s the man in the suit?” he asks, voice betraying him a little. Sehee just continues her kind smile.

“You should talk to Dr. Cho when he’s finished,” she says and knows a lot more than she says. Chanyeol sends them a glance through the window but none of the men notice him.

In the end, he agrees to accompany Sehee to the small waiting area in the ICU where a father and his two children sit, tears streaming down their face as a resident gives them the unfortunate news that their mother has passed away due to a . This is not ideal. The entire area is full of grief and sorrow and it tugs on Chanyeol’s heart and reminds him that he could be on the same end of the same horrible news in no time. He closes his eyes and tries to force out the sound of crying and the whispers around him.

Baekhyun is a welcome distraction in the waiting area and when the man in the black suit walks past them without sparing them a look, Chanyeol jumps from his chair and speed-walks to Minseok’s room. Dr. Cho is no longer in there, but it doesn’t matter. He will get his answers later. He leans down and kisses Minseok’s cold lips, holds his hand and rests his head gently on his chest to hear the heartbeat that is barely there. Baekhyun comes back from his trip to the toilet and watches Chanyeol carefully from his spot in the doorway.

A few hours later, dr. Cho steps into the room again to check on Minseok and the ECMO. Chanyeol lets him do his job first, before he grabs the sleeve of his doctor’s coat. Dr. Cho turns around in his hold and looks at him with questioning eyes.

“Who was the man that was here earlier?” Chanyeol asks. His voice isn’t wavering or desperate. He wants answers and he’s not letting dr. Cho get out of this. The doctor sighs a little and Chanyeol lets go of his clothes.

“We’ve found an unknown virus in Minseok’s blood. None of us have ever encountered it before and Dr. Hwang suggested it might be related to the hypothermia, so we have contacted the CDC to take over and investigate the virus. Until we know more, we’re isolating him, and you should probably keep your distance even though I know it’s hard.”

Chanyeol chews on his cheek as he listens to dr. Cho. This makes even less sense. Where would Minseok have encountered a strange virus nobody has encountered before? How could it have entered his system in the first place? Then he registers the last part of dr. Cho’s sentence and whips around so fast he’s lucky he doesn’t get injured.

“What?”

His voice is now high-pitched and desperate. He only now registers that dr. Cho is wearing gloves, a medical mask and a cover-up. Dr. Cho nods.

“I understand it can be difficult, but we’d rather not take any chances.”

This is absurd. Chanyeol has been with Minseok the entire time he’s been admitted to the hospital and he doesn’t have any symptoms he has caught whatever it is they have found in Minseok’s blood. He’s about to protest, but he doesn’t get to when dr. Cho gestures to the door and sends him a stern look.

When the door closes to the room, however, Chanyeol lets his anger overflow. He’s scolding the doctors and the nurses and being completely irrational, but they let him rant and when the tears threaten to spill, Sehee hands him a handkerchief and pats his shoulder comforting.

“I’m sorry Chanyeol,” she says, voice empathetic and understanding and it only has Chanyeol crying harder. Behind the door lies Minseok on the bed alone.

---

The phlebotomist rummages through his drawers and finds the vial he needs. Chanyeol sits in the chair next to him, arm resting on the table. The phlebotomist has been trying to make small-talk but Chanyeol has been pretty curt with him. Ever since Minseok got isolated and the CDC got on the case of the unknown virus, Chanyeol has been in an awful mood.

It has only been about 24 hours, but 24 hours separated from his comatose boyfriend is 24 hours too much. Sehee has been understanding and tried to help him all she could, but it’s not enough when he’s still not allowed to sit beside Minseok and kiss his cold hands.

Now he’s here to get a blood test to make sure he hasn’t caught whatever virus it is, and the CDC is nowhere closer to getting him any more information. Chanyeol knows that it’s not really their job to inform a desperate relative to a sick patient of anything but he doesn’t care too much for technicalities. He just wants to know if Minseok will ever wake up and be okay and nobody so far has been able to give him any answers.

The tiny prick when the needle pierces his skin stings for a few seconds as his blood empties into the small glass vials. It’s not the first time Chanyeol has seen his own blood but it still makes him a little nauseous, so he turns away and looks towards the wall. There’s silent in the small room beside the wall clock ticking the seconds away, one second more not spent with Minseok.

Chanyeol can feel annoyance grow within him again. It’s irrational and he’s been plenty annoyed in the time Minseok has been in the hospital, but he just doesn’t know how to work through the emotions anymore. It has always been Minseok who sat him down to talk it out, who lent an ear when he was affected by his work or forced him to scream at the world when it was just too unfair. It has always been Minseok who his hair when he wanted to hide and whose strong chest Chanyeol found comfort crying into when things got too difficult.

It has always been Minseok who helped Chanyeol deal with negative emotions and now that there’s no Minseok and plenty of negative emotions, Chanyeol finds that he’s just unable to deal with everything.

It’s not the phlebotomist’ fault, so Chanyeol bites his remark back when the needle slides out of his skin and a white cotton patch is put on top to stop the minimal bleeding.

“Done,” he says with a smile and Chanyeol looks away from the wall to face the other man in the room. A faint smile grazes his lips as he thanks him for doing his job well and leaves the lab. It’s not until he’s a few meters from the entrance to the lab, that an idea strikes him like lightning from the clear sky. The lab. Minseok’s work. Something might have happened at the lab. He fumbles with his phone and curses as he almost drops it. A woman walks past him with a disapproving gaze but Chanyeol doesn’t care.

“I think I know what happened!” he says the minute Baekhyun picks up. “No no, we have to meet up. Now. Bring Sookyung.” There’s a pause and Chanyeol ribs the cotton pad off of his arm. “I’ll come to you then. Stay there. I’ll be there in a few!”

When he hangs up, Chanyeol is already speed-walking down the corridors, half-running towards the entrance.

It takes 30 minutes to get to the café in which Baekhyun and Sookyung is on a date. Chanyeol doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt for interrupting their self-proclaimed very important alone time. Sookyung looks at him, half-worried, half-annoyed.

“What’s up?” she asks, hand pointedly holding onto Baekhyun’s and not letting go when Chanyeol sits down in the chair next to her.

“I know what happened to Minseok!” he says, out of breath and a little sweaty. Both Baekhyun and Sookyung widen their eyes at that.

“Spill! Is he going to be alright? Did he wake up?” Baekhyun says in a hurried whisper. Sookyung looks just as shocked at the news. Chanyeol shakes his head wildly, still slightly panting and trying to catch his breath.

“The lab,” he says, and both of his friend look at him, now slightly confused.

“The lab?” Sookyung asks, disbelief clouding her voice. Chanyeol nods.

“I got a blood test and … the lab! The unknown virus must’ve come from whatever they were doing at the lab. I gotta ...” he takes a deep breath and continues. “I have to find Minseok’s coworkers.”

“Hang on.”

Baekhyun looks from Chanyeol to Sookyung and back to Chanyeol again.

“Unknown virus?” he asks and Chanyeol realizes it’s only been 24 hours and he hasn’t spoken to either of his two friends in that time frame. He guiltily rubs his neck, looks towards the table for a second before he decides to tell his friends his theory anyway. That is why he’s here, interrupting their date, after all.

“Yesterday,” he starts. Then he looks at Baekhyun and points an accusing finger towards him. “Remember the guy in the black suit that went past us in the waiting area?”

Baekhyun raises an eyebrow in thought and then shakes his head.

“There are a million people in suits in the hospital,” he says. It’s a lie. There are not a lot of people in suits in hospitals and Chanyeol knows this, but he lets Baekhyun off the hook. Baekhyun probably just didn’t notice him as anything out of the ordinary.

“Get on with it Chanyeol.” Sookyung sounds rather annoyed now. Chanyeol frowns at her.

“Yesterday I saw a man in a black suit talking to dr. Cho. I asked later what it was about, and he told me, they’d found an unknown virus in Minseok’s blood and called the CDC. They have isolated him and asked me to keep my distance until they know what it is. This morning I got a blood test to make sure I hadn’t caught whatever virus it is, and I realized, maybe this is a result of Minseok’s work in Lab 32. Maybe they found something, and it spread to him and made him ill. I have to get into Lab 32. I have to speak to his coworkers!”

His voice grows more enthusiastic as he speaks. Sookyung tilts her head a little.

“Do you even know his coworkers?” she asks, skeptical with the whole thing. Chanyeol deflates a little. He does know a few of Minseok’s coworkers by name because Minseok has spoken about them before, but he doesn’t actually know them. He might have met a few at the annual gala a couple of years ago, but that’s not useful now.

“How are you going to sneak into Lab 32? It’s still South Korea’s leading research facility, they’re going to have a lot of security.”

There’s silent around the table while Chanyeol thinks this through. Surely, he could use Minseok’s ID but when he voices this idea, Baekhyun bursts out in laughter, disturbing a few of the other patrons in the café. There is simply no way he can fool anyone into believing he’s Minseok.

The idea of being honest with the security guards is shot down by Sookyungs headshake. Nobody’s going to believe him and even when they confirm that Minseok is in the ICU, they’re going to go to the government, not some stranger that claims to be Minseok’s partner. Chanyeol grumbles for a few minutes and Baekhyun hands over the last half of his cake so he can consume that while he’s deep in thought. He doesn’t notice that his friends start their date all over even though he’s sitting there beside them.

When he finally realizes that the answer to all his security woes is sitting right beside him, he’s so loud that multiple people in the café call differing versions of “shut up” towards them.

“You!” he shouts and points to Sookyung who winces at the sheer volume.

“What about me?” she asks, voice sour and glare deadly.

“You’re a brigadier officer! You can get me into Lab 32, can’t you?”

She stares at him for a few seconds before she bursts into laughter. Baekhyun is looking confused at his wife. She can’t contain her laughter anymore and has to let go of his hand to dry the tears rolling down her cheeks. Chanyeol doesn’t get what’s so funny.

“You want me to,” she says and then has to pause to continue laughing. “You want me to get you into Lab 32 on military grounds?” she asks when she’s finally done laughing. Chanyeol nods enthusiastically.

“Oh, poor Chanyeol, I love you but you’re stupid. I can’t get you into Lab 32 like that.”

Baekhyun reaches over to take her hand again, intertwining their fingers, and Chanyeol feels his heart plummet to his feet.

“Why not?” he asks, defeated and sad. Sookyung pats his shoulder with her other hand and sends him a small smile. There is still laughter shimmering in her eyes.

“Because the military doesn’t have that kind of authority when there hasn’t been issued any safety warning. Did you even tell dr. Cho that Minseok works at Lab 32?”

It’s like a lightbulb is lit over his head. He feels embarrassed when he shakes his head and Sookyung shoos him off the chair, telling him to go straight to the hospital to tell dr. Cho and stop interrupting their date.

Chanyeol leaves them feeling conflicted. He understands that it would be stupid to withhold important information, such as Minseok working at Lab 32, from the doctors and the CDC, but at the same time, he has felt so useless and hopeless that he wants to get to the bottom of this on his own. The doctors clearly don’t know what they’re dealing with and even though they have experts trying to figure it out, it doesn’t feel right to just sit back and do nothing. It annoys him.

Instead of going back to the ICU, Chanyeol heads to the paramedic headquarters and sits down in the large couch. Luhan turns around in the kitchen and raises an eyebrow at him.

“I thought you were on sick leave?” he asks. Chanyeol nods but Luhan doesn’t see because he has turned back to his food.

“I am.”

He needs somewhere to think and going back to the apartment just isn’t right. Minseok’s parents have suggested he moves in with them, just a for a short while, if it’s too much to stay in the apartment. His own parents have reluctantly extended their help as well if he needs it. It’s not it, though. Chanyeol doesn’t need to live somewhere else, no, he still needs Minseok’s presence in his life and he’s not going to pretend that Minseok has already died. He doesn’t need the sorrow and uncertainty that is so heavy around his parents-in-law.

“So, what are you doing here? Joonmyun isn’t in today,” Luhan says. He’s still rummaging with his food at the counter. Chanyeol sighs.

“I needed somewhere to think that wasn’t our apartment. Do you think it’s relevant where Minseok works?”

There’s silence in the break room for a few minutes while Luhan finishes up. When he turns and sits at the table, he looks at Chanyeol quizzically.

“You know it can be important. I thought you had told them already?”

Chanyeol shakes his head. It hasn’t occurred to him before now, but now that it might be important, he doesn’t really want to tell them. Luhan looks at him with a raised eyebrow, silence spreading around them until the alarm sounds from Luhan’s pocket and he groans. A woman peeks in from the rest area, hair sticking in every direction. She rubs her eyes before she glares at Luhan and the man rolls his eyes at her.

“Hey Mei Tao,” Chanyeol says, and she just sends him a flat look.

“I haven’t slept all night,” she says and trudges to the coat stand to grab her jacket. “Kids. Don’t get them.”

With those words, she leaves Chanyeol alone in the break room and Luhan running after her to get to the ambulance and to the call. Alone in the break room, Chanyeol finds the peace and quiet he needs to think. No matter how little he wants to give the doctors information about Minseok’s life, it’s the right thing to do. It could help the CDC with identifying the virus and potentially other victims.

It’s the last thought, the thought that there might be someone else out there, exposed to the same virus that cements Chanyeol’s decision. For all the fear he’s living with, if someone else has been exposed, someone else might be struggling with the same fear and it’s a thought he can’t bear. He can’t be responsible for someone else’s loss, even if it’s just by withholding information.

Instead of going home, when he leaves the break room, he heads for the ICU. Sehee is there, smiling at him from her desk in the front, tilting her head to the side.

“There have been no changes,” she says when he’s close by and he stops in front of her desk and sends her a smile.

“Would it be possible for me to go inside if I get dressed up?”

It’s not what he has planned to say but being here again, this close to Minseok, makes it slip. He can’t be here, stand on the other side of the door and just look at Minseok from afar. Sehee shakes her head with a chuckle before she nods and gets off of her chair.

“Yeah, but you have to promise not to kiss him.”

Chanyeol isn’t making any promises and he tells Sehee this. She pretends that she doesn’t hear him as she finds cover, gloves and mask to him. The cover is a little too small for his tall frame but Sehee doesn’t have anything bigger and Chanyeol doesn’t care too much. This is all just protocol anyway. He hasn’t caught the virus from sleeping next to Minseok the first days he was admitted to the hospital so surely, he isn’t going to catch it now either.

Minseok is still and cold like he has been for the past week and a half and the ECMO-machine is humming its repetitive rhythm in the corner. Sehee has been combing his hair daily to avoid knots, Chanyeol can see it. How soft his hair looks despite his illness. Looking at Minseok has Chanyeol’s stomach forming knots and his heart hurting. He looks so good, so beautiful. He looks exactly like he’s sleeping if it wasn’t for the paler color on his skin.

When Chanyeol ducks down to press his lips to Minseok’s forehead, he’s interrupted by a cough from the door. He looks behind him and watches Sehee shake her head, eyes serious. He rolls his eyes but straightens back up, kissing his own gloved finger and pressing it to Minseok’s lips instead. Soon enough, he will get to kiss his boyfriend again.

“Where’s doctor Cho?” he asks when he’s outside Minseok’s room, no longer dressed in all the gear. Sehee shrugs a little but offers to call him. Chanyeol shakes the offer away; it’s not necessary.

“Tell him that Minseok is a chemist at Lab 32,” he says instead. “I thought it might be useful information.”

With those words, he bids Sehee a good afternoon and leaves her in the ICU with patients and colleagues.