Yixing and Songmi’s story has always been something of a hospital fairytale. The tale of the handsome oncologist and the beautiful ED nurse, brought together by the stars of destiny - or at least, that’s how Dr. Yun Boyoung tells it, though personally, Yixing highly doubts the exchange program between Hangang University Hospital and Nanjing University Hospital is written in the stars. He smiles vaguely as his third-year resident relates the tale to a pair of fascinated medical students. He’s not embarrassed by their story being shared any more, though he was at first. The years of retelling have immuned him, and he certainly has nothing to be ashamed of. He and Songmi are perfect together, and if everyone knows it, what’s the problem? Likewise, Boyoung isn’t at all fazed by him wandering into the oncology workspace with an armful of files and journals midway though her story, though the two med students gasp and sit up straighter. She just sends him a playful wink and keeps going, which has the dimple in Yixing's cheek deepening as he dumps his armful on the table and starts putting everything back where it belongs.

“I’ll do that, Dr. Zhang.” The second-year resident, who has already heard the story far too many times, offers to take over Yixing’s task, but Yixing just smiles, shakes his head and points her back to her computer. He knows Minhee is preparing an important paper, and Yixing doesn’t mind tidying up after himself, though he knows many doctors of his stature would take advantage of having junior staff around and make them do it.

He’s a little distracted as he shelves journals. Last month Songmi’s sister was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. It has been identified as the cause of her several miscarriages, and because they’re also trying for children, he and Songmi had decided to check she didn’t have the same condition. They’d visited the fertility clinic a few days ago and this afternoon is their follow-up to get the results. He’s not really worried, because although PCOS does sometimes run in families, it’s not always the case by any means and Songmi doesn’t have any signs or symptoms. All the same, he’ll be glad when they know the test results, so they can stop wondering.

He finishes tidying up at about the same time as Dr. Yun finishes her story, and feels the eyes of the med students on him as he leaves. Hopefully soon, he’ll be able to populate the hospital fairytale with its next chapter - their first child. He picks up a tired-looking Songmi from the ED and presses a gentle kiss to the top of her head, ignoring her protest that her hair is gross from working all day. They’ve brought the car today so it’s easier to go directly to the appointment from work. Yixing turns the radio on low, then glances across at his wife.

“Are you nervous?” he asks.

“Not really,” Songmi says. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have it, but it’s good to check. And even if I do, there are so many options for treatment these days. My sister’s going to do IVF.”

Yixing nods, though even the mention of fertility treatment has his heart sinking a little. He knows that fertility treatment is much harder for women, as they have to take the hormones. He doesn’t want Songmi to go through that. He wants everything to be okay, to be perfect, just like every other aspect of their lives together has been perfect. And it will be okay. They’re the fairytale couple. Everything works out for them.

Half an hour later, they’re staring with twin shell-shocked expressions at the specialist. The fairytale has just ended. Yixing feels Songmi’s hand creep into his, and he’s suddenly, forcefully reminded of all the times he’s delivered bad news to his own patients. He’s always been an empathetic person, too empathetic, even, but being on this side of the news is worse than he’d ever understood. He feels like a ton of bricks has just been dropped over his head. He shakes himself a little, trying to pull himself together. This isn’t the same at all. It’s not a cancer diagnosis, and neither of them are going to die, but somehow, to Yixing, it feels almost as bad.

“Could you explain exactly what this means?” Songmi asks the specialist when the silence goes on a little too long. Yixing hasn’t managed to speak. He should be the one asking, but his throat seems to have locked itself tight. He should be the one, because as it turns out, Songmi doesn’t have PCOS. It’s Yixing who is the problem. The count he agreed to take as part of the routine tests all couples who come to the fertility clinic take has come back at zero.

He listens as the specialist explains exactly what azoospermia is and what their options for proceeding are. He already knows the basics, of course, but it’s been a while since he thought about infertility, not since he was a student in fact. It’s not part of his specialty and not part of Songmi’s, either. He tries not to feel like the world has just ended, because objectively he knows it hasn’t. Neither of them are sick. They may still be able to have a child through IVF. But it’s hard to look at it objectively. Yixing had never even dreamed that he might be the problem. Now that he thinks about that, it was a stupid and biased thing to assume. Men are just as likely to be infertile as women. He just...never thought of it.

Songmi’s hand is still in his. She’s asking all the right questions, and collecting a small pile of brochures in her lap while Yixing just sits here like a statue. He turns his head to look at her, and feeling his gaze, she looks back at him and sends him a gentle smile, her hand squeezing his fingers. He doesn’t know what he looks like, but if the concern in her eyes is anything to go by, it’s probably not good.

She doesn’t let go of his hand as they leave the clinic, the brochures about IVF safely tucked away in her purse. Yixing doesn’t know what to say, and it’s not until they’re standing beside the car and he realises he has to unlock it before they can get in that he starts to come back to himself.

“Shall I drive?” Songmi asks, holding out her hand for the keys. Yixing shakes his head and forces a smile.

“No, it’s fine,” he says. He unlocks the car and they get in, and once they’re safely out of the public eye Songmi leans over and wraps her arms around him.

“I’m sorry,” Yixing says. It wasn’t actually what he intended to say, but somehow the apology comes out before anything else, and his voice sounds a little broken. “I - I never thought it would be my -”

“Zhang Yixing, if you dare to utter the words my fault, I am going to smack you until you come back to your senses,” Songmi tells him. Her voice is fierce and her arms tighten around him, and a laugh escapes him, but it comes out more like a sob.

“At least you’re fine,” he whispers, pulling her a little closer. “I’m glad for that.”

“Darling, this isn’t the end of the world,” Songmi tells him. She pulls back so that she can look at him. “They said we can try IVF. Lots of people have success with that.”

Yixing can’t reply. He starts the car and begins to drive out of the car park. It had been sunny earlier, but now, as if in commiseration with his feelings, the darkening sky above them opens and rain begins to pour down. He turns on the lights and wipers, then indicates and pulls onto the main road as Songmi continues to talk about the IVF process. He nods along, barely hearing her. He does know what IVF entails.

“IVF will be hard on you,” he says after a while. “The hormone treatments will be hard. The extraction and implantation will be hard.” He would be hanging his head if he didn’t have to concentrate on driving in the wet conditions. Guilt presses down on him at the thought of Songmi having to suffer for his failure.

“It doesn’t matter,” Songmi shakes her head. “It won’t be so bad. It’s just a few hormones, babe. You think I’d get through pregnancy without suffering? Hormones are going to be everywhere!” she grins, and Yixing tries, he really tries to smile back.

“It seems so unfair,” he says. “It’s my fau - I mean, my problem,” he amends hastily when she shoots a look at him, “but you’re the one who has to suffer.”

“All good things are worth fighting for,” Songmi says. “I’m one hundred percent willing to do this, Yixing, if you are.”

Yixing is silent. He wants a child, he wants one so badly, but this has shocked him so much and right now he can’t make this decision. He’s not as clear as Songmi seems to be about it. She’s already determined, but he needs to process what he’s been told and think about all the implications. This is why he always tells his oncology patients to take a few days to think about treatment before coming to a decision. He can’t balance his logic and his emotions right now, and he can’t get a grip on his swirling thoughts. They tell him that he’s a failure. He’s failed as a man, and he’s failed Songmi by being unable to give her children in a natural way. He knows this isn’t a healthy thing to think, but it’s there, and he needs to be calm and quiet and find a way to process it and organize his thoughts. He can’t do that while he’s upset.

He pulls to a stop at a red light, one car between them and the pedestrian crossing, which people start to hurry across with umbrellas held over their heads. Through the swishing of the windscreen wipers Yixing sees that the back windscreen of the car in front of him has a bright yellow diamond-shaped sticker in it. BABY ON BOARD, it says, and Yixing feels like someone has just sunk claws into his heart. Will there ever be a sign like that on the back of his car? His eyes flick automatically up to the rear-vision mirror.

The car behind them is coming up fast, way too fast to stop in time. It’s going to hit them. His mind jumps into hyperdrive. He thinks of taking his foot off the brake to lessen the impact and let the car roll forward with it, but the BABY ON BOARD sign flashes before him and no, he cannot allow his car to hit the car ahead of him. He stamps as hard as he can on the brake, jerks the wheel so that if the car does roll it will hopefully divert to the side and avoid the car with its precious burden ahead of him, and flings out his arm across Songmi’s chest in an instinctive attempt to hold her safe.

BANG! They both jerk forwards against their seatbelts. Songmi screams. A bolt of adrenaline shoots through Yixing as the car rocks against the brake. His arm is still across her chest and his heart pounds. But it’s okay. Their car hasn’t hit the one in front, and the impact wasn’t nearly as bad as he feared.

“Oh my God,” Songmi gasps. She twists around in her seat to look through the back at the car which has just rear-ended them.

“Are you okay?” Yixing asks. He sounds much calmer than he feels. He knows she didn’t jerk far forward enough to hit anything, because his arm was across her, but the split-second panic of seeing the car racing up in the rear-vision mirror is still with him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she turns back around and looks at him, eyes huge. “What about you? Did you hit anything? The seatbelt didn’t cut you?”

Yixing knows why she’s asking this. Because of his haemophilia, getting cut for him is much more serious than it is for most people. He doesn't have enough clotting factor proteins in his blood. If he bleeds, his blood cannot clot, and the bleeding will not stop.

“I don’t think so,” he says, “but you better check.” He unclips his seatbelt and turns to face her fully, letting her pull down his sweater collar and examine his collarbone and neck where the seatbelt presses for any cuts. She inspects his skin, then takes his hands and turns them over, making sure he hasn’t scraped them on anything. She shakes her head.

“You’re good,” she says.

“I better go and talk to the driver,” Yixing says. He gets out of the car and walks up to the car behind them. The icy rain pours down on his head and shoulders, flattening his hair as he hurries up to knock on the driver’s window. It rolls down and a terrified-looking young girl peers up at him. She looks barely old enough to be driving.

“I’m so sorry,” she babbles before Yixing can even get a word in. “I didn’t mean to, I don’t know what happened -”

“Are you hurt?” Yixing interrupts gently, though he can’t see any injuries on her. She pauses, then shakes her head. “Okay, don’t worry. It was just a small accident, nobody got hurt. We’ll get it sorted out. Here,” he passes his card through the window and she takes it. “Pull over to the side of the road so we’re out of the way of the traffic,” he tells her, and jogs back to his car to do the same.

“Just a kid,” he shakes his dripping head as Songmi looks at him enquiringly.

Once the cars are on the verge, he gets out again and finds himself having to explain how the insurance is going to work to the young driver, who has obviously never been in this situation before. He has a quick look at the bumpers where their cars hit, but the impact was so light it has only scratched his paintwork, and hers appears unharmed, so he reassures her that it’s likely to be a cheap repair. He thinks about cautioning her to pay more attention to the roads in future, but decides against it. She’s obviously already repentant, apologizing to him over and over, and he gets the feeling she’ll be more careful without him having to tell her.

By the time he gets back into his car again he’s soaked to the skin and shivering. Songmi shakes her head and unclips her seatbelt to half-climb into the back and haul out the old blanket they keep there, which Yixing uses to dry his face and rub the worst of the wetness from his hair.

“I should have brought an umbrella,” she sighs. “I didn’t know it was going to rain.”

“You didn’t know we’d get rear-ended and I’d have to go out in it, either,” Yixing points out. He waits until she’s belted in before driving into traffic again. It was only a tiny accident, but it’s suddenly brought home to him just how easy it would be to get in a worse one. People die in car accidents all the time, he knows that, but this is the first time he’s ever been in one himself.

Songmi turns up the heater, then puts the radio on as they drive towards home. She fiddles with the radio stations for several minutes before settling on one that’s playing old classic hits. Yixing knows why. It’s her comfort music. He creeps a hand across to her, and she takes it, warm and dry against his clammy skin. After a while she starts to sing along, which makes him smile. He joins her for a couple of songs he knows, but after ten minutes or so have gone by he has to stop singing and focus a little harder on driving. The rain is slowing to a drizzle, so it’s easier to drive, but he’s starting to feel a little unwell. He takes his hand back from Songmi to put both on the wheel. She looks at him.

“You okay?” she asks. Yixing nods a little distractedly and takes a deep breath. Then another. He’s not sure what it is, but he doesn’t feel quite right somehow. Is he getting sick? he wonders vaguely. Or maybe he’s chilled from getting soaked. He drives silently for another few minutes, hoping the weird feeling will go away, but it doesn’t. In fact, it starts to get worse. He blinks hard and shakes his head a little.

“Hon, you’re breathing a little too rapidly there,” Songmi says, sounding a little worried. Yixing realises that she’s right. His respiration rate has increased, going shallow and rapid. He tries to slow his breathing down to normal, but he’s starting to feel pretty bad and his body is reluctant to obey him. It wants to hyperventilate. He flicks the indicator on and pulls the car over to the side of the road, where he leans his forehead against the steering wheel and tries to breathe right. He’s nauseous and dizzy, and he’s becoming aware of a strange, dull pain across his abdomen, right under his seatbelt.

“Yixing? Talk to me,” Songmi demands, her voice sharp.

“Babe, can you take my pulse?” Yixing asks her. She immediately leans over and places her fingers expertly to the carotid artery in his neck and watches the timer on her phone. Fifteen seconds is enough, and she takes her fingers away.

“128.” She’s done the math in her head. He hears the alarm in her voice. It’s way too fast for someone simply sitting in a car seat, shock-fast, and they both know it. “What -”

“I think I’m having a bleed,” Yixing whispers. He turns his head to look at her. “It must be from the seatbelt. My haemophilia -”

She understands immediately. She goes pale, but her years of ED nursing experience take over, and she replies calmly. “Okay, we’re going to the hospital. Switch places with me - it’ll be faster if I drive you straight there, paramedics can’t give you clotting factor -” she’s already unclipping her seatbelt as she talks, then his. She gets out and runs around the front to open his door and help him get out of the car. He stumbles around to the passenger side, leaning heavily on her as his vision swims. He’s trying not to freak out, but he knows he’s in serious trouble. He flops into the seat and Songmi rushes back around to the driver’s side and hauls the car into a screaming u-turn.

Yixing is sweating cold now. With shaking hands he pulls his damp jersey and shirt up. As he’d feared, there is a band of dark purple bruising staining his lower abdomen, right where the seatbelt was. Songmi glances over and her lips tighten. It confirms the internal bleed.

“Don’t worry,” she tells him. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll get you some clotting factor and fluids and you’ll be fine, so stay with me, okay?”

It’s her professional voice, professional words, but he knows her, he can hear the fear in them. She knows exactly how bad this is, and Yixing knows too. He has an uncontrolled bleed into his abdomen and he is going into hypovolaemic shock. If he doesn’t get clotting factor, blood transfusions and surgery to fix whatever part of him is bleeding pretty soon, he’s going to die.

“Yixing, talk to me.” Songmi sounds tense.

“Stupid - of me,” Yixing pants through his over-rapid breathing. “I never thought - it was such a small impact - ”

“I didn’t think of it either,” Songmi says. “I only thought of external bleeding. It was no harder than bumping into someone.”

Yixing guesses that the impact must have concentrated over the small area of the seatbelt, and because his haemophilia makes him bleed so much more easily than most people, it had been enough to rupture something. He tries to say this to Songmi, but it comes out in a confused mumble. His pulse is hammering in his ears, way too fast. He closes his eyes, but Songmi tells him firmly to open them. When he doesn’t, she switches to accented Mandarin Chinese.

“Yixing, open your eyes,” she tells him. He finds a slight smile come to his lips despite how terrible he feels. He cracks his eyes open to find her glancing repeatedly between him and the road. It’s easier to think in Mandarin right now. Changsha dialect would be easiest, but Songmi doesn't know enough of it to be conversational.

“We’re nearly there,” she tells him. “Just stay with me for a little longer, okay?”

“Not going anywhere,” he whispers.

“That’s right, you’re staying with me,” she says. She keeps talking to him even when he can’t really answer beyond murmured monosyllables, intermixing Korean into her Mandarin when she can’t find the right words. Yixing feels a strange urge to giggle at how funny it sounds, but the laughter doesn't quite make it to his lips. He hears Songmi speaking in Korean again and realises that she’s on the phone now, probably to the ED staff.

They’re waiting for them outside when Songmi drives up. Yixing probably knows them, but he’s too blurry to focus on who they are. They get him out of the car and lift him onto a gurney, and then it’s all rushing ceiling and faces and bright lights and the oxygen mask over his face and the prick of multiple IV lines, and Songmi’s voice