“Minho?”

His eyes snapped open at her quiet whisper.   She was lying down still, but her head was propped up by a pillow as she looked around the dark room. 

“Yeah, I’m here,” he mumbled, wiping sleep from his eyes and scooting his chair closer to the bed.

“What time is it?”

He glanced down at his watch, squinting because of the dim lights.  “Um, about 7:30PM,” he replied, running his fingers through his hair as a makeshift comb. 

He heard her sigh and shift restlessly, and he continued, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

A short silence followed and Minho chuckled.  “You really think I’m going to go for that?  Tell me, what’s wrong?”

She sighed again and he could see her head nod slowly.  “Okay,” she murmured.  “Minho, I just want this to be over.   This…battle…has taken so much from me.  And from you.  And from my parents.  It’s just too much.  I’m tired, Minho.  I’m tired.  I just want to sleep.”

“Don’t say that!” he exclaimed, reaching over to try and grab her hand. 

She jerked away, rolling over to face the far wall.  “I mean it, Minho.  I just want this to be over!”

“You don’t mean that,” he muttered, his voice cracking. 

Suddenly she flung around to lock eyes with her boyfriend, and his spine stiffened.  “Don’t tell me what I think, Minho,” she spat icily, “I know how I feel, and I know what I want.  This isn’t about you, this is about me.”  She broke off, and an intense silence echoed before it was broken again by her harsh words.  “Go home, Minho.  I don’t want you here anymore.  I want to call my parents.”

His heart squeezed in pain, and he could hardly find the strength to form a response in his head, let alone open his mouth and speak.   He saw her swoon and fall back towards the pillow, and he instinctively reached out and caught her, gently laying her back down. 

Her eyes stared up at him though, not with gratitude, but with pain, and he felt his heart sink even more.

“Go away Minho.”

The air seemed to catch in his throat, and he couldn’t make a coherent sound as he stumbled out of the ICU unit in a daze.   Those words echoed in his mind.

“Go away Minho.”

“Go away Minho.”

It wasn’t until he reached his car that he let out a strangled sob and collapsed into the driver’s seat.  

He drove home like a robot on autopilot, unlocking his apartment door mechanically.  He tossed his keys onto the table by the door and thumped to the couch, barely making it to the edge before he slumped down onto the cushions. 

His mind was blank, his feelings were dead.  He couldn’t believe what had just happened. 

“No, stop it Minho,” he told himself, “She was just tired and overreacting.  You’ll just give it a few days and then she’ll be back to normal.”

But as he drifted off to an uneasy sleep on the couch, he couldn’t help but think.  What if she did mean it?

Ring! Ring!

He opened his eyes lazily, his hand blindly grasping the couch around him to try and discover the source of the obnoxious ringing that filled his apartment.  They finally found his cellphone, and he cleared his throat and blinked to read the number filling the screen. 

His heart thumped erratically in his chest as he recognized it. 

It was her brother.  Her brother.

He pressed accept and put the metal object to his ear.

“Hello?”