<< Rewind: 2 <<

If anything, Lay was in even greater shock than Sehun.  Sehun might have been the one with the clearest view of Leigh being stabbed, but Lay was the one she’d dived in front of to protect, and he knew that.  He knew how close he’d come to being killed.  It was somehow worse that somebody he’d known for a matter of weeks had had the presence of mind to sacrifice herself for him, whether or not it had been intentional.

Xiumin had done the right thing getting Sehun occupied with something else before the boy was too far gone to function.  Sehun still had the capacity to realise that Lay was in a much worse condition than he was and he channelled all his remaining energy into that, cajoling him into handing the last of the girls out of the window to Chanyeol and then helping the Chinese boy down the fire escape by carrying him on his back.  He even gave up the one friends-and-family space on the ambulance to him, saying that Lay needed it.

The ambulance arriving so quickly had been a of providence.  It wasn’t that much in advance of what it would have been anyway, but there had at least been the consoling fact that one was already on its way to where they were when Kris dialled the emergency services, because one of the eight battered girls from the kitchen had revived abruptly in Chen’s arms and had a frighteningly violent panic attack.  She was one of the girls from Taiwan, and from the virtually incoherent babble of Chinese that had left her lips, Chen had gathered enough information to conclude that something extremely unpleasant had gone down with one of the mafia men and that she was petrified of any of the male species touching her, even if he happened to be her bias in EXO.  Rather than trying to get her down to one of the taxis, Chen had sat her in the corner of the tiny metal landing they were on and then distanced himself to ring the hospital at once.

It was a subdued reunion in D.O.’s room at the hospital.  Speaking somehow felt inappropriate, especially with D.O.’s death-rattle-like coughs breaking the silence, and not even Suho could find it in him to scold Baekhyun or Lay over what had happened, Lay in particular.  The poor guy was in such a state that he couldn’t even cry.

In fact, all Suho got round to saying was: “We need to work out what to tell the manager.”

Not long after that, they had been herded out of the room by an angry nurse telling them it was way past visiting hours and that there shouldn’t even be more than four visitors in there at any one time before she dosed D.O. up on soporific antitussives and told him to go to sleep.

After that, they congregated in A&E, feeling awkward but nobody wanting to be the first person to speak up.  It had only been about fifteen minutes since they’d all arrived, and nobody was entirely sure where Leigh had been taken after she’d been unloaded from the ambulance.

Eventually, Kai couldn’t take it any longer.

“Luhan rang—” he began, but he was abruptly cut off by the approach of a doctor.

“You were the ones who came in with all the girls, correct?” she asked.  “Can I ask what your relationship to them is?”

Everybody automatically looked to Kris.

“We… er… well, most of them were abducted and we rescued them,” he said, glancing nervously around at the others.  “They were all unconscious when we found them… chloroform….”

“Most of them are going to be okay,” she told him.  “There are two of them we need to keep in for a few days, but most of them we ought to be able to discharge tomorrow afternoon.  Unfortunately, there’s one who’s going to need surgery—”

Even though she’d spoken in Chinese, everybody’s head swivelled towards her.

“We’re just waiting for a space in the operating theatre to open up.  We’re not going to know the extent of her injuries until she’s actually in there.  Is there any way of contacting her next of kin?  We don’t seem to have a name or medical records for her and her condition is absolutely critical.”

A little lost, Kris turned to the others.  Nobody was able to respond.  The doctor picked up on their expressions and nodded, taking a couple of steps back.

“I’ll give you a few moments.  When the operating theatre is free, I’ll be back with the surgery forms to fill out.”

“Um, excuse me,” Tao called out as the doctor began to walk away.  “Is it possible to sit with her until she goes into the theatre?”

“Family only, I’m afraid.”  She cast him an apologetic glance before vanishing around the corner.

“Well, that sounded hopeful,” Chen said bracingly.  “No mention of the D word at least.”

Tao scowled at him.  “She’s hardly going to go spewing total doom and gloom to people outside immediate family circles.  It would be unprofessional.  And critical does mean she could die, doofus.  It’s just a nice way of saying it.”

“We practically are her family at the moment, though,” Chen muttered.

“Speaking of her family, we need to call her parents.”  Kris sighed.  He looked to Suho for help, but Suho seemed just as hopeless as he did.  “How do you tell people you’ve never met that their daughter might be dying in a foreign country?”

Kai stuck a hand up.  “I’ll do it.  My English is good enough.”

“How, though?” demanded Tao.  “Does anybody actually know how to get in contact with these people?”

“We need Leigh’s phone for that,” Xiumin said, speaking up for the first time.  “And somebody who knows the code.  Sehun?”

Everybody turned expectantly towards the maknae, who had been staring at his feet.

“Sehun?” prompted Suho gently, touching him on the arm.  Sehun took a deep breath and looked up.  His eyes were glassy and glazed.  For a moment or so, it looked like he was going to speak, but then his Adam’s apple bobbed and he just looked down again.

The awkward silence returned.  Almost everybody was watching Sehun; several of the members looked like they wanted to say something but couldn’t quite find the words.

Lay was the one who broke it this time.

“This is all my fault—” he began in a stilted whisper, fingers gripping so tightly to the hem of his t-shirt that his knuckles turned white.  “It’s my fault – I—”

Baekhyun rounded on him.  “Don’t you dare, Lay, don’t you dare!”