I can't free myself from
this pain

Her scuffed shoes skidded on the polished tile floors. The soles of her sneakers were practically falling apart from years of use but she ran like hell anyways, not stopping to give a damn about her stupid shoes.

Everything in that building gave her the creeps. The whole place smelled like alcohol wipes and antibacterial soap. Not to mention that it even looked like place no one would want to be. White floors. White ceilings. White walls. There wasn't an inch of that place that didn't make shivers crawl down her spine. The whole thing felt like a horror movie.

But all the panic and mortal fear that coursed through her had to be pushed aside. She needed a rational mind, just for a second, just long enough to find someone who could give her directions. She sprinted down hallways and around corners. Something flashed by in the corner of her eye, making her skid back around. The nurses station. Chaerin nearly broke her neck from how hard she crashed into the wooden counter, but she didn't care about that right now.

"Miss! Please do not run in the hospital! If there's something you need just—"

"Min Yoongi. He was brought here in an ambulance. What room is he in?" The words came out in gasps, she couldn't breathe, she'd run all the way to the hospital.

"Alright, are you family?"

"Yes!" It wasn't a complete lie. Yoongi was the closest thing to family she had left.

The stern looking nurse behind the counter raised an eyebrow at Chaerin but glanced down at her charts anyways.

"He's in room 4211." As soon as the words left her mouth, Chaerin was off.

She sprinted to the elevators and pushed the 'up' button until the doors slid open, even though she knew that pressing it incessantly wouldn't make the elevator arrive any faster. Chaerin bounced impatiently on the balls of her until the doors opened on the fourth floor, and then she was running once again. She ran blindly down the halls until the numbers seemed to be getting closer and closer to 4211. By the time she found the right door Chaerin was exhausted. She was panting like a marathoner and her sneakers were for sure ruined now, seeing as the soles had come unglued from the rest of the shoe in some places.

Her hand reached out for the door handle and froze. As much as she needed to go in there and see Yoongi, to make sure he was alright, she couldn't. She was scared. Chaerin was terrified of seeing the state that he might be in. Fear gripped her like a vice. It wouldn't let her breathe. It wouldn't let her move. All she could do was stand there and pray to every god that Yoongi was okay. But the fact that she was hovering in front of a hospital room door kind of gave away the fact that he wasn't okay.

She didn't know what it was. Maybe it was the desperate need to see him, or the pain of not knowing how he was, but by some miracle, Chaerin moved. She opened the door.

Even though it was still early in the afternoon, the room was dim. Someone had drawn the curtains closed. Two beds sat on opposite ends of the small room, only one was occupied.

Yoongi lay still, his eyes closed. He was pale, his breathing was shallow, and there were heavy layers of bandages wrapped around his shoulder and upper torso. But he didn't look nearly as bad as Chaerin had expected. It was a relief, really. When a robot-voiced nurse called her cellphone in the middle of her shift and told her that "Min Yoongi has been admitted to Asan Medical Center, you are listed as his emergency contact," Chaerin had pictured the worst. But there were no tubes in his mouth or arms, no crazy wires connected him to any machines, and aside from the sling his arm was in, he looked alright.

Chaerin breathed a sigh of relief. Yoongi was okay. That was good. Because she was going to kill him for scaring her like this.

Her knees buckled and she collapsed in the hard plastic chair beside his bed. She feared hurting his injured shoulder so she grabbed the hand on his good side and gently intertwined their fingers. Chaerin was stuck between wanting to wake Yoongi up and knowing she should let him sleep. Several minutes of internal debate later, it turned out she wouldn't have to decide anything.

Yoongi's fingers twitched and squeezed the warm hand that rested in his own. His heavy eyelids lifted just enough to spot a teary eyed Chaerin sitting at his bedside.

"Hey," he croaked, catching her attention.

"Yoongi!" She exclaimed. "You're awake! How are you? Do you feel alright? What happened? Are you okay? Oh, that's a stupid question, we're in a hospital so obviously you're not okay—"

"Chae," he called quietly, effectively cutting of her ranting speech. "Shut up," he mumbled.

She sighed in relief. If Yoongi was lucid enough to tell her to shut up then he would be just fine.

"So what happened?"

His head shook slowly side to side. "I was on my bike doing my deliveries and this car came out of nowhere—" he stopped, seeing the tears gathering in Chaerin's eyes. "Basically the doctor says my shoulder is broken in a few places. I'm not supposed to do any excessive activity for a while." He decided to give Chaerin the Readers Digest version and spare her the grizzly details.

She heaved a sigh. "Don't scare me like that you jerk. When I heard you were in the hospital I swear my heart stopped."

A dopey smile graced his lips. "Aww you care about me." It was confirmed, he was totally doped up on pain meds.

Chaerin sighed. "Of course I care about you, idiot. You can't land yourself in the hospital and not expect me freak out. I nearly broke my legs trying to get here."

"Did you trip on the bus steps or something," he snorted.

"No jerk, I didn't take the bus. I ran here—"

"You ran all the way to the hospital?" His sleepy eyes widened like he'd seen a ghost.

"Yeah," Chaerin mumbled sheepishly.

"But...but your restaurant is all the way across town...that's miles away," he blinked as if he was trying to calculate the exact number of miles between the restaurant and the hospital. "Why would you run that far?" His nose scrunched in distaste.

Chaerin's eyes rolled so far back they nearly got stuck. "Because I was worried about you! Is that really so hard to understand?" She nearly smacked him for asking such a stupid question. "The streets were backed up, the buses would have been way too slow. So I ran," she shrugged as if it was no big deal. He was hurt so she had to get to the hospital. Running was just the most efficient way to get there, despite the sweltering August air outside.

He squinted at her, "You're crazy."

"I'll take that as a compliment," she laughed.

"I never said it was a compliment," he teased, making Chaerin's sly grin go sour.

"Shut up and sleep, Yoongi." He laughed at her grumpy state but closed his eyes as he was instructed. In truth he really was tired.

A minute after his eyes had shut, Chaerin lay her head on the thin mattress beside their intertwined hands. She had absolutely no intention of leaving that hospital until Yoongi was released, so she might as well get some sleep.

Despite how tired he was, Yoongi couldn't seem to fall asleep. Worries kept crowding his mind, bouncing off the walls of his skull and making his head ache. How could this have happened? How could he let himself get injured like this? This was just going to cause so many more problems for him and Chaerin. A broken shoulder meant that he wouldn't be able to keep his delivery job; he'd have to quit. That meant that Chaerin would start taking up more shifts at the restaurant so she could pay his hospital bills. That in turn would result in her going to less and less auditions, which were already few and far between. Yoongi hated to think that he would be the reason for Chaerin's dreams falling apart. But it seems he would be. The thought of his studio sprung into his mind; the studio Chaerin had created for him months ago. How was he supposed to do anything with only one good arm? Yoongi could already feel the misery seeping into his heart. Chaerin had worked so hard to make him happy. And yet he was still the same broken, miserable kid that had been dropped off at his grandmother's house so many years ago.

Yoongi slammed his head against the plastic headboard of the hospital bed in frustration. Just when he thought things were starting to change for the better, everything had to fall apart.