—First life. St. Vincent's Hospital, year 2027—

White.

That was the first thing I saw as my heavy eyelids came open, before everything came clearer to me and I was met with the familiar sight of my white ceiling. I could not remember how I ended up lying on my bed or how I had fallen asleep. The last thing I remembered was Jungkook gripping my upper arms so tightly that it hurt, and I started feeling scared for my life.

Then everything became a blur.

Was I crying? I could only wonder. Because I remembered the tears and the sobbing that came bubbling from inside of me. I remembered seeing him getting so angry—at me, at himself, at everything happening around us—while I felt my own rage burning deep inside me simply for having him there, messing up with my feelings. And I vaguely remembered thinking about how he had no right to blame me for this and for him to demand all the things he was saying to me.

How could he? How dare he ask that much from me, after everything that he had done? For all the neglect and the pain he had given me when I had given him so much, when I kept giving him nothing but chances, only to have him break me apart, over and over again.

"Why do you keep forgiving him, ______? Why do you keep giving him more chances even after he had screwed you up so many times?"

I closed my eyes and let Yoongi's voice rang in my head as I tried to find the answer to the question he had always given me. Yet the only thing I could find was the pain residing inside my chest. One that somehow felt deeper than the pain I was getting from the monstrosity of my illness that was supposedly eating me up inside.

As I opened my eyes to the sight of my bedroom once more, I exhaled a deep breath and felt how terribly dry my throat was. A soft, groggy moan slipped out from me as I tried to move and look around, to find and reach for something to relieve myself from this dryness, yet no movement was made as my body had become too stiff and too weak to do anything at all.

"You're awake," a gentle voice came from my side and her face appeared to me as she hovered above me. Soyeon gave me a smile as she stood tall next to my bed. From the looks of it, it seemed like she was in the middle of changing my infusion bags when I woke up. I tried to push myself up, only to have her stopping me.

"Don't move," she quickly said, making me look up at her, completely confused. But as the small movement I just made had proceeded to make my head spin, I figured it would be best to comply to her instead of pushing it and I lied still instead. "You've gone through a lot of stress and your body is still recovering from it. There's no need to force yourself up. You'll just feel more pain if you do. You must be thirsty. Let me get you some water."

I could only respond to her with a nod and let her finish doing her job. My eyes grew heavy as I waited. At some point, I had given in and had nearly fallen back to sleep until I felt the bed rising slowly, supporting me to sit a little, before she nudged gently at me to wake me up.

"Here, drink just a little," Soyeon said as she handed me a glass of water. She reached to my back, patting the pillows there to help support me up. "There. Comfortable?"

Mouthing a quick — 'Thanks,' — I took the drink, feeling all my senses coming to wake right after. My mind was going on a mile a second as I tried to recall what had happened to me and why I was feeling so drained. Looking over to the window, I realised that at least a day had passed. But there was nothing I could remember happening in between.

"What happened? I don't remember—" I was cut off when a cough forced itself through my throat, forcing me to clear my airway before I could speak again. "The last thing I remembered was my, um—Jungkook was here."

Soyeon's eyes lit up briefly before it faded. "Your husband?" she asked me as she took away the glass of water from my hand and set it aside.

"My ex," I answered her, feeling bitter about talking to him that I had unintentionally sounded harsh.

She gave me an understanding smile as she nodded. "I met him just as he left," she calmly said to me without any judgemental look appearing on her face. If there was one thing that I adored most about the beautiful nurse standing beside me, was that she was never as nosy as the other nurses who I have met since I had gotten admitted into this hospital. While others loved to gossip around during their breaks, asking personal things from the patients to talk about behind their backs, she was never that person. At least, not that I knew of. She always had this calm, understanding look in her eyes whenever she noticed that I needed someone to confide in or to talk to. The same way she was doing it now.

"Was he—I can't really remember what happened," I muttered softly. My voice trailed off when his face came into my mind.

She paused as she was pulling my blanket up over me, making sure I was warm enough to relax. "Well, what do you remember?"

Looking away, I thought about our previous encounter. "I remember seeing him. We had a—an argument. He found out about my condition after he secretly followed my brother here. He got angry when he found out that I have been hiding this from him, then he got even angrier when I refused to go back to him. I—we fought, and he insisted that he wouldn't let me go. Then—nothing," I said, looking back at her. "I know we yelled at each other and then I started crying. I felt like my body started burning up right after and everything was a blur from there."

Soyeon took a moment before she finally answered for me.

"I guess that explains the stress," she carefully said, causing me to raise my eyebrows, silently asking her for an explanation. Which she gladly gave me soon after. "I think the stress of seeing him and having your emotions riling up had taken a toll on your body," she started, before finally continuing, "_____, you had a seizure when he was here. I was called to your room when everyone heard him shouting, asking for help—"

And then it came back to me. Blurry images of him calling my name, of him trying to hold me while I kept pushing him away, while I was thrashing on the bed and crying, unable to breathe.

"—you started to have trouble breathing and I came rushing in with the doctor. He was pushed aside and was asked to leave when he tried to attack the doctor who was handling you."

I shook my head. "I can't believe it—" I muttered with a sigh. "And then what happened?"

"We had to give you some medications to remedy the pain and we gave you something to help you sleep. The doctors were worried that your condition might turn to the worse if you had passed out right in the middle of the seizure and we have been keeping you under close observation since," she explained to me.

I knew that it wasn't usual for a nurse to explain these things to a patient without the presence of a doctor, but I felt glad that she did not hold back or hide anything from me. "The doctors will be here shortly to explain it better. They might offer you this, but they'll have to wait until you are fit enough to run a few tests regarding those seizures. We need to find out if it was indeed caused by over-stress or—"

"Or if the malignancy had reached my nerve system."

Soyeon's eyes grew wide with shock, completely surprised to what I had said before she looked amused. "You've done your research."

I only shrugged. "I had to. Ever since Dr. Kim told me about how terrible my body has been reacting to the drugs. I had to know all the possibilities of what I'll be facing."

Her eyes grew wary for a moment, but she only nodded and sighed. "Good, then you're well prepared," she muttered softly. A smile graced her face, but I could easily tell how forced it was. As if she was trying to be strong and calm about it — for my sake. "You should stay in bed for the rest of the day. Get some more rest or just take some naps, and don't strain yourself too much. I'll let the doctors know you're awake and come back with your meal."

Soyeon came back with my meal sometime around one hour later, giving me enough time for a quick, refreshing nap until then.

Dr. Kim came in right as I was finishing my meal, Hoseok tagging along by his side, looking worse for wear as he rushed to my side. It was clear that the doctors had told him what had happened, as he instantly took me in his arms.

"I should've been here," he whispered to me as he rocked my body with him side to side. "I could've stopped it from happening."

"It's not your fault," I told him, looking over his shoulder to meet the doctor's eyes. For someone who I had placed my trust to regarding my illness and finding the cure, Dr. Kim was not someone who would mask anything he was thinking of or keep me in the dark through it all. So the moment I saw the solemn look he was giving me, I knew that things were getting serious.

He gave us some space for a moment, allowing my brother to take his time to show his regret for leaving me alone in the hospital.

Pushing my brother gently, I took a look at him and smile. "I told you, it's fine. Nobody could predict he would do anything to find me," I tried my hardest to convince him, to calm him down a little since I knew how dramatic and emotional my brother could be. "And I was the one who told you I would be alright on my own. I had nurses to keep an eye on me and the doctors standing by. I didn't want either you or Yoongi to put on hold on your life or your work for me when I've put you guys through a lot already."

Hoseok reluctantly nodded his head. "Fine, but I'll talk to Yoongi later so we can arrange our schedules to be able to watch over you more frequently. And if Jungkook ever comes back and triggers anything like that again, I'm calling the cops."

Rolling my eyes on him, I only scoffed. "You're making a big deal out of nothing," I told him. "Just let the security know to keep him away. Okay?"

Hoseok only agreed to this after I reminded him that the doctor was with us, while Dr. Kim was watching everything patiently with an amused look in his eyes.

"Sorry, Doc," I said, smiling bashfully out of embarrassment. "My brother can get too much when he gets worried."

The kind doctor only smiled. "I totally understand. If it were my own sister or any of my siblings, I might get even more dramatic about it."

"I guess you have something to tell us?" I asked him, refusing to put things on hold for too long.

Hoseok took the chair beside my bed and settled down as the doctor took out a few papers from his folder, showing us the chart that was taken from me while I was unconscious before he began talking about my condition and what was needed to be done.

"We had a few test runs scheduled before you had a seizure, and we were only able to do a few smaller ones while you were down," he started, and I felt Hoseok hand tightening on me. The doctor passed a copy of the test result to Hoseok and let my brother read it briefly. "I highly suggest to do the rest once you are strong enough to pull through, so we can find out what's wrong and handle it as soon as we can."

"How serious is it?" I asked him, while my brother had his palm covering his mouth as he held the test result on his lap.

Dr. Kim tried his best to keep his expression calm, but I knew him well enough by now to see how tense he was as he carefully said, "We don't know yet. I know that this isn't the first seizure you've had nor it was the first time you fell completely unconscious, but I can say we're safe for now. We just need to make sure it doesn't happen again."

I only gave him a smile as I agreed to take things easy while they would try to figure out what was wrong with me, even though deep down I knew that we had a lot to worry about.

Hoseok stayed the night, refusing to leave me alone after having quite a scare of finding out that his sister had been ambushed and experienced a seizure while he was not around to protect me.

The medicine they had given me allowed me to have a long, good sleep, and I woke up the morning after feeling a bit stronger than I did before. I found Hoseok still sleeping on a cot that the hospital had provided for him, a frown was engraved on his face even as he was sleeping and my chest clenched tight for having been responsible for putting so much burden on him.

I was looking out the window, watching the sunlight growing brighter when someone gently opened the door. Yoongi appeared through the doorway when I turned to see who it was, carrying two cups of coffee for him and Hoseok and a warm tea for me, with an overnight bag filled with change of clothes for he and Hoseok to wear just in case any of them were to stay overnight.

"Morning," he whispered to me after noticing my brother still sleeping soundly. He placed the hot drinks on the nearest table and walked over to me, kissing the top of my head as he asked me how I was doing. "Feeling better?"

"Slightly," I answered him with a terribly dry voice and took the tea from his hand to warm myself. "Thank you, I needed this."

"I figured as much," he said while chuckling. He took the chair next to the bed and sat down, enjoying his coffee as we talked about what had happened the other day. "So you brought change. I'm guessing I won't be the only permanent resident in this room."

He smiled at me and shrugged. "Hoseok and I talked about it. We'll be taking turns to stay with you, and one of us will stay here every night," he explained. "I also heard about Jimin. Knowing his condition, I don't think we should let him take over the task of nursing you while we're away. It wouldn't be fair to him, don't you think?"

My eyes instantly got a bit teary as he mentioned Jimin. I had no idea if Jimin had heard about what happened to me after meeting him, but I hoped it did not add to his worries. Not when he already had so much going on. "Thanks for thinking about my friend too," I said to Yoongi, while he only responded to me with a scoff.

"I know he's more than a friend to you. I can tell he means a lot to you just the way you are to him," Yoongi said to me, adding the moisture in my eyes. "And you're like a sister to me, so—"

And that was it. The dam broke and my tears fell all over my face. He stopped and reached to wipe them away, only to have me laughing. "I'm okay. So many things happened and I just got emotional."

A knowing look lit up on his face and he only nodded. "Don't worry about it. You've gone through so much and there's still a long way to go. You're not in this alone."