I'm not sure how I stayed asleep through the night with all the wires and machines I'm hooked up to, but I suspect they've been giving me medicine to take some of the pain away and to help me sleep.
I wake up to the harsh rays of the sun seeping in through the blinds of my hospital room's window, and I'm surprised to see Taehyung still seated next to me, as if he were there all night.
"Good morning," he says. "You slept a long time. You must be really exhausted."
I slowly nod, feeling my eyelids already beginning to droop again even though I just woke up.
I want to speak to Taehyung so badly; I have a million questions to ask him, but my body is just refusing to do anything. It's barely letting me take shallow breaths and blink, much less speak at this point.
I hear my room's door open, and then footsteps approaching my bed. I slowly roll my head to look at the doctor standing next to me with a grim look on his face, and I hear my heart rate pick up in pace as I realize whatever he came in here for isn't good news.
He grabs the stool and pulls it up to sit next to me, holding his clipboard in his lap as he watches me for a second, almost seemingly trying to think of what to say.
I close my eyes and take as deep of a breath as I can manage before opening my eyes again and nodding to the doctor to just tell me what he needs to.
"We did a lot of extensive testing on you to try to see what is causing these symptoms," he begins. "I ran every test I could think of, but everything was coming back negative. No flu, pneumonia, strep throat, nothing. It was really a mystery to me and I was honestly a bit stuck because I didn't know what else to test you for. I stayed up all night brainstorming and I realized something that all of these symptoms could point to, so I ran one last blood test and it came back positive."
I raise my eyebrows slightly, and he takes a breath before continuing.
"I found high levels of arsenic in your blood, Violet," he explains. "Poison."
I stare at the doctor as I feel Taehyung's hands tighten around my own.
"Someone has been poisoning you," Dr. Kang says. "Probably over a span of a few months or so now. The reason you became so much sicker in such a short span of time is that whoever was poisoning you must have started administering larger doses to speed along whatever their agenda was."
I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do.
What do I say?
What do I do?
"There is good and bad news," Dr. Kang continues. "The bad news is that the damage is extensive. You were given a tremendously large dose of arsenic fairly recently. To put it quite plainly, there is a chance you won't survive this. The poison is basically eating you from the inside out. You're dying."
I find myself glancing towards Taehyung, who is only watching me with a sorrowful look on his face as he continues to hold my hand.
"The good news is that now that we know what's wrong, you have a chance to survive. It will be a long road to recovery, and I can say with certainty that with this amount of poison in your body, you won't ever be the same in a physical sense. You'll be at a much higher risk for developing cancer among other health problems, but if we work now and we work hard, we can do our best to help you survive this. Now, I have to ask... Is there anyone who would've wanted to hurt you?"
I immediately shake my head, not able to think straight as the doctor's words echo in my head over and over again on a loop.
I was being poisoned. I could die in this place.
"I'm going to put in some orders for your future care here and we'll get started right away," Dr. Kang says. "When you're a bit stronger, you'll need to speak to the police about this so they can find who hurt you."
I nod, tears rolling down my face and onto the oxygen mask. The doctor grabs a tissue and wipes them away before smiling at me.
"I promise I will do my best to make you feel better," he says before walking out of the room and shutting the door behind him.
I don't even want to look at Taehyung in this moment. I close my eyes and let myself focus on the feeling of his hands holding onto me, his fingertips rubbing against the back of my hand.
I begin to think about when the symptoms began until now.
I think about who would want to hurt me like this.
My first thought is my step mother. I was always afraid of her spitting in my food, but what if she was poisoning it?
If I was out of the way, she could have anything my father leaves behind when he dies. She would get the house and what little life insurance money he has.
But I find myself realizing that it couldn't have been her. I was still getting sicker even after I left my dad's house. She had no access to me after I left, so there is no way she could've done it.
I frown in concentration, trying so hard to think of someone who had the ability to poison me over a long span of time and knew where I lived with my dad, where I worked and where I stayed with Jin so that they could continuously put arsenic in my food or drinks.
Memories hit me so suddenly that I lose my breath for a second.
"Jungkook dropped this off for you about ten minutes ago," Jin says quietly, pushing a paper bag across the counter to me. "He said he couldn't stay because he has an early morning class but that he wouldn't ever forgive himself if he forgot to bring this to you."
I find myself smiling, albeit quite painfully, as I open the bag and pull out half of a peanut butter sandwich.
Jin looks at me like I've lost my mind. "Why are you grinning at half a sandwich?"
"It's a tradition," I explain. "Jungkook and I would always have a peanut butter sandwich on Wednesdays and we'd split it in half; we've done this for years. He's never missed a sandwich day even after going off to college."
~
"Fine. But eat this before you go. You look like you've lost weight," he says in a gentle tone as he hands me a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie.
I smile at him gratefully. "Is peanut butter just our thing or something?"
~
"I know it's not Wednesday, but I figured you could use something to cheer you up," Jungkook grins as he pulls out a small cardboard box. "I made these for you. Only you. Jin can't have any."
"Peanut butter cookies," I say, nostalgia washing over me at the smell. "I guess peanut butter really is our thing."
~
Jungkook brought back some more peanut butter cookies he'd made for me that he insisted once again that I'm not allowed to share.
~
"You shouldn't feel like you have to do anything for me," Jungkook says, smiling a bit as my eyelids begin to feel heavy. "The only thing I want is for you to be free."
"I can't," I say, chin quivering.
"I know," he whispers, smiling sadly as my eyelids flutter closed. "I know, and I'm so sorry."
Jungkook.
