Slave to the Scale

Chapter 46

warning: blood

So there he went again, resting while everyone else went back to work. Truth be told, he did appreciate the rest, but it wasn't helping much. Jungkook had a friend who was a doctor and he got him to bring a blood pressure machine over. Every morning, before breakfast, Jin had to check it. And every day, it was on the lower side.

He was told to drink more water. He did. It was annoying. He hated feeling so full. But he did. It helped marginally. The blood pressure machine still said it was low.

And maybe that was when Jin started taking it seriously. Holy shit, was something wrong with him? Was he going to die, now after everything he had gone through?

He didn't want to anymore.

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"It hasn't improved?"

Namjoon shook his head. "No."

Jin leaned back in his chair while Namjoon and Dr. Lee talked. For once, he didn't have to bear the burden of keeping the conversation going.

For the most part, Namjoon was pretty chill. He didn't say or do anything that hurt Jin. He could be quite pessimistic and fatalistic at times, but that was the extent of his faults. No, Namjoon was a good man. He handled Dr. Lee's constant chatter very well.

"Is the shortness of breath a bit easier to deal with, Seokjin?"

"Yeah," Jin said. "The inhaler helped a lot."

"That's good to hear."

She got him to sit up on the bed again and she checked his blood pressure and pulse again. His oxygen saturation was fine, but the other things were once again low. Jin had heard that very fit people generally have lower pulses, but he probably wouldn't fit into that category.

Also, he wasn't completely comfortable.

A bit more clicking around and then Dr. Lee announced that she had booked him in for a blood test. A week from now, he would have to come in again.

"It will be early in the morning, so make sure that you don't eat anything before you come here," she said. "We're just going to check if everything's normal."

Jin nodded. He exchanged a look with Namjoon who thankfully, didn't look annoyed.

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"Again, another blood test?" Jungkook asked.

Jin sighed. "Yeah."

"He probably has low iron or something," Namjoon said. "Calm down."

"Oh."

Oh. Jin relaxed. See, Dr. Lee had probably said that at one point during the appointment but he hadn't been listening, so he hadn't thought of that. He probably wasn't dying then.

He tried to focus on the task at hand. He, Namjoon and Jungkook had been told to come up with themes for a new song. He wasn't the slightest bit interested in learning anything new for singing, but he tried to be enthusiastic. Otherwise the others would notice. They had better ideas than him anyway. All he felt was a swirling sense of panic and fear for the upcoming tests and diagnoses.

"No album," Jungkook said. "Just a song?"

"Yeah," Namjoon said.

They had been away for so long. They hadn't performed on a stage since that last concert tour nearly one and a half years ago, the one that Jin had a meltdown in. The one where Hoseok had seen him shirtless and had freaked out. It felt like a lifetime ago. It was a lifetime ago.