Beyond Repair (Min Yoongi) [UPDATED]

2. Questions

"—You okay? Can you hear me? I need you to calm down, dear," said the nurse.

Yoongi tried to obey, but he couldn't pry his eyes away from the strange man. The fact that the man was holding a bag full of God-knows-what didn't help Yoongi feel any better about him.

He was finally going to be punished. He'd known this was coming, but knowing didn't make the anticipation any less terrifying.

The man asked a question in a language Yoongi didn't understand—it didn't even sound like English—but he barely heard it over the other voice in his head, telling him to kneel.

Yoongi didn't know if he even had the strength to get out of bed, let alone get on his knees without face-planting on the floor. His chest constricted.

"C-can't...please," he whimpered, and then he struck himself across the face.

"You don't have to do that, remember?" the nurse told him. "Just tell us what's wrong. Can you do that?"

Yoongi just shook his head and curled up, squeezing his eyes shut. He tangled his fingers in his hair when he felt movement close by, too close, and he let out a tiny, broken sob but he didn't move. He couldn't move.

"Put down the bag," the nurse said, her voice harder this time.

Yoongi flinched at the sudden change in her tone and stopped breathing altogether. He squinted his eyes open ever-so-slightly—he had to find out whether she was angry with him, specifically, or just frustrated in general—just in time to see the man frown, stubbornly tightening his grip on the bag in his hand. Another strangled sob escaped Yoongi's throat and he closed his eyes again, hunching further into himself, wishing he could disappear.

"Bag. Down. Now," said the nurse. There was a small thump. "Go wait outside. I'll tell you when you can come back."

The man tried to say something else, but the nurse cut him off.

"Outside," she snapped. "I'll explain later."

Yoongi opened his eyes again to see the man slinking out of the room, looking defeated. Then, the force preventing him from breathing properly lifted, and he took in huge gulps of air so quickly he became lightheaded.

"There we go. Just like earlier, dear. In and out."

The nurse demonstrated the breathing exercise again and Yoongi let his eyes flutter shut in relief. As his breathing returned to normal, he unfurled from the defensive ball he'd curled into, finally relaxing a bit.

"Good. Now, can you tell me what just happened?"

Yoongi shuddered. Why did everything feel like a test?

"You know," the nurse continued after a moment, "we can't make sure this doesn't happen again if you don't tell me what triggered it. Was it Roy, the phlebotomist? Did he happen to say something that upset you? Was it his bag?"

Yoongi didn't say anything. She hadn't given him permission to speak.

The nurse sighed. "Okay. I can't make you tell me. I hope you'll tell someone, though. Even if you have to write it down again. We can't help you if we don't know what's wrong."

Yoongi nodded a little, just to show that he understood. The nurse kept eyeing him for a few more seconds as though waiting on some further explanation that Yoongi couldn't provide.

"Okay. Well, you seem to be healing quite nicely. It's going to be a long recovery, but everything looks as good as can be expected. You seem to be through the worst of the withdrawal, too, but just to make sure, we need to run a couple of blood tests. That's actually why the phlebotomist was here—"