SEVEN || BTS

Chapter 7-听你自己的心跳

He knew the beat of his own heartbeat would cost something greater than the price of a surgery.

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Beep beep beep beep beep beep.

The steady rhythm of the machine quietly hummed through the room.

He could see to his right an empty hospital bed with lilies placed on the pillow, to his left a machine that was connected to him through various tubes and wires and nerve impulses. When he looked forward he could see the edge of the bed, his feet, that felt cold as ice that particular morning, peeking out from the bedsheets and beyond that a small desk or table of some sort.
There was a painting on the wall, it looked like Van Gogh but it looked too creepy and insane to be his style.
The ceiling above him was not 100% white, it was just a few shades darker and seemed to be really high.

The hospital band on his wrist was red, in a black marker his name was written neatly between the boundaries and three boxes were ticked. He'd find out later what that all meant.

Beep beep beep beep beep beep.

He could feel his own heart beat, it wasn't because the machine connected to him sounded out each beat. It was as if he could hear it internally, in his mind or soul.
He didn't want to hear it, there was something wrong about the beat, something that felt strange and unfamiliar to him.

He sat up, taking a moment to realise how much injury was done to his body, there were bandages wrapped tightly around his neck and torso, his knee was in a cast and his arm was being supported.
He winced a bit trying to remember what had happened and how he got to this point.
He knew he was a clumsy person, but he also wasn't dumb enough to surpass the usual cut on the finger of scrape of the knee.

So what exactly had happened to him?

When he disconnected all the tubes and wires the machine stopped keeping track of his heartbeat. He made his way slowly around the room. The placard attached to the foot of his bed told the doctors everything they need to know about him.
"K-I-M...NAM...JOON" he read slowly getting used to his croaky voice. Getting used to his wounded body.
He did not forget himself, in fact his head was barely scratched when the ambulance found him, they found that extremely lucky of him considering how great the impact was; but he certainly did not feel himself, and maybe reassuring his own name would make him feel better. Only it didn't.

There was a cup of water on the table, which he gladly drank, taking in as much as possible, water dripping from his mouth as he greedily gulped it.
When he was finished he made his way outside.

It was as if he walked out onto the center streets of Seoul. Everywhere he looked doctors and nurses rushed from one place to another, there were patients waiting, people visiting. There was no one here to visit him, but he felt warm inside watching people interact in such a friendly way.

"Mr Kim? Are you feeling better already?"
A nurse asked him, gently pushing him back into his room. He realised his room was luxurious compared to the other rooms he could see. He stole a peak while he was standing in the doorway, as many beds as possible crammed into a single room, nurses having no space to turn around in, no fruits or water left for the patients to enjoy. But he had everything, silk bedsheets and exotic fruits that were usually really expensive at this time of year, a flat screen tv which he failed to notice before, hidden behind the painting.

"I-I don't feel like my self yet.."

"That's completely normal, it is a hard surgery to go through." The nurse explain, checking his pulse and temperature.

"S-surgery?"

"Mr Kim, how much do you remember?"
She said changing the bandages on his neck, revealing scraped skin and vulnerable meat beneath it.