The boy didn't need to get involved with a troubled person like him, and Yoongi didn't want to risk testing his heart a second time and ending up putting the pieces back together.
When he finally woke up, it was already morning. Or at least that's what he estimated from the light coming through the window to his right. After opening and closing his eyes several times to adjust to the light, he glanced around. The walls were white, as you would expect in a hospital, and the only decoration in sight was a vase of plastic flowers that had been placed on the edge of the window. To his left, the other bed was empty and completely made, so he was the only patient in the room.
Getting up slowly, Yoongi pulled the sheet that covered him to get up and go to the bathroom. Yes, accompanied by the hanger that had the intravenous solution that had been put on him. After relieving himself, he glanced at his reflection in the mirror, checking that it wasn't as bad as he'd thought it was. Obviously, he could be better, but considering what he'd been through and that everyone in a hospital lost their glamour, he looked pretty decent.
When he got out of the bathroom, he considered staying in bed waiting for someone to arrive, be it the doctor or his friends, or going for a walk through the corridors and finding the cafeteria.
Seeing that he had nothing to entertain himself with if he stayed in the room, he decided heading to the cafeteria was best. But first, he had to get some money, since nothing was free. He was sure he had put the wallet in his pants pocket, so it should still be there.
After taking the money and putting it in the pocket of his hospital pyjamas, the door to the room opened after a quick succession of taps. The person who entered was a man, a doctor, judging by his clothing, who appeared to be in his thirties. He was tall with tanned skin and a robust build without being fat. His short brown hair was slicked back, and square glasses framed his face.
"Good morning, Min Yoongi-ssi. I see that I have arrived at a good time. I am Dr Park." The doctor greeted as he closed the door. His voice was deep but not severe, and his face was adorned with a slight smile that softened his features.
After returning the greeting, the doctor gestured for him to sit down, so Yoongi sat on the edge of the bed.
"It was fortunate to find him awake, I just started the round of visits." Then the doctor looked at the portfolio he was holding in one hand and wrote something on it. "How are you? Best?"
"Yes, I feel better, although a little disoriented when I woke up."
"This is normal, nothing to worry about." The man removed the track while he continued speaking. "Tell me, Yoongi-ssi, do you know why you are here? Do you remember what happened last night?"
The question left him quite unsettled, but he tried to answer as best he could. The sooner the visit was over, the sooner he could go for coffee, preferably at home and not in the hospital cafeteria.
"Well, I remember I passed out, but the rest is confusing. I've had ... quite a bit of trouble lately." He couldn't tell the doctor that a host of shadows had used his house as a playground. Not even the craziest would believe it.
"I am aware of it. Your friends were on the verge of a nervous breakdown when they came here with you."
"I imagine," I answer. "Sometimes it seems like they're my mother."
At this, the doctor laughed heartily and shook his head slightly. "That was a very accurate description. In any case, I had to send them home to rest. They insisted on staying here, and I wouldn't have minded if it weren't because last night we were packed with work and the bosses were breathing down our necks. They went through the police station first before going to rest."
"The police station?"
"Of course, to report the theft you suffered. You remember, right?"Dr Park looked at him with a slight frown.
So a robbery. Well, after looking at the condition of his apartment, it was the most appropriate conclusion.
"I... Yes, sure, I remember. It's just that ... It's a bit ..." Yoongi passed his hand over the back of his neck in a nervous gesture that would accompany him until the end of his days, probably.
"Don't worry, Yoongi-ssi. I understand your situation." The doctor cut it off. "That they come to rob your house and destroy it is not something pleasant to experience. It's a shame the police couldn't catch those criminals, they've been causing trouble around the area for a while now. But luckily, his friends arrived in time to bring him here."
"Yes, I was quite lucky." He replied with a relieved sigh. Without realizing it, the doctor had saved him from having to make up an excuse. And his friends had been quick to come up with that robbery idea.
After leaving, he was going to have to continue with that lie, because he couldn't tell the rest about the shadows. He felt bad about having to hide what had really happened to him, but he thought it was something totally surreal and hard to believe. That Jin and Namjoon were involved was only because Yoongi took it out on the other rapper, and seeing two pairs of concerned eyes was enough for him. They had seen the changes firsthand, but the others were oblivious to their problem, and Yoongi wanted it to stay that way. If what that woman had said was true, he would never see those shadows again, so his life would regain the rhythm it had carried until now.
"You're really lucky. Especially since he found his soul mate. Thanks to him, his gem managed to stay stable."
The doctor's words snapped him out of his thoughts. Hearing him mention his soulmate made his heart race for no apparent reason, and his attention focused on what the doctor had said.
"My soul mate?" Yoongi repeated.
"Exact. Your gems connected last night, according to what his friends explained when he got here. Don't you remember?"
"No. I mean, yeah, I remember, but ... What does my ... soulmate have to do with this?"
"Well, he saved your life in a way." It seemed as if the doctor had noticed his confusion. His words had come out slowly for Yoongi to understand.
"Saved my life," Yoongi repeated as if with this he could understand it better. "I don't get it." He ended up saying a few moments later.
"It's alright. I'll explain it to you."
And with that said, the doctor put the briefcase on the table next to Yoongi's bed and took a chair that was at the back of the room. After pulling himself closer to the bed, he sat down and looked Yoongi in the eye. In any other circumstance, he might have been intimidated, but this man was his doctor, an affable one, and at this moment the confusion, and the curiosity, were stronger.
"According to your friends, when they arrived minutes after the robbery, your gem and the other boy's gem, what was his name? ..." The doctor's eyes looked to a distant point on the wall, as if he could thus remember the name.
"Jungkook," Yoongi replied without thinking.
"Exact! Jungkook." The doctor exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "Well, your gems connected, correct?" Doctor Park waited for Yoongi to confirm it before continuing with his explanation. "You see, Yoongi-ssi, when you got here, aside from being unconscious, your gem was quite unstable, and when I say unstable, I mean it was doing you more harm than good."
Yoongi frowned and made a face with his mouth. "It is impossible. My gem has never done something like that, but the other way around. I am sorry to doubt you, but are you sure there is no mistake?"
"I am completely sure, Yoongi-ssi. Sometimes when we are under a lot of pressure, when we are not able to relieve stress, be it from work or personal problems, the gems absorb all that energy, but they do not know how to react to solve the problem. Have you been feeling stressed or exposed to a lot of pressure? Not counting the situation last night, of course."
"Well ... yeah, I've had a lot of things to worry about. But it's not something I haven't experienced before, I usually take the pressure well."
"We are all exposed to give in under pressure, even those who constantly live in that state. It is something logical, a kind of defence mechanism of the body that tells us when to stop. In your case, I assume that this latest incident was the last straw. I am going to give you a simple example so that you understand what has happened to you: suppose that all your emotions are contained in that vase there." The doctor said as he pointed to the vase that had plastic flowers inside. Yoongi looked at him and nodded for the man to continue his explanation.
"Let's also assume that the content is being pressured by those new emotions that want to enter. Without a way of escape, the vase begins to fracture, and the existing cracks end up growing. So we have two problems: first, there is no escape route for all those emotions; and second, the pressure forms more and more fissures. Probably your gem fixed the cracks first, but seeing that they kept appearing, he decided it was more sensible to relieve the pressure; the problem is, he had no way to do it. After that, another much more intense emotion appeared: the connection with his soulmate. Faced with so much pressure and with no outlet, the normal thing is for the vase to burst, just like you did."
After the explanation, the room fell silent. The doctor expected some reaction from Yoongi to show that he understood, but Yoongi was just looking at the vase with such intensity that it could have shattered it.
"It was something very metaphorical, right? Maybe I should have tried explaining it to him with a swimming pool. Or with the leaks of a house, or with ... "
"Okay, doctor. I got it." Yoongi said, thus interrupting the string of the man, who felt immediately relieved.
"I hadn't seen it that way. But what does Jungkook have to do with all this? How could he have saved me?"
"It's a matter of energy." The man replied to which Yoongi had to suppress a shudder, for those had been the same words that the shadow woman had used. Fortunately, the doctor did not seem to notice this.
"His gem was subjected to too many emotions in a short time and he could not keep up. He could only absorb the remaining energy, but he still did not know what to do with it. In short, the gem panicked. It is nothing strange, after all, it extends our being. But Jungkook's gem managed to shed some of that energy and stabilize his gem long enough for it to help him recover."
If he had understood everything correctly, everything that happened had overwhelmed his gem and could not help him, as he did that time when he prevented him from taking the entire bottle of pills. But Jungkook had saved him, his gem, to be exact. What Yoongi did not quite understand was how he could do it. The doctor had told him the process, but he still didn't understand how he had done it. Could gems do that? A week ago I discovered they could save your own life, but someone else's? It was crazy. Although not as much as what he had had to live until now.
"If what you tell me is true, how did he do it? What did he do to save me?" Yoongi was confused and wanted answers. "What would have happened if he hadn't intervened?" Would he have died? That was the question that he hadn't asked, but that was implicit.
"Well, it's hard to say." Said the doctor, shifting in his seat and showing for the first time since he had entered a nervous gesture. "After what they told me, I checked the energy of his gem to confirm the state of it, a kind of energetic electrocardiogram. According to the team's results, there were two distinct types of waves that moved at different wavelengths. One of them was constant, with minor changes, and the other was more erratic but had a clear tendency to imitate the first and overlap with it." Then the doctor took a deep breath. "I don't know if this young man was aware of what his gem was doing, and if he was, I don't know if he controlled it. I have to be honest, I have seen nothing like it in my ten years of profession, but I assure you that, if you had not received the help of your gem, the result would not have been pleasant. You wouldn't have died, you can rest easy," the man assured him, "but you would've remained in a coma-like state of unconsciousness until his gem could regain its stability."
After that, the room fell silent again, although it wasn't an awkward one. Dr Park was giving him time to absorb all the information and ask questions he had.
Yoongi had to admit that that had happened with the shadows. His mind was much more open to things that at another time would seem to him out of a science fiction book. He realized how little he knew about gems and what they were capable of. He did not know his true potential, nor did he know his limits. He had underestimated them. I thought they only reacted in the presence of your other half, but it turns out they did more than that; they could save your life.
"That's ... I ... I don't know what to say. This is quite ... strange. " Yoongi said with a grimace at his lack of vocabulary to express himself. He could always blame the lack of caffeine.
"I know what you mean. I was the same the first time I saw him. But now it's okay, which is what matters."
"Do my friends know? What Jungkook's gem did."
"Oh, no. With all the fuss there was last night, the results took a while to come out, and by the time I got them your friends were gone. Life in the ER is not as wonderful as they paint it in the medical series." Said the doctor with a small smile.
"If you happen to be asked, please not tell them anything? I'd like to do it myself."
"Of course, that's not a problem at all."
With a smile, the man rose from the chair and returned it to its original place. Then he picked up the briefcase he had left on the table and began scribbling on the paper.
"I am aware that nobody likes to spend more time than necessary in a hospital, so I will prepare the discharge report so I can pick it up as soon as possible, around eleven-thirty. And please, if possible, try to reduce stress levels. Even if you are fine now, it does not mean that you can fully return to your previous rhythm of life. You will do this in a short time, maybe a week, but keep in mind that your gem also needs time to recover. Do you think you can do it?" The doctor asked as he fixed his gaze on Yoongi's eyes.
"It's going to be a great effort, but my friends will make sure I follow their plan to the letter. They're worse than my mother."
The doctor laughed at his comment as he finished writing the last indications on the paper.
"You are lucky to have friends like them. They are not found every day."
"Yes, I tell myself that every day. Although that does not mean that they are sometimes a pain in the ass."
"Who is not once in his life? Since I am going to discharge you, you can take off your pyjamas from the hospital and put on your clothes, if that makes you more comfortable. You can let your friends know to be here when you are leaving. When you return to give you the discharge paper, the nurse will remove the bracelet."
Yoongi nodded and thanked the doctor, who then left the room to continue his round of visits. He then called Namjoon, who answered after the first ring, and told him what Dr Park had told him, except the part that had to do with Jungkook. He would have time to tell him once they got home.
This story belongs to @nometoloko on AO3. I'm just her translator.
...I got nothing to say, Hope you like it.