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Jeno’s a patient man.
Like, ‘you have to put in some serious effort to piss him off’ kind of patient. He barely speaks above a whisper most days and has a perpetual eyesmile that can calm even the most panicked case in the infirmary (Donghyuck).
“So,” he says for the fifth time that hour. “This means no strenuous activities for the next three weeks. Including training. You need to rest and heal.”
Jisung pouts from where he’s lying in the infirmary bed, shoulder bandaged and IV inserted into his arm. “Hyung, it’s nothing too major.”
“You were shot, Jisung,” Jeno sighs, running a comforting hand through the boy’s dark hair. “That’s major.”
“It was a flesh wound, hyung.”
Jeno smiles and gives Jisung a gentle pat on the head. “Which required surgery and stitches, so in my book, still pretty major, Sungie.”
Jisung huffs and pouts, but doesn’t bother arguing further, because like it or not, he’s still the one confined to the infirmary bed. Jeno feels the younger’s reluctant acceptance, and gives him a final pat before standing up and making his usual round about the infirmary. It’s a peaceful week—there hasn’t been any major incidents aside from Jisung being shot and Donghyuck spraining his ankle trying to carry him back.
No chemical explosions from Chenle’s lab.
No immediate life-threatening injury from the senior agents.
No Mark having anxiety attacks or Taeyong coming in with severe migraines.
He should’ve known it’s too good to be true.
No sooner has Jeno set aside his charts that Jaemin kicks open the door to the infirmary, strolling in like he owns the place. Jeno immediately turns to the new arrival, and even Jisung leans forward a little to watch as Jaemin strides forward. There’s an unfocused haze in his eyes and slight limp in his left leg that Jeno immediately zeroes in on.
“Jeno,” Jaemin slurs with a hiccup. “Heeeyyy…”
“Jaemin, what the fuck,” Jeno deadpans, staring at the bloody holes in Jaemin’s pants and the chunks of metal protruding from his skin. There is no logical way in hell he’s able to put weight on his leg like that with those injuries.
Jaemin shrugs languidly. It’s so obvious that he’s doped up on something strong. Jeno will have to have a word with Chenle about it later.
“I had an oopsies down in the lab,” he giggles. Jeno can see red spots forming on the floor by Jaemin’s foot. “Can you fix me?”
Jeno points at the nearest bed. “Go lie down, Jaemin. Now.”
Jaemin does as he’s told, and Jeno scrubs his hands down in record time before pulling on a pair of gloves and pulling out his surgical kit. He makes quick work of Jaemin’s pants, cutting the fabric of the left leg away and revealing the wound. It’s not as bad as Jeno initially expects, just four or five shards of shrapnel embedded in Jaemin’s lower thigh and upper calf.
“What the hell happened to you?” Jeno mutters as he prepares a syringe of local anesthesia. “Did you set off a grenade or something?”
Jaemin shrugs loosely. “Was testing out a gadget.”
“And was this gadget supposed to explode?”
“I don’t...think so?”
Jeno sighs and carefully injects the anesthesia. “How, Jaem? How can you do this to yourself? And on this leg? Are you kidding me?”
“Well...” Jaemin reaches past Jeno to roll his remaining pant leg up. The smooth white and silver of his bionic leg peeks through, unmarred and pristine compared to the mess of his biological leg.
Jeno sighs. He hates that fucking prosthetic leg. Not because of the fact that Jaemin’s an amputee or the matter of him using one, but because of the process that got him there.
They’ve all collectively agreed to never speak of the great Na Jaemin Dismemberment Incident ever again in their careers. Jeno still can’t eat properly after thinking about it.
It had been the first time Jaemin landed himself under Jeno’s care.
The experience has turned Jeno’s entire world upside-down and he even had an existential crisis afterwards, questioning his line of work and every life decision he’s ever made.
Worst thing about it is: Jeno can still remember every detail like it happened yesterday.
It’s been a particularly exhausting day, and Jeno had just returned from a 4-hour-long surgery to extract shrapnel from Yuta’s leg and side after the man had been airlifted from an explosion while he was on assignment. Doyoung had been beside himself with worry, and Donghyuck (who was on assignment with Yuta) was having a nervous breakdown, crying every two minutes about how Yuta is going to die and how it’s all his fault.
After the surgery, Jeno’s sure of two things: Yuta is fine and Donghyuck is an idiot.
Doyoung had hugged the living daylights out of Jeno the moment he told him of Yuta's condition, and Jeno can still feel his ribs throb from how hard the elder had crushed him. Doyoung might look slight in build, but that man has one hell of a grip, and if Jeno sees patches of blue starting to form on his skin because Doyoung squeezed him too hard, nobody has to know.
The noise outside the infirmary wing is faint at first—a couple muffled voices, a squeak of a shoe, and Jeno largely ignores it in favor of getting some much-needed rest. He tosses his clipboard onto his desk and washes his hands, getting ready to just eat a snack and take a nap.
Then when the yelling starts, Jeno is almost certain he’s hallucinating, because the voices sound awfully like Taeyong and Mark, which he thinks is very unlikely. The chief director’s supposed to be in his office four floors above the infirmary, and Mark left ten minutes ago to go home.
So when the doors to the infirmary burst open and Mark comes running in with no shirt and blood all over his hands, Jeno screams.
“Stop screaming!” Mark yells, running up to Jeno with a face of complete panic. “Jeno, we need your help! Now!”
“What?” Jeno collects himself enough to see Mark pointing frantically at the commotion from outside the door. “Who died? What happened?”
Mark doesn’t even get to answer, because at that moment, Jaemin comes through the open doors in a wheelchair, pushed by a wide-eyed Chenle and a frazzled Taeyong. And the weird thing isn’t the fact that both of them are covered in blood, or that Chenle’s clutching a small snorting pipe in his hands, or even that there’s a bloody piece of cloth (probably Mark’s shirt) tied where Jaemin’s right leg used to be.
The weird thing is that Jaemin’s giggling like a maniac, holding his own severed leg against his chest like some sort of stuffed animal as he bleeds out.
"Hey!" he greets chipperly. "Looky, Jeno! Look what I got!"
“Oh my god!” Jeno immediately jumps into action, paging every emergency medical personnel in the premises and finding a proper tourniquet to bind around the remainder of Jaemin’s leg.
“Jesus Christ,” Taeyong snaps, horrified as Jaemin bounces his leg in his lap. “What the fuck is this kid on?”
Chenle looks between the pipe in his hands and Jaemin, who’s now outright laughing as Jeno tightens the tourniquet around his thigh. “I don’t know...I forgot if I gave him morphine or cocaine.”
Jeno pulls out a small flashlight and shines it in Jaemin’s eyes. The boy’s lashes barely flutter, the whites of his eyes are bloodshot, and his pupils are so blown it’s almost impossible to even see the iris anymore.
“It’s cocaine,” Jeno concludes.
Taeyong’s eyes widen comically as he glares at Chenle. “What the f—what made you think it’s a good idea to give him cocaine? Where the hell did you even get cocaine from?”
Chenle shrugs. “Pain inhibition? I mean...he’d be too doped up to notice he’s in pain, sir.”
Taeyong grabs Chenle by the shoulders, ignoring the boy’s disgusted grimace as more blood is smeared on him. “How much cocaine did you give him?”
“Just one line,” Chenle says quickly, averting his eyes from Taeyong’s furious stare. “One line, sir. He’ll live.”
“JENO!” Taeyong screams.
“On it, sir!” Jeno pushes the emergency button on the nearest wall as a swarm of nurses flock in, followed by Kunhang, already decked in his surgical gown.
“He’s doped on cocaine, losing blood fast,” Jeno tells the nurses as they work together to lift him onto a gurney. “Get him into the OR, stat.”
The nurses rush out with Jaemin, and Kunhang meets Jeno’s eyes with an understanding he wishes he never has to see again.
“Get him back in one piece!” Mark hollers as Jeno leaves the infirmary. “You can’t let him die! Not in two pieces!”
Jaemin is, surprisingly, ecstatic that they’re unable to replant his leg onto his body.
“Awesome!” Jaemin feels over his stump carefully, one hand rubbing the smooth end of his thigh and the other running down his one remaining calf. “This is gonna be so so lit! I can finally begin my cyborg project! Oh my god, I can become like, real-life cyberpunk! Holy shit!”
Jeno however, is both mortified and severely disappointed. He’s not a specialist in the replantation aspect of surgery, and he technically failed to get Jaemin back in one piece. Mark is absolutely going to grill him for this and Taeyong is going to lose his mind.
But one look at the bright grin on Jaemin’s face, and Jeno feels the crushing emotions drain away.
Well, most of them, anyways.
“What’s with the long face?” Jaemin asks, voice softening as he rests his hand over Jeno’s. “I’m not dead, Jeno. You saved me.”
“I can’t…” Jeno looks down at the lumps under the blanket where Jaemin’s legs are, feeling his stomach drop at the sight of the shorter one. “I can’t believe this.”
“It’s just a leg. I’m still here,” Jaemin assures, stroking the back of Jeno’s hand gently. He’s sober now, awake, and as normal as ever. Jeno on the other hand, feels like something had been ripped from the very core of his being.
Like he’s the one missing a body part.
“Mark said to return you in one piece,” Jeno finally murmurs, eyes flickering between Jaemin’s face and the stump underneath the blankets. “I thought I could at least honor that.”
Jaemin scoffs. “Who cares what Mark says? He’s not the one who’s missing the damn leg or the one who had to perform the surgery.”
That somehow only makes Jeno feel worse. The guilt of not performing up to a standard and the fact that Jaemin is now permanently handicapped claws away at his insides, and Jeno wants to just break down and cry. Jaemin must see this, because his hand is enclosing over Jeno’s, lacing their fingers together with a certain steadiness that Jeno didn’t know he needs.
“It’s just a leg,” Jaemin says again. “No big deal. I can just make myself a new one.” He smiles—it’s that big toothy kind of grin that always indicates that he’s up to no good. “A better one.”
Jeno doesn’t like this, not at all. “Jaem—”
“C’mon, look at it my way,” Jaemin prompts. “I can finally make good use of all those cool bionic prosthetic designs I’ve been working on! I’m gonna be a cyborg, Jeno! It’s an opportunity!”
“The chief’s not gonna like that.” Jeno winces. “How’d you even lose your leg in the first place?”
Jaemin frowns as he thinks. “Uh...I was in the lab and working on this new retractable multi-bladed claw and I was testing it out.” He shrugs. “I guess I cut my leg by accident.”
“You cut your leg?” Jeno huffs in disbelief. “Oh, sure, you just cut your leg. You cut that shit clean off !”
“At least it was clean.”
Jeno heaves a sigh, counting to ten in his head so he doesn’t start yelling at Jaemin. It’s been a traumatic 24 hours, and he barely slept a wink because he’s had to perform two surgeries in the span of a single day. To say that Jeno’s seemingly endless patience is thinning would be an understatement.
“Hey,” Jaemin prompts gently, drawing Jeno’s attention to him. “I’ll prove it, Jeno. I’ll make myself the sickest bionic leg ever. It’ll blow your mind.” His eyes have a crazed gleam that immediately sets Jeno’s nerves on edge. “Like, think about it. A leg that can shoot projectiles or store blades. I can implement our latest neurotechnology to have it move with all the flexibility of a human leg, except better. Stronger. Can you imagine me running a marathon with that thing? I’ll be unbeatable!”
Jeno wants to believe Jaemin, because the boy is nothing short of a genius, but he also knows from experience that there are other aspects of intelligence that Jaemin is severely lacking in. And knowing Jaemin personally, his version of a bionic prosthetic is probably going to end up blowing up whatever’s left of his leg now.
“No explosives, no blades, nothing sharp or pointy or a threat to anyone’s physical safety,” Jeno lists, making sure to look Jaemin in the eye as he speaks. “None of that in your prosthetic.”
Jaemin pouts. “But—”
Jeno shakes his head firmly. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Not even—”
“Jaemin, no .”
“I mean, I can tone it down—”
“I said NO.”
Jaemin scowls and slumps back against his pillows, letting go of Jeno’s hand to cross his arms over his chest. “Okay, fine . Killjoy.”
Jeno rolls his eyes. “Don’t sass me. When the chief director doesn’t come up to you demanding that you scrap your invention immediately, you’ll thank me then.”
Jaemin’s scowl melts into a smirk. “He doesn’t have to know.”
Those are some pretty damning words in Jeno’s opinion, but he decides to just let Jaemin do his thing and suffer Taeyong’s wrath on his own. Jeno’s a medic, not a goddamn babysitter.
Especially not for a nineteen-year-old boy who makes gadgets so dangerous they should be illegal and has no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. The missing leg is evidence enough.
Jaemin’s talking again, but Jeno must’ve tuned out the first half of it, because the first words he catches are “rocket boosters” and “retractable blades”.
“—I can become something outta a Kingsman movie!” Jaemin exclaims. “Like that chick with the knife prosthetics? How sick would that be?”
“You’re hopeless, Jaemin,” Jeno sighs as he turns to leave. It’s only been a couple hours since Jaemin woke up and Jeno’s already regretting not putting him under a heavier dose of anesthesia.
“Y’know, you should really work on your bedside manners, Jeno,” Jaemin calls, cackling as Jeno pulls the curtains around his bed closed. “Do you walk out on all of your patients like this?”
“Only the ones who send themselves to me,” Jeno deadpans, ears ringing with Jaemin’s boisterous laughter as he makes his way into his office.
“Technically, Chenle and the chief sent me here!”
Jeno makes a point to slam his office door shut, effectively blocking out all the noise from the infirmary.
God, he really needs a nap.
And an aspirin.
Jeno compares the two legs in front of him—one slender, made of flesh and neatly stitched up, and the other a sleek, artificial biomechanical prosthetic.
“One day,” he sighs, pulling out a roll of gauze to bandage the stitches with. “Can there be one day when you don’t put yourself at risk of losing another limb? Isn’t one enough?”
Jaemin giggles, still high off whatever Chenle gave him. “I’ll try. No guarantees, but I’ll try.”
Jeno fastens the gauze in place and stands up, observing Jaemin’s eyes under the bright lights of the infirmary. His pupil is constricted and the whites aren’t concerningly red, but what worries Jeno is that when he puts his hand over Jaemin’s eyes, the pupils don’t widen to accommodate the dimmer lighting.
“What did Chenle give you?” he asks, taking one of Jaemin’s wrists in his hands to test the other boy’s pulse.
“I think morphine,” Jaemin drawls. “I’m pretty sure it’s morphine this time.” He frowns, and it’s a loose expression, more like a strained pout. “Cocaine was bad. I don’t like cocaine.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Jeno shudders at the memory of the last time Jaemin was high. “Don’t ever take anything from Chenle again.”
“A little hard not to when the moment you scream he’s got his hand full of powder and a pipe shoved up your nose,” Jaemin snips back, sounding just a tiny bit spiteful. “That shit hurt, y’know?”
Jeno has a lot of questions for Chenle, beginning with how and why the boy even has all those illegal drugs in the first place. He sets them aside in a little mental folder of future interrogation questions and focuses on finding a spare pair of pants for Jaemin, since the latter’s current pair hangs off his pelvis in strips now.
He manages to find a pair of scrub pants in a drawer and a pair of crutches nearby, and takes both to Jaemin.
“Thanks.” Jaemin takes the pants and stares down at his crotch, unmoving. Jeno follows his line of sight, and if he was a lesser man, Jeno would be embarrassed.
But this is Jaemin, and Jeno has fixed enough problems near the guy’s crotch to feel unfazed.
“What?”
“Can you...help me?” Jaemin slurs, motioning at the part of his pants still wrapped around his unharmed leg. “I still feel funny.”
The morphine is obviously still wreaking havoc on his system, and Jeno doesn’t hesitate to pick up his scissors again and cut away the rest of Jaemin’s pants. The prosthetic comes to full view—shiny and white against the peachy tone of Jaemin’s skin. Its thin wires wrap delicately around black cables and cords, and are all encased in clear plastic and wrapped on either side with smooth ivory-toned panels.
Jeno may not be a big robotics person, but he will admit (very begrudgingly) that Jaemin’s leg is beautiful. The prosthetic is the product of Jaemin's many botched (and confiscated) attempts of creating the ultimate mechanical leg, and Jeno’s just grateful that Jaemin at least took his words to heart and didn’t go and create some laser-shooting, blade-wielding monstrosity.
Jaemin’s bionic ankle rolls lazily, and Jeno traces the prosthetic’s motion with the shifting of muscles from Jaemin’s thigh. Neurotechnology has come a long way, and even though he doesn’t dabble much in the field, Jeno can appreciate the wonders it creates.
“Are you just gonna stare...or are you gonna...help me put some pants on?” Jaemin’s head lolls to the side lazily as he stares down at Jeno. “C’mon, Jeno...it’s chilly.”
“Right.” Jeno carefully guides Jaemin’s feet into the pant legs, and tugs the pants up his legs, Jaemin doing his best to shift around so Jeno can get the waistband around his hips. Jaemin’s skin is marred with all types of scars, Jeno notices, and he makes a point of observing every one he comes across.
There’s a couple small laceration scars along the outside of Jaemin’s good leg as well as a faded burn scar—no doubt from some lab accident. His knee has a small, rough patch of scar tissue that hints at a badly scraped knee, and a couple tiny, barely-noticeable circles that Jeno knows for certain are from puncture wounds.
So much hurt for one person.
“Hey Jaemin.”
“Hmm?”
“Why do I only see you when you’re hurt?” Jeno murmurs as he tugs the pants higher up Jaemin’s hips. “Why do you always hurt yourself?”
“Why?” Jaemin brings up a hand to lazily card through Jeno’s hair. “Dunno…part of the job, probably…”
Jeno frowns, face level with Jaemin’s shoulder and refusing to look into the latter’s eyes. “But why? Why can’t you be more careful?”
“I try.” Jaemin shrugs nonchalantly and gives Jeno’s head a gentle pat. “Shit happens sometimes.”
“Jaemin,” Jeno sighs, leaning forward to press his forehead against Jaemin’s shoulder. His chest aches as he lets himself press against Jaemin, feeling the ridges of a jagged scar under the latter’s clavicle. “Please. You only have one body. Don’t break it anymore.”
Jaemin smiles, a faint tug of his lips to the side, and envelops Jeno in a loose hug. “Aww...you worried about me, Jeno?”
“Yeah.” Jeno tilts his head towards Jaemin’s neck, seeing the faded red splotches from a mild burn. “I can’t stand this anymore, Jaem. I don’t wanna see you get hurt.”
Jaemin rubs large, soothing circles over Jeno’s back, his touch gentle and languid. “Are those doctor’s orders?”
Jeno shakes his head. “No...just...a personal favor.” He tilts his head up, barely enough to catch the corner of Jaemin’s eye. “Please.”
“Well,” Jaemin rests his cheek atop Jeno’s head, lips pursing against Jeno’s hair. “Can’t say no to you, can I?”
Jeno hums, content with the answer for now. “Guess not. Oh, also…"
“Mm?”
“For the love of god, the next time Chenle comes to you with a pipe, don’t inhale. It could be meth for all we know.”
Jaemin frowns. “Meth is illegal.”
“Yeah, well so is cocaine.”
“...I’ll hold my breath...”