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Wooyoung’s head was pounding as he woke up, fighting the urge to be sick before he even managed to move. He vaguely remembered his head starting to hurt before he’d gone to bed the previous evening, but it hadn’t been all that serious and he’d simply popped a couple of ibuprofen right before bed assuming that it would go away. Wooyoung should have known, after everything that had happened in the past year or so, that it wouldn’t be enough.
The headaches had become a fairly common occurrence for Wooyoung after his trip to the emergency room months earlier, although he had done his best not to be obvious about it. With all of the things that had gone wrong for the group since then - Jongho’s mental break, Yeosang’s sudden illness and subsequent heart surgery, Mingi’s anxiety diagnosis, and finally San’s bout with COVID - Wooyoung hadn’t wanted to put any additional stress on their managers or Hongjoong. Instead, Wooyoung had been using the pills he’d been given at the hospital to medicate himself so that he could just get through the bad days - especially during their Kingdom stages. Unfortunately, Wooyoung had run out of the medications during his last major headache a couple of weeks earlier, just before their Deja Vu stages had ended, and he knew that this wasn’t going to be a good day.
Sitting up was a bad idea; Wooyoung found his head spinning as he tried not to puke all over the floor of the room he shared with Yeosang and Jongho. But Wooyoung desperately needed to get up and find something to take for his headache, or he definitely wouldn’t be getting any more sleep. And given the fact that it was still dark in the room when Wooyoung was finally able to get his eyes to open, Wooyoung knew that it was far too early for him to be awake for the day.
If sitting up was a bad idea, standing was probably the stupidest thing Wooyoung had ever done. Wooyoung gripped onto the safety bar of Yeosang’s upper bunk, praying that he wouldn’t find himself collapsing in the middle of their room before he could even get more than a couple of steps. He had to close his eyes, breathing through the surge of pain in his head and swallowing back the bile that had begun to slowly rise up the back of his throat. It took a few moments for Wooyoung to be able to move, and he could feel his hands shaking as he began slowly making his way towards the kitchen, where he knew they had a bin full of various medications they might need. Even though he knew that it wouldn’t be enough to completely take away the pain in his head, Wooyoung was sure that they at least had some kind of over-the-counter painkiller that he could take to dull the pain and make things more bearable.
Wooyoung wasn’t sure how long it took him to actually make it to the doorway of their room; he was too dizzy to really process anything, and he was really struggling to keep himself from vomiting all over his own feet. He was both hot and cold at the same time as though he was going to pass out, which scared Wooyoung almost more than the fact that his headaches hadn’t gone away in the months since he’d first started having issues with them. If anything, they were getting worse.
“Woo…? What are you doing?” Wooyoung couldn’t help whimpering as the light in the hallway clicked on at Seonghwa’s question, collapsing against the wall and trying to cover his eyes to protect them from the sudden bright light. “Aish… Woo? Are you okay?”
Wooyoung felt Seonghwa wrapping an arm around his chest, as the older man gently helped him down to sit on the floor. “Hurts, hyung,” Wooyoung whispered softly, barely loud enough for the elder man to hear him.
“Your head again?” Seonghwa asked, dropping his voice to match Wooyoung’s low volume. “Where are your meds, aegi? You still have the painkillers and stuff from the hospital, right?”
“Gone…” Wooyoung whimpered, letting himself lean into Seonghwa’s side as he tried not to vomit all over the older man.
“Okay… I’m going to lay you down, and then I’m going to go see what I can find to help with your headache,” Seonghwa commented. The older man was gentle as he repositioned Wooyoung’s body, leaving him on his side with his arm underneath his head so that he was as comfortable as possible. “I’m going to be right back, okay? Just try to rest.”
Wooyoung didn’t have much choice but to do as he was told, trying to just breathe through the pain in his head as he waited for Seonghwa to come back.
“Hey… can you sit up for me, Woo-yah?” Hongjoong’s voice asked, after what seemed like forever. Wooyoung whimpered as he felt someone placing an ice pack against the back of his neck, shivering against the cold. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but if you’re having another migraine it should help. I can’t give you anything for the pain on an empty stomach.”
Wooyoung took a breath, slowly forcing himself to sit up with a bit of help from Hongjoong and Seonghwa. “I checked the medicine cabinet… his meds from the last migraine really are gone,” Seonghwa commented softly.
“Have you been having migraines all this time, Woo-yah?” Hongjoong asked, as Wooyoung choked back the bile that was trying to come up as he sat there. “Wooyoung-ah?”
Thankfully, Seonghwa seemed to realize what was going on and the group’s eldest had a bucket under his chin before Wooyoung lost the battle to keep himself from vomiting. It didn’t help the pain in his head at all; if anything, Wooyoung’s headache was even worse after he got sick than it already had been. “He’s in really bad shape, Joong-ah…” Seonghwa whispered. “I’m worried about him… if he’s been having headaches all this time and using the meds from the hospital to treat them, we could be dealing with something really serious here…”
“I know,” Hongjoong replied, as the leader gently stroked a hand through Wooyoung’s hair with a sigh. “I think we need to take him to the hospital… I’m not sure that I feel comfortable trying to treat this ourselves, when he’s already getting sick. I’m going to go call Manager-hyung, if you’ll stay with him…”
“Of course,” Seonghwa replied, gently repositioning Wooyoung’s body so that he was leaning against the eldest’s chest instead of the leader. “Should we call for an ambulance?”
“Let me talk to Manager-hyung first… if he gets sick again, or if anything else bad happens then definitely call,” Hongjoong replied. “Hold on for a little while longer, Woo-yah… we’re going to get you some relief.”
Wooyoung tried not to think about the fact that his stomach was still churning as Seonghwa adjusted his position so that the ice pack was against the back of his neck again, gently rubbing his back and doing his best to provide some kind of comfort as they waited. As much as he hated the fact that he was causing more stress for his members, he couldn’t help thinking that it was kind of nice to have someone taking care of him. “Do you think you could drink some water, aegi?” Seonghwa asked softly.
“No…” Wooyoung whined, not opening his eyes. Just the thought of trying to put anything in his stomach made him feel sick again.
“Let’s just try a sip, okay? We don’t want you to get dehydrated,” Seonghwa pushed. Wooyoung felt a bottle held up to his lips, which he hadn’t even noticed the older man bringing back to him or opening. “Just a little, okay? Just to help keep you from getting even worse.”
Wooyoung opened his mouth just enough to let Seonghwa help him take a sip, trying to swallow the small amount of water despite the fact that he felt as if he might be sick again at any moment. It didn’t sit well with his stomach, and Wooyoung shuddered as he tried his best to swallow back the bile rising up his throat. Thankfully, Seonghwa seemed to understand and he brought the bucket back just in time to make sure that Wooyoung didn’t make a mess of the floor.
Wooyoung didn’t remember being laid down on the floor again, or the blanket that was laid across his body. All he really knew was that his head was still throbbing, and he was afraid to move for fear that he would make himself sick again. Everything still felt disconnected and unreal. “He’s thrown up twice… the second time he ended up passing out on us, which is when we called,” Hongjoong’s voice commented from somewhere off in the distance.
“How long has he been having migraines?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
“The first one we know of was a little over a year ago… but we don’t know how often he’s been having them or how bad they’ve been since then. He’s been hiding them from us…” Hongjoong replied.
“Okay… does he have any other health issues that you know about?” the unfamiliar voice continued, as Wooyoung felt someone placing an oxygen mask over his face.
“Just an old back injury that gives him trouble sometimes… he’s usually pretty healthy,” Hongjoong replied.
“Okay… let’s get an IV started, so that we can get him stabilized and ready for transport,” the unfamiliar voice replied.
Wooyoung couldn’t help whining as the ice pack was moved away from his neck, instantly increasing the pain in his head and making him feel as though he was going to be sick again. “Hey, you’re okay, Wooyoung-ssi,” another unfamiliar voice commented. “You’re going to feel a big stick, okay?” Wooyoung whimpered as he felt the needle going into his arm, stopped from pulling away only by the fact that someone was holding his arm still.
“You’re okay, Woo-yah,” Seonghwa’s voice reassured, as a hand gently stroked through his hair. “We’re going to get you some help now. Everything is going to be okay.”
***
Wooyoung pulled the jacket he’d been given tighter around his body, closing his eyes as he leaned his head against the cool window of the van their manager had brought to pick him up from the hospital. He honestly didn’t remember much of the morning; between being in and out of consciousness from the pain and the heavy painkillers he’d been given, Wooyoung honestly wasn’t sure that he wanted to remember; what little he could remember of the migraine from before he’d passed out was absolutely miserable, and he still felt pretty awful despite the fact that he had been given medication to deal with all of the symptoms of his migraine.
“I want you to go straight back to bed once we get back to the dorm…” their manager began, as they made a turn. Wooyoung forced his eyes open, realizing that they were in their neighborhood rather than heading towards the KQ building.
“But practice…” Wooyoung began.
“You’re taking a few days off,” the manager replied, shaking his head. “I spoke with the doctor who treated you at the hospital, and he suggested that you shouldn’t work until after your appointment with the neurologist tomorrow. At the very least, you’re going to go try to get some rest today so that you don’t make your symptoms any worse before we’re able to get your prescriptions filled and hopefully get some answers…”
Wooyoung nodded, sighing and closing his eyes as he leaned back against the window. He didn’t want to miss dance practice; Wooyoung loved dancing, and he hated anything that stopped him from doing his actual job. But Wooyoung realized that it was probably for the best that he didn’t try to go to practice, given the fact that the music would be loud and that would definitely not be good if the headache came back as the medication he’d been given at the hospital began to wear off.
“I’m going to pick up your prescriptions after I drop you off. Is there anything specific that you want to eat?” the manager asked, as he turned onto their street.
“I’m not really hungry,” Wooyoung admitted. “The nausea’s kind of starting to come back again…”
“I’ll bring back something easy on your stomach, then. You have to at least try to eat something… you said earlier that you haven’t really eaten all day, and that can’t be helping your current situation,” the older man replied.
Wooyoung nodded slowly, knowing that the man was right; he really wasn’t sure how much of the weak, sick feeling he had was from the migraine and the medications he’d been given to treat that, and how much of it was from not having eaten anything. The only thing he knew wasn’t a cause was dehydration, given the fact that he’d been hooked up to IV fluids most of the day.
Wooyoung was thankful that the manager decided to walk up with him, because the effort it took to get up to their dorm was a little more than he was really up for in that moment. By the time they’d made it to the living room couch, he was shaking slightly and starting to feel like he might pass out again. “Okay, new plan… you’re going to sit down and eat whatever I can find in the kitchen before I go pick up your prescriptions so that I’m sure you aren’t going to pass out trying to go to the bathroom while I’m gone,” the man commented, once he’d safely deposited Wooyoung on the closest end of the couch.
“Yeah, okay…” Wooyoung replied, closing his eyes and leaning back into the couch. He didn’t have the energy to argue about it, and honestly Wooyoung was willing to try just about anything to get his stomach to stop churning again.
“Okay… sit up for a minute and eat this.” Wooyoung forced his eyes open, looking up at the bowl of instant rice and bottle of water the man held out to him. Wooyoung took the food and spoon slowly, taking a tentative bite in the hopes that it would help his stomach rather than making things worse.
Wooyoung had managed about half of the bowl before the manager spoke again. “Drink some water, too… I know you aren’t dehydrated, but I don’t want that to end up happening if you get sick again before all of this is over,” the man commented. Wooyoung nodded, taking the offered bottle.
“My head is kind of starting to hurt again,” Wooyoung admitted, after he’d taken a couple of sips of water.
The manager nodded, standing up from where he had been scrolling on his phone while Wooyoung ate. “Do you think you’ll be okay while I run out to pick up those prescriptions?” the man asked.
“Yeah… I feel better, other than the headache trying to start up again,” Wooyoung replied.
“Okay… but I want you to text and let me know if anything weird happens while I’m gone. Even if you just feel dizzy or nauseated,” the manager commented.
Wooyoung nodded slowly, putting the bowl of rice down on the table. His headache was definitely starting to make itself known again, and Wooyoung really didn’t want to be sitting up or trying to eat if it got anywhere near as intense as it had been in the early hours of that morning. “I think I’m just going to go lay down now…” he began.
“You need to eat more than that, Woo-yah…” the manager replied, shaking his head.
“I can’t right now, hyung… I really just need to go lay down,” Wooyoung replied softly, closing his eyes.
The manager sighed. “At least take the water with you… letting yourself get dehydrated is only going to make your symptoms worse, and I really don’t want to have to take you back to the hospital right now,” the man replied, gently squeezing Wooyoung’s shoulder. “I’ll be back soon, and then we’ll get you something for that headache. Try to get some rest.”
Wooyoung nodded, slowly getting himself to his feet and taking the bottle of water with him to the room he shared with Jongho and Yeosang. While he was still feeling a little unsteady on his feet, he definitely felt better after he’d eaten a little bit and it was a lot easier to get himself to his bed and laying down than it had been to get up to the dorm from the van.
Wooyoung didn’t remember falling asleep, but he woke up to the sensation of someone running their hand through his hair and gently scratching at his scalp. The sensation wasn’t as comforting as it usually was, and Wooyoung couldn’t help groaning as he realized that his headache was still there and the nausea was starting to come back again. “C’mon, Woo-yah… you need to wake up so that you can eat and take your meds,” Seonghwa’s voice commented softly, as the elder moved his hand down Wooyoung’s back. “Manager-hyung got some soup for you, and he said that you need to eat something more before you can have the painkillers for your head.”
“Is he sleeping?” Hongjoong’s voice asked, from what sounded like the doorway.
“I’m up,” Wooyoung muttered, although he didn’t immediately move to get up. “I just… it hurts…”
“Okay… do you think you could sit up and eat here, if we brought some soup to you?” Seonghwa asked softly.
“Maybe…?” Wooyoung honestly wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to actually keep anything down, but he had to at least try; the last thing he wanted was to be taken back to the hospital because he couldn’t at least try to get food and his medication down.
“I’ll bring some soup and his meds in here, if you can get him to sit up and drink some more water,” Hongjoong commented.
Wooyoung forced his eyes open, wincing at how bright it was in the room. “Can we turn the lights down, hyung?” he asked softly. “My head is really hurting again…”
“Yeah… here, drink some water,” Seonghwa commented, passing Wooyoung his bottle from earlier in the afternoon before the eldest got up and moved to turn on the only lamp in the room before he moved to turn off the overhead light. The lower light was significantly easier on Wooyoung’s eyes, and he could feel his headache easing just a little as his eyes adjusted to the adjustment. “Better?”
“Yeah… thanks, hyung,” Wooyoung replied. He took a few sips of the water, before he moved to pull his jacket a little tighter around his torso. “Mianhamnida…”
“We’ll talk about everything later, okay? Right now, we just need to get you fed and feeling better,” Seonghwa replied.
“I have everything,” Hongjoong commented, as the leader came back into the room with a bowl and a plastic carrier bag that he sat down at the foot of Wooyoung’s bed. “Hyung said that there’s some nausea medicine in here that we can give you before you try to eat, if you need it…”
“I think I’m okay,” Wooyoung replied softly. “The nausea’s not that bad, and it got better when I ate earlier. I’d rather save the pills for when it’s really bad…”
Seonghwa nodded. “Okay… you eat while we sort out your prescriptions and figure out what you need to take tonight,” the eldest commented, as Hongjoong passed over the bowl of soup and a spoon.
Wooyoung mostly focused on eating the soup as the two older members looked through the bag of medication their manager had picked up from the pharmacy for him, reading over the instructions and sorting out the bottles so that it was fairly clear what they needed in that moment and what could wait.
“Do you think you’ll feel up to talking for a few minutes after you’ve eaten?” Hongjoong asked, once the medication had been sorted and placed on top of the small table next to Wooyoung’s bed.
“Maybe…” Wooyoung began, not looking up at the older man. “I didn’t want to cause any problems, hyung…”
Hongjoong sighed. “Then you should have told us that you were still having migraines, Woo-yah… we could have gotten you a doctor’s appointment months ago so that you wouldn’t have to suffer like this,” Hongjoong replied.
“What were you planning on doing when you ran out of the medicine they gave you the first time?” Seonghwa asked, moving to sit down next to Wooyoung and put an arm around his waist as he ate.
Wooyoung shrugged. “I didn’t really have a plan… I just knew that I didn’t want to worry anyone,” he replied. “I was managing okay with the medicine they gave me the first time around when they got bad, or just with ibuprofen when they were just kind of annoying instead…”
“You mean it was happening that frequently?” Hongjoong interrupted, obviously shocked. “How often were you having headaches, Woo-yah?”
Wooyoung shrugged. “A couple of times a week? They’d only be bad like one or two days a month…” he replied. “It wasn’t really consistent. Sometimes it would be a couple of days in a row, and other times I might not have a headache at all for a couple of weeks. It was really bad during Kingdom, but then I didn’t have any bad ones for a while until towards the end of promotions for Deja Vu… that was the last bad one until today.”
“How have you been functioning like this?” Seonghwa asked, squeezing him gently. “With everything we do… how can you put yourself through that?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Wooyoung asked. “There wasn’t a good time… there were always other things that were more important for everyone to worry about…”
“Yah… your health isn’t something to be ignored, Woo-yah,” Hongjoong interrupted. “Whatever we all had going on, it wasn’t more important than this. Especially not when it seems like it’s been getting progressively worse…”
“It hasn’t…” Wooyoung began.
“You were vomiting, and you passed out because you were in so much pain,” Seonghwa reminded gently. “That’s a lot worse than the first migraine you had. And we can’t really know exactly what’s been going on, because you’ve been medicating yourself and hiding the fact that you weren’t feeling well. The fact that we don’t know what’s going on is really concerning…”
Wooyoung nodded, realizing that the two older members were right - he really should have said something a lot sooner. “I just… I knew that you were already stressed out dealing with everything else that was going on, hyung,” Wooyoung replied, finally looking up at Hongjoong. “I didn’t want to put any more stress on you… half the group has had some kind of serious health issue come up since everything started, and we’ve been so busy. I didn’t want to make anything worse…”
“Unfortunately, you probably did end up making your own situation worse,” Hongjoong replied. “Listen… whatever we have going on, your health is more important. We have to take care of our bodies. And that’s even more important when there’s something that could be really serious going on. You have to be honest with us about your headaches from now on, Wooyoung-ah. We need to know if you’re feeling off, even if it’s just a normal headache and not an actual migraine, so that we can make sure you aren’t overworking yourself when you aren’t well.”
“And you have got to get these migraines treated and under control,” Seonghwa added. “Whatever is going on, you can’t keep going like this. If you were taking that much medication for these headaches… aegi, that could be really bad for your body.”
Wooyoung took a deep breath, nodding. “I… I know you’re right, hyung,” he replied. “I guess I didn’t think about that, because I was so worried about making everyone else worry too much…”
“It’s part of our job as your hyungs to worry about you,” Seonghwa replied.
“Eat some more of your soup, Woo-yah, before it gets cold,” Hongjoong instructed, reaching out to gently stroke his hair.
Wooyoung nodded, going back to the little bit of soup that was left and finishing it off while Hongjoong and Seonghwa watched. By the time he’d finished it, Hongjoong had two pills pulled out of the bottles for him. “What are they?” Wooyoung asked.
“It looks like this one is for the headache you currently have,” Hongjoong said, pointing to one of the pills in his palm. “And this one isn’t really explained, but it said for you to take it twice a day until it’s gone. There are only a few pills in the bottle…”
“Whatever it is, you should take it. At least until you can see the neurologist tomorrow and get a better idea of what’s going on and what you need to do next to get better,” Seonghwa reasoned. “Your doctor today gave you these for a reason. So it must help somehow.”
Wooyoung nodded, taking the pills from Hongjoong and swallowing them, followed with some water to wash them down. “Do you need the nausea medication, too?” Hongjoong asked.
“I think I’m okay,” Wooyoung replied, shaking his head. “Which one is it, though? In case I need it later…”
“I’ll leave it the closest to your bed, so that it’s easy to grab,” Hongjoong replied.
“I’m going to swap places with Jongho-yah tonight, too,” Seonghwa added. “I don’t want you to have to get up if you’re so sick that you need help… this way I’m just in the next bed if you need anything.”
Wooyoung nodded slowly. “Thank you, hyungs.”
“Go to sleep now, okay? I’ll bring another bottle of water and some crackers in here, in case you need them to help with the nausea later,” Seonghwa commented, standing up and taking the empty bowl from Wooyoung’s hands. “We’ll talk more when you’re feeling better.”