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Jongho stared down at his phone, taking a deep breath as he tried to process the information he’d just been given. He didn’t want to get this kind of news; if he was being honest, it was the last thing he’d ever wanted to hear. But Jongho was thankful that he was at least being given advance notice that the day he’d been dreading was happening, far sooner than he’d ever expected it to.
“Jjongie?” Seonghwa asked, as the group’s eldest came around the corner to find him. Jongho had excused himself from the practice room to take the phone call during their last break, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to even think about going back despite the fact that he’d been gone for far too long. “Is everything okay?”
Jongho shook his head slowly, wishing that he could figure out how to explain everything going on in his head without divulging all of his deepest, darkest secrets. “Is it your grandmother?” Seonghwa asked softly, moving a bit closer and putting a hand on Jongho’s shoulder lightly.
“No,” Jongho replied, shaking his head slowly. “Halmeoni’s fine…”
“Are you okay?” Seonghwa asked, moving so that his arm was wrapped around Jongho’s shoulders. Jongho took a deep breath, turning and burying his face into the older man’s shoulder and closing his eyes for a moment. There was a brief moment of hesitation, before Jongho felt Seonghwa pulling him into an actual hug. “Hey… I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
Jongho let himself relax into the older man’s embrace, fighting back the tears that were beginning to gather in the corners of his eyes. The last thing he wanted was to deal with the fact that his father was being released from prison in the midst of preparations for the rescheduled European leg of their tour, when they needed to be focused on their music and what they would be doing in the next few months. It was just too much - too much stress, too much pressure for Jongho to actually comprehend everything.
“What’s going on?” Jongho could hear Hongjoong’s voice coming from somewhere nearby, but he didn’t move to look for the leader.
“I’m not sure… I came to check on him, and he was really pale and kind of shaky,” Seonghwa replied, rubbing Jongho’s back. “He said that his halmeoni is fine, but when I asked if he was okay he sort of collapsed in on me like this. I’m worried, Joong…”
Jongho felt a hand gently stroking through his hair. “Let me take him,” Hongjoong replied softly, as the leader gently pried Jongho away from Seonghwa’s chest. The eldest seemed to hesitate for a moment. “Please, Hwa… let me handle this.”
Seonghwa finally let go of Jongho enough that he could be transferred into Hongjoong’s waiting arms, and he willingly moved to lean against the smaller man instead. “Come on, aegi… we’ll go to the studio to talk, okay?” Hongjoong suggested, before he moved to guide Jongho down the hall past their dance studio and away from the rest of the group so that they could get some privacy for the conversation that was to come.
Jongho was thankful for the large sofa in the room once Hongjoong got him inside, where Hongjoong quickly guided him to sit down before closing the doors and making sure no one would interrupt them unexpectedly. “Okay… tell me what’s going on,” Hongjoong commented, once he’d come back to sit next to Jongho. Thankfully, the leader seemed to understand that Jongho needed some physical affection for a change, and he was quick to put his arm back around Jongho’s shoulders once Jongho leaned into Hongjoong’s side.
“My dad is getting out,” Jongho replied softly, not looking at the older man. “He’s being paroled.”
There was a moment of silence, as Hongjoong stroked a hand through Jongho’s hair slowly. “Was that the phone call?” Hongjoong asked. Jongho nodded, closing his eyes. “Aish… and that’s why you’re upset.”
“I’m terrified,” he replied. “I don’t want to deal with him, hyung… I don’t want to deal with any of this any more…”
“But you have a no contact order, don’t you?” Hongjoong asked. “They have ways to protect you from him, even now… you’re still a victim, and you have a right to that protection.”
Jongho took a deep breath, sighing. “What if it isn’t enough, hyung?” he asked softly. “I don’t trust my father to follow the order… he’s never cared before, so why would he care now? What does he have to lose?”
Hongjoong sighed, pulling Jongho a little closer. “We need to take it to the company… the managers need to know what’s going on, so that we can all work together to keep you safe, aegi,” Hongjoong replied. “I’m not saying that you have to tell anyone else what’s happened to you, but you do at least need to let them know that there’s a potential problem.”
Jongho nodded slowly, closing his eyes. “I know,” he replied.
“I think it might also be a good idea if you called your therapist, before things have a chance to get out of hand,” Hongjoong added. Jongho sighed, letting his tears starting to fall as he realized everything that was about to start happening because of his father’s parole. “I know that you aren’t a fan, but I’m worried that you’re going to get too far into your head again, and that you’re going to get hurt because of it. And I don’t want to see you in that kind of pain again.”
“I’m not that bad…” Jongho began.
“Jjongie… the point is that you don’t get to that point again,” Hongjoong explained. “We don’t want you to be in that position. We don’t want you to be anywhere close to that bad off ever again, because that was terrifying. We want you to be safe.”
Jongho took a deep breath. “I just… I need a minute,” he replied softly.
“Okay,” Hongjoong replied. “We can take a minute. You’re here and you’re safe. That’s what’s important right now.”
There was a soft knock at the door, and Jongho found himself quickly wiping away the tears for fear that it was one of his members. It was bad enough that Seonghwa knew something was wrong with him; he really didn’t want to have the entire group stressed out about his mental health again, when they had finally all gotten to a good place. Thankfully, when Jongho looked up it was just one of their managers ducking into the room with a couple of bottles of water.
“Seonghwa-yah said that you might need some help in here…” the man began, closing the door softly behind him. “Are you hurt, Jongho-yah?”
Jongho shook his head quickly, relaxing slightly because he knew that he wasn’t going to have to go into an in-depth explanation of the situation. Their managers knew the basics of his past, and he wouldn’t need to go into much detail for the man to understand why he was in such bad shape from the news he’d just received. “I got a phone call from the prosecutor’s office that handled my father’s case,” Jongho replied. “He’s being let out on parole. He’ll be out by the end of the week.”
The manager nodded, handing Jongho one of the bottles of water. “But you have a restraining order, don’t you?” the man asked.
“There’s a no contact order, because of the charges he went to prison for,” Jongho replied. “I can file for a civil protective order once he’s released, but that’s going to cause a giant mess and there’s no away to keep something like that away from Dispatch or the newspapers…”
“And that would mean having your past on public display,” the manager replied, nodding slowly.
Jongho took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “I thought I would have more time before I had to deal with this… I didn’t think he would be eligible for parole so quickly,” Jongho replied. He took a sip of his water, before he spoke again. “Maybe I should tell the rest of the hyungs… at least that way they won’t be so shocked when it does come out…”
“That’s your decision to make,” Hongjoong replied. “You don’t have to tell anyone your story if you don’t want to - that’s your choice. But if you choose to tell them yourself, you get to control how they hear everything, rather than having to do damage control after the fact.”
“You know that the company has your back here,” the manager added. “The only time we’re going to make you talk about it is if your mental health is at risk, and we need you to seek help for your own safety. But we’re going to support you through whatever you need to do in order to be safe.”
***
Jongho didn’t like the way everyone seemed to be staring at him as he and Hongjoong reentered the practice room, almost as if they already knew that something was seriously wrong. Not that he really blamed them; he felt fairly certain that he looked like something was wrong. Even with some extra time to sit and calm down in the studio, Jongho knew that he likely still looked like he had been crying. But Jongho also knew that he was doing the right thing by telling the rest of the members; if his father came looking for him, it was very likely that the other members would end up in danger as well, and Jongho didn’t want to leave them unaware of what could potentially be coming in the future.
“Guys… Jongho-yah needs to talk to everyone,” Hongjoong commented, guiding Jongho to sit before the leader sat down next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. Jongho leaned into Hongjoong’s embrace, thankful to have the leader by his side. Even if it wasn’t the ideal circumstances for Jongho to be telling his hyungs about this situation, at least he knew that he had Hongjoong’s support through it all.
“Is everything okay?” Yunho asked, as the rest of the group joined them and formed a circle sitting on the floor. “You look pale, Jjongie…”
“I need to tell you guys something…” Jongho began, looking down at his hands so that he wouldn’t have to look at the other men’s faces as he explained. He didn’t want to see the hurt or betrayal on their faces as he told them all that he’d been keeping a secret from them for so many years. “I told you guys that I grew up with my grandparents, starting in my second year of middle school. But I never talked about why I was living with them…”
Jongho took a deep breath as he felt Hongjoong squeezing him gently. “My eomma died not long after I was born… I don’t really know what happened, because no one has ever told me. My father got remarried before I turned two, but neither one of them really wanted me. They were awful to me…”
“One day at school, my shirt got pulled up enough that one of the teachers saw a bunch of bruises they’d left behind…” Jongho commented softly. “They’d convinced me that I was worthless… that no one would care about me, so it wasn’t worth telling anyone. But that teacher… she was horrified by what she’d seen, and she wouldn’t let me just brush it off like it was nothing like I always had in the past. She kept asking questions, until I finally broke down and told her everything that had been going on for so many years…”
“Aish…” Wooyoung’s voice commented from across the room.
“But they got in trouble, right?” San asked softly, as the ’99-liner moved a little closer to Jongho and gently rested a hand on Jongho’s knee. “They went to prison… that’s why you went to live with your grandparents, right?”
Jongho nodded slowly. “But now my father’s getting out,” he replied. “I have a no contact order, but I don’t trust him to comply with the rules of the order… especially not when I’m the reason he went to prison in the first place.”
“He went to prison because of what he did to you… not because of anything you did,” Mingi commented. “None of that is your fault, Jjongie.”
Jongho took a deep breath, nodding slowly. “Thank you, hyung,” he replied softly, still not looking up at the rest of the group.
“We’re going to make a few changes in the way that we do things for the next few weeks, just until we know what’s going on,” Hongjoong explained, when Jongho didn’t add anything else to the conversation. He was honestly too tired, and he was thankful for the leader’s decision to move forward with going into an explanation of what the leader and managers had already decided regarding his safety. “We aren’t going to let Jongho-yah go out alone for a while - any time he leaves the dorm, it’s going to be with at least one of us and a manager. I know that it’s going to make things complicated for a little while, but we don’t want to give his father a chance to make contact with him.”
“Even in the company building?” Yeosang asked.
“Especially here,” Hongjoong replied. “The managers are getting in touch with company leadership to talk about making sure all of the security measures we have are working properly, and to see if there’s anything else that can be added for Jongho-yah’s safety. It may mean some inconveniences for all of us…”
“Who cares if it’s inconvenient?” Wooyoung interrupted. “If there’s a serious concern for Jjongie’s safety, then why are we worried about it being a little inconvenient? Eight makes one team… we all know that it’s never the same when one of us is out, even temporarily. Whatever it takes to make sure we’re all safe, then that’s what we need to do.”
“Is there anything else we can do?” Seonghwa asked. “Anything that will make you feel more comfortable, Jjongie?”
Jongho shook his head, closing his eyes. “I don’t know…” he replied. “It’s been so long… I didn’t think I would have to face any of this again so soon. I don’t really understand why this is coming so quickly…”
“We’re going to get Jjongie in for some extra visits with his therapist for the next couple of weeks, just to make sure he stays stable while we’re sorting through all of this,” Hongjoong added. “For the moment, we’re going to make the changes we think are necessary for Jongho-yah to be safe. But that could change from day to day, or even more than once in a given day depending on the situation we find ourselves in. We have to be flexible, while we figure all of this out…”
There was a prolonged moment of silence, before San squeezed his knee gently. “Do you want us to call it a day, Jjongie?” the man asked softly. “We can go back to the dorm, so that you can sort out what you’re thinking and try to get some rest…”
“No…” Jongho replied, shaking his head. “No, I think I just want to try and keep working. We’ve lost enough time already today because of this…”
“Your safety and mental health are the most important thing right now,” Seonghwa replied. “If you need some time, we can make that happen. You don’t have to push yourself to be productive just because that’s what you think you should be doing. This isn’t the kind of thing that you can just get over easily…”
Jongho closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “I don’t want to spend all of my time thinking about what might happen,” he replied. “I don’t know if I can handle just not doing anything…”
“Okay,” Hongjoong commented, squeezing Jongho’s shoulders gently. “Lunch should be here any minute, so let’s just extend this break until after we’ve all eaten. That will give Jjongie some time to calm down, and we can clean up a little in here so that there’s less of a mess later if we decide that we need to leave early.”
“Jongho-yah, do you want to go clean up a little bit?” San asked softly, as everyone finally began to move and Hongjoong let him go. Jongho nodded, letting San help him to his feet and guide him down the hall towards the bathroom that Hongjoong and Seonghwa had found him in earlier.
As much as Jongho had tried to clean himself up and make it look as though he hadn’t been crying before he’d gone into the practice room again, by the time he looked up in the mirror Jongho’s face was bright red and it was obvious that he’d still been fighting back tears for quite a while. “Aish… I look like a mess…”
“I think any of us would, if we were in your shoes right now,” San replied softly, leaning against the wall between Jongho and the door. “I know that you’re holding up a lot better than I would be, if I was in your shoes.”
Jongho shook his head as he got some cold water in his hands, splashing it on his face in hopes that it would tone down some of the redness. “I just want it to be over… I had hoped that they would decide he didn’t deserve parole, after everything he did to me when I was a child. That I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this for a long time, until after Ateez…”
“I’m glad that you aren’t dealing with this alone,” San interrupted, shaking his head as he handed Jongho a paper towel to dry his hands and face. “You don’t need to deal with this along, Jjongie… I know that you want to be strong, but this is too much for anyone to deal with on their own. I don’t want to think about what would happen if you didn’t have people to lean on through all of this. Not just your father getting out, but all of it…”
Jongho nodded slowly, knowing that San was right; there was no telling what would have happened to him if he’d been on his own when he’d gone through his catatonic episode, let alone all of the ups and downs that had gone along with the therapy process once he’d been diagnosed with depression and complex post-traumatic stress disorder and properly medicated for his condition. He was still working through all of the trauma he’d been through in his childhood during his therapy sessions, and Jongho knew that his father’s release was likely to cause some serious setbacks.
“You know that we don’t mind… we’re your hyungs, and we want to be here for you,” San commented, when Jongho didn’t respond verbally. “Your health and safety is always going to be our main concern. I know that you don’t want to think about taking a hiatus…”
“I’m safer here,” Jongho interrupted, shaking his head. “I’m not even sure that he knows it’s me… I don’t look that much like him. And we changed my name when I was in middle school…”
San looked surprised by that confession. “Your name wasn’t always Jongho?” he asked.
“Choi was my mother’s family name… I lived with her parents,” Jongho explained. “I never use the name he gave me… we did the legal name change process, and we did everything we could to erase my original name…”
San nodded slowly. “It makes sense…” he began. “Would you ever tell us?”
Jongho shook his head. “I’d be too afraid of it slipping out on accident somehow,” he replied. “I don’t think any of you would intentionally say my birth name in public if you found out what it was. But I don’t want to risk it getting out that I ever had another name.”
***
Jongho felt uneasy as he woke up to someone coming into the room in the dark, even though he knew that it was likely just Yeosang or Wooyoung coming back from the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was something that normally wouldn’t even register with Jongho, but with everything that had happened in the past week he’d been much more anxious than normal and it had put him on edge. The lack of sleep from waking up to every little noise or movement in the dorm certainly wasn’t helping things, either. While his psychiatrist had given him a some new prescriptions to help him get through the worst of these new symptoms, he had a limited number of doses and Jongho was trying his best not to use them unless absolutely necessary.
The sleeping medication wasn’t really an option most of the time, because it left him groggy and out of it the next morning; the anxiety medication, on the other hand, had proven itself useful more than once in the past few days. But Jongho couldn’t take it constantly, so he had to save it for when his anxiety symptoms were getting to be too much to handle.
“Hyung?” Jongho asked, when he felt the bed move in an unusual way. He was used to the feeling of Wooyoung climbing into his bottom bunk; Jongho was usually in bed before the elder made it into their room at night to go to sleep, even though he wasn’t actually asleep. He’d moved into the room at the beginning of Mingi’s mental health hiatus so that he wouldn’t be left alone, meaning it had been over a year that Jongho had been sharing the bunk bed with the second maknae.
It took a moment for the complete blackness of the room to register with Jongho as something was forced against his face and he felt himself being pushed down into his mattress. He didn’t fight back at first, too shocked by what was happening to register that this was wrong until he realized that he couldn’t breathe through whatever was covering his face. By that point, Jongho couldn’t really get a good grip on the person holding him down so that he could push them away, and he could feel his heart starting to race as he tried to thrash against the unknown person. Jongho felt himself hitting the wall and the bars on the side of his bunk, praying that his hyungs would hear it and come to save him from whatever was going on.
Jongho felt like the attack was going on forever, before he could finally hear screaming through the pillow and he felt the weight of the person trying to hold him down being pulled away. There was a loud thud, before the pillow was quickly pulled away from Jongho’s face. He could see a terrified looking Yeosang looking down at him from over the railing as he opened his eyes, gasping for air. The sudden rush of oxygen burned his lungs and made him feel lightheaded, as Yeosang gently stroked a hand through his hair. “Hey… hey, you’re okay, Jjongie,” the older man commented softly.
Jongho’s body was shaking as he tried to sit up and see what was going on down below them on the floor, but Yeosang gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t move, okay? We don’t know how badly you’ve been hurt…”
“I d-don’t…” Jongho began, trying to shake his head until Yeosang moved again to quickly hold his head still.
“Hey… I know that you’re scared, but you have to stay still until the paramedics get here to check you out,” Yeosang interrupted. “Everything is going to be okay, I promise…”
Jongho could hear a struggle happening, and saw Yunho, Wooyoung, and Hongjoong all working together to force another person out of the room. Even covered in blood - Jongho couldn’t quite figure out where it had come from during the brief glance he was able to get without moving from his position on the bed - he knew his father’s face. A new wave of panic shot through him, and Jongho found himself gasping for air again as his eyes filled with tears and he felt his blood run cold. A loud sob escaped from his throat, as Seonghwa and Mingi hurried into the room and locked the door behind themselves.
“Where’s Sannie?” Yeosang asked.
“He’s calling for the police, and staying out there to help restrain that asshole if necessary,” Seonghwa replied, leaning back against the door as Mingi moved closer to the bed and gently put a hand on Yeosang’s shoulder to get the elder to move out of the way. Yeosang’s hand in Jongho’s hair was quickly replaced by Mingi’s, and the taller man leaned over the side of the bed to take Jongho’s hand and squeeze it gently.
“You’re okay, Jjongie…” Mingi commented softly, although Jongho could see the tears in the older man’s eyes as well. “Hyungs are here… we’ve got you…”
“I… I th-thought…” Jongho whimpered softly, trying to get his breathing under control. He could feel his whole body shaking, as he realized just how close he’d been to suffocating only a few moments earlier.
“Hey, hey… breathe with me,” Mingi commented softly, purposely exaggerating his own breathing to make it easier to follow. Jongho did his best to focus on Mingi, following the older man’s lead as best he could. He choked after a couple of deep breaths, coughing and sputtering slightly until he managed to get his breath again.
The adrenaline was wearing off quickly, and Jongho could feel the exhaustion weighing heavily on his body as they waited for the authorities to arrive. Jongho closed his eyes slowly, trying to focus on the fact that he could breathe, and that Mingi’s hand was holding his own, and that everything was okay now. Unfortunately, someone chose that moment to knock on the door and Jongho jumped at the unexpected sound, shooting up in his bed so that he could see who was at the door.
“Hey, hey… you’re okay,” Yeosang commented, moving up the ladder to comfort Jongho as Seonghwa answered the door and blocked the small gap. Jongho couldn’t focus on either of the members trying to comfort him, too close to losing the small amount of composure he’d managed to regain when he didn’t know what was going on. It took him a moment to register that it was San standing on the other side with someone else that Jongho couldn’t make out behind him.
“The police are here…” San began. “One of the officers wants to check on Jjongie, to make sure that he’s okay until the ambulance arrives.”
Jongho nodded as Seonghwa turned to look at him for approval, before the eldest stepped aside to allow San and the uniformed police officer into the room. “Wh-where is he?” Jongho asked, not letting go of Mingi’s hand or letting Yeosang move away from him as the officer approached the bed. “Wh-where’s my father right now?”
“Your… wait, Jjongie, was that your dad?” Yeosang asked. Jongho nodded slowly, unsure that he could bring himself to actually say the words out loud.
“I don’t understand…” the officer commented, turning towards Seonghwa and San when neither Jongho or Yeosang elaborated on their brief conversation.
“Jongho-yah’s father was just released from prison this week,” Seonghwa explained. “He was convicted of child abuse and a few other things, and Jongho-yah has a no-contact order against the man as his victim… but obviously that didn’t actually mean much, since he just broke into our dorm…”
“He’s currently being escorted down to a police cruiser,” the officer replied, keeping his voice soft as he turned back to talk to Jongho. “Are you able to climb down? I’d like to check you out, make sure that you’re stable while we wait for the ambulance to arrive…”
Jongho nodded slowly, letting Yeosang get down first so that he could access the ladder at the foot of his bed more easily. Jongho was thankful for Mingi and Yeosang supporting him from behind, as his hands were shaking again from the shock of the knock at the door and he really wasn’t sure if he would have been able to get down on his own. The two older men were quick to sit him down on Wooyoung’s lower bunk, before giving the police officer access to check on him.
“Does anything hurt?” the officer asked, as he gently took one of Jongho’s hands and carefully placed his fingers against Jongho’s wrist to check his pulse.
“My lungs are burning…” Jongho began.
“He was trying to suffocate Jjongie with that pillow…” Yeosang added, motioning towards a pillow that was laying discarded in the floor.
The officer nodded, pulling out a small flashlight. “Did you hit your head at any point?” the man asked.
“No,” Jongho replied, shaking his head. “I couldn’t really move… I think I kicked the wall a couple of times, and I tried to push him away…”
“We were trying not to let him move, but he jumped up when Sannie knocked on the door,” Mingi added.
“Jongho-ssi, was he putting pressure on your neck at all?” the officer asked.
“No,” Jongho replied.
“Right… I wouldn’t worry too much about him moving, then,” the officer replied. “The chances of a neck injury are pretty slim. I’m a little concerned by your eyes…”
“M-my eyes?” Jongho asked, turning to look at the other members to figure out what the man was talking about.
“There’s some bleeding in the whites of your eyes… it’s not inherently dangerous, but it’s something that we’ll want to have a doctor check out,” the officer explained. “Do you remember what happened, Jongho-ssi?”
Jongho nodded slowly, closing his eyes. “I w-woke up to the sound of the door opening,” he began, forcing himself to take a deep breath to try and calm himself down. “I thought it was one of the hyungs… but then the bed was moving in a weird way. I tried to call out, thinking it was Wooyoung-hyung doing something weird, but then there was a pillow over my face, pushing me down into the mattress…”
Mingi put an arm around Jongho’s waist, pulling him a bit closer as he spoke. Jongho leaned into the older man’s side, thankful for his hyung in that moment. Even though he wasn’t normally one to be in favor of skinship, it had actually been a big comfort for him over the last few days and he’d found himself craving being close to the older members over the previous few days.
“And you said you tried to push him away?” the officer asked.
“I couldn’t get a grip on him,” Jongho replied. “He caught me off guard, and he was at a weird angle…”
“How did the attacker end up so beaten up?” the officer asked.
“That would have been Wooyoung-ah, Yunho-yah, and Hongjoong-hyung,” Yeosang replied. “The commotion ended up waking up the whole dorm… when Jjongie kicked the wall, it woke us up and Wooyoung-ah and I started yelling. Wooyoung-ah and I managed to haul him off, and Yunho-yah and Hongjoong-hyung got here about that time and took over so that I could make sure Jjongie was okay.”
“Did you see what happened after that?”
“I had my back turned… I didn’t know how badly Jongho-yah might be hurt, and I was more concerned with making sure that he wasn’t going to do any more damage to himself…” Yeosang explained. “I didn’t really pay attention to what they were doing until they were hauling him out of the room, when Seonghwa-hyung and Mingi-yah came in here and locked us in until you got here…”
***
Jongho opened his eyes as he felt a hand gently stroking through his hair, blinking a few times as he tried to fight against the sedative that he’d been given once the doctors had confirmed that he wasn’t in any immediate danger from his injuries. He’d been admitted to the hospital overnight for observation, and he’d been given some pretty heavy sedatives to allow him to sleep when it had become obvious that he was struggling with intense episodes of anxiety following everything that had happened the previous evening. While he vaguely remembered nurses coming in throughout the night to check on him, Jongho didn’t have any real memory of what anyone had done or anything that had happened once he’d been given the medication.
“You’re okay, Jjongie,” Seonghwa reassured softly, as Jongho finally managed to find the elder’s face leaning over him. The elder smiled at him, taking Jongho’s hand and squeezing it gently. “It’s time to wake up now… Dr. Cha wants to check you out again before rounds.”
Jongho nodded, taking a deep breath and letting the doctor and a nurse that had also come into the room while he was sleeping do their examination. “Everything looks really good… I think at this point we just need to wait for your psychiatrist to check on you, so that we can get you released some time this afternoon.”
“So… he’s going to be okay?” Seonghwa asked.
“Physically, he’s fine,” the doctor replied, smiling at them. “It will take some time for the blood in the whites of his eyes to dissipate, but the only thing I’m really worried about is his mental health in this situation. Hence why I’m not authorizing his release until we have his psychiatrist’s approval - I want to know that we’re going to have him properly cared for outside of the hospital before we send him home, because he’s been through something extremely traumatic.”
Jongho closed his eyes at the doctor’s words, turning back towards Seonghwa. “Thank you, Dr. Cha,” the older man commented. Jongho could hear the hospital staff leaving the room, before he felt Seonghwa’s hand gently stroking through his hair again. “Do you want to sleep more, Jjongie?”
“I want to go…” he began, shaking his head.
“Soon, okay?” Seonghwa replied. “As soon as we’re sure that you’re stable, we’ll get you out of here.”
Jongho took a deep breath, nodding. He knew that it wasn’t going to be possible to convince the group’s eldest to get him out of the hospital any sooner; Seonghwa was stubborn, and he wouldn’t give in even if Jongho begged him to try to change the doctor’s mind. “Is… are we going back to the dorm?” Jongho asked.
“Not today,” Seonghwa replied. “The managers have gotten us hotel rooms for the moment, and the company is going to have us moved as soon as they can find a new dorm for us. They’re trying to work it out so that you don’t have to go back into the old dorm at all…”
Jongho nodded, reaching up to wipe away the tears that he could feel starting to gather in the corners of his eyes. “Mianheyo…” he began.
“Hey… hey, don’t cry, aegi,” Seonghwa commented, squeezing Jongho’s hand. “You did nothing wrong, okay? We’re going to protect you from this in whatever way we can - we don’t care about the inconvenience, or the extra stress, or whatever it’s going to take. All we care about right now is making sure that you’re safe, and that nothing like this is going to happen to you again.”
“He’s never going to stop…” Jongho replied, shaking his head. “He’s going to keep coming back, over and over again…”
“He’s back in prison for violating his parole, and they’re working on the new charges now,” Seonghwa explained. “He’s going to be getting a lot of prison time for this, Jjongie… we’re talking about no parole, no way he’s going to get out again any time soon.”
“The only way I’ll ever really be safe is if he dies in there, hyung…” Jongho replied. “He’s already proven that he isn’t going to stop - he isn’t going to leave me alone, no matter how long they send him away…”
Seonghwa sighed, nodding. “I know that this is a lot, Jjongie,” the elder replied. “You have every right to be stressed out and afraid… none of this should have been possible, especially not when the company and the managers were all looking out for problems. But right now, we have to trust that the police and the justice system are going to see what’s happened here and take this seriously. There’s the potential here for extremely serious charges… things that should keep him in prison for a very, very long time.”
“Your hyung is right…” Jongho looked up as he heard his psychiatrist’s words, thankful when he saw the older man standing in the doorway with a thick notebook in his arms. “What happened to you last night should never have happened, and it’s perfectly normal for you to be feeling scared and anxious, and any number of other things right now. If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk with you for a few minutes so that we can come up with a plan for how to handle the next few weeks in private.”
Jongho nodded, taking a deep breath and turning to look at Seonghwa again. “It’s okay, hyung…” he began.
Seonghwa nodded, smiling. “Okay… I’ll wait outside until you’re done,” the elder replied, heading out of the room with a quick smile and bow for the doctor.
Although Jongho liked his psychiatrist as a person, he really wasn’t a fan of the fact that he needed to have a psychiatrist. “How are you feeling this morning?” the doctor asked, once Seonghwa had left them alone.
“Tired,” Jongho admitted, not really looking up at the man. “They gave me something last night… I kept panicking…”
Jongho watched his doctor nodding, as he flipped through the paperwork in the notebook. “I can see that… the dose they gave you was a little high, given the medication we already have you on,” the doctor replied. “Not anything that would be considered dangerous, but that’s probably what’s making you so tired this morning. It’ll take some time for those medications to work their way out of your system.”
“You aren’t going to make me keep taking them?” Jongho asked.
“I’m going to give you a prescription for an anxiety medication that I think will be better for your situation,” his doctor replied, making a few notes. “I know your psychiatric history, as well as the demands of your career, better than the doctors who treated you last night. I also have insight into how you’ve responded to the other medications you’ve been on since we started working together… you trust my judgement, right?”
Jongho nodded. “So… I don’t have to stay in the hospital?”
“Hospitalization will only serve to cause you more stress,” the doctor replied, shaking his head. “I’ll need to talk with your managers, just to make sure that I’m releasing you into a situation that I’m comfortable with. But as long as you’re going to be safe outside of the hospital, I’m not going to keep you here against your will.”
“Thank you,” Jongho replied, closing his eyes.
“How often have you been seeing your therapist?” the psychiatrist asked
Jongho shook his head. “Once or twice a month… I was supposed to go this morning for an extra appointment, but I can’t really do that now…” Jongho replied.
“I think we need to get you back into a more frequent therapy schedule, just for the time being,” the doctor replied. “It isn’t permanent - just until we get you through this crisis. What happened to you last night was traumatic, and we need to deal with the root of that trauma rather than just the symptoms of it. Medication is a great tool, but I don’t want to keep adding medications to your daily routine without giving you the other tools you need to heal, too. Ideally, I want to get you off these medications in the future, or at least bring your dosages down to as little as possible.”
Jongho nodded. “I trust you.”
“Okay… I want you to eat a good breakfast and have your medication before you leave the hospital this morning. After that, if everything else is already organized then I’ll sign the paperwork for you to be released later this morning,” the doctor replied.
“Thank you,” Jongho replied again.
The doctor left after making another brief note in Jongho’s chart, and he was quickly replaced by Seonghwa again. The older man quickly took the chair next to Jongho’s bed again, taking his hand. “Is everything okay?” Seonghwa asked, squeezing Jongho’s hand.
Jongho nodded. “We’re going to change my medication a little, and I’m going to start having therapy more often,” Jongho replied. “He’s going to talk with the managers about the plan for the next couple of days, and if everything is okay I’ll get released after breakfast and my medication.”
“That’s good,” Seonghwa replied, nodding.
“You’ll stay with me, right, hyung?” Jongho asked, feeling a little uneasy at the idea of having to be alone at any point.
“I’m not going anywhere, aegi.”