Chapter Text
“You have chronic alcohol poisoning…”
That sentence alone shook him to his core. His blood went cold, and all the color drained from his face.
No. There’s no way. FSM, there’s just no way. She must’ve made some kind of mistake. She had to.
“Lloyd!” She waved her hand in front of his face a few times to get his attention. “Are you okay? You look very pale. Are you about to throw up?”
“Wha-what exactly do you mean by chronic alcohol poisoning?”, he asked as he felt his voice quiver with fear.
“After taking a sample of your blood, I sent it to the lab for testing. When your results arrived, I immediately began analyzing it. There were high levels of AST and ADT found in your bloodstream, and high levels of these two enzymes present in the blood is one of the most common indicators of heavy drinking or alcohol use. Further testing is not required because high levels of these enzymes in the blood is enough to rule out any other condition or illness. However, I will need to confirm your symptoms first, before I can fully diagnosis you, okay?”
Lloyd might throw up right then and there from pure shock, but he kept his composure. He was well aware of the rather unpleasant effects and consequences of drinking too much, but he never would’ve imagined something as bad as this.
“Alright, Lloyd. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
“No.”
“Okay, great.” She pulls up Lloyd’s Electronic Medical Record on her desktop and proceeds to look through some files in the cabinet beneath her. She finds his Patient Record and begins to flip through the pages.
“Okay, Lloyd. Last week, you came to me complaining about persistent vomiting episodes, correct?
Ugh, god. Don’t remind me. “Yes, doctor.”
“Okay. Just making sure.” She flips through another page.
“Oh.” She sets the file down on her desk. “I never got the chance to properly introduce myself the last time we met. I was in a rush, due to our clinic being backed up with patients. I’m Doctor Yana. I’m the Site Medical Director and Senior LPN of Ninjago City’s clinic.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Yana.”
“It’s a pleasure to have you here at our clinic. You came to the right place.” She smiles at Lloyd and picks up the file, flipping to a blank page with “Fill in the blank” questions on it. She grabs a pen from her lab coat.
“Okay. So has the vomiting stopped since I prescribed the anti-nausea medication?”
“It has. But the nausea is still there. I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s more like a sharp, almost severe type of pain in my stomach.”
“Ok. It’s good to hear that you aren’t vomiting, but as of right now, there isn’t anything I can prescribe for the abdominal pain itself. When you say nausea, do you mean ‘sick to your stomach’ kind of nausea or just stomach pain?”
“Just stomach pain, I guess. It’s like…I feel like I have to throw up, but for some reason I can’t.”
“Okay.” She fills in one of the blanks on the page and checks off a couple of boxes. “Have you noticed any changes in your appetite lately?”
“Uhh, not really. I don’t eat much, but now I can barely hold any food down.”
“Okay. Sounds like you have a loss of appetite. Have you been experiencing any dizziness or vertigo?”
“Sometimes. When I’m washing windows, I suddenly feel dizzy out of nowhere, sometimes almost falling over on the platform I stand on. It’s weird because I have no problem with heights or being really high up.”
She checks off a few more boxes and fills in more blanks, and as she did, Lloyd felt his heart skip a beat as a sense of dread and fear overwhelmed him. What did all of this even mean? Chronic alcohol poisoning? Was he going to die?
“Alright, Lloyd. Now that I’ve confirmed your symptoms, I can officially diagnosis you with chronic alcohol poisoning. The symptoms you just described to me are most common in patients with this condition. I may need to call you in again for another follow up. I’ll need to do a Liver Function Test to ensure that your liver isn’t damaged. Tell me, Lloyd. Do you drink heavily?”
“I…used to drink heavily, but…I stopped about 1 month ago.”
“How often would you drink? Every day? Once a week? Once every month?”
“E-every…night. For an entire week. At bars.”
“Okay. How much would you drink?”
“At first, I would just have a glass of whiskey mixed with juice or something...But after it became an every-night occurrence, I went from drinking one glass to two glasses plus 4 shots of straight vodka.”
“Okay. I’m going to set you up with a treatment plan in order to treat your alcohol dependency.” She pulls up a new tab on her desktop. “The medication I’m going to prescribe is called Disulfiram, or Antabuse. Take it once a day for 1 month.”
“Okay..”
“Oh, and just a little heads up for when you take it.” She turned from her desktop and faced Lloyd. “There are some side effects you should know about. Disulfiram works in treating alcohol abuse by inhibiting your body’s ability to break down alcohol, so the excess alcohol builds up. I’m desperately urging you not to drink if you take the medication. If you do drink after taking it, you can experience some unpleasant side effects such as nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headaches, sweating, and abdominal pain.”
“Okay.” If I throw up again, so help me.
“Alrighty, then. You’re all set. I just sent the prescription to the local pharmacy. They told me it’s ready, so all of you have to do is pick it up, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you so much, Dr. Yana.”
“You’re very welcome. Take care of yourself.”
After Lloyd picked up his prescription at the pharmacy, he headed back to the monastery. When he arrived, he hurried over to the kitchen and took his meds out of the paper bag. He studied the bottle and began to read the labels on it. The pills were pink and looked very similar to an aspirin or an ibuprofen. He felt sick to his stomach just from looking at them.
“Hey, Lloyd!” Kai greeted him from the doorway of the kitchen.
“Hey…”
“How’d it go?”
“It was fine…”
“What’d they tell you?”
“I...I don’t want to talk about it right now”, Lloyd said quietly as he kept his eyes fixated on the floor. He couldn’t bring himself to look Kai in the eyes because if he did, he knew he would start crying, and if he cried, he wouldn’t be able to stop. It would all be over. Kai would hate him. He would hate him for being so stupid, for being such an idiot, because now he has chronic alcohol poisoning, and now he needs to go in again and complete more tests. It’s all his fault. Why was he so stupid? He felt like a weak little kid again, similar to how he felt when he was still at Darkley’s.
“Do you wanna talk about it with me in private?”
“I—yes please.”
“Okay. Let’s go to my room.”
Kai took Lloyd to his room and sat him down on his bed. He shut his door and then sat next to Lloyd.
“Okay. What did the doctor say?”
Lloyd kept his focus on his hands in his lap, refusing to look at him.
“Lloyd, can you please look at me when I’m talking to you?”
He looked up at Kai, feeling the tears well up as his emerald green eyes met his.
“Sh—she said that I have something called…chronic alcohol poisoning.”
“What?”
“Kai, I—I swear I’ve been meaning to tell you about all this for a while, but...I have a serious drinking problem.”
“You have a drinking problem??”
“Yes…I do. But I stopped about a month ago.”
“And when were you planning to tell me about this?? When were you planning to tell any of us?”
Tears were already streaming down Lloyd’s face, and he quickly wiped at his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
“I—I was going to, I swear! I just didn’t know how! So I lied to all of you! I was going from bar to bar almost every night, drinking shot after shot, glass after glass!”
He was sobbing at this point, unable to control himself.
“Okay. Come here. Stop crying.”
Kai wrapped his arms around Lloyd and pulled him into a tight hug. He was so warm. He managed to calm Lloyd down, but he noticed he was still breathing heavily.
“Lloyd, breathe for me okay? Deep breaths.”
Lloyd’s breathing slowly steadied, and he finally managed to calm down.
Kai felt sick. It was absolutely sickening to see his little brother cry. But what bothered him the most was the fact that Lloyd, the legendary green ninja and leader of their team, has a drinking problem. He was shocked. The thought of him drinking irresponsibly and abusing alcohol had never even crossed his mind.
“Wait here buddy. I’m gonna go get you some tissues, okay? Do you want some water?” Lloyd nodded in response.
He came back with a glass of water and a Kleenix box. Lloyd took a couple of tissues and cleaned his face.
“At least now I know why you were puking so much. Has it stopped?”
“Yes. She gave me Gravol and it kinda helped a little bit.”
“Okay, good. I’m relieved that it’s not something serious. I mean, alcohol poisoning is pretty serious, but you know what I mean. I was just really worried about you. At first, I thought you had just eaten something bad, but then you were puking a lot more often. I was starting to think you had a parasite or something.”
“Parasite?”
“Yea. When Nya and I were little, she caught amoebic dysentery. It’s a parasite that infects your stomach lining. I think she drank contaminated water from a lake or something. Can’t really remember. Anyway, she was barfing non stop for an entire week, and at one point, she became dehydrated. I took her to the hospital and they hooked her to an IV drip because she couldn’t even drink water.”
“Nya…” Lloyd felt the tears welling up again.
“I know. I miss her too, bud. But…there’s nothing we can do.”
Silence fell between the two.
“I’m...sorry you had to watch me puke my guts out, haha.”
Kai let out a brief sigh. “Don’t act like this is my first time seeing you puke. Do I need to remind you about the time you projectile vomited all over the south wing when you were little? At least, before Jay destroyed it of course.”
Lloyd’s face reddened with emabressment. He felt the blood rushing to his cheeks as he suddenly remembered that awful experience. “Dude, seriously? It took me years to forget about that! Why did you have to remind me??” They both shared a laugh.
“Okay, well uh, I’m gonna go now. You can take the rest of the day off if you want. You’re probably not feeling good. Get some rest okay?”
Kai was just about to leave when Lloyd suddenly stopped him.
“Wait! Can you do me favor?”
“Sure, what is it?
“D-don’t tell the others about any of this…Please...”
“Okay. I won’t. On one condition. If I ever find out that you’re out drinking again, or if you’re at a bar late at night, I’m gonna tell them right away. I’ll tell your Mom and Master Wu, too. Got that?”
“Yes. I understand.”
It’s been about a week since Lloyd started taking the Disulfiram. So far, he’s been feeling fine, but the remaining symptoms of the alcohol poisoning were still there. Thankfully, he didn’t vomit, but he still felt the vertigo and dizziness Dr. Yana had mentioned. Some nights, he couldn’t sleep. Other nights, he would be jolted awake from cold sweats.
He figured that maybe he should get back to work. The other symptoms weren’t as bad as the throwing up, so he should be fine. He had taken one too many sick days already, and he didn’t want to risk losing his job. This was the only thing he had to keep himself busy, since he was no longer a ninja. He decided to give Dr. Yana a call in regards to changing the date of his Liver Function Test.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Dr. Yana. It’s Lloyd. I was wondering if I can reschedule my Liver Function Test.”
“Oh, of course! Does next Thursday at 7 pm work for you?”
“Yes, that works perfectly. It’s just that I need to get back to work this week. I’ve used up all my sick days.”
“Okay, great! And it’s not a problem at all! I completely understand. I’ll see you next week!”
The day of his test finally came. After a long, tiring day of cleaning windows, he headed over to the clinic. When he arrived, the waiting room was packed. Looks like I’m gonna be here for a while.
After what felt like decades, Lloyd’s name was finally called.
“Lloyd Garmadon? Dr. Yana is ready to see you.”