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The pulse ox had been shockingly cold when it had been put on Will’s finger but now it just felt heavy. Kayla had moved quickly enough onto placing nodes onto his chest, wires connecting up to the small machine that had absolutely not been repossessed by a Hermes kid and gifted kindly to the infirmary at the low low price of a promised IOU.
When the machine made its start up tone, Will made a conscious effort to settle his racing heart as to not worry her.
“Will,” Kayla said lowly.
“What?” He grumbled back. “See, it says I’m fine.”
Will reached up to remove the uncomfortable stickers but Kayla batted his hand away. If he was being honest, Will was surprised that she had even let him sit through the examination, his legs hanging over the side of the cot. Kayla could be a drill sergeant when it came to patients, not that he was a patient, yet she had allowed him the dignity of sitting upright on his own strength instead of lying down and surrendering entirely.
Kayla watched the two devices for a moment and Will watched the numbers too, forcing himself to take even consistent breaths. He really was fine, she was just overreacting to absolutely nothing. He was a little tired maybe but he was fine. He was always fine.
Instead of pulling away from him, satisfied that he was in fact perfectly fine, Kayla came closer and placed the end of a stethoscope against his chest. It was somehow colder than the pulse ox had been and Will had tried not to yelp, the heart monitor pipping loudly all the same. Will steadied himself once more, gaze locking onto a part of the wall if only to not have to watch Kayla work.
“Take a deep breath in.” She said.
Will did if only to get this over and done with. Kayla moved the stethoscope to a few different spots, periodically instructing him on when to breathe and while he wasn’t looking at her, he knew that his sister was frowning.
“Will,” Kayla said carefully, at last pulling away. “How long has your chest been hurting?”
“It hasn’t been.” Will said.
Her brow quirked up but Will wouldn’t not back down so easily, no matter how well that look worked on other campers to get them to fess up to any pain they were hiding.
“I’m serious.” Will said. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. How long?”
“You know, we should probably order in some more gauze and bandages, I have a feeling that Capture The Flag is gonna be pretty intense this time.”
“William Andrew Solace.” Kayla admonished.
“What?” Will huffed, crossing his arms. “I tend to deflect when I’m being threatened and seeing as my own dear sister looks minutes from killing me, I’m a little bit threatened right now.”
Kayla huffed out a breath, raising her hands in surrender.
“So,” She said, as gently as she could. “How long has your chest been hurting?”
“A day. Maybe two.”
It was much closer to a week but Kayla absolutely didn’t need to do that.
“I’m just dehydrated.” He said quickly. “I’ve been busy with patients, I just forgot to drink enough. That’s all.”
“I suppose that arrhythmia is from dehydration too then?” Kayla challenged.
Will’s gaze shot to the heart monitor, the traitor showing clearly how weirdly his heart was beating. He opened his mouth, trying to think of some excuse, but his mind went blank. Kayla was even waiting patiently for him to come up with something but Will could only blow out an irritated breath.
“Okay, fine.” He snapped. “Somethings… Up… With me… I guess…”
Kayla hummed.
“Symptoms?” She asked. “Oh don’t give me that look, out with it.”
“Dizziness, mostly.” Will said. “Like when I stand up too fast or concentrate for too long. Chest pain, but I swear it’s not too bad, fatigue, loss of appetite.”
“Irritation.” Austin supplied helpfully from the other side of the infirmary.
“I have not been irritated.” Will snapped.
When Kayla’s lip didn’t so much as twitch upwards at the obvious lie, Will grew worried. She had that stern face she always got when she was thinking about serious conditions and injuries. Kayla tilted back in her chair, glancing at the heart monitor.
“And you’re saying it’s only been the last few days?” She asked. “Have you run any bloods?”
“No.” He said.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t considered it and maybe if his vision hadn’t been pulsing at weird times he would have already done them himself before anyone had even noticed that he was feeling unwell.
Kayla shifted away from him, returning soon with everything she needed for a blood draw.
“Really?” Will muttered.
“Yes really, now give me your arm.”
If it had been uncomfortable to have the stickers on his chest, Kayla cleaning the crook of Will’s arm made him want to claw his own skin off. It was different when it was him that was tending to patients. He could ignore the textures and the smells, he could focus on the task at hand. Now all that he could focus on was the needle inching closer to his skin and the thought that maybe something actually was really wrong with him.
The tests came back clean, as he knew they would, but Kayla still didn’t seem convinced and honestly Will knew it was just going to be a matter of time before she detected what he already knew. It wasn’t his heart, that was just because of anxiety and the fact that he hated to be under a microscope.
No, Will had already well on his way to work out a way to fix this. He just needed to work out how he could get the tumour out of his own right lung without any of his siblings, or Nico for that matter, from knowing any better.
Surely it wouldn’t be that hard.
Will fidgeted with the pulse ox on his finger, desperate to focus in anything other than the fact that a stranger was placing electrodes onto his chest.
It had been uncomfortable to have Kayla perform an examination on him last week but at least she knew to take her time for him to get used to the sensations but as it was Will wanted to tear off his skin. Twice already the nurse had placed the nodes in the wrong spots, a more experienced mentor patiently showing them the correct way as Will sat there uselessly.
The student even attached the wires wrong and when Will went to finish the job himself, he heard footsteps. The hope that it was Nico was immediately quashed when he saw that it was just another damn nurse because apparently it took the entire staff to assess one kid.
"Is everything alright?"
"Just peachy." Will snapped back.
He was lying down, looking up at the too bright lights of the examination room. He missed his cabin, he missed Camp, he missed being in control of what was happening to him. This just felt… Wrong.
“Just relax, William,” The nurse said.
He wanted to correct her; only his mother called him William and that was only when he had really messed up. Will didn’t. He chewed on his lip, ignoring how his skin was burning. Once the electrodes had all been checked over that they were in the right positions, Will readjusted, uncomfortable with the attention. He never handled being the patient well, no Apollo kid did he was certain of it.
He had just passed out, he was fine. It was his own stupid mistake that he had collapsed on the streets of New York City instead of back at Camp because if he was at Camp then Kayla would have long since declared him fine.
A cold stethoscope pressed up against his chest and Will flinched, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to ignore his space being invaded.
“Deep breath, William.”
He was tempted to refuse. Truely this was all just some stupid mistake. He was fine, he had simply not been getting enough sleep recently and maybe he had missed a meal or two but he was fine. His chest was tight with anxiety, nothing more. And besides, he would know if something was wrong with him. He was the Son of Apollo, he knew intrinsically when he was sick and he was fine, benign tumour on his right lung not withstanding.
The sooner he got this done the sooner he could forget that any of this had happened. He took a deep breath and he absolutely did not immediately cough because he was fine.
“And another. That’s it, good job.”
Will’s chest was hurting but it was just because the stethoscope was cold. He readjusted on the bed again, ignoring the monitors incessant noises and ignoring how the nurse was now placing a blood pressure cuff on his arm. He forced himself to take another deep breath, already expecting the cuff to tighten around his arm way too much.
It started inflating and Will heard his own blood rushing in his ears as his heart beat harder.
He needed to get out of here. He needed to get to Camp. He needed Nico.
“Just relax William, your exam is almost done.”
It wasn’t an exam; it was torture. The pulse ox was digging into his finger and the wires were trying to strangle him and the patient scrubs he had woken up in were scratchy that it might as well have been made of scalpels. Will’s hand scrambled to get the cuff off of his arm but the nurse caught it instead.
“I need you to stay calm, William.”
“Don’t… Don’t call me that.” Will’s voice sounded weak even to himself. “I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”
“William, your heart rate is elevated and your oxygen saturation is lower than it should be. Oxygen saturation is the am-“
“I know what oxygen saturation is.” Will snapped. “My Dad is a fucking Go- uh- Doctor.”
Smooth Will, real smooth.
“Would you like me to give him a call, so you have someone here with you? It’s going to take time to get the scans you need.”
“Absolutely not.” Will said.
“William,”
“My Dad is very busy.” Being a God and all. “I’m fine being here by myself.”
He really wasn’t and Will was very much starting to consider just full on booking it out of this damn hospital but no one else needed to know that right now.
“Maybe we can contact your Mom, and if not do you have any siblings or friends?”
The thought of his Mom flying all the way up from Texas just to be with him made Will just miss her more but he couldn’t bare the thought of her seeing him like this, lying on some hospital bed attached to wires and surrounded by strangers. No, she couldn’t know.
“I’m fine.” Will said, looking away as his eyes prickled. “I don’t need anyone.”
The Nurse at last pulled away from him, no doubt intending on bringing this conversation up again later.
“We’ll start with an X-Ray, see if we can’t work out what’s going on.”
Will knew full well what was going on. He hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that deep sinking feeling in his chest when Kayla first became concerned about his health but the feeling had just been growing exponentially. A tumour, he was certain of it, right there on his right lung. Kayla had worked it out too, eventually at least, and while she had forced him to tell Chiron, Chiron had simply told him to go to hospital.
It made no sense. Will literally worked every single day in the infirmary, surrounded by the progeny of Gods. What could doctors in a hospital do that he couldn’t do for himself?
Will had promised to go, even he never had any intention to and yet he had ended up here all the same just with an extra scratch on his forehead from where his head had hit some stupid sidewalk. He didn’t need the scans, he didn’t need these doctors. Will just needed to be better. It was insulting, being a child of Apollo and developing a tumour anyway. It was benign, as far as Will could detect just from intuition alone, but that didn’t change the fact that his cells had replicated wrong and it was starting to affect his breathing.
It was starting to affect him.
He hated how much it scared him.
When the X-Ray had been completed, Will had seen the shift in the expression of the nurse, and the doctor they brought along. He knew that they knew but they wanted to reconfirm anyway and soon enough he was being carted over to an MRI and then even a CAT scan as if the doctors didn’t want to tell him what he already knew.
“William,” The Doctor had finally said, sitting by his bedside. “Are you sure you don’t want someone here with you?”
Will shook his head, eyes already stinging.
“Okay. We’ve consulted your scans. There’s a small tumour on your right lung. You will need a biopsy to confirm, but at this point we are hoping that it is benign. Even if it is, you may require surgery to remove it. Do you understand?”
Will tried not to snap that of course he understood. He was a Son of Apollo. He already knew about the damn tumour and he already knew all of his options. He knew and yet his breath was still catching and his eyes were stinging and his hand was shaking.
The words were fading away, Will’s world alongside with it. It was stupid. This was so stupid. He was so stupid, unable to fix his own damn body without anyone ever knowing any better.
“Will?”
Will’s focus snapped to the voice by the door. It was Nico, hands shoved in the pockets of his bomber jacket, and Will was absolutely crying now. In just a few quick strides, Nico was there holding his hand and squeezing it tight and maybe everything was going to be okay after all. Not immediately, not when he might still need treatment even if it wasn’t cancer, but it was going to be okay.
Will was going to be okay because Nico was right here with him now and maybe a video call with his Mom wouldn’t be so bad.