Chapter Text
“Are you having any shortness of breath?”
“Only when I’m working. It’s not bad.”
That was a lie. But Chuuya didn’t want to admit the truth — not if it meant getting stuck here longer than necessary. He hated scans, hated hospitals, hated the hum of machines, the prick of IV lines. He’d had it all before. And he definitely did not want to deal with the consequences of jumping head-first into a situation that he didn’t fully understand, something he wasn’t even sure he wanted to face in the first place.
“It may not seem serious, but we won’t know until we check.”
“I really don’t think it’s anything. I’m fine,” he insisted. Chuuya knew that the nurses were only trying to help, but he was fine. Maybe other people would be troubled in his situation, but Chuuya was strong; he knew he was just fine. He had to be.
“Of course, I trust you, Chuuya-kun, but just to be safe,” the nurse’s lie fell from her lips too easily, like it was practiced in weaving mistruths. Chuuya knew she was lying, of course. They always lie.
It was one of those gentle, careful lines they told every patient, meant to comfort rather than be believed. He’d heard them before, too many times to count. Lies dressed up in kindness were still lies.
Chuuya watched stiffly as the woman leaned over him, pressing her stethoscope against the different areas of his chest, listening carefully for the drain and fill of each chamber of his empty heart.
And, as she repositioned her stethoscope once, twice, three times, furrowing her brow, Chuuya thought surely, surely that can’t be good. He knew that look. That kind of silence always meant something.
The nurse, herself, was pretty, with tied black hair and gray eyes; a face of clear skin, but even that couldn’t hide the darkness of the circles under her eyes. Her look was demure, but focused — her appearance was not unique, but she was still beautiful enough all the same.
“What is it?” he asked, already anxious just from the woman’s expression, which surely did not aid whatever was wrong with his heart.
“Ah, it’s likely nothing,” she replied, slipping the stethoscope from her ears. She was only cushioning the blow. Chuuya wasn’t interested in reassurances — he didn’t want the polite version of the truth. He wanted the real one. He wanted to know what was actually wrong, not hear that it was ‘probably nothing.’
“A heart murmur can be common in athletes or children your age. But, combined with jugular venous pressure…” she sighed, her gaze flickering to her notes before meeting his eyes again. “I’d just like to run a few more scans. Just to be sure.”
There were few things in the world that Chuuya despised more than tests, more than scans, more than needles, more than being hooked up to machines. If he could say no, he would. But instead, he just sighed.
“Sure, whatever,” he murmured, rubbing at the veins bulging at his neck — it wasn’t painful, but the simple knowledge that it was there was bothering him. He dug his blunt nails at it, though it ultimately did nothing to relieve his discontent.
Something so deep-seated couldn’t be brushed away so easily, after all. No amount of scratching could get rid of something that was part of you now.
“Why do I have to be in the kids’ unit?” Chuuya groaned as the nurse walked him through the hallway. His tone was already soaked in irritation.
“All patients under the age of eighteen reside in the pediatric unit.”
“I’m not a goddamn kid, I don’t play with toys.”
“Of course you’re not. There’s no need to worry, Chuuya-kun. You’ll be in a room that’s appropriate for your age.”
But he did worry. Not about the room itself, that was whatever, but about the way people looked at him, like he was some fragile thing. Like he wasn’t old enough to understand what was happening to him.
Chuuya hated that. He hated being infantilized. He hated being belittled and kept in the dark, talked down to; kept out of conversations about his own body. He knew that the staff thought he was a kid, but he was 15, dammit — not a goddamn baby! Sure, he was a little short, but he was still growing! He was mature for his age! And more than anything, he wanted to be treated like it.
Chuuya hated feeling small.
“How long will I have to stay here?” Chuuya asked through gritted teeth, patience already taut; a spider’s string pulled too tight.
“We’d just like to keep you here for observation while we do some further tests,” the nurse explained, her voice warm, but the undertone clinical. Chuuya hated it, every bit of it — the tests, the antiseptic smell. He hated it all. Even with his eyes closed, he was so painfully aware of everything around him.
“What do you think it is?” he pressed, harder this time — this nurse just wouldn’t tell him what the fuck was the issue, and it was bothering him.
“Ah, it’s nothing to be too concerned about.”
“I’m more concerned that you’re not telling me.”
Now Chuuya was really pissed off, and the nurse sensed it. She probably didn’t want to stress him, since she thought he was just a “kid”, but it was doing the opposite; it was just making him angrier.
“Your… heart, ah, allow me to explain,” she began, opening the door to a hospital room he’d be staying in. “Your physical examination showed some strange behavior in your heart. It’s normal in pediatric patients to have a slight stutter or murmur, and these arrhythmias can be harmless most of the time — arrhythmia, that’s an irregular heartbeat, if you didn’t know.”
Chuuya did know what it was, but he just pressed his lips together in annoyance instead of berating her.
“But yours is unusual, so we’d like to keep you for some further testing, just to be sure. Yours, coupled with the edema in your extremities and your fainting spells, can be a cause of concern.”
Chuuya still didn’t fully understand, but it was a start. He took in a breath, looking at his fingers. His limbs had been swelling lately, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed by him. It was no big deal at first, but now, in retrospect, every issue coupled together seemed to twist into a bright yellow warning sign.
But Chuuya was never the type to think in retrospect, to take life slowly — he was impulsive, he hated to admit; a carpe-diemist, if you will.
Chuuya huffed. “How long will I have to be here?”
“I’m not sure. We’ll have to run some tests first.”
Chuuya sighed, already expecting the vague answer. He stepped into the space, glancing around, taking in the vapid room. It was plain, no toys, no distractions for a kid. It was just a basic, empty room.
There was a hospital bed, a small television mounted on the wall, a chair, and a drawn shade. The room felt bleak, isolating — like a grim hospital ward, frozen in time from disuse many years ago. And, in a way, it was. And that fact made Chuuya’s skin crawl, like a thousand bugs invisible on the surface, the redhead helpless to rid himself of their ubiquity.
“If you need anything, you can press that button to call a nurse. I’ll inform your parents to bring you some of your personal items.”
Chuuya nodded, tuning out most of her voice. He didn’t care about any of it. All he wanted was to get out of here as soon as possible. All of this was unnecessary anyway. He was fine, and he would be fine — he was no weakling, that was for sure.
Chuuya soon fell into a fitful sleep after that, the same routine nightmares haunting him behind the seal of his eyelids. It was nothing new, something he’d grown used to — the little variations in each one were never notable enough to lend much thought. Like what he had for lunch some days ago — important in the moment, but forgotten in the long haul.
Chuuya woke up to his phone blaring, a vibration so great his phone had nearly knocked itself off the table. It took him a moment to gather his bearings, to remember where he was, but when he did, he unlocked his phone to see the dozens of missed texts waiting for him.
Seems like he slept through the night.
From: Shirase
Dude, where are you? u never came back to school after u passed out. What happened??
From: Mom
Good morning, honey. Are you awake yet? Your father and I will be visiting in a few hours. I hope you’re doing all right.
From: Yuan
Shirase and I are worried about you. Please update us when you can. Be safe!!!
Chuuya sighed, setting his phone face down on the bedside table. He would reply eventually — later, soon, at some point, definitely. But they all had questions, and he didn’t have any answers. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. Maybe it was something serious. Maybe he’d die tomorrow. Maybe it was nothing at all. Every line of questioning he seemed to pursue would always draw a blank.
He tried not to let it get to him, not to worry himself over nothing, but his mind was like a cat on hot bricks, and he couldn’t get it to shut up. He just wanted silence, but it seemed to exist nowhere that he went.
Chuuya looked up at the TV playing on the wall of his hospital room. The volume was low, a quiet hum in the background. A reporter was talking about a woman whose remains had been found in the Nara Prefecture. She’d gone missing on a hiking trail.
Chuuya felt bad, he always did, about things like this. He imagined if it were his mother who’d gone missing, how heartbroken he’d be.
But it passed, like it always did, and the newscaster switched to another story. He blinked up at the screen, already forgetting the woman’s name. (It was strange how an entire life could be reduced to a nine-second clip on the morning news, then vanish as easily. Gone, dismissed, like it never mattered in the first place.)
There was a knock on the door to his room — not an askance, but an alert that someone would enter whether he liked it or not. The knob to the door twisted, pushing open to reveal a nurse that he didn’t recognize.
“Good morning, Chuuya-kun. How are you feeling today?” the nurse asked, her voice sweet — or, at least, sweeter than the nurse from yesterday.
The woman at the door had hair that was bistre, ashy, but it shone in the sunlight bleeding through the blinds. She wore a nametag that read Ishige Miroku. Chuuya glanced at it once and figured he would forget it by tomorrow. Still, she smiled at him.
“Fine. My neck’s a little sore, think I slept on it wrong,” he replied, rolling his shoulders.
“Don’t worry, I know the feeling,” she smiled, her voice sweet, like honeyed sugar. He wasn’t typically one to fall for charm — he usually saw through that play, usually sniffed out that disingenuous kindness from a mile away — but something in her tone calmed him somewhat, just a little. Like a shade on his eyes that blocked out the unease weighing on his mind. Perhaps likened to a splinter in the foot, or a twisted ankle, in the way that it was only exacerbated with each step he took. Metaphorically, of course. Just metaphorically.
His leg was aching. His feet, too, but not soreness, but more like it was being pulled apart, stretched beyond what it could withstand. His socks bit into his ankles, and his feet pulsed with a numb warmth; an annoyance he’d gotten used to by now, but an annoyance nevertheless.
“It’s early morning, and we’ve gotten your test results back, Chuuya-kun. We’d like to bring in your parents to discuss what we’ve found.”
“Is it bad?” was Chuuya’s first question, instinctual, the words coming out of his mouth before he could even stop it, an arrow loose from tightly drawn nerves. He hated asking. Hated the vulnerability in the question, but he couldn’t help it — he was a bundle of nerves impossible to unwind.
“Well…” the nurse hesitated, circumspect with her statements. Chuuya understood, but it annoyed him all the same. “It relies on a lot of factors. If untreated, it can be bad, but, conversely, it’s important to be aware of the treatments you have at your disposal.”
Her voice was a smile, even despite Chuuya not looking. That didn’t answer the question, though. Not really.
“I just don’t want to feel like I’m in the dark anymore,” he grumbled, the taciturn tone of voice an attempt to mask how vulnerable he truly felt.
“I understand, Chuuya-kun, and I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t feel that way, alright? Your parents are waiting outside. I’m going to let them in so we can discuss the treatment plan together.”
“Alright,” he replied, barely louder than a breath.
The nurse smiled again, a gentle one, of course, before turning on her heel to depart from his room.
Chuuya glanced down at his phone, seeing the time. It was late morning. He hadn’t replied to his mother’s texts, but he figured it would be fine; she’d see him soon anyway.
His gaze shifted to the TV, getting lost in the news broadcast in the process. It was past the weather broadcasts, so they were reporting on smaller, filler stories. Something about an American company testing new delivery robots, and something frivolous the Prime Minister had said. Chuuya didn’t care. It all sounded static.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, immediately wincing as he put his weight down on them. He’d had his legs swell like this before, and it was always painful.
It was a strange pain, something that nobody ever seemed to understand when he described it. It felt like his veins were throbbing. He couldn’t explain it well. Chuuya was really no good at articulating things. Wasn’t his strong suit.
He found it frustrating. It all sat unspoken on the tip of his tongue, and every time he tried to say it out loud, it came out wrong. Too blunt, too vague, or not at all.
He climbed back on the bed with an annoyed glower, agitated with the feeling of being helpless. He hated it. Hated not knowing, hated waiting. He was at a loss, cornered. Up a creek without a paddle, as the saying went. It was stupid, in all honesty, but it was hard to think clearly with the constant throb in his legs and the anticipation of whatever the doctors were going to say.
He’d gotten distracted with studying the remote. It was oddly bulky, dust-worn with faded buttons. The writing on the back was in English, an American model, maybe. How strange.
The recurrent sound of knocking dragged him out of his curious mind. The same nurse from earlier came back, now with two familiar figures behind her.
“Chuuya!” his mother cried, rushing over to trap him in her embrace before he could even sit up straight. Her arms were tight around his shoulders, clinging like he might fall apart if she let go.
He mumbled a soft “hello” into her shoulder.
He didn’t hate his mother’s hugs, far from it — but with the hospital smell in the air, the embrace didn’t comfort him like it usually did. He couldn’t stave off the discomfort he felt just by being there. It was a constant reminder of just how serious this all might be.
His father wore his typical stoic expression, lips pressed so tightly together that it nearly twisted into a scowl, like a wilting flower’s petals curling in on itself. Chuuya was used to it by now, so much so, in fact, that he could see the concern hidden beneath it. But his father was a man of few words and even fewer emotions, so that glimpse of concern vanished as quickly as it appeared. “Honey, how are you feeling?” his mother asked, sitting beside him on the edge of the hospital bed as the same nurse from earlier entered the room, now followed by a male doctor without a nametag. “I’m alright, Mama,” he assured her, keeping his voice steady despite the way he felt inside. He felt like a bug on an examination table — small, exposed, and vulnerable. Like every twitch, every breath, every beat of his aching heart was under scrutiny.
His mother’s presence comforted him slightly, but he still felt a sense of unease, like a poisonous gas in the air. She squeezed his hand, and he tried not to flinch at the sight of her fingers leaving small indents in his swollen skin. It always went away after a while, so it was okay. “Just a little anxious.”
“It’s okay, dear,” she whispered, and it helped, a little. Maybe. He wasn’t sure. But he wanted it to, so he tried to convince himself it did. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
He knew his parents were trying their best. Trying to be strong for him. And showing any sign of worry felt like giving them more to carry, a burden he hated to add.
“Nakahara-san, good morning, it’s a pleasure. My name is Ishige Miroku, and this is our lead pediatric cardiologist, Tsuchida-sensei. He has carefully reviewed your son’s case. I know it’s been a confusing time for you, and I’m sure you’ve been worried, but I hope we can provide you with some clear answers today,” the nurse said with a gentle smile.
Chuuya turned his head to watch his mother return the smile. It put him at ease, a little, despite the paradoxical situation. The nurse’s hands were neatly folded as she stood in the room, while the doctor’s attention was fixed on the graphs and notes in his hands. Chuuya wondered why they had chosen to break the news in his residential room instead of an office. Maybe it was meant to feel less clinical, more personal, more human.
Was Chuuya really still human?
“Yes, thank you all for coming in today. I reviewed the results of your son’s echocardiogram, MRI, and blood work. Based on what we’ve seen, the signs point to a condition called restrictive cardiomyopathy.”
“Cardiomyopathy? So his heart isn’t working?” his mother asked, concern clear in her voice.
“To a degree, yes. More specifically, it means that the walls of the heart become stiff — especially the lower chambers, the ventricles — which prevents the heart from filling with blood completely between each beat.”
The nurse chimed in, “It’s not immediately life-threatening, ah, you can think of it as if your son’s heart is made of leather. It’s too stiff to properly relax when it needs to, which causes a buildup of pressure that can be pushed down to the liver and the lungs.”
That all made sense. It made complete sense, actually. No wonder he often felt like he couldn’t get enough air to feel satisfied, but just enough to survive. The reason why he could never seem to properly catch his breath. It all made sense, but it didn’t make him feel much better. He was still confused, and, despite his reluctance to admit it, he was scared. He didn’t like this one bit. Why did his body have to betray him like this?
He found it ironic that even his own heart didn’t seem to want him. Did he even deserve a heart?
Maybe something as sophisticated as a heart didn’t suit someone like him.
“Is it fatal?” his father asked, straight to the point, yet unable to mask the unease in his usually steady voice.
“Well, yes, it can be. It’s quite rare in someone his age, and this condition can worsen over time. I can only imagine the reason being a congenital heart defect, but still — this type of cardiomyopathy is rare in pediatric patients,” the cardiologist spoke, his voice steady, clinical.
The man’s tone was more factual than sympathetic, but it didn’t disconcert the redhead — the professionalism — he admired the man’s dedication to his work, really.
“But,” the nurse cut in with a sweeter, more hopeful tone, “it’s important to know that we caught it early, which means we can treat it more effectively. With otherwise good health, your prognosis is quite promising.”
Her smile really was sincere.
“How do you treat it, I-I mean— Can it even be cured?” his mother’s voice was shaky, her fingers gently tracing his.
“This disease — No, it can’t be cured, well, more accurately, your heart’s muscles can’t be ‘fixed’, so to speak,” the cardiologist began. “Regarding treatment, we can manage it with medication. But this condition will inevitably progress.”
“In cases like his, we typically begin the process of evaluating for a heart transplant,” the nurse spoke with a voice that was gentle.
“A transplant, really? That serious?” asked his father, a flicker of disbelief and worry in his voice, barely visible to an outside observer. “Yes, for cases like this, a transplant is often the most effective treatment.”
Strangely, the first question Chuuya found himself able to voice was, “Will I have to stay here?”
The nurse shook her head. “No, not forever. We want to keep you here under observation for now to monitor how your body responds to various? medications. Do you have any drug allergies?”
“He’s allergic to Dilaudid,” his mother said. In truth, Chuuya had no idea what that even was. The name sounded like some complicated medical jargon, it was all Greek to him, terms he couldn’t even begin to understand.
The doctor began to scribble something on his clipboard while the nurse still regarded his family with a patient, sympathetic look.
“If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to ask.”
“Transplant,” his father began, “How long does he have if he doesn’t get one?”
“Anywhere between six months to two years. Somewhere around the middle,” said the cardiologist.
“That’s… no time at all…” his mother mumbled, voice barely disguising the horror hidden underneath. “How… How long is the waitlist?”
“Currently, it’s around three years for pediatric patients. But patients are prioritized by urgency, and those higher up on the list can often be skipped when an organ becomes available, especially if the donor has an incompatible blood type or physical size,” the nurse explained once again, ever the patient with the three of them.
“So his chances are good,” his father declared, more of a statement than a question. He had a knack for seeing the bigger picture, something his that mother often struggled with.
“Precisely.”
“We’ll leave you two alone to discuss things. If you need anything, feel free to use the call button,” the nurse smiled, before carefully leaving the room with the cardiologist in tow.
It was silent for what felt like eternity. Sempiternity, perhaps. Chuuya had heard the word in a book before, and, although he wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, it felt fitting here.
“How are you feeling?” was his mother’s first question once the door closed, her face decorated with a heartfelt concern.
In truth, Chuuya wasn’t sure how to answer. He had no idea how he truly felt. It was as if he were floating in the middle of the ocean. He was fine for now, but he knew that he’d drown soon, and he had no idea which way was shore.
“I’m okay, Mama,” he reassured her, smiling, both a consolation for her and for himself. He was trying to present an emotion that wasn’t there, that didn’t belong to him. It was like putting on a jacket that didn’t fit right.
It was hard to know how he should feel in a situation like this. Everything inside him was a blur. It was hard to parse the strongest feeling out of the jumbled mess of scattered, overwhelming ones. There was just too much of it, all muddled together, and none of it made any sense.
A part of him wanted to commiserate with her, to lean into the comfort of his mother’s worry, to let her hold him and say everything would be alright — and to believe it.
But another part of him just wanted to push it all away, to ignore the issue until it eventually put him under the ground.
“It’ll be alright, son,” his father spoke up, surprisingly, despite his penchant for tight-lipped stoicism. His father was not the emotional type, but he was not uncaring, either. Chuuya knew his parents cared for him.
Of course they cared. He was their only child, their pride and joy. They never expected a child, after failing so many tries, so when they finally succeeded, they were elated. They’d celebrated his birth for three whole days. Those were some of the only days his father ever missed work.
“Fuku, you don’t need to worry. He’ll be fine. Our son is strong,” his father added, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
His mother bit down on her lip, hard, nodding slowly. Chuuya could see the doubt in her eyes, how hard she was trying to convince herself that it was true.
Whether she succeeded or not, Chuuya hadn’t a clue.