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Arisu was very, very done with it.
He had been, statistically speaking, perfectly prepared to give a calm, measured lecture on the clinical presentation of appendicitis1. He, however, had not been prepared nor informed about the possibility of his partner — in life and in crime — to give himself the same diagnosis right in front of their students — those poor, poor souls — and continue teaching as if nothing catastrophic had ever happened.
“Pain localized to the lower right quadrant here…” Chishiya said lightly, pointer tapping the projected diagram of the abdomen. “Usually accompanied by nausea, low-grade fever, loss of appetite, tenderness to palpation2 and, ah, the pain tends to worsen if you press and release this area.”
He paused, gaze flicking toward the students as if checking to see who was taking notes, and in the same calm tone one might use for a weather forecast, added a, “Which are all the symptoms I've had since yesterday evening, so… any question you have for me?”
The room went so still you could've heard a pin drop. Twenty-five undergraduates froze in varying stages of scribbling, and Arisu was certain his soul must have vacated his body with how horrified he was.
“Did you just—” His voice cracked halfway between a whisper and a hiss, forcing him to clear his throat before he even attempted to speak again. “Did you just casually announce to everyone that you have acute appendicitis!?”
“Please don't fret or panic over my announcement, Dr. Arisu.” Chishiya tilted his head, pointer resting lightly against his shoulder, utterly unbothered. “I personally think that this is a wonderful opportunity for students to have hands-on experience about acute appendicitis and how to… recognize the signs before it becomes too late.”
It was a surprise he didn’t have a heart attack on the spot. His stress level should have been high enough to qualify him for an immediate transfer to the ER.
“Hands-on experience,” Arisu sighed, fingers itching with the urge to throttle the man in front of him. “You want to use your own medical emergency as a teaching moment.”
“Well, when you put it like that, the whole thing does sound very… unreasonable.” His partner shifted slightly, and he could see that barely perceptible wince crossing his features. “However, consider the educational value of this—”
“Alright, that's enough.” Arisu snapped, and whatever remained of his composure evaporated as he turned to their class with a smile far too bright for how close he was about to lose his temper. “Everyone, lecture's over. Please collect your things and head out quietly. Dr. Chishiya and I need to discuss some… curriculum adjustments, and I'll email updates once these changes are approved.”
Their students didn't have to be told twice; they fled in a ripple of confused murmurs and sympathetic glances. When the last one had nearly cleared the doorway, Arisu marched over to slam it shut before finally, finally turning around to address his menace of a partner behind him.
“Shuntarō.” He hissed, his professional tone dissolving completely. “What the fuck was that?”
“Well, if my self-diagnosis is correct—”
“Don't.” Arisu held up a finger, eyes closed as if he was trying to summon a great deal of patience from whatever cosmic entities would listen up there. “Don't you dare make a joke about your health right now. How long have you been in pain?”
Chishiya's pointer finally found its way to the desk, and the cardiologist leaned against it with what he recognized as discomfort getting tucked away. “Since around eleven last night. Started as general abdominal pain, which I thought was just normal stomach issues, then localized to McBurney's point3 around three AM. I think I had a low-grade fever around—”
“Jesus Christ, Shun.” The brunette dragged both hands through his hair, completely destroying whatever professional styling he'd managed that morning. “You've been walking around with appendicitis for nearly twelve hours and didn't mention that until we were in the middle of a lecture!? To first-years who take everything you say as gospel!?”
“The timing was perfect, actually. We were covering the exact symptoms—”
“You're losing your mind,” Arisu muttered while reaching for his phone, because yes, the ER was where they'd be heading next.
“I know exactly where my mind is, thank you.” Despite the pain that made his shoulders tense, Chishiya's smirk stayed exactly the same. “Unlike my appendix4, which appears to be staging quite the rebellion right now.”
That was enough to make him pause right before he pressed the call button on his phone. “Did you just… Did you seriously attempt to make a joke about your own medical emergency!?”
“I thought you'd appreciate the humor.”
“… I'm going to kill you myself and save your appendix the trouble instead.”
Chishiya opened his mouth to reply — another quip, certainly — but the lightness in his expression curdled as a sharp, hot crease cut across his features and his hand went flat against his abdomen like the pressure could fix whatever had gone wrong in his body.
That was very much the last fucking straw.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—” Arisu dropped his phone onto the desk so that he caught his partner before he fainted. “Can you listen and sit down while I try to get you an ambulance and a doctor who can actually help you!?”
“It… It's alright, don't make this a big deal.” Chishiya hissed softly. “I can walk—”
“You can walk!? Shun, that ship has sailed and crashed straight into an iceberg the moment you decided to use your appendicitis as a real-life example for our students!” Arisu tried to laugh, but it came out more like a strangled noise instead. “Now please tell me how painful it is on the scale of one to ten, and if you dare say that it's ‘manageable,’ I will lose what's left of my sanity.”
“… Five.”
“Five my ass…” The brunette muttered and reached for his phone once again while also trying to get Chishiya to settle down on a nearby chair. “You said the same fucking thing last year when you fractured your wrist, and it ended up with you being in a cast for three months.”
“It was a hairline fracture, excuse you—”
“Shun.” His tone was sharper than he had intended to, but it did the job — the blond immediately snapped his mouth shut, cat eyes focusing on him with surprise. “Sorry, I just… I need you to stop being a doctor for five minutes and… be my boyfriend instead, yeah? Can you do that for me?”
Fortunately (or Unfortunately) for him, his partner relented, letting the pain wash away his usual façade and reveal the discomfort he had tried to hide throughout the day.
“It hurts, Ryō,” Chishiya said quietly. “I thought I could handle it by myself.”
“Oh, baby, you absolute disaster of a human being.” Arisu sighed and cupped his partner's fever-warm cheeks. “I love you, but you really need to stop sometimes.”
Chishiya leaned into the touch despite himself, eyes fluttering closed for just a moment. “I still think it was a good idea to—”
“Shh.” He hushed and pressed a gentle kiss against his partner's dampen blond hair while his hand dialed emergency services. “Doctor mode off, remember? Let me handle this.”
The dispatcher picked up instantly.
“Emergency services, what's your emergency?”
“Hi, my name is Arisu Ryōhei and I need an ambulance sent to the Tokyo Medical University, Building C, Lecture Hall 204. My thirty-three-year-old partner is currently having acute appendicitis symptoms — pain localized to McBurney's point, low-grade fever, nausea, symptoms started approximately twelve hours ago.”
“Is the patient conscious and alert?”
Arisu glanced at Chishiya, who was watching him with those sharp cat eyes, looking simultaneously fond and exasperated. “Yes, unfortunately very much so. He's also a cardiologist who thought it would be brilliant to use his own medical emergency as a teaching demonstration.”
The dispatcher paused. “… I'm sorry, did you just say he planned to use his appendicitis as a real-life example?”
“Welcome to my life,” the psychiatrist muttered. “And yes, that's exactly what happened. Can you please send someone before he performs his own appendectomy5 for educational purposes?”
Chishiya snorted at his words, then immediately winced as it sent another wave of pain through his abdomen. “I'm a heart surgeon, Ryō, not a general one.”
“Don't give me ideas about what other medical specialties you can traumatize today,” Arisu hissed — thank God he was covering the phone's mouthpiece — before he continued talking to the dispatcher with a sigh. “Yes, my apology, may I ask how long will it be for the ambulance to arrive?”
“ETA is eight to ten minutes, sir. Can you keep the patient still and monitor his condition?”
“Trust me, keeping him still is going to be the biggest challenge of my medical career.” Arisu looked down at Chishiya, who had the audacity to look amused despite being doubled over in pain. “But yes, I've got him.”
After confirming the location and hanging up, the brunette then turned his full attention back to his partner. “Okay, ambulance is on the way. How is the pain right now? And I want actual honesty, not whatever number you think will worry me least.”
“… Seven,” Chishiya admitted, his usual composure finally cracking around the edges. “I think it's… getting worse.”
“Of course it is.” Arisu ran his fingers through the older man's blonde hair, trying to keep his composure even when all he wanted to do at that moment was to give his man a full-blown lecture on a doctor's responsibility to take care of himself. “Because appendicitis tends to do that when you ignore it for twelve hours and then use it as a visual aid.”
“In my defense—”
“There is no defense for this, Shun. None. Zero. You have officially maxed out your quota of medical stupidity for the next decade.” Still, his touch stayed gentle despite the way he phrased his words. “But I'm proud of you for eventually telling me the truth.”
Chishiya leaned forward slightly, resting his forehead against his shoulder. “This is not how I planned to spend my Wednesday.”
“No, your plan was to give twenty-five undergraduates collective trauma by casually announcing your life-threatening condition during a lecture.” Arisu wrapped his arms around his partner carefully, mindful of his pain. “Which, by the way, we are absolutely going to discuss once you're not actively dying on me.”
“I'm not dying—”
“You're not allowed to have opinions about your mortality right now. Doctor's orders.”
“You're a psychiatrist.”
“And you're a cardiologist with appendicitis, so clearly we're both operating outside our specialties today.”
Despite everything, Chishiya laughed — a soft, breathless sound that made his chest tighten with affection and worry in equal measure.
“There's the ambulance,” Arisu said as sirens became audible in the distance. “Try not to diagnose the paramedics when they get here, okay?”
“I make no promises.”
“Shun, I swear to God—”
“… And I love you too, Ryō.” It slipped out almost lazily, as if he hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but his fever-bright eyes were unbearably sincere. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
And, really, how could he continue to be mad when the man he loved opened up to him like that?
He didn't stand a chance.
Wirh a sigh coming from the depth of his soul, Arisu pressed a soft kiss to his partner's temple, and they waited together until help arrived at their lecture hall.
(Chishiya, of course, made a full recovery. The story of how he turned his own appendicitis into a lecture demonstration, though, lingered in all the spaces of their university long afterward — a cautionary tale, a whispered joke, and, to Arisu's eternal mortification, a legend among freshmen for years to come.)
╔══《✧》══╗
Footnotes:
- Appendicitis is inflammation in your appendix, a tiny organ attached to your large intestine. [ ▲ ]
- These are all symptoms of appendicitis, with "tender to palpation" describes a localized area of the abdomen that is unusually sensitive to touch or pressure, causing pain when you gently press on it. [ ▲ ]
- McBurney's point is the area in the lower right abdomen where tenderness is often felt during a physical exam for appendicitis; it is located about one-third of the way from the right hip bone's anterior superior spine to the navel. [ ▲ ]
- The appendix is a finger-shaped pouch that sticks out from the colon on the lower right side of the abdomen. [ ▲ ]
- Appendectomy is surgery to remove an inflamed or infected appendix. Because an inflamed appendix has the potential to rupture (burst), appendicitis is a medical emergency. [ ▲ ]