Chapter Text
“Mr. Valdez,” The nurse’s gentle voice snapped him out of his trance. “The doctor will see you now. If you follow me, I can take you to her office.”
Leo had been doing that a lot now, the zoning out, not being there. He’d been through too much in his life to be anything but present. But even this, even consciousness and cognity and every beautiful, cursed thing that came with simply having an able mind was slipping through his fingers the way his screws and bolts had started doing when held in his right hand.
“Of course. Thank you." He said quietly as he rose and began to follow the nurse out of the waiting room. Outside, the afternoon light was brilliant in the way snippets of heaven always were. He felt —in a way his mind hadn’t allowed him to feel in a long time— like molten glass on a blowpipe. The sun the sweltering heat with which the sculpture of his future would be blown tall and tempered and strong, and this waiting room and everything that led to it was the glassblower.
He wondered what kind of sculpture he’d be when he went. He wondered if the notion of his life and everything he’d done in it would catch the light and refract into the hearts of everyone he loved and he hoped loved him back. He wondered how many colors the glass sculpture of his life would produce from the sunlight. He wondered if the sun would shine over him some day the way it shone over the large metal letters of ‘ONCOLOGY’.
He’d be spending some time here, maybe. Leo had enough time to get acquaintained with the white, sterile hallways he was currently following the nurse through.
“Here we are, Mr. Valdez.” The nurse said warmly as she paused outside the door and turned to him. “Thank you for coming on time.”
Her hand rested gently on the door handle before she pushed down to open it. The light blue of her scrubs was a nice contrast against the oak of the door. It was grounding. Light blue had always been one of Leo’s favorite colors. Though he seemed like more of a red person, light blue was special in the way red never would be. Light blue was the sky. Vast and perfect and free. He knew someone else that loved light blue, the same someone that had made Leo like it too. Maybe it was time to give that someone a call.
“It was no trouble.” Leo replied, willing his heart to back from his throat into his chest. “Thank you for having me.”
Then, the door was open. Between him and the threshold to his consultation, there was all but one step. The doctor sat at her desk, waiting. He met her eyes, and she did not berate him. She nodded, allowing Leo to weigh his choices within his allotted half-an-hour. He was terrified of what he’d be told. He was terrified of what he’d hear, whether he’d space out again and cease to hear it altogether.
But the sky had told him once, as it smiled down at him with a faint scar curving like a crescent moon beneath two pools of electric blue, that it was always better to know.
"When you know about something, it becomes just the one thing. Isn’t that so much better than mounting possibility after possibilty onto your shoulders?”
Leo wanted to see the sky again, he decided. He wanted to see the sky again if it was one of the last things he saw. He wanted to sear it into his memory, so he’d have something to hold onto if he never saw again.
He’d agreed then. It had seemed straightforward when no complexities were bearing down upon him, but now it was as though he’d been released into a labyrinth and made to wander for his freedom. Between awareness and the superficial embrace of ignorance within he longed to remain, he knew the hard thing —the hardest thing, the largest obstacle he’d probably face in the glassblowing of his life— was also the easy thing.
Even if Leo didn’t love himself as much as he should have, there was someone out there who did. That someone had the right to learn that Leo had given himself the right to know. that Leo had stood between the threshold to an office in the oncology ward at a hospital and decided to do the hard thing of pushing past denial. Leo would make that someone, and all the other someones proud today. Even if it was just Tuesday afternoon in the most depressing floor of the hospital.
So, he took a breath. And then he released it, breathing fire into the forge of whatever came next.
He stepped inside and was met with warmth. The doctor smiled at him from her desk, jet black hair looking almost blue in the sharp lightning overhead.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Valdez. Thank you for coming in today. Please,” The doctor motioned to the chair in front of her desk. “Have a seat.”
As Leo settled into the chair, she continued. “I understand we haven’t met before, you were referred to me after your GP ran some tests after your last consultation. I’m Dr. Velani. What would you like me to call you?”
“Leo.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Leo.” Dr. Velani said gently before she shifted into a more serious register. It made Leo’s ever-beating heart beat just a little faster. "I have some important results for scans and tests ordered by your GP that I’d like to look over with you, is that alright?”
He sat up straighter and tried to force in breath through lungs that were too terrified to work, and tried to force thoughts into a mind that had been failing for the better part of a year. “Yes. Please, I-I’d like to know.”
“Of course.” Dr. Velani said, and angled her monitor slightly so that Leo could see. It was a scan of his brain, he realized. They’d put him in that god-awful MRI machine and forced him to listen to sounds that made him feel like an atom in a particle accelerator. The memory sent a shudder down his spine, and so did whatever Dr. Velani was pointing at with the butt of her pen.
“When they did the liquid biopsy to check for any tumor indicators in your blood and spinal fluid, they found tumor cells and DNA. That was why you were taken to do the MRI.”
“And they found something.” Leo said quietly. He didn’t have to be a doctor to know he was looking at a mass in his brain. “A big something.”
“They did.” Dr. Velani said softly. “It’s in the left cerebral hemisphere and is most likely a glioblastoma. It’s—an aggressive brain tumor. Given your history and presenting complaints of memory loss, headaches, and weakness in your right hand…it is likely that this tumor was the cause of your symptoms.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t begin to imagine how this must feel for you, Leo.”
"How—How bad is it?” Leo tried, his heart calming down in a way Leo would not have expected. He knew now. He knew. The sky had spoken to him and compelled him to believe, and he did now. Atlas’ burden had all but fallen away. Yet it left Thanatos cloaked behind him, a hand settling on his shoulder.
Dr. Velani’s expression softened and she took a breath. “I don’t currently have enough information. We don’t know for sure yet so we’ll have to do a biopsy to get a better look at the tissue in your brain. Is that alright?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for your time, Leo. I understand this can’t have been easy. If you need anyone to talk to—”
“I’m okay.” Leo smiled as he rose. He felt like a charlatan, a hypocrite of the highest order. Leo wasn’t okay. Not in the slightest. He felt as though the glassblower had taken out the sculpture of his life and smashed it against the earth. He couldn’t fix himself, he was no machine. “Really. Thank you, doctor. I’ll see you next week.”