Schmico Short Stories

Open the door

Warning- mentions of death, blood, surgery. Italics mean it happened in the past. Probably gonna be short.

It happens to every doctor, every surgeon, there comes point when you lose a patient and sometimes they form bonds and friendships with them to have it all suddenly ripped away.

For Levi, today was that day and the patient wasn't just anyone.

A few months into Levi's internship, he was introduced to a 12-year-old boy that was battling a brain tumor and who was more obsessed with nerdy things than Levi was.

From the second the two met, they were bonded. Levi always tried to make sure that he would visit Elijah so they could talk about Harry Potter and crime documentaries that had recently watched. Sometimes Levi knew that Elijah needed a distraction from the hospital around him.

Nico would sometimes tag along, talking to Elijah about the broken bones he's dealt with recently as the boy was fascinated with how bones worked. It was a good way for him to nerd out about the topic he loved with someone who was just as interested.

Nico had told Levi many times that he was getting too attached, that he knew that Elijah's situation wasn't good. As the big surgery came up, Nico told him again that things could go wrong but Levi decided to be optimistic.

~~~

"Dr. Sheppard knows what she's doing, she'll be able to remove as much as she can, hopefully, all of it and Elijah will be fine," Levi spoke to Nico, looking in through the window of Elijah's room as Amelia and other doctors talked to him.

"Levi," Nico sighed, "you aren't thinking properly about this, you know how hard this surgery will be and there are no guarantees that it will work." The chances that his tumor could be removed or even reduced was slim, and the outcome, if they managed to, was unknown but Elijah and his mum insisted on trying the surgery.

"Why do you always have to be so negative?"

"I'm not being negative, Levi, I'm being reasonable and logical," Nico finished but Levi ignored him and went back into Elijah's room. He knew this wasn't going to end well.

~~~

The surgery had started it well, Amelia was doing well in keeping in steady and calm as she worked around the tumor to remove it. Levi wasn't as calm but he was trying not to show it. He knew he had to stay quiet and do what he needed to do as a doctor to not distract Amelia.

Levi wasn't quite sure when everything seemed to go downhill but suddenly Elijah's pressure started dropping, then there was too much stress on his heart and his brain started to swell and bleed. Before long, there was nothing they could do to save him.

It was fairly silent as they cleaned things up in the OR, as Levi got out of his scrubs and just stood over the sink, not knowing what to do. The male couldn't understand how he felt, he felt so much as once but nothing at the same time. His stomach had sunk, his chest hurt everything he looked up and into the OR, his mind wouldn't shut up but his face was stone cold.

He wasn't sure how long he had been standing in the room, leaning on the sink and watching the water dry up but eventually, more people came in and needed to use the room. Levi apologized and walked out, not knowing where he was walking. He knew he had to be working, that he had other important things to do But he couldn't do them, he didn't want to.