"because best friends don't look at each other the way we do!"
in which maya is so in love with
riley that it's making her sick.
The Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from unrequited love, where the patient's throat will fill up with flowers, they...
.•°•.•chapter one: who says love can't kill?•.•°•.
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"Ms. Hart, it appears that you have Hanahaki Disease."
The man's words rang out through her ears several times, seemingly loud yet far away all at the same time.
Maya slowly raised her head to look up at him, brows creased together right in the center. Riley always told her she'd get wrinkles right there if she didn't quit it. Riley told her a lot of things. She shifted nervously, the sound of the paper beneath her crinkling momentarily breaking her out of her thoughts. "What's that?", she finally asked, crossing her arms. "It couldn't be bad, could it?"
The man gave her a sad smile. "I'm surprised you haven't heard of it. It's claimed many people around your age recently..." He took out an x ray and held it out to her. "Hanahaki Disease is also known as the flower petal disease or the throwing up flower petals disease. It's a disease that is born when you love someone, truly love them with all you have, and they reject you."
"But I—" Maya shook her head. Her throat suddenly felt tight. Her eyes stung like she was about to cry. "That can't be right, I never told he— The person doesn't know how I feel about them."
"They don't have to do it outright, dear. You just have to believe in your heart that they'll reject you. You said that today you coughed up a single pink flower petal... That puts you at the beginning of Stage Two, The Fluttering."
"The— the what?"
"There are four stages with this disease. The first stage is called The Blooming. The flowers in the patient's heart begin to bloom in their lungs. Stage Two, the one you have just entered, is known as The Fluttering. Petals begin to be coughed up or thrown up. Stage Three is The Trickling. Blood is coughed up along with a whole head of flowers..." He paused then, the silence stretching on for what seemed like hours. Maya scanned his features.
He was a tall man, very thin. His blue eyes seemed to hold more sadness than humanly possible for one man to bear. It was like he took the pain of every person that entered his office and carried it for them. His brown hair was messy, like he constantly ran his fingers through it. He looked like you thought a father would.
Maya's heart ached.
"What happens at Stage Four?" It had taken all her courage to whisper those words. Four simple little words. Who knew they could be so powerful?
"The Flowering", he finally said, swallowing thickly. Maya could see his Adam's apple bob nervously every few seconds. After every fifteen seconds, to be exact. ...Not that she was counting. "If the love isn't returned in time, and I don't mean friendship, I mean real, true love... The patient will die of suffocation due to the flowers filling their lungs and throat."
Maya felt sick.
Her hands got clammy. Her head throbbed. Her aching heart picked up the pace, as if it were afraid of being left behind. The room seemed to tilt and spin, stretch and grow. Maya wiped her now sweaty palms on her jeans, her hands trembling. "Who named these fucking stages?" The words sounded so sweet and welcoming, nonthreatening, but all it did was spell out an early death for her.
He gave her a sad smile. "Love is often beautiful and chaotic, disastrous and deadly. Shame how it's such a beautiful way to die, isn't it? We figured that a disease so beautiful and dangerous deserved equally as beautiful and disastrous stage names."
"There's gotta be a cure right?", Maya asked quickly, her voice pitifully hopeful.
His silence said it all.
"If the person returns your love before it's too late, the disease disappears, so to speak. There's also a surgery. We go in and remove it at the root, but you'll never feel any love for that person again. Not paternal, not romantic. All feeling for that person will be gone forever, nothing left but the knowledge that it used to be there. Is surgery an option you would like to further discuss further, Ms. Hart?"
Die because she loved Riley too much or live without her? Without the fluttery feeling she got when Riley held or her hand or said her name? Without the butterflies erupting in her stomach when the girl smiled at her? "No." It didn't take her long to decide. She couldn't do that. Life without Riley wasn't worth living. Death by love. How poetic. Well, this was certainly one way to go. "Who says love can't kill?", she muttered bitterly.
She agreed to meet Dr. Corbin, that had apparently been his name, once a week. She was given a prescription to help treat her cough, but that was it. There was nothing else he could do. Maya sulked the whole way home.
On her way back down the street, she puked up rose petals.
