The Heart Wants What It Wants - MakoHaru Hospital AU

Chapter 1: Newcomer

Makoto Tachibana

Pain.

That's what I've felt for the past fourteen years.

Hooked up to machines, within these four white walls, surrounded by nurses and other patients.

The nurses might be really nice. And the walls might be covered with "get well soon" cards, drawings and movie-posters. But nothing can hide the fact that it's not home.

I'm here for a reason.

I remember when this hell started. I was only three years old when my parents started to worry about me.

They thought I was a late bloomer, when I didn't start walking and talking at the normal age. But when I still hadn't said my first words, or taken my first steps when I got three, I started to worry them.

Besides that I was always crying, because I felt constant pain.

They took me to the hospital. The doctors took some blood, did some tests and not much later my parents got the results. I had Muscular Dystrophy.

I don't remember anything from that day, honestly. I was way too young to understand what was going on. I didn't know why I suddenly didn't stay at home and only saw my parents once a day from that day on.

I just accepted it and within no time it became normal.

For four years I had daily check-ups, physiotherapy, medications and visits from both nurses and my parents. They did everything they could, and because of them I learned to walk and talk at the age of five. I don't remember much of learning this, but I do remember my parents' faces when they heard my speak my first words. They looked so happy, tears streaming over my mom's cheeks.

When I turned seven they transferred me to another hospital, which was further away, but had better medical assistance.

This made it a lot harder for my parents to visit though. Not only because the hospital was far away, but my mother also was pregnant of my twin siblings – Ren and Ran – at the time.

The following years I spend most of my time in the hospital. My parents visited once or twice a week, and when Ren and Ran got older they would visit me as well. I also started getting daily lessons of a home-teacher, because I couldn't go to school.

I still had to take medication every day, but the check-ups became weekly instead of daily. I got moved over to another hospital ward, outside of the Intensive Care for a few months when I was eleven.

When I almost was twelve I went home for almost two years. Those two years were, I think, the best years of my entire life. I was able to spend time with other kids. Mom let me go to school, which was both weird and amazing. Most of my classmates thought of me as strange and didn't want to talk to me at all, while others wanted to be friends immediately.

This all came to an end when I got back in the hospital three years ago.

My life got back to medication, surgeries, physiotherapy, feeding tubes, nasal cannula, nurses and the four sterile walls surrounding the hospital bed.

I sigh and look at my hands. I hate it whenever my thoughts take me back, because it makes me sad. I don't like being sad, that's why I taught myself to be glad for what I've got. I'm surrounded by the nicest nurses, I've got to know many other patients and most importantly I'm alive. Which not everyone can say when they've been in the hospital since they were three.

I look up when I hear a knock on the door.

"Come in!" I reply, my voice is still a little hoarse, because I'm not up that long.