This was inspired by the song Cancer by My Chemical Romance. I recommend listening to the song while reading.
I did a lot of research, but info can still be inaccurate.
Enjoy the angst.
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"Good morning, Mr Katsuki."
Yuuri opened his eyes involuntarily. It was part of their routine by now. It was all Yuuri seemed to do these days. Follow the routine.
His nurse would come in to tear him from the slumber he longed to clutch onto. Bleak, dark eyes would study the infinitesimal strands of sunlight that crawled through the thick curtains. He would notice how the ice cubes bobbed up and down in the jar of water placed on his bedside table and the clicking of the nurses shoes on the spotless tiles.
He would feel the cold of the water and the wisps of a breeze fluttering through the opened window as the nurse bathed him. He would sit through his check up and pick at the plate of food set before him until he was forced to put some of the contents in his mouth and swallow.
Most of the time he would stare at the sickly white wall, not thinking, not feeling. Just letting numbness overtake him. As numb as possible when pain struck his torso every time he took a breath or when he coughed up blood that dripped down his chin.
Or he would turn his head towards the mirror. Yuuri didn't recognize the person he saw. It wasn't him.
His thick hair didn't hang so loosely as if every strand was about to fall out, or plaster so tightly to his sweaty forehead. His dark eyes didn't look so lifeless and devoid of hope. His face didn't look so hollowed out, nor did his bones stick out so sharply like they could pierce through his sickly skin. His lips weren't so chapped and dried.
He didn't look like that. The person in the mirror was nothing more than a living corpse to Yuuri.
If doing nothing and feeling nothing got boring, Yuuri would ask a nurse to hand him the large book he stored in his bedside table. It didn't have to much in it. He never had much photos and belongings to begin with, being an orphan.
The first two page were filled with pictures of him and his family. His sister standing by his mother as she held him, an infant, in her arms. His father handling the task of blowing out the candles on his cake on his first birthday. His older sister by seven years, Mari, holding him as they took a family photo.
The photos held snippets of his early life. Sometimes he wasn't even in the photo at all. Like a picture of his mother and father's wedding or his sister's first day of school. These were the ones he cherished most.
He wondered what they would have sounded like. What it would be like to hug them, or even just talk to them. What would they be like? Would they get along well? Would they have visited him as he laid on the rickety hospital bed?
Occasionally he imagined he felt a hand squeezing his shoulder and hearing voices say, "We love you, Yuuri." But when he looked around, he was alone.
Tracing the outlines of the crumbling pages, Yuuri tried to picture how different his life would have been if not for the accident. He couldn't remember much. Only the car severing to the side, the body of his sister shielding his and the feeling of comfort with her arms wrapped around him before all went black.
Yuuri was told it was a miracle he survived, being just five years old. He shook the image of three lifeless people with glass embedded in their flesh covered with white sheets and a five year old Japanese boy wailing for his mother, trying to crawl into the beds, to be held a last time, out of his mind.
He tried to recall the comfort of arms embracing him, but was met with the chilling feeling that only death could cause.
He had had no family left and was taken to an orphanage. That was where he had met his best friend. Phichit was a kind soul. Yuuri remembered how he had sat on the dusty wooden floors with nothing to do when the Thai boy had waddled over and offered to share his teddy bear with him. Yuuri still had the worn down stuffed animal on his bed.
Phichit stood up for Yuuri when no-one else had, when Yuuri was trampled by others, forgotten, and encouraged Yuuri to follow his dream of being an ice skater.
There was just something about seeing that silver haired boy calmly and confidently sliding across the ice on a winter morning when passing that stuck with him. Yuuri didn't even remember why he was outside that day, but he could clearly remember the way that boy moved, like he was a dancer. Movements precisely practiced, aimed to impact the hearts of onlookers.
Yuuri flipped to the next page and smiled sadly at the photographs of him and Phichit. The one that particularly stood out was of the two of them at an ice rink, beaming at the camera. It was like that was yesterday. The rink had had an huge discount that weekend and the two best friends had spent all their money to spend the day skating. He could almost feel the excitement of his younger self when he had been handed the skates.
Having been their first time on the ice, they fell hard and they fell often. But the ear splitting grin never left their faces.
Yuuri missed Phichit's contagious smile and how he could talk and talk about anything and everything. He missed the boy's compassionate eyes and his comforting hugs.
No matter how much he yearned to, Yuuri could never erase the brutal memory of Phichit ahead of him, stepping onto the rode with a skip and tripping over the untied laces of his shoes. Before Yuuri could do as much as call his best and only friend's name, a gigantic bus sped around the corner and down the street, never stopping, and leaving the scene painted with dark red and a little boy with a horrified face.
Yuuri felt the familiar weight of grief settle onto his heart and focused on the beeping and humming of the monitors surrounding him as of to ignore his emotions. For a second, Yuuri almost felt the appalling texture of blood splattered on his face and the stench drifting into his nose.
Droplets of tears slid down his sallow cheeks. Yuuri had taken to smoking after that. The feeling of a cigarette rolling between his fingers and the burn of smoke filling his lungs and puffing out of his mouth had become the only thing he cared about.
Except ice skating. The longing to glide across the ice to enticing music and swaying the crowd with dancing was as seducing as ever.
He told himself that he was only using his addiction as a crutch until he could stand on his feet again. Yet his depressed state of mind never disappeared, the cigarettes became more and more until he was smoking them by the packet.
As if his loved ones were sending him a message from the grave, he realized the serious damages he was inflicting on himself. Yuuri was 3 months clean now, yet here he was.
Lying in a crisp hospital bed withLung Cancer. Yuuri accepted that he was going to die soon. When the heard the click of an opening door and heavy footsteps, he knew his doctor was here to confirm it.
"Привет, Yuuri, " Doctor Victor Nikiforov greeted cheerfully. Yuuri guessed that Privyet was an informal greetingin Russian.
"Hello, Doctor." Yuuri meekly attempted to sit up, but his doctor ushered him back into his previous position before dragging over a chair to the side of Yuuri's bed. It made an awful scraping noise and Doctor Nikiforov plopped onto it, resting his clipboard on his lap.
"How are you today?"
"Still dying," Yuuri wheezed dryly. "I can hardly breath, cough up blood and my back hurts like hell."
The doctor scribbled it down on his clipboard and looked up. "Well, I do give one hell of a back rub." He winked.
Yuuri couldn't form a reply. Because he didn't know what to say and because of his constant coughing.
"You know," Doctor Nikiforov remarked, "I find that a person's mood reflects their surrounding quite a lot. With your room so bland, I'm not surprised you sound so dejected."
"I don't have a lot of things. And even if I did, I'm not allowed to change the decor." Yuuri shuffled uncomfortably under the covers.
The doctor didn't seem miffed in the least. "I've heard that you spend most of your days just staring into space. Don't you have a hobby, or something you're interested in?"
"I don't- ," Yuuri looked the other way and sighed. The thing he loved most was tied to his best friend. And to the most horrendous scene he had ever experienced. "Ice skating. I've always wanted to ice skate."
Doctor Nikiforov grinned. Yuuri thought he looked like an excited puppy, minus the fur and wagging tail. "That's great! I loved ice skating myself as a teen. I still do."
He leant forward and rested his chin on his palm. "I almost decided to pursue professional skating as a career. I had a coach and everything."
Yuuri raised an eyebrow and asked hoarsely, "Then why didn't you?"
"My desire to help people was greater than my love for the ice," he replied softly. "Oh, and I have a ton of skating magazines and recordings. I'll be sure to bring them to you tomorrow."
"Doctor Nikiforov, that really isn't nesse-" Yuuri stopped and reached for the medical pan, which Doctor Nikiforov held for him, and coughed up bloody mucus. He spat the last out and sank into his pillows.
Doctor Nikiforov handed him a glass of water. "I insist." He held up a hand.
Yuuri made to interject, but felt an intense stab through his torso and deemed it unimportant.
"Why are you really here, Doctor?" He asked tiredly. Fatigue seemed to spread through his veins faster than his blood pumped.
"I came to tell you about the results of all your tests," he picked up his clipboard. "We did a CT, MRI, chest x-ray and sputum culture test." He looked more serious and professional than he had before.
Yuuri noticed that his eyes were peculiar shades of blues and greens. "And the results?"
"I diagnose you with Limited Stage Small Cell Lung Cancer."
Yuuri breathed shallowly. He had known he had Lung Cancer, but wasn't certain of the specifics. "What does that mean exactly?"
"Small Cell Lung Cancer, or SCLC, is the more uncommon, aggressive type of Lung Cancer that spreads faster. You're at the Limited Stage, which means that the cancer cells are confined to the one lung, but hasn't spread to your lymph nodes or other organs yet."
Yet.
"Is it curable?
"Yes. The tumor is too large and in a hard place to remove, so surgery is not an option. Despite some damage done by smoking, you are in prime health. The standard treatment would be to give you Concurrent Chemoradiation, meaning chemo and radiation simultaneously. The chemo drugs are usually epotiside with cisplatin or carboplatin. "
Doctor Nikiforov paged through his clipboard's notes. "This treatment has a better chance than giving the treatments seperately. Although, it has harsh side affects and can be hard to take, but I believe you can push through."
"The risks?"
"The tumour will shrink significantly, possibly to the point where it can't be seen on imaging test. And, unfortunately, for most people, the cancer will return at one point."
Yuuri let out a series of bark-like coughs and allowed his eyes to close for a few seconds. "My medical bills are going to higher than Burj Khalifa," he muttered to himself.
Doctor Nikiforov somehow managed to catch those unintelligible words. "I'm sure your medical insurance will cover most of it. And even if it doesn't, we recently received quite the generous donation from a wealthy man that was meant to help Cancer patients in our care."
A few tendrils of platinum hair fell into the doctor's eyes. Yuuri had the unexplainable urge to sweep them to the side.
After Yuuri coughed up more blood and his doctor untangled him from his encircling cocoon of wires, Yuuri croaked, "What are the survival rates?"
"With a limited diagnosis, the median survival rate is about 16 to 24 months, with 14 percent at a five-year survival rate."
It looked as if Yuuri had sunk even further into his pillows, if that was possible. "That doesn't sound too good, does it?"
Doctor Nikiforov stayed silent. Yuuri sighed, "I guess don't have other options."
The doctor had said a few words after that, but Yuuri wasn't listening. He barely acknowledged the scrape of the chair as it was dragged back to its position in the corner and the click of a closing door as his doctor left.
Yuuri stared up at the ceiling.
It seems we'll meet again sooner than I anticipated, Mama, Papa, Mari, Phichit.
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True to his word, the next morning when Yuuri awoke and looked beside him, a stack of ice skating magazines and DVD's of recorded performances were piled on his bedside table.
Wanting to stubborn, Yuuri pretended not to notice them. He went through his routine. That was what he did and what he would do until he left, with his spirit inhabiting to his body or not.
A nurse, Marie, came in and did her duty. She placed his breakfast on the pull out table him and noticed the pile that Yuuri was so adamantly and obviously not looking at. "Oh, why don't I put one of those on for you?"
Yuuri wanted to interject, but she had already opened the DVD case and a series of coughs was creeping up his throat. By the time he could speak again, the DVD was playing and the nurse had her hand on the door.
"I'm just down the hall if you need anything," the nurse chirped and fluttered out the door.
Yuuri sighed and winced at the pain in his chest. Settling more comfortably into his pillows, he put on his blue-rimmed glasses and focused on the tiny screen of the TV attached to the ceiling. It wasn't long before he was completely immersed.
He recognized the famous Canadian skater, Brian Boitano. He was the first American to ever to land a triple axle and also attempt a quadruple jump in a competition. Yuuri watched as he preformed his signature jump, Tano triple lutz, where he raised his left arm above his head.
The next recording was of Scott Scovell Hamilton. Yuuri's jaw dropped when Scott's signature move, a backflip, was displayed. It was a feat that few other figure skaters could perform and went against USFSA and Olympic competition rules, but which greatly pleased the crowd.
The last on the disc was Johnny Weir. Yuuri couldn't help but have great respect for the man.
Not only did he triumph on the ice, but was a famous, openly gay fashion designer and television commentator that did a lot of work for the benefit of the LGBTQ community. Searching the Web for more information, Yuuri read more about the skater and felt his eyes tearing up at some of the quotes.
Yuuri called over a nurse and she switched the watched DVD for a new one.
Yuuri felt inspiration rush through him as he studied the Japanese skater, Yuzuru Hanyū, who was ranked first in Greatest Male Figure Skaters of All time. Yuuri smirked when he found out that an outfit of his was designed by the very Johnny Weir.
The skater competed in the men's singles discipline was the only man to break the 100-point barrier in the men's short program. Yuzuru was the 2014 Olympic and World champion, a two-time Grand Prix Final victor, a three-time Japanese national champion and won the 2010 World Junior Championships.
Yuuri stared at the last DVD case. Turning it over in his hands, he saw it was just a plain, milky white cover reading "Me" on the side. On the equally pale disk was only a scribbled date.
The nurse smiled to herself as she inserted the disk and left her patient be. Yuuri examined the TV screen closely. This was clearly not like the other recording.
A silver-haired women squinted into camera as if she wasn't quite sure what the contraption was meant for. Her eyes twinkled with a revelationand she chuckled goodheartedly.
Switching the camera mode, a teenage boy no more than 16, standing in the middle of an ice rink, came into view. The boy had long grey hair tied up in ponytail.
"Okay, Vitya," the woman called.
Yuuri felt his heart stop. It was him. The one that started everything. The boy that sparked his love for the ice.
Soft notes of music wafted through the air and the boy began to move. Slowly, carefully at first with hardly any movement. He skated around the rink and he appeared so small, like the ice itself could swallow him whole, like the competition could crush him under their soles. The ice skidded beneath the skates as he made a clean triple toe-loop and double toe-loop combination.
The song began to build momentum and the boy's movements became bigger and more confident. Timing it to the beat, the boy skated backwards, leaning towards the inside of his blades. Jumping high into the air, the boy landed gracefully on his opposite foot, leaning towards the outside.
"That was a perfect Salchow!"
The boy did a twizzle, skating across the rink on one leg as he span, with one hand holding his free skate. He did a small step sequence and skated forward, preparing for another jump.
"No way," Yuuri muttered to himself. "Can he manage it so late in the program? "
Leaning towards the forward outside of his skate, the boy propelled himself into the air and did exactly two and a half rotations before touching the ice.
"A double Axel. He actually managed a double Axel." Shock was eminent in his voice. The Axel was the hardest jump in ice skating, since it required an extra half rotation.
The boy glided back to the centre of the rink and dropped into a sit spin. Rising back up, the boy posed with his arms raised high as the music came to an end.
In his mind, Yuuri wasn't in the hospital bed anymore. He was on the ice, at the World Championships, skating to the music he loved with the routine he choreographed. It felt thrilling to hear the chanting of the crowd, to feel the cold radiating from the ice. The air caressed his face and the audience's clapping matched the thrum of his heart.
When he jumped, he was like a bird soaring through the sky. When he danced, it was as if the music itself was emitting from his movements. At that moment, Yuuri felt that he had the world at his feet and that anything he tried was possible.
But the dream he conjured didn't last forever.
When Yuuri reluctantly opened his eyes, he was back in the hospital bed. Pain flared in his chest. The cords and needles were like anchors that tied him down, restraining him from chasing his dream.The audience was replaced with the peeping and humming of the machines. The beat of his heart wasn't matched with clapping, but with the heart monitor. And the chill of the ice wasn't there.
It was just him.
Alone and dying under crisp, crumpled sheets with wires and needles plastered to his body like a second skin.
He couldn't chase his dreams. He couldn't even skate on the ice for one last time.
Yuuri took of of glasses and covered his face with his hands. For the longest time, he just laid there, silent. Letting the bitterness rise up in his throat, the rage sting his eyes, the misery engulf his soul, Yuuri did what he should have done long go.
He cried.
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Yuuri once again turned his head stared deeply into the mirror, tracing the lines of his face.
It was much more swollen that before. His gaze traveled up to his scalp, where not a single stand of inky black hair resided. His lips were dried and chapped. Even his dark orbs seemed more sunken than before.
Yuuri closed his eyes, his pitch black lashes contrasting sharply with his chalky skin. He wasn't quite sure how many months he had spent in the same crisp sheets on the same rickety bed in the same bland white room with the same shining tiles.
Some days he wished that when he awoke he was somewhere else, away from the beeping and humming of monitors and the fumes of medicine, the chatter of nurses, the clinking of equipment and the clacking of shoes, even if that meant that his soul and mind were not inhabiting his body.
But other days a light shone through his dark thoughts and melancholy mind. That light was his Victor.
Victor Nikiforov. A doctor. A skater. And hand that reached out to pull him back up when he fell. Somehow he had crept into Yuuri's heart and had become the sole reason Yuuri fought to life another day.
Yuuri couldn't quite tell when he had fallen for Victor. It wasn't one enormous moment that rocked his world like so often portrayed in books and movies. It was more like a lot of minuscule things that, little by little, made Yuuri learn to appreciate the everyday things in life.
When he had discovered a gift of more ice skating magazines on the edge of his bed.
The time he had woken up not to the medical smell of his room, but to the aroma of a bouquet of red roses that adorned his bedside table.
The way the bird sang a lullaby from the tree branch outside his window. How pleasant the few rays of sunlight felt on his skin or how the light breeze drifted through the air.
The way that Victor's smile lit up the room and how his laugh made Yuuri feel wonderfully warm. Or with the love Victor spoke of his poodle Makkachin and how his magnificent eyes shone with wonder.
Maybe it was the way Victor clasped Yuuri's hand in his like it was a lifeline, or how he gently kissed Yuuri's forehead when saying goodbye. Or how he would spend his breaktimes and even free days at Yuuri's bedside, talking intently and listening with interest.
But things never seemed to go well like Yuuri wanted it to.
It was too much to hope for. Yuuri thought himself foolish for believing that the treatments would go over well and he could spend the rest of his days with Vitya.
His life was filled with misery and torment and pain. It was as simple as that.
Yuuri felt pain constrict his chest and spread through his body. He wheezed and coughed as he stretched to reach the medical pan on his bedside table. His fingertips nearly brushed it when suddenly he wasn't on his bed anymore.
He plunged onto the ground, his chest impacting harshly with the tile. The cords tangled even more around him as he struggled until they were digging into his skin. One was strangling his neck and Yuuri struggled to breath, even more than he had before.
He thrashed and scratched at it as he coughed hoarsely. His anguished pleas went unheard. Bloody mucus spilled down his dried lips and dripped off his chin onto the spotlessly white and clear tiles.
Yuuri spied a silhouette at the door and crawled desperately towards it, smearing the blood all over the floor like a gruesome and bloody artwork. The tiles were cold and unforgiving against his mostly bare skin.
My angel. It has to be my angel. My Vitya.
"Please," he croaked desperately, reaching out. His pale hand quivered. "Please help."
The figure stayed completely still, as if observing the suffocating man. Yuuri hopelessly cried out in his mind.
Victor! Victor! Vitya!
He forced his limbs to crawl, to move, to bring him closer to his light, his love. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and every part of his body was shutting down, but Yuuri managed to reach out clasp the angel's hand. Agony squeezed at his torso, blood flooded down from his mouth. The cords wrapped around him like serpents around their prey.
The dying man looked up with a glint of hope in his eye, praying for his lover to save him.
A tear slithered down Yuuri's cheek. Any hint of love drained out of him. The thing before him wasn't his angel.
The figure black as coal grasped Yuuri's wrist in it's claws, the talons sinking into his flesh. It's pearly fangs gleamed in the dark as it cruelly laughed at the pathetically sniveling man at it's feet. The Angel of Death expanded it's sharp wings and soared away, leaving with it's prize dragging behind.
And the broken Japanese boy, his tears and blood mixing together, laid his head down on the cold, hard tiles. His miserable eyes closed, long dark lashed contrasting with the pale parlour of his skin.
With the name of his love resting on his lips, the beat of his heart stilled and he passed his last breath.
Mama, Papa, Mari, Phichit.
I'm here.
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Total length: 4 280 words (excluding AN's)
I managed the angst in the beginning, but it went downhill as soon as Vitya showed up /
I'd like to know what you thought. Did I make you even a little bit sad?Thanks for reading!