To Partake of Life Fully

So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art. ~Hippocratic Oath

"You need to pick a major," Dr. Richards says, thumbing through a list of brochures. Music Theory. English. Mechanical Engineering.

Nico doesn't say anything, just leans back in his chair and watches the snow pile up outside the window. He's spent nearly a year and a half in college, he realizes with a start, and is on the road to becoming an adult who needs a job and—

"Are there any subjects you are particularly interested in? I see here you've done very well in Greek Mythology. Would you be interested in Classical Studies, perhaps?"

"No."

Nico isn't being fair to Dr. Richards, and he knows it, but he only took the history class to fill a requirement and to have an easy A in his schedule during the semester. He hadn't expected it to be so painful to hear the name "Perseus" coming from his professor's lips every time she mentioned her favorite myth.

Five years later and it still feels like being punched in the stomach.

Dr. Richards is studying him quietly, probably wondering how the hell he's going to get through to Nico.

So Nico says quietly, "Chemistry."

"What's that?"

He likes the sciences, classes where there's no room for ambiguity because there are rules for how the world works. Even biology, which he had expected to hate, isn't so bad once you break everything down to the molecular level. It's easy to forget that the small building blocks like amino acids are part of a living organism.

"I want to major in chemistry."

All it takes is a few pages to sign and drop off at the chemistry department.

Sometimes when he tries to fall asleep images of Bianca's corpse play behind his eyelids. He's never actually seen her dead body – no one has, as far as he knows – so he's not sure where he gets the mental image from, but it keeps him awake, mentally cursing every god in the pantheon that his sister had opted for rebirth.

On those nights, he flicks on the light and pulls a textbook over, replacing the images of his sister's corpse with the chemical structures of complex carbohydrates.

He turns twenty-one and realizes that he's spent more of his life without his sister than with her.

Sometimes Jason IM's him. If Nico is in a good mood, he'll answer.

He sometimes considers going to one of the LGBT events on campus, but they're too rainbows-and-sunshine for his taste. He goes to a gay bar one night and has a one-night-stand with a philosophy major.

He gets a job as a research assistant in a pharmacology lab because it pays (sort of) and he doesn't have to talk to anyone.

Nico spends a lot of time in the underworld, practicing his swordsmanship against skeletons.

He dates a son of Hermes who somehow convinces him to take the MCATs and apply for medical school and by the time they break up Nico is already enrolled.

He doesn't know whose sick idea of a joke it is for a son of Hades to learn how to cheat death.

It's their first day of Gross Anatomy Lab and Nico seems to be the only one unfazed by the dead bodies in the room. Typical.

He's paired with a tall-ish brown-haired guy who introduces himself as Spencer and looks like he's trying his hardest not to vomit.

"You okay?" Nico asks.

"I past out at my ex-girlfriend's grandfather's wake last year," Spencer admits. "You might have to take the reigns on this one."

Nico ignores the part of his brain that registers the word girlfriend and sorts Spencer into the "unattainable" mental list.

Nico follows Dr. Hunter's example, palpating the cadaver like he's supposed to.

"Doesn't that freak you out, like, at all?" Spencer asks when Nico rolls up the body's eyelids to check for glaucoma.

Nico shrugs. "Not really." Dead things never do, he almost adds, but he doesn't want to come off sounding like some kind of serial killer.

Spencer just shakes his head.

They all have to work with girls to learn how to conduct breast exams, so Nico and Spencer are split up. Nico ends up working with Kenzie Miller.

Most of the other guys are smirking at each other; the girls have been warned to wear sports bras or bathing suit tops, but they're still removing their shirts, which apparently sets off some kind of act-like-a-complete-dick mechanism in a lot of guys' heads.

Kenzie is sitting with her arms folded across her bikini-clad chest. As much as some of the other kids at camp might joke, Nico can't actually smell fear, but Kenzie is giving off enough signs that he can tell. She's scared.

"If it helps," he offers, "I'm not really into girls."

Kenzie's eyebrows scrunch up. "Meaning what?"

Nico shrugs like it's no big deal, except that it is a big deal and even years after he's admitted it to himself and pretty much everyone else it still makes his heart pound when he tells someone new about it, "I'm gay."

"Oh." Kenzie says, calming down noticeably. "Are you sure you aren't just saying that so I'll let you feel me up?"

Nico rolls his eyes at her honesty.

"I'm not 'just saying that,'" he tells her. "Um, so..." He gestures at her chest, which he's supposed to be, as she so eloquently put it, feeling up.

Kenzie has to move his hands a couple times because he honestly has no idea what he's doing – she glares at him a few times when he squeezes or pokes too hard – but they get through it well enough.

"On the plus side, you don't have breast cancer," he offers.

Kenzie pulls her shirt back over her head. "Thanks."

It's some kind of cruel joke that his first clinical round is in the obstetrics ward. He can go through the motions and deliver screaming infants to their mothers – one of the attendings even lets him help with a C-section – but the son of Death should not be involved in the process of giving birth.

Kenzie shares his dislike for neonatal care – "everyone expects me to be all excited about OB/GYN, since I'm a girl, but honestly that's just gender stereotyping because babies are gross" – but Spencer seems to enjoy it. He gives such a huge genuine smile at his first successful delivery that Nico has to turn away to keep himself from blushing.

No. He is not attracted to Spencer. Not at all.

A few weeks later they are transferred to the pediatrics ward. Spencer is elated, but Nico mutters, "I don't work well with kids" whenever someone asks about his perpetual scowl.

In the end, it's Spencer who has the hardest time watching children suffer from terminal illnesses. Nico ends up volunteering to do rounds in the more critical units – intensive care, cardiology – leaving Spencer the kids with minor issues: tonsillitis, broken bones, anything treatable.

Spencer still has to deal with some terminal patients, of course. One day in November Nico catches him gripping the edges of the sink in the hospital bathroom and looking like he's holding back tears.

"Oncology," Spencer whispers as an explanation.

Nico has no idea what makes him do it, but he holds the bathroom door open and beckons for Spencer to follow.

"Come on," he says. "You'll be okay."

"I can't look at—I can't…" Spencer mutters.

"It sucks," Nico says. He's never been one to beat around the bush. "But if you're in here holding a pity party for yourself nothing's going to happen. If you go out there and face it and learn how to help, at least you can give those kids a chance."

It takes a while, but eventually Spencer follows.

Her name is Lauren, and before the chemo, she had long red hair. Now she has a bald head and Acute Myelocitic Leukemia. There are no more treatment options.

Her parents have been told to contact the Make-A-Wish Foundation, that Lauren may not make it to her fifteenth birthday. They spend nearly every second at her bedside, but by some chance Nico and Spencer are sent in to check her medication dosage at a rare moment when Lauren's parents are at the hospital cafeteria.

Lauren is asleep.

Spencer's face contorts with sympathy while he checks something off on Lauren's chart.

It's painful for Nico to watch.

He makes the decision too quickly. He checks that there are no attendings in the hall and then kneels down by Lauren's bedside, gripping her frail hand.

Dad, he thinks. Not yet. She doesn't deserve to die. Please, Dad.

It's not much for a prayer, but he never prays, so maybe for once Hades will listen.

There's no response at first.

"Uh, Nico…?" Spencer asks, confused.

"Shhh," Nico says, ignoring the fact that Spencer probably thinks he's insane, kneeling next to a fourteen-year-old with cancer.

And then he feels it. The cancerous cells in Lauren's body, the killers trying to seep her life away, are right there, waiting for him to take action. Nico doesn't know why, but he knows that if he concentrates just a little harder, he can stop them from spreading.

After all, death is at his command.

"I don't know what the hell you did back there, but it worked," Spencer says, changing from his scrubs into his regular clothes. Nico averts his eyes on principle.

"What?"

"Lauren Jones," Spencer says. "You didn't hear?"

Nico shakes his head, but he can feel Spencer's elation spreading.

"She's in remission."

Nico turns away to change out of his own scrubs, but he allows himself a smile.

"Spencer likes you, you know," Kenzie says so offhandedly that it takes Nico a second to process her words.

"He's straight," Nico responds, turning back to his textbook and trying to memorize the etiology of autism spectrum disorders. "He had a girlfriend all through college."

"He's bi," Kenzie corrects, "And he asked me about you."

Nico doesn't respond. He's not sure how he feels. In three years of friendship Spencer's sexuality has never come up.

"If he asked you out, would you say yes?" she asks.

Nico is on the neurology unit when the Sauveterre girl's heart rate flat-lines. He and the attending rush to administer CPR, then a defibrillator. For forty-five agonizing minutes Nico prays to his father with every fiber of his being.

But the girl was a car crash victim, living – if you could call a coma living – on borrowed time for a week. Even the gods can't save everyone.

Nico holds it together, even as the attending simultaneously fills out a death certificate and relays her information for Nico to scribble on his clipboard.

Date. Time. Cause of Death. Date of Birth.

She was only twelve years old.

Name. Sauveterre – the attending has to spell it out for Nico because his dyslexic brain makes the letters at the top of her chart scramble together – Sauveterre, Blanche.

Nico is in a state of shock as he stands beside the attending physician – who at this moment looks every bit of his 50-some years – to tell the girl's family. Mother, father, younger brother. The brother must be about ten.

There's something in his eyes that makes Nico feel like he's looking in a mirror.

Blanche. Twelve years old. Dead.

He feels tears start to well up behind his eyelids and he barely manages to stop himself from summoning an entire army of skeletons right then and there to curse the Fates for this.

Blanche is the French version of Bianca.

Spencer catches him in an abandoned corner of the hospital.

"You okay?"

No, Nico wants to yell. No, I'm not okay and I won't be okay because kids don't deserve to die. Not when they have little brothers who have to keep living without them.

Instead, he says the other thing that's been bothering him, that made him cut his knuckles open by punching a wall. "I couldn't save her."

Spencer sits beside him, wrapping Nico's hand with his own. "You aren't God," he says. "You can't save them all."

Death comes easier in the geriatrics ward. By the time they are old enough to qualify for geriatric care, many of the patients have resigned themselves to death, or at the very least been able to look over their lives and feel a sense of fulfillment.

His name is Gerald and he is pushing 90 years old.

"This is it," he tells Nico, his voice weak and rasping. "Too many damn cigarettes when I was your age."

Nico sets down the chart he'd been filling. He knows what Gerald means. "Do you want me to get an attending?"

Gerald shakes his head. "Just come sit with me."

Nico almost leaves to get a real physician anyway, but Gerald speaks again. "Does it hurt?"

"I can have Dr. Hunter give you some more morphine if you want," Nico says.

"Not now," Gerald lifts a hand as though to wave Nico's comments away, then lets it drop. "Death. Does it hurt?"

Nico meets Gerald's eyes and in that instant he knows that Gerald knows.

"How…?"

"Interesting job, being a doctor. Wouldn't have guessed it if you weren't running around magically curing everyone." Gerald pauses. "Even then I'd have pegged you as a son of Apollo, except that you don't have a very sunny disposition."

He coughs a few times.

"So you're a son of…"

"Comus," Gerald says. "God of comedy. They had me lumped in with all the Hermes kids when I was at camp" – cough – "Half-blood."

"Minor gods have their own cabins now," Nico says.

Gerald nods, closing his eyes. "The Hades cabin used to be full, when I was a camper. Then they made that damn prophecy."

Nico nods, pondering that.

"You never answered my question," Gerald accuses.

"No," Nico says. "Death doesn't hurt. Not when it's from natural causes, anyway." He pauses, then, "At least, that's what they say, down in…"

"Hmmm," Gerald says. "This was probably coming for me from the start. Fought so many monsters I should have died when I was kid. So tell your dad thanks for me."

"I will."

"And keep up with the medicine. Those kids in pediatrics are lucky to have you."

Nico nods, feeling tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

"And," Gerald says, letting his eyes flutter closed. "Do me one last favor?"

Nico nods yet again, then realizes that Gerald can't see him. "Sure."

"I never had kids. My wife died two… two and a half years ago. Stay here and…" his voice grows so feeble that Nico has to lean in to hear him. "Don't let me die alone."

So Nico waits.

He can't save them all.

But he can offer them some comfort.

A/N: Well, that got morbid fast. I meant for this to be a happy NicoxOC mostly fluff piece, but it wasn't working for this story.

I may continue this sometime; there's just so many situations about being a medical student/doctor where being comfortable around death is an interesting thing to explore. But for now I'm going to leave it as a one-shot.

Oh, and I have absolutely no idea how Nico is paying for medical school. Maybe Camp subsidizes it?

Any medical inaccuracies are entirely due to the fact that I am not a doctor (or medical student) and know only what the internet has to say about medicine.

Review?