Did I say I was done with this? Sorry. Guess I spoke too soon. I got out of the story for one entire chapter.
I got back into it the day after the lobster bisque episode (I still want some of that). I was in my room reading; Axel and Roxas were in Roxas's room, playing video games. This was a fairly normal situation, right up until I started getting some incredibly abnormal vibes. Abnormal and bad.
I heard a groan, and a thud, but for all I knew, those were signs of disappointment. The hysterical speech - from Roxas, who I didn't think was prone to hysteria - was a bit more worrying. When he burst through both bathroom doors, white as a sheet, saying "Something just happened to Axel!"...well, if I didn't have a clue by then that something was up, I'd have to be deafer than Demyx and blind to boot. I had to catch him and set him back on his feet to keep him from going sprawling.
"Okay, what just happened to Axel, besides something really bad?" I just went to his room to check for myself, since if it was bad enough to get Roxas hysterical, then a. it must have been pretty damn bad and b. waiting to get an answer out of Roxas was a hopeless cause. Axel was curling up on the floor, clutching the side of his chest and turning a very unhealthy color. "What happened to you?"
"Dunno...but fuck...that hurts...like I've been stabbed..." He was gasping for breath, in obvious pain. I was half-expecting to find blood in his chest cavity, but contrary to expectation, there wasn't any where it wasn't supposed to be. He was starting to become hypoxic, though - well, duh, he could hardly breathe. The first thing that hit my brain was "pulmonary embolism due to DVT", but that would be obvious right off the bat. To me, at least. And if that was the case, I could fix it.
Well, hell. If he had been stabbed, I'd have a better idea what to do.
Well, there was always "run find Vexen".
"Keep him breathing, okay? I'll go get Vexen." Wherever the hell he was. But Roxas and I together probably didn't outweigh Axel, even though he's skinny as a stick. Neither one of them questioned what sort of advice "keep him breathing" was.
Surprisingly enough, Vexen was fairly easy to find, in his laboratory examining an odd little Heartless that I'd never seen before. "Fifteen, is there some valid cause -"
"Yes. Axel just keeled over. Sudden onset, ton of chest pain, apparently unilateral, said it was like being stabbed, having real trouble breathing, turning hypoxic. Not a pulmonary embolism. No signs of internal bleeding or abnormal clotting."
I timed Vexen's thought process on the wall clock. He spent exactly seven seconds thinking about what I'd just told him. "...Possibly spontaneous pneumothorax. I need a chest X-ray as soon as possible."
"Last I knew, he was still on Roxas's floor..."
He gestured impatiently, and a portal opened. "He needs to be brought to the hospital wing as soon as possible." He didn't order me to help; it was kind of understood that I just plain couldn't. Vexen was more Axel's size, though; he might have a hope of getting him up and moving him around. Which makes me wonder why he didn't realize that when he stumbled through the portal with a broken hip two months ago.
Axel was definitely turning a little bluish by the time we got there, and he'd come up with a dry, hacking cough that looked twice as painful as just breathing. He didn't seem to have the energy to fight, but he didn't have the energy to help either - Roxas and I wouldn't have stood a chance. Hell, Roxas could barely move; he just stood there giving us this shell-shocked look. I couldn't blame him.
AN: Bopping around on the internet, I found out that collapsed lungs sometimes occur spontaneously in the tall, thin, and young.
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, got it memorized?