Chapter 2:
(A/N) Alright, on to the second chapter. By now you've all noticed something's wrong with Hiro, of course. But don't expect it to be like super detailed. I'm only fourteen, i'm not a f*cknig doctor. For all of you who went to medical school, whoopy doo. But i'm still trying to pass high school, so I don't know a whole lot about any medical terms. In any case, I hope you all enjoy this chapter.
Tadashi wasn't allowed to go into the ER with Hiro. He was forced by finicky paramedics to sit in the waiting room. Tadashi sat for about an hour, his head rushing with thoughts of what happened to Hiro.
He was fine on second, and then on the floor the next. What the hell happened? They said something about his heart. Does… does Hiro have a heart condition?
Tadashi's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his phone going off. It was his Aunt Cass. Tadashi quickly pressed the answer button.
"Aunt Cass," he said into the phone.
"Tadashi," his aunt replied. "How's Hiro? Is he…"
"I… I don't. They wouldn't let me into the ER with him. They… said something about his heart on the way here."
"Oh god. I should've known."
That last statement grabbed Tadashi's attention. "Should've known what?"
Cass was silent.
"Aunt Cass, what's wrong with Hiro?"
Cass was sobbing on the other end of the line. but she calmed down enough to speak. "When… Hiro was born, the doctors noticed something abnormal about his heart. They knew something was wrong, but they wouldn't be able to tell what it was without cutting him open. But they still knew what the problem could cause… I just never expected…" Cass began to cry again.
"Aunt Cass," Tadashi said soothingly. "Aunt Cass calm down. What's happening to Hiro?"
"The…" Aunt Cass was sniffling, "the doctors told your parents that sometime in his life… he… he would have a one on ten chance… of heart failure."
Hearing that mad Tadashi feel like he was having heart failure.
"What? How come I didn't know about it?"
"Neither of you did. It was a one in ten chance. We never expected it to actually happen. Your parents figured that telling Hiro would just make him worry about dying the rest of his life, and they didn't want that for him. So the only people that knew were the doctors, your parents, and I."
"Well… what does that mean? What's going to happen to him?"
"I don't know," Cass sobbed quietly. "I don't know."
"Look, Aunt Cass, Hiro's gonna be fine, okay? He's gonna be just fine. Sit down, drink some tea… aaaaaaaand… do whatever you need to do to calm down."
Cass was silent for a moment, then she let out a heavy sigh. "Okay," she said quietly. "Call me soon."
"I will. Love you."
"I love you too."
Tadashi hung up the phone, and let his head hang low.
Heart failure? Hiro had heart failure? All his life, Hiro had never shown one sign of having such a thing. He never had chest pain, and he was always so energetic. Tadashi could never have imagined anything like this happening, especially not to Hiro.
Tadashi sat in the waiting room for about ten more minutes before a doctor walked through the doors of the ER. Tadashi sprang to his feet immediately.
"How's Hiro? Is he-"
Tadashi was stopped by the doctor putting his hand up. "First, I will say he's doing better than when he arrived," the doctor said. That made Tadashi ease up a bit, but not much. "Luckily, we were able to keep his heart beating with some medication."
"So… is this going to be a recurring thing, or…"
"That's… the bad news." Tadashi felt his heart stop (no pun intended). "I'm not sure if you're aware, but your brother has severe heart failure."
"Yeah, my aunt told me... ten minutes ago."
"Right. Some cases of heart failure are very easy to fix. They could be helped with medication or simply even changing lifestyle choices. But… some cases are very life threatening. Hiro… how should I put it? Hiro's heart isn't functioning like it should. The medication will only do so much before it… stops."
Tadashi was speechless. This couldn't be happening. About an hour or so ago, Tadashi was having a brotherly conversation with Hiro. Now he had a medical professional in front of him telling him that Hiro was going to…
When Tadashi opened his mouth to speak, he was stopped by the doctor again.
"Now, that doesn't mean Hiro isn't going to be alright. We have procedures for cases like this. The only one that I think would help though is a heart transplant."
"A… heart transplant?" The doctor nodded. "Like... give him a new heart?"
"We have many donors from deceased patients waiting and ready to go. We can't start right away though. We'll need to wait a few weeks, maybe even enough. His heart is still working, so a heart transplant at this very moment would be unnecessary. But, i'm going to need confirmation that this is what you want done."
Tadashi opened his mouth to speak. Of course he's allow this. Without it his brother would die. But then he thought of Aunt Cass. She was their legal guardian. This was her call to make, not his.
"I'll… i'll have to call up my Aunt Cass." Tadashi rubbed the back of his head.
"That's fine," the doctor said. He began to walk back into the ER, but Tadashi stopped him.
"Oh, wait, can… can I see him?"
"He's resting now. It wouldn't be wise to disturb him, especially in the state he's in now." The doctor put on a smile. "By tomorrow, he should be well enough for visitors though. I'd suggest you go home and get some rest. Hiro's in good hands."
With that the doctor walked through the doors of the ER, leaving Tadashi alone in the waiting room.
Three Days Later
Tadashi was sitting in Hiro's hospital room. This would mark the fifth time Tadashi had visited his little brother since the accident. When they talked, they mostly tried to keep the conversation away from the topic of anything medical, other than Tadashi asking Hiro how he was doing.
Today, Tadashi brought Hiro's laptop so he would have something to do during his hospital confinement.
"So," Tadashi said as he sat beside Hiro's bed, "how you feelin' today?"
"Better," Hiro replied as he was typing away at his laptop.
"That's good. That's good." "Tadashi didn't have anything to say to make the conversation less awkward. Luckily Hiro had something he wanted to talk about.
"Hey Tadashi, when do you think they're going to go through with this transplant thing?" That was a topic Tadashi was hoping to avoid. He didn't want to remind Hiro of his possibility of death.
"I'm… not sure. Aunt Cass already gave them the all clear, but they said to wait like a month."
"Why wait that long? They could just do it now and get it over with."
"I don't know. I didn't go to medical school."
"Yet you built a medical robot."
"I'm building a medical robot. Baymax isn't anywhere close to being finished."
"He looked fine when I visited you that one time."
"Yeah, well… when you left he started going haywire."
Hiro let out a laugh. "Is that what all that noise was when I was leaving."
"Yeah. He kinda wrecked my lab. I had Wasabi help me reorganize it all."
"You mean organize it all."
"Why would I mean that?"
"Because your lab was a mess before Baymax destroyed it."
"It was not. I can find everything just fine in there."
"Tadashi, i'm surprised you could even find the door on your way out."
"Alright, now I know you're full of crap."
The two talked for another thirty or so minutes. After that a nurse came in and told Tadashi that he had to leave because the medication she was about give Hiro would make him fall asleep. Tadashi said goodbye to Hiro and walked out of the hospital. His moped was in the parking lot, where he mounted it and made his way toward the café.
The whole way there, Tadashi thought of the fact of Hiro getting his transplant. It was horrifying to think he was going to die without it. It was also very strange. Tadashi had just seen him, talking, breathing, living. He didn't even seem like there was anything wrong with him. Then Tadashi's mind jumped to three days before, when Hiro was on the ground, looking like he was going to die. Tadashi didn't know how to feel anymore
When Tadashi arrived at the café, it was close. That was weird, seeing as how it was one o'clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
Tadashi parked on the sidewalk and entered through the café door with the bell chiming at his entering. The lights were all of in the café, and the chairs were stacked on the tables. Cass must've been upstairs.
"Aunt Cass," Tadashi said as he walked up the stairs. "I'm home." When Tadashi arrived at the top of the stairs, he found Cass in the kitchen with his back turned to him. Before he said anything, he peered over her shoulder. In her hands were letters of some sort.
"Aunt Cass?"
Cass whirled around startled. "Tadashi don't do that. You scared me." Cass had her hands behind her back. Was she trying to hide the letters?
"Didn't you hear me calling you from downstairs?"
"Oh, no. Sorry, my… my mind's in other places today. How's Hiro doing?"
"Fine," Tadashi said. "The nurse kicked me out so he could take his medication."
"Oh, that's great," Cass said sincerely. Although it looked like she was hiding something, she didn't sound like she was trying to make the conversation go faster. "Is he bored out of his mind?"
"You know it."
Tadashi went over to the kitchen and grabbed an apple out of the refrigerator. "Hey, Aunt Cass," he said as he munched on his apple, "why is the café closed?"
"Huh?" Cass was staring off into space when Tadashi had asked her."
"Why's the café closed?" Tadashi repeated.
"Oh, well… you know, I wasn't feeling all that well today. I've got a headache, i'm tired, and... just, everything that's been going on lately has really got me stressed out."
"I know what you mean. If you're not feeling all that well you should go lay down."
"I don't know. I was going to but-"
"Aunt Cass, if you're right about one thing, it's been a stressful few days. You should really go rest."
"You're so sweet," Aunt Cass said as she began making her way toward her bedroom.
Tadashi noticed she had left the letters on the counter. She wanted to keep them a secret from him. He's feel bad about looking at them. Then again, if they were the reason Aunt Cass said she wasn't feeling good, Tadashi had to know for himself what was going on.
Tadashi approached the the counter and swiped the letters off of it's surface. Tadashi read through them. They weren't letters at all. They were bills. Hospital bills to be exact. Tadashi read through the costs. There were small cost such as Hiro simply being put in the hospital, then he saw the biggest number on the paper and wouldn't look away.
Eight hundred thirty seven thousand dollars. That's what Hiro's heart transplant cost. Tadashi now understood what Aunt Cass had been acting so strange about. They didn't have the money to pay for that.
Tadashi set the papers back down on the counter and trudged up to his room. When he arrived at the top of the stairs, he plopped himself down on the edge of his bed and thought to himself.
Cass made quite a bit of money from running the café, but sure as hell not enough to pay off that hospital bill. What were they going to do?
There was only two options here. One: they could not go through with the operation so they wouldn't be in debt, but then Hiro would… Two: Tadashi found a way to make over eight hundred thousand dollars. Neither of those options were possible.
Tadashi looked to the other side of the room where Hiro would usually be typing away at his computer, working on his bot, or sleeping. Tadashi imagined him not doing those things, or anything, anymore, ever. Then he knew what he had to do, no matter how crazy.
He was going to get the money of course. How he was going to achieve that goal, Tadashi wasn't sure. But it was for Hiro, and he'd find a way.
Little did Tadashi know that that 'way' was going to be more hell than he could ever imagine living through.
(A/N) I know this chapter seemed a little slow paced, but I promise, the next chapter will be more exciting. That's where all the criminality starts. Is that a word, criminality? I hope so. Also, did that heart stuff make sense? I hope it did. My friend's dad's a doctor. I mean, i've only ever heard him talk about doctor stuff twice, but you know, it was enough. Those of you who didn't think it made sense and are questioning me at every turn, what are you still doing here? Get out of my sight! But in all seriousness, thanks you guys so much for reading and reviewing, and That's DaydreamDepartment out of your hair! ;)
