The Monsters Inside Us

by angstwithtea

Rule number one: Never fall in love with someone who has a terminal disease.

4. That Other Summer

I'm back again.

This story is going a lot more slowly than I thought it would. And the backstory stuff ended up a lot longer than I thought it would be. But I'm still going with this. Now that the story line has finally kicked in, maybe people will read it.

But guess what.

IT'S TIME FOR MORE BACKSTORY CRAP.

See? I warned everyone that it was going to happen in the last chapter. And here it is.

YES, I know it's boring and frustrating and this is really dragging everything out as much as it can possibly be dragged out. But it's important. i promise. You'll see why once things turn back to the present. Or at least I hope you will.

Not even gonna bother with the tumblr plugs this time around. But the story does have a tag now. I'm tracking "fic:tmiu" and "fic:tmi" on tumblr now. That's all the letters and no spaces, if you're like me and have a hard time telling the difference between where there is and isn't a space. "fic:the monsters inside us" works too.

Let's go ahead and get this over with.

---

That, obviously, was not the first time I had seen Levi.

It happened the summer after what would have been my freshman year at Shiganshina High.

I'd started having symptoms the week after Mikasa got out for summer vacation. It wasn't anything serious, at first. I just hadn't been as hungry as I normally was. I wasn't about to go telling my dad about it anytime soon. Not until I was sure there was actually something wrong, anyway. Knowing him, the second I said that something was off, he'd throw me into the backseat of the car and start off for the hospital. It seemed like the only time he ever bothered to prove he was still my legal guardian was when I was sick. I can't say I blamed him. Mom never let anyone take care of her whenever she got sick. And my dad was never one to force his care on her when she wouldn't accept it. We all know exactly how that turned out. I guess it was just a mistake he never wanted to make again.

The first week of July was the same week that I started throwing up. I tried to cover it up the first few times. Then there was the night that I ended up getting stuck at the dinner table while mediating (re: trying and failing to mediate) a debate between Mikasa and my dad over why she couldn't get a summer job like apparently all of her friends were. About three minutes in, my dinner suddenly felt like making a reappearance. I tried to fight it off, to stay and keep playing back-and-forth devil's advocate for my dad and sister, but my stomach wasn't having it. It didn't take long for the nausea to turn uncontrollable. I didn't have time to casually slip away like I had before. I just got up, bolted to the bathroom and purged my guts out.

Naturally, within minutes of witnessing my vomit, my dad called Dr. Erwin and told me to get in the car. I had a scheduled appointment before sundown.

For what I think was the fifth time that year, my dad and Mikasa escorted me to the cancer center of Trost Regional Hospital. My appointment with Dr. Erwin went pretty much the same way as all the others before it had. He gave me a quick once-over, poked at a few pressure points for a bit, then felt my stomach up. He said that my spleen felt inflamed or something along those lines and that he'd get a PET scan scheduled for that Thursday. He sent me home after that. So maybe things weren't nearly as bad as my dad feared they were.

Of course, by Thursday things had only gotten worse. I hadn't been able to keep anything down since the night of spontaneous vomit. I wound up being able to eat only tiny amounts of food every hour or so. Anything more than that just wound up getting regurgitated. Then there was the strange feeling I would occasionally get in the right side of my ribcage, like a rock sitting inside me where one of my organs should have been. By the time the scan results came back, I already knew what was wrong. The pictures on the disc only confirmed it.

A few stray leukemic cells had gotten into my bloodstream, and they had collected in my liver and decided to take root. I was now the proud owner of a malignant liver tumor.

By Friday, I was checked in for yet another stay at Trost Regional Hospital.

---

That first night was an absolute hell.

I hadn't been expecting another extended hospital stay that summer. But at the same time, I sort of had. That was one of the things I hated most about my disease. No one ever knew what it was going to do next. One month it would be in total remission, then the next it would relapse and start ravaging my body like some kind of zombie scourge. I was never exactly able to plan out when I would be stuck at Trost Regional next, but hospital stays had turned into just another part of my normal life.

That sure as hell didn't mean I liked them, though.

I hardly slept at all the first night. I never slept well in hospitals. Everything always seemed too cold, too clean, so meticulous and orderly that if I twitched in my sleep I would knock something over or rip an IV out or make some other life-threatening mistake. Then there was the constant noise of the monitors that were stuck to my chest. And the dull ache from the saline drip they'd plugged into my arm to combat the dehydration I'd developed from the constant vomiting. And the irritating smell of antibacterial cleaner that always seemed to be hanging in the air.

Not exactly what you'd call a prime sleeping environment.

I spent most of the night lying awake and staring at the ceiling. I was lucky enough to get placed in a room that was only half-occupied. The curtain that hung at the halfway point on the ceiling stayed drawn back, and the bed next to mine stayed empty. At least one thing had gone right for me in this insurmountable shitstorm. I might have been caged up in a hospital with a diseased liver, but I still didn't have to live with nothing but a curtain separating me from a total stranger who could have been watching me sleep for all I knew. Visiting hours had ended at ten, and both Mikasa and my dad had gone home. Despite the fact that I usually don't care all that much about being alone, I was lonely. And on the rare occasions that I actually do get lonely, I have a hard time getting any sleep.

Needless to say, the sensation of white fluorescent lights casting their agonizing glow on my eyelids was not pleasant.

I pried my eyes open, squinting against the blinding light. A dull jolt of panic shot through my mind. For just a second, I'd forgotten where I was. Then that dull, heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach reminded me. Leukemia. Tumor. Hospital.

Right. I let out a discontented groan and reached up to rub at my eyes.

"Hey. Sorry about that. I sort of needed those on to readjust you."I blinked, trying to force my eyes to open. The light still burned, but it was just a little more tolerable now. I wriggled around under the thin, papery sheets and tried to make myself sit up against the pillows. I was already halfway up before my eyes decided they could handle the sudden light adjustment.

The mechanized popping sound of the flow control on my IV drip broke the relative silence in the room. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and turned towards the collection of machines at the side of my bed. "Wha? Who's..."

I fell silent in mid-sentence. Standing by the IV dispenser, pressing commands into the little plastic button panel and dressed in spotless mint-green scrubs, was... someone.

I didn't know who, or what. He was just someone.

I blinked. I didn't know what he was doing there. I hadn't ever seen him around the hospital before. He seemed pretty young, maybe only a few years older than myself.

He pressed one last button and the IV dispenser chimed in response. "Okay. That's done..." He threw a quick glance at the other machinery and turned. Suddenly his eyes were on me.

Holy shit. Grey. I had never seen anything so grey in my entire life.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

I took a deep breath and coughed up a single sentence. "Who are you?"

He blinked, dulling the feeling of razor wire spearing through my flesh where his eyes made contact with mine. "Oh, right," he said. "You were passed out when I came in to check on you earlier."

"I was asleep?" I croaked. It certainly didn't feel like it.

The guy let out a soft, breathy noise that could have been a laugh, but I wasn't sure. "Asleep doesn't even cut it. Your monitors were the only reason why people knew you weren't dead."

I rubbed at my eyes again. "What time is it?"

"A little after eight," he responded. "There's a digital clock above the TV in the corner, if you'd bothered looking."

I looked. He was right. For some reason I suddenly felt stupid. "How long was I out?"

"Probably a few hours. Don't worry. Passing out for an extended period of time is completely normal."

"What?" I mumbled.

"You heard me," he replied. "There's even a name for it. It's called sleep."

I sighed heavily and turned back to the stranger by my bed. "Ha. You're hilarious."

He didn't respond. He just glanced at my patient file hanging up on the wall. "Looks like everything's in order here," he said matter-of-factly. "See you in an hour."

"Wait."

The guy froze, his fingertips just barely brushing the door handle. He spun around to face me. "What is it?"

I had to force myself upright before I could speak. It felt weird talking to him while lying down in bed, for some reason. "You never answered me before."

"Right. What were you asking?"

"Who you are."

"Oh," he said with a casual nod. "My name's Levi Ackerman, LPN. I'm your nurse. They assigned me to you first thing this morning."

"Oh. Okay." So he was the one who'd be taking care of me for the next however long I happened to be staying in Trost. That explained why he'd been messing with my IV. He was an LPN. Just a practical assistant. It was probably his first shift here or something. That was why I'd never seen him before.

With a silent nod, Levi turned away again and swung the door open. As he walked out, he reached for the lightswitch. The room went dark again. The door closed. And just like that, he was gone, disappearing just as suddenly as he'd shown up.

---

The next day, Levi came in to readjust me for the twentieth time since the first morning.

"You've been scheduled for radiation at ten today," he said.

"Ten?" I murmured absentmindedly, the haze of sleep still hanging over me from a few minutes before. I glanced at the clock. My eyes widened. "That's in less than an hour!"

"I know," he replied. "Thank god you actually woke up at a reasonable time this morning."

I looked over at him, expecting there to be a teasing smirk on his face like there usually was with Mikasa whenever she said things like that. But the expression wasn't there. His face hadn't changed in the least. He just looked indifferent, unamused, maybe even a little bored, exactly the way he did every other time I'd seen him.

I shivered internally. That expression was really starting to creep me out.

"Yeah," I groaned in response. "Because why would I want to miss lying down in a deafening noise pod and getting bombarded with gamma rays?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who has an infected liver," Levi snapped. "As far as I know, this could wind up saving your life. So why don't you just shut up and focus on getting better?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Well that's new."

"What's new?"

"Never had a nurse snap at me before," I said flatly.

Levi sighed. "Oh," he said. "It happens. I've been trying to keep my mouth shut more often. Dr. Erwin's gone after me about it before, but you know what they say. Old habits die hard. You might as well get used to it."

I shuffled around with my sheets and swung my legs over the side of the bed. "Wow. And I thought nurses were supposed to be nice."

"Well, I guess that makes me no ordinary nurse, then."

I inhaled sharply through my teeth as my bare feet hit the cold linoleum floor. I may or may not have murmured something under my breath about women's professions.

Levi's head spun around and his eyes latched onto me. "What was that?"

"N-nothing," I stuttered.

"No, it was definitely something."

I rolled my eyes and let out a heavy sigh. "I said... I thought that most nurses were women, too."

I wasn't trying to piss him off. I was serious. Every nurse I've ever had before him had actually been a woman. Of course, I didn't have time to point that out before he fired his response straight back at my face.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize that my job was gender-restricted."I felt a hot, embarrassed blush flooding up to my face. "W-wait, that's not what I-"

"Then what?" he quipped, staring up at me with his hands on his hips.

Staring up at me.

I stifled a laugh.

Levi gritted his teeth and exhaled, slow and heavy. "What now?"

I bit my lip and suppressed a smile. "You are really short."

Something about that bored, impassive look on his face changed. It was harder, steelier, suddenly about eighty times as dangerous as usual. He let out a soft, breathy almost-laugh, his razor-sharp eyes tearing holes into mine. "Yes. I'm short. Five-foot-three, to be exact. And your point is?"

"N-nothing, just... I never realized it before."

The psychotic version of his normal expression on his face quickly receded back to its regular level of scariness. "I didn't think so," he said. He unplugged my IV dispenser from the wall and switched the power source to battery charge. "We should probably be getting you down to the treatment center. You wouldn't want to be late."

I reached out to take the rolling dispenser from him. "Whatever you say, nurseman," I said with a smirk as I pushed it towards the door.

"Hey. Watch it, brat," Levi snapped, shutting the door behind us.

---

"Hey. I brought that in half an hour ago. Aren't you going to eat it?"

It was my fifth day in the hospital. Everything sucked so far. The second day, I was given my first dose of radiation, the first session in total of fourteen I would have over the course of that summer. I was given a break on the third day, given an extra-intensive session on the fourth, then left to my own devices for a while. I was sent in for another that morning, then another was scheduled for later in the afternoon with the promise of another break the next day. Dr. Erwin told me I'd have a screening at the end of my first week to see if the treatments were making any progress. I wasn't sure that they would. The rock hanging around in my ribcage was giving me a bad feeling.

I glanced over my shoulder towards the sound of the voice that I'd learned to recognize. Levi was standing in the doorway of my room, tapping his fingertips impatiently against a plastic clipboard, the same one printed with patient information that he always carried around. His piercing grey eyes were fixed on me. My gaze drifted from him to the untouched tray of microwaved food on the rolling table by my bed.

"I wasn't hungry," I said.

It wasn't a total lie. I was still having a hard time keeping food down, especially food as bland and shitty as what they served the overnight patients. I couldn't eat normally if I tried. But even the threat of projectile vomit didn't keep me from feeling the painful clawing in the pit of my stomach that generally comes with avoiding food at all costs.

Levi didn't seem to believe me. "Look," he deadpanned, "I know it's not exactly gourmet, but you have to eat something sometime. You're in a hospital. The staff won't hesitate to tube-feed you if that's what it comes to."

I shifted around on the bed to face him. "That's not it."

The clipboard tapping stopped. "Then what is it?"

I bit my lip and breathed in before murmuring, "I just don't want to throw up again."

I didn't think he'd heard me. The look that suddenly filtered onto his face said otherwise. "You're still having problems with that?"

I swallowed (which was just about all I was able to do) and nodded. "Yeah."

"I thought so." Levi glanced at the watch on his left wrist. He always had it there. At least he always did when he was working his shift. I'd never seen him without it. A second later, he looked back up at me. "Okay. I'll give you some advice. There's a certain trick to it. Have you tried eating small amounts at intervals?"

"Wait, don't you have other-" I suddenly found myself asking.

"The floor's pretty calm right now, actually," Levi said, cutting me off mid-sentence. "I think I've got a few minutes." Well, that was new. His packed schedule was something that he hadn't hesitated to remind me of before.

"Oh," I said. "Um... well, I've tried doing that before, but I really don't think they'd accommodate it here. You know, the schedule and everything."

"They could if you told someone you needed it," Levi said flatly, as if it should have been the most obvious thing in the world.

"Well, I'd thought about doing that, but I just didn't want to make a big de-"

"Okay, I'm just going to stop you right there," Levi snapped, cutting me off for the second time. "First of all, no. There is no set schedule for patient meals, and even if there was, do you really think that everyone in the hospital could adhere to it? Second of all, this is a hospital, for fuck's sake. Accommodating patients is what we're supposed to do. And finally, do not ever tell me you don't want to make a big deal about anything. There are no heroes allowed around here. In fact, you probably should have made a bigger deal about the constant vomiting than you did."

I stared at him, eyes wide. I think that was the first time I'd ever heard a nurse intentionally swear in front of me.

"Wait. How did you know about the-"

"Oh, come on, brat. It wasn't that hard to tell. Your bathroom's been smelling like stomach acid ever since you got here." He wrinkled his nose. "I really wish the janitor would do a better job of cleaning it up."

I felt a humiliated blush rising to my face. Why did he always seem to do that to me?

"Well, it's not exactly something I have a choice about."

"Really? Because it could be, it you went about it the right way," Levi said. He left his clipboard in the holder by the door and made his way over to my bed. He leaned over and looked at my tray, which I hadn't even started picking at yet. It was reheated chicken nuggets, surrounded by a few other food-like substances that I knew better than to bother trying to choke down. Admittedly, it wasn't the worst thing they had tried to serve me, but I still wasn't interested.

"Hm," Levi murmured, resting his hands on the edge of my bed. "And this is normally what the other patients actually manage to eat."

"Yeah, well, you could get me takeout from a freaking five-star restaurant and I still wouldn't be able to eat it."

"Just start picking at it and stop whenever you feel like you need to. That's all you can do, really."

"Okay." I picked up one of the nuggets and bit down on the breading. It was lukewarm and kind of soggy, probably because it had been sitting on that tray for the past half hour. But it wasn't quite vomit-inducing. Not yet, anyway.

"Hey, Eren?"

"Yeah?"

"I haven't had my lunch break yet, so if you wouldn't mind..." Levi glanced down at the tray of nuggets.

"Go ahead," I mumbled around processed chicken. "I'm not going to finish it."

"Thanks." He grabbed one of the nuggets from the tray and ripped it in half between his teeth. Neither of us said anything for a while, Levi enjoying my would-be lunch and me focusing on keeping my food where it was supposed to be. He glanced over at me and nodded his head to the side.

"Hm?" I mumbled.

"Scoot. I want to sit down."

I did as he said and shifted over a few inches. Levi turned and settled down at the foot of the bed. "So," he said, keeping his eyes away from mine for once.

"So?" I responded.

He shrugged. "I don't know."

I breathed out and picked up another nugget off of the tray. "Are you new here?"

"Yeah, actually," Levi answered. "I just finished my training program in May. I've only been working here for a few weeks. Don't freak out or anything, though. I aced the exam, and I'm fully qualified. You're not even my first patient."

I couldn't help smiling. "Good to know I'm not a guinea pig."

"So what about you?"

I swallowed and glanced over at him. "What about me?"

Levi shrugged again. "I don't know. Anything about you."

"Okay," I said, digging through my brain for something interesting to tell him. Other than the whole terminal disease thing, my life in and of itself was actually pretty boring. "I'm not a fully qualified anything, and I haven't taken a standardized exam in maybe a year and a half."

"Why's that?"

"I'm homeschooled," I said flatly. "My dad withdrew me a few months into my freshman year. I mean, I'm still learning at a sophomore level, training for the SATs and stuff, but it's just... there's really no way to gage anything anymore. I take online classes. I don't get a summer vacation. I've also got a tutor who basically just visits my house and teaches me as often as he can. So everything's a little scattered. I've been using Mikasa as a way to tell whether I'm in the right place with my work and everything."

"Mikasa?"

"My sister."

"So that's who that girl is."

Mind you, Mikasa had come in to visit me every afternoon by going out to the library and snagging a ride to Trost from one of the Signashina High volunteers with a license. My sister had something of a knack for making connections.

"She has the same last name as me," Levi mentioned. "It's kind of weird."

"Yeah. She was already nine by the time my family adopted her, and she was used to being referred to using her old name, so she just kept it."

Levi nodded, then things went quiet. He broke the silence again a minute later.

"So why did your dad withdraw you from school?"

"I was missing too many days. You know. Cancer stuff."

Suddenly I felt an unsteady twist in my guts. I dropped whatever was left of my current nugget back on the tray.

Levi glanced over at me. "Done already?"

I nodded. The queasy feeling in my stomach slowly began to subside. So did the empty clawing sensation that had been bothering me for the past three days.

"Well, at least you've managed to eat a little something." He stood up, the bed dipping in my direction without his weight to even it out. He picked up the half-empty tray on the rolling table. "I've got to go. There's a little kid in the next ward over with the flu and a suppressed immune system who needs his temperature taken."

"Okay," I said, burying my legs back under the blanket. "See you later, then."

"See you later," he echoed, picking up his clipboard on the way out. "I'll bring you something to eat later. It'll be from the cafe downstairs. If it'll quiet your guts down, I think we can hold off on the cardboard food until tomorrow."

I watched the door swing shut behind him and stared at it long after he had disappeared out into the hallway. A strange, numb emotion was swirling around in my head. I couldn't find the words to describe what I was feeling. I probably would have called it confused, if anyone had asked. But I that didn't even come close to what it really was.

This was my nurse. My nurse who didn't seem to care much about anything. My nurse who called me a brat every time he saw me. My withdrawn, bossy, easily-offended nurse who was kind of sensitive about his height and snapped at me for pointing it out once.

And he was treating me to decent food.

Confused didn't even cut it.

---

Mikasa came in for her seventh visit a few days later.

"So how much have they done so far?"

"A shitload of radiation sessions and another scan," I answered.

She raised her eyebrows. "Wow. And nothing's changed?"

I shook my head. "Nope. The images they got didn't show any change with the tumor. If they did, Dr. Handsome said I might be able to leave in as little as two weeks, but that didn't happen, so..." I shrugged. "It looks like I'm going to be stuck here for a long time."

Mikasa frowned. "That sucks."

"Leukemia sucks. These are just the side effects."

"They still suck, though," she mumbled, kicking her flip flops off and watching them hit the floor. She turned and fixed her dark eyes on me. "We miss you at home, Eren." She paused before adding, "Well, I miss you, anyway."

"What about dad?" I dared to ask.

"He's been working a lot," Mikasa said, dropping her eyes back to her flip flops. "He kind of tends to do that when he's upset about something. So I guess that means he misses you too."

"I guess," I murmured, shifting around on the hospital bed where I'd spent the past week plus one day of the summer. So. Dad was working a lot. I didn't know why she even bothered telling me. That wasn't news to any of us.

"I can't believe you're stuck in this hellhole again," Mikasa said. She flopped back on the mattress, swinging her legs over the edge. "When was the last time you had an actual summer?"

I sighed. The rock in my ribcage suddenly felt heavier. "That's what I've been asking myself lately."

At that moment, the latch clicked on the door to my room.

"Don't mind me. Just doing my job here."

Levi shuffled into the room and went about adjusting my IV drip, the same as he'd been doing every hour for nearly a week. He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, his sharp grey eyes registering the girl next to me on my bed. "Oh. Didn't know you had a visitor."

"It's just Mikasa again," I said, nodding casually towards my sister. "She got here a little bit after you last came in."

"Hey," Mikasa mumbled. Her face looked like it was competing with Levi's for absolute expressionlessness.

Levi, of course, remained the reigning champion. "I remember you. You've been coming in during visiting hours almost every day this week. Didn't really get a chance to talk to you, though."

Mikasa tucked her legs under her. "Did you want to?"

"Not particularly," Levi said flatly. He turned away and focused on my monitors in the corner.

Mikasa blinked, her eyes widening just the slightest bit. Something had her interested.

"Yeah, so, this is the nurse I was telling you about last time," I said, trying to keep the room from falling into an awkward silence. "Levi. Remember?"

Mikasa nodded. "Yeah. I do." Her eyes didn't move an inch.

"So what do you think? Was I accurate?"

"Accurate about what?" Levi said over his shoulder. He glanced back at us. Mikasa suddenly pretended to be very interested in the charity garden outside my window.

"My description of you."

"Which was..." he said, trailing off and leaving an expectant blank space at the end. He looked intently at Mikasa.

My sister brought her attention back to us and smirked. "Nothing out of the ordinary," she said. "Eren complains about his nurses all the time."

I turned towards her, my mouth dropping open and my eyes wide. "Mikasa!"

"Lovely," Levi deadpanned, scribbling something down on his clipboard.

I sighed internally. "So..." I said, trying to keep the conversation going. Levi seemed to have lost interest. Mikasa was once again either fascinated by something over Levi's shoulder or...

Holy shit, she was checking out my nurse.

"So, you're still no closer to dying than you were when you got here," Levi said. "I think you'll survive just fine until I come back to check on you again. Don't get too crazy while I'm gone, kids. And remember to use protection," he said as he slipped out the door.

"Levi, she's my sis-" I started, but the door slammed shut before I could finish.

A second later, I heard a soft, breathy scoff next to my ear.

"That's the bitchy nurse you told me about last time?"

I turned to look at Mikasa. Her eyebrows were raised, a steely glint in her charcoal-black eyes. "Yeah. What about him?"

"For once, he is actually as bitchy as you said he is."

I let out a short, sharp exhale. "Yeah. No kidding."

"He's still pretty hot, though."

My eyes went wide. "What?"

"Your nurse. Levi. He's hot," she said, as if I didn't know who she was talking about. She turned to me and tilted her head to the side. "Come on. All personality quirks aside, don't tell me you don't think so, too."

"Well... I..." I mumbled. I'd agreed with her on this sort of thing before. It wasn't anything new between us. I can't even count all the times I've let her gush about boys to me. She'd done the same for me, girlwise. I've never felt weird pointing out if I thought a guy was nice-looking. Finding someone attractive and actually being attracted to them are two entirely different things. Calling another guy hot was never uncomfortable for me. But for some reason, now that my nurse was involved, it suddenly was.

"Come on, Eren. Don't tell me you haven't noticed."

"Noticed what?" I asked, feeling more than a little bewildered. What did she see that I seemed to be missing?

"So you're telling me that you've been seeing this guy every other hour, every day for the past week and you haven't ever thought he was hot? Not even once?"

I let out a laugh that sounded more nervous than I would have liked. "Um... no?"

"Hm," Mikasa scoffed, her smirk faltering for a split second. "Well. I think he is."

"Why?"

"Don't really know. He's kind of got this... this eccentric charm to him. He's got some pretty sexy hair. The shortness subtracts a few points. And the personality. Not many, though." She stopped for a second, nibbling at her lip. "And his arms. Have you even seen them? I mean, if you look up toned in a dictionary you'd probably get a picture of that."

"Well, I'm sorry I don't spend most of my time here staring at my nurse's arms," I said with a hollow laugh.

She grinned at me and punched me playfully in the shoulder. "Ha. Homophobe."

"But seriously. What's with the nursely fangirling all of a sudden?"

"I'm not fangirling. He's still a dick. He just happens to be an attractive one."

I laughed again. "Yeah. Whatever you say."

Mikasa left after three hours. Levi dropped in once and we all did our best to ignore each other. The next time he came in, she was gone.

"Had fun with Mikasa, I'm guessing?" he asked as he tapped buttons on my monitors.

I made a disgusted face behind his back. "Depends on the context."

"The context?" Levi spun around, his face coming out of its expressionless phase for just a moment and twisting up almost to match mine. "Ugh. That's not what I meant at all. Jesus, brat, get your mind out of the gutter."

"Hey. It's not my fault you don't know how to word a question," I retorted, throwing my hands out to the side in a you-started-it gesture.

Levi sighed. He seemed to do that a lot. "Whatever, Immature Irving."

"Excuse me, it's Eren Jaeger-bom-bastic," I tossed back, enunciating every syllable and shooting them at him like Nerf darts. "Get it right."

Levi glanced over his shoulder and stuck his tongue out at me. "Shut up."

I snorted to myself and looked away from him. And you're calling me the immature one.

As Levi turned away to finish up readjusting my saline drip, I glanced back at him. And then the glancing turned into staring. My eyes somehow wound up wandering to his arms. I remembered what Mikasa has said earlier. Her words echoed in my head.

Have you even seen them? I mean, if you look up toned in a dictionary you'd probably get a picture of that.

I blinked in surprise. She was right. They totally were.

---

That first week was the last healthy one I would have for a long time. After that, things started to go downhill fast.

The second week was the same as the first. Radiation, day after day. A break every now and again to keep me from getting gamma poisoning or whatever else might go wrong if the doctors went too crazy. Then, at the end of the second week, there was another scan. The results were almost exactly the same. The radiation didn't seem to have done anything but leave dry, scaly patches all over my skin. The useless accumulation of cells in my liver hadn't shrunken in the least since I had first checked in. Dr. Erwin decided to step up his game and started administering chemotherapy in alternation with everything else. So, naturally, this brought on symptoms of its own, ones which were worse than any problems my liver had given me so far. Within a few days, I was vomiting again, my hair had started falling out and the drugs in my system had started to give me migraines.

But, of course, the tumor wasn't giving in to that, either.

Two weeks turned into three. July eventually became August. The dull weight in the pit of my ribcage seemed to grow heavier with each passing day. Then the weight turned into all-out pain. I was spending every second of every day walking around feeling as if someone had just punched me. I could feel on my own that my condition was getting worse. I didn't need the scan results from Dr. Erwin telling me two more times that my tumor wasn't shrinking, no matter what he put me through to force it into submission.

All through the torturous weeks, Mikasa kept visiting me.

I don't know what my dad was doing the entire time. Working, probably. It seemed that all he ever had time to do was drive Mikasa around when she bothered him enough. The only time I ever saw him was once or twice while he was coming in to drop Mikasa off or take her home again. And even then we didn't say much. Mainly because there was nothing to say. At least nothing that we didn't know already. I was sick. I was getting worse. My tumor absolutely refused to shrink. No one knew where things would be headed next, or if I would be okay in the end or not.

---

Five and a half weeks in, Mikasa stayed through one of my chemotherapy sessions.

I still had the PICC lines stuck into both my arms, even though the assortment of IV drips I'd been plugged into a few minutes earlier were gone. The plastic tubes felt weird, being stuck so far into my veins, but they were there for a reason. As far as I knew, they'd be staying there until I either died or left. My brain was already starting to pound from the side effects. I ran a hand over the curve of my aching skull. My hair was getting so thin. I'd asked Mikasa to bring a razor in one of these days and hack off whatever was left before I started looking stupid.

I heard the muffled tap of broken-in Converse before my door swung open and Mikasa walked in, carrying a big hospital-issue plastic container with her. She pushed it into my lap before jumping up onto the bed next to me.

"I'm betting it won't be five minutes before you toss your cookies," she said.

"Shut up," I growled, clutching the container to my chest. "You're disgusting."

Even as I said the words, I was choking back a lethal bout of nausea. I tried to cover it up, but I could already feel my stomach churning uneasily. I bit down on my tongue, determined to keep the tiny amount of hospital food I'd eaten a few hours earlier in its place. But, knowing the current state of my digestive system, that wasn't likely to happen.

"Yeah, well, it's gonna happen, whether you like it or not," she shot back, folding her legs up on the edge of the mattress.

I sighed and forced myself to swallow. "As if I need you to remind me."

The door of my room swung open again without so much as a knock. It was Levi. I couldn't help the wave of relief that washed over me at seeing him. He'd been the one to disconnect me from the ungodly chemicals that had been draining into my bloodstream a few minutes earlier. I'd never been happier to be taken off an IV in my life. Well, other than the last time I'd been given chemo. But that was a long time ago. Fresher pain is always worse.

"Hey, brat," he said. "You still doing alright so far?"

I kept my mouth shut and nodded. The painful twisting inside me was getting worse. I felt like if I tried to speak, something other than words might come up.

Levi sighed and pursed his lips together. "You know, there's no shame in side effects. Everyone has them. It's not like seeing you vomit is anything new to me."

Mikasa held her hands up like a choir singer. "Testify," she said in the worst southern accent I'd ever heard.

"What, so now you're encouraging me to puke my guts out?" I snarled, my hands tightening on the container.

"No," Mikasa said. "Just pointing out that you don't have to power through your symptoms or anythi-"

My stomach lurched and half-digested food came spilling out of my mouth before she had even finished her sentence.

I felt my sister place her hand on my back. "Hey. Easy, there," she said softly to me as I continued to cough and choke. It didn't stop until there was nothing but thin, bitter liquid welling up in the back of my throat. My body still shuddered as if it expected something more to come up. Mikasa ran her hand in small circles over my shoulder blades. "That's it. Breathe. Just breathe."

I coughed a few more times before the dry-heaving finally stopped and I was able to sit up. "Jesus fucking..."

"Here," a voice said. I looked up to see a hand outstretched in front of me, its fingers clutching a wad of wet paper towels. My eyes traveled up and landed on Levi's calm face.

"Thanks," I mumbled, taking the towels from him and swiping vigorously at my bile-stained mouth. He stood back before turning and disappearing into the small bathroom door. He came back with twice as many paper towels, one handful soaked with cold water and the other dry.

"Take these. You need them," he commanded. I looked at the backhandedly offered towels, then at the acid-stained ones in my hands, then back up at Levi.

"Just drop those in the vomit holder. It's not like you're going to need them anymore."

I did as I was told, then continued to clean myself up with the new paper towels he'd given me. I tossed those in the container as well before drying myself off with the ones he'd left unmoistened. He snatched up the plastic container from the bed and slipped out of the room, holding it out in front of him as if it were on fire.

I stared after him, even after the door had slammed shut. Mikasa did the same.

"Wow," she said after a minute. "That was fast."

I shrugged. "It's normal. For him, anyway."

"Is he always such a clean freak?"

"Yes," I answered, sighing. He'd done the same thing every time I'd thrown up. It was as if he couldn't stand the sight of anything soiling my precious face.

Mikasa rifled through the bag of random crap she'd brought with her and fished out a pack of gum. She flicked it open and handed me a piece. I took it and crammed it gratefully into my mouth, happy to taste anything other than my own vomit.

"I guess it makes sense," Mikasa said while I worked the bitter aftertaste out of my mouth. "You know, the whole obsession with sanitation. He probably has to be that way. He is a nurse, after all."

"I know, but I've never had one this obsessed with keeping me clean."

Mikasa laughed. "You sure it's just you he does this to?"

"Probably not," I replied, giving her a weak smile.

Levi came back, a fresh container tucked under one arm. He tossed it to me without even half the care Mikasa had used with the first one. "Feeling any better?" he asked.

I sucked on the gum in my mouth. I felt the pulsing migraine starting to build up in the back of my skull. Still I forced myself to smile again. "A little."

His eyes fixed on me for a second, then flicked away. Something about that one tiny motion told me he knew I was lying. "Alright," he said, despite everything. "Then let me know if there's anything else you need. And you've got your friend there if you feel like throwing up again," he added, nodding at the container in my lap.

"Okay," I said quietly, shifting around on my bed. Another wave of pain pulsed outwards from the core of my brain. I gritted my teeth, squashing the gum between them. It wouldn't be long until the pain would start messing with my vision and making it hard to sit upright.

"Levi."

My nurse turned around, his fingers already resting on the door handle. "Yes?"

"Um... I..." I stuttered. I didn't know why I was hesitating. I just had to ask him for a favor. One favor. And then I wouldn't have to deal with the sensation of my skull splintering like an eggshell over the next two hours.

"What is it? Come on, brat, I don't have all day," Levi snipped impatiently.

Mikasa's hand squeezed my shoulder. I took a deep breath and asked. "Could you maybe bring me some Tylenol or something? I always get migraines after these things."

Levi blinked. "Oh. Sure. I'll be back in a minute."

With that, he slipped through the door and disappeared into the hallway.

I shifted my legs up from the side of the bed to lie back into my pillows. Mikasa flipped herself around and leaned back on the footboard. "Well, this is new," she remarked.

"What's new?"

"You. Actually asking for things when you need them."

"What do you mean?" I scoffed.

"I mean you always have a hard time asking for stuff. Even stupid things like that," she said, flicking her hand at the half-closed door. "You always try to fight through the symptoms by yourself. It's like you're trying to be a hero or something."

"What are you talking about?" I said, taking in a quick, hissing breath as another ache throbbed its way through my brain. "I'm not trying to be anything. I just... I don't want to make it a scene over it or anything. That's it."

She shifted around and dropped her gaze into the sheets. "You know, Mom was exactly the same way."

Wow. That stung. "Yeah. She was," I murmured.

Neither of us said anything for a while after that. The only thing to break the silence was the sound of Levi's voice drifting in from the hallway as he pushed the door open again.

"Okay. I hope you're not brand-specific, because all we have in stock here are generics," he explained. He dropped two unmarked white tablets into the palm of my hand. "Here, take these." He handed me one of those miniature 8-ounce water bottles and placed a small plastic bag on the rolling table. "I brought you two more doses, just in case those don't work or you need them later. Don't go taking them all at once, now," he added with a completely straight face.

I quickly slipped the two tablets onto my tongue and took a sip of water. My stomach immediately twisted up at the feeling of not being completely empty. I gritted my teeth and ignored it. I wasn't in the mood to puke again anytime soon.

"Thanks, Levi," I said, offering him a weak smile. He didn't return it. I hadn't expected him to.

"It's my job," he replied. "Just let me know if there's anything else you need. That little red button is on your TV remote for a reason, you know."

"Okay," I murmured again. Levi didn't say another word, only nodded. His eyes met mine, just for a second. I could almost hear his voice in my head saying Well done, brat. Then he walked back out into the hallway.

Mikasa waited the door swing shut before turning back to me. "I knew something else was up. Now are you actually feeling better?" she asked.

I smiled. "For once, I actually am."

---

That last comment didn't hold true for very long.

I think that the chemotherapy did a lot more harm than good. Even more weeks were wasted in the hospital, Dr. Erwin and his staff shooting me up with chemicals and radiation, then sending me into radiology for scan after scan after scan. It turned into a cycle, a vicious one that didn't seem to have an end. The tumor started to shrink, then grew back, then shrank again, then spread past its former boundaries before receding back to its original size. My condition got worse. My inability to eat correctly finally got to me, and I started losing weight again. My hair was gone. The chemo side effects tortured me on a daily basis. Fluid started building up under my skin, which had long since turned yellow and jaundiced. So had my eyes. Every time I looked in the mirror, I felt like I was looking at a rotting corpse.

Mikasa still came in to visit me every day. She never said it to my face, but I knew it was because she was worried. She always acted a little differently when I was really sick. She'd stopped punching me in the arm, wasn't poking fun at me nearly as much, and a billion other tiny quirks that no one would have noticed but me. My dad, on the other hand, I barely ever saw. I wasn't surprised. If I were him, I wouldn't have wanted to see me, either.

And I was putting up with Levi and his bullshit through all of it.

I don't know if he treated any of his other patients the way he treated me. In all of the three years I had been dealing with my cancer, I had never had a nurse who had snapped at me, sassed me, cracked jokes about me to my face and swore in my presence even half as much as Levi did. I was surprised no one had complained about him. But I had the feeling that Dr. Erwin had hired him fresh out of training for a reason. Maybe he just kept him around because he was good at what he did. In spite of all the blatant insults and constant jabs about how I kept my hospital room, I was doing okay in Levi's hands.

I'd been in the hospital for more than six weeks when Dr. Erwin finally gave me the news.

My tumor wasn't shrinking enough for my symptoms to subside. He'd been trying to avoid going to invasive measures, but at that point it didn't look like he had any other choices. He would continue administering the treatments, just to see if he could get my tumor to recede again. As soon as that happened, I would be going into surgery. He would give it two more weeks. And if nothing happened, he would go through with it anyway.

A partial hepatectomy. That was what he had called it. I, on the other hand, had another name for it entirely.

I know this is going to come out later, so I'll just go ahead and say it now. I'm scared of surgery.

I'd only ever gone into surgery once before. It was a bone marrow transplant. I'd gotten it back when I had first been diagnosed and people still hoped that I would one day be free of this demonic disease. I was awake the whole time, and the entire thing was performed with needles. I wasn't cut open, wasn't put under and didn't wind up with any scars from the experience. I was given local anesthetic and everything, so I wouldn't feel needles the size of chopsticks getting stabbed into my flesh, but I was never, for lack of a better term, put to sleep. They said it was a surgical procedure, but I never counted it as one.

This was going to be different. I'd be lying out on a table. Totally unconscious. My stomach sliced open and all my insides exposed. Strangers poking around in them and cutting me into pieces...

The mere mention of my impending doom sent chills down my spine.

At least, different chills than the occasional nerve tremors from the chemotherapy.

Three days after the announcement, Levi was hanging around in my room. He'd done it before. Repeatedly. I didn't know why. He said he had a few free minutes before he had to tend to his next patient. I told him that I didn't see any reason for him to be hanging out with me, of all the people in the hospital.

"Simple," he said. "You put up with me better than anyone else in this medical hellhole."

Oh. So that was why he bitched at me so much and hadn't been reported yet.

"I don't really think I have a choice," I responded. "You know, since you've been taking care of me this entire time and everything." I shifted around in my bed, trying to find a comfortable position. Nothing was comfortable as long as I had that stupid tumor sitting in my liver like a cluster of buckshot.

"Actually, you do."

My gaze ripped away from the FRIENDS rerun we'd been watching and latched onto Levi. "What?"

He looked back at me, his eyes cool like drops of glass. "If I was giving you any trouble, you could have asked the administration to assign you someone else. It's a regulation policy. Because we value our patients that fucking much."

"I... I didn't know that," I stammered.

Levi let out a sharp laugh. "You've been going here for how long, and you didn't know that?"

"No."

It was a lie. I had known about the policy the entire time. I just never saw any point in actually taking advantage of it. Besides, getting rid of Levi meant dumping him on some other helpless patient. I wasn't too enthusiastic about that idea.

"Well, I'm glad you didn't," he said. "If you'd gotten rid of me, then I wouldn't have had anyone to bitch at anymore." He turned back towards the TV. If I hadn't been hallucinating from the chemo side effects, I might have thought there were the faintest traces of a smile on his face.

We sat there in silence for a few more minutes, listening to Rachel talk about her horrible love life before Levi's pager interrupted and he had to go patch up some kid's broken stitches. Before he left, he stopped in the doorway and turned back to me.

"Let me know how the episode ends, okay?" he said.

I cocked my head to the side, confused. "But I thought you'd already seen the entire series."

He rolled his eyes and sighed. "Does it matter? Honestly, brat, you can't expect me to remember the exact plot of every episode. Especially when there are at least thirty with the same theme," he replied, nodding towards the TV.

"Okay. I'll tell you later," I said, giving him a weak smile. As usual, he didn't return it.

"See you."

"See you."

With that, Levi slipped outside and closed the door behind him. I turned away from the door and tried to focus my attention on the FRIENDS episode and remember where the hell I'd left off. But for some reason, I couldn't. I just stared at blankly at the screen, not entirely aware of what was going on. All I could think about was how unexpectedly empty the room felt. How everything seemed so quiet and lonely all of a sudden.

Something in me wished Levi was still there.

---

Dr. Erwin scanned me again five days later. The tumor had shrunk again.

My worst fears were about to be realized.

Mikasa had come in to visit me the day before it happened. She wouldn't be able to come back for a while afterwards. My dad hadn't let her get a summer job, so she'd found other things to keep herself busy. One of them happened to be a seven-day wildlife survival camp in the mountains upstate. She'd be staying for the last few dregs of August before school started again. And, conveniently, had her first day scheduled right before my surgery.

"So, Dr. Handsome is gonna be cutting you open, huh?" she said to me from the other end of my hospital bed.

I shuddered. "Wow, Mikasa, it sounds so much more pleasant when you put it like that."

Mikasa only smirked. "Don't worry about it. He's a doctor, Eren. He knows what he's doing. What's the worst that could happen?"

"You know what the worst that can happen is," I said.

Mikasa's smirk disappeared. She stared into my eyes, and I stared gravely back. She quickly realized that her last sentence was probably the worst thing she could have possibly said to me.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"It's okay," I responded just as softly.

"No, that was insensitive. I wasn't thinking..."

"You shouldn't have had to think. You were right. I shouldn't be so nervous. I just..." I trailed off, unable to find a way to finish my thoughts.

Mikasa reached out and placed her hand on my small, bony ankle. "You're scared, aren't you?"

I nodded. There really wasn't much more to it than that.

My sister dropped her gaze to the sheets for a second, then brought it back up to me. She leaned forward on her knees and wrapped her arms around my skeletal shoulders. I returned the hug without a second thought, reveling in the feeling of human contact and her silky black hair against my bare scalp. She'd chopped it off a week earlier and turned it into a spiky little pixie cut. She always got her hair cut whenever I lost mine.

"You'll be okay, Eren," she whispered. "It's going to be okay."

I bit my lip, trying to ignore the feeling of tears stabbing at the corners of my eyes. "How do you know that?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Because I do. You'll see," she replied. She released me, then sat back on her heels and smiled. I tried my best to do the same.

"Do you really have to leave?" I asked like a forlorn preschooler.

"Yeah," she said with a shrug. "If I'd known this was going to happen, I never would have signed up for that stupid camp, but..." She looked at me and shrugged again.

"I'll miss you, Mikasa."

"I'll miss you, too," she replied. "But remember to call me before you go into surgery. Then we'll facetime or something afterwards. You better not forget."

I couldn't help letting out a nervous laugh. "Okay, chief."

---

The day of the surgery came long before I was prepared for it.

I was lying alone in my room. The space was deathly quiet, save for the constant hum from my monitors and the saline drip dispenser that would soon be replaced with anesthetic. The guardrails that up until that point had been folded under the mattress of my bed had been pulled up and locked into place. The wheels all had their brakes off and were ready to be rolled out into the hallway and towards the operating room.

As I lay still in my bed, I could hear my blood rushing in my ears. My heart was beating so hard that I could feel it pulsing inside my chest. In less than an hour, I'd be going into surgery.

And I was absolutely terrified.

I shifted around under the blankets for the six hundredth time. There wasn't really much else to do. I wished someone were here. I wished that I had someone to talk to, to distract me from the traumatizing thoughts rushing through my head, to let me know that I was going to be okay and I wasn't alone.

I wished I had Mikasa.

But she wasn't there. She was at camp, learning how to build fires and fight bears and whatever the fuck else.

So I was alone. Not like that had never happened before.

I glanced over at the plastic tv remote hanging over the edge of my bedframe. Maybe if I turned the tv on it would help to drown out the deafening voices in my head telling me over and over that I was going to die. My arm twitched on top of the blanket. I needed something, anything to make the horrible thoughts stop.

My eyes suddenly switched their focus from the power button to the little red circle just above it.

The call button.

I thought about pressing it.

I looked away. No. It was a terrible idea. I would just have to suck it up and keep waiting.

I looked back at the button. I couldn't suck it up. I was panicking. I needed help. I couldn't do this on my own.

I thought of Mikasa again. She'd been the only one to visit me during this entire hellish experience. She was the only one who could have helped me. But now she was gone. Right when I needed her most, she was so conveniently unavailable.

The only other person who could come even close to doing what Mikasa did for me was...

Was...

I pressed the call button and immediately regretted it.

A moment later, the door of my room swung open. Levi strode in, his face expressionless as usual. "Hey, brat," he said. Strangely enough, the derogative term didn't seem so insulting anymore. "Dying already?"

I forced a nervous laugh past my lips. "N-no."

"Oh. What a shame." He came closer, then stopped, his muscular arms crossed over his chest. He gave me a quick once-over with his steely grey eyes. "No Mikasa today, huh?"

"No. She's at camp." I couldn't help the low, barely-even-out-loud growl that came afterward. "The selfish bitch."

"That's unfortunate," he said, an amused lilt in his voice. He must have heard me. "So what's wrong, then?"

"U-um..." I stammered. What was wrong? "N-nothing, I guess."

The amusement flickered out as if someone had flipped a switch. "Nothing? Then what the hell did you call me in here for?"

"I..." I was skating on thin ice. I couldn't tell him. He wouldn't care. He would laugh. He would call me a pussy and tell me to get over it. Going to him for moral support was like asking to get slapped in the face. Why the fuck did I press that stupid call button?

"Well?"

"...No reason, I guess."

Levi raised his eyebrows. "Seriously? I have eight other patients that I could be tending to and you just decide to call me in here on a fucking whim?"

"No, I just..."

"You just what?" His eyes were locked onto mine, his gaze burning straight into my soul.

I swallowed, digging my fingers into the blanket. "N-never mind," I murmured, tearing my eyes away from his. "You can go, if you want to."

I heard Levi let out a soft, whispery sigh. "You can be a real jackass sometimes, you know that, Eren?"

I looked back up at him. For once, he'd actually used my name. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you must think I'm stupid or something," he said. He took another step towards my bed. I had to fight the urge to scoot back. "This entire time you've been trying to power through your symptoms and play fucking hero or something. I mean, I've hardly heard a single word of complaint out of you this entire time. But now, all of a sudden, you've decided to use your call button and bring me in here? And you are actually fucking dense enough to tell me that there wasn't any reason for that?" He slowed down and took a breath, pressing a hand to his forehead and tangling his fingers in his hair.

I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off again. "Look, brat," he said. "I don't know why you pressed that button. But, if you have even the faintest idea of what it's meant for, you obviously had a reason for it. And if something is wrong enough for you to actually bother bringing me in here when there are probably about twelve other things I could be doing right now, it must be really, really wrong. So I just want to know one thing, Eren." There was my name again. I felt his steely grey eyes delving deep into my soul. It suddenly occurred to me why they call it eye contact.

"What. Is. Wrong?"

"I-I..." I choked, my voice barely above a whisper. I didn't want to say it. It was too stupid. Too embarrassing. But still... "I really can't..."

"Come on, Eren," Levi said, his voice soft and coaxing. "It's okay. You can tell me." I looked up at him. He'd never spoken to me that way before.

I bit my lip and sucked in a deep breath, then let it out, painfully slow. "I've never had a surgery before. And... I'm scared."

For the longest time, Levi didn't say a word. He just stood there, staring at me as if my cancer had suddenly spread to my face. He blinked, then the razor edge in his eyes started to soften.

"Oh," he murmured. "Okay."

My brain stuttered. I felt my heart do the same. I stared at Levi. He was moving closer, headed towards the chair next to my bed where Mikasa would occasionally sit when she didn't feel like cramming herself onto my bed. What was going on? What was Levi doing? Wasn't he supposed to be not caring and laughing in my face and calling me a pussy and telling me to get over it and everything else I'd been thinking of just a few seconds ago?

Levi settled down in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees and locking his fingers together in front of him. His eyes never left mine for even a second.

"What exactly are you scared of?" he asked.

"I... well, it's..." Wow. Now that I actually had the chance to tell someone what my problem was, I couldn't find the words to do it. I pushed myself just a little more upright against my pillows and twisted up the edge of the blanket between my fingers, then took a breath to try again. "It's about my mom."

Levi's face didn't change. His eyes stayed soft. "Your mom?"

"Yeah," I replied. "You see, this cancer, the leukemia... When I was ten, she was diagnosed with the same thing. And... she died of it. After a few months."

"So is it your cancer that you're scared of?"

"No, it's the surgery. It's definitely the surgery. You see, my mom had to go into surgery a few months after she was diagnosed. Our old doctor, Dr. Hannes, he hadn't caught her leukemia until it had already progressed. She was in stage four already. There was a growth in her spinal cord. They did all these screenings, and they said it was intramedullary or something and they couldn't operate without risking all this nerve damage, so they tried to treat it with radiation and chemo and everything, but..." My throat started to tighten up and forced me to stop. I reached up an ran a shaky hand over what should have been my hair.

"But nothing was working," I continued. "And before long, everything started to spread, then it was in her brain, but everything was still inoperable, and the treatments still weren't getting any responses, but they managed to get the tumor in her brain to shrink back a little, so they took her into surgery, just to give it a try, and..." My voice cracked, choking off the last few words of my story and forcing me to start again. "And she never came out. She died on the operating table."

The room fell into a silence almost as deep and consuming as the one that had been hanging in the air before Levi came in. I stared at him, and he stared straight back at me, his calculating gray eyes searching my face. Things still felt unfinished.

"S-so," I choked out, "that's why I'm scared. Because... my mom died in surgery, and I-I feel like... something's going to go wrong, and... and I'm not going to come back out..."

"Eren."

Levi's voice was so quiet it hardly even qualified as a whisper. I heard it all the same. I turned towards him, my eyes stinging. "Yeah?"

"I want you to listen to me, okay?" he said. His eyes caught mine and held them captive.

I nodded slowly, fighting back the tears my mom had brought up. "Okay."

"I know you're frightened," he murmured. "It's okay. This is your first surgery, and you have every right to be scared. But you shouldn't panic. Maybe your tumor hasn't responded to treatment as well as it could have. But it's still in a place where it can easily be removed without causing any serious damage. You're still alive, and as far as we can tell, you won't be dying anytime soon. The surgery is going to be fine. You're going to go into the operating room, we're going to anesthetize you and you aren't going to feel a thing until you wake up. And by then everything will be over. Your tumor will be gone, and you'll be able to go home once your symptoms clear up. You're going to be okay. Understand?"

I took a deep, shaky breath. "Y-Yes," I choked. Something that felt like a drop of acid slipped out from the corner of my eye and rolled over my cheek.

"Hey, don't be like that, okay?" Levi said, watching as another foreign object streaked a searing path over my face. He untwisted his fingers and placed one hand on the guardrail. "You're going to be fine. You'll make it through this."

"Are you sure?" I said, my voice rasping over the congealing lump in my throat.

"What kind of nurse would I be if I wasn't?" Levi answered. He gave me a small, encouraging smile. Yes. You heard me. Levi actually smiled.

I let my gaze fall away from his and sank back into the pillows on my bed. I'd have to remove them once Dr. Erwin and all the OR nurses came. My fingers still worried at the edge of the blanket, my palms cold and sweaty. My heart was still hammering against my ribs, threatening to punch a hole through my already-doomed liver. I was still scared. But it wasn't nearly so bad as it was before.

I glanced over at the guardrail. At Levi's hand, his strong, slender fingers draped over the cold metal.

Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed it.

Levi didn't act shocked. He didn't say anything or try to wrench his hand away from mine. He just let me take it, twisting my fingers around his and clutching them as if it would save my life. Still, he didn't move, not even when my shaking hand tightened so much on his that our fingers turned white. Not until we heard the latch click open and Dr. Erwin Smith came striding in, his entourage of OR nurses following closely behind.

Dr. Erwin looked at the both of us and raised his majestic eyebrows. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No, not at all" Levi said flatly. He twitched his fingers as if to say You can let go now, Eren. I didn't.

"Well, preparations in the operating room are almost finished. All that's left now is to bring in the patient," he said in that factual voice of his. "We'll just be administering a small dose of vicodin. Then we'll be good to go. How are you holding up, Eren?"

I choked down the lump in my throat and forced myself to answer. "Fine."

"Good," he said. One of the nurses stuck the end of a plastic syringe into an open port of my PICC line. A moment later, I felt like my skull was floating away from my spine. Suddenly everything in the room was the most hilarious thing I had ever seen in my life. I started to laugh uncontrollably, and my death grip on Levi's fingers finally came loose. He eased his hand away from mine and stood up.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

"Y-yes," I said, laughter bubbling up into my voice. "A lot."

"Good," he replied in almost the same tone that Dr. Erwin had used before. He began milling about the room with all the other nurses, unplugging my monitors and giving the loose wires to me, switching my IV dispenser to battery power and a million other small tasks that I couldn't be bothered to name. Dr. Erwin came back in while they were working and introduced me to the anesthesiologist and the surgeon who would be doing the majority of the cutting while Dr. Erwin directed. The pillows were cleared away from my bed, and I was told to lie on my back. Then the entourage of nurses organized themselves around the frame of my bed and began rolling me towards the door. I stared up at the ceiling as I was wheeled out into the hallway and began traveling towards the operating room.

The vicodin only did so much to calm down the raging torrent of trauma and misery in my head. I was still having visions of my lifeless body lying on the table, my skin split open like a cheap toothpaste tube, my guts spilling out, my monitor lines going flat...

"Almost there, Eren. You still doing alright?"

Levi's voice broke through the surface of my thoughts like a lifeguard reaching for a drowning victim. I blinked and strained my eyes to search for him. He was leaning over me, his dark hair pushed neatly into a surgery cap.

I nodded as much as I could while lying on my back. "I think so."

I watched as a line in the ceiling passed over us and the ceiling tiles changed. I heard the clear, mechanical blips of awaiting monitors. The smell of antibacterial cleaner was stronger than ever. My bed shuddered to a stop and one of the nurses tugged my blankets off of me. All of a sudden I knew exactly where we were.

Dr. Erwin leaned over me, a pale blue surgical mask over his mouth and nose. "Well, here we are," he said. "Are you ready,Eren?"

I tried to nod. I really wasn't feeling it anymore.

"Alright," Dr. Erwin responded. "I'm just going to need you to move over this way."

I strained my neck to look over my shoulder. My bed had been rolled up directly next to the operating table and the right guardrail snapped back into place. All of a sudden I felt the nurses' hands all over me, pushing me gently sideways, giving me small murmurs of encouragement as if they were trying to get a baby bird to fly. I rolled onto my elbows and began inching towards the operating table.

"Yes, that's it."

"Right there. There you go."

I dropped back down on the operating table and watched as my bed was rolled away into an empty corner. Suddenly I felt something long, thin and heavy fall across my legs. I looked down and the blips from my heart monitor began to speed up. It was a big, heavy strap, one that looked ominously like the ones used to bind mental patients to their beds.

"W-what is that for?" I demanded, my voice only slightly less than a panicky shriek.

"A regulation safety measure," Levi said. My eyes relaxed and I found myself staring up at his calm, collected face. There was a surgery mask over his mouth and nose as well, mint green, just like his scrubs. "Patients sometimes kick around in their sleep. Anesthesia isn't much different. We don't want you moving around during the surgery. That would be bad, no?"

"Yeah. It would." I wanted to laugh, but the anxiety throbbing in my chest wouldn't allow it. Another nurse straightened out one of my arms and secured it in place. Levi moved out of my field of vision for a second to secure my other arm to the operating table. I heard him talking to someone just to the left of my shoulder, standing next to my IV dispenser. The anesthesiologist, I guessed. When Levi came back, he was holding a clear plastic breathing mask.

"Alright, Eren," Levi said, reaching over me to pick something up from the other side of the table. He clicked it onto the open tube at the tip of the mask. "I'm going to put the mask on you now. This might feel a little weird, but don't panic. Just breathe normally, alright?"

"Okay," I said. My left arm was starting to go numb. I could already feel cold liquid draining into my veins. My heart kept stammering. It wouldn't be much longer now.

With one quick, fluid movement, Levi slid the mask over my mouth and nose and tightened the straps around my head. The overwhelming smell of sterilized plastic burned the inside of my nose. I felt cold gas seeping through the vent in the mask. The tube to the gaseous anesthetic draped itself over my shoulder.

Levi leaned over me, his eyes fixing themselves to mine. "Okay, Eren. I want you to count down from ten for me. Can you do that?"

"Yeah," I mumbled, the mask screwing with my ability to speak. I stared blankly up at Levi's face. The numbness in my arm was starting to spread. "Ten..."

Levi looked up at one of the other nurses and said something I couldn't understand. I started wondering if LPNs were qualified to work in the operating room.

"Nine..."

Someone in the operating room said something to either me or Levi. I wasn't sure who anymore. They sounded annoyed. Levi said something else. His words sounded even more slurred than before.

"Eight..."

I started wondering about his qualifications again. I kept searching my brain for that simple little fact that for some reason I wasn't able to find. Was Levi supposed to be in here? Was he?

"Seven..."

I didn't even hear what the invisible speaker said this time. But Levi heard it. He looked down at me. The room started going dark.

"Sixxxxnvmfhbnnjhrnjwfunl..."

"I'll see you later, Eren."

I never did make it to one.