Chapter 34: Not some idle claim
Vlad was doing better – except for the days he wasn't.
It wasn't often, it wasn't most of the time, it wasn't even once a week, but sometimes...
On the days Vlad wasn't doing great – on the days, perhaps, when he was too tired from the night practice, or maybe it was because he'd done something wrong, or possibly it was because he was ostentatiously damned and it was all Jack's fault – he'd cough up blood for hours.
His meals.
Occasionally, things that shouldn't ever get out of one's body. Like a semi-tangible bit of spleen.
It lasted through the day and there was no hiding it, no pretending, no wiping off the blood in the dark of the night and acting as if nothing had happened, as if he was just tired and a bit nauseous.
Vlad, those days, wasn't feeling level-headed enough to care about hiding anything, anyway.
Those were days – rare, not often, perhaps once every ten days or so, and frankly, considering his health in the last twenty months, that was nothing – when Ziad would look just a bit tense, worried. Days when Bianco's visit – it had happened twice, not enough for the older man to notice a clear pattern, but the director probably had access to Vlad's medical file anyway – would turn into a long vigil by Vlad's bed, as he couldn't speak of anything, his throat raw and his breath interrupted by coughing fits, his bed sheets splattered with blood and saliva. Days when the doctors would come over and freak out – discreetly, professionally, but nowadays Vlad could tell when a health professional grew baffled and powerless about his pain and suffering – trying to keep him alive.
a flash of green pain hurts
was that what death felt like
Vladislav child why are you still here?
As if there was still anything the doctors could do about that.
as if it wasn't already too late
as if Vlad wasn't some kind of undead abomination that couldn't even manage to be properly dead
Besides, he may have coughed up a third of his spleen the other day – they'd needed to take him to the clinic's operating room, to cut him open and see to the internal bleeding, and Vlad hadn't said anything because he couldn't go around telling them that it was alright, it would grow back soon enough and anyway he had a passable amount of blood out of his body as it was without needing more sloshing around his insides – but overall, he was doing better. He'd healed from that particular gruesome tale in three days had felt around his own innards with intangibility just to make sure it had grown back and the stitches weren't in the way. He would cough up more blood than there was in a human body over the course of five hours, and the next day he'd just be tired and slightly feverish.
Vlad was doing better.
it wasn't his fault his health had fallen so low that such abysmal conditions were still better than what used to plague his every waking hours
Even Bianco – not Ziad, because he hadn't been there yet for the worst of it June had been and June was gone because and maybe he'd heard about it but he hadn't been a witness – had to admit it, no matter how alarming some specific days were: Vlad wasn't flatlining, his hands weren't eaten away by necrosis, most of his time was spent in relative comfort – without high fevers or pains or rashes. He managed to make decent, regular progress with the textbooks and other related materials for his business correspondence course.
There were low days, yes – and those days, Vlad felt like dying all over again but it hadn't taken the first time and it was the reason he was in so much pain so.
Those days, he didn't think of June who was gone because of him of Maddie she'd tried to help to warn Jack of Jack "banzai!".
Those days, he didn't stop to ache about Ziad who he couldn't confide in but still ended up worrying or Bianco he'd visited and it wasn't the older man's fault that Vlad hadn't been able to respond or even think about anything else than pain and blood blooming on his clothes and bet sheet.
Those days, Vlad didn't have the luxury to even consider how alone he could feel June Maddie Jack, how the ones who were there were still impossible to truly let in Ziad Bianco, how some would have wanted to be there but couldn't and shouldn't ever see what he'd become Mama Dad Dasha.
He didn't didn't didn't didn't think about it, because he was too busy hurting.
hurts make it stop please help
It didn't happen that often, anyway. It was only sometimes. Not often, not most of the time, not once a week.
Only some days.