Sandy only knew about Hanahaki disease in passing.
She's an engineer, not a pathologist or epidemiologist. But during one of her waits for the material she needed to arrive, she ended up down the rabbit hole of rare diseases to pass the time. Hanahaki disease stood out and stuck in her head because of how strange of a disease it is. No virus, no bacteria, and no fungus was needed. Based on the cause, you'd think it a misfolded prion in the brain of some sort would be involved, but none of that. Nothing but the belief of your love being unrequited. The only reason the public wasn't in a panic and shielding their hearts and affection was because of how unheard of it is, Sandy assumed.
She fell asleep not long after reading about it, and once her materials arrived, she stopped thinking about it. What are the chances that she'd run into something like that?
Higher than she could've anticipated, because now it was front and center in her, and the others, lives. SpongeBob had it, had the flowers removed, didn't tell them before OR after, and what was the reason he gave for not giving them the chance to prove to him that they do in fact love him?
To make them happy.
"But if I can't love everybody anymore, then I can't annoy and bother them. I know everyone thinks I'm a nuisance," he said. "It's supposed to make you happy. Aren't you happy?"
She wanted to shake some sense in that Sponge for ever thinking that.
She understood that he was hurt from being left behind, and even more so after finding out exactly why. They were only supposed to be gone for a day, but one day turned into two, then three. Then a week, then another week—
She sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Anyone would feel awful after that, especially someone who wore his heart on his sleeve.
The damage is done, and the trigger was pulled that gave him a rare disease. She saw it in his eyes. From the look he gave when she, Patrick, and Squidward went over to his house to check on him, it was like he didn't recognize them, just as Patrick said when he came to her treedome a crying mess. He held onto the broom like a shield between them, as if he expected them to hurt him.
Well, technically, they already have.
. . .
But she was going to fix this. She made a promise to find a way to fix it, and she wasn't going to stop until she did.
First thing in the morning, Sandy holed herself in a corner of the Bikini Bottom Public Library. After going through the aisles, she grabbed every book on rare disease she could find, nearly covering her table in short stacks of books. One of these books must have what she needed.
She only knew the basics of Hanahaki disease, the cause, the symptoms, and the treatments. But she needed more than that. Any research, any studies, any statistics.
Two stacks of books later, and she only found what she already knew. She checked the publishing dates of the books. Seeing that they're decades old, she kept her hopes up.
Two more stacks later and she finally found something different.
"'There are two ways to treat Hanahaki disease. Reciprocity and removal'," She read. "Already knew that." She skimmed the next few paragraphs for anything new. "'Removing the flowers comes with the side effect of the patient losing the ability to love the person(s) of their affections. This side effect is permanent."
Wait.
What?
"Permanent?" She whispered. "That. . .can't be right. . ."
What she read before didn't mention it being permanent. Maybe this book was older, like the rest she's read so far, and more discoveries about it have been made. Sandy closed that book and opened the next. But, each time, when it came to losing the ability to love, she ran into the same word.
Permanent.
Permanent.
Permanent.
She wanted to throw these books through a wall; it felt like each one she opened was mocking her. They told her that her friend was stuck like this, and there was nothing to be done about it.
Instead, she slammed her fists on the table. Luckily, the library was empty, and no one around to disturb.
Darn it, she promised SpongeBob she would help him! She can't just leave him like this, a shadow of his former self.
She opened the next book hard enough to nearly crack its spine. Someone, somewhere, had to have researched this. Some kind of experiment to reverse this side effect that she can bounce off of, or at the very least a hypothesis about the mechanisms in place that causes it in the first place.
"Here's something," she hummed. "'About 3 patients per year contract Hanahaki Disease. 2 out of 3 patients can be expected to be Sponges. However, due to their low population, it's difficult to conduct research on why Sponges contract this disease more than others'."
Huh.
Sandy never thought about it until now, but SpongeBob was the only Sponge in Bikini Bottom, wasn't he? He certainly hasn't seen any others since she's moved here, not even his parents. According to this book, they were in low numbers, so it made sense there weren't any around and why her search for more information was turning up empty.
She couldn't help but wonder. . .
"If Sponges are more prone to this disease, and their numbers are low," She pondered. "Is Hanahaki disease causing them to die out?"
It certainly sounded like an unfortunate possibly.
"That would mean most of them choose not to get treated and pass away instead," she pondered. "I'm getting off track." Closing the book, she stood up. If Sponges are the ones who get it the most, then maybe the books on Sponges had more information about Hanahaki disease, and she was just looking in the wrong place. She'll just go grab a few books and start from there.
. . .
. . .
There wasn't a 'there' to work from.
There were plenty of books, shelves even, on the different kinds of Fish, Squids, Starfish, Crustaceans, Shrimp, practically every other sea creature, but nothing, not a single book on Sponges. That was more evidence of the idea that they were going extinct. Why else would there be so little information about them?
She was ending up with more questions than she started with.
Whether or not Sponges are dying out, the information she needed wasn't here. If there was any hope of finding a way to fix this, then she was going to need information about how Sponges worked and what made them more prone to Hanahaki disease in the first place. But to get that information, she needed to talk to the one Sponge she does know.
That was going to be tricky. She heard from Patrick that it was hard to get more than a few words out of him at a time, let alone spend any time with him. She had her work cut out for her on that front. But she made a promise, and a friend always keeps a promise.
Still, she had to consider all possibilities. What if all these books were right, and there wasn't a way to reverse it? And he was stuck like this?
. . .
She didn't want to think about that. It's too painful to think about, the first person she met when she came down here, the first to not treat her or look at her like some kind of alien, suddenly didn't care about her, or any of his friends, existence, and the possibility that there was nothing that can be done about it. That he'll keep avoiding them like the plague, barely sparing them a glance or a few words.
"I can't think like that," she said, as she placed the books on the return cart. "There's got to be a way to fix this. And if there's not. . . then. . .we'll figure something else out."
Yeah, that's it. Maybe it's possible for him to build up a tolerance to being around and talking to them. None of these books had anything about the full scope of what it was like to lose the ability to love, what it limited and what it didn't. What was going on in that square head of his was anyone's guess.
But she can't work on guesses. Not with something like this. It's too important.
With a growing list of questions, finding and convincing SpongeBob to answer them became her next priority.
