Working Class Hero [Percy Jackson and the Olympians Fanfic]

Four Seasons in Four Years

He’s just a little boy with sea-green eyes, a shy smile, and tousled black hair that never seems to settle down. He comes in on the fourth of July, chattering about wanting to see fireworks that night and smiling shyly, as only a seven year old could do at the same time. His sea-green eyes are bright and he wants to pat down his messy hair and smile back.

He glances at his chart and keeps the smile on his face.

The little boy periodically coughs up blood, but he hasn’t yet progressed to vomiting it so he can’t say he’s suffering from hematemesisbut he’s confident enough to call it hemoptsis. He orders a CBC STAT because this seemed serious and he didn’t want to take chances, but there’s this niggling feeling in his gut that says it’s not enough. He has the boy with the shy smile and sea-green eyes promise to take his iron vitamins tid, and explains the medical jargon with his own smile as he realizes the little boy scrunches up his nose in confusion. He’s been working too long, he forgets himself.

Summer isn’t as warm as he thought it would be.

He has the mother, frantic and consumed with worry as she is, remember to have her sea-green eyed boy take those vitamins pcand record the hs. He’s worked there so long, he even thinks medical jargon.

Summer passes, and he works on and on, taking long shifts and weary hours. He doesn’t forget the little sea-green eyed boy that came in with a shy smile and gravity-defying hair.

~*~*~

It’s autumn, and he keeps expecting to see the usual brown, gold, and scarlet colors that blend the world into a vision of a macabre of a murder scene. Morbid, he knows, but he really hasn’t a thought to up his optimism levels for a long time. They come, but isn’t macabre or disturbing. Simply there and simply vivid. Maybe next time, he thinks.

His wife still suffers from agoraphobia and refuses to come outside. He works more long hours. And his colleagues have all the gory cases that they trade talk about, ribbing on who has the worse and sorriest patients waiting for the end. He doesn’t talk about his, but it is generally an accepted argument that he has the worse of them all. Because he has all the odd and horrid cases, but they’re all children too. He has a girl with splenomegaly, a spleen that could rupture at any moment. He has another girl that has a severe case of quadriplegia, whom they’re not sure will ever be able to move again. She’s just moved into one of their wards, quiet and unmoving in the silence of her room, except for the beeping of hospital machines and the pump of the oxygen tank.

Then there’s one pre-teen boy who’s diagnosed with cirrhosis, and they’re giving him until the end of the year to live. He’s not sure how to break it to the parents. 

There’s another kid with alopecia, and he’s only ten. It’s not something severe or life threatening, but he does understand how embarrassing it is to lose your hair when you haven’t even reached puberty.

He thinks he’s been desensitized. He works in the pediatrics of hell, after all.

And then the boy with sea-green eyes comes back; only this time it’s the mother who needs to see a doctor. He hears from one of his colleagues that she’s in to have a hysterectomy, most probably because of that no-good husband of hers that’s hovering around her and a cute little boy hanging around her legs like a puppy. His legs move on their own and he sees the mother is already in for surgery, and the husband is slumping lazily on one of the chairs while the little boy sits quietly next to him, his legs hanging over his seat and swinging back and forth. He stands a little ways away, and like radar the boy’s head snaps up to look straight at him. The sea-green eyed boy looks at him curiously and offers another shy smile. He gives a small one back and waves slightly. His curiosity sated, he turns to leave and starts walking away, when he notices small footsteps stumbling behind him. He turns halfway and notices the poor boy breathing fast, almost like he was suffering from tachypnea, but straightens up quickly and gives him an almost blinding smile.