That evening the coughing got worse and worse. Anna and Gavin didn’t notice, thanks to the mute button, but after a particularly bad bout of coughing I had to call it quits. I told them I was going to bed early and that I’d see them the next day.

I found a small pink petal in my hand. It was as slimy and nasty as I’d imagined it would be. Hanahaki, for sure–a disease that everyone knew about, that had obvious cures. Only a bit worse than a cold. I’d still have to go into work on Monday, in all likelihood, although I had enough cachet there to take a day off if I wanted to.

I was faced with a dilemma. Should I go to the doctor?

Of course not. There was no mystery, anymore.

Hanahaki is something that almost everybody gets once or twice. Making a big deal of it would be seen as being dramatic: like I wanted attention for my emotional state. Really, any illness that a man faces falls into that category. I felt averse to going to the doctor, because weakness wasn’t something society would let men have. I didn’t want to ask for help because attention was something society didn’t want to give me.

Those were my biases, and I found that they were worth trying to correct.

On the other hand, I could go to the doctor with an honest desire to learn more about my illness, even if it was benign. I wouldn’t be dramatic; I’d be practical. Maybe even secretive. If I went to the doctor I didn’t have to tell anyone about it except my doctor. Other people might judge me for it if they knew, but they didn’t have to know.

Beyond that, some part of me wanted to go. It was true that I had promised myself I’d go to the doctor before I had any evidence it was hanahaki, but a promise was a promise.

No–I could feel it at the back of my mind. I was still confused. I still didn’t believe that I had hanahaki. I wanted more evidence. I had trained myself to notice when I was confused, and that wiggling note of confusion crawled out from the back of my mind. Hanahaki happened during limerence, and I didn’t feel limerence, so why was I sick?

I stared at the little lung symbol on the hospital’s webpage. The two overlapping teardrops symbolized many things. Health, excitement, and love of course.

I didn’t have a crush on anyone, right?

What if it wasn’t hanahaki after all? Maybe I had bronchitis, or pneumonia, or something very severe like actual lung cancer? Thinking about that last thing was what scared me the most. I scheduled an appointment online for the next day.

—

“It’s hanahaki,” said Dr. Dominic, my primary care physician. “We can do an x-ray to confirm, but the petals are very indicative.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “I don’t have a crush on anyone!”

“Mr. Caldwell, you are young. Can you not think of anyone who you might be attracted to?” I paused to consider it. I did have an unusual number of female friends, it was true, but that was just the result of all my social activities.

I was still faintly surprised that I ran out of fingers on my right hand while counting the women I might date.

“But I’m not… attracted to any of them,” I said. It was a bit of a lie. Some of them were very attractive, at least physically, but that didn’t mean I was attracted to them. “I don’t think I could have a relationship with any of them.”

Chloe was a coworker, making that impossible, especially when you considered the power dynamics regarding our ranks. She wasn’t allowed to date me.

Emma probably didn’t like me that way based on her behavior at the soup kitchen.

I’d promised myself I’d just be Diana’s friend before I even talked to her about working out.

I knew Bella through her parents, a relationship I wouldn’t want to jeopardize.

Finally, I’d been friends with Anna forever and we’d never dated, so obviously there was no chemistry.

These thoughts took me only a moment. I’d had all of them before, I realized; I’d found reasons not to date any of these women. Obvious reasons, even if I couldn’t explain them to my doctor all that quickly.

“Not being able to have a relationship you want is the primary cause of this disease,” said Dr. Dominic.

“I don’t want a relationship. I just want to work, and help people, and be happy.” My doctor wore a tight frown. Patients argued with him all day, and I realized I might be delaying him from seeing another patient, even then. Doctors are very hurried individuals. “What should I do?”

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“Go on a few dates. Start a relationship, or do what it takes to realize you’d rather not start one with the person after all.”

“But which person? Seriously, this makes no sense.” He sighed and looked down at his notes.

“When did you say this started?”

“A week ago,” I said. “A time when my life was just going normally.”

“And you describe physical weakness and fatigue.”

“Yes, it’s been affecting my workouts. That was how I noticed.”

“Hmm. It’s not impossible that you are experiencing a hanahaki flare-up for other reasons. Hormones can signal the parasite to become more active, but perhaps instead your immune system is stressed.”

I snapped my fingers. “I do have an upcoming thing at work that’s very stressful.”

“In that case you’ll want to take steps to reduce the stress in your life.” The doctor tapped his pen. “For you that might involve going on a few dates, anyway. You are very extroverted.”

“Well, I am now. I used to be introverted, until I deliberately tried to change that for the numerous benefits.” The doctor gave me a look that showed me how little he cared. “So I just wait for the work thing to pass, and I’ll get better?”

“No,” he said. “If an immune system issue is the cause, you might have the chronic version of the disease. That can be more severe. We’ll do a chest x-ray, to see how severe your case is.” He went on to explain that ignoring hanahaki disease could, in rare cases, be deadly. If the parasite expanded too far into the lungs it would compromise breathing, and immunocompromised people sometimes faced that issue.

We’d do blood tests and all kinds of other undoubtedly expensive things. Oh well. Once again I found myself grateful for my job and the money it afforded me.

Dr. Dominic left to get my x-ray scheduled. Shortly after that, I walked to the machine with the guidance of a nurse. It was a large device made out of sterile white plastic, with lines on the floor marking where people could stand.

It felt a bit awkward to walk around in a hospital gown. The nurse had me walk into the scanner. I was required to rest my arms on a handle and point a giant lens at my chest. I resisted the urge to flex my pectoral muscles–that would have been stupid.

The nurse remained stoic through the procedure. I had to hold my breath at key moments. The machine made a little hum as it ran.

I was good at paying attention to body language. It was something I’d practiced to become more empathetic, part of my endeavor to be more extroverted. People mirror the body language of those they speak with. It is a way of syncing up your feelings, but also a way of remaining sympathetic. If empathy is mind reading, mirroring body language was like opening up your third eye. I didn’t believe in psychic senses, but I did believe in the power of intuition.

I noticed immediately when the nurse tensed up. She was standing behind a computer station. I couldn’t see her monitors, but I could see it when her eyes flicked toward me briefly. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second, but she looked away after that.

When she went to take me back I had to say something. “Can I look at the images?”

“The doctor will go over them with you,” she said. “I can’t make a diagnosis.” My heart had begun to pound. She was definitely not meeting my gaze.

“I just want to look at them.” She smiled and told me to go back to my room. “Seriously, just let me look at them?”

“I’m sorry, that’s just not the procedure for this.” She was mirroring my body language, indicating sympathy, but it only made me more nervous. Maybe I was tense, making her tense. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Maybe my intuition had connected some dots, after she gave me that look.

I walked back toward the examination room on my own. The nurse didn’t accompany me; she had walked off in a different direction, and quickly.

My thought process was too shattered to try to make plans for–well, for what specifically, I didn’t yet know. But something. My mind kept tripping over itself. I’d start imagining some horrible possibility, like lung cancer, and I’d immediately reset to wondering what my problem actually was, because I couldn’t make plans without that information, right?

A few minutes later Dr. Dominic reappeared in my room. There were two nurses behind him with a gurney.

“What’s going on?” I asked. I moved to lay in the gurney before they answered. Timeliness was obviously important.

“Hanahaki roots have gotten deeper into your lungs than we’d realized,” he said. “We are going to remove them immediately.”

“Will I live?” I asked. He didn’t wince, but one of the nurses did. I didn’t want to dance around the important questions, not when time was of the essence–or at least that’s what I told myself. The truth was that when I was stressed, I forgot to avoid being blunt, and I was stressed. I was frightened, even.

“This procedure has a ninety percent success rate.” I cared an awful lot about ten percent, I realized. “It’s a fairly common procedure, but the lungs are fragile organs. You’ll have to stay in the hospital afterward.”

“Why are we in a hurry?” They’d started to wheel me to a hidden part of the hospital, like a new location I’d unlocked in some game. I unlocked it by being sick enough for surgery. “Can you take the time to explain more?”

“There are surgeries scheduled for the rest of the day, but there’s an open slot now. A day’s delay might make things worse.” Good thing I’d scheduled my appointment online, then.

“Ah. I’m going to have to skip workouts, huh? And work?”

“For a few days, at least.”

“So my immune system is weak,” I said.

“We are going to have to talk about this after the surgery,” he responded. “But something like that, yes. You’ve had hanahaki for months, at least, without noticing.” Dr. Dominic was no longer following us and we started to pull away. I was too far away to feel comfortable calling back out to him.

As people I never met handed me forms to sign, and someone else attached a plastic mask to a hose, it suddenly felt like my life was crashing down around me. Someone else asked me when I had last eaten, and other questions. I answered in a daze.

When they put the mask over my mouth my thoughts turned to mush, then evaporated entirely.