From Bright Bodies
When the first symptoms start, Robby does what he always does â he ignores them.
A Rabbot hanahaki fic exploring psychosis, queerness, love and grief.
[Read on AO3]
Thank you so much to @permanent-fire-hazard for instigating the hanahaki craze and inspiring me to write this absolute angst-fest for my two favourite guys! <3
When the first symptoms start, Robby does what he always does â he ignores them. He minimises and explains away. The vague chest pains are just too much caffeine; the dizzy spells are a lack of sensible meals. When the cough starts and refuses to clear up, Robby brushes off Dana's comments and tells her he's just feeling a bit run down. The pattern of symptoms could mean anything, there's nothing to worry about, he'll rest when he gets chance. He bristles when she stares at him over her glasses â a look so familiar it's enough to raise his hackles on its own. But it's been a hellish shift and neither one of them has the energy to take on the same worn fight they always have, so it gets dropped, and Robby is left to carry on ignoring the signs for a little while longer.
Dana must speak to Jack at some point, because a couple of weeks later Robby finds himself being talked into going out for drinks with him. In truth, Robby's head is swimming and he wants nothing more than to go home and crash heavy into his bed, but Jack has always been persuasive and Robby doesn't do much to resist his offer to buy the first round.
The bar is a bit grimy and dimly lit, but the beer is good and it's less crowded than the more popular places the Residents prefer. Good to his word, Jack instructs Robby to grab them a seat while he heads over to order their drinks. Robby slumps into a corner booth and absently watches Jack chatting with the bartender. From this angle, he can see the back of Jack's strong frame; the way his jacket hangs over the curve of his shoulders and how his black cargo pants fit over his round ass and thick thighs⊠It must be a trick of the light, but Robby could swear he sees Jack's aura. A blend of blues and greens that twinkle and shift around him.
Robby's eyes snap upwards when Jack turns round to face him, bottles in hand. He tries to shake the image of Jack's legs from his mind, and focuses instead on their conversation. Despite his earlier misgivings, it feels good to be sat here with his friend, laughing at his night shift stories and feeling relaxed for the first time in months. He gets through the first beer just fine, but it's halfway through the second, just as Jack is regaling him with an inappropriate story about a patient's attractive relative, that Robby feels something tighten in his chest. He coughs a few times to clear it, but nothing works. He tries to ignore the insistent pulling at his ribs, but eventually gives in and excuses himself to the bathroom where he's wracked with a coughing fit that leaves him breathless.
That's when the first petal falls from his lips. Robby stares at the small yellow speck in the sink and marvels that this delicate, beautiful thing has appeared in the middle of what could only respectfully be called a dive bar. Strangely, he doesn't feel any panic, only a brief moment of realisation as he looks up at his reflection in the mirror and wonders how it's taken him this long to notice what's happened.
"OhâŠ" he whispers softly to himself, staring deep into his own eyes and finding the answer very clear. Jack.
â
Jack is waiting right where Robby left him just minutes ago. A rush of adrenaline floods through Robby's system when they make eye contact. The blue-green aura is surrounding Jack again, and the way it shifts and glows almost knocks Robby off balance.
Jack frowns and a tinge of red bleeds into the colours that are dancing around him.
"Wow, brother. You look awful." Jack says.
"Don't think I should have drunk so much on an empty stomach. Okay if we call it a night?"
Jack looks unsure for a moment, glances skeptically at the half-finished second bottles. When he looks back up Robby gets the strange sensation that Jack is somehow seeing right through his skin and muscle into the cavity of his chest. He tries to breathe through the growing wooziness, and focuses on the greying curl that's fallen across Jack's forehead. It doesn't help.
Jack's standing up to move towards him, making the aura surrounding him shift rapidly. "You want a ride home? I'm still good to drive."
"Nah, I'll walk. Get some air."
Robby doesn't wait for Jack to respond, just knows he has to get outside quickly before he passes out. Without another word, he grabs his jacket and turns to leave. Jack stares after him, his brows knitted together in a mixture of confusion and concern.
â
The word Hanahaki swims round Robby's head as he stumbles home. It's a rare disease, but one he's seen a few times across his career. By the time they get to the ER, they're usually terminal, fully formed flowers spilling from their airways with no option but to make them as comfortable as possible while their plant reaches its full height inside them. Robby's seen plenty of death, and this is not one he'd choose.
There were times earlier in his career where they'd made attempts to cure the patient, or at least buy them more time. Robby once watched Jack run a code that lasted hours - they pulled endless flowers and leaves from a poor, frightened young woman who'd come in with the name Paul Thomas written onto a scrap of paper held tight in her fist. Jack had phoned every Paul Thomas he could find in the directory, but none of them admitted to knowing the girl, let alone loving her back. That case haunted Robby â and he knew it haunted Jack too, although neither of them would ever speak about it again â and the next time Robby was called into a terminal Hanahaki case, his orders were quick and to the point: make them comfortable, let them go.
The recollecting of his flower disease patients carries Robby almost the entire walk home. His memory of Jack dialling number after number weighs heavy in his chest. Even at the time Robby had seen the desperate beauty of it, a man determined to do whatever it took to defeat death with love. But that was before Emily went, when Jack still believed that miracles were possible.
Robby coughs and feels the strange sensation of velvet petals on his tongue. He unlocks the door to his house and steps inside, leaving a trail of yellow and green along the pavement behind him.
â
By the time he gets to his room, Robby's feeling bad enough that he can believe he's managed to get drunk off just one and a half weak beers. He falls fully clothed on top of his bed, his head spinning. The pain in his chest is back, an insistent tightness that wraps around his lungs and tangles through his ribs. He tries to steady his breath â box breathe around the flowers he now knows are blooming inside him, but it's useless.
The colours he'd seen surrounding Jack at the bar have followed him home. Jewel-toned now, the blues and greens dance around his room and illuminate the darkness, making Robby grip his bedsheets tightly in sweaty palms. He's hit repeatedly with the sensation the he's falling out of bed and hitting the floor no matter how still he lays. Hypnic jerks. The words swim into view âtextbook-like â before snapping away again. How bizarre that he can catalogue an altered state even while experiencing it.
Time passes slow and quick, and eventually the vertigo eases. Robby opens his eyes to find petals scattered across his chest and over his sheets, petals that he has no recollection of vomiting. He spends a few seconds processing this through the fog in his head, while something else starts to demand his attention, something he senses before he can see it.
The knowledge of it drifts over him slowly. Standing just beyond reach by the foot of the bed â at once both there and not there â his mom. She looks just as Robby remembers her; long, dark hair, seventies clothes and a sad smile just like his own. Her face is indistinct, too soft around the edges, empty of specific detail. This is how he always sees her when she visits his dreams, the ill-defined features all that are left in his memory.
There's no panic, no attempt to deny what he can see. Robby simply enters into a reality where his mind has split in two: what's true â his mother died 45 years ago â and what's also true â his mother is standing next to him. She stays with him a while, waiting till the aching in his lungs has settled. By the time he can breathe normally again she's gone, although Robby can't remember feeling her leave.
â
Weeks pass. Robby can no longer ignore the symptoms, but he can still pretend they're not important, can still do the second best thing after denial which is bargaining. I'll see a specialist if I cough up a whole flower. I'll be okay so long as I focus on work. I'll avoid Jack and this might get better on its own. For some reason he takes to reasoning these things out with his mom's ghost even though she never replies. He does all this and grinds through each day and hopes against all hope that a solution will present itself soon.
It's at the end of another long shift with no time for food or toilet breaks when Robby realises he can't go on like this. He can feel the weight of the day in his muscles that ache dully, and in the deepening sensation that he can't quite catch his breath. He makes his way over to the gathered group of nightshift staff and begins the handover, keeping it efficient and direct in the hopes that he can make a clean break and get home quickly.
Robby's almost finished going over the board when his eyes find Jack standing at the edge of the group. He's got his chin up and his arms crossed, his biceps strong across his broad chest, his bare forearms dotted with freckles that are visible even at this distance⊠The dizziness hits Robby immediately, and he screws his eyes shut to stop himself from falling sideways. At the same time, he feels his chest muscles tighten painfully as something moves deep in his lungs, climbing up his trachea until it's irritating the back of his throat. Desperately, he attempts to draw in a breath, but can only wheeze around whatever is blocking his airway, until finally he gives in, covers his mouth with his hand and coughs harshly. He manages to catch most of the petals in his palm, but he watches horrified as a single green foliole drifts to the ground.
Before Robby even registers what's happening, the petal has been stepped on and covered. He looks up through watering eyes to see Dana staring out at the oblivious crowd of physicians.
"You heard the boss, get going!" Dana's command of the department is never questioned, and Robby watches wordlessly as the huddle disperses to go about their work. Amongst them, Jack has turned and is walking away towards a patient's room with Nazely. Robby hiccups, and another green petal floats gently to the floor.
"And you're with me," Dana says, her voice low, and Robby allows himself to be guided towards an exam room.
â
Almost as soon as the door clicks shut behind them, Robby is hit with another wave of dizziness and the awful fluttering of petals low in his lungs. There's something else now too - a stabbing pain just below his ribcage that sharpens with each inhale - but he doesn't get the chance to dwell on this. Robby doubles over as the coughing attack fully hits him. He grasps out, not even knowing what he's reaching for, and feels Dana's hand slip into his to help hold him steady. With her free hand, she's bringing an emisis basin up to his lips. The petals come quickly, wave after wave of green and yellow that block his throat and give him no opportunity to suck down any oxygen. Absently, he wonders if he'll ever breathe again, or whether he'll die like this, suffocated by the flowers that taste bitter and pungent on his tongue.
Eventually the vomiting passes, and Dana leaves his side to place the emisis basin next to the sink. Robby collapses onto the bed, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he does so.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Robby shrugs and Dana seemingly decides to choose her battles.
"What other symptoms have you had?" she asks.
Robby considers lying, pretending that it's just the cough and the petals, but something in Dana's face stops him. He sees a worry there that somehow conveys both her gentle compassion and her lack of tolerance for any of his bullshit. He gives her the satisfaction of staring him down for a couple more seconds before he answers.
"You're a really great nurse, do you know that?"
Dana smiles. "I'm a real Nightingale. Now come on, tell me what's going on."
It's not a question this time. Robby takes a deep breath, feeling the now-familiar pull at the base of his lungs as he does so.
"It started with visual stuff. Nothing too weird, jackets on the back of doors that looked like people, that kind of thing. I see weird colours sometimes, like⊠patterns that shift and ripple when I try to look at them."
If Robby had been expecting a reaction from Dana, he doesn't get one. And somehow, now that he's started talking and been met with no judgement, he feels like he needs to get it all out.
"Then the vomiting. It wasn't too bad, just a few petals here and there. But I started getting this feeling like I was floating. Things go hazy. Like the universe is bending into shapes that don't exist⊠I see people I know can't be there."
Dana's face has lost its worry and turned impassive. Robby notices the switch from friend to detatched professional, knows it's because they both realise the implications his symptoms have, knows that his words have set a sequence in motion that cannot be stopped now. Acceptance clicks in him like a switch has been pressed. He looks down and takes another deep, tight breath.
"It's a psychiatric variant," Robby says, like he's just telling Dana about a random patient instead of admitting for the first time the horrible truth about what's going to happen to him. Dana fixes her eyes back on him, her expression completely unreadable now.
"Let's get you tested first. One step at a time, eh?" She reaches out and squeezes Robby's shoulder, her refusal to acknowledge the severity of the situation a clear indication that she's trying to put on a brave face. Robby lets the inevitability of the disease rest on him, doesn't respond to Dana either way. She must sense what he's thinking, and thankfully she knows him well enough not to push any further just yet. Instead, she stands up and sets to work covering the emisis basin with a cloth.
"I'll get your petals up to the lab as a John Doe. Stay here, I'll drive you home."
"Thanks, Dana."
"I mean it. Don't move."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Dana pauses at the door and turns back to look at Robby like she wants to ask something. Robby sets his jaw.
"I'm not going to tell them, Dana."
"No, didn't think you would," she whispers, and leaves him alone in the quiet room.
â
Robby opts to ignore the tests Dana runs, and instead books himself an appointment at a specialist phytopathology clinic where no one knows him. It's where he meets Dr James on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
"The test results confirm hanahaki disease. The primary growth is Acacia Pycnantha - those are the small yellow petals." The doctor's demeanor is professional, with a stiff, formal kindness. Robby knows how giving bad news works - has been trained to do it himself, has done it thousands of times in his own career - and he sees all the evidence of this specialist trying to soften the blow.
"It's psychiatric?" he asks, desperate to bypass sympathy and get straight to the facts. Dr James seems relieved by Robby's lack of emotion.
"Yes. The plant naturally produces dimethyltryptamine, which is hallucinagenic. Once that leeches into the blood stream we start to see both positive and negative symptoms of psychosis."
"Can you treat those?"
"Unfortunately anti-psychotics do very little to counter the effects of Hanahaki psychosis. But if you have surgery to remove the growths at the root, then all your symptoms will subside."
"And I'll forget I love them?"
"Yes. The other option is to tell them and hope â"
Robby cuts him off. "I can't do that."
"Then surgery is your only option."
The finality of it covers the room in a thick silence. Robby's mind drifts somewhere else, only to be pulled back by Dr James politely clearing his throat.
"If you don't have any more questions, I can ask our receptionist to get you booked in for a follow up appointment?"
Robby nods and stands up to leave, but pauses at the threshold into the corridor.
"You said the primary growth explained the yellow petals. What about the green?"
Dr James looks back up from his computer screen.
"Oh. Er⊠those are carnations." He seems to consider this explanation enough, but Robby stares back blankly.
"They affectâ Well I think I have a leaflet here somewhere."
The doctor rummages through his desk drawer, finally pulling out a small pamphlet. Robby catches the rainbow branding before he sees the title and feels his cheeks flush at the realisation.
Hanahaki Disease: Information for LGBT+ Patients
"OhâŠ" the sound catches in the back of Robby's throat. Dr James looks like a man trying not to look embarrassed. He nods once; consultation over. For the first time since he realised what his symptoms meant, Robby feels like he might cry.
â
Robby stops in the park on the way home, the ordinariness of the Tuesday afternoon extending into the way old couples sit chatting on benches and young parents chase after their giggling toddlers and pigeons crowd around anyone who's bought a pastry from the kiosk on the corner. That's the worst of it all, the endless ordinariness that lies flat in the background of the kaleidescope colours that Robby sees permanently now. He knows that none of these ordinary people on their ordinary Tuesday afternoon can understand what he does, which is that there's a second reality overlaying the first, and that it's no longer clear to him which reality he's supposed to want to choose.
His mind turns back to Jack. He thinks about how he fell in love with him somewhere in the first few months after Emily died, when they were spending all of their days together, sharing in a vulnerability so profound that it altered both of them permanently. It had felt platonic to start with, a deep bond of trust and friendship that had remained at the root of Robby's feelings for Jack ever since. The romantic feelings had developed more slowly, were resisted and denied because Robby could not allow himself the idea of stepping into his friend's loss in that way.
Except for one night when they'd shared a bottle of whiskey and then some, and they were drunk enough and sad enough to have found themselves leaning closer together, eyes tear streaked and pleading for things they couldn't name, not even to themselves. To this day neither of them could remember who initiated the kiss. Perhaps it was both of them or maybe it was neither of them. Perhaps it was just a thing that had to happen. A thing that was soft and tender and filled with a yearning for everything that was out of their reach, because some higher power had finally taken pity on them and offered them a brief kindness.
After they'd slept and sobered up, Robby told Jack that he'd never cared about him being bisexual, because that was the truth. And then he told Jack that he was straight, which was mostly a truth, because he'd never really thought about his feelings for men before. After that, Robby went back to loving Jack quietly, because from that point on Jack's happiness was far more important to him than his own.
â
Jack messages him not long after he makes it home from the park.
Dana said you're taking some leave? Won't tell me why. Snapped when I tried to bribe herâŠ
What's going on Rob?
The thought of Jack confused and hurt by his sudden disappearance sends Robby rushing to the bathroom, where he kneels on the cold tile to vomit thick clumps of petals into the toilet bowl. His heart is racing, cold sweat gathers along his hairline and prickles across the back of his neck. He feels the tree roots constricting his diaphragm and the stutter in his lungs as they lose their rhythm. He feels the ache of each of his inconsistent and uncoordinated breaths. In his desperation, the tears he's been holding back since his conversation with Dr James suddenly start to fall, and he sobs and retches till there's nothing left to bring up. Every loose petal is pulled from him until, exhausted, he collapses against the bathtub.
That's when he notices. Amongst the now normal yellow and green vomit there are large streaks of purple. The contrast of colours is alarming for some reason, the deep shade standing out like a bruise.
He already knows what this is, really. But something compels him to reach into his pocket and pull out the leaflet that Dr James had given him anyway. Robby scans down the list of species known to disproportionally affect gay and bisexual men. He soon finds confirmation.
Pansy (Viola Wittrokiana): large petals, typically purple or pink. Recent research suggests that pansy flowers are more likely to affect men who are questioning their sexuality or gender identity, though it's not yet known why this is the case.
â
Time loses its meaning. Or rather, time gains new meaning. Robby experiences days as months, months as days. Things stop happening in linear order, and cause no longer needs to happen before effect. Robby throws his phone away. Two days later Dana calls and he gets so frustrated with her worrying that he gets the urge to put his phone in the bin and forget that the outside world exists.
He loses huge chunks of memory, walks around the house in a daze, goes to bed when the sun's still up and then finds himself sat on the stairs in the dark. Throughout it all, the petals keep coming. They litter the carpets, gently decaying and releasing their pungent sweet smell when he wades through them.
Robby's woken from his sleep one morning by a whole carnation blocking his airway. He chokes it out in violent retches that send fire shooting through his ribcage. He thinks he can feel stems and branches wrapping around his spine now, but nothing about his body feels certain to him anymore.
The colours he used to see in the dark have stopped dancing now. Instead the world around him looks two dimensional. His mom still spends time with him, though he cries and wheezes despondently whenever she leaves. He spends hours walking the house in search of her, checking cupboards and corners for her ghost, wondering why she cannot stay, just this once.
It's while he's looking for her that Jack appears to him. He walks straight through the door, bold as brass, clutching the spare set of keys. Robby keeps calling out for his mama anyway, asks this new ghost to tell him where she's hiding. Jack leads him to the kitchen, presses a glass of water into his hands and tells him to drink. Robby doesn't bother to explain that his hanahaki is creeping too high for him to swallow water anymore.
Instead he watches this version of Jack pull out a phone and dial 911. He's talking in code to the switchboard. Robby tells him it's useless, tells him it's too late. Tells him that if the real Jack was here he still wouldn't confess his love to him, but that he's grateful to have been visited by his memory before he dies. This Jack wraps his arms around Robby and barks orders to someone unseen, and all the while Robby has the sense of flashing lights and urgent voices just on the periphery of his senses.
â
Shen and Langdon meet them in the ambulance bay. In Trauma One they begin the code â Robby is laid on his side, hooked up to monitors, while Perlah and Kim alternate giving him oxygen via ambu bag, and pulling leaves and flowers from his mouth with forceps. They all know it's not possible to save someone with hanahaki this advanced. They know that the kindest thing to do would be to let Robby go, but no one wants to be the one to say it first.
Robby knows it's the end too. He uses the last of his energy to grasp hold of the Star of David that hangs from his necklace. He pushes the sharp points of it into the delicate skin of his palm and tries to let the sensation keep him in the room, keep him conscious, keep him alive. Jack is right next to him, talking to him, letting his voice soothe Robby even if he can't take in the words.
"I had it too. Hanahaki. When I met Emily. I couldn't bear the idea of telling her, couldn't put that on her. But she was always smarter than me, she worked it out pretty fast. She saved my life and she called me an idiot and she was right. I am an idiot. Because I knew. Us. I knew, Rob. Maybe not right at the start. Maybe not when the grief was at its worst. But I knew. The way you held me together after Emily died. The way you looked at me sometimes⊠But I convinced myself I was just imagining it. You told me you were straight and I let myself believe you because I was so scared that I'd read things wrong. I was so scared I'd love you when you couldn't love me back, and I'd get the disease again. So I ignored it. Didn't let the feelings for you grow. And now⊠Fuck. I love you back, Robby. I love you back."
Through the fog of pain, Robby is suddenly aware of a different sensation. Something blooms inside him, hot and bright. The agony of it is so powerful, so inescapable, that a new panic washes over him. He tries to draw breath but his lungs have seized. He's being taken over by something new, something that sends tendrils and leaves shooting through every bronchiole, scratching and growing up his trachea with frightening speed. It's unlike anything he's felt before, and the terror and heat of it fills him completely. He's vomiting again. Not mere petals this time, but a fully formed plant. Dark hairy leaves and clusters of tiny pale flowers that fill every space inside him and blossom from his mouth.
"Ambrosia?" someone murmurs. "Love reciprocated?"
"Holy shit! I thought that only happened in films!"
Robby feels quick movement around him. Someone is pulling on the plant, gently but firmly easing it out from his throat. He feels the snap where the roots disconnect from his lungs, and the burning as the long stem is pulled through the length of his chest. But he has no air to scream out, so all he can do is wait and pray that it will be over soon. All he can do is think of Jack. Jack.
Jack who is standing beside him. Jack who is gripping his hand so tightly that his bones might break. Jack who is talking about loveâŠ
Robby's eyes settle on him. This man that he loves. This man that loves him back.
The plant is removed from his mouth. Air rushes back along his trachea and fills his raw lungs. He coughs and gasps and an oxygen mask is put over his face. For the first time in months his airway is clear and his chest can rise and fall freely. There are no hallucinations, no feelings of sorrow or shame. Only the sudden clarity of the world rushing back in.
Robby pulls himself up and throws his arms around Jack's shoulders. Lets himself be held while he sobs into the soft skin of his neck. Jack keeps him steady; one hand firm on his back and the other tenderly cupping the nape of his neck to hold him closer.
"It's okay," Jack whispers through his own tears. "I love you back. I'm here. I love you back."
