the pain had been one thing. it had started the day before, a slow-crawling kind of discomfort he experienced while in the office still, pouring over books and accounts, the emails the front office never managed to filter quite well enough. he had put it down to a bad lunch, perhaps, or just the weather, the short night, maybe, because he had gotten less sleep than usual after one of those horrible mixers his superiors insisted on hosting, and dragging him to, every once in a while. usually he got out of those things with a good excuse but this time he had needed to be there, after successfully closing a deal with the overseas office in brazil, one of his biggest deals to date yet, which is to say: celebration was in order, and somehow he had become the man of the hour. once he returned home from the office the day after, though, the pain had only gotten worse, and while he was stretched out on the couch, with his feet in satō's lap, he paused nursing his rare cup of tea, and looked at his husband with an even rarer sort of clarity. appendicitis was something he had yet to experience at that point, but he knew either way that it was just that. how he made it through the night was a mystery to him - the pain had only gotten worse, and satō had done his best to help him through it, offering to drive him to the hospital, but kōji had a few more things to wrap up at the office; he could wait. it was manageable. and so, after doing just that, he had called satō on his way to the emergency room to inform him of the impending surgery, and by some miraculous happenstance, the architect had somehow beat him to the punch, was already pacing the entry when kōji pulled up, looking more hazard than kōji could have expected, after all he had assured him repeatedly that everything was fine.
after that, admittance had taken far less than he would have thought, and soon enough, they had him in a room with three other beds ( much to his dismay ), ready to be taken downstairs, to the OR. satō had assured him that he would bring him a change of clothes, because he could hardly walk out of here in the suit he had shown up in, and he had forgotten his bag of toiletries in the bedroom this morning, already running late after a light, sparse breakfast; the plants had taken up most of his time, preparing them for his inevitable absence. the nurses were all kind, attentive, and the surgeon seemed capable enough; kōji respected doctors the most out of any profession, because they went through the rigorous reality of medical school and had to undergo extensive training before they would ever be allowed near a living patient. he admired their tenacity and hard work, and worried very little about the surgery itself, especially once the pain became too bad to ignore and they promised to be quick about everything. like any good citizen, he trusted them with his life, and knew this was only a minor procedure anyway. when they sent him to sleep, he hardly noticed, barely making it to the proposed eight his nurse told him to count through, down from ten.
once he woke up, the world looked different: fuzzy at the edges, woozier than he could remember, and he felt mildly nauseous, though he could recognize that it was largely from the anesthesia, and the fact that they just cut him open and closed him up again. he blinked a few times, trying to gather his bearings and place himself, where exactly he was - he knew it was the hospital, that there were other patients in the room, but that was it. it was bright, though, too bright in the room, and he groaned, turning his face into the pillow his head rested on. then, a blurry motion caught his eye and he blinked a few more times, frowning. there was a hysterically handsome man sitting by his bedside, looking worried and a little worse for wear ( god, who had put him through all that misery, and what was he doing by kōji's bed? there surely had to be other rooms, other patients, other people in this entire big building ), and for all the world like someone had kicked his favorite puppy. or whatever people liked, kōji didn't quite know and couldn't make sense of it just now. " what are you doing here? " he asked, bewildered, but his tongue was thick and the syllables came out all jumbled and weird, and he made a face; he hated when he sounded less put together than he wanted to be. " i have a husband, you know, " he added, because maybe this man did not quite understand he was in the wrong place. kōji was waiting for satō to show up with his stuff, sit with him until they would inevitably send him out again and he would put up a fight anyway. " he's, like, very big, " he said, frowning now. " he should be here any minute. "
@disvelocitys ; what if your husband accurately diagnoses himself with appendicitis, drives himself to the hospital, and wakes up but cannot recognize you (his spouse) because he's completely out of it
