Chapter Text
He’s had this cough for a while.
It had started a few weeks or so before Christmas break. Phoenix had thought it was just a common cold, at first. No big deal. Cough into his fist and move on.
Maybe it was the dropping temperature of the winter season that made it worse. It definitely got worse.
Coughing fits would last nearly a minute before the poor kid could take a breather and then do it all over again. His mother only got more and more concerned. Two doctors had said he’d only gotten a nasty case of bronchitis, but with no phlegm or any recovery whatsoever to show for it, she was skeptical.
Uncle Gregory had invited him to something, he wasn’t really sure. Phoenix would have loved to go. His mother had kept him in bed, under two blankets and a warm cup of ginger tea on standby. Miles had promised to write to him all about it the next day.
Now, Phoenix is in bed, under two blankets, holding a warm cup of ginger tea, and no letter whatsoever.
It’s worsened. Phoenix coughs more than he could breathe. Something is eternally stuck at the back of his throat, and he can’t get it out. His mother screams in the faces of doctor after doctor. He cries himself into a restless sleep, only to wake up from the sound of his own coughing.
He cries again. The lonely night sky assured him that his tears were not only from his sickness.
He’s sick. Phoenix is sick and cold and tired and lonely.
He’s spent the entire Christmas break in bed, no face to see other than his own mother’s, whose worry and fear he wishes so much to wipe from her face.
He misses being healthy. He misses being outside. He misses Larry. He misses—
Phoenix coughs, and spits out the something in his throat.
A flower.
The doctor says it’s normal. It’s manageable. It’s something a lot of people have. It’s something they can help with. Like asthma, the doctor says, with a glance towards his mother.
Phoenix coughs into a tissue and crumples the thing up, blue petals and all. The doctor looks at him and smiles. Something about the smile seems sad. Smiles aren’t supposed to be sad.
They’re still finding out why people get this sickness, but they’ve gotten a hang on how it works. The doctor says. Writes something on something. It’s not a cure, but it helps with keeping the coughing at bay. Phoenix just needs to develop a habit of always carrying a bunch of tissues with him, so that he can throw away the flowers.
His mother cries her thanks, taking the prescription in one hand and the doctor’s hand in another. Phoenix stands up and moves to the exit.
The doctor asks what kind of flower he got. He puts the crumpled up tissue on the desk.
The smile the doctor gave him seemed sad. Smiles aren’t supposed to be sad. Says that the hydrangea is pretty.
Phoenix doesn’t smile as he leaves the doctor’s office.
“Yo, Nick, what did you just cough out?”
Phoenix flushes as he quickly crumples the tissue and the flower. “N-Nothing, Larry, just—”
Larry grabs the tissue from his hands and opens it, checkers game and hot chocolate mug completely forgotten. “ No way, is that a flower?! ”
The tissue and the flower are quickly retrieved by an embarrassed Phoenix. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Dude, that is so cool! I wish I could cough flowers.” Larry almost looks genuinely sad for all the wrong reasons.
Phoenix loves Larry, he really does, he’s a great and funny friend despite it all, but right now he’s wishing for his own mother to come home early from work to give Larry a ride back.
“It’s really not cool, actually—”
“If I could cough up flowers, I’d give them to Kate,” Larry sighs. His face has quickly turned into something wistful, despite everything he said being so weird. “I hope they would be tulips, or roses! I almost gave her a tulip once, Dad helped me with the origami, but she got out of the classroom so quickly I didn’t even have time to get…”
Phoenix takes a sip of his chocolate. He can’t butt in to talk about his sickness, or respond to anything Larry says. Not even if he wants to. Today just isn’t his day, it seems.
He hopes tomorrow is finally his day, but he’d already hoped that yesterday, and the day before that.
He hopes Larry had already forgotten.
Tomorrow, he goes to school, and he’s quieter than normal. He says he’s sick and he shouldn’t talk much. It’s technically true, but the medicine has helped. Phoenix can breathe.
Only when he asks if Larry told anyone about what he knows, and Larry responded with a clueless “Huh?”, did Phoenix finally breathe again. He’d already forgotten.
And he’d already forgotten to write about it in yet another letter that will yet again go unanswered.