CHAPTER 43: SHE MADE SARAH’S FAVORITE SOUP. (⁠@⁠_⁠@⁠)

She made Sarah’s favorite soup, her body movements jerky and overly precise, as if she were afraid that dropping a spoon would shatter the fragile calmness they had managed to build...

Sarah’s father tried to make conversation. He asked Leo about his family, about his job, his voice unnaturally loud in the quiet house...

Leo gave short and polite answers, but his mind was elsewhere. He was replaying the conversation with Dr. Katana, the clinical terms...dilated cardiomyopathy, hemoptysis, transplant...circling in his head. He felt a desperate need to understand, to arm himself with the knowledge concerning her illness.

After the failed attempt at lunch, where everyone just pushed food around their plates, Leo retreated to the living room with his laptop...

Sarah sat on the couch beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, watching as he typed...

He started with the basics, looking up her condition, reading through medical websites and patient forums...

He read about symptoms, treatments, and prognosis. He read about the transplant process...the evaluation, the waiting list, the surgery, the recovery.

Each word added another layer to the fear and dread that had settled in his stomach, but it also fueled his resolve... He wasn’t going to walk into that doctor’s office unprepared. He started a new note on his phone, typing out a list of questions...

What are the stages of heart failure?

What does the evaluation for the transplant list involve?

What are the risks of the surgery?

What is the average wait time?

What is the recovery like?

What can we do right now to keep her as healthy as possible after the surgery?

Sarah watched him, her expression a mixture of gratitude and fear. " Babe, you don’t have to do all that," she whispered while rubbing his arm.

"Yes, I do," he said without looking up from the screen. "We need to know what we’re up against."

Her parents watched them from the doorway, their faces filled with a painful combination of shame and relief...

They saw Leo taking charge, doing the research they had been too afraid to do themselves. They were seeing the man their daughter had fallen in love with, and they were finally understanding why. He wasn’t just her childhood; he was her boyfriend, and he was ready to go to the extreme for her...

As the afternoon turned into the evening, an unhappy routine began to form.

Sarah’s mother made dinner. Her father cleaned up. And Leo and Sarah stayed together. After dinner, they went upstairs to Sarah’s room. It was a time capsule of their childhood, with old band posters on the wall and worn-out stuffed animals on a shelf. It felt strange to be back in this room, surrounded by her past and his, while facing such an uncertain future...

Leo’s parents had moved out of Akihabara when he was in middle school, relocating the family to Hokkaido. It was sudden. One day, he was walking Sarah home like always. Next, he was packing his house boxes and saying goodbye..

They promised to stay in touch. They tried...for a while. But as time passed. Their Messages got shorter. Calls became less frequent. Eventually, they just... stopped...

Leo could still remember it all like it happened yesterday...

Then they sat on her bed, and the silence between them became comfortable now...

"Babe, I’m scared to go to sleep," Sarah confessed, her voice was a little bit shaky. "I’m scared of what might happen."

Leo turned to face her, taking her hands in his. "I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere."

"I know," she said, looking down at their intertwined fingers. "But what if... what if this doctor can’t help me? What if there’s nothing they can do?"

"Babe, we don’t know that yet," he explained firmly. "We can’t think like that. We have to take this one step at a time. The first step is tomorrow. We go, we listen, and we ask our questions. That’s it. We just focus on the first step."

She nodded, but he could see the fear still underneath in her eyes. "Babe, when we were little," she said, her voice barely a whisper, "I used to think that if I was good enough, nothing bad would ever happen to me. I got good grades, I listened to my parents, and I tried not to cause any trouble. It’s stupid, I know."

"It’s not stupid," he said softly.

"It feels like it is now," she said, a bitter smile touching her lips. "Because I did everything right, and I still got sick. It just doesn’t feel fair."

"It’s not fair," he agreed, his voice filled with emotion. "It’s not fair at all. And I am so, so angry that this is happening to you. But we can’t change what has already happened. All we can do is hope for a better outcome."

He squeezed her hands....

Tears welled in her eyes, but this time, she didn’t look away. She kept looking at him with watery eyes...

He stayed with her until she finally drifted off to sleep...

He watched her for a long time... He felt a love for her so fierce and so overwhelming it hurt so bad... But looking at her sleeping peacefully, he knew he couldn’t let her down...

The next morning, the drive to the hospital was overwhelming...

Sarah’s father drove them. Her mother sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, her purse clutched in her lap. Leo and Sarah sat in the back. He held her hand the entire way, his thumb rubbing softly in circles on her skin...

The Yamada Hospital was a massive building complex of glass, a place that felt both intimidating and hopeful for them...

They found the cardiology wing and walked into the waiting room... It was very clean, modern, and impersonal, filled with the happy, sad and sick murmur of other patients and the rustle of newspapers...

Leo went to the front desk and began the process of checking Sarah in...

He filled out form after form, his hands were steady as he wrote down her medical history, her list of medications, the details of her diagnosis...

Seeing the words "dilated cardiomyopathy" written in his own handwriting made it feel real in a way it hadn’t before...

This wasn’t some abstract problem anymore; it was a real fact, a part of their lives for now until they solve it...