Chapter Text
3. April 2015
“I’m so sorry, but…you have cancer.”
The room is dead silent.
“Cancer,” Prussia repeats, saying the word slowly.
The doctor frowns. “Specifically, you have acute myeloid leukemia.”
“But there is a treatment plan, right?” Ilse, Prussia’s Nation Advisor, asks.
The doctor grabs her clipboard. “There is, especially since we caught it early. Currently, we’ve identified you being in stage two. This means—”
Cancer…
“Certain cells are…”
Prussia’s eyes are glassy, and he’s staring at the wall.
I’m going to die.
“Listen to her,” Ilse mutters.
Prussia snaps back to reality. “Why? It doesn’t matter! No fucking treatment plan will do anything!”
“You don’t know that!”
“Ssh. It’s okay,” the doctor breathes. Prussia bites his lip and stares at the ground. The doctor continues calmly, “Here; why don’t I go? I’ll leave the clipboard on this counter, and you can read it yourselves, okay? I’ll be back in ten minutes to answer any questions.” With that, she exits the room.
The door shuts gently behind her.
Prussia feels like he’s going to vomit.
“Gilbert,” Ilse soothes, placing her hand on his thigh.
“I just—”
“We can get through this.”
“What, like with my colds? My allergies? Asthma!? God Ilse, this—this is a whole new animal!”
“…”
“My body wants me dead. Like, even if we treat this, something worse is going to happen next!”
She frowns. “What, so you’re just going to give up?”
Prussia clenches his fists. “I can’t—I can’t go through chemo. I can’t. Because if I do, everyone—they’ll find out I’m sick.”
“You’ve already lost a ton of weight and are bruising easily. Eventually, your friends are going to pick up on it regardless.”
Prussia feels tears welling up. “I can’t let them know.”
“Isn’t that a bit selfish?”
“I don’t want their pity.”
His vision is becoming blurry, and he blinks in an attempt to keep tears from falling.
“Then what do you want to do?” Ilse murmurs.
“I don’t want chemo,” Prussia chokes out. “I’ll just live with it, with this,” he nearly falters on the word, “cancer as long as I can take pain meds and stuff to make everyday life bearable.”
Ilse sighs. “Okay. If…this is what you want, I won’t fight you.”
She hands him a tissue, then reaches for the clipboard and puts on her glasses.
Prussia sniffs. “What are you doing?”
“We might as well read this.”
“…”
“There are eight stages of acute myeloid leukemia. You’re marked as having stage two. This means the maturation of the bone marrow cells is beyond the…” she pauses, trying to figure out how to pronounce the word, “pro-mye-lo-cyte stage?”
Prussia blinks, gripping his damp tissue. “The fuck does that mean?”
“Varying amounts of gra-nul-o-cyte maturation may be observed,” she continues. “Apparently.”
“Does it say how long I have?” Prussia mutters.
She shakes her head. “We’ll have to ask the doctor. It could be longer than normal, though, since you’re a Nation.”
“Am I really?”
“You can still speak any language.”
He closes his eyes. “Thank God.”
When he opens them, he sees Ilse reading through more of the papers on the clipboard.
Nation advisors don’t normally stick around for twenty plus years.
Yet, here she is.
She’s stayed with him ever since she found him in the bathroom surrounded by a pool of blood and limbs. They formed a bond of sorts after that incident. So when Prussia asked her to keep it a secret from Germany…
She agreed.
As the years passed and Prussia got hit with more and more medical ailments, they kept those, too, a secret. And now they’ve become pros at keeping everything from Germany—making up excuses for Prussia’s doctor’s appointments, hiding his medicines…
It’s like they’re partners in crime, and it’s bizarre. Prussia knows Nations aren’t supposed to be friends with their advisors.
But when has he ever followed the rules?
He doesn’t know a lot about Ilse’s personal life—it’s probably better that way—but he knows her basic interests and hobbies, so it’s enough. And thankfully, she’s only in her late forties, so she won’t die anytime soon.
His phone vibrates.
Ilse looks up. “Who is it?”
Prussia grabs the phone out of his sweatshirt pocket and looks at the lock screen. “Just Ludwig. He says he won’t be home till late.”
There’s a knock on the door, and the doctor pokes her head in. “Is this a good time?”
Ilse nods. The doctor enters.
Prussia clenches his fists and stares at the ground. He suddenly feels so tired. Well, actually, he’s always tired. At first, he thought it was because his sleep schedule is erratic.
But now he knows it’s because of his leukemia.
“Did you read the pamphlet?” the doctor asks.
Ilse nods. “We did.”
“What do you and your son think?”
Oh right; that’s a thing they put down.
Ilse doesn’t bat an eye. “We want to know how long he has without treatment.”
“Without, I would say around five years.”
Five years…
It seems so long, yet at the same time, very short.
“But, again, you’re only in stage two, so if we start treatment options now, then your prognosis is pretty good,” the doctor continues.
Silence.
“We’ll need to talk about this with the rest of our family,” Ilse ends up saying. “We’ll schedule another appointment and get back to you.”
The doctor nods. “Okay. That seems like a good idea.”
She and Ilse shake hands. Prussia follows more reluctantly.
After checking out of the treatment center, they exit the building and stand on the sidewalk.
“Do you want me to come home with you?” Ilse murmurs. “I can stay with you until Ludwig comes back.”
Prussia shakes his head, trying not to shiver when a cool breeze blows through. “I just want to be alone.”
Ilse sighs and zips up her coat. “Okay. Call me if you need anything.”
His Berlin apartment is only a couple blocks away, yet it feels like it takes him forever to make it back. His legs are aching by the time he gets home, and he immediately downs multiple pain relievers. He then hides the bottles where he knows Germany won’t find them.
Prussia flops on the couch. He feels a headache coming on and wills it to go away, closing his eyes until he hears his phone vibrate.
He groans and looks at the lock screen.
Facebook:
[Jetzt]
>Feliciano Vargas hat dich angestupst!
You can still poke someone on Facebook?
He throws his iPhone to the side and closes his eyes, willing his churning anxiety to go away along with the headache.
You have cancer.
The thought is sudden, and he clenches his fists, turning on the TV as background noise.
He drifts off listening to the news.
“The Russian and American embassies in Amman, Jordan were the victims of bombing attacks here on the third of April, 2015. Though there have been no deaths reported, twenty people are missing—ten from each embassy. Data files were also stolen from both, and it is unclear who the attackers are, or what their motives might be. The information stolen is not being disclosed to the public. Officials are saying…”