The Delectable Delicasy of Dr Darlington's Hat

*Trigger Warning- Death due to medical procedures

My temples were pounding, and water- no, sweat- trickled down my forehead and back, despite my breath steaming in the air. Lord, all I wanted to do was collapse.

I stumbled, crashing into the side of the ambulance.

"Yazzie, is the patient stable!?" Emma Brown shouted from the front of the ambulance, yanking the steering wheel. She honked it as loud as she could, and my headache worsened.

"The mother is! I don't know about the girl!" I forced myself to yell out.

"Is she stable?! Bandage her, OK?"

Like an automaton, I lurched over to her. I pretty much collapsed onto the little girl, my normally nimble fingers slow and stiff as I unravel the bandages. I wrap them around the unconscious eight-year-old Caucasian girl, covering the girls deep wounds and stopping the blood loss. Yes. That was what I had to do. Stop the blood loss... wrap her... in what again?

My legs fell from under me, and I collapsed like a tonne of bricks.

"Yazzie!? Aella Yasmine!? Help! Backup needed! HELP!"

And then I was gone.

"There she is, the bugger."

"Took her long enough."

"Huh?" I whispered and blinked awake. Two fuzzy faces hovered above me. One was male, dark-skinned, with black dreadlocks. I didn't know him. The other was an Asian girl with round, babyish cheeks, and black hair tied in a plait. Emma Brown.

"Oh look. It seems Sleeping Beauty has finally decided to grace us with her presence." The male said.

"Dr Darlington!"

"What's... what's going on?" I asked.

"Well, my friend-" the guy (Dr Darlington...?) began, but I interrupted him.

"Nope. I... don't want your diagnosis. I'm figuring this out by myself." I thought over my symptoms. Headaches. Sweating. Unable to walk properly, unable to concentrate, numbness, stiff body parts, fainting.

An idea. Is it... no!

But I had to check.

Nervously, I took a deep breath and quieted my thoughts. Lord... if I had what I thought I had...

No thoughts, Aella!

My mind was quiet. Everything was calm.

And then there was a rustling. Movement. The tiniest creeping of... something.

Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!

"Is it," I asked, "Do I have... fernscurse?"

Silence.

I took a deep, shuddering breath. Fernscurse. A New World sickness. Ever since global warming had nearly destroyed Earth a hundred or so years ago in 2042, a whole new world had arisen, along with horrid new illnesses. Like fernscurse.

It was one of the rarer sicknesses, but the most deadly. It happened when a plant's cells gain the ability to be able to live in another organism's body, similar to a parasite. Once their in another organism, they attack the brain and slowly grow into minuscule plants, which slowly overtake the rest of your brain. It also causes moss, flowers, and other plants to grow out of your body from your lungs, muscles and bones until you're completely covered. The process takes three weeks in all. And the survival rate... the survival rate.. it was...

1%.

One. Bloody. Per cent.

"Dammit," I whisper.

"Oh, Yazzie." Emma wraps me in her arms. "You're gonna be all right. You'll be fine, darling."

Dr Darlington snorted. "If she survives the next two weeks, I'll eat my hat."

Emma and I look at each other. "Bet," we say in unison.

The next days pass in near silence. The people setting up my machines don't talk to me, they treat me like I'm already dead. One actually had the audacity to ask me if I'd written my will.

"Bloody hell no," I snorted. "I'm not a hundred. I have my whole life ahead of me. This is just one more hurdle to overcome."

I've already decided that there will be no tears, no wallowing in my own self-pity. I'm twenty-four, for God's sake, not a bloody baby who'd give up at the slightest bump in the road.

I will not give in.

A knock at the door. "Come in," I say, and the guy setting up my heart rate monitor scurried away, and opened the door.

Emma Brown saunters into the room, wearing an oversized pink Hello Kitty nightshirt and pink unicorn pyjama pants, complete with a My Little Pony handbag, and rocking it like she was on a Parisian catwalk. "Hi, Yazzie."

"Em!"

Em plonks herself down on the edge of the white bed, ignoring the stares of the idiots in the room. "I bought you a gift."

She opens her My Little Pony handbag.

And a little head pops up.

"Oh my God-" I whisper. "Oh- Em... what!?"

A little body follows that little head, and then little paws and a little wagging tail.

A PUPPY!

The sweet little puppy clambers onto me, her tiny paws latching onto my hospital gown. The puppy's (greyhound?) tail started thumping on the ground, and she began to lick my chin. I giggled.

"Oh my god, Em. She's precious! What's her name?" I tickle her chin and the puppy's tounge lolls out of her mouth.

"That's up to you."

"Awww, you letting me name her? Thanks!"

"Course I'm letting you name her. She's yours."

WHAT.

"Sorry!?"

"She's your puppy."

"Oh. My. Bloody god, Em-"

I tackle her in a hug. I couldn't talk anymore. I was bursting with too much happiness.

"Em..."

"Thank me later!" Em swaggers out of the room, waving a hand behind her.

I can't stop smiling as I patted the little puppy, and I make a promise to myself. Em and I will name her together, in two weeks, when I'm still alive and well and conquered fernscurse. As we watch Dr Darlington eat his hat.

Speak of the devil...

Dr Darlington rushes into the room and then freezes. "What. Is. That." He points a singular finger at the puppy.

"A puppy, doctor. It's a baby dog."

The doctor scowls. "Of course I know what it is. Now get that mutt outta here. Animals aren't allowed."

"Well, this one is too cool to not be allowed. She's staying here. And if you have a problem with that- well, that's your problem." Dr Darlington glared at me. "You suck, Aella Yasmine."

I just grin.

The next couple of days dragged on, slowly, slowly, slowly, like I was tugging them through quicksand. Each day, it was harder and harder to talk, harder and harder to move, until I barely could twitch my fingers to pat the little greyhound puppy. Flowers had started to bloom behind my ears, moss was creeping up my arms and along my legs, and reeds were growing, wild and tangled, in my hair. My heart rate dropped each day: it was 30 beats per minute now. Em visited whenever she could, feeding and playing with the puppy, and Darlington, of course, was in here almost every day, hooking me up to machine after machine, from both the Old and the New World. Tubes were stuck in my nose, my mouth, around my ears, and pretty much everywhere. Every couple of hours, my lungs had to be flushed out to stop plants from growing.

And... it was only Tuesday. I still had four days left to get through.

Four. Bloody. Days.

And from what I'd overheard the doctors saying... I wasn't going to make it. The only thing they could do, they said, was to make me comfortable. They thought I was going to die, no matter what.

I thought otherwise.

When the doctor next came into my room, he wasn't acting normal. Darlington didn't look at me, didn't greet me, and instead started fiddling with the machines.

"You can talk to me, you know," I said. "I'm not dead yet." The doctor didn't look at me for a while.

Before he looked up. I gasped. His eyes were full of tears.

"Sorry- I'm sorry- dammit, no... I'm sorry..."

"Darlington. What's the matter?"

He blinked furiously. "Nothing."

"Tell me," I demanded.

"Nothing!"

I was quiet for a bit. Then the doctor sighed.

"Aella... fernscurse is very rare." I nodded. I already knew this, I had graduated from medical school. "But you're not the only patient I've tried to treat.

"My... my father got it. When I was an apprentice doctor.

"He fought for the whole of the three weeks. He never gave up. Until the third last day... It was clear he- he wasn't going to make it." Darlington wiped his eyes furiously. "I had an idea on the first day Dad got diagnosed, and I spent the entirety of the three weeks chasing up on it. I proposed it to my superior at the time, Dr Lisa Veretta, and she said it was too dangerous. But on the third last day... she approved it.

"My idea was a brain tissue transfer. To have the tissue of someone's healthy brain, implanted into the infected one. I had done my research. It was failproof. I had the sample taken off me. I was so confident in myself and my plan and so busy in discussion with Dr Veretta about it... I never got the chance to talk to Dad. When I woke up the next day... Dad wasn't there. The transfer I thought up, the idea I had...killed him." Darlington took a deep, shuddering breath. Carefully, I reached out and gripped his callused fingers in my own.

"I'm sorry," I whispered because I didn't know what to say. "I'm so, so, bloody sorry."

The doctor sniffed.

Then he walked out of the room without so much a word.

For the next day and a half, I couldn't get the idea of the brain tissue transfer out of my mind. It might have failed on Dr Darlington's father, but surely it offered more of a chance of survival than just slowly wilting on this hospital bed.

I made up my mind just as Dr Darlington walked into my room.

I would ask for the transfer. If he said yes, excellent. If he said no, I'd just ask someone else.

I took a deep breath.

"Dr Darlington," I rasped, trying to force my strangled vocal cords to make a sound.

"Aella," the doctor frowned at me, "Stop talking this instant. It's not good for you right now."

I ignored him. "I want the brain tissue transfer."

He froze. Completely, like, dead still.

Then- "Are you sure?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Darlington ran a hand through his hair. "Damn. OK. Even after I told you about my fa-" He took a deep breath and looked down. He didn't look back up. "All right. OK."

"I'll discuss your circumstances and thought with your team of doctors. If they give the all-clear to perform the surgery, I'll get back to you shortly." He turned abruptly and marched out of the room, but paused on the threshold. "I- I-" The doctor took a deep breath. "Have a good night, Aella."

He walked away and didn't look back.

Later that night, one of the other doctors came into the room. A tall Caucasian female with perfect blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes. Her name tag read Dr Evergold. "Hello, miss." I weakly gestured for her to pick up the little puppy from her zoomies and pass her to me. I clutched the dog close like a toddler would to her favourite toy. "You've been given the all-clear for the surgery. And if you're wondering where you're usual doctor is, he's on the operating table."

If I had water, I would have spat it all over Evergold. WHAT!?

"Oh yeah. Your doctor buddy has got it in his head that the only way you'll survive is if he does the transfer. You didn't think about who the transfer was coming from, did you? Should've given everyone a favour and just died."

I stared at her, slack-jawed. Oh my god. How could she treat me like this? And how could DARLINGTON BE THE ONE I'M GETTING THE TRANSFER OFF-

I felt another flower bloom behind my ears. The reeds in my hair burst into new growth, and all of a sudden, I gasped, struggling to breathe.

Calm down, Aella. It will all be fine.

Evergold heaved me none too gently into a wheelchair and shoved me out the door, shaking her head. Disgustedly, she wheeled me all the way to the operating room. There was just me, Evergold, the puppy looking on curiously from my arms, and a couple doctors in there. Evergold snatched the puppy from my weak arms. NO!

"No animals are allowed in here," she hissed and stalked out of the room, the puppy barking frantically in her arms. This couldn't be happening. No, no, no, NO!

One of the other doctors, Dr Grimm, his nametag read, heaved me up out of the wheelchair and onto the operating table. Ow! I squirmed, trying to force my arms to obey me, but the numbness was rapidly spreading across my whole body. Plants raced up, arching all over me, forcing my eyes closed. I screamed, back arching, and then something was shoved over my mouth and- Emma! Why wasn't she here, something was wrong, terribly wrong, and-

I was gone, fading, fading away, like the autumn leaves on a tree just before winter.

I didn't know if I'd ever wake up again.

"Please, please, please." A cool hand touched my forehead. "Come on, Aella. You can do this."

Strange, gruelly syrup was forced down my throat and I coughed, then coughed again. I found I couldn't stop.

"Aella! Help! Help, HELP, DOCTORS, you good for nothing-"

Sleep claimed me again.

"Yazzie," a weak voice whispered. I found I could open my eyes and look over. I saw a girl, an Asian girl, skin the colour of sickly plaster, hair plastered to her sweaty forehead. She was in a hospital gown with a sticker sewn on of a smiling duck. It takes me a second to remember her name. Emma. Emma Brown. "Yazzie, it's going to be OK. I promise. I'll see you soon. I'm proud of you."

Then more syrup was poured down my throat, and I hacked, choked, and fell back into my disjointed dreams.

The next time I awoke, there was a little eight-year-old girl, wrapped in bandages and in a wheelchair, sitting next to me. "Hi?" I croaked, voice hoarse.

"Hello." She whispered. "What's your name?"

"Aella Yasmine."

"That's a nice name, Aella Yasmine. My name is Lillianne Tides."

I nodded, already falling back into the sweet embrace of sleep.

"Don't let her sleep!" A voice cried out, urgently. "If she goes to sleep now, she'll never wake up!"

Lillianne jumped, startled. "Umm... Miss Yasmine?"

"Aella."

"Sorry, Aella... I just wanted to say... thank you for saving my life."

"I did what?"

"Remember the day you fainted in the ambulance? I was the little girl there. You saved my life. Thank you so much."

It was only then I noticed a tiny, squirming grey shape on Lillianne's lap. "Is that... a greyhound puppy?"

The little girl giggled. "Yup. She's very sweet."

I smiled. The puppy was safe. Em was safe I noticed from my previous bout of consciousness, Darlington was alive... that was all I needed to know. I was ready to leave this world.

"Aella, don't fall asleep. Please. How many lives have you saved?"

I don't know.

"How many more will you save?"

I paused. Lillianne made a good point.

I took a deep breath.

I would survive.

"There she is, the bugger."

"Took her long enough."

"Huh?" I asked.

And then Emma was there, her arms wrapped around me, and then Darlington was hugging me as well.

"You are the bravest, strongest person I know," he whispered to me, and I blushed.

"Knew you could do it!" Whooped Emma, but her voice was wobbling and weak. "Darlington, time to eat your bloody hat!"

He shook his head. "My Lord," he rolled his eyes, took off his hat, and pretended to take a big, fat bite of it.

Em and I giggled, and the little puppy jumped up and started licking me under the chin. I smiled wider than I ever had before. And so Em and Darlington sat on my bed and told stories, and we just laughed and laughed and laughed the day away.

The next day, I sat up. Darlington was sitting on my hospital bed. His eyes were red-rimmed.

"What's wrong?" I asked, pleased that my voice was back to normal.

Darlington pressed a fist to his mouth.

"Where's Emma?"

The doctor was silent. Then- "I'm sorry, Aella."

No.

"I was meant to do the tissue transfer. But when I was on the operating table, Em swapped the files. I got a tooth removed, and she- she did the transfer."

No!

"She said that she would have more of a chance of survival because she had more brain tissue than me."

NO! Emma! My beautiful, quirky, amazing best friend. We had known each other since birth. She couldn't of just- she couldn't-

Darlington hugged me, and I cried. I cried and cried and cried and didn't think it would ever stop, because Emma was gone, Emma Brown, with her Hello Kitty shirts and My Little Pony handbags and Princess Duck stickers, Emma, MY Emma. Was. Dead.

The puppy whimpered, head on my lap. "We were meant to name her together," I whispered.

"I know. I know."

I stroked the puppy's head, and Darlington gripped my free hand.

"I'm going to name her Emma," I whispered.

Darlington nodded. "A fitting name. The name of a hero."

We sat together and looked out the window, watching as the sun set, the sky turning pink and gold and all sorts of colours, until it finally settled into an inky darkness. We sat together all through that night, and into the morning as the sun rose once more. It would always keep rising, no matter how harsh the night was, no matter what happened to it.

And so. Would. I.