Sugarcane

Midnight. No more food.\n\n"We got you a present. It's a Game Boy. For when you're recovering."\n\nOne of your favorite things to do was to see how the various parts of your body all fit together in perfect proportion. One of the very best was the way your palm would fit perfectly into the indentation in your ribcage, like a lock into a key. They stuck together like a suction cup. \n\nYou wonder what you'll do with yourself when that symmetry is broken.\n\n[[Hallway]]

[[*|blank2]]

[[*|unconscious]]

20 years later, you're still here, grateful as hell.\n\nNO END IN SIGHT

This is getting a little boring. You hope this works.\n\n[[7.]]

This is so cool. Somebody made this by hand from tiny metal tubing and hundreds of gears. A little car sits perched at the precipice, prepared to go on hundreds of loops.\n\nThere is a red button at the base. \n<<set $RollerCoaster = true>>\n[[Press it.]]

Finally, some piece and quiet. This hospital room is like in the movies, and you have it all to yourself. There are cool buttons to [[make your bed recline]], and there's a TV that'll play movies if you want. There's even a [[window]] letting in sunlight, making this the first time since surgery you've been able to tell day from night.\n\n[[Watch a movie]]\n\nPlay with your [[Game Boy|Gifts]].\n\n<<if $breathtest and $movie and $gameroom>>You're feeling stronger since walking down the hall and sleeping a little more. Try the [[Breath Test]] again.\n<<else>> Before you leave this place, you need to prove you can walk and prove you can breathe. Your diaphragm is weak from all that rooting around in your chest. The plastic [[breath gauge|Breath Test]] sitting on the table will check your progress.\n<<endif>>\n\n

Happy birthday to you,\nHappy birthday to you,\nHappy birthday dear nuuuuuurse\nHappy birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu\n\n(Your mother starts bawling, but you don't hear her.)\n\n[[Giggle|Countdown]]

You are in the cold white chamber of an operating theatre.\n\nHe hands you a mask, hissing with gas.\n\n"Just [[breathe in]] and count down from 10. How about we see how far you can get?"

[[Beforehand.|TrueStart]]

It is late at night now, and all you hear is your own breathing. The pain aches deep into the center of your chest and your tendons and your bones and organs you can't even name.\n\nYou press the "call" button, and after infinite time a nurse shows up. He picks up a tube already strapped to you and injects it with a tiny needle.\n\nEverything right with the world blooms out of your brain and through your skin. \n\nThe world feels sad and shadowy and uncanny, but your wounds have been wrapped in a delicious warm hug straight from your central nervous system.\n\nYou doze in your painless cocoon.\n<<set $morphine = true>>\n\n[[Thanks, medical science!|A nurse rushes]]

[[No, not this time.|FUNNY ENDING]]

OW. It hurts all the way into the center of your diaphragm when you laugh that hard. But you keep laughing, and it feels warm in your face and into your teeth and out your eyes.\n\n[[Thanks, Dad|A nurse rushes]]

Clenching your jaw, you lift your shirt and grab his hand, making him touch the rubbery scar on your chest. He screams with horror and runs away!! (This really happened kinda.)\n\nVICTORY!!!!\n

<<set $CantMove = ($CantMove + 1)>><<if $CantMove lt 2>>\nOne of your fingers makes it an eighth of an inch down the bed. That was hard! \n<<else>>You lift your arm, and the intravenous tubes coming out of your wrist hold you back.\n<<endif>>\n\n[[Time to sleep again|ICU]]

The game room isn't a room. It's just a section of the hallway, right before a very eerie door. It reminds you of Flight of the Navigator, all floppy layers of clear plastic to keep your universe utterly sanitary of alien particles.\n\nYou play Ninja Gaiden with a strange bald kid.\n\nTen years later you realize it was leukemia. He's probably dead now. It was years before they came out with those million dollar cures for some lucky people.\n\nYou trudge carefully back to [[your room|your own room]]

The doctor is standing over you. He beams friendliness down on your lifeless semi-carcass.\n\n"You're recovering nicely. We're going to move you out of ICU to the recovery room. If things go well, you might have your own room in a couple of days, once we get those tubes out of you. On the upside, you can ask for morphine every four hours."\n\n[[Tubes?|Numb]]

They slipped you a pill an hour back, and now that you're on the way to surgery, something is starting to feel funny. \n\nEverything feels funny. \n\n"How's your birthday going?" one nurse wheeling you down the hallway asks the other.\n\n[[Well in that case...|Happy birthday]]

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heartlungmachinesternumcrackingbloodpuscuttingsnippingvalving\n\n[[*|or]]

An orange finless thing tries to stare at you, but it keeps listing to the right. \n\nBlub.\n\n[[*|fish tank]]

You are in an empty grey room. \n\nA tiny grey box full of adult realizations is sitting all alone on the ground..\n\n[[Open the box]]\n[[Escape to the funny ending|FUNNY ENDING]]

<<set $gameroom = true>>\n"I'm sorry. You really should be [[walking down the hall]] to the game room. Save that Game Boy for when you get home."

You gingerly pull yourself out of bed and shuffle to the window. Rows of cars are parked down below; this must be the fifth floor or so. A handful of manicured trees sway in a light wind.\n\n[[Phew. Back to bed.|your own room]]

You awake into a painful, cotton-wrapped blur. There's some kind of rubber tube down your throat. You try not to think about anything below that.\n\n<<if $CantMove eq 0>>Mom and dad smile down. You think. \n"...oing good, kid."<<endif>><<if $CantMove eq 1>>It's hard to breathe deep, but you suck in all the air you can.<<endif>>\n<<if $CantMove lt 2>>\n\n\n[[Go North|SorryCantMove]]\n[[Go South|SorryCantMove]]\n[[Go East|SorryCantMove]]\n[[Go West|SorryCantMove]]\n<<else>>A nurse says, "You can't eat for 24 hours, because the anesthesia's still in your body. But try this."\n\nYou open your mouth, and she slips a tiny sliver of ice onto your tongue. Whoa! The breathing tube is gone!\n\n[[Chew and swallow]].\n<<endif>>\n

Your chest feels numb. A thick black and red line of stitchery reaches down from throat notch to solar plexus, whenever the bandages are changed.\n\nThe [[drainage tubes]] are still there.\n\nThere is also a [[tiny little hole]] in your chest, sprouting a wire that goes nowhere.\n\n<<if $drainagetubes and $pacemaker>>\nA greyish brain-fog descends and a nurse wheels you down hallways and elevators to the [[Recovery room]].<<endif>>

Dad is suddenly here, along with something much better than the average story book: The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes.\n<<set $story = true>>\n[[Listen to the comics]]

<<if $gameroom and $movie and $breathtest>>\nYou suck in all the air your lungs will hold and blow hard into the blue tube, and the dial lifts halfway to maximum. Plenty enough for recovery.\n\nAn hour later, your parents lead you down the elevator on two feet. Somehow it's been five days, but that's impossible to believe. \n\nIt's sunny in the lobby, and you hobble out the glass doors into the daylight.\n\n[[What's to come?]]\n<<else>> You blow as hard as you can into the little blue tube, but the dial hardly budges. [[Still too weak.|your own room]]\n<<endif>>\n<<set $breathtest = true>>

All Our Tickers Are Ticking Down

Brilliant tropical fish the size of your head swim lazily around the tank. It must be hundreds of gallons.\n\nWhen you look closer, you notice that all of them are missing an eyeball or a fin.\n<<set $FishTank = true>>\n[[Tap the glass.]]\n\n[[Leave it alone|TrueStart]]

"When is this thing going to start?"\n\n"Don't you know, kiddo? We just sat here watching it for two hours. You seemed pretty out of it."\n<<set $movie = true>>\n[[Nap again, very confused, and awaken into the room.|your own room]]

The Playground\n\nYou are at the handball court, standing on fresh blacktop. It's a warm Los Angeles spring day, and purple jacaranda blossoms are dripping all over the pavement from across the chain-link fence. \n\nJust as you were about to enjoy an innocent game, a bully comes up and sneers.\n\n[[Run away]].\n\n[[Fight.]]\n\n[[Unleash super scar power!]]

This room holds six hospital beds. Despite the various families visiting heart patients and cancerous kids, it is strangely quiet except for the whir of machinery. You still can't really move enough to catch a glimpse of who else is here.\n\nA little bit of the fog has lifted, but there's a downside: you *ache* deep in your abdomen. It's only getting worse.\n\nDo you want to [[distract yourself with a story]] or [[try some morphine instead]]?

Nothing's happening.\n\n[[9.]]

You're a friendly kid. [[You try not to resort to violence.|FUNNY ENDING]]

[[10.]]

You're doing pretty well. Still here.\n\n[[8.]]

Something's a little funny. \n\n[[Wha-]]

Whirrrrrrrr.\n\n\nAhhhhhhhhh.\n\n\n[[Perfection!|your own room]]

[[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!]]

A movie! That would feel like real life again. You ask to sit down with some comic-book movie that wouldn't be too complicated.\n\nYour bleary-eyed mom, who has been sleeping in a chair ever since you moved to this room, gets up to turn one on. But something is taking a while.\n\n[[What's the hold-up?]]

Tick. Tock.\n\nYou are at the doctor's office. Machinery hums. Happy children and sad parents are everywhere. \n\nA toy [[roller coaster]] sits on the waiting room table.\n\nA [[fish tank]] is built into the wall.\n\n<<if $RollerCoaster and $FishTank>>[["The doctor will see you now."|Ready]]<<endif>>

That tiny spot on your tongue is the most blissful spot in the entire universe. Entire glacier-galaxies of ice waft down your throat for the unknowable timeless instant you lick the last drops.\n\n[[YES MORE PLEASE]].

"Just in case you turn out to need a pacemaker."\n<<set $pacemaker = true>>\n[[Reassuring|Numb]].

Ow. Swallowing hurts. But that doesn't even matter because your tongue is the only pain-free place that has ever existed.\n\n[[THANK YOU NURSE!!!]]

[[Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!|drainage tubes]]

[[*|blank1]]

[[Blub. Blub.|TrueStart]]

Okay, do you want the [[FUNNY ENDING]] or the [[EXISTENTIAL CRISIS ENDING]]?

Your eyes get too heavy to read much, and bits of story keep falling away into unconsciousness, but you smile for the first time since surgery. And grin. And laugh a great big belly [[laugh]].\n\n\n

<<set $drainagetubes = true>>\nFour of them. (If you don't count the [[catheter]] or the breathing tube they already removed.) Each one the size of a nickel. \n\nSucking pus and surgical blood straight out of your organs. Yum.\n\n[[Back to your chest.|Numb]]

Three more tubes, plus a yank of the pacemaker wire (shiver), then a glorious dose of morphine, then unconsciousness. Rattling and a sense of motion accompany you through your sleep, and [[you awaken in. . .|your own room]]\n\n

Clank. Clank. \n\n\nWHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!\n\n[[*|TrueStart]]

"...aortic..."\n\nOpen heart surgery.\n\nSecond opinion.\n\n"I can tell you the odds, and they're quite good, but in another way, there are only two outcomes. From your side, that's like flipping a coin."\n\nOpen heart surgery.\n\n"...only 10 years old!"\n\nOpen heart surgery.\n\n[[The Night Before]]

by Michael Alexander

<<set $CantMove = 0>>\n[[...|ICU]]

The Voice of Internet Research and 15-minute Doctor Conversations approaches.\n\n"Your operation was a complete success, but you are going back one day, or many more days."\n\n<<insert "Q: ">>When?<<becomes>>\n\nA: <<becomes>>Can't tell you.<<becomes>>\n\nQ: <<becomes>>How do I plan for a life like that?<<becomes>>\n\nA: <<becomes>>Can't tell you.<<becomes>>\n\nQ: <<becomes>>Anything I can't do till then?<<becomes>>\n\nA: <<becomes>>Bodybuilding. Cocaine. Ecstasy. Meth. Too many push-ups. Or having bad dental hygiene.<<becomes>>Q: <<becomes>>...<<becomes>>A: <<becomes>>Or miss too many check-ups, if you're unlucky.<<becomes>>Q: <<becomes>>Any silver linings?<<becomes>>A: <<becomes>>The first time, you were young enough we didn't have to crack your ribs<<becomes>>\nQ: <<becomes>>Gee, thanks.<<becomes>>A: <<becomes>>Okay, hang in there enough decades, and we'll be able to slip you a new valve through a tube. You may never have to go through this again.<<becomes>>Q: <<becomes>>Better...<<becomes>>Q: <<becomes>>Where will this all end?<<becomes>>A: <<becomes>>Death, eventually, same as everybody else. Go have a good run along the way. Try not to think about it.<<becomes>>Q: <<becomes>>What's next?<<becomes>>A: <<becomes>>Eventually the sun explodes. Like I said, try not to think about it.<<becomes>>[[Step into the unknowable]]<<endinsert>>

A nurse rushes in.\n\n"You're doing great! With these readings, we're supposed to take out the drainage tubes and get you into your own room. I warn you, this is going to hurt...\n\n[[Feel her *yank* the half-inch-thick tube out of the center of your body...|detubing]]