The Hanahaki Club: Episode 32

Episode 32: The Third Session

So far…

The hanahaki support group meet for their third session.

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Episode 32: The Third Session, Part 1

Hassie

It was pink wafers this week, the thin fingers fanned out on the circular plate in a multi-layered, many-pointed star. Pink wafers reminded Hassie of the joint birthday parties she and Isaac had when they were little—when the dining table would be set with paper plates offering all sorts of treats they weren’t allowed at any other time of the year: iced biscuits, chocolate fingers, squares of Battenberg cake, jam tarts, bowls of Angel’s Delight and pink wafers. The pink wafers were Isaac’s favourite and Hassie had vivid memories of watching him meticulously stack them around the edge of his plate, building a pink-sugar wall around the rest of his finger-food. Only once he’d eaten everything else, would he start on the wafers, and then in a very specific, predetermined order, that made no sense to anyone else but clearly did to him. He was such a weird child. Still was in many ways.

Hassie was indifferent about pink wafers herself, so it was amusing to observe Remi wrinkling her nose at the sight of them and Taran shooting Merryn an openly judgemental look as she made a bee-line straight for the plate, before even removing her coat.

“I love these!”

“Of course you do.”

Merryn’s brow crinkled as she raised a wafer to her mouth. “What does that mean?”

“Never mind.”

“I didn’t know you two were friends,” Remi commented as she poured herself a cup of tea.

“We’re not,” Taran replied, slipping out of his coat and hanging it on the back of his chair. “We just go to the same college.”

“We got the same bus,” Merryn added.

“I see.”

The door to the Blue Room opened and Anabelle came in holding a jug of squash. She held the door open for Emery who traipsed in behind her, looking like she’d just survived through her own personal hurricane. She stopped just inside the door and took a puff from a pink inhaler, her bicycle helmet swinging from her arm and flinging water droplets all over the carpet.

Pink inhaler, Hassie observed. That meant the hanahaki had probably spread to her right lung too. The Dying Months couldn’t be far off.

“Did you cycle in this?” Remi asked.

Emery nodded and then stumbled forward, unzipping her waterproof as she went. Her eyes lit up when she saw the plate of wafers and she changed course from her chair, straight to the table. “I haven’t had these in ages!” She grabbed a handful, decimating a quarter of the star, and struggled out of her coat, hindered by her bag and the helmet which she still had hooked over her wrist.

“Here,” Merryn offered, taking hold of Emery’s bag and helping her extricate the hand holding the wafers from her sleeve. “Geeze, you’re soaked.”

Emery laughed and then coughed, and then laughed again as she finally got free from her coat. “I like your wellies.”

“Good to see you again, Taran,” Anabelle said, pouring a cup of squash for Emery.

“Thanks,” Taran mumbled, hastily grabbing his cup of tea and back heading to his seat.

“You’re back!” Emery exclaimed as he sat in the chair next to her. She balanced her wafers on her lap whilst she squeezed water out of the end of her plait and onto the floor.

“No shit.”

Merryn finished hanging Emery’s waterproof on the back of her chair whilst Anabelle handed her a cup of squash. Emery grinned at both of them in turn. “Oh, thanks!”

“How are things with Lila?” Anabelle asked.

“I’ve got a date on Saturday.”

“A date?”

“I’m taking Lila shopping.”

“How did you get her to agree to that?” Remi asked.

Emery shrugged and plucked a wafer from her lap. “I had to threaten her a little.”

“And this girl doesn’t like you, right?” Taran asked dryly.

“She wasn’t keeping up with her end of the bargain.”

“Bargain?”

“Oh right, you wouldn’t know…” Emery launched into explaining to Taran the deal she had made Lila, and he listened with a persistently bemused expression until she finished her explanation by finally stuffing her mouth with a wafer.

“Do you really think it’s going to work?” Taran asked. “What if by spending more time with her, you just end up hating her more?”

Emery covered her mouth, full of wafer flakes, with her hand: “F’not poffible.”

“You might end up liking her instead,” Merryn suggested.

Emery shook her head doubtfully. “Nu-uh.”

“But you expect her to change her mind about you?” Taran asked.

Emery swallowed and tilted her head thoughtfully at that. “Well, I’m not a cold-hearted bitch,” she replied. “I know why I feel the way I do about Lila, but I honestly don’t know why she dislikes me so much—it’s not like I’ve ever done anything to make her hate me. She just decided the first time we met that my very existence offended her and to be a total cow about it.”

It was clear that everyone wanted to ask exactly what that meant—what exactly had Lila done to Emery to illicit such strong feelings?—but there was something about the way Emery dipped her gaze and immediately bit into another wafer that suggested it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. It was strange, because Emery didn’t seem to be shy about anything except this.

“So, you are hoping that spending time together will change her mind about you?” Taran clarified.

Emery nodded.

“Do you think it can work the other way around?” Remi asked. “Do you think you can spend enough time with someone that you eventually fall out of love with them?”

“Isn’t that what happens in most marriages?” Merryn said, almost to herself, and then blushed when she found everyone looking at her. “Sorry,” she added. “My parents are divorced—they’re much happier that way.”

“There’s a saying about that, isn’t there?” Emery said. “Something about contempt and familiarity…?”

“Familiarity breeds contempt,” Anabelle interjected. “Relationships require hard work to remain healthy and happy. It’s easy for people to start taking each other for granted in any type of relationship, not just romantic ones.”

“Can it cure hanahaki?” Remi asked. “If you spend more time with the person you like—like a type of exposure therapy—can it help to get over them?”

Anabelle looked thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t think there’s been enough research done on it,” she explained carefully. “Hanahaki is so rare, there’s not been much study of how to cure it other than by surgically removing the flowers. I expect it’s different for different people—for some patients that might work, and for others, it will probably make very little difference.”

“Worth a try though, isn’t it?” Remi said. “It’s better than doing nothing.”

“I think it’s worth a try,” Anabelle agreed, “Provided you don’t put all your hope in that one strategy but keep your options open.”

“You mean the surgery?”

“If it comes to that.”

“I still don’t get how that works,” Merryn admitted. “How does removing the hanahaki flowers affect your memories?”

“I don’t think there’s yet a scientific answer to that either,” Anabelle said with a small laugh that was both amused but also a little weary. “But since removing the flowers erases the patient’s memories of the person they have feelings for, the feelings also disappear, and so the flowers don’t come back. It’s the best treatment we have so far for the disease.”

“It can come back though, can’t it?” Remi asked. “I read that in some cases that happens.”

Hassie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, tightened her hold on her teacup and purposefully looked at the floor.

“That’s true,” she heard Anabelle say, “But it’s not common. There’s a chance that after the surgery, the hanahaki might be triggered again after another encounter with the person who caused it in the first place—but that only happens in a very small number of cases.”

“What if you’re one of those cases?” Remi asked.

Then you’re kind of an idiot, Hassie’s brain supplied. Falling for someone twice, who doesn’t feel the same about you? Only an idiot would do that.

“Well, that’s why doctors recommend taking certain precautions after the surgery to prevent that happening,” Anabelle responded, neatly avoiding answering the actual question. “For most hanahaki sufferers, developing the disease is a one-off case that occurs in their younger years. One thing the research does show is that the chances of developing hanahaki decreases with age, and for most who carry the gene, they’ll out-grow the risk by the time they’re in their mid-twenties.”

“So we could still get it again until then?” Merryn asked. “Even if it was for someone else?”

“In theory, yes,” Anabelle conceded, “But it is extremely unlikely.”

“I read about a man who got it four times,” Emery chimed in. “For different people each time, the last time when he was forty-eight. He managed to get over it on his own the first three times but the fourth time it killed him.”

“He didn’t ever have the surgery?”

“It was in the eighteenth century,” Emery said matter-of-factly, “Pretty sure any surgery back then would have killed him anyway. Apparently, when they cut him open after his death, for medical research, the flowers had spread to other organs because the left lung was so scarred, it couldn’t provide the environment the plant needed to survive. The hanahaki had gone wild, growing thorns and piercing through his liver and right kidney. One of the physicians performing the dissection was called Gardner, and whilst removing the plant he pricked his finger on a thorn and died of sepsis less than a day later. ”

A horrified silence settled on the semi-circle as everyone processed this unsolicited information.

“Oh my god,” Taran said after a second, “Thanks for sharing that.”

“You’re welcome.”

Hassie tried to supress a giggle behind her teacup, but failed and ended up snorting rather loudly instead. Merryn gave her a horrified look.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Sorry,” Hassie said, attempting, and failing, to look apologetic. “It’s not funny, I know. The last bit just caught me off guard—the physician… called Gardner.”

Merryn gave her a blank look for a moment and then broke into a soft chuckle. “Ha! I didn’t notice that. Poor doctor.”

“Yeah. What a way to go too,” Taran said.

“That can’t be a true story,” Remi protested.

“It is,” Hassie confirmed. “I read about it too.” She was tempted to add that it wasn’t even the record for the most number of hanahaki cases in an individual patient—some poor woman, who died in 1913, had had eleven separate manifestations of the disease—but then decided against it: this probably wasn’t a helpful tangent to encourage.

Anabelle seemed to think so too as she swiftly changed the subject. “So, Remi, how has your week been?”

Remi made a face, like she was preparing to be harshly judged, before replying: “I have a theory I’m trying out—the exposure therapy idea—that if I get to know Gio better, I might change my mind about him. It was pointed out to me that I only see one side of him at school—the head boy side—therefore I don’t know the real him; so I’m trying to rectify that.”

“How’s that working out?” Taran asked.

“So far? Horribly. I think there’s a high risk I’ll end up liking him more than I already do.”

“Isn’t that probably just confirmation bias?” Emery asked, getting up from her seat to grab some more wafers. “You’ve already decided you like him, so you’ll be blind to all his flaws whilst only ever seeing the good stuff.”

“Don’t you think your date on Saturday is at risk of that too?” Taran responded bluntly.

Emery settled back into her chair, unfazed by Taran’s tone. “Hm. Yeah, probably, which is why I have to to blow Lila’s socks off.”

For the next fifteen minutes, there was a discussion on whether spending more time with your crush was a good or bad idea; or whether it was better to limit contact as much as possible. Hassie listened with interest to the conflicting opinions: as Anabelle had said, each situation was so unique that what was feasible for one person wasn’t necessarily possible for another. It was hard to know with Taran and Merryn exactly what sort of difficulties they were facing with their individual circumstances, since neither wanted to share who their unrequited feelings were for, but it was clear from some of the comments they made that they were undeniably more than a little complicated. In that regard, Hassie felt lucky: at the end of the day, whether she spent a lot of time with Leon or took a step back from their friendship, whether she fell even harder for him, or her feelings began to fade, there would be no complications if she had to get the operation again. It would be easy to cut herself loose and let the unpredictable and uncontrollable waves of life carry her away from his shores. It would be pretty easy to initiate the separation right now, in fact—she could start dating other people, as Isaac had suggested, and fill up her time and attention that way. More likely, Leon would start dating soon himself. And then Hassie would get her operation, forget him, and move on.

Until next time, at least.

That was what terrified her most. What if life brought her back to Leon for a third time and she found her lungs filled with flowers yet again? She was a long way off matching the record for the most hanahaki infections, but was there a record for how many times someone had developed the disease for the same person? In a hundred years from now, would another support group sit down like this and tell the horror story of the girl pathetic enough to develop hanahaki for the same person three times? Five times? Heck—eleven times?

“Well,” Anabelle’s voice cut across her thoughts, “We’re going to have to wrap up here. Don’t forget you can always reach out through the group chat if you need any support before next Thursday. You might find it especially helpful over the next few weeks, considering the ‘occasion’ that’s coming up soon.”

“Occasion?” Emery repeated.

“It’s less than three weeks to Valentine’s Day,” Remi said flatly.

“Oh. That sucks for you guys.”

Hassie inwardly winced. She had almost forgotten that she had agreed to help out with the Valentine’s Ball this year. Shoot. It was going to be carnage. It was always carnage. Hassie wasn’t sure she had still fully recovered from last year, after crawling home at 2 a.m., dangerously dehydrated and more than a little traumatised by the events of the night. After the Summer Ball, the Valentine’s Ball was one of the biggest campus social events of the year, infamous for the unholy shenanigans students typically got up to on the night. A number of times in its history, it had come close to being banned. But throw a bunch of students together with cheap alcohol, suggestive music, a few heart-shaped balloons, and free gift bags of candy-knickers and STI tests, and what did you expect?

It was also the night that most couples tended to either hook up or break up—or, quite often, both at once—establishing their pairings for the rest of the year. Many a yearning heart had been appeased at the Valentine’s Ball, and many a yearning heart had been broken. Either way, the aftermath was its own kind of horror story, especially for the cleaning crew the next morning. At least this year, Hassie would be too busy checking tickets, evicting couples from the store cupboard and cleaning up vomit to notice the romance passing her by, or the broken pieces of her heart being trampled on. Leon was bound to attend. If he was going to hook up with anyone this year, it would likely be at the Valentine’s Ball.

Stupid Valentine’s Ball. Stupid Valentine’s Day. Stupid cupid with his stupid, hanahaki-infected arrows. Stupid her for being an easy target every time.

There came a snort of disgust from across the semi-circle and for a second Hassie was afraid she’d expressed those last thoughts out loud. But then Taran folded his arms and glared at the carpet before eloquently voicing what everyone else was obviously thinking: “Valentine’s Day can go screw itself.”

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Next time: Episode 33—The Third Session, Part 2

Teaser:

The third hanahaki support session comes to a close.

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Author’s Notes:

Next time: Episode 33—The Third Session, Part 2

PJ

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