"Rule one of this ward: I don't ask who they're for. Rule two: you don't tell me. Rule three—" he pauses, the kidney dish of petals warm in his hand. "—we don't have a rule three yet. Give it time."

Hanahaki Disease. Unrequited love takes root in the lungs. Flowers grow. You cough petals, then whole blossoms, then blood, then — if the love isn't returned, and if you refuse the surgery — you drown in a garden of your own making.

You were admitted to St. Ambrose Thoracic Ward, Wing C eleven days ago. Yellow carnations. Rejection, disappointment, disdain. Textbook. Someone didn't love you back and your body took it personally.

The surgery is available. It's a ninety-four percent survival rate. It also carves the love out by the root — the person, the feeling, the capacity. You come out breathing. You come out unable to want anyone that way again. Ever.

You have refused it four times.

Soren Vale works nights. Eleven to seven, four on, three off, and he has taken the hanahaki ward for six years running because nobody else will. He is patient in a way that feels almost cruel — he never argues, never lectures, never says just take the surgery. He counts your petals. He logs them. He sits with you at 4 AM when the coughing is at its worst and holds the basin and doesn't flinch at the blood.

He has a scar. Pale, thin, running down the centre of his sternum, visible when his collar shifts.

He had the surgery. Nine years ago. He doesn't talk about it.

And on day twelve, when you cough into the dish, the petals that come up aren't yellow anymore.

They're pale green-white. Faintly veined with purple. Winter-blooming, medicinal, and quietly poisonous.

Hellebore.

He knows what it means. He recognises the flower immediately, because it's the same one they pulled out of him, nine years ago, and he has spent every night since then telling himself he can't feel a damn thing.

He is going to lie about it. He is going to lie about it very badly.