Chapter Text
“Cardio-what-the-fuck?”
“Cardiomyopathy.” Recovery Girl repeats patiently before frowning at him. “And please watch your language.”
Katsuki ignores her. “The hell’s that?”
“Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy, or,” she gives him a sorry smile that makes his eye twitch. “Broken heart syndrome.”
He follows her line of sight to his ultrasound on the wall. “This is what a normal heart is supposed to look like.” she remarks, pointing at the picture of the left.
Katsuki doesn't think it looks like a normal heart at all. It looks like the instagram post his cousin made when she announced she was pregnant with her third kid.
“This,” she says, redirecting her finger to the image on the right. “Is yours. Notice how enlarged your left ventricle is compared to the other one. A bit like an octopus trap, eh?”
Katsuki squints at the sonograms. He can’t really make out much of anything. Looks more like a water balloon than an organ.
“So?” he blinks expectantly. “You gonna kiss it better or what, granny?”
“I wish I could,” she shakes her head, sliding a warm palm over his chest. He snarls when she gives him another one of her little smiles. “I’m afraid only time will heal this wound.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” he snaps, smacking her hand away from him. “Are you really trying to tell me I’ve got a ‘broken heart’? What kinda soap opera horseshit diagnosis is that?”
"What did I say about watching your mouth?" she shakes her head. “Intense emotional distress can manifest itself physically in the human body. In this case, your heart’s structure and function has been damaged by a traumatic event.” she explains, “What’s fascinating, though, is that this is a phenomenon found almost exclusively in women, namely widows.”
Katsuki frowns. He finds that fact to be mildly emasculating but he holds his tongue.
“Studies are inconclusive about what the exact etiology is. And because it's so rare and reversible, it's barely studied. In fact, it’s widely disputed whether this should even be considered an actual disorder, or if it’s just a temporary response to adrenaline and other stress hormones.”
“You mean I got pulled out of class for some bogus heart condition?” he scoffs. “This isn’t even real.”
“Research is limited, yes, but the fact remains," she states, "Your echo shows signs of moderate cardiovascular disease. The shortness of breath and heart palpitations you’re experiencing are the result of stress-induced cardiomyopathy. You ought to take it as seriously as a battle injury. How long has this been happening?”
There's been an ache in his ribcage ever since she left him. He'd felt chest pains for a month now, and also found himself getting winded a lot quicker than usual, but it was only this afternoon that he felt like his heart was going to explode.
He was having a perfectly mediocre morning until Mic took over for their English lesson and just had to use her as a writing example.
“Just today,” he grunts.
She hums, pressing her lips together pensively. “Was there anything that may have triggered it?”
He sets his jaw into a frown and stubbornly avoids eye contact. “No.”
She searches his face with a skeptical look. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” he hisses through grit teeth.
“Well,” she sighs, handing him his clothes back. “In any case. Symptoms should clear up in a couple months.”
“Cool.” Katsuki grabs his shirt from her outstretched hand and dresses himself hastily. “Can I go back to class now?”
She takes his echocardiogram down and collects the rest of his papers into a neat little folder. Then she clicks her pen to start writing him a hall pass. “Yes, but please take it easy, you’re still in critical condition—”
“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, doing the buttons on his jacket as his gaze lingers on his x-rays. It seems surreal that something like a dumb breakup that happened weeks ago could take this much of a toll on him. Is his pathetic body trying to tell him he can't live without her?
His file and hall pass are gently extended to him, shaking him out of his thoughts.
“She must’ve been very special,” Recovery Girl says with a knowing gleam in her eye.
With an involuntary burst of his quirk, he snatches his things up and slams the door shut behind him.
He pushes down the urge to combust the papers in his hands as he walks down the hall.
So far, his day is sucking ass. First, he damn near has a heart attack at the mere mention of his ex-girlfriend's name, then he gets rushed to the nurse's office only to be told he's got broken heart syndrome. What the fuck is he gonna do with himself? He takes one final breath before turning the door to his homeroom.
Everyone stops what they’re doing when he walks in. Katsuki comes back from the nurse’s office looking like a total loser and slams the crumpled, slightly charred slip on Aizawa’s lectern, refusing to look at anyone as he stomps back to his desk.
His notebook's still open to the page he was working on. Mic used her in a shitty attempt to make the learning experience more involving. They all had to write about something that she likes for their compound sentence. Katsuki peeks down at what he wrote with a grimace.
FUCKING CUNT likes to steal my hoodies so she stays warm while I freeze my ass off.
WORTHLESS BITCH likes to make me buy her mochi ice cream until I'm broke like her.
OCHAKO URARAKA
That's as far as he'd gotten before his pencil snapped. It's kinda blurry what happened after that, but he's pretty sure he started hyperventilating and had to be rushed to the nurse's office.
Her name's gotta be cursed or something. He stares down at the unlucky combination of thirteen anglicized characters, trying to find a fault in them but he comes up empty.
It’s like somebody cherrypicked all of his favorite letters and strung them together into one sweet name. In the privacy of his bedroom, he used to sing every syllable in her name, but lately it's been choking him up and leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
He only realizes he's seething when the page starts smoking in his tight grip. He balls the paper up in his fist to ignite it.
His heart rate kicks back up again, he can feel its shaky rhythm pounding in his ears. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices his classmates glance over to see his assignment burnt to a pile of ashes on his desk.
“The fuck you guys lookin’ at?” he barks.
They all promptly go back to minding their own goddamn business.
He opens his medical file up just to busy himself with something that isn't her. His constricted pupils skim through the pages cynically. Why should he even believe the nurse? She herself said it was bullshit. He’s not heartbroken. Especially not over her.
Something hot drips down his cheek and onto his printed name on the cardiograph. He must be sweating again, because he's sure as fuck not crying over some dumb schoolgirl that had the bad taste of breaking things off with him. This condition has to be the result of the eighty consecutive near-death experiences UA had subjected him to ever since he'd enrolled. Once he graduates, he's suing these motherfuckers.
Even though he's mostly convinced that the nurse is senile, he finds himself checking his pulse throughout the class period, trying to see if the tempo matches up to the cardiogram. It's hard to believe that this is what his heart looks like under his skin and bones. It doesn't look like a heart or a fucking octopus trap or anything he's ever seen before. If he squints, it kinda looks like a tsuzumi drum.
He taps a fingertip on his sonographed aorta, as if to manually regulate its throbbing.
His heart used to be his body's very own kick drum, pumping blood through his veins with its strong, steady rhythm. Now it feels like a punctured tsuzumi, trying desperately to thump life into his withering limbs. He slinks into his seat and tries not to think of any more pathetic analogies but oh, god— who the fuck's he kidding?
His heart is a broken drum, and it only beats for Ochako Uraraka.