The Wall part 17

[krystalkatz.livejournal.com]

“Did you not have fun?” Satoshi asked his friend when Sho climbed into the carriage beside him. He looked happy but there was a shadow in his eyes and his mouth was drawn into a deep frown. “Sho? What’s wrong man?”

“It is the boy I have chosen. I am sure that he is unwell” Sho admitted and Satoshi blinked in surprise wondering if both the Ninomiya brothers were prone to fighting for their meals. The bruising on Nino’s small side had been enough to give him a series of nightmares. He was relieved however that the doctor had found nothing seriously wrong and that Nino had insisted that it would be his last fight.

“Masaki, Kazunari’s brother? Why would you think that?”

“I heard him coughing through the door before I was about to enter” Satoshi’s heart sank a little. It might be nothing but a simple cold but his mind went to the one illness that he knew affected the miners on the outside. The black lung. He had researched it thoroughly while giving his petitions to the Queen and parliament and it was awful. The coughing started first as the passageways were clogged with the coal dust. Once infected there was no cure for those that continued to work with the dust, and it was unlikely living near the mines wold help the condition. “The guard heard him to, for a moment I thought that he was going to take him out and shoot him. The sounds were like those from a nightmare. I had almost expected him to be keeled over when I entered but he was sitting upright and with a smile on his beautiful face. He’s such a sweet person, I think his greatest wish is to die away from the mine”

“My greatest wish is that somebody so young would never have to contemplate dying again” Satoshi growled thinking of Nino and the effect that this would have on him when he learned of it. It didn’t seem likely that Nino knew yet, if he did he would have been more bitter than he was and there was very little chance that he would have attempted to go through the sponsorship. “What are you going to do?”

“The illness isn’t so far progressed. If I get him away from the mine, his lungs will still be damaged but not prone to gaining more dust and then I can pay for him to be studied and treated perhaps there is a cure that hasn’t yet been found?” Sho breathed slowly though there was a note of worry in his voice “As far as I’m aware no doctor nor healer has even made a rudimentary study of the illness”

“I feel as though I must correct you, one doctor has made a study. I contacted her when I was researching for my paper” Satoshi whispered hoping that his information could help both his friend and Masaki so that in turn it would save Nino. “She has spent the last ten years of her life researching the black lung”

“And what are her results?”

“Not many, I must admit, she is not permitted to go out of the wall and there has never been a…Living test subject inside with any stage of the disease” Satoshi tried his best not to picture the lab that he had visited last year. He was trying his best not to judge her, after all she was trying to help, but the sight of dismembered body parts pickled and lungs with gas being pumped into them wasn’t something that he was going to forget in a hurry. The smell of it had permeated into his clothes meaning that he had had to set fire to them upon returning home “If you were to give her one I’m sure she would even work for free”

“Why would she be so interested in the black lung?” Sho asked and Satoshi gave a small shrug remembering the conversation that he had had with the doctor.

“Her father was a sponsored from beyond the wall, he told her that his parents died of the disease when he was young. His sponsor was a doctor who in turn helped his daughter. She’s made it her life’s work to study it and find a cure. I will find her address for you tonight. You may even be able to find something that may help him in the interim”

TBC
A/N: I hope that this is okay ^_^

Comments

[arashi4dream1.livejournal.com]

I hope Masaki gets better buuuuu Gambatte!