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ghost-booy · 4 days

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Perfect Bill of Health

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 2671

Danny's forced trip to the doctor reveals he has several unexplained and suspicious unhealed or badly healed injuries

more phic for phic phight

He was sore. Even just laying in bed hurt. He didn’t know how long it would last for like this. But his alarm was going off and he needed to get ready for school.

He lifted his arm up and pressed the button to turn his alarm off. He laid his arm across his face and groaned. Time to get up.

Danny rolled onto his side and shakily pushed himself up. Once up, he sat on his bed for a few moments out of breath. It took too long to pass and he sighed. A knock sounded at the door and he jumped.

“Danny, sweetie, are you waking up?” His mom called.

The sound of a saw. A bright light above him. His missing kidney being passed from one person to the other.

He shook his head and took a deep breath.

“Yeah, Mom! I’m awake!” He said shakily.

“Okay. Make sure to get some breakfast on the way out. I made eggs and bacon with waffles today.”

“Okay, I’ll eat some.” He called back. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stomach it.

He listened to the sound of her walking away from the door and waited until he couldn’t hear her steps anymore.

Time to start the day.

He slowly stood up and grabbed a change of clothes and headed across the hallway to the bathroom. He started up the water and waited for it to get warm while he brushed his teeth. He turned the water off and stared into the mirror for a few moments as the water ran in the shower behind him.

He started peeling off his hoodie, trying to avoid looking at the scar on his chest that trailed up over his collarbones. He turned around and dropped the hoodie on the floor and finished undressing before he stepped into the shower.

Once he was done, he got dressed and pulled on a new hoodie. Dropping his old clothes off in his room, he grabbed his backpack and headed downstairs.

His mom turned and looked up at him when he entered the kitchen.

“Danny, it’s awfully warm today. Are you sure you want to wear a hoodie?” Maddie asked as she set a plate down in front of him.

“It’s colder inside the school.” Danny poked at the food on his plate. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure-”

“Danny-boy!” Jack walked into the living and slapped a hand on Danny’s back. “Be sure to save some waffles for the rest of us!”

“Jack!” Maddie shooed him to his own seat as Danny gasped for the air that was knocked out of him. “You know Danny’s been sore and out of breath lately.”

Jack knocked himself in the head. “Drat! That’s right. Sorry, Danny.”

“Speaking of that.” Maddie took her spot next to Jack. “You have a doctor’s appointment after school today, Danny.”

Danny spit out the small bite of eggs he finally put in his mouth. “A doctor’s appointment?”

Maddie nodded. “You’re overdue for a regular checkup and with all these other concerning symptoms you’ve been having, I think it’s time you go in for one.”

“But after school I-”

“Nope.” Maddie shook her head. “You have no extracurriculars and whatever you might have planned with Sam and Tucker can wait until after you go to your doctor’s appointment.”

“But-”

“No buts. I’ll be picking you up after school today and we’ll be heading straight there.”

Danny slumped forward in his seat and twirled his fork around on his plate.

Maddie sighed. “Look, I know going to the doctor can be scary. Especially when something is wrong but you don’t know what. Going to the doctor when symptoms first appear instead of waiting will prevent any issues from getting worse.”

Danny nodded. “I understand.”

They finished eating the rest of their breakfast. Danny still had a bit on his plate, but he pushed it away from him and stood up.

“Have a good day at school, Danny.” Maddie came around the table and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Danny tried not to cringe and stooped down to pick up his backpack and head to school.

~~~~~~~~~~

Danny stared at where his mom’s car was parked in the parking lot.

“You sure you’ll be okay?”

He turned to look at Sam and Tucker as they walked up to him.

“Yeah, Sam. I think I’ll be okay. It’ll just be a regular check up, right? What can they all do at one of those?”

“Just give us a call when you’re done.” Sam said.

“Or if you need us to break you out of there.” Tucker gently nudged him. “We’ll bust down every door to get you out.”

Danny chuckled. “I’m sure I’ll be fine, Tuck. But I will let you guys know how it went afterwards.”

He walked away from them and made his way to his mom’s car.

He pulled the door open and threw his bag onto the floor and jumped into the passenger seat.

“Hi, Danny!” His mom smiled at him as he shut the door and put his seatbelt on. “How was school?”

He shrugged as she pulled out of the parking lot. “It was fine. It was school. Didn’t do much of anything interesting today.”

“Aw. That’s too bad.” Maddie said.

They drove his silence until they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital.

“The hospital?” Danny asked. “Why didn’t we go to our usual doctor’s office?”

“Because here they can perform any kind of tests they might deem necessary. If they don’t think you need anything else done, they will. If they don’t they’ll just do the regular check up and then send us home.”

She turned the car off and got out. Danny sat there for a few moments staring at the building before he finally opened his door and stood up. He followed his mom across the parking lot and into the building. Right inside the entrance was a reception desk and his mom walked up to an empty booth and smiled at the receptionist.

“Hi! We’re here for an appointment for Danny Fenton?”

The receptionist shuffled around a couple papers and clipped them into a clipboard with a pen.

“You can take a seat and fill out these forms while you wait for the nurse. They’ll be out shortly.”

They walked over to the waiting area and took a seat in two chairs.

They went through the checklist and filled out every symptom Danny could remember having in the last six months and his family’s medical history. They were at the bottom of the sheet when a nurse walked through the door leading to the examination rooms.

“Danny Fenton?”

Maddie stood up and Danny’s heart rate spiked.

“Haha, you don’t have to come with me, mom. I’m old enough to go to my own doctor’s appointments on my own now.”

Maddie frowned at him. “Are you sure? I can come in and advocate for you. Make sure they’re taking you seriously.”

“No no, it’s fine. I’ll be okay.”

He stood up with the clipboard and walked over to the nurse.

“I’m Danny.”

“Hi, Danny.” The nurse smiled at him. “If you follow me, we’ll start by taking your height and weight. Once we get to the examination room we’ll go through checking your vitals.”

They walked up to a scale and Danny took off his shoes.

“120 pounds.” The nurse said.

She unfolded the height thing and pulled it down to the top of his head.

“Five foot five. Follow me.”

He followed behind her down the hallway. He studied the walls as they walked by another desk. She stopped and opened a door to their right.

“In here. You can take a seat on the bed over there.”

He sat down and took another look around the room. It looked like any other normal doctor’s room he’s been in before.

“We’re going to start with your temperature.”

She stuck a thermometer in his ear and took it out when it beeped. She frowned at it. “Ninety four degrees.”

She stuck another thing in his ear and moved to his other side. When she was done, she grabbed the blood pressure device. He held up his arm and she wrapped it around it and started pumping it. It squeezed Danny’s arm as she studied the measurement. She pulled it off.

“Blood pressure is low.”

A knock sounded at the door and a doctor walked in.

“Hi, Susan. I can take it from here.” She said.

Susan walked out of the room and the doctor sat down in the swivel chair next to the bed.

“I’m Dr. Burnell. Your mom said you came in with concerns about shortness of breath today?”

“You talked to my mom?” He asked.

She nodded. “I just went to ask her a few questions and to get permission to run tests.”

“Don’t you need my permission too?” Danny frowned at her.

“Unfortunately, your mom has the legal say on any medical treatment you go through. But any tests we run are for your benefit so we can get to the root of the issue. But before we get to any of that, I’m going to ask you to take a couple deep breaths while I listen through the stethoscope.”

“Okay…”

She stood up and walked over to him. She placed the stethoscope on his back and listened as he took a deep breath. She frowned.

“Can you take another breath?”

He did as she asked and she stepped away.

“Have you had any injuries lately? Been hurt in any sports at school?”

His bones cracking as his chest was ripped open. The pain as it radiated outward. Voices talking around him.

“No.” He said shakily. “No injuries. I don’t play any sports at school.”

Her frown deepened. “I’d like to do an x-ray of your chest. It sounds like you may have a couple broken ribs. That could explain your soreness but not your shortness of breath. For that I’d like to do an MRI.”

“Broken ribs?” Danny asked. He would have thought those would have healed by now.

Dr. Burnell nodded. “When a patient has broken ribs, you can hear them rattling through the stethoscope. There’s not much we can do for those besides prescribe bed rest and pain meds while you’re healing.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“If you come with me, we can get started.”

~~~~~~~~~

Danny was led back to his examination room once the tests were over. They were much more painless than he was expecting, but he still didn’t know what his body would look like in them. If his ghostly qualities would appear in them.

He’d been sitting in this room for quite a while now and he wasn’t sure when the doctor would be coming back.

A knock finally sounded at the door and Danny jumped in his seat. “Come in.” He called.

Dr. Burnell walked in, staring at some sheets in her hands. She looked frazzled and concerned.

“We have your scans back Danny, but we haven’t gone to talk to your mom yet. We wanted to check in with you first.”

Danny frowned at her. What could they have found that she’d be this concerned about? Especially if they still haven’t gone to get his mom to tell them the news together?

“You do indeed have a couple broken ribs. When we did the MRI we did find out that the broken ribs are pushing against your lungs causing your shortness of breath.”

Danny nodded. Was that all they were concerned about?

“But we found something else.”

She handed him his x-ray. His heart dropped into his stomach at the color he saw in the scan that he knew wasn’t supposed to be there.

A green orb sat in the center of his chest.

“And your MRI.”

She handed him another scan and this one had specks of green littered throughout his body.

The doctor stared at Danny.

“What did your parents do to you?”

Danny pulled back suddenly. “What do you mean what did my parents do to me?“ he asked shakily.

“We have no other evidence of this type of ecto-contamination in any other patients in Amity Park.” Dr. Burnell said. “We see cases of child abuse often in the hospital. It’s something we have to ask.”

“My parents would never hurt me.” Danny said shakily as he stood up from his seat.

“We’ve already contacted CPS. They’re going to come and ask you and your mom some questions.”

Danny started hyperventilating. They were going to tell his mom about his injuries and ecto-contamination. They were going to tell her about his core. How would he explain this away? If he was just ecto-contaminated he could get away with that, but not having a core.

“I- I have to go.” Danny turned towards the door and tripped over his own feet. He hit the ground hard and his chest exploded in pain and stars burst in his eyes.

“Danny!” Dr. Burnell shouted. He could hear her running over and kneeling on the ground beside him. She turned him to his back. Then there was a light shining in his eyes.

White light. The pain. His parents.

“Get away from me!” Danny shouted.

His ghostly wail must’ve pushed its way into his shout through his anxiety because the windows on the wall opposite from them shattered. Dr. Burnell covered her face and Danny pulled himself away from her, backing up across the floor.

“What was that?” Dr. Burnell asked.

Danny shook his head. “My mom didn’t do anything.”

“Okay.” She whispered. “Okay. She didn’t do anything. But we still don’t know what that is inside your chest. It might be a tumor. We need to-”

He covered his chest with his hands. “No!”

His core in their hands. Bright lights. Even brighter light. It fell back in his chest and his parents were covering their eyes. His chance.

“You can’t have it!”

“What is it?”

Danny stared at her. He couldn’t tell some random person his secret. There was no way.

But this was a doctor. If his mom kept forcing him to go to doctors appointment after doctor's appointment, he’d keep having the same problem. The doctor’s discovering something they shouldn’t have that could only really be worked back to his parents.

Was there anything else he could do?

“It’s… It’s my core. I’m half ghost.”

“Half ghost?” Dr. Burnell asked. “That doesn’t sound real.”

Danny nodded. “It is. But you can’t tell my parents. CPS can’t talk to them.”

She gave him some placating hand gestures. “Okay, okay. They’re on their way right now. How do we stop them?”

Danny turned intangible and invisible and called on his transformation. He flew his way towards the waiting room and got there just as someone walked up to his mom.

“Madeline Fenton-”

He flew into their body, overshadowing him.

“Yes?” Maddie asked.

“Oh, nothing much. We just wanted to check and say hi. Danny will be out shortly.”

“Oh! Okay. Should I start checking out?”

He nodded. “You guys will be all set to go.”

She stood up and headed towards the reception desk. Danny turned and walked through the door leading to the hallway and walked the agent around a couple turns and corners before flying out of him.

Danny transformed back and was about to walk back out through the door when he saw Dr. Burnell.

She had a stoney expression on her face. He was sure she didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t believe him either. But there was no other option. Not one that disrupted his entire life and flipped everything on its side. He was already different. He didn’t want anything else to change.

He walked back out through the door, ignoring Dr. Burnells gaze.

“How did everything turn out Danny?” Maddie asked him as they walked out through the front entrance.

Bright light. Saw. Nicked his core. Screams. Escape.

“It’s alright.” Danny lied. “Perfect bill of health.”

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