The Hospital Visit

The Hospital Visit (sometimes called "The Visit") is a one-shot Katawa Shoujo fanfiction written by Ryan Nurse. His first published prosaic work, it was written on the morning of 10 July 2012 during Nurse's hospitalisation for a two-stage scoliosis operation, and posted on Facebook that same day. On 3 August, it was uploaded to FanFiction.net and DeviantArt. At 972 words (1,071 in the 2015 revision), it is his shortest published work.

Set on the day it was written, The Hospital Visit depicts Hanako Ikezawa, Nurse's "waifu", visiting him in hospital - 10 July 2012 was Hanako's birthday, and the day before Nurse's second scoliosis operation. The vignette has received near-universal acclaim and is considered one of Nurse's best and most personal works; Nurse himself regards it as "the best thing I've ever written", and reposts it on 10 July each year. On 10 July 2015, the story was reposted as part of Project 20:15, with several sections edited and a new paragraph inserted near the end.

Background
In January 2012, Nurse was formally diagnosed with scoliosis, or severe curvature of the spine. He had had the condition for some time, and by the time of his diagnosis the curve had reached almost 90 degrees. His sister Katy was diagnosed with the disease at the same time, and the pair were booked for surgery at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, Greater London. Their surgeries were booked for the same day - 4th July - in order to minimize the stress on their parents, but Ryan's curve was so severe that he had to have a two-stage operation instead, with the second stage occurring on 11th July.

On 30th June, a few days before his admission to hospital, Ryan selected the Katawa Shoujo character Hanako Ikezawa as his "waifu". Coincidentally, her birthday fell on 10th July, the day before Ryan's second operation, and so he resolved to celebrate it by writing a fanfiction starring the two of them. He wrote The Hospital Visit at 2am that morning, in a single continuous writing session. Ryan has often claimed to have "practically hallucinated" the entire story as he wrote it, seeing Hanako at his bedside, and to have been in tears by the time he finished writing it.

The story takes a few artistic liberties - for example, Ryan was in a room of his own opposite his sister, and not in a cubicle with a curtain as he is in the story. It also ignores Hanako's fictionality, and the inevitable language barrier that would arise should she (a Japanese native) ever actually meet Ryan. The 2015 revision, however, acknowledges in its additional paragraph that Hanako is "a denizen of the virtual world".

Plot summary
The story is narrated from the perspective of Ryan himself, who is confined to his bed, and starts when a nurse announces that he has a visitor. Hanako steps into Ryan's cubicle, approaching his bedside, and is clearly upset to see him as he is; Ryan also speculates that simply being in a hospital is bringing back Hanako's own bad memories. After a brief chat, Ryan asks Hanako why she is tormenting herself by visiting him. She claims she had simply wanted to see him, and a brief moment later, she breaks down at Ryan's side, falling to her knees and begging him not to die. Ryan tearfully promises that he will "never leave her", and the pair lovingly embrace until the nurse returns to announce that visiting hours are over. Hanako reluctantly leaves, and the story ends with Ryan noting that "as hard as it had been for her to come here, it was ten times harder for her to leave".

Reception
The story has received near-universal acclaim, and has been noted for its personal nature compared to Nurse's other projects. It was the first of his works to gain significant attention, and led him to write two more Katawa Shoujo fanfictions: The Test, which he began publishing in August 2012, and Signs, published in October, both of which have received more views on FanFiction than The Hospital Visit.

Nurse himself considers The Hospital Visit to be one of his best works. He has often cited the line "though no fluids flowed through it" - part of a brief description of his intravenous cannula - as one of the best he has even written, due to its poetic use of alliteration and assonance.