Trapped
Disclaimer:
Sango, Miroku and most of the characters in this story do not belong to me. They are the property of Rumiko Takahashi. The only character that belongs to me is Dr. Ajikenai, but who wants to take credit for inventing a balding, middle aged man, anyway? Oh, and I made up the name for the asylum, too. ^_^A/N: ~~~ ** means a change in scene or point of view.
Chapter 1: Silence
A nurse in her mid-thirties, wearing flower print scrubs, walked through the halls of The Asylum for Particularly Psycho People. She held a file in her hand, and a depressed look on her face.
Finally, she stopped at a door, and opened it.
"Dr, there has been no change for patient X4338," the nurse said, speaking to a man in a white lab coat.
"Ah, yes. It goes as I expected," replied Dr. Ajikenai, the balding, middle-aged man looked up from his paperwork.
"I feel so sorry for her," the nurse sighed, as she gave the file to the doctor.
"Yes, she has been through a lot," the doctor agreed, taking a look at the file.
"Do you think the new doctor will have any effect on her?" the nurse asked hopefully.
"I don't think so. She has seen the best of every kind of doctor there is. What is some kid straight out of Med. School going to change?" Dr. Ajikenai said spitefully. It seemed that he didn't think highly of new doctors.
"Yes, Dr," she said, as she walked out the door. She knew better than to say otherwise. Ajikenai seemed to have a grudge against any doctor that was younger than him (which was quite a few, it seemed).
"Oh, I do hope she will get better," sighed the nurse, as she walked to the Nurse's Locker room. "Gods know she's been through too much for an 18 year old."
~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~
The next day:
"So, Dr. Ajikenai, what is wrong with the next patient?" asked a tall, dark-haired young man in a white lab coat.
"No stupid questions!" snapped Dr. Ajikenai, irritably. "You'll find out soon enough."
"Hmm…patient X4338..." Miroku read the file under his breath, as he followed Ajikenai up a set of stairs.
"Katsuragi! Get the hell over here! Do you want to keep your patient waiting?" Ajikenai asked sarcastically.
Miroku looked up to find that he kept walking down the hall while Ajikenai had stopped at a door.
"Sorry sir," Miroku mumbled, as he walked back to the Dr.
The older doctor walked into the room first.
"Hello, Sango," he said in a friendly, yet gentle voice. "We've just come to check up on you."
Miroku looked around the room. There were four regular white walls (not padded, as those rooms were for violent patients), with a cheap looking cot in one corner, and a table with three chairs in the middle of the room. "Sango," as Ajikenai called her, was already sitting in one of the chairs, and Ajikenai was walking towards the one across from it. It was like all of the other rooms he had visited, so Miroku supposed that this patient was probably like all the other ones; acting like killer-chickens, or something.
But when Miroku took a look at the thin girl who lived in the room, he gasped.
Her face was extremely pale, except for the place right under her eyes, which was a sickly shade of purple, probably caused by lack of sleep. She wore a white nightgown that reached down to her mid-calf, and the dress accentuated her paleness and anorexia.
Dr. Ajikenai, noticing Miroku's astonished face, gave him a sour look and said "Don't worry, we feed her every day, and she does eat a little."
"Sir, what happened to her?" asked Miroku, still amazed at her condition.
"I am not here to answer questions, Dr. Katsuragi. Look at her file!" snapped Ajikenai, rolling his eyes.
Miroku read her file:
Patient name: Matsushita, Sango
Age: 17
Date checked in: July 11, 2002
Checked in by: Carol Malloy, social worker
Reason for admission: Shortly after being seriously wounded (stabbed with a butcher's knife in the mid-back, lower back) by her brother, Kohaku Matsushita, and witnessing said brother kill their father, and then himself, patient refuses to do anything for days at a time. Does not eat, drink, or talk, during this period, and sleeps for only two hours every night.
"Wow," Miroku stopped reading and tried to imagine what the poor girl must have gone through.
~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~ ** ~~~
~~~**Sango's Flashback**~~~
She's dusting off the TV, while her father is taking a nap.
Poor dad. Least I can do is let him sleep after working the graveyard shift
she thought.Suddenly, she hears muffled sounds from her father's bedroom.
She runs to the room, noticing that the door is already open.
She looks inside, and suppresses a scream when she sees what's happening.
Kohaku, her little brother, is holding the largest knife that they own. It is held high above their father…
"NO!!!!" Sango screams running to her brother, trying to take the knife away.
She looks into his eyes, not seeing the timid, sensitive child that he once was, but a demented killer, intent on killing his prey.
And worse, he smiles at her…
Sango screams again as she feels a sharp piece of metal pierce through her back, near her spine. It goes through her back multiple times.
She looks up to see her attacker, his smile growing even wider…
Her brother…laughing at her pain…
As she watches Kohaku walk to the bed, she realizes her throat is frozen from the excruciating pain burning through her back.
Kohaku holds the knife over their father…
She can only watch as her father dies instantly, being stabbed in the side of the neck.
As their father drew his last breath, Kohaku seemed to come back to his senses, looked at what he had done, then looked straight into Sango's eyes.
"I'm sorry…"
Those were her brother's last words as he sent the knife that tasted the blood of both his sister and his father, through his stomach…
~~~**End Flashback**~~~
And this memory replayed in her head again, taking all of Sango's energy just to watch it.
"Sango? How are you doing?" Ajikenai asked.
She did not reply, but continued to stare, a blank look in her eyes.
"Katsuragi! How long does it take you to read a file? Get over here!" Ajikenai snapped. "I'll tell you a little about this patient."
Miroku eagerly sat next to the older doctor, ready for some real information.
"Alright. Sango was checked in about a year ago, and has not improved since," the doctor explained, his edginess seemed to disappear in concern for Sango. "She falls into a momentary lapse about every few days, and during that time she does not respond to anything. But once these few days are up, she returns to normal, and she doesn't seem to remember…or maybe chooses not remember…the past few days."
"Wow. What kind of treatments have you tried?" asked Miroku, his eyes wide.
"We've tried to talk to her about it, but as I've said, she doesn't seem to remember anything," Ajikenai's old snappiness coming back. "We've even tried 'natural' medicines and prescription upon prescription of anti-depressants. The thing is, she doesn't seem to be depressed."
Miroku turned the matter over in his mind. How do you help a person who doesn't seem to know that she momentarily shuts down? She doesn't seem depressed, but she was definitely unhealthy. It seemed to Miroku that she needed to be in a hospital, rather than in an asylum.
When he expressed his thoughts, Ajikenai sneered again, but this time at the mention of a hospital. "They wouldn't know what to do with her."
But neither do we, Miroku thought sadly.
He looked at the young girl sitting in front of him.
I promise I'll do everything to help you, he thought. Just like I was.
A/N: You know, once I got the 14th InuYasha book, I realized that Sango's condition is kind of like Rin's. Whatever. Did you like it so far? You can tell me in a review…
Name Translations:
Ajikenai- Bland
Katsuragi- Actually, this is the last name of a teacher on the Japanese TV show, "Sakura".
Matsushita- This is the last name of the main character on "Sakura".