There was a strange air about the room that night. He couldn't quite place it, but it seemed that he couldn't make himself comfortable. Not only in position, but also in mindset. There was something always bugging him, constantly confusing him, but the confusion came from not knowing what bugged him. And in that way he found his frustration and unease growing. He felt anxious, like he was expecting something. He hadn't told a friend to call him and, besides, it was close to one in the morning. No one would be awake to call him. He felt like he'd missed something. Most of the time he would be in bed, but tonight he could do nothing to calm the worry he felt so vaguely.
He had no tests coming up, no evaluations, and no important meetings. He didn't even work tomorrow. In fact, tomorrow was a holiday. He had nothing to do tomorrow. Yet the feeling in his gut that suddenly deprived him of his much yearned for sleep was eating away at him, gnawing, feasting.
He sat on the couch, watching nothing, reading nothing, and doing nothing. All he could do was sit. He felt too distracted to watch television or to read. He felt too shaky and nervous to do anything. And his stomach was curled in knots. He could go for a drive, but where to? And was the cost of gas actually worth it? He could walk… but it was getting cold and his winter jacket was at the cleaners in preparation for the upcoming winter. Besides, the cops swarmed the streets just hunting for an innocent late night stroller to pick on. He'd been at the butt end of that stick too many times to risk it again.
He looked across at the phone and closed his eyes, sighing. Why couldn't it just ring? He knew it was supposed to at some point. Something important was going to be told to him through that device. He could feel it. Call it intuition, but this feeling was too strong to just be ignored. Even though sleep evaded him quite skillfully, he laid down anyway and closed his eyes. What good was it to wait up for something that might not come to him until hours from now? He felt as if he should rebel against the captivating feeling and sleep through it.
And eventually he did. He fell into a sleep, not uninterrupted by nightmares, and slept. Through the fog in his mind, quite some time later, he awoke to the sound of a phone ringing. For a moment, he thought of letting it ring, his anxiety from the night before forgotten, but he'd never been one to ignore so he rolled from his couch and grabbed the receiver.
"Hello?" he answered groggily, rubbing at his eyes.
"Hello?! HELLO! Hikaru? Are you up? Are you up? Is this you? Hikaru?"
He immediately found himself awake at the tone of the frantic voice speaking loudly from the other end. "Yes, it's me. What do you want?"
"I've been calling since eight. I've left almost twenty messages I think. Something terrible has happened. I can't even… begin to explain. It's…"
Before the sentence could be finished, he dropped the phone, his breath locked fiercely in his throat as he tried to make sense of what he had just been told. No, he thought, it couldn't have…
And quickly he grabbed his coat and strode blindly to the door, keys fastened in a strong grip, and got into his car.
Strong hospital… room 206 in the intensive care unit. The feeling all last night had been trying to tell him something and suddenly he knew why and what it was.