The phone call sounded like a shot gun blast in the torpor of the early morning. Solomon Moto rolled over,with a groan, and fumbled to pick it up. He blearily mumbled a greeting into the phone, but was instantly awoke when the polite but apologetic officer gently explained that Yami Moto had been in a severe car accident, and they needed to come to the hospital immediately.
Solomon bellowed in grief rousing Yugi, who came running to his grandfather's bedroom, wide-eyed and alarmed. Solomon wasted little time in tact, or delay as he hastily dressed and told Yugi that Yami was in the hospital
Yugi managed to control his shock and tears enough to avoid a breakdown as they drove the longest miles of his life, as they walked through the bleak waiting room, with its shining black and white, tiles. There were other people, huddled together and cowed down, awaiting news of their own. Solomon left Yugi to perch in the uncomfortable plastic chair to badger the harassed admission secretary yet again for information about Yami. So far, the only thing that she could pass on to him was that Yami had been transported to the hospital, and that he was now undergoing emergency surgery.
It was only a few hours, but each one seemed to be an eternity as Solomon only fought back tears, gripped Yugi against his side, a tether of uncertain familiarity in all of this turmoil. Yugi said nothing at all, but just quietly wiped away tears and tried to offer a brave smile, and hollow reassurances that Yami was going to be alright, he knew it. At long, long last, the Motos were called to the front, where a weary surgeon emerged fromthose swinging metal doors, wiping the sweat from his brow with a forced smile meant to convey confidence.
Solomon could not stop the tears or the prayers when he got the blessed, blessed news that Yami would live. Yugi slumped at his side, exhaling the held back anguish as the surgeon gave a bland, sickening recitation of Yami's condition, and his injuries. Yami had undergone surgery to repair his shattered leg. He had a fractured calf, dislocated shoulder, and several broken ribs on his right side. He had suffered massive contusions on his right side, and he had a broken nose. Yami had been wheeled to the recovery room, and they would soon be able to see him, but with the understanding that they couldn't be there for long, and that he would be heavily sedated.
They were herded down several long hallways, past the general admission beds, past the nursery, and off to the ICU wing. Here, the nurse's station was filled with the quiet shuffle of paperwork and nurses going in and out of the glass doors leading off into the patient's rooms. The nurse assigned to Yami was perched on a mobile work station. She gave them a kind smile, and gently told them that Yami had been through a substantial trauma, that the facial swelling would go down, that it might be a bit distressing to see him with all the machinery hooked up.
Solomom opened his mouth to reply, Yugi plunged past her into the room.
All those gentle reassurances, those hours in the waiting room of mentally shoring up his defenses to face this moment fell down and shattered at his feet when he saw Yami. Yugi heard his grandfather's gasp from behind him, as Yugi hesitantly crept to the bedrail.
It was clear that Yami's right side had borne the brunt of the carnage.
The right side of Yami's face was a sickening rainbow of mottled blue, darkening to nearly purple around his distorted, wilted eye socket. The eye had swollen shut, and the bruise went from his temple to his jaw line, splintered over his bent nose. The fingers on his right hand had swollen up, bloated from the fluid and damage, winking out of the splint and the cast, and propped up by a pillow. He wore a pale, patterned hospital gown, and Yugi winced to see that his entire torso was covered with bruising from shoulder to right leg was encased in plaster, and propped up on several pillows.
There was no sound but Yami's ragged, deep breathing, the invasive beep of the heart monitor and Yugi's quiet sobs. He heard the scrape of something across the floor, and saw the nurse pushing in two chairs to rest beside the bed with a kind smile.
"Why don't you take a seat and talk to Yami? He may not be able to respond, but it might do him good to know that you are here."
Yugi politely thanked her, flicked an uncertain glance at his grandfather, and then carefully gathered up Yami's uninjured left hand in between his shaking 's hand felt cold, and damp, unnaturally limp and strange as Yugi sat back, floundering for words, and finding nothing to say at all.
"Yami? Can you hear me? Please, hang on...."
Yugi felt Yami's fingers tighten against his own, the groan and the flicker of a grimace twist the good side of Yami's face. Yami's left eye shot open, huge with tears and terror as his eye darted around the strange surroundings, and coming to rest at Yugi's familiar face. His breath quickened in panic, and choked off abruptly by the blinding pain of broken ribs exhaling those frantic breaths. They heard his animalisticgroan, the shudder of agony and realization as Yami trembled, and the tears mutely trickled down the bruised cheek.