Forgotten
Chapter 10: Waiting
There were doctors and nurses and surgeons and consults, therapists and psychologists, a team it seemed like, all devoted to helping Shuichi. They surrounded him, deserted him, chattering and jabbering in doctor jargon no one understood. Eiri sat in a corner, watching, observing, within an arms length of Shuichi if he was ever needed. Tohma came and went as frequently as the doctors did, asking questions and making orders and asking more questions, his hand in every small detail concerning the surgery. Shuichi lay quietly in the large white bed, his tiny body clad in a paper hospital gown.
Two hours and counting.
They looked at the X-rays again and again, holding them up to the light and pointing things out with their pens. Eiri felt like he was stuck in the middle of a bad soap opera. What's the diagnosis doctor?
"Yuki?" Shuichi said quietly, looking away towards the generic watercolor curtains around his bed.
"Hmm?"
"I enjoyed last night. A lot."
Eiri didn't quite know what to do with that. He paused and watched Shuichi as he remained in his reverie, lost in his thoughts. "I did too." He responded finally, his voice very deep in the quiet room.
"Shuichi, we're ready." Tohma interrupted, sticking his head into the room from the doorway. Shuichi turned and nodded; his face as transparent and unworried as a trusting child.
Tohma entered and two nurses followed, carrying some bottles and a bag of what looked like disposable razors. Eiri's eyes grew wide and his heart began to thud sporadically. Shuichi's unemotional face turned horrified in a second and he looked to Eiri for comfort.
"We'll need to remove your hair for the surgery, Mr. Shindo." One of the nurses said, laying down the items in her hands and putting on a pair of gloves.
Tohma, sensing the overwhelmed panic, headed off any unneeded stresses efficiently. "We'll get you some amazing wigs Shuichi. You'll be able to change your hair color daily if you want. Once your hair grows out, we'll put it back right."
Shuichi gulped, his throat constricting and releasing in a tight motion. He nodded.
Eiri stood, grasping Shuichi's hand as the nurses sat him up and began cutting off most of his hair in long locks with a pair of silver scissors, as close to the scalp as they could manage. Then they applied some chemical-smelling shaving cream and took the razors to the rest. In a matter of minutes, Shuichi was bald.
He had cried the whole time, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried hard not to shudder and shake while the blades were put to his scalp. Eiri almost lost feeling in his hands, Shuichi was gripping them so hard, but he didn't care one bit. He was horrified by the sight of Shuichi's one shocking physical trait suddenly being stripped away. All of Shuichi's pizzazz, his soul, seemed to be falling away one lock of hair at a time. What made him unique on the outside was gone, what made him beautiful on the inside fading fast with the weight of knowledge and responsibility.
It almost wasn't Shuichi in there.
When they finished the doctors came and began wheeling a crying Shuichi and his thousands of machines and wires to the hallway. They approached the OR doors, this was where they had to separate, and Eiri felt his heart gripped with fear. He laid a hand against Shuichi's wet cheeks, rubbing away the tears, melting in the soft feel of his skin. The doctors were filling out charts.
"Are you ready Mr. Shindo?" asked one doctor kindly as he prepared to push the bed forward.
Shuichi reached one arm up to stroke Eiri's fingers.
"Yuki, I just wanted to tell you that no matter what happens… I love you."
Eiri's jaw slackened, his head spun. All at once Shuichi was rambling, explaining things that shouldn't have had to have been explained, and babbling in a way only Shuichi could, hiccups of sobs interrupting the speech.
"I know I've known you for a lot longer than I can remember and to me, it seems like I've only just met you two days ago, but everything you say, everything you do, the way we connect feels right and I can honestly understand now why I loved you before. So I just wanted to let you hear it one more time, just to let you know that the part of me that you remember is still here and he still… I still… love you."
"Here we go," the doctors said, pulling Shuichi away before Eiri had a chance to respond.
"I'll be right here!" Eiri called as the doctors wheeled him out of sight.
After a few moments, Tohma came up behind him. "Eiri?" he said quietly, placing one hand on his shoulder. "Let's go back to the waiting room."
He felt frozen in time, frozen in place, lost and empty and confused.
Then he nodded, and shuffled after his brother-in-law on heavy feet.
Hiro arrived an hour later, asking questions and pacing with fresh nerves. Eiri remained motionless, bent over in his chair, face in his hands. His thoughts wandered back to the beginning of this mess, back to the night he had left and returned to find Shuichi unconscious on his floor. His eyes pricked uncomfortably with unwanted tears and Nakano and Seguchi conversed in quiet tones, leaving him to his misery and worry.
The brat was in his bed, in his home, in his fucking head. He felt clouded by it, filled with it, sick with the overweight feeling of never being alone. His writing was controlled by this pink haired specimen sleeping beside him. His life was wrapped around this boy's fingers. It angered him. It numbed him. It stupefied him. It enraged him.
He detached himself from the boy's arms and the sheets of his warm bed to face the chill of the frigid fall night. The kid didn't even stir.
He wandered past his study, his spare bedroom, his kitchen, his living room. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table and meandered his way to the balcony, his head and body filled with thoughts he needed to release before they exploded, things he needed to let float away on the chilly night air, to forget in the haze of smoke.
He lit up, smoked two, three, four, five, six, on and on until the pack was gone. He had wasted an entire hour, smoked a whole pack. He felt nauseous and his chest hurt. He wanted to rip it open and let out the smoke, dig out the tar, return his lungs to a healthy pink, heal his burned throat and tongue. His thoughts remained tormented by this place, this house he couldn't truthfully call home.
Suddenly seized by anger and pain he returned to the house and as quietly as he could manage, threw his things into a suitcase, all his clothes, his laptop and files, his toothbrush. He dressed in a quick pair of slacks and a button up Armani shirt he'd left hanging in the laundry room to be steam ironed. He threw on his shoes, gathered his keys and phone and jacket and left, not knowing or caring where he was going.
It had been about midnight when he had left. Deprived of sleep he had to stop at a motel along the way and he crashed for a quick power nap, then scavenged for food at a restaurant down the street, caught another two hours of sleep, and left again at two in the afternoon.
He didn't really know where he was when Tohma called at three thirty. He ignored the phone and kept driving, not caring where he'd landed himself as long as it was far away. The phone continued ringing for a straight half-hour. When he finally answered it with a clipped greeting, he knew something was wrong.
"Where is Shuichi?" Tohma demanded without his usual polite greeting.
"How the fuck should I know? I'm not his mother."
"When's the last time you saw him then?"
"Last night."
The telephone line crackled as Seguchi paused. "He didn't show up for work today."
"Fuck." Couldn't the brat do anything right? "He's probably just taking a day off and didn't tell anyone."
"He hasn't answered his phone."
"That's not unusual. The damned brat's phone is always dying. He never charges it."
"Where are you Eiri?"
That threw him for a second. He tried to gain his bearings and discover where he'd taken himself, a street sign, a business, anything that would tell him where he was. He finally had to give himself up. "I don't know."
"Well go home. I want him found."
"Why the hell do you care about him? I'm telling you, he's probably just at home ignoring the world and being a dumb ass."
"I care because the lead singer of my top band didn't show for work. I'm losing money when that happens Eiri, and you obviously don't know where the hell he is, let alone where you are. Figure it out."
The phone disconnected. Eiri threw it to the side and made an illegal U-turn stopped at a bus station and found a map detailing where he was exactly and how to get back to the freeway that would take him to Tokyo.
Grumbling, he returned home, wondering if the brat had finally killed himself in some stupid klutzy accident
Eiri felt his chest clench. He'd been so stupid, uncaring, and now he realized that if Shuichi was every permanently gone from his life he would gratefully crumble into a thousand tiny pieces and disappear. There was no life with Shuichi.
It had been two hours. The clock was ticking loudly in the corner, passing of the seconds that led down to a final future, a single destiny. Right now there were two, a life with or a life without Shuichi. In another couple of hours there would be one.
"Nakano," Eiri said hoarsely, remaining in his crouch-like position. Hiro, still pacing, strode to Eiri's side.
"What?"
"Do you remember a few weeks ago, when I said I'd leave once this was done and I was sure Shuichi was better?"
"Sure," Hiro's tone was slightly apprehensive.
"I change my mind. I know I don't deserve him, I know he could do a hell of a lot better, but he's what I want and for some inexplicable reason he wants me too."
"As long as he's safe, I have no problems with that," he replied quietly.
"Good." Eiri said softly. Tohma and Hiroshi looked at one another and smiled.
End-11
A/N: I think we're slowly drawing to a close... I'm debating between ending it where the results of the surgery come out and ending it at a few-years-later glimpse in time. Let me know which one you'd prefer. Or I could just draw it out over ten or fifteen more chapters! Hahahahaha! (evil laugh).
Seriously though, its been a pleasure writing and listening to your reviews and critiques. Please tell me if you what kind of results you think the surgery should have, what kind of ending, be it happy or sad or random, anything you can think of. I take all suggestions into consideration and try to encorporate them into what I do so I can please everyone.
Thanks for reading... review?