Author's Notes
The characters are acting a little out of character here, but seeing as what's happening, I think it's pretty in character as far as having an out of character situation goes. If that makes sense to anyone...made better sense in my head, but I can't be bothered sorting out syntax after that monster of an essay.
About updates, I'm going to try and update three times a week: Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays, so I should get it finished by mid-October, but with...well, unpredictable "stuff" to be honest, I may not always be able to do that. I'll try by best though, and you guys keep reading and enjoying. Hey, if I do finish, this will be my longest fic (chapter wise) to date that's actually complete. Cool. Which means the next time round, I'll have to try beating that. Or a few times over...
And on an interesting note about my writing if anyone's curious, if I can get the reactions out of myself that I'm aiming for in other people, then I think I've done a really good job. And writing this chapter almost had me in tears. So that's a big tick in my checkbook. Not many actually manage to do that, though they all go online anyway.
Anywho, enjoy, and tell me what you think.
Sakura, Mono no Aware
He's always been in and out of hospitals. But that doesn't make it any easier, or more tolerable. Especially since he's going to be there for a while yet with hopes for recovery slimming – but at least there are friends and family to help him through...
Kouichi K & Kouji M
Rating: T
Genre/s: Drama/Hurt/Comfort
Chapter 10 – Admission
He was sleeping peacefully now, a thin canal running through his nostrils and a needle piecing the vein about his wrist, but that was going to change when he woke up. That peace. She knew that.
'I'm sorry Kimura-san, but the shock, then the infection so soon after...his heart is failing. Slowly, painfully, but it is failing.'
She stifled the sobs behind her hand, wanting her son to have this last rest before his freedom was destroyed.
'Isn't there anything?'
'Perhaps...given time, his body may be able to adapt a little better to its state, but the current situation points simply to further decline. A heart transplant may help, but at this stage, he would more like die from asphyxiation before the operation is complete, even with the support of an oxygen mask or tube.'
'So there isn't-' Her voice broke off with a sob.
'I'm sorry Kimura-san.' The doctor's professional mannerism was cracking in the face of a distraught woman with whom he had worked for years. 'All we can do now is pray, and hope. But you must know he can't go home for awhile.' If ever, but he reserved enough tact to not say that out loud.
'Kouichi...'
He stirred a little as his mother's voice, but didn't wake, heart monitor still beeping rhythmically to reassure her he still lived. After the call from the hospital, telling her he had stopped breathing, that his pulse had died to almost nothing...she wasn't ready. And she never would be.
After all, no mother wanted to say goodbye to their child. Or bury them.
And she was going to have to tell him now. And that could break the trust he had in her, after separating the boys for so long...
She shook her head, tears building on the edges of her eyelids. How many mistakes could one woman make..?
No, she knew, within her heart, that this choice had been the right one. She just hoped there was enough time for her son to see that, because they all could see that this was a tale that was reaching its climax.
And from that, a drop off a steep cliff. Whether there would be something to break the fall...no-one could say, but they all hoped.
Caught up as she was, she hadn't noticed the blue eyes staring at her.
'kaa-san?' His voice sounded weak, barely audible, but what else could be expected from someone with a dying heart and whose fever had just broken less than an hour ago.
'Hai Kouichi-chan?' she smiled at him, but inside, her own heart shuddered. 'Is there something you wanted?'
He was silent for a moment, eyelids slipping over blue eyes, tired, exhausted, but still fighting.
'What-' He hesitated briefly here, but it was too late now for denials. He felt like he had slept for awhile, but his body still felt heavy and numb. All he had been doing lately it seemed was sleeping, being simply too tired to do anything else despite how stir-crazy he was getting in doing so, and it wasn't the smooth, continuous, dreamless sleep he desired, the one where time could fly past without remembrance, but small, burst fragments which seemed to sometimes only exhaust him further. The waking hours seemed to mush together at times; the last thing he could remember relatively clearly was the oral conversation, simply discussing personal information: his name, age, family, friends, hobbies...but this wasn't the infirmary. Because the infirmary at least didn't have a white ceiling. His room didn't either. The hospital did however, although it took a few minutes for his brain to put those pieces together, wanting to go back to sleep and yet not simultaneously.
'What's wrong with me?' he asked eventually, pulling his mind temporarily out of the fog to lap thirstily at the knowledge he needed, turning his gaze away from his mother and back to the ceiling, not wanting to see her expression. 'Why am I so-aargh!' He gave a sudden cry of frustration as the tears he had not wanted to shed prickled at the edge of his vision, the reflexive action of gripping the linen failing to occur simply because his hands were too numb.
Tomoko had jumped a little at the sudden exclamation, before hesitantly reaching out to embrace her son.
'Y-you're heart's failing,' she said slowly, choking back her own sobs. It wasn't fair! None of this was fair. But then, life never was.
Kouichi's mind suddenly went blank. Later, he would realise that this was a pretty obvious conclusion, if anyone had been thinking rationally. But no-one had. Not before, and not then.
'Restrictive cardiomyopathy,' she continued, mumbling into his hair. 'The heart doesn't...relax properly in the diastole phase, and eventually-'
'-stops pumping blood effectively, leading to shock, stroke or heart failure,' Kouichi interrupted, twisting slightly as if to get out of her grasp.
Tomoko understood, releasing her son with a heavy mass of lead in her chest.
'Am I going to die?' he asked softly, almost emotionlessly.
She froze at that. 'Maybe,' she replied in a whisper, when the silence stretching between them became too much. 'But maybe not.'
The tone was enough to tell which was the more likely scenario.
'I'm not going back home, am I?'
She noticed the emphasis on the word 'home'.
'No, no you aren't.'
The blue eyes, darkened in hue, stared up at the blank white ceiling, slight shadows leaning upon it from the evening sun's rays bouncing off the trees outside.
Silence stretched again.
'Kouichi?' his mother asked hesitantly, looking into his face and being, a rare occasion, unable to read the expression that lurked behind those eyes. The facial expression wasn't much of a help: flat, numb...
'Why?' he screamed suddenly, eyes snapping shut as moist tears streaked down his cheeks. 'It's not fair! I don't want to stay here! I don't want to die!'
The beeping increased in the background, but he blocked it out, not even noticing the noise, or the flurry of activity it brought about.
'Kou-' Tomoko began, only to be interrupted.
'Don't!' His eyes flew open to glare and a needle pricked him, but it felt so far away that his brain didn't even register the action till a while after. One arm tried to yank up under a sudden surge of adrenaline, only to be stopped by something clamped on to his wrist. 'Just shut up! Go away! You should have said something! You knew. Just like Kouji,...and you...never...'
Blurrily, he realised his lips weren't forming the words anymore. His eyelids dropped before he even noticed, and before his mind could register the fact that he had just been drugged, the tranquiliser took its full unconsciousness-inducing effect.
Tomoko backed away slightly, and Doctor Kawano beside her put a comforting hand on her shoulder. 'He's just upset,' he said quietly to her. 'No-one could really expect less.'
She nodded tearfully, listening to the monitor return to its monotonous rhythm.
'I think it would be best to give him some time to think,' he continued. 'In any case, visiting hours are over.'
Whatever voices he expected to hear as he, quite suddenly, became aware of the blackness cloaking him, the one he did hear was not it. To be honest, he had been somewhat hoping for silence, but all the fight had essentially been knocked out of him, and all he could really do was lie in the position he was in, open his eyes about halfway (they refused to open completely) and perhaps, hold a less-than-normal toned conversation.
Most of him was still hurt, and as people well knew, it was an effect that tended to expand radially.
'What are you doing here?'
Kouji jumped a little at the sudden sound, finding tired blue eyes partially open and regarding him with an odd assortment of emotions on his face.
'Visiting you of course,' he replied, as soon as he found his voice.
'Skipping school.'
'Actually, no. The class is on a field trip to Fukushima for the next few days, so I can stay here till Sunday without teachers on my back. 'tou-san's here too; his boss wouldn't let him come, so he went to the higher ups and got permission. Satomi couldn't come though, it was too short notice for her to be able to get practical exemption. You know how they require five working days and all that-'
He was blabbing. He only did that when something was seriously bothering him. And it wasn't the fact he was sick; Kouji would simply get overprotective. He'd seen that before.
'You're blabbing,' he replied, still scrutinising, before something clicked. 'Fukushima? Isn't that the field trip you've been wanting to go to for ages?'
Kouji shrugged. 'You're more important. Besides, I had a feeling that you'd be going crazy in here first of all, and that...well...you'd be a little upset with 'kaa-san at some point.'
'That's an understatement.' The other tried to lift a wrist again, only to find it restrained. 'Figures they'd chain me to the bed.'
'For a good reason,' his brother pointed out. 'And glaring isn't going to help,' he added, noting the half-energized glare they were getting. 'But aren't you being a little hypocritical?'
The eyes snapped back to him, fast enough to make his vision momentarily blur. 'What?'
'Remember what we talked about, before I told 'tou-san about meeting you?'
'Humour me,' the other said tiredly. 'We talk too often and too much.'
'Well, I wouldn't say "too",' Kouji replied, biting his lip lightly. 'But I meant specifically when we were talking about how it would be unfair to blame someone individually when there were heaps of other factors, most of which we couldn't or else wouldn't blame, involved. And you're doing exactly that now.'
Kouichi didn't say anything, though his eyes narrowed slightly in thought.
'Maybe she should have told you. Maybe she was right not to, because you had more than twelve years of not having to worry about the fact that it was a very real possibility that it was your last.' He noted wryly that he was being rather calm about the whole situation. No doubt the shock had passed over, and not yet come. 'Would you have enjoyed it, or grown as much as you have, with that looming over your head. Because personally, and I mean no offence in saying this, I think you would have lost your mind quite a few years ago.'
'You knew.'
'Yeah.'
Silence. But Kouji let it stretch. No doubt the other needed to think about it.
'By the way,' he said eventually. 'Did you wake up after that shot?'
'Yeah,' Kouichi replied, a little distracted by the other train of thought.
'Mmm-hmm.'
Another pause.
'You're right,' he said finally. 'I guess I was just-'
'Upset and ready to spontaneously combust?' The dry humour behind that question was enough to crack a small smile onto the other's face.
'Something like that,' he admitted. 'And a stubborn block that had been growing for awhile.'
'Well, it's a good thing your stubborn blocks aren't like mine then,' the other said, grinning slightly at the humorous turn the conversation was taking. 'You'd need a sledgehammer to break them down. Or a Ni-san.'
'Well, it's just too bad I don't have one then...'
'Ni-san?'
'Tired, sick, and sick of being tired,' he replied slowly, before the other had the chance to ask.
The other couldn't help but laugh at that. 'Feeling better?'
'Hai. Arigato.'
'No problem. Now just say you're sorry to 'kaa-san, and then go back to sleep. And don't look at me like that, you need it.'
When he returned that evening, he found his mother affectionally stroking the short cropped hair, with his brother curled up as best as he could while chained to the bed (a necessary, and seeing his reaction, a wise precaution to keep him in bed when he needed to be).
