Typical Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Hospital Visits and Displacements

Moments after the two teenagers left the Ootori water park, the limo they were in pulled up in front of the Ootori owned hospital across town. Not even waiting for the limo to fully stop, the strawberry blonde girl opened her door and jumped out of it, heading full speed to the information desk inside. Without saying a word, Kyouya grabbed the Disney bag that his companion left behind in her rush, and headed out behind her.

"Excuseme,"

the girl said too quickly and rushed together, showing her urgency and worry, "but where is Fr. Kichi, I need to see him and I was told that he was admitted here?"

Barely acknowledging the girl whose hair was still dripping from the water park she was just at, the blonde nurse coldly asked, "are you a relative?"

"No, I'm not", Michelle replied, "but he's my legal guardian and I need to see him now! He was just admitted from the fire at Heavenly Savior, so where is he?"

"I'm sorry ma'am," the nurse snidely said as she finally looked up at the girl who was standing in front of her with a large, robe-like dress on over her still soaked body, "but unless you are a family member, I cannot divulge his location to you."

At that moment, Kyouya finally caught up with Michelle and he stood right behind her.

"Now you listen to me. I'm the closest thing that he has to family in the area and being my legal guardian that makes him a family member to me," the strawberry blonde said, now bordering on yelling at the stubborn blonde behind the desk.

"I'm sorry, but as I told you, I can't just give his information to anyone who asks for it, so if you would please—" the nurse said as she started to turn around in order to completely ignore Michelle, but was cut off as she jolted at the sound of a young man clearing his voice.

"If you won't give my friend the information she's asking for, perhaps you'd like to give it to me instead," the business like voice of Kyouya cut in, annoyed that one of his family's employees was being so uncooperative.

"Listen young man, as I've been trying to tell your little friend here, I can't—" the nurse icily grumbled, but stopped as soon as she looked at the teenage boy in front of her. Recognizing the fear in the woman's eyes as she realized that she faced the son of her employer, Kyouya spoke up once again with the firm confidence that intimidation could bring him,

"Where is Fr. Kichi located at this moment?"

Beginning to protest again, but stopping as she realized that the boy in front of her could cost her her job if she didn't do as he asked and realizing that it wasn't worth it, the nurse hurriedly pulled up the requested information and scribbled it onto a piece of paper. Snatching the sheet from the nurse, Kyouya curtly thanked her as he put his arm around Michelle's shoulders in order to escort her in the direction of the section of the hospital that was written onto the piece of paper. Being in too much of a rush to get to her guardian, the female host didn't even notice all of the irregularities that Kyouya had just exhibited. Among the many odd traits, that was the first time he'd ever used the word 'friend' when describing her…

"Your guardian was in the building when the fire started and he has inhaled a lot of smoke and has received a few minor burns on his body", a tall, elderly doctor by the name of Hausu told the duo once they reached the area that Fr. Kichi was admitted to. "He's currently receiving enhanced oxygen in a special recovery room, but once his breathing has returned to normal, he will be placed in a hospital room right over there and you can visit him then. Until then however, I'm going to have to ask you to wait here," Dr. Hausu said as he motioned to a nearby, uninhabited section of seats.

The empty waiting area was painted a pale tan color with sea-foam green plush, individual seats. Scattered on the wall were calming scenes of the ocean; a peaceful sunset upon rippling waves, seagulls dancing over a rocky shore, and a lighthouse with a large sailing boat next to it were among the many framed paintings in the area. The two thanked the doctor and Kyouya proceeded to sit down as he placed the Stitch bag that he was still holding, next to him on another seat. Instead of sitting down next to her classmate, Michelle just started worriedly pacing the waiting room floor. A million thoughts were racing her mind at once, creating a cluster of ideas that seemed to babble on endlessly.

'Oh God, please let him be alright. It's all my fault... I mean, it's all because I'm in the witness protection program, those people must have caught up with me and harmed him. Oh God, why did it have to be him? Oh, it's all my fault! How'd they find me? Who's next? What now? What about my friends at home? Oh God, let him be alright... Fr. Kichi is one of the kindest people I've ever known and now this happens… Oh, why was I born? I'm nothing but trouble to all those who know me. It's all my fault!'

the blue eyed girl thought in a circular manner of self-hatred and deprecation as she walked back and forth over and over. In all honesty she had no clue who burned the church or why, and a small, currently ignored, part of her knew that, but she still couldn't shake the strong and overwhelming feeling that it was somehow all her fault anyway. Truthfully that wasn't an odd feeling for the perfectionist to have since she always believed that everything that went wrong around her was her fault, whether it was or not. So why should today be different?

Kyouya watched as Michelle paced the floor, not knowing the downward spiral of self-loathing that was going on inside her mind. Not being one who normally had to talk with a person who was as clearly anxious and concerned as the girl was, he had no clue what to say to her, so he just sat in silence, waiting for the doctor to tell them that they could visit the priest. However, something odd happened to him during those tense moments of silence, where the only noise was the occasional crackling of the overhead PA system calling for medical assistance and the never ending patter of Michelle's pacing feet. Seeing how much the strawberry blonde was worried, the same girl who he normally only viewed as a frustrating thorn in his side, caused something to twitch inside of him. Without any real reasoning behind it, a plan began to form in his mind as they waited for what seemed like forever.

At around 3:00 P.M., five hours after Kyouya received the phone call from Asunna, the doctor came back and told the duo that Fr. Kichi could now receive visitors. "But don't let him talk too much. His lungs still need all the air they can get and it wouldn't be wise to either fluster him or let him talk too long, understood?"

The two agreed to the doctor's instructions and he turned around to lead them to the elderly priest. Since she was already standing, Michelle immediately followed the doctor's footsteps without giving another thought to her companion or her bag, which she hadn't really held onto for herself since she walked into the water park that morning. Kyouya also gave no thought to his immediate reaction, which included him unhesitatingly grabbing Michelle's bag as he got up to follow her and the doctor.

"Fr. Kichi you have two visitors who want to see you," Dr. Hausu said as he took a half step into the recovering priest's room, "Are you up for visitors?"

Seeing the priest nod his head 'yes', the doctor stepped aside so the anxious strawberry blonde could enter the room, followed closely by her silent be-speckled friend, a person who looked astonishingly like the third Ootori son.

'It couldn't be him', the doctor thought to himself as he turned out of the room after briefly glancing at the teenage boy again, 'an Ootori would never be here with someone his age, nor would he carry another person's bag.'

"Fr. Kichi!"

the girl said as she flung her arms as gently as possible around her guardian who was currently hooked up to a multitude of machines. The sight of the priest connected to the machines, with wires and tubes hanging all around and connected to him didn't faze her at all. When Michelle's mother was alive, there were a couple times that her mom was admitted to the hospital because of serious asthma attacks. Whenever her mother was admitted, the blue eyed girl stayed by her mother's side, whether she was there overnight or for a week. All of this time in the hospitals helped in making the teenage girl comfortable with the procedures concerning breathing problems and the way that it looked when someone was hooked up to the machines. Kyouya however was a different story; he was slightly taken aback by the sight in the hospital room. Being an Ootori, he had read a plethora of medical books and already knew quite a lot about the human body and medical actions, but there was a big difference between reading about the technicality of a procedure, and actually seeing someone you've met receiving the treatment.

Upon seeing the girl in his care and seeing the amount of worry and even a curious and unneeded sense of guilt that was oozing from her eyes, Fr. Kichi could only gently smile as he slowly moved his arms up in order to touch Michelle's. In his current state, he didn't have enough strength to hold onto her, but he did manage to place his arms on top of hers for a moment in order to comfort her. Pulling away from her guardian a moment later, Michelle looked him in the eyes and asked,

"Father, are you ok? I mean, were you really in the building when it caught on fire?"

The elderly man lifted his hand to the breathing mask that he had on his mouth and nose as if to remove it in order to answer her questions, but the female host immediately placed her hand on top of his and said with true concern,

"Father, they are yes or no questions, you don't need to remove your breathing mask".

"It's ok my dear," the priest mumbled under the mask, gesturing for her to remove her hand, "I can take this off for short periods of time to talk" he said as he fully removed the mask to answer her questions.

At this point, Kyouya slowly started to approach the girl and her guardian, making sure not to impede on their dialogue.

"Yes my dear, I was in the living room when I heard something crash and explode in the kitchen. I went to go check and see what had happened, but the next thing I knew I woke up on a hospital cot in an ambulance. I'm feeling better now. The doctors told me that I was lucky that the fire was reported as quickly as it was, since I didn't inhale too much smoke before some Good Samaritan rescued me from the flames and left me with the EMTs," the priest said as he slowly put the mask back onto his face and took a few deep breaths of air in order to regain what he had lost in his somewhat lengthy answer.

The Good Samaritan he was speaking about was none other than Asunna, but only Kyouya and his guard knew that and they planned on keeping it that way.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am that you are ok,"

Michelle said with a small smile, sensing that the priest was telling the truth that he was going to be ok. She could see the same fighting spirit in his eyes that she used to see in her own mother's eyes when she was getting better. Before the two could talk about much more, a knock came at the door frame and a police officer stood in the doorway. Michelle held her breath for a moment, afraid that he was sent by the witness protection program to retrieve her.

"Excuse me, uh… Fr. Kichi," the short, pudgy officer disinterestedly asked as he looked down at his clipboard, "I'm from the police department and I'll need a detailed statement of what happened and what was lost as soon as possible."

Breathing a sigh of relief that the cop was only there for a statement, Michelle spoke up before the priest could take his mask off again,

"He's slowly beginning to regain functioning use of his lungs, so can you and I start with the damage report and end with the eyewitness portion, so he can get a little more oxygen and medication in his lungs?"

Looking to the priest first before responding to the girl, the police officer said, "that's fine," as he realized that the elderly man could use a little more time on the oxygen machine.

"Stay with him Kyouya,"

Michelle said as she turned to the boy who had remained silent the entire time, before she followed the police officer to the nearby seaside styled waiting room. Kyouya nodded in agreement as he finally put down her beach bag onto a chair in the corner and approached the bedside of the priest. Once the strawberry blonde and the cop disappeared from view, Kyouya turned to the priest and said in a very serious tone,

"Father, I need to talk with you for a moment; it's in regard to Michelle."

~**Thirty Minutes Later**~

"Thank you for all of your cooperation ma'am," the cop said as he escorted Michelle back to the priest's hospital room. "After we finish the report, we'll let the insurance company know. Hopefully they'll contact you in the next few days with more information,"

he mentioned to the girl as she walked back over to where the hospital bed and an oddly smirking Kyouya was. Before she had a chance to truly question the Cheshire Cat like smile on the raven haired boy's face, the two of them were shooed out of the room by the police officer,

"Now I need to get that eyewitness statement from Fr. Kichi since he's had a little more time to rest."

Wandering back over to the still vacant waiting room, Kyouya was the first to break the silence between the two.

"Don't worry about scheduling an insurance meeting with the proper officials; I will take care of all of that for you,"

he said as he pulled his notebook out of nowhere and started to write a list of all the measures that needed to be taken in the next few days. Since she was no longer worrying about her guardian's health, the past few hours rushed through her mind and she recalled how politely her normally jerk-like classmate was acting towards her. 'Why would a pompous person like him be so…kind?' Still curious as to why Kyouya had such an odd smirk on his face earlier, Michelle spoke up as she sat down for the first time in hours,

"Thank you Kyouya, but there's no need to do that. I'm a big girl and can handle this myself. I mean, I'm going to have to take care of myself and Fr. now since our residence was burnt to the ground... I wonder where we'll be able to stay until the house is rebuilt… Well, since he'll still be in the hospital for a couple more days for observation, I can just stay here and keep an eye on him. But when he's discharged we'll need someplace else… I guess that's something I'll talk to the insurance agent about" the girl stated, muttering the last part to herself more than to her companion.

"First of all," Kyouya said without looking up from his notebook, "This has nothing to do with how capable or incapable you are at taking care of yourself. Second of all, you don't need to worry about where your guardian will be staying after he is discharged from here; we will make sure he is well taken care of and is comfortable. Lastly…"

he said as he looked up at the truly confused female host,

"Since you will be staying with my family until the rectory is fully rebuilt, all things like insurance claims and the like will be taken care of by the Ootori Corporation, so stop worrying about it." and with that, he quickly turned back to his growing list of tasks on his notebook.

Michelle was truly focusing on the words that Kyouya was saying to her, until the words 'you will be staying with my family' left his lips. Once those words hit her ears, the strawberry blonde looked down at the floor and could have sworn that the world stopped turning, but somehow everything around her was spiraling out of control.

"What did you just say?"

the girl softly asked, with a clear tone of confusion, with an undertone of disgust, seeping through those five small words, refusing to look up at Kyouya when he answered her.

"I said," the be-speckled boy stated, "that you don't need to worry about anything because…"

"No, no, no, I meant that part about my accommodations"

the blue eyed girl interjected as she raised her hand as if to stop him, shuddering unconsciously at the thought of her being forced to take residence with the most annoying boy that she had ever met. True, he had been nice the past few hours and she did enjoy their banter from time to time, but she couldn't forget that this was the same Kyouya that had forced her into servitude for the host club, the same Kyouya that she argued with basically every time they spoke, the same Kyouya who tried to assert dominance over her at every waking moment, the same Kyouya who tried to manipulate her every chance he got. There was no way that she was going to agree to this arrangement.

"Oh,"

Kyouya said as he smugly fixed his glasses, obviously amused that he was disgusting her as much as he was, "I discussed that with Fr. Kichi while you were with the police officer. Since it is the hospital's policy to not allow visitors in this section to stay overnight with the patient and since it is unbefitting for a young lady, such as yourself, to live in a hotel room, which the insurance company will undoubtedly provide as a housing accommodation in the meantime, with an elderly gentleman, guardian or not, he rather quickly agreed with me that it would be more appropriate for you to stay in the home of a fellow classmate until the rectory is fully rebuilt. As I informed him, you will receive your own suite, your own maid, and your personal space will be fully respected. You will have a lock to your suite that only your maid and yourself will have a key for and a strict 'in suite' curfew will be placed upon both you and I, just to maintain the proper amount of decorum" the boy said silkily, not missing any opportunity to embellish his offer, as if he was selling a vacation home to a buyer.

"WHAT?!"

Michelle exclaimed in disbelief, "You mean to tell me that Fr. actually agreed to that crap? I mean, I admit I really appreciate that you are offering to help us out and all, but let me tell you that there is no way that I'm going to move in with you, so you can forget that you, arrogant…"

she started to raise her voice to the calm boy in front of her, but stopped when he looked up to meet her eyes.

"Well then, if you don't believe me, why don't you ask him yourself when he's done with the officer?" Kyouya said as he bore into her eyes with a look of 'you'd be wise to not argue this point' in his charcoal eyes.

"Oh you can bet your spoiled ass that I will," was the answer he received as she stormed over to wait outside the priest's door for the police officer to leave.

'This is most certainly going to be interesting,' Kyouya thought to himself as he pulled out his cell phone in order to start preparing everything that he and Michelle's guardian discussed about concerning her lodging.

'I still don't understand why I came up with this idea,' he thought as he waited for the chief of staff at the Ootori's mansion to answer the phone, 'But I will make it work to my advantage. Those walls of secrecy of hers will soon be broken through.

'Very soon'.

_

Hi everyone! I'm back again thanks to the amazing amount of support you guys have shown from my last update! I mean it, to log onto the site and see that in a 24 hour period you received 5 amazing reviews and another one before the week was over…

It's truly amazing and inspiring, so honestly a massive thank you to PepperCornPie (good catch on the cause of the fire btw), You Can't Handle This Username, VampireSiren (Thank you so much! I'm always so afraid that I'll mess up comedy bits since I'm not too used to writing them, but I'm so happy to know that I can be capable of them), .3 (Wow, that's a humbling comment if I've ever read one, thank you! And don't worry, your two fav boys will definitely be stepping up soon, as you can see Kyouya beginning to here), and the mysterious and anxious guest!

Whew, now this chapter introduced a serious story change here! Toldja that something big was on the way, lol. I hope that this chapter is continuing on the quality that I hope I've maintained and you've come to appreciate by now, but if it isn't, I encourage people keeping me in check ;)

As always, thank you for all of the story alerts and fav author/story selections and your continued interest in this story! See ya all soon!