The Forgotten Child
Chapter 13
written by Kat Aubuchon
edited by Windlily
Shuuichi strolled the halls of the hospital
after visiting one of his young patients in
intensive care. He hadn't been a hospital
employee for quite a few years, and the only
reason he was here now was because one of his
patients had just had a tumor removed from the
base of her spine. He had started his own
practice about five years ago and had become a
successful pediatrician with more patients than he
could handle sometimes. Of course his most
interesting patient was one that he didn't even
bill, Urameshi Keiko.
He had been one of the first people that the
Urameshi's had consulted when Keiko had discovered
she was pregnant again. They had asked him to
monitor her pregnancy and to deliver the new baby,
or babies. He had run his own tests to double
check the results from the batteries of her first
pregnancy and knew that he was on shaky ground.
He just couldn't predict an accurate due date with
only one pregnancy to go on. He had given his
best guess, knowing that it would reassure Keiko
and Yuusuke and was very relieved when Yuusuke had
moved his family to live with the Kuwabara's.
Yukina could use her powers to help Keiko when her
time came and keep her stable until he got there.
On the way to his car Shuuichi just happened
to see an old friend's car parked in the first
row. It was instantly recognizable since it was
bright orange with florescent green flowers
painted on the side. Akira was one of guys he had
gone through medical school with and his car fit
his personality, which was, in a word, weird.
He debated whether to pay his old friend a
visit or just head home, since Shiori was sure to
be waiting for him. With a grin he threw his bag
into the car and trotted over to the ER entrance
where he knew Akira would be. His friend had opted
for ER duty after his internship because he like
the challenges and the constant drive to perform.
Shuuichi entered the ER and was immediately spied
by the hyperactive head physician.
"Shuuichi, what the hell are you doing here?
Don't you make enough money giving iron drops and
lollipops to kids, or do you just miss the
excitement?" Akira asked as he took Shuuichi's
hand and shook it hard.
"I don't play being one of the gods as well
as you do, Akira. I'll take a screaming kid over
a dying patient any day."
"Speaking of screaming kids, when is Shiori
going to fix you up with a nice little girl so
that she can have some grandchildren?" Akira
teased with a smile.
"Don't give her any ideas, or I won't invite
you over for dinner ever again."
Akira put his hand over his heart like he had
been shot and gasped, "Don't even tease like that,
man! Your mother could probably unite the
countries of the world with her cooking. By the
way, what are you having tonight?" he asked with a
wink.
"Your favorite," Shuuichi answered with a
grin and a wink of his own, "Your welcome to come
if you like. I'm sure she'll love to see you."
"Good. It's a date. I'm off shift...
"Team 9 en route, we've got a female,
multiple fractures, the worst a compound fracture
of the left femur with heavy bleeding and possible
sever head trauma," the radio at the nurses'
station blared suddenly.
"... sometime tomorrow," Akira finished
grumpily.
Shuuichi only smiled in response and followed
as his friend jogged over to the station to get
the full report from the EMT crew.
"Heart rate in the 90's and blood pressure is
85 over 45. Age, late teens to early twenties
of... uh... undetermined race. Patient is
unresponsive to verbal or physical stimuli.
Allergies/meds unknown. Fracture has been
stabilized with a SAM splint with an ace over a
five by nine pressure dressing. We've started a
KVO normal saline solution IV using a 18 gauge
catheter in the right antecubital. ETA two
minutes."
"All right. I want station 4 cleared and
prepped, and I want three units of O negative on
stand-by. I want her typed and cross matched as
soon as she comes through that door. You're going
to have to excuse me Shuuichi," his friend said as
he raced with the nurses down the hall toward
station 4.
The two minute wait seemed more like seconds
to Shuuichi. He watched his friend take immediate
charge when the unconscious girl was wheeled into
the station.
"Miss! Miss! Can you hear me?" Akira said
as he forced her left eyelid open and shined his
pen light into her eye.
The girl reacted by trying to turn her head
away from the light, but Akira held on to her chin
firmly so that he could look in the other eye.
"PEERL normal at 3 millimeters," Akira
announced and put the pin light back in his
pocket, "Shuuichi, come take a look at her eyes.
I've never seen anything like this."
Shuuichi made his way between the nurses,
feeling like he was in the way as they buzzed
around him. She suddenly opened her eyes and
looked directly at him as he put his hand on her
cheek to hold her head still. In all his life he
had never seen someone so completely taken by fear
as this girl lying in front of him now. She
looked up at him with such terror that he almost
didn't notice the color of her eyes. Deep red
eyes, like a certain fire demon he knew.
"Blood pressure 95 over 66, pulse in the 90's
and respiration, 24," one of the nurses informed
the head physician, but Shuuichi couldn't break
away from the patient's stare.
"Miss! Do you know where you are, Miss?
Miss, can you tell me your name?" Akira kept
asking the girl, but she never broke her eye
contact with Shuuichi.
He reached out his hand and placed it over
hers. Her eyelids drifted back shut out of a
combination of blood loss and pure exhaustion.
"Doctor, the blood typing came back
negative," a large nurse to Shuuichi's left said
as she handed Akira a paper.
"What the hell do you mean it came back
negative?" he practically yelled as he grabbed the
paper from her.
"The type and cross match doesn't fit any
know blood type on record."
"That's impossible!" he yelled as he absently
thrust the blood test results at Shuuichi, wanting
his opinion. "I want them run again,
immediately."
The nurse quickly drew another blood sample
as Akira continued to give orders.
"OK, until the real type cross comes in, I
want Central Venous Pressure Monitoring and 500 cc
of Dexteran 40 and infuse remaining dose slowly to
keep her going."
Shuuichi looked at the test results and the
eerie feeling that started when he had looked into
the girl's eyes grew stronger and more persistent.
The nurse said that the blood typing didn't fit
any blood type *on record*, but he had seen a
blood type with these levels before, in youkai.
Shuuichi knew that they would never get a clear
result, no matter how many times they tried to
type and cross match the girl.
He looked back at the girl laying prone on
the stretcher. Her arm was obviously broken and
laid at an odd angle to the rest of her body. The
leg pinned between the white boards of the splint
was the major concern of the moment. The splint
was smeared red with her blood despite the EMTs
effort to apply pressure to the wound. The heavy
blood loss was evident in her much too pale face.
If the girl was a youkai, what was she doing here?
Shuuichi studied the equipment monitoring her
vital signs and saw that the Dexteran was keeping
what blood she had left circulating, but her heart
rate was up and her pressure was going down. She
was losing blood, a lot of blood, with every beat
of her heart and the Dexteran wasn't going to hold
forever.
Shuuichi moved aside as one of the nurses
tried to apply more pressure to the wound on the
girl's leg. He left station 4 and hurried out
into the hall where there was less noise as he
pulled out his cellular phone. He dialed his
brother's number and let the phone ring as he
remembered the first time he had been introduced
to a youkai.
He had come home late that night from his
internship and was dead on his feet as he walked
through the front door. He still lived with
Shiori in the same house they had moved into when
his father married that wonderful woman. He loved
Shiori like she was his own mother and even though
he could have moved out a long time ago, he
preferred to have a smiling face when he came
home, plus it let his brother move out without too
much guilt.
On that strange night that so many secrets
were revealed, he had sat down on the couch with
Shiori and was telling her about the day's events
when there had been the sound of shattering glass
upstairs. He had tried to get Shiori to stay
downstairs until he had a chance to check it out,
but she had followed him anyway.
Shuuichi had checked each of the rooms and
when he came to his older brother's old room he
saw that the window had been smashed in. He had
walked to the opening to see if a branch from the
tree outside had fallen when a small figure had
stepped out of the shadowed corner. It had
stumbled, mumbled the name 'Kurama' and passed out
into his arms.
Shuuichi hadn't known what to think so he had
picked what he had thought was a young boy up and
placed him on the bed. Shiori had moved closer to
them and recognized the young man. She had told
him that he was one of his brother's friends that
had come to visit once, named Hiei.
Shuuichi quickly took the scarf from around
Hiei's neck and the draping covering from his
shoulders. His hands had came away wet with blood
and he looked his new patient over for the
obviously heavily bleeding wound. He found an
ornately decorated dagger protruding from his
stomach. Hiei's left hand had been gripping it
tightly, weakly pulling at it.
"Cursed dagger, Kurama," the bleeding man had
rasped as he grabbed a hold of Shuuichi's sleeve,
"Only a human can take it out."
Shuuichi hadn't had the foggiest idea who
'Kurama' was or what curses and humans had to do
with the dagger in Hiei's belly, but he looked
into his glazed red eyes and had known that he
needed help.
"Stay with him mother while I call an
ambulance," he had said as he turned to leave, but
before he could Hiei arched his back and screamed.
Shuuichi had tried to hold him down, but Hiei
had struggled with a strength that belied his
small frame. Shiori came to his aid and held the
young man's right arm down to the mattress.
Suddenly Hiei had tensed and his whole body grew
as tight as a bow string. Shiori had given a yelp
of pain and jerked her hands away. Hiei's arm had
literally caught fire and had burned her with the
strange black heat that encircled it. Both of
them had stepped back as Hiei continued his
thrashing, moaning and then screaming the name
'Kurama'. Finally Shiori had enough and went to
the person on the bed that they now knew wasn't
human at all.
"Shh... be still. You'll only make it
worse," Shiori had cooed to Hiei as she stroked
his sweat dampened hair.
Shuuichi had been too stunned to move as he
watched Shiori coddle the demon that had left
angry red burns on her hands. After a few minutes
of gentle whispers of motherly nonsense the young
man on the bed calmed and then had laid still.
Between the two of them they had pulled the
dagger from him. It evaporated as soon as it had
left his body, reinforcing that this young man was
much more than he appeared. He had stitched and
dressed the wound and within a few hours Hiei had
started to complain about being in bed, even
though he had been delirious enough to not be able
to recognize who was around him. Shiori had
patiently, if not forcibly, kept him down.
Over the next two days Shiori had questioned
the demon and said that she found him prideful,
arrogant, and stubborn. On the outside. On the
inside she had seen a man that had never really
been a boy. A man that had grown up believing
that he could only rely on himself. A man that
was in love with her son, and seemed to have a
*very* personal relationship with him.
The only thing that made the whole experience
almost worth it after being cursed at, yelled at,
hit with a pillow, glared at and having to watch
Shiori hover over the rude little beast like a
guardian angel, was the look on his brother's face
when he saw his lover having dinner with them.
Shiori had calmly turned to her son and simply
said that they had a *lot* to talk about.
Shuuichi jabbed the disconnect button on his
cellular phone with disgust. Kurama's cellular
was for emergencies only and very few people had
the number, but he wasn't answering. Shuuichi
dialed his brother's apartment and started to
really worry when he couldn't get an answer there
either. In desperation he dialed his home phone
and waited for Shiori to answer.
"Hello?"
"Mother, do you know where *Kurama* is? One
of his *old* friends is paying the hospital a
visit and I really need to talk to him," he said
with as much emphasis as he could without alarming
the woman at the other end of the line.
"The last I knew, he said that he and Hiei
were going to Yukina's to visit. Let me get the
number. What's going on? Are you all right?" she
asked worriedly.
Shuuichi could hear her flipping pages as she
talked. He looked at his watch and discovered
that a full ten minutes had passed since he had
left the ER.
"I'm fine, Mother, but there's this girl here
that was brought in from the mountain area. She's
hurt badly and I don't think that...." Shuuichi
stopped in mid sentence with true fear.
It had been ten minutes since Akira had
administered the Dexteran. The second blood
results would have been back by now, and he knew
that they would have come back negative also. If
he knew Akira, saving that girl's life was more
important than following the rules. If he thought
she was going to die of blood loss, then he would
administer her a full transfusion, test results be
damned. A transfusion of human blood directly
into a youkai.
"Mother, get a hold of Kurama and tell him to
get to the hospital as fast as he can," he told
her as he started to run down the hall, back to
the ER.
"Ok Shuuichi, but tell me what's going on,"
she demanded, worry evident in her soft voice.
"No time. Just make sure Kurama gets here,"
he said as he disconnected the line.
He didn't know what he was going to say to
Akira to keep him from giving the youkai blood,
but he was aware of the results if he didn't.
After his brother had confessed to being a youko
and having Hiei as a lover, he had given both
himself a Shiori a crash course on youkais. One
of the carnal rules was to never let a youkai
drink human blood if it could be helped. He had
been told that the effects could be as varied as
euphoria to an ultra increase in power, depending
on the species of youkai that drank the blood.
Shuuichi wasn't sure if a direct infusion of blood
would have the same effects as drinking it would,
but he didn't want to find out.
He turned the corner in time to see some of
the nurses leave station 4. He pulled the privacy
curtain aside and saw Akira slowly unwrap the ace
bandage from the girl's leg. He looked around the
room and saw that his friend had done as he had
expected. There where two empty bags of blood
next to the full one that was being fed through
the IV. A pressure cuff was wrapped around the
units of blood so that the blood would be
administer at the fastest rate possible. He
watched the girl for any movement, but besides the
color returning to her cheeks there was no change.
"Hey man, I was wondering were you ran off
to," Akira said with a smile, then nodded over at
the girl, "I really thought we were going to lose
her, but after I got the blood in her all her
signs went back to normal."
Shuuichi didn't answer as he continued to
stare at the young lady in the bed. Maybe he was
wrong, maybe she was just a normal girl with weird
eyes and abnormal blood.
"By the gods, what the fuck is going on!"
Akira gasped at he stepped back from the bed.
Shuuichi looked over at his friend and saw
what had caused his reaction. Akira had pulled
away the pressure dressing so that he could repair
the compound fracture underneath, but the wound
was healing itself. The skin was stretching just
enough so that the bone could be pulled back into
the flesh it had previously ripped though.
Shuuichi felt his stomach turn as he watched the
girl's oddly bent left arm straighten and then
make a grinding noise as the edges of the bone
fitted back together. The rise and fall of her
breathing became less labored and faster as each
of her ribs fused back into place.
There was only one nurse in the room with
them and she made the sign of the cross over her
chest as she slid down the wall onto the floor,
blabbing incoherently. Suddenly there was a noise
in the room, like thunder rolling in the distance
and rapidly coming closer. As the noise grew in
volume, the girl spasmed and grabbed the metal
side rail of the stretcher with a white knuckled
grip. The noise got louder and louder and the bar
under the youkai's hand started to melt. When she
opened her eyes, there were no warm red irises to
greet the light, just a blank, white nothingness
that stared off into the corner of the room.
Shuuichi grabbed the nurse by the arm and
forced her to her feet as he took hold of Akira's
jacket with the other. He forced both of them out
of the room, but just before he went though the
doorway he looked back. The youkai was now
surrounded by a intense red glow that hurt his
eyes to look at. He was trapped at the door,
mesmerized by the spectacle he was seeing.
The aura around the girl wavered a bit and
then started to take shape. Before his very eyes
he saw a fox shaped out of fire form and stand
over the girl as if it was protecting her. The
fox lifted it's head and joined it's voice to the
noise of raging thunder with a howl of it's own.
Shuuichi felt the floor shake beneath his feet and
knew that he had to get out of there fast.
He turned and ran for the nurses' station
dragging his two gaping companions with him, then
dove behind the counter . The room he had just
left emitted such a bright light that the entire
ER was cast in a deep red glow. He could hear
screams of terror as the quaking became noticeable
in the rest of the ER, and then station 4 exploded
in a fiery ball of heat.
The screams of the other people in the room
filled Shuuichi's ears along with the sound of the
building around him crumbling. A nurse ran passed
where he sat, her white uniform engulfed in
flames. He rushed to help her put out the
unnatural crimson fire with his own coat. Once
she was no longer in danger, she passed out on the
floor from the fright. A large section of the
roof above him came loose from the walls and fell
on top of them.
Shuuichi was pinned under the impossible
weight, struggling to get his legs free when the
flames and the smoke parted to allow their
mistress to walk through. The girl that had been
so close to dying a few minutes ago limped heavily
on her left leg towards him, her eyes still blank
and lifeless.
The fire around her licked at her legs and
hips, but she gave no indication that she felt
them as she continued onward. Her black hair
reflected every flicker of the light, making it a
deep red curtain that fell to her waist. Beside
her trotted the same fox made of fire that had
stood over her. It brushed against her leg and
she reached her hand down to stroke it's head.
The fox craned it's head upward to her hand and
then turned into pure crimson fire that curled
around her wrist and arm like a snake before it
traveled up to disappear into her hair.
From the nurses' station, Shuuichi heard a
cry of fear and rage as Akira came at the female
youkai with a piece of steel from the collapsed
wall. Her eyes narrowed almost inperciveablely as
the bottom of the flames changed to a eerie silver
blue and then traveled up the tongues of fire.
From base to each pointed tip, the fire around her
was froze into jagged crystalline shapes.
A mist formed around the youkai and swallowed
her inside it's thick depths. Akira slowed in his
steps, since the object of his fury was no longer
visible. Suddenly something shot out of the fog
and hit Akira square in the chest, sending him
flying into the wall. When he impacted, the object
attached to the center of his breast released
dozens of ice vines that whipped out to lace into
the cracked surface of the wall. Akira hung there
in the cage of ice brambles still holding the
impromptu weapon in his hand.
The mist slowly inched it's way over to were
Shuuichi's friend was pinned and then parted to
reveal a transformed youkai. Almost absurdly
dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, the youkai
stepped toward Akira with her taloned hand
outstretched. Her hair had changed in color to an
icy blue that fit the frozen flames at her feet
that broke like dried twigs under her tread. She
was taller than she was before, but her eyes were
still empty and emotionless.
Her hand lunged out and grabbed the steel in
Akira's slacking grip. She pulled it away as the
vines that surrounded him wrapped themselves
around his wrist to yank him tighter back against
the wall. She looked at the pitiful weapon in her
hand and then at the man bound to the wall. She
pushed his head up with her free hand and then
showed him the steel. From her hand came a blue
light that engulfed the object and then
disappeared to show that the weapon was now frozen
solid. Shuuichi noticed that there was a collar
around her neck that glowed with white hot
brilliance as she did this. With a squeeze of her
hand, the youkai shattered the steel inches from
Akira's face.
Shuuichi's friend passed out and the girl let
go of his head. Shuuichi watched as she turned
away from Akira and walked toward him again. He
thought that she was going to pass by, but then
she stopped right beside him and looked down into
his face. She lifted her hand toward him and he
knew that he was her next target.
==============
Kat
Chapter 13
written by Kat Aubuchon
edited by Windlily
Shuuichi strolled the halls of the hospital
after visiting one of his young patients in
intensive care. He hadn't been a hospital
employee for quite a few years, and the only
reason he was here now was because one of his
patients had just had a tumor removed from the
base of her spine. He had started his own
practice about five years ago and had become a
successful pediatrician with more patients than he
could handle sometimes. Of course his most
interesting patient was one that he didn't even
bill, Urameshi Keiko.
He had been one of the first people that the
Urameshi's had consulted when Keiko had discovered
she was pregnant again. They had asked him to
monitor her pregnancy and to deliver the new baby,
or babies. He had run his own tests to double
check the results from the batteries of her first
pregnancy and knew that he was on shaky ground.
He just couldn't predict an accurate due date with
only one pregnancy to go on. He had given his
best guess, knowing that it would reassure Keiko
and Yuusuke and was very relieved when Yuusuke had
moved his family to live with the Kuwabara's.
Yukina could use her powers to help Keiko when her
time came and keep her stable until he got there.
On the way to his car Shuuichi just happened
to see an old friend's car parked in the first
row. It was instantly recognizable since it was
bright orange with florescent green flowers
painted on the side. Akira was one of guys he had
gone through medical school with and his car fit
his personality, which was, in a word, weird.
He debated whether to pay his old friend a
visit or just head home, since Shiori was sure to
be waiting for him. With a grin he threw his bag
into the car and trotted over to the ER entrance
where he knew Akira would be. His friend had opted
for ER duty after his internship because he like
the challenges and the constant drive to perform.
Shuuichi entered the ER and was immediately spied
by the hyperactive head physician.
"Shuuichi, what the hell are you doing here?
Don't you make enough money giving iron drops and
lollipops to kids, or do you just miss the
excitement?" Akira asked as he took Shuuichi's
hand and shook it hard.
"I don't play being one of the gods as well
as you do, Akira. I'll take a screaming kid over
a dying patient any day."
"Speaking of screaming kids, when is Shiori
going to fix you up with a nice little girl so
that she can have some grandchildren?" Akira
teased with a smile.
"Don't give her any ideas, or I won't invite
you over for dinner ever again."
Akira put his hand over his heart like he had
been shot and gasped, "Don't even tease like that,
man! Your mother could probably unite the
countries of the world with her cooking. By the
way, what are you having tonight?" he asked with a
wink.
"Your favorite," Shuuichi answered with a
grin and a wink of his own, "Your welcome to come
if you like. I'm sure she'll love to see you."
"Good. It's a date. I'm off shift...
"Team 9 en route, we've got a female,
multiple fractures, the worst a compound fracture
of the left femur with heavy bleeding and possible
sever head trauma," the radio at the nurses'
station blared suddenly.
"... sometime tomorrow," Akira finished
grumpily.
Shuuichi only smiled in response and followed
as his friend jogged over to the station to get
the full report from the EMT crew.
"Heart rate in the 90's and blood pressure is
85 over 45. Age, late teens to early twenties
of... uh... undetermined race. Patient is
unresponsive to verbal or physical stimuli.
Allergies/meds unknown. Fracture has been
stabilized with a SAM splint with an ace over a
five by nine pressure dressing. We've started a
KVO normal saline solution IV using a 18 gauge
catheter in the right antecubital. ETA two
minutes."
"All right. I want station 4 cleared and
prepped, and I want three units of O negative on
stand-by. I want her typed and cross matched as
soon as she comes through that door. You're going
to have to excuse me Shuuichi," his friend said as
he raced with the nurses down the hall toward
station 4.
The two minute wait seemed more like seconds
to Shuuichi. He watched his friend take immediate
charge when the unconscious girl was wheeled into
the station.
"Miss! Miss! Can you hear me?" Akira said
as he forced her left eyelid open and shined his
pen light into her eye.
The girl reacted by trying to turn her head
away from the light, but Akira held on to her chin
firmly so that he could look in the other eye.
"PEERL normal at 3 millimeters," Akira
announced and put the pin light back in his
pocket, "Shuuichi, come take a look at her eyes.
I've never seen anything like this."
Shuuichi made his way between the nurses,
feeling like he was in the way as they buzzed
around him. She suddenly opened her eyes and
looked directly at him as he put his hand on her
cheek to hold her head still. In all his life he
had never seen someone so completely taken by fear
as this girl lying in front of him now. She
looked up at him with such terror that he almost
didn't notice the color of her eyes. Deep red
eyes, like a certain fire demon he knew.
"Blood pressure 95 over 66, pulse in the 90's
and respiration, 24," one of the nurses informed
the head physician, but Shuuichi couldn't break
away from the patient's stare.
"Miss! Do you know where you are, Miss?
Miss, can you tell me your name?" Akira kept
asking the girl, but she never broke her eye
contact with Shuuichi.
He reached out his hand and placed it over
hers. Her eyelids drifted back shut out of a
combination of blood loss and pure exhaustion.
"Doctor, the blood typing came back
negative," a large nurse to Shuuichi's left said
as she handed Akira a paper.
"What the hell do you mean it came back
negative?" he practically yelled as he grabbed the
paper from her.
"The type and cross match doesn't fit any
know blood type on record."
"That's impossible!" he yelled as he absently
thrust the blood test results at Shuuichi, wanting
his opinion. "I want them run again,
immediately."
The nurse quickly drew another blood sample
as Akira continued to give orders.
"OK, until the real type cross comes in, I
want Central Venous Pressure Monitoring and 500 cc
of Dexteran 40 and infuse remaining dose slowly to
keep her going."
Shuuichi looked at the test results and the
eerie feeling that started when he had looked into
the girl's eyes grew stronger and more persistent.
The nurse said that the blood typing didn't fit
any blood type *on record*, but he had seen a
blood type with these levels before, in youkai.
Shuuichi knew that they would never get a clear
result, no matter how many times they tried to
type and cross match the girl.
He looked back at the girl laying prone on
the stretcher. Her arm was obviously broken and
laid at an odd angle to the rest of her body. The
leg pinned between the white boards of the splint
was the major concern of the moment. The splint
was smeared red with her blood despite the EMTs
effort to apply pressure to the wound. The heavy
blood loss was evident in her much too pale face.
If the girl was a youkai, what was she doing here?
Shuuichi studied the equipment monitoring her
vital signs and saw that the Dexteran was keeping
what blood she had left circulating, but her heart
rate was up and her pressure was going down. She
was losing blood, a lot of blood, with every beat
of her heart and the Dexteran wasn't going to hold
forever.
Shuuichi moved aside as one of the nurses
tried to apply more pressure to the wound on the
girl's leg. He left station 4 and hurried out
into the hall where there was less noise as he
pulled out his cellular phone. He dialed his
brother's number and let the phone ring as he
remembered the first time he had been introduced
to a youkai.
He had come home late that night from his
internship and was dead on his feet as he walked
through the front door. He still lived with
Shiori in the same house they had moved into when
his father married that wonderful woman. He loved
Shiori like she was his own mother and even though
he could have moved out a long time ago, he
preferred to have a smiling face when he came
home, plus it let his brother move out without too
much guilt.
On that strange night that so many secrets
were revealed, he had sat down on the couch with
Shiori and was telling her about the day's events
when there had been the sound of shattering glass
upstairs. He had tried to get Shiori to stay
downstairs until he had a chance to check it out,
but she had followed him anyway.
Shuuichi had checked each of the rooms and
when he came to his older brother's old room he
saw that the window had been smashed in. He had
walked to the opening to see if a branch from the
tree outside had fallen when a small figure had
stepped out of the shadowed corner. It had
stumbled, mumbled the name 'Kurama' and passed out
into his arms.
Shuuichi hadn't known what to think so he had
picked what he had thought was a young boy up and
placed him on the bed. Shiori had moved closer to
them and recognized the young man. She had told
him that he was one of his brother's friends that
had come to visit once, named Hiei.
Shuuichi quickly took the scarf from around
Hiei's neck and the draping covering from his
shoulders. His hands had came away wet with blood
and he looked his new patient over for the
obviously heavily bleeding wound. He found an
ornately decorated dagger protruding from his
stomach. Hiei's left hand had been gripping it
tightly, weakly pulling at it.
"Cursed dagger, Kurama," the bleeding man had
rasped as he grabbed a hold of Shuuichi's sleeve,
"Only a human can take it out."
Shuuichi hadn't had the foggiest idea who
'Kurama' was or what curses and humans had to do
with the dagger in Hiei's belly, but he looked
into his glazed red eyes and had known that he
needed help.
"Stay with him mother while I call an
ambulance," he had said as he turned to leave, but
before he could Hiei arched his back and screamed.
Shuuichi had tried to hold him down, but Hiei
had struggled with a strength that belied his
small frame. Shiori came to his aid and held the
young man's right arm down to the mattress.
Suddenly Hiei had tensed and his whole body grew
as tight as a bow string. Shiori had given a yelp
of pain and jerked her hands away. Hiei's arm had
literally caught fire and had burned her with the
strange black heat that encircled it. Both of
them had stepped back as Hiei continued his
thrashing, moaning and then screaming the name
'Kurama'. Finally Shiori had enough and went to
the person on the bed that they now knew wasn't
human at all.
"Shh... be still. You'll only make it
worse," Shiori had cooed to Hiei as she stroked
his sweat dampened hair.
Shuuichi had been too stunned to move as he
watched Shiori coddle the demon that had left
angry red burns on her hands. After a few minutes
of gentle whispers of motherly nonsense the young
man on the bed calmed and then had laid still.
Between the two of them they had pulled the
dagger from him. It evaporated as soon as it had
left his body, reinforcing that this young man was
much more than he appeared. He had stitched and
dressed the wound and within a few hours Hiei had
started to complain about being in bed, even
though he had been delirious enough to not be able
to recognize who was around him. Shiori had
patiently, if not forcibly, kept him down.
Over the next two days Shiori had questioned
the demon and said that she found him prideful,
arrogant, and stubborn. On the outside. On the
inside she had seen a man that had never really
been a boy. A man that had grown up believing
that he could only rely on himself. A man that
was in love with her son, and seemed to have a
*very* personal relationship with him.
The only thing that made the whole experience
almost worth it after being cursed at, yelled at,
hit with a pillow, glared at and having to watch
Shiori hover over the rude little beast like a
guardian angel, was the look on his brother's face
when he saw his lover having dinner with them.
Shiori had calmly turned to her son and simply
said that they had a *lot* to talk about.
Shuuichi jabbed the disconnect button on his
cellular phone with disgust. Kurama's cellular
was for emergencies only and very few people had
the number, but he wasn't answering. Shuuichi
dialed his brother's apartment and started to
really worry when he couldn't get an answer there
either. In desperation he dialed his home phone
and waited for Shiori to answer.
"Hello?"
"Mother, do you know where *Kurama* is? One
of his *old* friends is paying the hospital a
visit and I really need to talk to him," he said
with as much emphasis as he could without alarming
the woman at the other end of the line.
"The last I knew, he said that he and Hiei
were going to Yukina's to visit. Let me get the
number. What's going on? Are you all right?" she
asked worriedly.
Shuuichi could hear her flipping pages as she
talked. He looked at his watch and discovered
that a full ten minutes had passed since he had
left the ER.
"I'm fine, Mother, but there's this girl here
that was brought in from the mountain area. She's
hurt badly and I don't think that...." Shuuichi
stopped in mid sentence with true fear.
It had been ten minutes since Akira had
administered the Dexteran. The second blood
results would have been back by now, and he knew
that they would have come back negative also. If
he knew Akira, saving that girl's life was more
important than following the rules. If he thought
she was going to die of blood loss, then he would
administer her a full transfusion, test results be
damned. A transfusion of human blood directly
into a youkai.
"Mother, get a hold of Kurama and tell him to
get to the hospital as fast as he can," he told
her as he started to run down the hall, back to
the ER.
"Ok Shuuichi, but tell me what's going on,"
she demanded, worry evident in her soft voice.
"No time. Just make sure Kurama gets here,"
he said as he disconnected the line.
He didn't know what he was going to say to
Akira to keep him from giving the youkai blood,
but he was aware of the results if he didn't.
After his brother had confessed to being a youko
and having Hiei as a lover, he had given both
himself a Shiori a crash course on youkais. One
of the carnal rules was to never let a youkai
drink human blood if it could be helped. He had
been told that the effects could be as varied as
euphoria to an ultra increase in power, depending
on the species of youkai that drank the blood.
Shuuichi wasn't sure if a direct infusion of blood
would have the same effects as drinking it would,
but he didn't want to find out.
He turned the corner in time to see some of
the nurses leave station 4. He pulled the privacy
curtain aside and saw Akira slowly unwrap the ace
bandage from the girl's leg. He looked around the
room and saw that his friend had done as he had
expected. There where two empty bags of blood
next to the full one that was being fed through
the IV. A pressure cuff was wrapped around the
units of blood so that the blood would be
administer at the fastest rate possible. He
watched the girl for any movement, but besides the
color returning to her cheeks there was no change.
"Hey man, I was wondering were you ran off
to," Akira said with a smile, then nodded over at
the girl, "I really thought we were going to lose
her, but after I got the blood in her all her
signs went back to normal."
Shuuichi didn't answer as he continued to
stare at the young lady in the bed. Maybe he was
wrong, maybe she was just a normal girl with weird
eyes and abnormal blood.
"By the gods, what the fuck is going on!"
Akira gasped at he stepped back from the bed.
Shuuichi looked over at his friend and saw
what had caused his reaction. Akira had pulled
away the pressure dressing so that he could repair
the compound fracture underneath, but the wound
was healing itself. The skin was stretching just
enough so that the bone could be pulled back into
the flesh it had previously ripped though.
Shuuichi felt his stomach turn as he watched the
girl's oddly bent left arm straighten and then
make a grinding noise as the edges of the bone
fitted back together. The rise and fall of her
breathing became less labored and faster as each
of her ribs fused back into place.
There was only one nurse in the room with
them and she made the sign of the cross over her
chest as she slid down the wall onto the floor,
blabbing incoherently. Suddenly there was a noise
in the room, like thunder rolling in the distance
and rapidly coming closer. As the noise grew in
volume, the girl spasmed and grabbed the metal
side rail of the stretcher with a white knuckled
grip. The noise got louder and louder and the bar
under the youkai's hand started to melt. When she
opened her eyes, there were no warm red irises to
greet the light, just a blank, white nothingness
that stared off into the corner of the room.
Shuuichi grabbed the nurse by the arm and
forced her to her feet as he took hold of Akira's
jacket with the other. He forced both of them out
of the room, but just before he went though the
doorway he looked back. The youkai was now
surrounded by a intense red glow that hurt his
eyes to look at. He was trapped at the door,
mesmerized by the spectacle he was seeing.
The aura around the girl wavered a bit and
then started to take shape. Before his very eyes
he saw a fox shaped out of fire form and stand
over the girl as if it was protecting her. The
fox lifted it's head and joined it's voice to the
noise of raging thunder with a howl of it's own.
Shuuichi felt the floor shake beneath his feet and
knew that he had to get out of there fast.
He turned and ran for the nurses' station
dragging his two gaping companions with him, then
dove behind the counter . The room he had just
left emitted such a bright light that the entire
ER was cast in a deep red glow. He could hear
screams of terror as the quaking became noticeable
in the rest of the ER, and then station 4 exploded
in a fiery ball of heat.
The screams of the other people in the room
filled Shuuichi's ears along with the sound of the
building around him crumbling. A nurse ran passed
where he sat, her white uniform engulfed in
flames. He rushed to help her put out the
unnatural crimson fire with his own coat. Once
she was no longer in danger, she passed out on the
floor from the fright. A large section of the
roof above him came loose from the walls and fell
on top of them.
Shuuichi was pinned under the impossible
weight, struggling to get his legs free when the
flames and the smoke parted to allow their
mistress to walk through. The girl that had been
so close to dying a few minutes ago limped heavily
on her left leg towards him, her eyes still blank
and lifeless.
The fire around her licked at her legs and
hips, but she gave no indication that she felt
them as she continued onward. Her black hair
reflected every flicker of the light, making it a
deep red curtain that fell to her waist. Beside
her trotted the same fox made of fire that had
stood over her. It brushed against her leg and
she reached her hand down to stroke it's head.
The fox craned it's head upward to her hand and
then turned into pure crimson fire that curled
around her wrist and arm like a snake before it
traveled up to disappear into her hair.
From the nurses' station, Shuuichi heard a
cry of fear and rage as Akira came at the female
youkai with a piece of steel from the collapsed
wall. Her eyes narrowed almost inperciveablely as
the bottom of the flames changed to a eerie silver
blue and then traveled up the tongues of fire.
From base to each pointed tip, the fire around her
was froze into jagged crystalline shapes.
A mist formed around the youkai and swallowed
her inside it's thick depths. Akira slowed in his
steps, since the object of his fury was no longer
visible. Suddenly something shot out of the fog
and hit Akira square in the chest, sending him
flying into the wall. When he impacted, the object
attached to the center of his breast released
dozens of ice vines that whipped out to lace into
the cracked surface of the wall. Akira hung there
in the cage of ice brambles still holding the
impromptu weapon in his hand.
The mist slowly inched it's way over to were
Shuuichi's friend was pinned and then parted to
reveal a transformed youkai. Almost absurdly
dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, the youkai
stepped toward Akira with her taloned hand
outstretched. Her hair had changed in color to an
icy blue that fit the frozen flames at her feet
that broke like dried twigs under her tread. She
was taller than she was before, but her eyes were
still empty and emotionless.
Her hand lunged out and grabbed the steel in
Akira's slacking grip. She pulled it away as the
vines that surrounded him wrapped themselves
around his wrist to yank him tighter back against
the wall. She looked at the pitiful weapon in her
hand and then at the man bound to the wall. She
pushed his head up with her free hand and then
showed him the steel. From her hand came a blue
light that engulfed the object and then
disappeared to show that the weapon was now frozen
solid. Shuuichi noticed that there was a collar
around her neck that glowed with white hot
brilliance as she did this. With a squeeze of her
hand, the youkai shattered the steel inches from
Akira's face.
Shuuichi's friend passed out and the girl let
go of his head. Shuuichi watched as she turned
away from Akira and walked toward him again. He
thought that she was going to pass by, but then
she stopped right beside him and looked down into
his face. She lifted her hand toward him and he
knew that he was her next target.
==============
Kat