Attention Fanfiction.net Friends:
Many thanks for the wonderful words of praise--and delightful death threats!--you've left me here and at my email address! I love them all!!!
You really know how to make a writer feel loved when you indicate that his works can cause such a strong emotional reaction! I'm more than pleased to see a total of 76 comments here so far and I wanted to mention that I've read each and every one of them and that they made me feel strong enough to keep working tonight when I felt the need for sleep almost overtake me! In fact, it made me feel *so* strong, I wandered back to the rough draft and played around with it a little and worked out another new wrinkle that I wanted to insert somewhere. Ah, the joys of *never* releasing something as a rough draft when revisions allows one to add foreshadowing!!
{stops being genki over his plot devices and drops into serious warning mode in the hopes of sparing a few kind souls from unexpected pain and sorrow}
Before I turn you loose on tonight's posting run, may I please mention a warning that is embedded in the opening of this Part that might get overlooked by those who are in a hurry? The GW community used to call these a "Kleenex warning" back when I used to write sorrow for Duo Maxwell & Company and I'm afraid that it was appropriate to add one here, too, not only for what you are about to read but for a few parts in the future. I hadn't realized these were "tearjerker" scenes until I asked a friend to look over them and she got upset and told me she hated me for making poor Kenken suffer so much and that I ought to be ashamed of myself. But she immediately forgave me and said it was such good angst that she was glad to read it and that I ought to simply add this warning and leave it at that, so here you go. Two warnings are even better, right?
{shakes head at the level of angst in this posting run and thinks Melpomene must have bought stock in Kimberly-Clark to create these heart wrenching, facial-tissue-demanding scenes and then willingly sharing them with so many nice anime fans who never did a thing to hurt anyone}
Enjoy the Angst!
~~~Enigma~~~
(who didn't really *mean* to make his friend so upset but she said that the tears were worth it and the story runs unchanged so you can judge for yourself)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Title: Cold November Rain [part 13/?]
Book 1 of "Redirecting Destiny" and prequel to "Romantic Resolutions"
Author: Enigma
Series: Weiss Kreuz
Written: January, 2002
Rating: R
Pairings: (Yohji + Ken + Aya) (Omi + Nagi) (Brad + Schu)
Category: Dark! Yaoi Angst Action/Adventure Violence Blood Squick Language Romance. AU-OOC.
Archive: fanfiction.net [author: "E-sama the Llama"], Scripta Manent: http://digilander.iol.it/sakaba/Home.html
Spoilers: None, safe for new viewers as well as old.
Warnings: dark! yaoi, heavy angst, action/adventure, graphic violence, large quantities of blood, squick: medical and other, coarse language, agonized and overwrought romance, rare touches of sap, cigarettes, destiny, cruel cliffhangers, original characters. AU-OOC.
Disclaimer: "Weiss Kreuz" is the property of Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiss. This unauthorized work of fanfiction is intended for entertainment only; kindly do not sue me.
Notes: When Ken falls in battle, how can the other members of Weiss cope with the guilt and blame that they all seem to share and will he survive in spite of the odds against him?
++ date and time reference within the storyline beginning with the day of the battle ++
{{telepathic speech}}
*****
Special Notes: The medical information included in this story is accurate to the best of the author's knowledge which was gained primarily through personal experience with some supplementary information from research in layman's texts on the matters at hand. I'm not a doctor, neither do I pretend to be one, but I've spent more hours inside hospitals, ERs, ORs, ICUs, CCUs, and labs to know more than I care to and this is the fruit of that knowledge. I have no intention of delineating which specific incidents in my life and that of my family has given rise to certain knowledge, however, I can at least reassure that it wasn't all gained at once the way it's being presented here, and for that, I am grateful.
Also, if reading a realistic discussion of severe injuries like Ken's are in this story upsets you, allow me to recommend a box of tissues be kept close at hand as you read this as well as several fairly intense scenes to come. The shooting was only the beginning.
*****
++ day: 1. time: 1400-1430 hours ++
*****
"What the hell do you mean 'it's over'?!?" Yohji practically screamed, lunging forward as if to grab the man by the lapels again, threatening Egami with bodily injury if he didn't get the answers he wanted to hear.
"Nani?" The exhausted surgeon asked in confusion as he looked up into jade eyes raging with an inhuman anger and fury directed at him much the way the same power had been leveled at the criminals who died within the illegal drug operation mere hours prior. Gazing at Nagi whose eyes were suddenly a much deeper blue as he exerted his powers to restrain the wire-wielding assassin from acting prematurely, the man asked, "Didn't you ask me if the operation was finished? Because it is. Like I said, it's all over."
"Calm down, Yohji!" Aya commanded, voice uncharacteristically pleading as he realized that the way his powerful lover was struggling he was endangering himself as well as the diminutive telekinetic. Confusion, anger, hope, sorrow, and pain filled violet eyes as he turned towards the doctor and demanded, "Explain yourself, Egami! What *precisely* do you mean 'it's over'?!"
The physician looked baffled for a moment, he was accustomed to words like those being greeted with more positive reactions, then realized they'd come to the wrong conclusion. "No, no, you don't understand!" He raised both hands in front of himself as if to ask for clemency and rushed to say, "My team is completing the closure process right now and then your friend will go to the recovery room before being transferred to the ICU."
"Then Ken-kun's going to be okay?" Omi asked eagerly, barely aware of the struggle his boyfriend was experiencing until Yohji stopped fighting his invisible shield and Nagi slumped against the Weiss archer's side, temporarily tired from the effort of halting a runaway Balinese in his tracks.
"I didn't say that." The doctor frowned and then explained, "As I told you earlier, the entire procedure was touch and go. We had quite a few challenges from the very beginning simply due to the massive amount of damage that bullet holes in the torso can cause as well as the resulting catastrophic blood loss they caused. His systems were severely stressed and the hospital's lack of type B blood was a problem, too." He glanced at Omi and added, "By the way, young man, I understand that you are the one responsible for the tourniquets being applied to the arm and leg injuries, is this correct?"
Cerulean eyes were moist with unshed tears as Omi nodded, "Yes, that was me. I guess they didn't really help as much as I thought they would, but--"
His words were silenced by Egami interrupting to insist, "Far from it! In fact, I think without those injuries being isolated from the remainder of the vascular system, he would've bled to death before he ever even *got* to the hospital in the first place! No, it was indeed a most commendable effort and I wanted to thank you for it. We wouldn't even have had the last eight hours to try to repair the damage without that initial treatment and your friends mentioned that you might want to know."
"Thank you," Omi responded in a small voice and looked at Aya and Yohji before saying, "I'm glad it helped a little, but what about everything else? Why didn't you say he'd be all right, Dr. Egami?"
The other two Weiss assassins each spared the boy his own version of encouragement as the elder blond smiled sadly and the scarlet-haired man gave him a solemn nod before everyone returned their attention to the surgeon.
"Well, it's too early to say we found absolutely everything, we're waiting on some tests from the lab," the doctor spoke slowly, carefully choosing his words to avoid another misunderstanding such as the one about the surgery being over, "but we believe we found the vast majority. The punctured lung was fairly straightforward to repair but the same bullet disturbed the lining of the heart. We've put some protective stitches in place and will monitor it as it heals, though, so we're hopeful." The man wisely refrained from saying how many of the claw-wielding assassin's ribs had had to be cut free of his sternum and wrenched open to make these repairs, the added damage being unavoidable and he felt it could wait.
Taking a breath and mentally reviewing the other wounds, he continued, "Then there were the injuries to the extremities. The compound fracture in the left arm probably looked worse than it really was with the bone protruding like that, but it was the blood loss from a severed artery that was the greater issue there. That's been repaired as best we could, plenty of sutures at many levels of tissue, but he'll be wearing a cast on it for quite some time. The leg was a simpler matter. The bullet ripped through multiple layers of muscle tissue at an oblique angle and succeeded in tearing it up fairly badly, but again other than sutures there wasn't much we could do about it and now it's bound in some fairly substantial bandages that will need to be replaced often. He'll most likely experience a fairly radical reduction in muscle mass in both areas, so he'll be looking at several months of rehab, probably."
For the former athlete, the physical therapy would undoubtedly be frustrating, however Ken would have a greater appreciation for the benefits of obeying the rules and restrictions placed on him if he ever wanted to be able to run and play soccer with the neighborhood team he coached.
Seeing most of those listening nodding or otherwise indicating they understood, Egami moved to the worst areas of injury, beginning with a warning, "The next part that I need to discuss with you may not make a lot of sense at first, but hear me out. The patient was shot twice in the abdomen and, unfortunately, both of his kidneys were injured because of it. One was irretrievably damaged and we had to remove it entirely. It left us with quite a bit of free matter loose in the abdominal cavity, but we think we got all of it. The other one, though, we felt we could repair, so we did our best. If it regains full function, he should be able to live on it alone for the rest of his life without too much trouble. If, however, it fails to heal fully, he will be added to the roster of those needing an organ donation and place him on routine dialysis."
"How soon could he get a new kidney if one was needed, doctor?" Omi asked, recalling his biology teacher talking to his class about how so few people in Japan seemed willing to sign-up to be organ donors and urging them all to think about it. [1]
Egami shook his head sadly, "There's no way to say, I'm afraid. His blood type is fairly unusual to begin with and then there are other tissue-match issues to contend with. Unless he has relatives that are willing to consider it? A brother or a sister perhaps?" He looked almost hopeful as he glanced at the group.
"No, he has no one but us, doctor," Yohji stated darkly, realizing that was the truth for all of them except Aya to the best of his knowledge. The lack of blood relatives for the members of Weiss had never meant more than the absence of the emotional support system most people took for granted. However, now that this issue had arisen he was aware of the fact that certain things might be more difficult or even impossible because of it.
The doctor nodded as if this was the answer he'd expected, "So I see. Well, in that case, I'm afraid there's no way to predict, but it would most likely be a period of years if ever at all. There's simply not enough organs donated to meet the need and then there's the transport time involved in getting an organ to a recipient while it's still viable. It's regrettable, but to be entirely realistic, I'd have to say it probably wouldn't happen at all."
"Which means he's looking at a lifetime of dialysis with the eventual collapse of most of his bodily functions followed by death, ne?" Nagi's softly growled statement echoed the depth of feeling he had developed for the chocolate-eyed teen as he grew to care for those whom his boyfriend thought of as brothers. With an angry glare at the man, he added, "That is *not* acceptable!"
"Take it easy, Nagi," Omi urged, sensing a useless and potentially dangerous build-up of the telekinetic's powers even though there wasn't a clear target. "This is *only* a possibility, love. Dr. Egami said the other kidney might heal just fine, let's give it a chance. Please? Why are you so upset about it, anyway?"
Shaken from his sudden anger, the psychic automatically released the power that had threatened to unleash itself randomly, then turned remorseful eyes on his lover and he explained, "I had a friend from school a few years ago who got hurt in a car wreck. He lost both his kidneys right at the start, but they denied him a transplant because he had some rare genetic disorder that everyone assumed he'd die from before he was 30 anyway."
The sable-haired youth's voice lost some of its strength and Manx found herself straining to hear as he continued, "Well, as you can probably imagine, he didn't have much of a life after that. At first it was only a couple days a week at the dialysis center. Then it was more often as well as home dialysis treatments that were pretty horrible as I found out when I dropped by with his homework one day. Then he ended up in the hospital as it just got to be too much for him. He died before he turned thirteen." Teardrops he hadn't felt forming glimmered in the corners of midnight blue eyes as Nagi added emphatically, "We can't let that happen to Ken-kun! We just can't!!"
"Of course we won't, Nagi," Aya's smooth deep voice agreed unexpectedly, his warm hand coming to rest on the distraught boy's shoulder as he looked him in the eye and said, "Trust us, Nagi. Ken is more special than you can imagine and if we thought he might truly suffer that much, Yohji and I would do something to see that it didn't happen, wouldn't we, Yohji?" He gazed at his elder lover and amethyst eyes held a mixture of compassion for the boy he was touching and deep, abiding love for the one he loved who was hopefully recovering from surgery at that very moment.
Emerald eyes blinked with surprise at the swordsman's atypical show of emotion and then Yohji nodded confidently, "You bet, Aya!" He sobered slightly and added, "It's true, Nagi. I've got no clue what Aya's got in mind for a worst case scenario here, but we won't let Ken suffer like that without a fight. Okay?"
Nagi swiped the teardrops from his eyes with an annoyed hand and regarded both of the elder members of Weiss with gratitude. He wondered how to thank them for agreeing to protect a member of the adopted family he seemed to be building among the florist/assassins, but his words weren't necessary as Omi turned to him and offered, "It'll be okay, love, you'll see. They love him. We love him. Ken won't go anywhere without us, I'm sure of it." His gentle words would've ended with a kiss had there not been both Manx and the doctor present, but as it was, he simply smiled and hoped it would be enough.
The physician then cleared his throat nervously and spoke with trepidation, having left the worst for last as most doctors tended to do when they felt out of their league with a patient's prognosis. "I hate to add to your concerns, of course, but I hadn't completed my debriefing of the patient's condition. There is, I'm afraid, one other matter to discuss."
"There is?" Omi asked in a tired voice, "But you said there were five bullets, right? Two went through his arm and leg, one went into his lung by way of his heart, and two hit his kidneys." Wincing visibly at his own summary, he then asked in anguish, "That makes *five* injuries! How can there be *more* bad news, Dr. Egami?"
"Unfortunately," the man shook his head, hating this aspect of being the leader of an emergency room-based surgical team, "the one which left the second kidney damaged yet not destroyed also disturbed the spinal column during its passage through his body. It caused a certain amount of damage that we had a hard time quantifying and we're uncertain what the outcome of *that* particular injury will be in the future."
Nagi and Omi both looked terrified.
The three older people who had heard the earlier debriefing mid-procedure had selectively neglected to mention this issue and the two youngest in the room were horribly shocked as they peered at the woman and the two older assassins.
With a look of sadness, Manx admitted, "We didn't mention this to you two since we had so little to go on. Injuries like this can look so much worse than they truly are, it seemed ill-advised to upset you when we had so little to go on."
Omi nodded sadly. He understood the others' apparent desire to protect himself as well as his boyfriend since they were younger, but it was pointless since they were both hardened killers who had seen the worst that life had to offer already. With a sad sigh, he asked, "So? How bad is it, doctor? Is he going to be paralyzed?"
"We sincerely hope not," the man said earnestly. "We administered a powerful anti-inflammatory agent while we had direct access to the area, then I put on order a thorough course of treatment with more of the same as well as certain measures that are hard to explain. Suffice it to say, we're doing our level best to see to it that if he survives, he *will* walk again."
"That's an awfully big 'if' though, isn't it, doctor?" Manx asked in a soft yet threatening voice. She'd barely kept her own rage in check this entire time and the idea that a virile young man like Ken could be condemned to a lifetime of dialysis while trapped in the confines of a wheelchair made her see red.
"I know," the man hung a salt-and-pepper head and admitted, "The nervous system is a terribly complex mechanism, though. I've seen less damage result in permanent paralysis and far more result in only a mild limp. As always, this relies on luck and faith as well as medical skill, so I'd be lying to claim a greater knowledge of the outcome of that aspect of his injuries than I am."
Finding an inner strength to stand up to the inexplicably powerful woman, he added, "As I told you a few hours ago, he's got the heart of a lion to even survive as long as he has. So much now will rest on his own desire to live as well as whatever you can do to encourage him. If he knows you're here and that you want him to get better, it will help."
"Fine then," Yohji remarked with finality, tired of the man's answers almost all being qualified by one statement or another that implied a lack of control over the situation. "How soon can we go see him? If positive reinforcement is what Ken needs, then we're the ones to give it to him and let's get on with it."
Egami looked up at the resolute blond man and shook his head again, an action that was getting on Yohji's nerves at this point, saying, "I'm afraid that it's standard hospital practice to keep our more at-risk surgery patients off-limits from visitors for at least four to six hours." Seeing the anger returning to the obviously dangerous young men around him he added quickly, "But I've reduced that to two hours for any of the five of you. Why don't you all go get something to eat and plan to meet me back here in a couple of hours? That'll give the recovery room team a chance to get him stabilized and transferred to the ICU before you see him, okay? It'll be better for my staff and better for my patient, too. Do we have a deal?"
The worried friends considered this briefly, then Omi spoke for them all, saying, "All right, we'll do it that way since it sounds like it would be best for Ken-kun. How many visitors are allowed at once? I know it isn't five unless *all* the rules have changed."
Chuckling softly for the first time during the long day, the surgeon replied, "No, it's certainly not 'five', but I think that two is an acceptable number, don't you?" Rising tiredly to his feet, Egami looked forward to getting out of his blood-tainted surgical scrubs and finding a hot cup of coffee to fall into for awhile.
"If that's the best offer you've got, then I guess we take it," Yohji remarked with an unreadable expression on his face. Extending his hand to the doctor, he added, "Thanks for doing your best in there, doctor. If you're right and this is now up to him, then all we gotta do is make sure Ken knows we're still at his side and won't leave him. We'll meet you back here in a couple of hours."
"Great," the physician regarded first Yohji as he shook his hand and then Aya and Manx who followed suit, then Omi and Nagi who had hung back for their own reasons. With an exhausted wave of his hand, the surgeon left them saying, "See you here around five, then."
As the door closed behind him, the remaining individuals embraced and found strength in one another before silently agreeing to leave the room and go to find out what the hospital cafeteria had to offer at this hour. None of them had eaten in far too long and before long they were all quietly eating together and silently sending support to the brunette that they had yet to see after the horrible events of the morning.
*****
To be continued.
Author's Notes:
[1] This is a very real problem not only in Japan but also around the world. I urge everyone to consider it not only for themselves but for those they love. "Share Your Life. Share Your Decision." Tell those closest to you what your preferences are while you're still alive and well and make a difficult time easier while possibly granting a miracle to someone in need.
Full Author's Notes to Run at Conclusion.
Please be advised: Parts 13 & 14 will be posted together.