::Disclaimer: See Chapter One::
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By mid-afternoon, everyone in the Sohma family had given up on trying to visit Kyo in his bed at the hospital.
Kyo hated hospitals. They smelled oppressively of detergent and wilting flowers. The I.V. tube was uncomfortable and impractical. The heavy casts kept him from moving - and no one would tell him how long these plaster obstructions would be rotting away at him. Of course, there was also Kyo's least loved ritual of any medical visit.
Needles.
It was even worse here - there was a shot for everything. Hatori flatly assured him that most of what they had to give him was sedatives so that he would hurt himself - or put a doctor in traction - when they came to check on his ribs. Too bad they didn't help.
The drugs must not have been working correctly - ever minute he felt more awake and more irritable. Sleep wasn't drifting over him as it should have. In fact, it seemed that sleep was drifting further and further away from him. This wasn't helping him at all.
For the first time in his life, Kyo desperately wanted to fall asleep, even though he wasn't tired. Images kept flashing up in his head - the highway, Yuki, the guardrail, the blue car, the back of Yuki's head. Everything came up in bits and pieces. A flash of the guardrail. A still shot of the little blue Miata plowing towards him. Yuki laying beside the car, covered in blood and fighting for his life. If Kyo had not known better, he would have broken down and begged Hatori to erase these memories.
Just as Kyo thought he was going to break down, a different doctor arrived with a shot of a more potent sedative. Kyo couldn't even bring himself to fight; he simply prayed that he would be unconscious quickly. Off in the oblivion where nothing mattered.
Just not forever, he thought as he drifted into darkness with a final picture of the blue car as both vehicles began to roll.
*
Hatori leaned against the wall and let out a sigh that betrayed his stoic face. He was exhausted and worn. His hands had already been treated for the minor scratches he's received pulling Yuki and the girl from the wreckage, but wrapped in gauze, Hatori looked more like a failed suicide attempt then a doctor who had saved two lives.
Shigure had taken note of all this when Hatori sighed. Hatori wasn't as cold as he seemed. He was worried, and Shigure knew it. He was worried too. Kyo's injuries - a broken leg, broken arm and three cracked ribs - hardly amounted to anything compared to Yuki's extensive wounds. Shigure, himself, knew little of the accident, even in these sixteen hours after. Only that they had skidded across three lanes of interstate and managed to slam into the car of a girl.
The girl… Hatori swore it was the oddest thing he had ever seen. When he finally came across the girl, she was laying weakly on the ground. Weak, but conscious.
"I swear, it was like she knew someone was going to come find her. She was sitting there, bleeding herself out onto the ground, and smiling."
Hatori had been momentarily baffled - too baffled to get the girl's name before she lapsed into her coma. Which was just as well. The girl would have bled to death in the car if Hatori hadn't managed to create a tourniquet out of pieces of his coat. Her internal damage had been worse then Yuki-kun's.
Yuki had not been catapulted from the car at 124 kph directly into a tree.
Most of the girl's bleeding was from landing on windshield glass. Her bloody cough was the result of internal damage from slamming into the tree. Yuki had held so much pressure on his chest in the car that he had been unable to breathe for several minutes, along with have severe broken bones. It had been bad.
So bad that Hatori had specifically told Shigure to leave Tohru at her grandfather's and under no circumstances was he to allow her to come.
Shigure sighed for himself. It wouldn't have been right for Tohru to come - he knew there would be too many bad memories to pass, watching her new "family" being torn apart. She wouldn't have even been able to talk to Kyo - the last Shigure had heard, the boy was begging for sedatives to knock him unconscious. It was a pity he would have been the only one awake if Tohru came.
Yuki and the girl had been ushered into emergency care - surgery soon after that. Pins, stitches and removing pieces of embedded glass. From the sounds of it, both would come out of surgery more synthetic pieces of mechanical wonder then pure flesh and blood.
"You didn't want to see him," Momiji wept as Shigure arrived, "All mangled up like a doll in a weed whacker. His clothes were all red… and… and…"
"Sohma-san?"
The doctor's voice cut through his thoughts and he lifted his eyelids. Hatori simply looked at the doctor with the same cold eyes he looked through every waking moment of his day.
"The girl you rescued is waking up now. I'm sorry we didn't inform you when she first came out of surgery, but we weren't aware if you would care to know…" he broke off. "Since you have generously agreed to pay for her medical bills, I would suggest one of you go talk to her."
Shigure choked back laughter. While the doctor said "one of you", he looked directly at Hatori with a sort of "you are bound and obligated, now stop staring and get a move on" look plastered across his face. The man read like a book - a picture book. The look was so plain that Shigure wouldn't have offered to go had he wanted to.
"Aaaah, you go ahead Hatori-kun," he, said, looking up at Hatori benignly. "I will wait here for Yuki-kun to come out of surgery."
If Hatori's glare ever got any colder, Shigure would have sworn it just had. But Hatori recognized his own obligation. He had pulled her out of the woods single-handedly - and had the scratches to prove it - so he would be forced to except thanks at one point or another. With a stiff nod, he assented to a fate he couldn't refuse and moped his way down the hall.
*
Hatori clenched his teeth and ground them together invisibly. He did not want to be the one to greet this girl who he had found in the woods. There was something unnerving about her.
There was something unnerving about someone bleeding to death who could lay and grin.
He was not scared of her - he was tense about what she might do. If the delirium had not been from bloodloss the girl would have to be stark, raving mad. It was more then he could take to deal with another bout of insanity for the day.
Don't think like that, he commanded himself. There's no proof that everyone in the world who is a bit touched in the head is dangerous.
"Here we are," the doctor said shortly, "ICU room 247. I'll leave you here."
As the doctor stalked off - in a downright black mood from having to convince someone to accept thanks - Hatori slipped in. The girl appeared to have drifted off for a moment. She was thin, but tall and lanky. Her hair - thin, black hair - was surprisingly spared from a shearing. Hatori was grateful - he always felt awkward trying to speak to someone and trying to avoid looking at their head at the same time.
He reached for the file, hoping to see an injury list. What he saw shocked him slightly. There was no name marked, but age had been estimated. "19 - 20". He would have considered her younger - about sixteen or so.
But then she wouldn't have been driving, would she?
She had both legs in casts and an arm plastered all the way to her collar bone. The stitches were still fresh and she was covered in scratches.
How had she survived?
It had been bothering Hatori ever since they arrived at the hospital. The girl had been projected out of her car diagonally, slammed a tree and fallen onto a blanket of glass shards. Why hadn't she died before he'd been able to reach him? Why had she been spared? Why her? How had she woken from surgery so quickly? Hatori rubbed his temples in frustration at each unanswered question.
"Headache?"
Hatori's head flung up. The girl was staring at him, blue eyes - blue? - bright and cautious. She reminded Hatori of a fawn - frail, curious and desperately alive.
"No," he said in his own typical fashion, his tone businesslike and firm. "Just tired."
"You pulled me out of the woods," she - almost cheerily - prompted. "I owe you my deepest gratitude."
Ah? Hatori thought. Why is she so pleasant coming off anesthesia and back into pain?
"It was only natural. Two members of my family caused the accident," he replied, "If I would have left you I wouldn't be able to call myself a doctor."
"Ah, you're a doctor too?" her eyes were wide in pleasant surprise, "I've just finished my internship. I was applying for my first position today."
"A doctor? You're only nineteen," Hatori said, flatly stating his disbelief.
"Twenty, and I was advanced." She smiled, then frowned after a moment of thought. "I apologize for the tremendous ammount of blood I must have left in your car. I'll clean it as soon as I get out of here, I swear." She paused. "Except you'll most definitely want it cleaned before then won-"
"What's your name?" Hatori interrupted. She kept talking as if it were good enough to know she could.
"Tichini Koizumi."
Hatori nearly fell out of his chair, displaying one brief instant of pure emotion. "You're the Tichini Koizumi who was going to interview for a position at the Sohma compound?"
"Yes," she said, eyes widening in surprise and then narrowing in suspisicion. "How did you know?"
"I am Sohma Hatori," he said without emotion and regaining his composure. What was going on with this world where everyone seemed to know everyone through some odd link?
"Oooh!" she said, eyes widening in embaressment. "I am so sorry for today, a thousand apoligies," she sputtered.
Hatori waved her off with a bandaged hand. "It isn't your fault."
"I suppose I won't be getting the job?" she said lamely. "I mean, you think I'm too young and I'm obviously in no condition to start, am I?" Her dejected sigh would have brought tears from anyone else.
"Why were you so determined to get the job?" Hatori asked. "You sent enough reference letter to create a small book. Or a small novel in any case."
"I'm coming out of my internship and my final college term," she explained softly, "But my parents moved to London mid-term. I need a place to work and a place to stay. I really was the best in my class, I swear it." She took a moment to flash wounded-Bambi eyes at him. "I could stil do a good job. I heal fast. It's in my health records."
"I… I will have to think on it-"
"I can do a better job then anyone else you've looked at," she spat, her eyes burning in anger now. "To turn me down would be uncalled for and you're quite aware it could be labeled age discrimination. Check the facts, the letters, the scores. I am the best upcoming doctor in the country and you would turn me down because your family nearly killed me?"
As she finished she lapsed into a coughing spell. Hatori frowned deeply. She could certainly force her attitude on others. She was forceful and a bit too unnerving. It was as though everything that could be wrong about her was. He had to make her realize that he was not going to hire her - and he had to do it fairly.
"If you're going to work at the compound you would have to be able to walk and function within six months," he said, giving her an unreachable goal.
"Don't worry, I will be."
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Author's Notes: Ah, I bet you're all staring with sweatdrops on your foreheads. Before we form an angry mob that says, "INACCURATE!", let me explain. Hatori was overworked to the point of blacking out - hence the hiring of another. You're probably still grumbling, but hey, it is a fanfic, give me some literary liscense. ^^