****Note: Yes I know that all these characters and more belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. She is a god send to us all!!!

****P.S. Note: For this chapter I am having them speak usually as they would in their native language. I'm sorry but I can't take Shampoo's broken Japanese to these extremes. Anyway happy reading!

^_^ (\/) cyancat

When I Thought I'd Lost You

Ch.5

Mousse opened his eyes, blinking repeatedly as he tried to focus, then he remembered that he needed his glasses to do that. He shifted to the left a little as it felt like his back was aching. The pain in his chest was still there, but not as intense as it had been a while ago. How long ago was that day? Had he really passed out right inside the Nekohanten with everybody watching him? Mousse then suddenly realized that he wasn't in his little attic room, the blurs he saw through his muddled vision weren't brown, but a dark gray and white. Was he in the hospital? Would they have really brought him here for just passing out? He looked around the room to his left to see a blurred version of a huge window, but beside it looking out was a slim figure with two bumps on top of it's head.

"Sh-shampoo?"

Shampoo had been staring out the window, intent on studying the night stars in the sky. Her head snapped around as she heard her name spoken by that familiar voice that was Mousse. Her eyes widened with shock as she was now looking at an awake Mousse! There he was, awake and slightly leaning forward, squinting his eyes, trying to figure out if it was really her.

"Mousse! You're awake!" Shampoo ran towards him, ready to throw her arms around him, but stopped herself short when she remembered how she had wanted to really tell him everything she had figured out. She stopped beside his bed. "I...I'll go and get the doctor!"

Shampoo started towards the door, a smile spreading across her face as finally she didn't have to worry about the boy in the bed she had been watching over for so long. Her miracle had finally happened.

"Shampoo, wait, don't go just yet..." Mousse called out to the quickly moving figure of Shampoo.

"But...the doctor wanted to know when you woke up." Shampoo hesitated by the door.

"Just...just talk to me for a bit, please. I want to know what's happened to me."

"Okay, I'll stay for a bit, but I have to tell the doctor soon."Shampoo spun around and walked back over to Mousse's bedside and sat down her usual chair. "What did you want to know?"

"Why am I here? What happened to me?"Mousse said as he gestured about the room.

"You don't know? I guess you wouldn't know, would you? You were out the whole time. It's been two weeks since you passed out in the Nekohanten-"

"TWO WEEKS? I've been out for that long?"

"Yes. What your body went through, I...we were worried that you wouldn't make it. After you passed out, Ranma called a ambulance and they brought you here. They took some tests on you. Then they found out that..." Shampoo stopped in mid-sentence as she wondered if she was the one to tell him about the operation. This should be the doctors job to tell him, wasn't it? She looked down at her hands and fumbled with the fabric of her dress, nervous of what he might think of her if he figured that she was to blame for all this happening to him.

"Found out what? What's wrong with me?" Mousse sat up, despite the pain he felt in his chest and placed a hand on top of Shampoo's. "I'm not dying, am I?"

Her head shot up, "NO! No, you're not dying. Its just that they...they found out that you had a tumor. It was in your chest and causing all that pain you were going through." Her head dropped back down as he took in the news.

"A tumor? I have a tumor in my chest?"

"No, not anymore. They used a new kind of surgery on you to get it out and then said that it was up to you and your body to see if you were going to live. The doctor said that if you woke up..."

"If I woke up, I'd live, right?"

"Yeah." Shampoo said as she sighed a little, relived that he understood what had happened to him. She looked up to see Mousse staring at her in a way that she had never seen before. She expected him to start proposing to her again and go off in that flaky manner that he always had, but he was silent. His blue-grey eyes stared unblinkingly at her as he rested his head upon a hand. She couldn't stop herself from staring back at his face, her gaze locked in his. Shampoo was uneasy, what did this mean? Why couldn't she turn away from his gaze? She had wanted to see those eyes open for so long and now that they were and staring straight at her, she couldn't take it. Shampoo realized that if she didn't get away now, she might admit to him something that she wasn't sure that she could admit to herself even now. In the corner of her eye, she spotted his glasses sitting on the bed-stand. Quickly she grabbed them and shoved them into Mousse's hands.

"Here's your glasses. I'm gonna go and find the doctor now. Don't strain yourself." Shampoo said and dashed out the door and down the hall.

Mousse was surprised, well more like shocked, because it sounded like Shampoo had actually said something to him that meant that she cared about him. As he slipped on his glasses and looked around the now clear view of his room he wondered had Shampoo really told him everything that happened while he was asleep?

Not even ten minutes had passed by since Shampoo left that a tall man in a white lab coat entered his room, a broad smile on his face. He was followed by Cologne on her cane, but he was disappointed to see that Shampoo didn't enter.

"Well there, young man, you're finally awake. How do you feel?"

Mousse looked away from the doorway and to the face of the doctor. "Fine, I guess. My chest still hurts a little though."

"Well that's expected from the surgery. Soon the pain will subside and you'll feel normal once again."

"Yeah, I hope so. Cologne, I hope I wasn't any trouble for you."

"Mousse, I just hope that you will be up and on your feet soon. Do not worry about this as I promised your mother that I'd look after you. Anyway I just can't have a sick bus-boy on my hands now can I?"

"Well, we will let you be until morning. I'm sure that all your friends will want to see you, once they know that you're awake."

"All my friends?"

"Yes, a whole group of them. They all came in together when you were admitted to the hospital. They've all been visiting you since then, hoping to see you awake. Now boy, get some sleep," The doctor said as he stood and put a hand on Mousse's shoulder.

"I've been asleep for so long, I don't think I could if I wanted to. Though, could you tell me what's happened to me?"

"I'll answer any questions and tell you all you need to know tomorrow. Right now, you've just woken up from your state and we don't want to exhaust you in any way. Just try to get some sleep. It's going to be a long day for you tomorrow. You're going to need all the rest you can get."

The two quietly left the room, leaving Mousse on his own. A tumor, huh, he thought. Something like that really took me down for the count. What else could happen in this life that would go wrong? My love life is nil, I'm still not strong enough to defeat Ranma, I'm cursed with a stupid duck form, blind as a bat without my glasses, and now my health had to start failing too? What was it that I had done to get such bad luck in life?

Mousse laid back down on his bed as he had been sitting up during the doctors visit. He stared at the ceiling and wondered what it was that he had seen in Shampoo just that moment before she left. He also could have sworn that his blurred vision had cleared for a few seconds, that he had seen Shampoo's face full of worry clear as day, but he tried to brush it off to the side. His vision could never return and Shampoo could never worry about him.

How could she when she had no feelings for him? She was always going after Ranma, always trying to have everything her way. Why should she care for him now? Yet that sight of her face returned to his mind. Her face, usually so bright and carefree was grim and gray. Her violet eyes seemed to hold back tears and her bottom lip had trembled as if she was ready to break down crying. Had she really cared that much for him? What was it that made her look so sad?

Yet Mousse pushed those feelings aside as he began to think about the tumor that had supposedly been growing in his chest. He placed a hand upon his upper chest and felt the grooves from stitches down the middle. Mousse knew why he probably had gotten the tumor. Ever since he came over to Japan, all he did was worry about Shampoo and fighting. He never took the time to care for himself. He'd fight with bandages still fresh if he had to, but now as he began to rethink his life, Mousse seriously thought about quitting and forgoing fighting all together.