Two in One
Chapter Five
Two in One
Chapter Five
I do not own Love Hina.
No characters in this story are real. Any character not readily recognizable from LH belongs to me and can be used if my permission is gotten first.
This story is set at the end of Vol. 14 before the wedding.
Notes:
First off, as most of you who have reviewed, I like to answer the reviews with a personal email, I like getting the reviews and ya'll have been great. Sorry that this post has been long in coming. I have had a lot on my plate lately. Fulltime college for retraining for a new career and finilazing my divorce has taken a lot of time. I have been trading off writing chapter to chapter between my two stories I have going.
Next for a few comments some of ya'll have said.
1) No Keitaro will not end up a killing machine.
2) Su does not have the experience or knowledge to handle this type of wound. She maybe great with robotics and machines, but not with biotechnics.
3) Actually what is going to happen has been done in the labs and proven there.
4) And the basis for this story come from a SF/espionage story from the sixties.
5) Finally for this time, I am looking for a proofreader or several, if interested email me a somewhat resume.
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February 19, 2004
New York City
The doctor in charge of the Urashima case was looking over the charts and recorded observations. He was excited, intrigued, and confused all at the same time. Mr. Urashima's body was showing indications of rapid healing. His body temperature was two degrees above normal, but none of his wounds were showing any indications of infection, and his white cell count was normal. His blood work indicated below normal glucose, indications of dehydration, and large amounts of waste products.
Therefore, from the first indications, he had ordered that Mr. Urashima's glucose and saline drips be increased to the point at which his blood work was brought back to normal. The mystifying part was that this increase was to a level ten times what would normally be given to some of the athletes he has had in here.
For the waste products, he had Mr. Urashima put on put on a self monitoring dialysis machine. The first day, the machine broke down due to over use. So now, they had three machines hooked up in parallel to safely keep up with the load.
The most shocking was that he was still alive, with the amount of brain damage, he had received, and that being over twenty-five percent of his brain mass and his spinal nerve branch connection, he should be dead. However, he was not dead, far from it; he was showing all indications of getting better. His spinal cord was actually showing indications of growth. His brain patterns were showing as normal thought patterns for someone in a traumatic situation. If it had not been that the portion of the brain mass destroyed was the part that controlled motor and bodily functions, Mr. Urashima would have a good chance of recovering on his own with only little limitations.
But what had the doctor so confused, (and excited at the same point), was that they had done a complete gene mapping, intensive CAT scans, and MRI scans and found no plausible reason for Mr. Urashima's unnatural healing ability.
The lab techs and specialist were at first ecstatic that they would find some new wonder drug being produced by Mr. Urashima's body. Now, they were pulling out what little hair they still had trying to come up with some reason for his healing ability. They were doing molecular breakdowns of all his hormone, fluid, and blood samples trying to find the key.
The Holy Grail of medicine was there before them. If they could just figure out what was healing this man. They could save so many more people, not to forget they would also be rich beyond their imagination.
With the experience, they had with other paraplegics over the last decade, today they would install a one-way check valve in the air supply tube, allowing him to exhale normally. This should allow him to talk if he still could. They were going to insert electrodes into his heart muscles that would message his heart muscles, causing his heart to beat, and move blood itself, at least it has worked in the labs so far. Electrodes were to be connected to several muscle groups so that atrophy would not set in.
If this research doctor on the west coast could do what he said he could do, then Mr. Urashima would be totally healed.
February 19, 2004
The Mandarin Oriental Hotel
New York City
After taking, a few days to settle in the Ladies of Hinata were starting to calm down from the shocks and surprises of the last week. One such Lady was not taking this well. The man who had shattered her emotional barriers, who had shown her that not all men were perverts, and only looking for a quick fix. She had come to find that he was patient, honest, and trustworthy.
Oh, he could still be a pervert at times. But now she has looked past her own problems and prejudices and was seeing that his perversions were misconceptions of his clumsiness, exasperated by other members of Hinata House, (all Ladies by the way), being caught up in his clumsiness or even staged by some of them for their own enjoyment. At first, using his clumsiness and accidents as an excuse to strike out at him, letting out her pent-up anger and frustration by striking him at the least provocation.
Then over time with being in such close proximity with him, she found that she was starting to like having him around. He on the other hand wore his heart on his sleeve for everyone too see. All of the residents watched as he fell farther and farther in love with her. But she bottled up her emotions, they ate at her, she tried to reject them even. She lashed out at him to show she did not care, wanting him to just leave her alone. These emotions of love and caring were slapping her about the head and shoulders.
She had been so confused at that time, (and still was, the truth be told), and angry. Her conception of love was now gone. Before she had the loving/caring feeling of a father, of older family members, but they had left her all alone. Then all the boys at school professed their love to her. However, they only saw her as an object, a means to an end. They all saw her as a prize trophy to show off, and to show the world their manliness.
Then she saw what Keitaro was really offering her. He offered her his heart and soul. He treated her as a friend and equal. He cared about what she thought and listened to her when she spoke. With this being shown to her everyday, she started to see him for what he was and she fell in love with him.
To say she did not handle this well, would be like saying the Pacific Ocean was only a small pond. For a long time, she hid from these emotions, and the only way she could relate to him was to lash out and hurt him.
It took the arrival of his sister, (and almost loosing him), to finally bring every thing out into the open. She had finally confessed her love to him, no matter what others though of her. Lately she had even come to realize that the other Ladies of Hinata had been circling both Keitaro and her. Waiting for her to misstep and mess up, then they would leap at the chance to steel him away from her, for they all had feeling for him.
However, now he may slip away from her after all, and not be stolen by another woman, but by Death herself. Now her family was pulling in close together, the joking, innuendo's and playing put aside. Now she finally saw everything for how it really was, how much she loved him, but was so scared to come out and actually say it. How much he did for her and for the others at the INN. He openly showed his love and compassion, not just for her, but also for all of them.
How did she return his love, she was secretive and reticent with her shows of affection. While in public, even when around only her close friends, she ridiculed and hurt him, hiding away from her true feelings for him. Now she may not have the chance to show him what he really meant to her. They had had so little time together after THAT fiasco with his sister before he came here to America to finish up his degree. They had not really had the time to be a real couple yet.
She prayed to Kami-sama that she would have that chance to be with him again, that he would pull through this like all the other times.
February 19, 2004
Huntsville State Penitentiary
Maximum Security Isolation Cell
aka "The Hole"
Huntsville, Texas
He sat there on the hard slab of raised concrete that served for a bed, the thin foam mattress only thick enough to ward away most of the cold seeping though the concrete ledge. Sitting there cross-legged, meditation, trying to wash away the pain and grief.
- knock - knock - knock -
Through the emotional pain filled haze, he heard the sound of someone's knuckles tapping on the metal door to his cell. The knocking, drawing him back to the reality he now only wished to escape. Painfully moving back toward the surface of reality, he becomes cognizant of his surroundings. The coarse fabric of the red shirt and pants he is wearing, the grey painted floor, white walls, the beige ceiling, and the brown closed cell door. The sound of someone singing at the top of his lungs in the cell to his right, to his left, someone is pounding on his door and yelling incoherently at the top of his lungs. Another is yelling at the screamer and the singer to shut up.
- knock - knock - knock -
The knocking sound that had drawn him from his meditation comes again at the door, but this time accompanied by a mellow voice. "Kendricks, I need you to give me that letter back," spoke a voice I recognized as the senior guard at my cell door.
Looking at the crumpled letter in my hand, brings again the deep emotional pain and loose it had brought with it. Standing up, I moved toward the cell door, the vision slot closed, sealing away the pitying eyes of the senior guard. The food slot opened for me to expel the offensive letter through.
I placed the letter through the slot, turned and leaned against the wall. From the other side came again the voice of the guard. "I am sorry Kendricks about your wife and kid, that was just wrong what happened to them."
I hung my head, the sadness crushing down at the thought of not ever seeing my family again. Thinking on the letter, he had just read, informing him of the deaths of his wife and child. From the other side of the door, he could feel the sad presence of the guard.
"Kendricks, I did some checking after I read the letter. There is two things in the pipeline you should know. Your family's death was not an accident and you are not meant to leave here alive," the guard said in a low voice.
"I all ready figured out the last part. The warden has already tacked on five years to my sentence for fights I have been in. The D.O.C. board classified all the fights as assaults on my part, even though I was the one attacked each time." Kendricks said in a low voice through the door. "The Company wants me shut up for what I know or what they think I might know."
The guard now spoke in a normal sounding voice, "By the way Kendricks, you have some visitors coming to see you after lunch, so clean yourself up during your time out of your cell." Reaching into his uniform, he removed the cell keys and unlocked his door.
That afternoon, Kendricks was lead into the lawyer's conference room in leg-irons and cuffs, before him at the table sat a man in his forties and a younger woman in her twenties. They looked up from a discussion as he entered the room.
The man directed his speech to the guards with him. "You may leave us," he stated in a voice that was used to being obeyed.
The guards look at the man, then turn and leave the room, closing the door behind them. After the guards have left, the woman reaches into her satchel and removes a small box with a speaker screen on top.
Kendricks immediately recognizes it as a white noise generator. He raises his eyebrow in a questioning manner directed to the man. 'This might actually be interesting,' he thought. 'He does not appear to be from the Company, though he is a professional of some kind.' Kendricks shuffled his way to a chair across from the man, ignoring the woman who appeared to be his assistant. "So what is this about, I do not know you and you are not from my lawyer's firm, so who are you?"
The man before him looked up from the papers in front of him, "First let me say that I am sorry to hear about your wife and daughter, Mr. Kendricks. I wish that I may have been here earlier, I might have been able to prevent this."
At hearing what he had said, Kendricks became very angry at what had happened and was irritated that this unknown man knew what was going on with his family. Standing rapidly from his chair, knocking it aver as it slid back away from him. He slammed his hands down on the table, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" he yelled at the man. "How is it that you know about THAT!? It only happened yesterday and I only just found out about it!" Leaning forward, the pain in his eyes projected across the table. "Just who the hell are you?"
The man across from him, smiled sheepishly at him, though he tried to hide it, his eyes showed his sympathy for his family. Seeing this, Kendricks reached down, righting his chair, he slowly sat down and brought his anger back under control.
The man in front of him removed his glasses and started cleaning them, using that as a delay to get his emotions under control. Knowing that for a moment, he had been in very real danger. Even though Mr. Kendricks had been in irons, he was still a very dangerous man dealing with the lost of his family. "Mr. Kendricks, my name is Domhnall Musto; I am a doctor of medical research at USC medical school. We have a medical research project that you maybe able to assist us in, this project has the ultimate goal of saving a persons life."
"Originally we had hoped that by you participating in this project, it would have relieved the pressure being placed on you and your family by certain government and private agencies. If we had taken the project to its fulfillment, it would have guaranteed their safety, though not yours. The project has the highest potential of you passing on your knowledge and experiences to another, and save that other person's life at the same time, though it may cause your death, either physical of total, in the process. But unfortunately, with the passing of your family, there is not the incentives available to offer you as there was once, unless the possibility of helping someone else is enough," stated Doctor Musto in a deadened voice.
Kendricks looked toward the doctor with hooded eyes, then asked, "What does this project entail and what are the possible benefits to me?"
Musto reached into his brief case and handed a thick folder across the table, "All the information you need is in there, but that folder can not leave my presence."
Kendricks opened the folder and started reading. As he progressed further into the papers, his eyebrows tried to become a permanent part of his hair line, and with his hair having receded a while ago, that was a very interesting accomplishment. As time went by, he looked up at the doctor with a very questioning look in his eyes, and wonder at what the doctor was trying to accomplish. Obviously, this procedure was not sanctioned by the company, though there was reference to they having done so in the past.
Having finally finished reading the papers, Kendricks leaned back and thought on what he had read. After a few minutes, "If I agree to this, there are several things I need you to get done for me prior to the start."
Musto smiled at him, "Anything with in my power will be done."
Kendricks then reached to the doctor's note pad and starting writing out his instructions. He wrote for several hours with out any let up, then laid down his pen. "This is what I need you to do. The instructions at the top of page one will ensure that you get these notes to the right people. When I have gotten word back verifying that my instructions have been followed, then we may proceed with your test. It should take only a few days to find out if my instructions have been taken care of," Kendricks stated.
The doctor looked down and noticed several names and address, with notes detailing which pages of notes to send to which address. The notes were in some foreign language or possible an encryption which he did not recognize off the top of his head. He wondered at the capabilities of this man that he was able to write these notes with out having to resort to a key.
"I will take care of this immediately, then await your call informing me when you are ready. I expect to hear from you with in several days time," Doctor Musto stated, now with a lightened heart knowing that he will be able to go forward with his experiment now.