This thing will most likely go on and on, and I hope I stay on schedule with my updates. I'll try. I assure you it will not be this dark the entire way—it will end well. Of course, you already know it. You've already seen Yugi at the end (which was written at the beginning) talking to his friends and laughing at lunch. You know he will be all right. The suspense is discovering how he gets there. This thing happened to someone I know. Not all of it, of course, but some. This stuff is real. And it doesn't always end well. Remember that.
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You come to a point in your emotional warfare while staring at the plain white walls of the waiting room when you just go numb. You prepare yourself for the absolute worst: he's dead. As long as you're prepared for the absolute worst, anything else is wondrous news. Yami had reached this point. He was beyond tears or words. He was numb while he waited.
Solomon had cried and cried himself to sleep at Yugi's bedside, and there Yami had left him while he paced the plain white halls and stared past the receptionist's counter where children's drawings were hung—bright beacons of light and hope in this plasma-smelling hell of waiting.
Not long before, it had entered his mind to call Yugi's friends. That was before he went numb. He called Joey. That was as far down the hierarchy of friend's numbers he'd somehow managed to retain in memory before his voice cracked on the phone and he couldn't go on.
Again he found himself waiting—this time not just for Yugi to wake from his coma, but also for the gang to arrive and in turn themselves hear the diagnosis. The waiting made Yami numb. He couldn't tell how long he'd been waiting—only that it had been long enough to drive him to his limit. Loose shapes of 'mother' and 'father' were still smiling out from behind the receptionists' counter with their bright blue crayon edges at Yami when he closed his eyes. 'Mother' and 'father' were happy. Their only precious Yugi did not lie comatose in the next room. Yami hated 'mother' and 'father'.
Joey was the first to arrive. With him came Serenity, and she was visibly distressed. Yami regarded them with tired eyes. He muttered an empty, "Thank you for coming," before Joey recognized how distraught he was and went in search of something to drink. Five minutes saw him back with several bottled waters.
"Uuhm," Yami tried to begin, drawing it out on a breath like a sob, but he was cut off by a cold bottle of water in his hand.
"It's okay," Joey said. "Save your energy for the others. They'll be here soon."
They came as he predicted, one filing in shortly after the other—Tristan, Tea, Bakura—but Yami didn't notice them because he'd begun pacing again.
Yami was numb.
Joey had to walk to him and touch his arm to get his attention. 'Mother' and 'father' were leering and the walls were so white and plain and Yami drug his feet to address the small group of friends. He was preparing himself for the worst, in the same way as the teenagers must have been preparing themselves for the worst as well.
"Thank you for coming," Yami repeated automatically. He swallowed hard and continued, "When Yugi failed to return home from school today, I went in search of him." He faltered, trying to make eye contact with his hikari's closest friends. He couldn't. It hurt. "I found him," he said, "behind the abandoned grocery store. He was bleeding—"
He stopped and closed his eyes for a moment, trying hard to form his thoughts into coherent words. They needed facts. So did he. "The doctors…said he suffered a blow to the head. He has a concussion. He slipped into a coma." Nausea spun threateningly in his stomach, though there was nothing left there to heave into the hospital's plasma-smelling chinawhite.
"The doctors," he went on, "f—found semen…" His eyes slammed shut. His breath came shallowly. His world swam and spun. The images swam and spun in his mind's eye. Yugi curled lifeless in a puddle of rain, his blood pinking the water. Yami wanted to be sick. "A man…I don't know. A man," he forced out, thankful his eyes were closed, thankful he did not have to look at the shock and terror on the faces of Yugi's friends, "raped Yugi…first using himself, then a knife."
Tea started crying.
Bakura's hand had shot to his mouth.
Joey was absolutely speechless.
"They are not sure," he slurred through the numbness and the nausea, feeling his knees might give out at any second, "when he might wake up. And if he does, they say…they say there is a possibility that he will be partially mentally retarded."
Tristan put his head in his hands.
Serenity had started crying, too. Joey had no comforting words for her.
Joey was also numb.
"Oh God," Bakura whispered against his hand, and Yami felt the reality strike brutally again like it was the first time the doctor had told him, and he turned to stumble away someplace to sit down and recover himself—away someplace where he wanted to die.
Joey shot to his feet to help him, but he couldn't do much because Yami was already forcing himself against a plain white wall and sliding heavily down, down, until he hit the floor and he buried his face in his hands but he didn't cry, he couldn't cry, he had no tears left for his only precious Yugi lying comatose with tubes in his nose and shoved down his throat and an IV needle in his arm and a catheter needle in his urethra and a little machine beside him beeping, beeping out his heartbeats that were forcibly being taken from him as he lay there in a flimsy hospital gown with his grandfather asleep with head resting on crossed arms on the bed. The tear tracks had dried but were still visible. On both of their faces.
Yami wanted to die.
Yami started to scream. He'd cried himself dry so he would scream himself hoarse. It would have to do. He hugged his knees in the hall and clenched his teeth and yelled a dozen curses and oaths in a handful of dark, forsaken languages. Of all things, this. Of all victims, his own hikari. He had failed his precious perfect Yugi. He had failed in protecting his charge. He failed the one creature he kept on living for. He cursed the man, he cursed the doctors, he cursed the damn plain white walls and the heartless smiles of 'mother' and 'father' and above all, he cursed himself.
Yami wanted to die.
He'd failed the only thing he'd ever loved.
Joey was on the floor also at this point, and he wrapped his arms around Yami's shoulders in a loose hug. He didn't care what it looked like on the outside. He didn't care what the alarmed nurses thought when they tiptoed an arc around them in avoidance. Screw whatever they thought. His best friend was in a coma. He didn't care what comfort looked like from the outside.
It was far past ten. Far past visiting hours. The group in the waiting room talked quietly to themselves. Talked about what had happened, talked about their friend. Talked about nothing. They didn't want to talk about it. But they could do nothing else. No one was allowed to go in and see him, but no one could quite bring himself to leave.
The hospital only allowed family in the room—Solomon Mutou was in there now, he didn't even know the teenagers had come. The hospital thought Yami was family, too. It was the only reason Yami had been able to see Yugi since he'd arrived in the ambulance alongside the gurney, the little bed with wheels where the emergency response team crowded and prodded and stuck needles into Yugi's perfect skin, they cut his shirt, checked for wounds—where was all that blood coming from, those pools, those dark stains on his pants—they wanted to know, but Yami knew—he had seen the blue jean material bunched around hips and blood leaking out from hidden wounds, and he wasn't allowed on the ambulance, but he would have none of it, he would come along—he would be there the whole way, damn it, and no nurse in scrubs would tell him otherwise.
He was there the whole time, watching their cautious, searching hands on his aibou, hearing their medical gibberish and the wail of the siren warning other cars to stay away, and he sat there, crowded, wanting to scream at those paramedics with their hands in latex gloves touching Yugi—no one touched Yugi—NO ONE—but it couldn't be helped and Yami had already failed with some man behind the grocery store and Yami could only imagine how frightened Yugi must have been with some man's hands on him, some man hurting him, all the blood—Yami did not know why there was so much blood and he wanted to scream at the man and the paramedics but he couldn't find his voice.
It was after ten anyway.
Yami didn't want to think about it.
"Hey." It was Joey. They still were sitting on the floor against the plain white wall. They had been there an hour. They didn't care. Yami blinked slowly, staring at the cheap white wallpaper directly across from him. That's all the reply he could manage. "It's late, and there's not a lot we can do right now. I'm gonna send my sis home, okay?"
"You don't have to stay, Joe." Something had broken in his dry voice.
Joey sighed, hugging his knees tighter to himself. "No," he said. "I don't." He smiled weakly. "But I'm going to—maybe just a couple hours."
Yami thanked him and watched him haul himself to his feet and walk over to ask if Tristan would kindly escort his sister home. Tristan said OK, he would, and Tea said she was getting tired and asked if it wouldn't be too much for Tristan to walk her home too, please.
While they spoke, Bakura crossed the waiting room to where Yami sat numb and motionless and the British boy knelt gently and, with a hand on Yami's shoulder, spoke the most profoundly comforting words anyone could have offered him: "He's a fighter." And though Yami said nothing, the tears in his eyes were enough of acknowledgment and Bakura gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze and left with the others.
Solomon left the room once. Only once. The boys down the hall in the waiting room snapped to attention, but saw him only rub his sore neck and shuffle away to find a restroom. Several minutes later, he returned and shuffled back into the room, closing the door softly behind him as he went.
"You should go in there again," Joey said. "You haven't gone in there in hours—not once while I've been here."
Yami picked at the arm of the chair he was sitting in. The cloth was rough. It smelled like too much heat on a summer day. Yami didn't like it. "Nothing will have changed…even if I go in the room again," he replied absently. "And I couldn't leave you after you've been so kind in staying."
Joey nudged him with a playful fist. "Aw, I didn't hang around so you could keep me company. Go back in there. I'll be fine."
Yami considered the suggestion for a moment, and shook his head slowly. "I can't," he whispered. "See him like that—tubes and needles…all over him…I can't bear it."
"Yeah," Joey said, running a hand through his hair. "But I know it would be good for him…to know you're in the room…to hear your voice. And it would be good for you, too." He paused, rubbing his jaw. "I can only imagine how painful it must be for you to look at him," he went on, "but he needs you…even if he's not awake to tell you so."
Yami swallowed hard and blinked, exhaustion wearing suddenly and very heavily in his chest. "I know in my heart that you must be right," he whispered hoarsely. "Gods forgive me, how could I have let this happen?"
Joey sighed deeply and laid a hand on his friend's shoulder. "You had no way of knowing this was gonna happen. You can't prevent every single bad thing that might come into Yugi's life," he reminded the other man gently. "This is just one of those things that we all will have to learn from and then go on with our lives. It's scary and painful—and we'd like to say it's not fair, but it's life. Life's never fair."
They slipped at once into a comfortable silence, Yami absorbing his friend's advice with weary submission. He simply had no words to for rebuttal or objection. All his emotions had been spent—poured fourth from his being in so many sobs and curses that his voice had become dry and ragged from abuse. He had nothing left to say. He'd never worn his heart so openly on his sleeve in his entire long and disturbed existence.
"That's very true," he said at last. "Thank you." And then he stood and turned and without further explanation moved off slowly in the direction of Yugi's room where he found that Solomon had fallen asleep awkwardly in a chair by the bedside. Wordlessly, he gathered the old man and assured him that things would be fine and he escorted him back to the waiting room and delivered him into the hands of Joey, who opted to call a taxi that would take he and the elderly man back to the Mutou residence for the night.
Solomon kept tiredly insisting that he would return early in the morning, and Yami knew that the best thing for him was a few hours of undisturbed rest in his own bed, though he was secretly skeptical of how well he himself would sleep.
Morning light was muted as it came through the blinds of the solitary window. Distantly, Yami could hear the hospital workers bustling about their duties and the cars outside in the streets and the steady beep, beeping of the little machine that monitored Yugi's heart. Yami heard them all, but he was slow to push away the warm haze of sleep as he sat hunched with head resting at an angle on his arms on the edge of the bed.
His neck was stiff. The workers bustled beyond the haze. The beep, beeping faltered. Yugi groaned softly on an exhale. Yami's eyes shot open, immediately taking in his hikari's faint stirring—the turning of his head away from the muted sunlight, the fluttering of his eyelids over soft amethyst irises.
Yami straightened. "Yugi?"
The boy sighed, his eyes half-open and regarding Yami with groggy recognition. His brow tensed, his hands instinctively reaching for the tubes in his nose.
Yami knew nothing about medicine, but he'd watched these various contraptions keep his aibou alive for the last twelve hours so he assumed whatever they were either needed to stay there, or be taken out by someone who at least knew what they were. "No," he whispered to Yugi, trying to hold his hands down. "Hello there," he yelled at the door. "A nurse—anyone! I need help!"
Yugi was obviously frightened and struggling against Yami's intentions—what were all these tubes, these needles, he wanted to know. He wanted to know why they were there and more importantly, he wanted them to go away. He sobbed as he struggled, tears loosing from his tired eyes and streaming down his face.
"Shh," Yami soothed, trying not to hold the boy's wrists too tightly. "Yugi—it's going to be all right. I'm here with you." His stern and loyal gaze held Yugi's own and, after a moment, the boy settled down, still very much alarmed and breathing raggedly.
A nurse came in the door suddenly and bolted for the boy, hastily working to remove the various offensive tubes and monitors and such—but Yugi would have none of it. The nurse frightened him, and he struggled hard against her. Yami tried to be of comfort, but at that instant, a male nurse had also come into the room, and he promptly began to pry Yami away.
"No," Yami objected, his mind reeling and confused from all the sudden commotion. "I'm staying."
"Sir, you have to wait outside," this new nurse said, pulling Yami away—it was when Yami realized Yugi had grabbed his hand in a moment of fear and distress—the smaller hand slipped from his own with feeble resistance. The boy sobbed again, and Yami found himself in that same damn hall as before, staring at a door that had been closed in his face.