Anesthesia - Chapter 4
"Really, Nanjo-san, you're going to have to try to stop squirming."
I know he's telling me for my own good, but when a man like Muraki comes at you with a sharp object, it becomes very difficult to keep still.
When you've been stripped of half your clothes, and you're flat on your back in bed; when he's kneeling over you with one hand on your shoulder to pin you in place… That doesn't help matters much.
"I don't squirm. You're the one who wouldn't give me the painkillers I asked for."
The wad of kitchen towels he has clamped over the hole in my side is starting to stain red. He holds it with one hand, threads a needle with the other and with his teeth. Nearby, an IV trails blood into the bend of my arm, and my veins draw at it hungrily. "I did give you painkillers. Any more right now would be lethal."
"I told you, I have a very high tolerance."
"If that's the way you feel about it, perhaps I could just take you to the hospital. There, at least, they'd have proper equipment."
"No," I say, and it's impossible to keep my voice from rising. "Here is just fine. I don't want to go to the hospital. I…"
"I know," he says. "I know. You want it kept out of the papers. A charming enigma as always, Nanjo-san."
His eyes flick up to mine. "Or perhaps you were just looking for an excuse to spend the evening with me, alone in your bedroom."
I don't find that funny.
"I don't know what you're so worried about," I say. My eyes follow his hand as he lifts the threaded needle, holds it over a candle flame to sterilize it. "If I die, you won't be held responsible."
His expression softens a little, and he surprises me once again: he has a smile that's not completely hideous.
"What are you smirking about?" I say. "I'm not actually going to die."
His smile disappears the instant he becomes conscious of its existence. They call that psychology of awareness. They call what I have a lateral puncture wound to the abdomen. They call it massive blood loss.
They call it just what I deserve.
And Muraki says, "Don't bite your tongue." Then he lifts the kitchen towels away.
A little mouthful of blood spits out of the wound, splattering the white bed sheets, the white wall, like a field of roses in bloom.
"Muraki!"
"Calm down." He lowers the needle. I've never had stitches before, and so I'm not sure what I expected. A pinch, I suppose, a little nip.
But what I get feels more like a pulse of electricity as the needle goes in, agony so hot he must be able to see it. Snaking red and white lightning under my skin, racing from my hip up to my shoulder. And then he pulls the thread tight, and I have to remind myself that there's no way I can be turned inside out through a hole in my side, no matter what it feels like he's trying to do to me.
"Breathe," he says, as he pushes the needle in again.
Pain like this affects the way you think. In my mind, I can hear myself say very clearly, 'Muraki, can you perhaps tell me what has become of my youngest brother?'
But what comes out of my mouth sounds more like, "Muraki… what? Koji… please… Damn you!"
He pauses in his work, the point of the needle jutting out of my side like the head of a sea monster on an ancient map. He doesn't answer right away, but maybe he doesn't need to.
"Is he dead?" My voice is hoarse, as though holding in my cries did as much damage as letting them all out would have. "If he's dead, you can tell me. I saw what he did, and so I know better than to hope otherwise. I've been expecting…"
"Nanjo-san." He says my name sharply, as though to wake me from a dream. As though I were only sleeping.
"He's not dead." Then he sighs. "Not that I know of. He's just… gone."
"Gone?" I say it again, to be sure my foggy, misfiring mind isn't interpreting that word wrong. "What do you mean? Muraki, he…"
"I know," he says. "I saw the blood. But he's not here."
I hear myself laugh, as if from a long way off. "That little fucking monster. He did this to me you know."
"So I heard," Muraki says.
"He was angry. I've never seen him so angry. The knife just slipped right in. But, you know, he never could let me have anything of my own. He never could be second best at anything."
"Stop talking," Muraki says. And as he slides the needle in again, I surrender a little shivering hiss of breath.
This time, he doesn't stop what he's doing, and he doesn't look up, but he reaches to comb the fingers of one hand through my hair. "I'm halfway done. My apologies, if it hurts."
"It's fine."
Before he can pull his hand away, I reach up to pin it against the side of my face. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe it's because he's already seen so much of me, and it doesn't seem worth it to keep anything from him now. Maybe later, I'll just tell myself I wasn't thinking clearly.
"Koji," I say. Muraki's skin is usually cool to the touch, but this time it's like ice. "My brother isn't mad. He's just… angry. It's not the same."
"I know." I can't see his eyes, but I don't need to, to understand exactly what he's talking about. "It was you, wasn't it?"
"Me?" I can feel my hold on his hand go slack, and I let it fall. "You think I would try to kill my own brother?"
He shrugs. "Is that so strange?"
"I'm trying to protect him." But I've said that so many times, it's like a declaration of love; it's lost all its meaning. "From everyone who wants to hurt him. Even himself."
"I see."
"No, you don't."
I'm telling him things I never thought I would say to anyone. Perhaps I want him to ruin me. He could, with what he knows, and I think he would if he thought I was useless to him.
God, my father used to say, just runs a tab and kills us when we stop turning a profit.
Contrary to what he might think, Muraki is no god. But I've told him things I couldn't tell Akihito, and I couldn't tell Kaoruko, and I certainly couldn't tell Kurauchi…
And even now my throat aches, dryly, to tell him more.
"Listen," I say.
"Later," he replies. "When I'm finished."
"No." I'd touch his hand to still it, but I don't really want him to stop. I'm still bleeding. The truth isn't worth dying for. Not this truth.
"Listen."
He glances up, and there's something faint behind the cold steel of his eye. "Then speak, Nanjo-san. I'll listen."
How strange, that it comes as a relief to hear him say that. My head falls back against the pillows, and I'm still beneath his hands. It's not as difficult as I had thought it would be.
"We were younger…" And I have to stop myself to laugh. Bitter laughter, like wine from a bad vintage, or aspirin when you let it dissolve in your mouth.
He'll laugh, too, before I'm done.
"If he were here, I could keep him safe. None of us asked to be born into this fucked-up family."
Muraki glances up at that, and I don't care. However bad I look to him right now, it's not even a fraction of how I feel and I'll consider that a victory. I want to stop, but I keep talking, as if my lips are the only thing the morphine has numbed.
"My father named Koji his successor, you know. He was a man governed by tradition. Things like that still mean something in our family. And he gave Koji everything I worked for. Just like that, like he never went away. Like he never left us. My brother took everything that should have been mine. It's always been like that with us."
I pause to swallow the bile in the back of my throat. "And all I thought was that I'd take something that was his. He was supposed to come back, then."
"Nanjo-san." Muraki sighs, shaking his head. "I apologize. I don't understand what you mean."
"You don't need to. Just tell me…"
Tell me I had no other choice, that's what I want to say. I want to say, Koji is keeping a lover, and that's keeping him from coming home, where he belongs. And all I wanted was to warn that boy, Izumi, not to get involved. And what I didn't want, was for his voice to make me shiver the way it did when he cried for me to stop. For the taste of his mouth and of his skin to infect me the way it has, like a slow poison in the blood.
"Just tell me, do you think we go to hell for the things we do? Or for the things we don't?"
He's quiet for a moment, and his gaze searches mine. He won't find anything there. My eyes are silver, like mirrors, and like his eyes. We will do nothing but reflect lies back at each other, for all eternity.
"Do you mean us, personally? Or was that a collective we?"
I open my mouth to respond, but I never get a chance to. He pulls the stitches in my side tight, and all that comes out is startled little yelp. He ties the thread off, cuts it with a scalpel. "It's going to leave a scar."
"What doesn't?"
"Indeed." His fingers flick through my hair, lifting it out of my eyes. "You look dreadful. I'm nearly done." From somewhere next to the bed, he lifts a brown vial. When he uncaps it, I smell the bitterness of iodine.
"It's going to hurt," he says.
"I can only imagine," I reply.
The hand on my hair grows tight all at once, holding me still as his mouth finds mine. His lips are so familiar now that I don't bother fighting. I can learn to live with a lot of things; certainly, with these cold, intermittent kisses…
And then, he upends the bottle of iodine over the fresh stitches.
The pain isn't immediate, and that only makes it worse. I have time to tense up like the driver of a crashing car, and then a flash fire of agony spreads out of the hole in my side. Muraki closes his eyes, keeps his mouth pressed to mine and smothers the cries as they spill from my lips. He drinks them, like a vampire.
When the searing heat has faded enough that I feel as if I could regain some dignity, Muraki pushes back to his knees.
"Asshole…" My voice is quiet, and dry as a desert by night.
"That difficult part is over, Nanjo-san," he says as he tapes gauze over the stitches. "Now, all you need to do is rest."
"I'm tired…" I hear myself murmur. But I'm not sure if that's supposed to be an agreement. "Will you stay here, while I'm asleep?"
"That will cost you overtime."
"And how much is overtime."
He smiles. "More than I'm worth."
And I realize too late that the sheets beneath me are soaked in blood, and that when I open my eyes next it will be dried, congealed blood, which will most certainly be an unpleasant thing to wake to.
But I don't have time to say more, before letting myself go down, into the darkness.