Red Rose Rising Chapter 5
Disclaimer: Characters not mine, they belong to a wondrous artist who I worship, and I'm not making any money, so don't sue me please. Please? Pretty please?
…text…denotes personal thoughts.
A nurse entered, looking slightly anxious, and clutching a clipboard.
"Excuse me, sir, but we have information I think you need to know about…" She was young, maybe only just out of training. Glancing round at the other three men, she swallowed, then continued:
"Technically, I'm not supposed to let you know until other tests have been done, so I need your signature…"
"Of course." Ran reached out for the clipboard and the proffered pen. He handed it back, having signed on the dotted line. "What's happened?"
"Well, really it's two things, first, you received an unauthorised blood sample from an unknown donor- " Youji paled.
Shit! Why's it sound so bad? Am I ill or something…
"Which is not the current concern, seeing as how you have no ill-effects – "
Thanks to any Gods up there…
"But you're on the contact details of another patient - " Ran suddenly paled, a far deeper shock ran through the swordsman's mind. The nurse registered this, and continued swiftly.
"Sir, your sister just woke up."
Youji was silently panicking. It seemed a commonplace emotion here, in the hospital where so much seemed at stake. Omi was sitting wide-eyed on the bed, both hands on the stark sheets; Ken was staring at the nurse. Ran was breathing hard and shallow, his eyes focussing and unfocusing spasmodically, his hand twitching slightly, half clenching around the photograph then relaxing again.
"Ran?" Youji waved his shaking hand in front of Ran. No response. "Ran? RAN?" He didn't see the nurse push the alarm by the side of the bed, nor did he see Ken wrap his arms about the crying Omi and pull him off the bed. He was screaming deep inside, fresh tears flowing down his face, fast following the trails of the others.
The nurse took hold of Ran's wrist and counted under her breath the pulse, and watching her moving lips Youji could tell Ran's heart was contracting fast, so fast he could almost hear it's thundering. Fast, but not fast enough that he'd normally be in trouble, but combined with the twitches and the unfocused eyes, was it going to be a worry. Two other nurses pushed through the thin hospital curtain, and unearthing a needle from a drawer somewhere, pushed it deep into Ran's arm. Youji shut his eyes, terrified of the needle, fumbled for his lover's hand and found it, and held on tight.
……..
Ran was recessed deep inside his mind, forcing something out, or in, he couldn't remember… Then it hit him again, a sharp, twisting pain, something burrowing it's way into his head…Again and again, that thing, something he half remembered struck his consciousness. Mentally he writhed away from it, trying to stop it finding him, but subconsciously knowing he could never escape it…that was strange… Why was he so afraid? He felt a sudden break in the onslaught, and a new peace flew over him, bringing with it an image of a girl with auburn hair and shut eyes, and she was screaming, screaming, over and over again, as she threw herself from side to side with the effort of holding onto something she needed, loved…
The agony struck again, raising his heart beat fluttering fast, pumping rich blood round and round his head, till it came to a roaring, deafening black height that crashed back, revealing more black waves behind it, seething and teeming with flecks of black shimmering sparks of fresh pain arising. He screamed inside his head again as something touched him, something from the physical plane. Shallow warmth spread out from the point of contact, and the threatening black of the waves rose higher and higher above him. He screamed again as something lanced through his head, a pure stream of that terrifying black sea forcing it's way through his mind till it pooled in a secure resting place, never to be dislodged again.
……..
Youji was sitting by the hospital bed, staring forlornly at rumpled sheets, twisted lines and a death-white figure, lying still. This was more worrying than the compulsive twitching and spasms, although he knew this sleep was brought on by sedatives and morphine, it felt too strange to see someone lying that still – who wasn't ready for a coffin. Catching his thoughts and their apparent portents, he threw them aside, letting a white pureness seep into his head. Faint rasps of air being drawn in through an oxygen mask and a quiet beep-beep of a heart monitor were the only signs that Ran was not dead. It scared him how easily life seemed to ebb and flow, either coming in or going out, and how little control anyone had over it. All these machines, chemical drips were only another way of cheating death for a short while, till old and decrepit or young and crippled, not even the very breath of God could bring you back, safe and alive. Wouldn't it make sense then, just to die the second you were born? To escape the frailties and scenarios that life threw up at you from nowhere, and dragged you further into a hell-hole of depression and suicide, to not even bother to open your eyes, and say 'thank you' when you finally escaped the ties to the corpse you animated? Looking up again at the silhouetted figure on the bed – thin sheets falling gently over a slim body, seeming so thin you could hold it in one hand – he realised something he'd never thought about before.
If life is only made worthwhile by death, and life is chronicled by memories, then isn't life just thoughts in your head? Thoughts that could be wiped out by something greater, something that provoked all irrationality, that meant you ended up doing the stupidest things, just so that someone else could live a little longer? So, if that's true then…
Isn't life just there to give you time to love?
Love, pure crazy love. Isn't that the reason that he was sitting here? Wasn't that the reason why he gave his blood so fast? Wasn't that why…
Too many whys and wherefores. Love cancelled all that out, and took you over, but yet still made you blossom into yourself in a new dimension you never even realised you possessed?
Yes, that was life. He thought, and you know what else? Screw Kritiker. Screw both my jobs. Screw everything and anything that stops me doing what life is meant for. He was here because he was in love, and he was in love with Ran.
……..
Ran woke up slowly the next day, his head still groggy from the drugs and the rough entry of the black waves. But he knew where he was, and why he was there. That seemed to really matter for some reason he couldn't remember why…
Somehow all the noises seemed louder, harsher and more intense than he remembered. He could hear the nurse whispering to her friend in the corridor as if she was standing right next to him, and random comments that didn't seem to fit.
Over all these other noises came two things – first was the irritating drips in his arms, and the oxygen mask over his face, he tried to raise his hand to move the mask, but after raising it a little way, he gave up, the muscles too weak to continue. Second, he felt a small sensation in his head that could only be called a crackle. It felt like someone was crushing a sweet-wrapper in his head, and the sound that it would usually make was vibrating through his head as a feeling, a wave of feeling. But still it felt like it was coming from outside his body, but it couldn't be…
"Oh God, no…"
