Hello. Second chapter.

Disclaimers again: I own nothing except this story and the wasted time I could have spent reading the ECG book. I'm just a lowly medical clerk who isn't an expert at the things I describe below.

You may notice that I keep using pronouns. I am intentionally trying to maintain some distance from the character who may be talking in this story eventually, just not the way you might want. If I do use it, you see, with him like this, I just might break down and cry instead of write, hehe. It's a defense mechanism I find that most of us clerks use, using code names or last names or no names for patients, maintaining some distance, to keep ourselves sane. Even if samurai walk away from death, it doesn't mean they are not affected by it. Same goes with doctors and nurses, and people studying to be doctors and nurses.

………………………………….

She never expected him to be so thin.

Most of them thought that he was a bit chubby, at least. He ate a lot at every meal, she recalled. But under the thick coat, well-filled jacket, and baggy pants, he was small. Not tight, not wiry. But smaller than she thought. He was not even very muscular, like the other samurai. She sighed.

Even the youngest one – Katsushiro-sama, yes, that was his name, the one who got injured – if she were just a little younger, she might have gone dreamy-eyed over him like the other village girls did. Katsushiro-sama had well-toned arms, and pretty good pectorals. So did Kanbei-sama, Shichiroji-sama…Gorobei-sama. She was not blind. Jaded, maybe, but not blind.

But this stripling of a person stretched out on a cot – she hated even his body.

She could not make herself leave him, though. She had to stay there, while the hooded medical man gave instructions to a group of knowledgeable villagers in preparing the young man for surgery. He was too badly injured. They had to operate on him to stabilize him. They took off all his clothes, peeled off all the layers of cloth that hid most of himself from the world.

There was nothing to like, to appreciate. His arms, no longer hidden under a padded coat, were thin and bony. His legs were much the same. His abdomen was slightly rounded, too soft. He was a self-confessed geek, and he had the physical frame to prove it. Even the most hidden part of the human male…was not special. He was weak, through and through.

"Get some sleep," one of the assistants told her. "This will be a long operation. And you have a tiring job ahead of you."

"Find someone else to do this," she answered the assistant, her eyes pleading, but her face stern.

"There is no one else we can spare, Honoka, I'm sorry," the assistant said. "It's harvest season, remember?"

"You mean I'm useless during the harvest?"

"I don't mean it that way. But you're the one who knows him best, from before. You're in the best position to care for him. Please?"

"Why not Mizuki?" The girl was practically begging for the job, anyway.

"Of course you and Mizuki can take turns," the assistant replied.

"That's not what I said. Why not Mizuki?"

"Orders from the Shikimoribito, remember? Sorry about all this, Honoka, really."

She sighed and went to bed.

In her dreams she kept seeing those eyes that were staring and glaring at her, then looking away, especially after she had been found out. They were accusing eyes, eyes that kept warning her that she deserved no second chances, even if she was granted a second chance. She wanted him to die. She wanted those eyes to stop accusing her of treason. But she realized that she would continue to have those dreams about him with a sword ready to swipe down on her, even if he died. It was not fair. Life was not fair.

She was shaken awake by Mizuki, who went with her to where he was allowed to rest. Bandages and gauze were over his abdomen. He still looked terrible, though. His face was still white, his hands still too yellow.

The man who had operated on him had done so without the restrictive body suit of the Shikimoribito. Now that the operation was done, he donned the body suit again, and approached Honoka. He placed back the hood over his head. "We have done the best we could for him, just to keep him alive and safe," the man said. "There is more yet to be done. But we have to wait until he could take it. Keep a close eye on him. He is still not out of danger."

She was given the instructions. They were instructions she had heard before, for other similar cases, but they had to repeated to her now. She wanted to know the limits of what she had to do. She would only do that. No more, and no less.

Check the heart rate and breathing, every fifteen minutes, for as long as the numbers she gets keep changing. Pump the pressure cuff and get the blood pressure, every fifteen minutes, for as long as the numbers keep changing. Warn them about any major changes. Check the temperature, every fifteen minutes, for as long as the numbers keep changing. If he gets feverish, dip a towel in cold water and pass the towel through him.

Simple in execution. Sheer torture in execution. It was simple to do. It was the monotony of doing it, the exhaustion of doing it every few moments, the feeling of being both useful and useless, that was torture.

For most people, the fifteen-minute intervals had to be maintained for only two hours. After that, one only needed to check on the person every hour, then every four hours, then maybe every meal time. But his temperature kept rising, his heart kept beating too quickly, his breathing was too fast, and his blood pressure was plummeting. She had to keep up the moment-by-moment checking for four hours. It would have been easier without the sponge baths, but she had to keep that up, too, and it was that aspect that exhausted her the most.

It was the sponge baths that she hated with all her heart and soul. Despite being given a few injections of antibiotics and fever medicine, he was still warmer than he should have been. She was forced to constantly dip her hands in a basin of cold water, and wring out a small towel in it. She had to hold the towel over his sallow face, and wipe away the sweat that formed over his forehead. She had to place her hand, with the towel, over that small, thin body she despised. She had to move that towel down the bony arms, across the part she could barely call a chest.

The worst part of it all was this: he was still unconscious. He would never know she gone through such trouble for his sake, and unwillingly. She would never be thanked for doing all that. Because he would never know.

At least he would have no idea how much she wanted to place that towel over his face, and keep it there, until he suffocated.

His face just made her remember that she betrayed the samurai, people she had actually admired from the moment she met them. It made her remember that the justice he wanted was INDEED just, that it was but right that he chop her head off for deceiving them.

"Stop being so hard to take care of," she spoke to him already, in desperation. "Stop that fever from spiking. I'm sick and tired of having to deal with you. I just don't have a choice. I want to step away from you and leave you and never come back. So hurry up already and die or get better. Either way."

No reaction.

As expected.

If only it were HIM instead. Gorobei-sama. If only it were him instead. She would have suffered through all that, and more. If it were him instead. She imagined her hands touching his dark skin, feeling that long scar, wondering how he got it and where. She closed her eyes and dreamed of her hands running through that dark chest, a chest she had stolen a glance at just once while he was dressing, while the samurai were among them. It was his coat that she wanted to remove, piece by piece, article by article, until she saw only that dark, well-toned chest, those powerful arms, that graceful neck. If only it were him instead.

But she was stuck with the weak, gangly one. The one whose eyes bored into her conscience.

Punishment from heaven could not have been more painful.

She calmly and systematically recorded. "Heart rate has slowed to 90 beats. No longer panting. Fever has gone down, at last. Blood pressure now stable." Then she added silently, "At last, I can get away from you."

Her sister patted her on the shoulder, and she wrapped her arms around Honoka's neck. "Come on, nee-san, get some rest," Mizuki told her. "Let us other girls take over now. Don't you think you've done enough?"

Honoka actually thought she had already done too much.

……………………….

A gearhead fan enumerating the gearhead's weak points. Horrible of me, I know. But thanks for reading.