Chapter Two: White
Shuichi Aizawa stepped into the hospital feeling relatively frazzled and out of breath. He was desperately clinging onto his tie and the handful of papers he had been handed by Chief Yagami earlier that morning in an effort to keep them from being snatched away by the frigid gusts that insisted on adding to the chaos in his life. The brisk wind that eagerly gusted in through the doors after him caused the nurses gathered around the the front desk to shoot him mildly irritated glances, prompting a round of apologetic smiles and polite comments on the chilly December weather they'd been having.
Having a wife that had given birth to both of his children in this very hospital had taught him to show as much respect to the nurses as possible. Working with the police, a profession that often ended up crossing paths with the medical field, had only served to cement the principal.
"How's the missus?" One the of the nurses asked, a young chap who had been unfortunate enough to have his first day in the maternity ward the same day Shuichi Aizawa's wife had given birth to her second child. Not that she was anything but lovely, but she was also a mother with a propensity for being as frightening as a dragon. It had served the new nurse well though, and given him a steady hand and clear mind in tense situations equal to any of the more experienced nurses with decades handling screeching women in labour.
"Fine, fine," Aizawa answered, straightening out his heavy wither coat. "She's been on a baking kick for the past two weeks though. I'm afraid to see what my results on the next fitness inspection will be like."
One of the old maids settled behind the desk laughed. "You better eat it all up! Nothing's more healthy than the food baked by a woman you love!"
"And nothing's more unhealthy than if you don't," the younger male nurse muttered. This was met by a chorus of laughter.
"Looks like the lad's got himself a girlfriend," the elderly nurse informed, winking at Aizawa in an over exaggerated fashion. "She has him wrapped around her finger. Little bit like you, actually."
Aizawa had no real response to that, and managed a sheepish smile, covertly catching the eye of the young man who seemed to be the butt of many jokes. In a way he seemed a little like the youngster Chief Yagami had taken under his wing, Matsuda. "Well, as much as I would love to stay and chat, I am here on official business. Chief Yagami wants me to speak with the doctor of the victim from the automobile accident yesterday."
At this the nurses fell silent, their eyes flitting back and forth with concern.
"Then the Chief got my call, did he?" The new voice spoke from behind Aizawa, who turned to the professional woman, no longer paying attention to the nurses that were so obviously listening in.
"Doctor. Yes, we got your call. The Chief asked me to investigate. He would have been here himself, but as you can imagine it's been pretty busy at headquarters." It went without saying that the police had been up to their necks given the mysterious case of criminal deaths. Although they had made no public statements yet, the case was hardly a secret one. The civilians had easily taken notice of their supposed 'avenger', and had dubbed him 'Kira'. Now it was not uncommon to hear talk of the murderer posing as a hand of justice.
"I see." The doctor responded knowingly. She glanced over his shoulder at the silent nurses' station, and began to lead Aizawa away. "Well, let's go speak in my office. The patient is a bit of puzzle really. I knew the police would want to take her statement regarding the accident when she woke up, but considering how things have turned out, I thought you might like an update."
Aizawa stepped into a elevator, careful not reveal anything. "I see. Has she not woken up then? I suppose that's understandable. She was involved in a pretty bad collision after all."
The doctor nodded, passively agreeing to his general statement as they waited for the doors to close. When the did, she spoke. "Certainly. However, we have examined her thoroughly, and to be honest I just don't understand. That girl should be dead. There is very little likelihood that anyone could have survived what she did, and yet..." The doctor sighed, a hand rising to pinch the bridge of her nose in a way that revealed just how tired she was. "...And yet the patient seems to have suffered no real damage. Other than a few cracked ribs, medically...she's perfectly fine. We gave her a CAT Scan to be sure there was no bleeding or swelling in the brain, but it showed no anomalies."
The elevator slowed to a halt, the doors sliding open to reveal another sterile hallway, where only a few nurses puttered about quietly. Aizawa followed the female doctor as she navigated the brightly lit corridor, pondering the information he had received. As a member of the task force, he had been required to take First Aide, but that did not mean he had any in depth knowledge on the subject matter. He had to take the doctor's word for it when she said this condition was unheard of.
"Well, that's not why I called Chief Yagami," the doctor admitted, as she lead Aizawa into her office, and gestured for him to take a seat. "It's up to us to figure out stuff like that. No, the reason I called was the matter of her ID."
"From what I hear, it would be more appropriate to refer to it as a lack there-of."
The doctor frowned as they both settled into the seats on either side of her desk. "Yes, I suppose it would be. You already know she had no passport from the initial attempt at discovering her identity. Since we thought it was a critical situation we asked that the police wait to investigate anymore."
That had been the day before, immediately after emergency services had arrived at the scene of the accident. Given that it was imperative the victim receive medical attention, the police had not pushed the issue. They had intended on returning, though the Kira Case had delayed them somewhat. Before they had managed to make a decision in regard to the foreigner, they had received the call from the doctor.
"And? The Chief informed me that you mentioned something about no being able to find her records."
"Yes. We tried to access her medical record to see if she had any ailments of other health issues, as is custom. We also wanted to contact her next of kin. The thing is...we could not find anything. She had her purse on her, and we took the liberty to search it. There was the standard articles. She had a birth certificate, photo ID, and a bank card. None of these turned up anything. I have no idea if they are forgeries, or what. If they are, then someone put a great deal of effort into making them seem like the genuine thing. I don't know what to think. Either way, we also found a bottle of prescription pills. Standard insomnia medication. The residing physician was a doctor by the name of Nathan Takamura. When we got in contact with him early this morning, we were told that he apparently has never even heard of the girl."
Aizawa frowned. There were a lot of missing pieces in the girl's life, and whatever the reason was, things were not looking good. This was the kind of thing handled by foreign affairs, for god's sake, not one lone investigator. "So? What's the victim's name?"
"Hm? Oh. Erin Harker."
Erin Harker. Supposedly. There was a high chance that all the information they had found her was completely false, although he could not imagine why anyone would go through so much trouble to obscure themselves, and have absolutely nothing to back it up. Even the doctor, who Aizawa inferred was meant to be some sort of alibi turned out to unreliable. All of that was based on conjecture though; Aizawa was operating under the assumption that this Erin Harker was trying, what, some sort of infiltration? If anything it was more likely she was some innocent kid that had gotten kidnapped. Innocent until proven guilty and all that. Though that hardly explained why it seemed like she did not exist.
In an age of advancing technology, it was impossible to remain completely anonymous, particularly for a normal civilian anyway. Furthermore, the fact that there were traces of a past, a life, that appeared completely false... It was like a sick joke right out of a book, as if she were some sort if international spy, or escaped from a secret government facility. However, every time
the investigator brushed against such ideas, he dismissed them as ridiculous. That sort of thinking was largely implausible.
No, for now, Shuichi Aizawa pushed any ludicrous guesses to the back of his mind. He would not make any more conclusions until he had more concrete evidence. "I think I'll be needing whatever evidence you have, her ID, and the contact information for that American doctor. We will update you as her over-seeing physician if we turn up anything relevant."
"Thank you." The professional woman stood to her feet. She turned to the filing cabinet by her desk, and began to search for the files on her peculiar patient. "We will call when she wakes up, or if anything else notable happens."
"I don't suppose we have any idea why she has not woken up yet?"
"While there is no physical reason, it's not altogether surprising. It could've a result of shock, or trauma. I'm sure that when her body feels stable she will rejoin us in the land of the waking."
Aizawa sighed. "Hopefully she will do so soon so that we can get this sorted out quickly. There aren't many officers free to deal another international investigation."
X.x.X
Smears of grey surrounded her, vague and shifting. The shades ran, blending together like watery paints spreading across a canvas, little capillaries of dark and light leaking into an unfathomable distance. When Erin tried to focus, things only blurred further, as if she were turning the dial on a microscope the wrong way. It was disorientating, so much so that it actually made her nauseous.
She swayed unsteadily on her feet, knees like jelly as her eyes tried to make sense of her situation. Unfortunately the ground was a hungry glutton, and the moment her weight became unbalanced she began to sink, the mucky sand sucking and slurping against her legs and feet. Like quicksand, the more she struggled the more she found herself sinking, sinking, sinking, getting swallowed up by the very earth it's self.
She opened her mouth to scream for help, but no sound slipped passed her lips, only furthering her panic because why couldn't she speak? In fact, she realized that she could not hear anything either not the whisper of a breeze, the trickle of dirt as it dipped to encompass her, nor the sounds of her own breathing.
Was this what it was like to drown? To be consumed by a senseless void?
X.x.X
She woke up screaming. Well, perhaps it would have been a scream, but mostly it was a silent howl, a rasping strain against her throat, as if her own mind had tricked her body into thinking she was suffocating. The minute she was aware of herself enough to realize that she was, in fact, not dying, Erin snapped her jaw shut with a click.
She blinked, and cast her eyes about, confused by the bright afternoon light that shone through the window. The clean, relatively spacious room she was in was unfamiliar in it's monochrome design scheme and its orderly appearance. The number of clinical looking machines, however, were unfortunately easy to recognize in and of the fact that they were a relatively universal sight.
Erin Harker was in a hospital, and she was not impressed.
This did leave the question of how exactly she came to be in the hospital. Briefly she wondered if she really had suffered some sort of heatstroke, or had perhaps passed out from a lack of sleep. Maybe it was some kind of withdrawal symptom? But no, that would have been ridiculous. It wasn't like she was addicted to her prescription. Still, something must have happened for her to end in a building with such a nicely controlled temperature.
If she cast her mind back she could remember...
Eyes. Watching. Yellow, hedonistic, monstrous eyes, staring, following prying into her.
Suddenly it all came flooding back to her, chasing away any ridiculous notions about passing out on the sidewalk. The monster, the crash, and the pain. It had been a pain greater than anything she had ever felt before, the simultaneous feeling of having her soul shredded, and the feeling that she was being bludgeoned, beaten, burnt, sliced up all at once. It lingered in the back of her mind, a mind rending sear, a throbbing ache that made her curl into a fetal position, paying no mind to the tubes and needles leashing her. It was impossible to even think about as it filled her mind with a primal terror, and rather than wondering how she was in a hospital, Erin began to wonder how she was not dead, or at the very least dying.
Something was very wrong. Erin could feel it in her soul, so to speak. Her skin was itchy, and raw. The stiff blanket pulled over her chafed, the lights pierced her eyes, and with each gasping breath nausea seemed to surge up inside her. There was a cloying sweet smell that reminded her of dying flowers, and old people. It clung to everything, making her stomach lurch. Even the air in her mouth, the blood in her veins was just so off; it seemed so foul, like poison.
Then the nurses appeared in a flurry of white, summoned by the mad beeping of the monitors. they spoke to her, but she did not know what they were saying. She was scared that her brain had somehow gotten fried in the accident and now she was incapable of normal conversation. The nurses tried to get her to lay still, but when they touched her, her skin screamed and she only ended up thrashing about more.
She wanted to ask, demand what was going on, but they were all so loud, talking and jabbering away like flock of vultures, and her ears were ringing, and her heart was pounding, and she could breathe. It was all so insane and wrong, wrong, wrong, and she did not know what to do, btu she just wanted some relief from the pain, and the the madness, the wrongness that she could not escape.
When eventually one of the nurses had the brilliant idea of giving her sedative, she welcomed the tide of drowsiness that washed over her with open arms.
A/N: Oh My God. Writing this chapter was freaking impossible. I had it half written out, decided I didn't like, deleted it, and then wrote the Aizawa stuff. The dream bit I have had planned since the very start of this story, but the rest of it? With Erin waking up? I had no idea how to do what I wanted to do. Mostly I was just trying to drag out the chapter with out making it too choppy. Oh well, I finally got what I wanted done, and it might seem like a bit of a filler, but from here my path should open up a little. There's some political, technical stuff, but after that maybe we will get to see some L.
Anyway, I hope you like it. Really. You have no idea the blood I shed for this chapter. Well, not literally, but you get my point. Sorry if there are many mistakes. I think I should get a beta, but then, maybe I should focus on writing more consistantly first, lol.