Disclaimer: I do not own Love Hina, Tokyo Pop and Ken Akamatsu do.
WARNING: Contains descriptive bloody trauma and a few "choice" words. Reader desecration is advised.
MINDS WITHIN A MIND
Chapter 3- Waiting: Part 2
"Hello. My name is Dr. Haramara and I was one of the doctors that worked on your daughter in the Emergency Room." says a stocky doctor about in his 30's, wearing thin glasses. If it wasn't for his blonde hair he would almost look exactly like Keitaro.
"Doc. How's our daughter?" asks Mr. Maehara.
"Not good I'm afraid." he answers. Everyone in the room takes a slight step backwards.
"Is…Is she going to die?" asks Mr. Maehara with some fear in his voice. "Honestly I have no idea." answers the doctor. "It's a miracle she was alive when the paramedics brought her here. However; Man I hate having to say this; but you all should prepare yourselves for the worst." he gets through saying.
With that Mrs. Maehara turns and begins to cry into Mr. Maehara's chest. "So….her injuries are that severe?" asks Mr. Maehara chocking back some tears. "I'm afraid so." answers the doctor. "I'm very sorry." he adds as he bows.
Silence once again comes over the waiting room except for Mrs. Maehara who is muffling her cries with a tissue in her hand in Mr. Maehara's chest. Mr. Maehara is holding on tightly to her rubbing the back of her head. His usual hardened demeanor is on the verge of breaking down as a few tears roll down his face. The rest of the group are standing silently with extremely saddened looks.
Keitaro, unable to stand the silence anymore, speaks up. "So where is she now?" he asks. The doctor looks up. "Right now she is in the OR undergoing emergency surgery. We wheeled her up there about an hour and 15 mins ago." he answers.
The room goes silent once again. Motoko, gathering some of her composer back, speaks up. "Can you tell us the extent of her injuries?" she asks.
"Of course." he says calmly. He looks over at Mr. Maehara and he nods his head. "1st of all her injuries were much more severe than we 1st thought because of 1 reason. It wasn't until we got her into the ER that we found out she was not shot once but twice." Everyone gasps in horror. "The 2 wounds were bleeding so heavily that it looked like only 1 bullet wound. The 1st bullet struck her about 2 inches up and 1 inch over to her left above her belly button going at a leftward trajectory. It nicked her bottom left rib and started to tumble. It then went through her liver and out her back." he says as he demonstrates on himself using hand motions.
"So it was a through and through?" asks Kitsune. "Yes." answers the doctor. He continues.
"We nearly lost her a couple of times in the ER when her heart actually stopped 3 times, but we managed to bring her back every time, thank God. The 1st bullet did massive damage to her liver, blowing apart 1/4 of it. The reason is because the bullet hit her liver going sideways. After nicking the bottom left rib the bullet started to tumble and so it hit her liver going sideways. Instead of the bullet acting like a spear going through a watermelon it acted more like a bat smashing a watermelon. It was so bad that we had to remove more of the liver until 1/3 of it was removed in order to get to and clamp off all the places that were bleeding. Miraculously the bullet missed the major artery that supplies the liver with blood, but it did sever some major veins, but we managed to clamp them off." the doctor gets through explaining about the 1st bullet.
"And the 2nd bullet?" asks Motoko after a moment.
"The second bullet hit her strait on about an inch to her right from where the 1st bullet hit her." the doctor continued. "It grazed the top part of her large intestine went all the way to her back and ricocheted downward and to the right off of 1 of her vertebra and lodged into her right kidney. We were unable to remove the bullet from her kidney since we were mostly concentrating on her liver, but we did manage to clamp off a blood vessel about to burst because of the bullet." he gets through explaining.
"There is a bit of good news though." he started up again. "The side of the vertebra that was hit was shattered but did its job of protecting the spin from injury by taking the full force of the bullet hit. She is not paralyzed." the doctor gets through explaining.
"Well that's a bit of good news at least." says Keitaro giving a very slight sigh. "So what's her condition?" he asks.
"I don't know. It's been more than an hour since she was sent to the OR. She lost so much blood at the seine that we were forced to give her a lot of adrenalin when she got here to force her body to direct all her blood to her heart, lungs and brain. It was helpful in slowing the bleeding in her liver and kidney, but is very dangerous for the other vital organs. Using adrenalin is mainly used as a last resort to save someone. It helped slow the bleeding long enough for us to get her to the OR so I think we lucked out there. With a person of her age and size she could easily have bled out. She was very lucky that the hospital was close by." he gets through explaining.
The doctor lets a moment go by in order to let all he said sink in.
A minute later his beeper goes off breaking everyone's concentration. He takes it off his belt and looks at the message. "I'm sorry but I have to go now. I will tell 1 of the nurses to take you all to the surgical waiting room." he says as he starts walking away.
"Thank you doctor." says Mr. Maehara before the doctor starts walking away.
They watch as the doctor makes his way to the main desk and instruct the nurse to take them upstairs. The nurse turns around and tells 1 of her assistances to take over for a while as she takes the group up to the surgical waiting room.
She walks over to the group and bows. "Please follow me." she says in a sweet voice. The group nods their heads a starts following the nurse.
Kitsune shakes her shoulder a bit to wake up Naru and tells her it's time to go upstairs.
The group follows the nurse as she goes behind the main desk and around the corner and down the ER hallway with Naru and Kitsune bringing up the rear a few feet behind the group.
As they pass the 6th ER room Naru takes a quick look inside. It's nearly spotless compared to what must have happened in there less than an hour and a half ago. All she sees is the janitor mopping up a small puddle of blood.
Unable to bear the sight of the blood being mopped up Naru quickly turns away with a look of heart ache on her face. Kitsune puts an arm around Naru's shoulder encouraging her to continue walking. After a brief moment Naru hesitantly starts walking again.
The nurse leads the group past 2 more doors before turning left down a hallway. There they enter the elevator hallway. The nurse pushes a button and a minute later 1 of the doors opens and they all get in.
As the doors close the nurse pushes the button for the 8th floor. It only takes a minute for the elevator to reach the 8th floor. She leads them down a long hallway then takes another left down another long hallway until they reach a glass door with a fairly large room behind it.
"This is the surgical waiting room." says the nurse as she points to the door. "One of the surgeons will come to tell you when the surgery is finished." she gets through explaining. "Thank you." says Mr. Maehara.
As the nurse walks away Keitaro opens the door and they all enter it taking their seats. Everyone notices a T.V. hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the room playing at a good volume. It's isn't very loud but it's loud enough for everyone to hear clearly. They notice that it's playing another live report about the shooting.
"The police have now told us just a few minutes ago that this is the style of shooting by the Yakuza if someone is late paying them back money or other commodity. Because of this the police are refusing to give the names of the other people injured in this act of violence to protect their identity." says the female reporter.
Keitaro looks over at Mrs. Maehara who is very upset at what she is seeing on the T.V. So he goes over, reaches up, and turns it off.
"Hey I was watching that!" says a tall man getting up from his chair looking a bit mad at Keitaro.
"I'm sorry sir. But 1 of our friends; her parents (he says as he points to the Maeharas) was shot at that store and is now undergoing emergency surgery. There is a strong possibility that she could die, so seeing that report was very upsetting to us." says Keitaro as he gets through explaining the situation.
The expression on the man's face instantly changes from mad to guilt. "I'm…I'm sorry I had no idea….please forgive me." he says with regret as he bows. "It's ok we know you didn't mean any disrespect." says Keitaro to the man.
The man sits back into his chair and reaches over to the table beside him and picks up a Japanese translated version of People Magazine. He goes on to read an article about the latest Jackie Chan movie being filmed in Japan.
Another hour slowly passes by and the room has been silent for almost the entire time except for the occasional nurse who walks in and then walks out. Sara has gotten up a couple of times and has paced the room before sitting back down. Motoko has been sitting in her chair looking like she is meditating. But everyone knows that she is just as upset about this as they are. Naru hasn't moved ever since she sat down. She has a look of total guilt on her face still thinking that this was all her fault. Kitsune keeps silently reassuring Naru that it wasn't her fault. Haruka has steeped out on the balcony over looking the hospital gardens a couple of times to have a smoke. Keitaro at 1 point did turn the T.V. back on, with the volume down, trying to find something that they could watch, but every channel was having a special report about the shooting so he just turned it right back off. The Maeharas have just been sitting and waiting for any news.
Suddenly a loud growl gets everyone's attention. They all look over to Su who is holding her stomach. "I guess I'm hungry." she says in a depressed way.
Miss there are a couple of vending machines around the corner in the adjoining room over there." says the man as he points to the far right side of the waiting room right beside the balcony door. "Thank you." says Su in a depressed voice.
Su slowly stands up and walks around the corner to the adjoining room. A few seconds later the sound of a couple of coins can be heard going into the slot and a bag of something drops. Then the sound of the slot being opened can be heard. A few seconds later she comes back around the corner and back to her seat. She opens up the bag of what ever she got and reaches inside and grabs something. She brings it up to her mouth and begins to slowly munch on it. Keitaro looks over and sees it's a bag of mini chocolate chip cookies. He is also surprised to see Su just slowly munching on the cookies instead of inhaling them like she does with all her food. He can tell that she is taking this very hard.
Another 2 hours torturingly go by. Su is still slowly munching on her cookies that she still hasn't finished and looks to be just starring off into space. Sara has fallen asleep on Motoko's arm. Naru has also nodded off out of shear exhaustion. Kitsune has decided on a beauty magazine to read. Haruka is out on the balcony again smoking another cigarette. Keitaro was fed up with sitting and had gotten himself a bag of chips and started to pace the floor himself. The Maeharas had walked up to the nurse's window and had asked if there was any word yet. They got a "not yet" as an answer.
Another 10 minutes go by and finally a surgeon with some blood on his shirt and pants walks through the doors. "Mr. and Mrs. Maehara?" he says.
Motoko wakes up Sara and Kitsune wakes up Naru and they all walk up to the surgeon. They stare at him for a second eagerly waiting for his announcement.
He looks at the ground a second and takes a deep breath. He then looks up at the group and then directly to the Maeharas. "She survived the surgery." he says. Everyone gives a big sigh of relief to that.
"We were able to close up the wounds to her liver, kidney, and intestine. We managed to get the second bullet out of her kidney also. It took us more than an hour and a half alone just to close up the liver. And it took us just under 45 mins to repair the kidney and intestine. We spent the rest of the time doing delicate surgery to her back being very careful we didn't cause any damage to her spine. We where forced to remove the entire vertebra that was shattered do to the bullet. Because of that we had to fuse the 2 vertebras above that one and then replace the removed vertebra with an artificial plastic one." he gets through explaining. "Now the liver is a very resilient organ. It's the only organ that is able to regenerate itself from just a small piece of tissue. So the part of the liver that was removed should be able to grow back." he adds.
"That's the good news." he hesitantly says after a moment. Everyone looks at him with a bit of surprise.
"While working on her liver all her vitals just suddenly crashed without warning. We were forced to stop what we were doing and concentrated on trying to revive her. We shocked her heart for 8 minutes before we finally got her back. However because her brain went without oxygen for more than 5 minutes she has slipped into a very deep coma, one that she might not ever wake up from." he says sadly.
Mrs. Maehara begins to cry again while everyone else looks on with shook.
"If it's any consolation she is breathing on her own without a respirator." he adds.
Keitaro looks at the surgeon's sad expression and then notices someone being wheeled away behind him through the glass door.
After a minute Mrs. Maehara speaks up. "Can we see her now?" she asks.
"Not yet, they are still setting up everything in her room. I will tell one of the nurses to come get you when they are ready for you all." says the surgeon. "Thank you." says Mr. Maehara.
"By the way your daughter was extremely lucky today. See since gun shoot victims are rare in Japan not many surgeons here have had much experience in that field. But we had an American head surgeon from Los Angeles visiting our facilities for a week. Since Los Angeles sees a lot of gunshot victims he has a lot of experience in that field. He offered us his help and we accepted. Without his help I'm sure that your daughter wouldn't have survived the surgery." he gets through explaining.
"We did our best; all we can do now is wait and hope." he finishes. He bows respectfully and walks out of the room.
The group is a bit confused at what they should be feeling right now. And they stay that way for the next 10 minutes before a nurse walks in.
"Her room is ready, you may see her now." says the nurse as she motions to everyone to follow her.
They follow the nurse back the way they came but instead of turning left to go to the elevators she turns right down another hallway. They reach room 415 and walk in. What they see upsets many of them. Although the absents of a ventilator and tubes in her mouth is somewhat reassuring, the sight of an oxygen mask over her mouth, a half a dozen IV bags with various medications and nutrients dripping into 1 tube going into one arm and 2 blood bags hooked up to her other arm, the wires on her chest and on her finger hooked up to the heart monitor, and the sight of a 2ft streak blood stain across her gown indicating where the sutures are, is a very upsetting sight indeed.
The group slowly walks into the room and surrounds the bed, but keeps a bit of distance. All except Naru who stays back a ways still feeling a big since of guilt over her. Kitsune also stays back a bit right beside her. After a brief moment the Maeharas slowly walk up to the bed. Mrs. Maehara takes a hold of Shinobu's right hand and kneels down beside the bed, while Mr. Maehara stands right behind her and places his hands on her shoulders.
"Shinobu. It's mommy. Can you hear me?" says Mrs. Maehara while squeezing Shinobu's hand hopping for a squeeze of the hand in return. But there is no response, not even a twitch from Shinobu. Mrs. Maehara slowly lowers her head and then brings it back up after a couple of seconds with tears running down her face. Mr. Maehara just stands there with a couple of tears going down his face.
Su unable to take this sight begins to whimper with tears building fast in her eyes. She then turns and starts to cry into Motoko's sleeve. Motoko slowly turns and gives Su a hug trying to comfort her. Sara stands there just staring at Shinobu with tears building in her eyes and sniffing every few seconds trying her best to hold her sorrow in. Naru has some tears falling again while also sniffing. Kitsune, Haruka and Kietaro just stand there with very saddened looks on their faces.
An hour goes by and not much has changed. Then comes a knock at the door and the same nurse from an hour ago walks into the room.
"I'm sorry but visiting hours over. If you're not any of her next of kin I'm going to have to ask you to leave now." says the nurse in a calm voice.
"But!" says Su a bit loudly.
"I'm sorry Miss. It's the hospital's policy." says the nurse calmly.
Haruka cheeks her watch. "Oh it's this late already?" she says with a bit of surprise. (What little surprise she does show) "I've got to be heading back anyway….I left Mutsumi in charge of the Tea House. She's probably blown up something by now." finishes Haruka. The others agree to leave.
They had just started to leave when there is another knock at the door. The nurse turns around and opens the door and in walks a police officer.
"Can I help you?" asks the nurse. "Yes. I was told that I could find a Miss Narusagawa here." he says.
"I'm her." says Naru as she stands up trying to collect herself. "Can I help y- Hey it's you! You're the police officer that was 1st at the store. What are you doing here?" she asks with a bit of surprise.
"I came here for 2 reasons. 1st was so I could give this to you." he says as he hands something to Naru.
"Oh! My purse! Thank you very much." she says as she grabs her purse.
"You're welcome. The 2nd reason is because we need your statement. We have all the witnesses' statements except yours and Miss Maehara's." he says calmly.
"Of course. We were just about to leave anyway." says Naru as she and the rest of the group leave the room.
After giving her statement to the best of her recollection, Naru and the rest of the group leave the hospital to go back to Hinata Sou, leavening Shinobu alone with her parents.
Another hour slowly goes by as the Maeharas sit in some chairs beside Shinobu's bed. Mr. Maehara suddenly gives a slight laugh and smiles as he faces Mrs. Maehara who is now looking at him.
"Do you remember the 1st time all 3 of us were together at a hospital?" he asks with a smile. Mrs. Maehara gives a smile of her own. "How could I forget? That was the happiest day of my life." she says with a happy sigh.
End of Chapter 3
To be continued in Chapter 4- Remembering Memories: Part 1
Author note: See I told you I wasn't going to kill her. The next few chapters will be a bit confusing because they will be jumping around a bit because of the different memories plus it takes place in Shinobu's dreamy state of coma. I just wanted to warn you about that. The story will also start to get away from the gloominess that it has been going through for the 1st 3 chapters so there is a bit a good news for you all.
Story Hint: The Yakuza is the Japanese mafia. They are not as tolerant to people who are late paying them back money or other commodity as the Italian mafia here in America. They are very ruthless in their killings as you might have already read from my story.