Plug Suits and Penguins
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Chapter 7: Visitation Rights
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They named it Hakone Medical Center, years ago, when it actually was the center of medical care for the city. Before NERV swept in, expanding and mutating the area into Tokyo-3 with a single-minded focus on what lay before it, never bothering a glance or yen to what was left in its wake. The old hospital still survived, still serving as best it could with the scraps of funding that trickled out of NERV's cavernous maw. It almost seemed justified now, with new Angels wandering into the city limits on a regular basis. But old resentment is stubborn. It holds fast, refusing logic and reason. Sure, the Geofront protected everyone's lives. But surely NERV could live with slightly less. Enough to make Hakone Medical Center more than a glorified clinic, to make it what the surrounding populace deserved.
Or at least enough for new carpeting. That vomit stain on the second floor remained soaked into the fabric forever. And a new TV for the main waiting room would be nice. The volume knob fell off three years ago and was eaten by a therapy dog who threw it up in the hallway later which was cleaned up and thrown away by the temp night janitor and now you needed a pair of pliers to adjust the volume. And the reception was terrible on every channel except sixteen for some reason, which played nothing but infomercials twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They tried simply turning the TV off but without any distraction prospective patients realized they were seeking care from a run-down hospital that couldn't afford new carpeting or televisions and had a rash of disobedient therapy animals running amok. It was a minor miracle it was still open and tending to anyone.
But Toji Suzuhara didn't believe in miracles. No divine intervention was visible to his eyes. What gods allowed his basketball practice to be cancelled because some kid peed on the court during recess and the janitor was out sick and no one else wanted to clean up the mess? What holy grace let the cafeteria stoves break down before lunch so students were served nothing but cold bread with runny condiments? Did the heavenly hosts take a nap during fifth period, and the devil made Mr. Nebukawa spring a pop quiz, filled margin to margin with inane, indecipherable algebraic nonsense?
And also the whole my-younger-sister-stuck-in-the-hospital-with-a-busted-leg thing. God didn't shield Sakura from that collapsing roof during the Angel attack. No miracle carried her battered and bloodied body to Hakone Medical Center. Just Toji.
He looked up at the hospital entryway, a curved, cracked arch of paint-chipped wood. Old, weathered, bearing the wrong name of the city they lived in. Like it was from a long lost reality, and everyone seeking it out for help was thrust backwards in time. No NERV cash here. Only whatever the nearby masses could scramble together.
Toji rolled his shoulders, trying to be rid of an increasingly sour mood. A bad day was no excuse to make Sakura worry. She was remarkably empathetic for an eleven-year-old. She had the uncanny ability to pick up invisible cues, seeing through social artifice. She read him like an old, memorized manga. Pretending to be happy was pointless. He had to really feel glad or she'd know immediately.
So he recounted fonder memories as he entered the hospital, waved a familiar greeting to the ancient receptionist who may or may not have been born and raised in that rickety office chair, and made his way up to the third floor. The elevator was out, still, so he took his time on each stair, one foot after the other, every sound of shoe hitting ugly old beige carpeting a prompt for a positive recollection.
He summoned the memory of the last time he was out camping with Kensuke, when they burned the rice and the tent caught fire, and they had to throw it in the river. It floated downstream, to new adventures without them, waving farewell with a plume of smoke.
Okay. Bad example. That was just a warm-up.
His basketball team's last game was a bitterly fought contest against their cross-district rivals from the private academy Suguretatomi. Those preppy jerks always looked down on Tokyo-3 Municipal, showing off their designer uniforms and custom sneakers. Never mind Toji's team won, there was no celebration to speak of since the coach was behind on his rent and couldn't afford even a single slice of pizza for them. And their bus broke down in the parking lot and they all had to walk home, in their ratty, non-numbered jerseys and Swiss cheese shoes.
Toji idly wondered if he had any good recent memories. He already passed the vomit stain on the second floor. Sakura would see him upset, she'd naturally commiserate, and the visit would devolve into a wretched Suzuhara pity party.
Well, he did finally help Granddad finish a tough crossword puzzle last night. He smiled afterwards, gently brushing away all the eraser marks, and tapped his pencil against his wrinkled forehead.
"Only use ink on the important stuff."
Which may have been his way of intimating the value of not committing to hard truths in life, of keeping your options open and having the clarity and maturity to acknowledge and correct mistakes. Or he was just tired of using liquid paper to fix their screw-ups on crossword puzzles.
Kensuke bought a new fire-resistant tent. Toji didn't know they made those.
Shinji was in a slightly better mood lately. He seemed predisposed to mope, and he remained surprisingly world-weary for a teenager, but these past few weeks he shifted in a better direction. Toji didn't want to pry; he was glad for his new friend, and that was that. If Shinji felt like explaining, he'd listen. If not, that was okay, too.
Toji didn't know what it was like to live Shinji's life. He had clues, but Shinji did not tell him himself. And he had no right to pretend like he knew anymore. It was a surreal memory, being inside that robot with him, watching him fight for his life. Fighting for something else, a cause or motivation Toji couldn't pin down. Something he hoped he could make peace with. Maybe with Toji's support.
He reached the third floor of the hospital in a different mood. Not happy, but not put out. Determined. Steady. Ready to face his sister and the reminder he was unable to protect her. That leg in the heavy cast. He failed that day. But right now, today, he could protect her feelings.
He reached his sister's room around a bend in the hall and saw Nozomi Horaki, her hand raised to open the door. They stared at each other.
"Oh," they said in unison.
"Good afternoon, Big Oaf."
"Afternoon, Space Case."
Nozomi offered a look of youthful condescension. "I'm surprised you remembered where your sister was. Unlike that time you lost her in the park."
"That was a hide-and-seek game gone wrong. Three years ago. She was fine."
"The fire department had to dig up a sewer grate to reach her. There was police and everything."
"Which she loved. And she was fine—"
"It was in the morning papers. And the evening news."
Physically accosting kids was wrong, Toji reminded himself. Ah, but for the days of decking Shinji. A simpler time.
He sighed hard through his teeth. "We agreed on the schedule. You got even days, I took odd."
"It is an even day."
"It's the twenty-seventh."
"Oh." Nozomi shrugged. "Well, too bad. I have an important present to give Sakura. It shouldn't wait any longer."
"I got something for her, too. Go get kidnapped."
They glared at one another, feet firmly planted on the unvacuumed carpet.
"Rock, paper, scissor?"
"… Fine."
"Rock…"
"… Paper…"
"I'm going in," Nozomi said, and slipped into the hospital room.
Toji froze, half-bent over to match Nozomi's height, hand poised to throw out a rock. He frowned. How he yearned for punching Shinji.
He straightened. He opened the door. He walked in.
"Big Bro!" Sakura greeted from her bed.
The room was tiny, narrower than her bedroom back home. The carpet was threadbare, worn from ages of heavy traffic. There was a window, a hole in the wall displaying a glorious panorama of the north wing's crumbling brick facade that blocked out the sky. It was stuck open a crack, letting in the racket of late afternoon traffic below. Overhead a finicky fluorescent droned a dull buzz saw, just loud enough to draw attention. The hospital bed was a glorified gurney, wheels rusted into immobility, metal frame cradling a tissue paper mattress. And Nozomi Horaki was present and conscious.
Despite all of that, Sakura was all smiles.
"Yo," Toji greeted, no longer worried about faking it.
"It's so rare to see you here together," his sister went on. "What a treat."
"Yeah," Nozomi said, sitting atop a small nightstand littered with robot paraphernalia. "I just wish you had a bigger room. Somebody as big and ungainly as your brother might injure somebody."
Might, he thought.
"He can sit on the bed," Sakura said, beginning to gingerly rearrange her covered legs.
Toji spoke before she moved more than an inch. "I'll stand." He preempted her rebuttal: "Been sitting all day at school. It feels good to be on my feet."
She scanned her brother's words for untruths. "Okay. If you're sure." She opted to move on. "How is school? Oh, and Aida? Did you thank him for letting me borrow his spare TV?" She gestured to a portable five-inch screen under the nightstand, earbuds hugging it protectively.
"For the billionth time, yeah. He said it's no problem."
"And how is your new friend?"
"Good. Better than when I met him. He's still an odd duck, but not a bad one."
"And school?" Nozomi reminded him. "How's that going for you?"
It was hard, communicating daggers and swords and ballistic missiles with his eyes while remaining calm and composed for his sister. "Shouldn't complain. I mean, sure our teacher is a few decades past retirement, and we essentially got a student acting as ringleader, but, you know, it could be worse, I guess."
"She's only a ringleader if the class is a circus."
Horakis, he mentally cursed. They stick together like glue. Not that he could accurately speak to the eldest sister but his imagination was damning enough. "If it's a circus then she isn't doing her job."
"Didn't you go to the circus last week?" Sakura broke in, silently pleading for Nozomi to abandon the argument.
"Huh? Oh, no. We were supposed to but Dad had to work late. And Kodama was at cram school. It's like she's always there."
"I'm sorry."
"Forget about it. I heard most of the animals were sick and the clowns were on strike. But one of the jugglers almost lost an eye."
"Oh my gosh!"
"And the acrobat family was in debt to the mob and fled town."
"Do tell!"
Toji watched. Just like Sakura to positively redirect and refocus. He leaned against the door, inadvertently shutting it. The sound didn't register with the girls but startled awake Sakura's roommate, a thin elderly woman on oxygen.
She blinked a few times, and settled on him. "Ah. Brother Toji. Welcome."
"Hey. Sorry about that, Mrs. Yuko."
Was the name she answered to. Sometimes. When she wasn't drifting off in mid-conversation.
"Gah!" Sakura politely exclaimed. "Sorry! Did we wake you up?"
"No, no, dear. It's always nice to see the young people here to see the…"
Mrs. Yuko was asleep.
"Forgot we weren't alone," Nozomi said, carefully hopping off the nightstand. It was a testament to her slight body mass she was able to find any available space to sit on. The nightstand, under the bed, on the bed, on a shelf Toji stuck on the wall over the bed, every flat surface and some vertical spots were crammed full of mecha. Models, manga, merch of all kinds and types from any and every series imaginable. Here, a Valkyrie in bird mode, suspended from the ceiling by piano wire. There, a pair of Gundams, one UC and the other that crazy windmill from G, playing leapfrog. And everything else in between. A mecha Mecca.
As Nozomi left the nightstand she accidentally nudged a sizeable Hikaru statue which Sakura reflexively righted without hesitation or conscious thought. "Mrs. Yuko does like to sleep. Anyways…"
Nozomi and Toji exchanged glances. A high stakes mental poker game played out in that brief look, neither wanting to show their cards to the dealer Sakura. Whose hand was better?
Until Toji recalled it was dumb to be in a spitting match with an eleven-year-old. He pulled a bag from under his track jacket. "Here. Got you the newest volume of Last Millennium Eulogizer. Looked cool."
Sakura squealed in delight as she accepted the book. "Yay! Now I can find out if Kazu actually marries Eidolonia before the big battle against the Grand Elation Army! Thank you, Big Bro!"
If it made her happy, Toji would hop into one of those giant robots and shoot down every last Grand Elation scumbag. He smiled at her simple joy. Then smirked at Nozomi.
Who was, oddly, completely untroubled. Utterly confident in herself. She allowed Sakura to scan the new book, read the inserts, check out the jacket illustrations. Place it carefully on the shelf by its brethren, but slightly jutting out, ready to be plucked and devoured after visiting hours. Nozomi casually produced a small convenience mart bag. The kind of flimsy, tattered plastic that could never hope to contain anything of worth or merit.
"I got something for you, too."
Still the misplaced self-confidence. What on earth would instill such composed authority in that devil spawn?
"Really?" Sakura asked. "It's not my birthday or anything."
"No, but I was in the mart the other day and I saw this and thought of you."
She handed over the box of candy displaying a mech in a bed of flowers. Colorful beam weapons of bite-sized processed sugar, along with a random piece of robot waiting to be assembled.
"Really?" Sakura asked again. Like any decent kid, even one stuck in the hospital, she knew the ridiculous price tag attached to that particular treat.
"You steal that?" Toji blurted.
Nozomi chuckled. "Oh, you. Don't be silly."
He was hit off-balance. No snarky comeback? No passive-aggressive jab? No hurled mecha model soaring towards his temple?
"Are you sure?" Sakura wondered, torn between gratitude and polite denial.
"Yeah. I didn't steal it, but I didn't pay for it, either."
Mrs. Yuko was awake again. "… peel the potatoes more, and… the beans…" Mrs. Yuko was asleep again.
"I ran into someone," Nozomi went on, used to Sakura's roommate's undiagnosed narcolepsy. "He bought it."
"Who?"
What a sly grin she wore. What smug self-assurance. "The pilot of the robot protecting our city."
The cheap carpeting opened beneath Toji and he fell into an abyssal void of panicked flop-sweat. Drowning in his track suit all of a sudden. Leaking out the holes in his sneakers.
"You're kidding," Sakura said, strangely serious. Like that was not something to dare joke about.
"I'm not. He delivered some schoolwork to Hikari a couple weeks back and made us soup. Then I ran into him at the mart, and out of the kindness of his heart he bought that for you. He's a pretty cool guy."
The younger Suzuhara peered at her friend. Brow furrowed, trying to take in all that information. It was a lot to unpack. "He made you…" She shook her head slightly, a vain attempt to clear it. "… soup?"
"Yeah. It was good. For soup."
"And he…" Sakura looked at the candy in her trembling grasp. "… bought this? For me?" Whispered disbelief.
"Yeah, and—"
"He held it in his hands?"
A new Suzuhara family heirloom, Toji thought distantly, looking on. But not wanting to. Like watching the runaway train barreling towards you.
"Uh, yeah," Nozomi said, suddenly unsure at her friend's intensity. "He did, for like a sec at the register." She had second and third thoughts about offering the trading card now.
"What was he like?"
"Huh?"
"Height, weight? Eye color? Tenor of voice? How dramatically did his hair flow in the wind?"
"Um—"
"What was his name?"
"O-Oh, uh, it was…"
Sakura held her breath. Toji had been for the past minute or so.
Nozomi scratched her head. "Uh, Ogata? No, no, that's wrong. Iraki? Something like that."
"You don't remember his name?" Sakura moaned, falling back onto her pancake pillow.
"I'll get it. Give me a minute. Um…" Searching the tiny room for answers, her eyes fell on Toji. Pale, sweaty Toji. "Hey. He's in your class at school. What's the pilot boy's name?"
Fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu— he began to think.
"He's in your class?" Sakura repeated.
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu—
"Yeah. Didn't he tell you that?"
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu—
"No. He did not."
"That's weird."
"Yes. It is."
uuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu—
"Big Bro?" Sakura asked him.
His nickname, the simple term of familiar familial affection, suddenly not so simple or affectionate. There were layers of rows of tiers of columns of implied terror there now. Maybe forever. His brilliant plan of somehow both befriending Shinji and keeping him a secret from his sister had somehow failed to not blow up in his face.
"…udge," Toji finished. But not finished, since Sakura was still waiting for an answer. He was waiting too, for an Angel to smash another roof in, on him this time. Anything to avoid this conversation. His sister wouldn't flay him if he was in a coma. Probably.
Fate and hospital regulations intervened. The door opened behind him and he nearly fell into the arms of short, stocky Dr. Ozawa.
"Oh!" he said, trying to keep Toji upright with his pudgy, sixty-three-year-old arms. "Mr. Suzuhara. And Ms. Horaki, as well. Good evening. I'm terribly sorry, but visiting hours are up. You'll have to say goodbye."
Toji could have kissed him. On the mouth. He managed to pat the diminutive doctor on the shoulder as he steadied himself. Hard. Really letting him feel the gratitude.
Mrs. Yuko was awake again. "… Good… bye, buy the tires by the…" Mrs. Yuko was asleep again.
"Yeah," Toji agreed. Pain, allayed. That was going to be an exceedingly unpleasant future event for future Toji. Good thing it would be in a hospital already. "Uh, we should get going and—"
"No."
Everyone looked at Sakura. Except Mrs. Yuko.
"Not until you tell me. Big Brother."
He hadn't heard the "ther" part in years. Since he forgot her birthday that one time. It took weeks for it to disappear.
Dr. Ozawa stepped forward. "Now, now. Rules are rules. They have to leave."
Toji readied his lips. He never would have imagined his first kiss was with a general practitioner pondering retirement.
"But let's not part of a sour note, yes?" The doctor smiled kindly at Sakura. "I take it you didn't tell them?"
Sakura closed her eyes. Compartmentalizing the rage, memorizing its feel, saving it for later. A promise for retribution made. She returned with a smile. "I have a surprise, too!"
With a flourish, she grabbed her flimsy bed sheet and pulled it clear. Nozomi laughed in joy. Dr. Ozawa reached up and clapped Toji on the arm. Toji stared.
The heavy cast, zigzagged with autographs and stickers and robot doodles from her classmates, was gone. Her thin leg was still encased, but in a smaller brace. She lifted her foot up and down to display her new mobility.
"With all the excitement before, I forgot," Sakura explained. "My physical therapy has gone really well, so they removed the cast yesterday. And the doctors said if I keep working hard, I can be out of the hospital next month, maybe."
"Awesome~!" Nozomi cheered, twirling into a high-five with her friend. "The class is going to be stoked!"
"She's a real trooper," Dr. Ozawa said. "No promises, but I'm optimistic."
Toji stared. Crying, even a single tear, even a misty corner of an eye, would be permanent fodder for Nozomi. She'd never let him live it down. Big Baby Bro, perhaps, as a starter. He knew that, on a distant level, someplace far away. Away from his light feet and dizzy head. He stared.
"What is it?" Sakura asked, noticing his mute gaze.
He wanted to yell out joy, and relief, and frustration, and dread, and worry, and regret, and heartache like he had never experienced before. Not even when Mom died. Visiting his sister in this hospital was draining. Emotionally, physically, financially. He hated hating coming here. He hated the lousy food she had to eat, the drafty room, the overworked staff, Mrs. Yuko's sleepy interruptions, Dr. Ozawa's spit-shined shoes, the damn lights droning all the time. He hated that this was her reality. He hated that this was his reality. The guilt over failing to protect his little sister and bringing her here because that was the best he could do. The guilt over resenting her for getting injured. And now a heady new reality, one he stubbornly refused to pray for because God abandoned his sister and him and the city and the world. Sakura was almost free, to live outside these cramped walls again, to obsess over mecha and help Granddad cook and be his sister once more. To re-complete their incomplete family. As Toji secretly fretted when the next Angel decided to show up and pummel her again, and he returned to total powerlessness.
Toji wanted to express all of it. Any of it. All he could manage in that moment was one spontaneous, genuine breath:
"It's a miracle."
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Next chapter: Shinji is conscripted by a damsel in distress, but this time by a non-cloned one. Also, no penguins. :(
