Chapter Text
I died.
For a full minute, I was dead.
Stuck in the borderlands.
Yet, somehow, I found my way back to the world.
And apparently, I’m not the only one.
It’s only been a few days since I became fully conscious in the hospital, alone and surrounded by doctors. I don’t remember a thing about the nurses who know me by name or the funny stories they tell about things I said as if a dead version of myself possessed me. A version strong enough to endure getting blasted by a meteorite. Now, she drifts on to the afterlife as all ghosts must, and I’m left to mourn her, my former self. The one who could do it all, who could survive. But she left me with the hardest job, having to nurse my wounds and put the broken pieces back together again.
Coming to when I did was a mistake. Everything was chaos, the hospital overflowing with the injured and dying. Screams of those grieving their lost loved ones and those in pain would ring out in a wretched chorus accompanied by the shouts of hospital staff. They’re still trying to sift through everyone, identify and recover the last of those from the wreckage. Every day on the news, the memorial list of the dead piles up with more names as the bodies themselves do in the hospital’s morgue.
The thought haunts me, picturing myself crammed into one of those stainless-steel mortuary cabinets in the basement. The only difference between me reading the memorial list and being a name on it was a little luck. Despite the burning in my lungs and ache in every movement, I would still rather lay in this hospital bed than a coffin.
Every hour, I remind myself I’m lucky to be alive. Blast lung, tympanic perforation in my right ear, fractured ribs, concussion, second-degree burns, minor debris wounds, the laundry list of my injuries goes on and on and on. Listed at the top of my chart is the one that tortures me the most. My heart stopped for a full minute.
Through the nurse gossip I pick up, there is a rumour going around the hospital about those who came back alive from the accident, the one thing we all have in common is our heart-stopping. I stared death in the face with hundreds of people by my side and somehow was one of the few to walk away.
My sister was one of those people. I held her hand as we faced death together. If only I knew where she was. None of the hospital staff will give me any insight into what happened to her. I know she’s here; she has to be, but all they tell me is “they’re looking into it.” As if that’s enough to help me rest easy.
There’s a knock at the door. Today’s the day my chest tube comes out, the thing that has kept me alive and my greatest enemy. Nothing makes it harder to be comfortable than having a tube shoved between your bones through an open hole in your body. Every shallow breath makes it difficult to relax; it makes me miss being in obtundation.
“Good morning, how are you feeling today?” Kimura, my usual morning nurse, steps into the room, carrying a tray of food. Her voice implodes in my right ear, every sound foggy like it’s struggling to find the right path down my auditory canal.
“Like I was hit by a transport truck.” Getting blasted by a meteor feels close enough. The ache is strong enough to seep through all the painkillers they have me hopped up on.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I have your breakfast for you.” Kimura pulls down the floating tray table in front of me, sliding the food onto it.
“Do you need help sitting up?” She asks, a polite smile on her face.
I grit my teeth. I hate the way the nurses smile at me, their gentle voices acting as if they will break glass with too hard a tone.
“No, I’m fine.”
I ground my hands on the plastic mattress, digging my palms into the cushy padding to push my body up. My shoulders come up to my ears, my neck straining to pull itself above, like trying not to drown, waves lapping over me as I struggle to keep my head above water.
“Do you mind?” Kimura gestures to my upper arm. I push out breaths like a marathon runner, my arms shaking under my weight. I stare at her hand, waiting to seize me like a teetering vase.
“No,” I grunt, releasing back onto the bed. She grabs my bicep and rests her other hand on my back. Using my legs, I push back into her hand as she guides me upright into a slouch.
Despite the pang in my stomach, I pick at my breakfast with the back of my fork, squishing it together to form a modern art sculpture.
Kimura runs around the room, making me dizzy. She checks things off my chart, messing with the life-giving machines while instructing me on her activities as if I have the option to protest. At this point in my stay, I can feel the rhythm of her feet taking her from one medical device to the next and swaying as she checks before crossing the floor to glide her hands through another beeping, bubbling, whatchamacallit. A pattern so predictable that the nurses are almost unrecognizable from one another.
While Kimura attends to her routine, I return to my own.
“Any word on where my sister is yet?” My tone is as if I was asking about the weather. I already know she’s going to dodge my question and busy herself with whatever she can until the opportunity for a hasty exit presents itself.
“I haven’t been able to check with how overwhelmed we’ve been, but at the earliest chance I get, I’ll check for you,” Kimura responds without looking back at me.
She doesn’t waste a single second.
“Now, is it all right if I lift your gown? I’m going to inspect the incision site.”
I nod, anything to get this tube pulled out of me.
My hospital gown is propped open by the tubing wedged between my ribs; Kimura investigates to make sure my open wound hasn’t sucked in any infectious bacteria. I flinch at her gloved fingers, lifting my wound dressing and grazing my bare skin enclosed around the tube.
It was already bad enough that she had to help me sit up. You’re only safe from people touching you in a hospital as long as you’re not a patient; there are no personal boundaries being strapped to this bed.
“I’ll come back later to check your vitals again, and if everything still looks good, we can move forward with the chest tube removal.”
“Sounds good,” I smile, happy to soon be rid of this hindrance. Once it’s gone, they won’t be able to stop me from getting answers so easily.
***
It’s not long before Kimura returns with another nurse by her side. They greet me politely as they must and go about checking my vitals. Clean wound, unchanged, normal blood pressure unchanged, breakfast sculpture, also unchanged.
“Everything looks good. We can go forward with the procedure.”
Words have never sounded so sweet. I’ll finally be able to move without worrying if a piece of life-saving plastic jammed inside me is going to accidentally cause my death.
They help me roll over onto my non-tubed side, opening my hospital gown. A chill trickles down my spine, I cross my arms over my chest, resting my hands on the opposite shoulders. My eyes shut, trying to fast-forward time.
The nurse’s voices wash over me as they instruct me step by step on the procedure and practice the breathing technique with me. I count the seconds. I don’t even like to watch my blood get drawn, much less the removal of an organ tube.
Back in the lab at the University of Tokyo, the only human bodies I deal with are what’s left of their bones. Years studying for my bachelor’s and my master’s to get into the University of Tokyo so I could do research at the University Museum examining different processing techniques for DNA analysis on human remains, right now, my paper analyzes the DNA of the wartime remains that were unearthed in the Shinjuku Ward. Bones are easier to examine; there is nothing moving, pumping or oozing out fluids, and I don’t need hospitality skills to deal with them either.
The machine powers down as Kimura lifts my wound dressing. I can hear the other one fiddling with gauze and bottles, passing things back and forth. They warn me with every movement they make. A damp piece of gauze dabs around my chest tube, the skin sensitive from being trapped under the compress with the tube for so long. Finally, the pinching of my outer sutures being snipped.
With a calming voice, they instruct me to take a deep breath, holding my nose and mouth shut, my cheeks blowing up, trying to breathe out. I listen to the countdown, ticking down so slow I might as well be watching paint dry.
Just like that, they hit one. I exhale in a single, quick breath. They slide the chest tube out of me in a fluid motion, and before I can take another breath, Kimura is already tightening the inner stitches, closing the superficial incision in my rib cage and covering it with a fresh bandage.
I bend my neck to the TV in the corner of the room. Tuned into the news, a reporter stands in the Narita International Airport, interviewing stranded citizens and tourists whose flights have been grounded for the past few days as the city addresses the chaos. It’s been impossible to get a flight into Tokyo, and everywhere else is backed up with the country attempting to reroute everyone.
Across the world, my parents are camping out at the airport, waiting for a flight into Japan to open up.
A pit digs itself deeper into my stomach. On the nightstand sits my phone with hundreds of unread messages from my parents, distant family and friends from back home. I know what they’ve been saying, seeing the notifications piling on top of me until I suffocate. Up until this point, my chest tube wouldn’t have let that happen, but without it, I might finally be in danger of asphyxiation. I’ll get around to answering them soon, or so I keep telling myself.
“Everything looks good, you can sit up now if you like,” Kimura tells me. I shuffle myself onto my back into a hunch. I wouldn’t exactly call what I’m doing sitting, more like lying down with my head upright.
“You haven’t gone to the bathroom yet today, we can take care of that now while we’re here if you’d like,” Kimura offers while the other nurse collects all the materials for disposal.
“I’m fine, I can stand on my own,” I fling my legs over the side of the bed without hesitation, feeling the cold tile through my socks. I wheeze, suppressing a cough.
The nurses, ready for this, surround me, forcing me back down on the bed. My muscles, too weak to fight them, I cave onto the sheets in the most pathetic surrender of my life.
“You’re still not ready just yet to be up walking around on your own. You’re only risking further possible injury if you keep trying to do this.” Kimura insists, using the firmest tone any of the nurses have taken with me.
“I was told after the chest tube removal I would be allowed to move on my own,” I protest.
“Yes, but you still need a day or so before you can carefully move on your own."
I wouldn’t be surprised if I peeked at the nurse’s notes that it would say flight risk on it. Since no one will tell me anything about where my sister is, I’ve made myself quite the reputation of trying to wander around the hospital in search of her. So far, I haven’t made it more than a few rooms down from mine.
My sister had been with me, I was holding her hand. I would have held her hand to the end if they let me. Before I blacked out again, I saw them load her onto a stretcher. She should’ve gone with me. I should have fought more. The weight of death was too heavy to hold myself up, much less another. So, I let them take her. I trusted them to take care of us, and I can never take it back.
“Fine, I don’t have to go.” I wish there was a better way to say that. Time turns back my age against my will in this hospital. They lift my legs onto the mattress, pulling the sheets out from under me and tucking me in like a child. Like a helpless toddler, I sink into the bed, pouting.
“Okay, if you need anything, just buzz.” Kimura smiles weakly, her polite façade worn down. She and the other nurse finally take their leave from my side.
As life flushes in my cheeks again through this past week, my limbs moving on rusty hinges, becoming more mobile, and my head clears. I’m ready to fight again. In the few hours I’ve managed to stay conscious, a plan pulls itself together for this very moment.
All that’s left to do is wait. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out a hospital’s rotation schedule. Almost all hospitals are on a two-shift rotation system, and within that structure, the day shift roughly starts somewhere between six to nine in the morning and concludes between three to six in the evening. At this hospital, the first changeover is at seven in the morning and the second one at four in the evening. Naturally, the staff will be at their busiest in the evening, so the four o’clock changeover is my window.
On the nightstand rests a photo of my sister and I in front of the Sensō-ji temple, only taken over a week ago. We had already used all the rolls of film she brought; she wanted them developed before she left so we could go through the pictures together.
It was her dream to become a photographer and travel the world, her bedroom shelves cluttered with equipment and cameras, old, new, film, digital, there’s nothing she wouldn’t try. The only one she had with her this week was the film camera our family had used when I was a kid, the one I gifted to her when I left for Japan.
I count down as the hours turn into minutes. My leg shakes under the sheets while I try to focus on some game show on TV. Outside my door, the slamming of feet against the floor gets louder, I can almost hear the furious flipping of paper attached to clipboards. Checking the clock one last time, my moment has arrived.
Flipping open the covers, I swing my feet over the side of the bed; chills shock through my body. It’s now or never. I tuck the photo into the tied string of my hospital gown. Using the IV pole like a walking stick, I hold my weight onto it and shuffle out of the room. The staff on the floor has thinned out, and no one notices me, too wrapped up in staff gossip and patient charts.
This seemed much more doable in my head. My feet, unfamiliar with the weight that sits atop them, don’t help my unsteady legs that haven’t had to carry me more than a few meters to the bathroom this past week.
One wobbly step after the other, my ankles about to give out on me at any moment. Falling onto my feet with a heavy slap, none of the hospital staff draw their attention towards me. I whip my head towards every door I pass like an uncontrollable tic.
Room after room, unfamiliar faces bore into me as I peek through the open-door cracks and tiny windows. My feet drag behind me, my neck stretched out like a snake, craning around every door frame before the rest of my body makes it there. Every door without her behind it is another weight added to my back. It’s a good thing I didn’t eat my breakfast or the lunch that came later because my heart drops into my stomach, rolling around like a loose marble.
I’m sure days have gone past as I haul my broken body down the halls like a wagon with a broken wheel. Counting the doors, I rest against the wall whenever I have checked at least five. The voices in my head scream as my body begs me to stop. I stiffen my neck in place to keep me from looking back. All that matters is what lies ahead.
The last room at the end of the wing looms in wait.
Gripping onto my IV pole, I shove myself the rest of the way, collapsing against the door frame, huffing air my lungs aren’t used to having. The hallway is closing in on me, cutting off my way back. I don’t look back, instead, I raise my gaze with hope pumping through my veins.
Two young men lay in individual hospital beds. One is obscured by layers of bandages, but the other lays back against the pillows, strands of white-blond hair framing the sharp edges of his face. There is an almost ethereal glow about him as the sunlight bounces off his hair, surrounded by blue and white. He draws his stare away from the window to me. My skin pricks up at his dark brown eyes boring into mine. Something about him feels familiar, like recalling someone from a dream.
Snapping back to reality, my heart sinks. The closer I get to my answer, the more I think I don’t want to know anymore. The dangling rope I grasp onto for dear life is the idea she is on a different floor. God forbid she is stuck in the ICU.
“Do you need something?” The blond one asks.
Nothing either of them can help me with.
I must look deranged, loitering in a stranger’s hospital doorway, acting like an asthmatic on the verge of fainting. My hair, painfully brushed for the first time this week yesterday, returned to its messy state this morning. I’ve been too scared to look in the mirror, but I don’t hold out much hope for the bags under my eyes either.
The other one, wrapped in bandages, sputters with coughs, making me jump.
“No, thank you.”
I don’t know what makes me say it, but my vocal cords push out the words before I can stop them, “I’m just looking for my sister.”
“Why don’t you ask the staff for her room number?” He questions, suppressing an obvious annoyance. A coldness settles around him; what I thought was an ethereal glow quickly clears into an Ice King that needs to be knocked off his throne. Everything about him pale from a lack of warmth. The kind of person whose smile drips venom. His skin pulled so tight as to never falter, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly to appear polite, but it just looks like a crack across a marble floor.
Shouting breaks out at the other end of the wing, interrupting any excuse I might have given. Honoka, a nurse I recognize only by her hair, gathers a small band of nurses for what I can only assume is my search party. She’s the only one I’ve seen who wears their hair in pigtails, so even from across the endless hallway, I know it’s her. The few nurses break apart to head towards the opposite side of the wing, but Honoka hustles through the crowd, scanning everyone she passes, heading straight towards me without knowing it.
“Shit.” I duck into the room, positioning myself on the other side of the door frame, out of sight from the hallway.
“You often crash other patients' rooms?” The man wrapped in bandages rasps.
“Do you mind? It will only be for a little while.”
“I don’t know how I feel about harbouring a wandering patient,” the other one answers.
“I swear I’m not on the run or anything. I really need to find my sister, and no one knows anything.”
“And you think she is on this floor?”
“Everyone from the Shibuya Station accident ended up here, so she has to be somewhere. I was with her when it happened.” I say, desperation fighting through my voice, piled on from the verbal assault like rapid-fire shots.
In the bed closest to me, the bandaged man gurgles out a sick chuckle, sending my right ear to ring like an alarm clock.
“You actually think she’s still alive?” He smirks, his dark eyes narrow.
“She was still alive when they loaded her into the ambulance,” I shoot back without hesitation.
A silence settles over the room like a dark cloud, my words lingering above us more a hope than a promise. At the back of my mind stands a looming door I locked the moment I uttered my first words when I woke up, “where’s my sister.” My limbs grow too heavy for my body as I sway on my feet cemented to the floor, the only thing keeping me grounded to the Earth.
“I have to wonder; how do you know she’s still alive?” the blond one asks in a challenge, no different from the one enveloped head to toe in gauze.
There it is. The locks and chains fall from the door; I want to scream as it beckons me closer. The knob turns on its own and cracks open. Behind it, the million-dollar question I locked in the deepest part of my mind. The truth holds tightly to it. I don’t know if she is alive, but I have to hope.
Any courage I might have had before the accident has left me. My cowardice eats me alive, wishing that by the time I face my parents, there will be nothing left but a shell. Hope is the only thread keeping me together.
When the hospital staff gave me my belongings, I was met with an endless bombardment of messages and calls from family and friends. All flights near the area of the disaster were temporarily grounded, which gave me a little time to grow a backbone, but knowing my parents, they won’t stop until they get to us.
“Her name isn’t on the memorial list.”
He holds quite the poker face, but I can tell he’s not convinced. He measures out and calculates every word that comes out of his mouth. Whatever he wants to say, he keeps it to himself.
A knife could have stabbed me with the sharpness that cuts through my left side. I clutch the area as if it’ll help, sucking in a steady breath, whistling through my throat. My ribs burst with pain, pushing against my lungs.
“Not doing too hot, eh? Join the club.” The audacity the bandaged man holds on his back must be exhausting to carry, to be so snide despite being incapacitated by his injuries. I don’t believe in karma, but maybe there is a cosmic reason why he’s head-to-toe in gauze, alive just enough to suffer through his injuries. He must have some intense painkillers, though, enough to take the edge off, definitely better than the stuff the staff allows me to have.
“It’s nothing, just a few broken ribs, some blast lung, makes breathing a little difficult sometimes.” My tone sounds convincing, but the wheezing that accompanies it, not so much.
“You shouldn’t be up walking around with those injuries,” the blond man advises as if I need any more comments from the peanut gallery.
“What are you, a doctor?”
“Yes.”
I put my seething in pain on hold, standing up a little straighter to look him in the face. A face that doesn’t give anything away for free.
“You’re joking.”
“Only offering free advice, you don’t have to believe me.” His eyes light with indifference; any annoyance he let slip earlier has been buried far behind them. The sunlight dances across his features. He would almost look beautiful, like a Renaissance statue, with the sharp edges of his face shadowed by the soft curves of sunlight, exaggerated by the careful way he moves. Still, even Michelangelo carved people with more warmth than he possesses.
A second hit of pain slams into my left side. I prop myself up on the wall, grasping my IV pole with two hands to balance my weight. As if there is a possibility I could look alright, I try to even out my shallow breaths, only making my lungs hitch more.
“If you are going to be here a while, would you like to sit?” He gestures to the end of his bed.
My eyes dart between the two men, landing on the empty spot of blankets. Out in the hall, the nurses hunt for me, but sitting down feels like a slippery slope I can’t see the bottom of. A pit sits heavy in my stomach, warning me I’m about to cross a threshold I can’t come back from, and I don’t know why.
His face couldn’t possibly hold any less expression, what’s underneath it all? I’m watching someone lay out a trap around me I don’t know I’m about to be ensnared in. Maybe this is trauma talking, forced into overdrive by having to fight for my life this past week. He is just a man in a hospital bed. It’s not that deep.
“Feel free to continue wheezing over there,” his tone cuts sharply into me. The picture becomes a little clearer; he knows this is the easiest way to alleviate his annoyance with my presence. The path of least resistance. I’m not going to leave unless forced, with him being bedridden, it is not something he can accomplish. Calling the nurse is an option, but dealing with me making a scene would cause him a bigger headache.
I shuffle over to the bed, slowly lowering myself onto the edge with the support of my IV pole. I raise my guard; we’re strangers, but even at a distance, I never trust a snake in the grass. I’ve been bitten too many times before.
“What’s her name?”
“Huh?” I emerge from the depths of my mind, flexing my fingers. My knuckles white from gripping too hard.
“Your sister, what’s her name?” The man’s tone is even, not the slightest hint of genuine interest.
Her smiling face flashes in my head like rolling film, dancing, running, growing up all in an instant. She’s only a teenager. She has so much life left to live. We have a big age gap, so I haven’t always been around since I moved to Japan. This was supposed to be her fun trip abroad, spending time travelling with her older sister without our parents. It was supposed to be late nights watching movies and talking and early mornings for hiking and tourist traps. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The sterile walls of the hospital fold in on me, caging me in. I want to curl up on the ground and let them crush me, paralyze my nervous system so I can stop feeling everything and nothing all at once for a minute.
“Lina,” I answer softly, my eyes threatening to glaze over with tears. Digging my nails into my palms, lips pressed tight together, I keep the tears at bay.
“And yours?” The words leave his lips almost like an accident. He blinks as if trying to rewind the moment to make sure it actually happened.
My heart picks up in my chest, clutching my breath. I don’t even think he means to unwind and roll me back up again like a ball of yarn. Tossing me back and forth between his hands sure, but he keeps accidentally plucking at a thread he might not want to unravel. I introduce myself as if he doesn’t make me feel like a puppet fighting against being strung up to put on a show.
“And your name?” I ask in return. The curiosity burns dangerously in me. I want to pull back from him, to run out of the room, disappearing forever. Something else, a mysterious force I can’t control, keeps shoving me forward, tripping me over hurdles, all I can do to save myself is stand up and run in the direction it demands.
“Chishiya Shuntaro.” His name rolls off the tongue like a song, a simple melody that sends a tingle down my spine.
“Nice to meet you.”
He stares out the window as if his name is enough. I hold my tongue, begging to get more from him. He doesn’t owe me anything. If anything, I owe him for intruding in his hospital room and being a bother. A heaviness hangs in the air above us, more than silence. But before I can begin to analyze it.
“I’m Niragi, not that either of you were gonna ask me.” The man in bandages spits out like a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe that meteorite was a cosmic punishment for all who were blown away by it.
“Nice to meet you as well.” I give him a tight smile, probably the nicest thing anyone has offered him in life.
“Yeah, sure it is,” Niragi mumbles. I choose to ignore it. His bed isn’t the one I’m sitting on, so I can limit my kindness more. Niragi shifts, grunting at every slight movement. I tune it out at once.
In my peripheral, I trace Chishiya’s features: the shadow of stubble across his jaw, the small marks on his skin, the slant of his nose and the curve of his lips. A thought flickers across his eyes, and he stiffens under its weight, locking it away from himself and anyone who can notice. His face, a mirror to my own, almost makes me laugh and crawl into myself.
“Why is this so important to you?” His sudden question punches me in the gut.
“I don’t understand what you mean."
“Finding your sister. You’re risking your health and creating chaos for the hospital staff. I’m sure you’ve told them about her, they will have it noted down somewhere. Yet you go against it all, the least able person to find her, even faced with the possibility she is not here. Why?”
I disappear into myself. The words coming out of my mouth are not entirely truthful. It’s because it’s my fault. I let them take her, I didn’t watch her, I didn’t take care of her like I was supposed to. I just let them rip her from my arms. She wouldn’t have even been in Tokyo if it weren’t for me. I failed her. Her life won’t be the same, and neither will mine, but she had a better chance than I did at her age.
“She’s my responsibility.” It was my fault. “And I haven’t been able to contact my parents yet.” I’m terrified of answering their calls and messages. “They’ll be worried sick about the both of us, so when I can finally see them, we’ll both be together by then.”
“You act as if that’s something you can change.”
“Excuse me?”
He doesn’t deign to open his mouth again.
“Obviously, you’ve never cared for anyone in your life if you can’t understand.”
Chishiya’s eyes darken in a way I can’t read. The few words I managed to catch on stray pages are ripped from me. His book has slammed shut. I may be good at reading people, but even I can’t read minds. He returns to looking out the window, beyond the trees and sky, to somewhere no one but him can see. A dangerous path it would be to try and follow him down.
I open my mouth to speak, but I have no words. As if I’m going to apologize, my stomach squelching at the thought.
“There you are!” I flinch. Caught.
Honoka barrels into the room, red in the face like a cartoon bull, I swear I can almost see steam coming out of her ears. Sweat greases her brow; she sighs as if she’s the one with gravel rattling around in her lungs.
“Can I get a wheelchair in here, please!” She calls out the door.
Blood on my hands, the ruse is up. Should I deliver my evil villain speech about her foiling my plans now or later? Honoka looks down at me over the frames of her glasses, eyes spiralling with rage. I press my lips tightly together, squaring my shoulders. Definitely later.
“I’m fine; I can walk.” I move to push off the bed, but she bolts over, her hand weighing down on my shoulder. With how much they manhandle me, you’d think that would cause more delay in my healing process over my insistence on walking.
“Oh no, we will wait for the wheelchair, you’ve already overexerted yourself enough for today.”
Behind me, my ears catch a subtle huff of amusement. It licks me like a flame, singeing the hairs on my arm. I don’t want to, but Chishiya’s gaze is burning into me. Tucking my chin, I bend my head to the side as if I’m casually looking down next to me. In my peripheral, the smuggest slight upturn of his lip mocks me.
He can have his trophy. At least I won’t have to be in his condescending presence any longer. A tiny bump in the road of finding my sister, and I am one step closer than I was a few hours ago.
Another nurse rolls a rickety wheelchair into the room. I let Honoka take my arm and assist me, the hospital gown flutters against my skin as I shift into the wheelchair. If I am to attempt this again, I will have to wave the white flag until their suspicions calm down. By then, I should be capable of walking on my own.
The only goodbye I get is from Niragi, who sniggers as Honoka wheels me out of the room. I don’t bother to exchange any courtesies either.
Relief floods my body, rolling past all the other hospital rooms towards mine. My bones turn to dust under my skin that hangs off every muscle like sheets on a clothesline. Whatever glue that was holding my body together finally loosened. An ache sets in that overpowers any stabbing pain or exhaustion. For the first time this week, I can’t wait to be back in my hospital bed.
I slouch in the chair, folding my hands in my lap, my arms brush only fabric. My heart plummets into my stomach, begging me to puke it up onto the floor.
“Wait, I have to go back,” I demand, grabbing onto the arms of the wheelchair, about to jump out if she doesn’t stop.
“Why do you need to go back?” Honoka speeds up, her tone void of emotions, just like her eyes; she uses her glasses to hide. It begs the question when you get a nursing degree, do they suck your soul at graduation or five years after witnessing the horror that is the medical system. I keep that comment to myself.
“I dropped something.”
“Good try, but you’re wearing a hospital gown.”
“It was a picture tucked into my waistband,” I insist, desperation tinging my voice.
“Fine, after I drop you off at your room, I’ll go look for it, when did you last have it?”
It’s not the solution I intended, but I don’t think I’ll be able to push my luck anymore today, so I swallow my pride.
“Just before you found me in the room with the two men.”
“Okay, I’ll check.”
I almost add, please.
Honoka leaves me in my hospital room after helping me to bed. I don’t hold out much hope given their previous track record of finding something I ask for, but maybe the simplicity of this task will be doable for them. It takes everything in me not to get up and go searching myself, but I don’t think my legs would be able to take me that far through the hospital for a second time today.
Minutes feel like hours. My ears prick at the ticking clock mocking me, counting down. It laughs with every slow tick its hands make. I shake my foot under the sheets, vibrating my whole body. The door left ajar; I pop my head up whenever footsteps shuffling outside. I wring my hands as if any of this is going to make Honoka return sooner. The only thing she does quickly is head out for lunch. Taking a deep breath, I cut her some slack; she’ll come back soon.
I just can’t lose that picture too.
A knock comes at the door, and Honoka sticks her head in. Everything in my body stops moving; even my blood slows down.
“I’m sorry, I looked all over, but I couldn’t find the picture.”
Her answer knocks the breath out of my lungs.
On the nightstand, my phone rings. I stare at it, letting it go to voicemail.
The black screen lights up again. A message from my mom.
We got a flight to Tokyo in two days. I hope you and Lina are okay. I love you my angels.
Shit. The ticking of the clock could have deafened me.