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Hatori can barely stand to be in the room.
He’s attended the treatment plans for plenty of Sohma’s, the children especially. He’s learned to ignore the sidelong glances of other doctors. Of course they know that abuse is happening in the Sohma household. It’s obvious, but Sohma money funds the hospital and pays their salaries, so they stay silent or are quietly fired.
But now, as they stand in an office and flip through Rin’s file, he suddenly can’t be there.
“There could be brain damage.” One of his colleagues says. “There was bleeding, here…” She’s pointing at a photograph of the back of Rin’s skull.
““We should check for nerve damage.” Another one adds on. “And paralysis.”
Brain damage. Nerve damage. Paralysis.
It would kill Rin. She loves to run. She’d just started learning to take joy in her body again. Hatori imagines her unable to move, and knows that she would die from it. She has a desperate, vicious desire to control her own body, to prevent other people from touching her or even looking at her sometimes.
His heart is pounding. He can barely breathe. Shigure is just outside.
“Excuse me.” Hatori says suddenly. He feels like he’s floating outside of his body as he opens the door, robotically walks out of the room and closes it. He looks straight at Shigure.
“I’m going to be sick.” He says.
Shigure drags him to a bathroom, and by the time they get close Hatori is stumbling. Shigure shoulders the door open, and Hatori barely makes it to the toilet before he collapses in front of it and violently empties the contents of his stomach. He heaves over and over until there’s nothing left, and then he’s just choking and drooling and wiping at his face and eyes.
He’s not sure when he started crying, but tears periodically dribble down his face. He gasps for air, clutching at the rim of the toilet, gagging and occasionally heaving when he chokes on his own spit.
Shigure isn’t saying anything, but Hatori can feel his presence at his back. He’s giving Hatori whatever privacy he can in the small, single-toilet bathroom. Hatori’s not sure if he wants privacy, but he certainly doesn’t want to be comforted right now either.
He needs to get back to Rin. He needs to fix things. He wipes at his face uselessly, gags again when he remembers the mess of blood and gore at the back of Rin’s skull, the way she drifted in and out when he drove her to the hospital.
Brain damage. Nerve damage. Paralysis.
It turns out there was something left in his stomach, and he vomits that into the toilet too.
“Okay.” Shigure says, clearly deciding that enough is enough. “You need to calm down.”
Hatori spits into the toilet, wipes at his mouth again. “Okay.” He says automatically. He flushes the toilet, stands up and wipes at his face again. He stumbles when he stands, and there’s a terrible moment where he thinks he might collapse or black out, but he manages to stay upright. His heart is pounding, his vision is blurred, and the ever-operating medical professional part of his brain helpfully informs him he’s having an anxiety episode.
Shigure is leaning against the sink, but he moves aside so Hatori can lean heavily against the counter and wash his face and rinse out his mouth. Hatori washes his face and thinks of how her face was streaked with blood and tears. He doubles over the sink and grits his teeth together, squeezes his eyes shut. Her injuries come back to him in sickening bits and pieces.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Shigure asks quietly.
Hatori nods.
“Is she going to die?” Shigure asks. Hatori doesn’t miss the way his voice catches.
“Probably not.” Hatori says. His voice is raw and rough from throwing up. He clears his throat.
“Probably…” Shigure tilts his head.
“We haven’t ruled out brain damage.”
“Oh.”
“Dr. Ito thinks she could be paralyzed.”
“That would kill her.”
“I know.” Hatori says. He stares down at the sink, gripping the sides of it as though to hold himself up.
“You should excuse yourself from being her doctor.” Shigure says suddenly.
“What?”
Shigure looks at Hatori. “Are you her doctor right now, or are you her parent?”
“I’m not—“ Hatori inhales sharply. “I didn’t excuse myself from Kisa.”
“Kisa hasn’t been living in your house for the past two years. And she wasn’t this bad.” Shigure says evenly. “I know you’re a good doctor. I do not trust you to be her doctor right now.”
Hatori stares. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Do you see yourself right now?”
“You have no right—“
Shigure raises his hands in mock surrender. “You’re right. I have no right. I’m not her parent or her doctor. But when she wakes up, do you think she wants you standing there with a clipboard, or do you think she wants you holding her hand?”
“I can do both.” Hatori says weakly, but even has he says it he knows how much comfort she’ll need if this goes poorly. He can already imagine how difficult it would be, how frightened she’ll be.
“You don’t have to.” Shigure says. “Please, Ha-san.”
Shigure is right. Of course he is. Hatori tries to imagine himself deciding on her care plan, and finds himself frozen by the thought of it.
“How am I supposed to trust someone else with this?” He asks very quietly. He feels like he might be sick again. It feels impossible. He can’t hand over Rin’s life like that. It’s terrifying.
“It’s what everyone else does.” Shigure says.
It is. Hatori remembers Kisa’s mom sitting in the waiting room, anxiously twisting her hands. He remembers her sitting outside Kisa’s hospital door and crying into her hands to muffle her tears, so her daughter wouldn’t be frightened. He remembers Haru’s mothers’ pacing every time Haru would get seriously injured in a fight.
It’s unfair and self-indulgent to compare himself to a real parent, but he does it anyways.
“Trust me.” Shigure says, gentler now.
“You’re not usually this generous when your other cousins are injured.”
Shigure smirks. “I’m being selfish.” He says. “I’ve seen you rip yourself apart from guilt enough times. I’d rather not have to watch it again.”
The deflection is obvious, but Hatori ignores it. Shigure extends tenderness in bits and pieces, and Hatori won’t turn it away now. “I’ll feel guilty regardless of whether I’m her doctor.”
“I know.” Shigure says. “But it’s different.”
It is different. Hatori rolls his shoulders to relieve the ache in his neck from bending over the toilet for so long.
He feels tired. He feels sick. He wants Rin to be safe, he wants someone to sit him down and be gentle with him, and reassure him that they’ll take care of her. He doesn’t feel like he can be calm or in control right now.
“Okay.” Hatori says. His voice is raw and raspy. His hands are still shaking.
“I’ll let them know.” Shigure says.
“No.” Hatori says. “No, this is… I should take care of this.”
Shigure eyes him. “You should clean up a little more, then.”
“You’re terrible at being comforting.”
“You should have called Kazuma-dono if you wanted comforting.”
“I should call him anyways.” Hatori wipes uselessly at his face.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Hatori looks at him dubiously.
“Really.” Shigure says. “You… worry about other things. I’ll call Kazuma.”
Kazuma has always been very kind to Rin. He’s gentle with the Jyuunishi children, intentionally and purposefully resisting the Sohma tradition of being cold towards children.
Hatori’s not cold to them, but he certainly didn’t protect them from anything.
“She didn’t fall, Shigure.” Hatori says suddenly.
“I know.”
Shigure looks back at him evenly. He doesn’t look guilty or upset. It’s just something he’s accepted, like sickness or the rain.
And Hatori can’t even fault him for that, because he forgave Akito the moment he realized what had happened.
“And you’re okay with that?” Hatori asks. He feels desperate, he wants someone to tell him that this is wrong, that things shouldn’t be this way. He needs there to be some kind of moral compass, telling him that he’s been bad and properly punishing him for just watching terrible things happen, an unmoving spectator on the sidelines.
Shigure’s serious look softens. “Things won’t always be this way.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I can’t be.” He says, and there’s no performance behind the words. He’s looking Hatori in the eye, not smiling or laughing or deflecting in any way. “But I can feel it.”
Shigure is entirely capable of faking honesty, but Hatori lets himself believe it this time.
“I’ll call Kazuma.” Shigure says. “You should clean up some more.”
Hatori does. He waits until Shigure is gone before evaluating himself in the mirror— he looks like shit. He looks scared. He’s always been pale, but his face is noticeably whiter, except for the splotches of red around his eyes from crying. His eyes are red and puffy, and Hatori dabs at them with a paper towel soaked in cool water, but it doesn’t do much. He observes, detachedly, that he can’t quite bring himself to look himself directly in the eyes.
He arranges his hair to cover up his bad eye, and gives up on doing much else. He’s gotten used to being stared at at the hospital— after all, the Sohma family has all but outright bought the place. The state of his face will just give his coworkers one more thing to whisper about.
It’s something he’s gotten used to. Yet another thing that he’s given up on ever changing. Just like the way their family manages to break children over, and over, and over again. He feels nauseous again, but he swallows past it. He averts his gaze from the mirror entirely.
Hatori adjusts his white coat that somehow still feels too large and squares his shoulders. He has other things to take care of, and he can’t stay in the relative safety of the bathroom forever. He feels like he’s floating outside of himself again, but it’s probably for the better.
This way, he can at least talk to the doctors and Shigure and Rin without choking on how much he hates himself.