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When they arrived at their destination, it was hard to understand what was going on. Police officers were running to and fro. Firefighters were spraying the flaming building with water and fire retardant. There were two ambulances, the paramedics crouched next to bodies on the ground.
This was not the scene that Shinichi had assumed that they would be coming upon. Sure, they had radioed ahead with the crucial information that Sataka was the murderer, but that shouldn’t have led to such a dramatic scene.
Shinichi leapt out of the car, horror building in his gut.
What the hell had happened?
Shinichi surveyed the scene, trying to figure out what was going on. His focus was continually pulled to the bodies on the ground. Ran and Kazuha pushed past him, running. Shinichi followed them as fast as his cursedly short legs would let him.
As he got closer, Shinichi realized something horrible. One of the people on the ground was Sakata. The man was clutching at his leg. The other person lay concerningly still. Shinichi didn’t need to fully see the person’s face. He knew who it was just from the well loved baseball hat laying in the mud next to the paramedics.
Heiji.
Shinichi skidded to a stop next to Ran. He looked down at Heiji. The teen’s side was drenched in blood. What the hell had happened? Shinichi’s hand came up to his own sternum where the knife had nearly impaled him. Had something similar happened to Heiji? Was he stabbed as well?
“What happened?” Kazuha asked, a frantic note to her voice.
“He was shot in the abdomen,” one of the police inspectors answered.
Shinichi shuddered. Getting shot would do nasty things to a body, double so if the injured area was on the torso. The quick arrival of the ambulance would aid Heiji’s chance at survival. That being said, it would probably still be touch and go.
As he was thinking this, the paramedics around Heiji started moving. Heiji was loaded onto a gurney and loaded onto one of the waiting ambulances. The dancing light of the dying flames made the whole scene look macabre; almost like a bad dream.
A bad dream.
Shinichi’s hand once more went to the charm around his neck. Had Heiji doomed himself by giving Shinichi the charm? Shinichi wasn’t superstitious, but he couldn’t help but wonder about this.
“Wait! I’m coming too!” Kazuha cried, breaking into a run.
Ran went with her. Without thinking it through, Shinichi followed both of the girls to the back of the ambulance. The paramedics let them come abroad and then they were off.
Under the bright lights of the ambulance, Heiji looked bad. There really was no other way to put it.. His usually unruly hair was flattened and stuck to his head with sweat. That same sweat was creating an unhealthy sheen on his unusually pale skin. The oxygen mask over his face had very little condensation on it, telling Shinichi that Heiji was barely breathing. Heiji’s shirt had been cut away to make room for pressure bandages. The material was already becoming saturated at an alarming rate.
“Is Heiji gonna be alright?” Kazuha demanded.
“We are going to do everything that we can, Miss,”
Kazuha’s face crumpled at the medic’s words. She clutched Heiji’s hand. The action roused Heiji slightly. The teen detective gave a soft groan, his eyes fluttering slightly as he briefly drifted to semi-consciousness.
“Heiji?” Kazuha choked on her words.
Heiji didn’t answer. A moment later, his eyes closed once more.
The rest of the drive was fraught with tension. The paramedics were still frantically working on Heiji when they arrived at the hospital. As the doors swung shut, separating them from the operating room, Shinichi was left wondering if that was the last time he would see Heiji alive.
<><><><><>
Heizo was wrapping up work for the day when he received a phone call. It was Otaki.
“The murderer from the case that your son got mixed up in was arrested,” he reported.
“Good,” Heizo nodded.
That would make his evening lighter. One less criminal was out on the streets. Even better that the case that his son was involved in was now closed. He didn’t care for his son to be involved in police work while he was still in school. At least this case hadn’t been one that dragged on or put his son in too much danger.
“Sir….” Otaki trailed off sounding hesitant
Heizo paused and frowned. That was seldom a tone that Otaki used.
“What?” he prompted.
“There’s something else you should know,” Otaki said.
Heizo paused what he was doing to give the phone call his full attention.
“What?” he demanded.
“It’s…. well….Hei-chan……. He’s been shot,” Otaki stammered.
Heizo felt something cold creep into his heart. Heiji had… been shot? This was like a nightmare come true for Heizo.
“How bad?” he demanded, hand tightening around his phone in a death grip.
“Um. That’s hard to say. The bullet hit him in the abdomen and he looked like he was losing a lot of blood even while the paramedics were working on him,” Otaki admitted.
That is not what Heizo wanted to hear.
“Where are they taking him?” he demanded.
There was a bit of fumbling in the background of the call before an answer was given. Heizo jotted the location down on his pad of paper. He was intelligent, but he didn’t have his son’s eidetic memory. He also knew that stress could make the mind forget things unbidden.
After hanging up the call, Heizo set out. His first stop was to pick up his wife. Shizuka was not normally one to be shaken, but the news that their son was badly injured from a gun broke her normally unshakable exterior. Heizo had never seen his wife so tense before.
When they arrived at the hospital, they were directed to a waiting room. Kazuha was already there, along with a few people that Heizo did not recognize. While they waited for news, a round of introduction was in order. The girl that a teary Kazuha was clinging to was called Ran. The kid snuggled on the chair next to Ran was Edogawa. The man who had arrived at about the same time as Heizo and Shizuka was a private detective called Mori (a name that Heizo vaguely recognized).
They all waited for news with the same tenseness. After what felt like a small eternity, the medical staff finally gave them an update. Heiji was out of surgery and in a recovery room. Heizo and Shizuka were allowed to see their son briefly.
Heiji lay motionless in the hospital bed. It was so unlike the restless energy that Heizo’s son usually exuded. Heiji’s skin was an unhealthy pallor. His eyes were closed. Heizo’s one consolation was that his son’s chest rose and fell in an even rhythm. Heiji was still alive.
“How is he?” he asked the doctor who had accompanied them.
“Better than he was,” the doctor sighed.
“Tell me everything,” Heizo requested.
The doctor hesitated before complying.
“The bullet went through his body, narrowly missing his spine. It tore through his liver and clipped one of the main arteries in the area. He lost a massive amount of blood. On that count alone, he shouldn’t be alive. He coded twice in surgery from blood loss,” the doctor reported.
Only a lifetime of keeping a straight face kept Heizo from giving voice to his worry. He knew that his son had been badly injured, but he didn’t realize just how close he had come to losing his son.
“Will he recover?” This was truly the only question that Heizo wanted an answer to at the moment.
“His recovery time won’t be short, but, barring any unforeseen complications, he should be fine with time,” the doctor assured him.
For the first time since learning that Heiji had been shot, Heizo let himself breathe. His son was going to be alright.
Heizo and Shizuka reported this much to Kazuha (Heizo opted not to tell the poor distraught girl about how close Heiji had come to dying, instead focusing on the fact that Heiji was going to recover).
When Heizo stopped by the next day, Heiji was awake. He looked drugged, but fairly coherent for someone who had almost died the day before. For whatever reason, the room was thankfully empty. Heizo took the seat by his son’s bedside.
“Heiji….”
Heizo hated how his son flinched. After a moment, his son turned to look at him.
“You scared your mother and I,” Heizo scolded.
“Didn’t mean to,” Heiji mumbled.
Heizo sighed. He knew that was true. Heiji never meant to do anything wrong. He was a good kid at heart; a good kid who didn’t know how to stay out of trouble. That didn’t mean that Heizo didn’t feel the floor drop out from under him every time his son was hurt.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Heizo reprimanded.
Heiji at least had the good graces to look ashamed.
“I’m not gonna stop solvin’ case,” Heiji sulked.
“If you're going to insist on helping with case, start using your head a little more often before you go rushing off into dangerous situations,” Heizo told him.
Heizo wished that he could shake sense into his son sometimes. He knew that wouldn't be well received though.
Even with this little admonishment, Heiji grumbled something under his breath before turning his head away from Heizo. Heizo took that as a sign that the conversation was over. He glanced at his watch. He needed to get to work anyway.
Before he left the room, Heizo looked back over his shoulder. He felt like he needed to say something else, but he didn’t know what. Instead, he took comfort in the fact that his son was somehow still alive.