Chapter Text
Zanka blinked once, twice, and the pale lights of the hospital came into a blurry, distorted view. At first, he rubbed his eyes, hoping to dissipate this fog over his usually apt eye sight, using his fingers balled up into fists to clear away the murk.
He blinked some more, and fully opened his eyes again. Still the same, discolored, knocked off-kilter view. Maybe this was a temporary thing due to a poison overdose? He looked toward the other side of the room. No one was there, and beside his bed on a side table lie a diagnosis sheet. Against his better judgement, he lifted the sheet up, bringing it close to his eyes to make out words.
"Patient; Nijiku, Zanka... Diagnosis results... Optic Nerve Damage, Concussion... 5 Broken Ribs..."
He tossed it aside.
Permanent Optic Nerve Damage. He won't see clearly again. Not like he used to. Because of Him. Because of that raider.
His heart boiled with rage, anxiety, hopelesness, and worst of all, fear. He was scared. Zanka was scared. Of what this meant for his future as a giver, cleaner, everything. His whole life was still ahead of him, and now he didn't even have the vision to see it. He felt himself shake. His heart rate picked up so fast on the monitor it alerted medical staff.
A nondescript nurse rushed in, and laid him back down. She whispered something about calming down, relaxing, something Zanka couldn't hear, a lack of care for anything sharply injecting into his veins. She left the room shortly after, and the room and Zanka's heartbeat stilled once more.
Three days went on as such; Nurses rushing in once his heartrate spiked, giving him drugs or rebandaging his wounds, or sedating him or piercing him with needles or shining bright lights into his eyes or asking him about his mental condition to which he answered dryly. His days constituted of bland hospital meals, staring out of the window into a stony courtyard with a fountain and a few benches. The fountain was shut off and the evaporated chlorine buildup on the sides of the faded tile only served to remind Zanka that hospitals were typically places of death, not life. That they held morgues in their basements and restless souls wandered the halls at night, when everyone, or mostly everyone, was sleeping.
After the three days, the nurse in charge of him decided he was stable enough to let visitors see him. Although Zanka did not want anyone to see him in this condition, he'd never think he'd admit missing any one of the cleaners. Particularly this one boy, newly a giver, he'd recently gotten to know.
Well, Zanka's known of this boy for almost all his time as a cleaner, only having joined a couple years before him, but he only recently has gotten acquainted. His name was Follo, Follo Tunito.
And he was the first person to visit Zanka.