Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ On the Outside ❯ Chapter Nine ( Chapter 9 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Author's Notes: I was quick on this one. ^^ I deserve a cookie. … or maybe not. Maybe I deserve a lynching.

Chapter Nine

I hate hospitals. I mean, who doesn't? But I really, really hate hospitals.

I hate the smell. I hate how everything is so perfect and neat and in order. I hate how everything is so white. Why is everything so goddamn white? It just makes it worse when blood spills. Nothing like crimson on white.

Deliriously, I wondered what their laundry bill was, having to get blood out of their sheets and clothing and tiles as much as I figured they had to.

Delirious was probably the right word for me. I was delirious. I didn't really know what the hell was going on. There were people coming and going all around us -- I had forgotten that too, how damn busy the places are, and how many doctors you see, and yet there's never a one that can be bothered to see you for even a moment. We were sitting in the waiting room. Me, Mika, Touma, and a frazzled Shuuichi, gnawing on a nail, but otherwise just looking... blank and devoid of feeling. It scared me to look at him.

Mika with her hands pressed to her knees, prim and proper, Touma with his back hunched, staring down at the tile hard and saying nothing... and me, slouched in my chair, a leg pulled up so my knee touched my chin, and an arm draped carelessly around my shin. The other foot skidded along the floor.

Ryuuichi and Noriko had opted to not come with us. They probably felt that it wasn't their place. Noriko had offered a reassuring smile and told us to get going, but Ryuuichi had looked... really serious. He just nodded to Touma, some silent exchange between them. Touma walked away then, Mika at his side, and Shuuichi trailing blankly behind him.

He gripped my arm briefly before letting me go to follow them. His face was grim, but the pressure was somehow reassuring to me. I had murmured a thanks, and he smiled, quick and brief, and then gestured for me to go.

So we were in the hospital, and I was remembering how much I hated them.

I couldn't have cared less about a hospital when I was a kid. It was just a place you had to go every now and then, you know? Get your shots, cry for a bit about your new bruise, and then get a lollipop, and everything was all better again.

But it wasn't that easy when your mother was dying of cancer. It wasn't that easy at all. Nobody gave her a shot and made her all better, nobody gave her a lollipop and told her to go home and be a good little girl for her mommy and daddy. No, it was long, horrible treatments day in and day out, it was the constant chemotherapy, it was the blood transfusions, it was all the prescriptions and the bottles and the pills...

And nothing ever saved her. For all of that, nothing saved her.

When I was fourteen, I was in a car accident. It was no big deal. I had been coming home with a friend and his dad, and we had been slammed into on the right side by a guy blazing through the intersection. My friend's dad got away without much trouble, my friend with some bruises, cuts, and a concussion, and I somehow got my arm broken. It's all a blur to me so I don't know how it happened, I just remember laying on the pavement and a light shining in my eyes as the paramedics tried to bring me to.

I was kept overnight in the hospital for observation purposes, arm up in a sling and pumped with a nice amount of codeine. Mika had come back home the second she heard, and weirdly enough, Touma had come along with her. It was weird to me because it was only a broken arm, after all; it wasn't like I was going to die. Still, they both came to the hospital to see me. Dad stayed for awhile, but he had to split eventually. So they stayed.

The nurses kept waking me up on the hour of every hour just to make sure I didn't have a concussion. But when it was getting close to two in the morning, when they were going to come in to wake me up again, I woke myself up for them. I just sat up and started screaming.

Even now I don't remember the dream. I remember waking up, and I remember screaming like someone was trying to kill me, but I don't remember the dream. I remember it being white, blindingly white even. I remember hearing my mother's voice. And I remember hearing more, stranger voices that still give me the chills when I think about them now.

Mika had freaked out and rushed for a nurse, but Touma stayed behind. He gripped me around the shoulders with an arm, holding me tight against him, and just saying over and over again that things would be okay. He kept saying that. Over and over again, that things would be okay, that I would be fine, and I had nothing to be scared of.

Then he said, 'I'm sorry.'

I didn't know why. I still don't know why, but something about that sorry was so anguished. Like he felt responsible or something.

Mika came back and I latched onto her begging that she take me home. I said something about how creepy hospitals were, and how much I hated to be there, but Mika told me I had to until the doctors said it was okay.

But Mom died here! She died!

She took me home then. I said that, and she took me home. The doctors were pissed and told her she couldn't do that, but she pulled that evil Mika Glare on them, and they all were quick to shut up. I fell asleep with my face buried in her lap back at the house.

I hadn't been hospital since then.

And I wasn't happy about being in one now.

I stood up and started to pace. Hell if I was just going to sit there wondering what was going on. Nobody spared a glance to me. Touma kept staring fixedly at the floor, Shuuichi gnawing his nail and staring out the window, and Mika sitting prim and pretty.

The doctor came. Finally, he came, and Touma and Mika were on their feet at once. Shuuichi remained grounded, and I stood there, scuffing my feet along the floor.

"We had to pump his stomach," the doctor explained.

There was a gasp from Mika, and I thought I saw a twitch of movement from Shuuichi. But Touma just stood listening.

"He had ingested a lethal amount of prescription drugs," the doctor continued, "mostly anti-depressants and a few sleeping pills..."

I remembered those bottles. Those orange prescription bottles, and how many of them Eiri kept stashed in his medicine cabinet. I remembered him popping pills a few times and thinking not much of it. It had bothered me, but I had let it go.

I shouldn't have let it go.

"I understand he has a history of stress-related ulcers?" the doctor asked, indicating his question to Touma and Mika. "Has he been under a heavy amount of stress lately?"

"Yes..." Mika murmured it, softly. I snapped my head up and stared at her. Eiri always had a stick up his ass as far as I was concerned, but if Mika was saying it, it was something more. It wasn't just his usual stress, it was something else.

The doctor continued in that usual monotone doctors have, probably thinking about some golfing trip he had planned, and not about the fact my brother could have damn well died. "Since he has no history of drug abuse it is up to the family whether or not rehab is an option, but you ought to bear it in mind."

"He wasn't addicted," I snapped.

He looked up at me, as though just noticing I was even there. But then he looked right back to Mika, asking her with his eyes for clarification.

"He wasn't," she echoed. "It was just the stress getting to him, I'm sure..."

The doctor shrugged. "Well, you may see him if you like, but please only two at a time." He left us then, going off to do his other doctorly duties, and I knew by morning, our faces and problems would have vanished from his memory. Why should he give a shit about one patient in the long run? Patients were never individuals when it came to them, just another face, and just another check in their wallet.

"Tatsuha?" Mika looked at me. I shook my head and backed up.

"No. Let Shuuichi go."

She nodded, turning her gaze to Shuuichi. Slowly, Shuuichi got up, and after being given directions to the room, he went alone.

Touma and Mika sat back down. I kept pacing.

To me, it felt like it had been an hour before Shuuichi came back, but it could have been shorter. Not having much to occupy my mind with, it seemed like a hell of a long time to me. Again, Mika asked me if I wanted to go, and again I told her no. So away she and Touma went.

Shuuichi sat and said nothing. I opened my mouth a few times to try and say something reassuring to him, but no words would come. All of a sudden it was dry and cracked, and I couldn't even swallow.

It may not have been an hour that Shuuichi was gone, but it was an hour until Touma and Mika reappeared. Mika looked stressed and pissed all at once, but Touma just looked tired and drained. I figured it was my turn to go.

"I'll go," I said, and I doubt if any of them really heard me. So shoving my hands in my pockets, I wandered away, prowling along in search of his room.

The door was pulled to. I nudged it open and slowly poked my head inside. It was a shared room, and the curtain was drawn around the opposite side. I walked in as quietly as I could and was relieved to see that Eiri was in the first bed instead of the other; passing some other sick guy by didn't really appeal to me. Who knew what he had. Sick people have always given me the willies. I pity them and all, but I hate to see people suffer like that. I can't do it anymore, not after Mom.

But the fact he was the first bed's occupant was about as far as my relief would go. Strapped to an IV, a heart monitor to the other side, Eiri almost looked like a corpse, swallowed in that big, white bed. His skin was pale, and dark circles were sketched beneath his eyes. He looked like a man that had never slept, like a prisoner of war that had just returned to the homeland. He looked awful.

His dull, dead eyes just looked at me blankly when he noticed me standing there.

"Hi," I said, and damned if it didn't come out as a squeak. My mouth was still dry, and so my voice came out hoarse. I sounded like a pre-pubescent kid that was just starting to have his voice break.

There was a chair pulled up beside the bed, one I figured had probably been occupied by Shuuichi, and then by Mika. Touma would have just stood. I flopped into it, and resting my elbows on my knees, leaned forward slightly.

"How you feeling?" I asked. Stupid question. But nothing else was really coming to mind. 'Hi, big bro, how ya doing, here you're kinda stressed, guess you went and popped a shit load of pills to take care of it.'

Right.

"Been better," he replied, voice dry and bland as ever. I could have smiled. No, I couldn't. Smiling was the last thing I could do, and it was probably going to be the last thing I could do for awhile.

I didn't know what I was feeling. I was angry, but at the same time I was worried out of my mind, and on top of being worried, I was relieved. I wanted to scream and yell at him, but then I wanted to hug him and say how glad I was he was okay. I didn't know what to do.

So I settled for the blunt approach. Or maybe it was my mouth settling on that approach for me because there the question was, out in the open, and I had no chance to stop it before it was said.

"Why'd you do it?"

He looked at me slowly, and I could see he was tired. Not tired how he had been for the past few days, that exhausted tired that had worried me. This was a sad sort of tired look. Sad was not something I often equated with Eiri.

I thought he wouldn't answer me; he was quiet for so long. But then he did, voice soft, and I had to lean forward to hear him.

"There are a lot of things you don't know, Tatsuha."

I blinked at him. What kind of thing was that to say? Yeah, I knew there were a lot of things no one would tell me. I had known that since I was a kid. Ever since I was little, it seemed like all my family wanted to do was keep me in the dark about everything. No one ever told me anything and it was frustrating as hell.

And it wasn't fair to take it out on Eiri, but I wasn't thinking. My mouth was moving faster than my brain. All I knew was that I was pissed off, really pissed off, and all of a sudden I was on my feet and yelling at him.

"Yeah, no fucking shit there a lot of things I don't know! No one will fucking tell me! You can't tell Tatsuha, God forbid anyone tell Tatsuha, he might just break if he hears anything bad. Fuck you! I deserve to know, just as much as Mika does, just as much as Touma, just as much as Shuuichi! You're my brother too!"

The nurse had come in during that little tangent of mine. She grabbed my arm and looked at me like I was some demon from hell.

"Sir, please, this is a hospital," she hissed.

"No shit, lady," I barked at her.

"Shut up, Tatsuha." It was Eiri, sounding as quiet and drained as ever. And I did. I don't know why but I shut up completely. I collapsed into the chair, and with some assurances from Eiri that I would not make a scene again, she left us alone with a quick, hateful look at me. I stuck my tongue out at her retreating back.

Eiri sighed. "You're right," he said, and I did a double take.

"What?" I asked.

"You do deserve to know."

It struck me then that I didn't know what it was I deserved to know. I know that the family had been keeping something from me, for years and years now, but I had never really stopped to wonder what it was. I only knew it had something to do with Eiri, and it was something that not even Mika would tell me. It was something Eiri never wanted to repeat.

"Okay," I said, slowly. "Tell me."

And he did. He told me everything. Told me how he had not been able to get along with our father ever since our mother had died, how Touma had seen that anguish and wanted to do something for him. He told me that Touma had wanted him to go to New York to relax and experience life outside of the family. He said it was there that he had met Kitazawa Yuki, the man his penname was taken from.

His voice hitched slightly as he continued, telling me how devoted he had been to Kitazawa, and how much he had wanted to be like him. He told me how much it hurt when he went home, back to that apartment, and Kitazawa had been there -- had touched him, and none of it was wanted, none of it he had ever asked for. I choked when he told me about the two men, and how Kitazawa had sold him out to those men, and only for a lousy twenty bucks.

They raped him, he said, and then he had shot them. All three of them, he had shot them dead.

He was silent then, and so was I.

Then I spoke, words almost drowned out by my sudden, choking sobs. "Good," I said. "Good. They deserved to die."

"I thought so, too," he said, and I wondered if he was crying, too. "That was why," he continued. "Today is the day that it happened, the anniversary of it."

"So you took all those pills," I finished.

He nodded.

We sat there a long time in silence. And then I stood up. He looked at me, surprised, but it was too late. I was gone. I was running, and I didn't know where the hell I was going.

Mika caught my sleeve as I blundered into the waiting room, but I shook her hand away and kept going, running as hard and fast as I could, and ignoring their voices calling my name.

I ran, right out of the hospital, into the dark street, and kept running. I was exhausted within a half hour, but I kept going, walking now, and nearly tripping over myself. I wanted so badly to just stop and fall asleep.

But I kept walking, and I don't know how it happened, but there I was -- standing in front of Eiri's apartment door. I dragged the key he had given me out of my pocket and shoved it into the keyhole. Threw the door open then, not bothering to turn on the lights. I only needed to go into the kitchen, anyway.

Almost all the cabinet doors were ripped off their hinges by the time I was done. I grabbed every single prescription bottle I could find, and I went into the bathroom, and dumped every pill down the toilet. I flushed all of them.

And then I stumbled out, slamming the door behind me, and I kept walking.

I remembered the way. I remembered how to get there. I got on the next bus that came around the corner, and I rode it to his apartment.

Walking up the stairs felt like something or someone else was in control of my body. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know why I was going to him. I wanted to turn around more than once, but then I was standing there, and I was lifting my hand, and I was knocking.

He opened the door. I had probably caught him at a bad time. I mean, he was shirtless. But for once I didn't drool or blush or think about how lucky I was to see that. I just stood there.

"Tatsuha-kun."

I started to cry.

"He could have died," I said. "He could have died."

And I just kept repeating it over and over again, until Ryuuichi took me firmly into his arms and held me.