Through the Lens

Chapter 6: Hospital Surprises

Conan lay on the hospital bed, doing his best to look like he was actually interested in the movie that Ran had chosen for them to watch. Kiki's Delivery Service just wasn't holding his interest. He couldn't tell Ran that the way that Kiki flew on her broom didn't seem at all realistic, nor could he explain that the voice of the witch unnerved him. Ran kept giving him worried looks as she sat in a chair next to his bed, also not fully paying attention to the movie. It made his heart ache to see her so worried. Resigning himself, he did his best to pretend to be interested for Ran's sake. Sadly, having so little interest in the movie left him to wonder about his current predicament.

His biggest concern was that they were not letting him leave the hospital. He didn't like being cooped up in the hospital, unable to investigate while a series of people who he didn't know were in charge of the case. While there were a few people in the fire department and the bomb unit who he knew, he would have felt much more comfortable if division one had been fully in charge, and of course, if he was on the scene. Conan knew he could always weasel information out of the crime scene investigators, but it was harder if he wasn't there.

As it was, it seemed the entire police force was working as a team. Division two and three had managed to weasel into the case to see if there had been a theft of the keys or other things in the property. It seemed overkill, but as there had just been a Kid heist the night before, many of the Kid task force had found themselves overly zealous in wanting to help the "Kid-killer". However, the more people working on a case meant that the more likelihood that clues would be found. It also meant that one of the other departments would figure out information first, meaning that Conan wouldn't get the information right away. While they were helpful, they didn't know the way he worked – and vice versa. If he were there, he could actively work out the clues as he discovered them.

Another concern that Conan had about being kept in the hospital was that a nurse or doctor could walk in the room to check on him, but how would Conan know if these people were really who they said they were? What if they were the person responsible for attacking him? From the people who were coming in and out of his room, he'd already deduced that one of the nurses was a drug addict who stole medication meant for patients to use. She likely used some of it and sold the rest to get money for drugs. He'd mentioned this to the police officer on duty. The officer had done a little investigation to find that yes; the hospital had recently reported significant losses in its inventory, one significant enough that it had actually resulted in the death of a patient who had needed medication but the hospital had been unexpectedly out of it. Once this came to light, it had resulted in the nurse confessing her crimes.

Conan sighed. Obviously things like this happened everywhere; it was just that he was able to see it. Things like that occurred every day, but they nonetheless made him worry.

One of the doctors also made him suspicious. Despite his age, the doctor seemed to not know his way around the hospital, meaning that today was his first day on the job. These types of suspicious behaviors kept Conan on edge. He'd feel much safer at the Mouri Detective Agency or at Agasa-hakase's where he could monitor the people he interacted with.

When Conan had first arrived at the hospital, the doctors had ordered a series of x-rays. Two hours ago the doctors had set his shoulder and not long after they had stitched up his leg. However, they had ordered another series of x-rays on his entire body, not just the areas he'd mentioned had pain. No one had said that his injuries were life threatening, but the fact that they were doing more tests and not telling him why had Conan beyond frustrated.

Conan knew that there were dangers of things being left undiscovered in a fall like he'd had if they didn't take x-rays, but he couldn't well explain that he'd had plenty of worse injuries and knew that he would be fine. He supposed it was better that the doctors be safe than sorry. Conan just wished they were sharing more information with him.

Instead of watching the movie, he looked over at the vases of flowers that his friends had sent him. One was from the detective boys who had dropped the flowers off personally before heading down to the station to give their statements. One of the vases had been from the forensics department that had a card signed from all the crime scene investigators, the note promising they would do their best without him there. The last vase had been from Kobayashi-sensei. She'd also brought him a book of puzzles, but they were all childish. However, with the lack of stimulation from the moving, Conan was actually toying with browsing them out of pure boredom.

Conan's ears perked up as he heard the familiar, disgruntled footsteps of Mouri Kogorou walking down the hall, his eyes tearing away from the flowers. Occhan had gone to the scene where Conan had been injured to see if he could help the investigators find anything. Honestly, Conan wasn't relying on the man's detective skills to unravel anything (though he was competent on occasion), but he did hope that Occhan had news.

Just before the footsteps reached the door, the sleeping detective stopped. Conan made out the silhouette of Kogorou-oji-san and one of the doctors outside of the door, along with another man. Even through the closed door, Conan could make out parts of their conversation.

Conan could only hear bits of the beginning of an argument, but it wasn't until Kogorou-oji-san's outburst that the other man (the-not-doctor) spoke loud enough for Conan to hear.

"I will only repeat myself once! We are taking Edogawa Conan into our custody due to the clear signs of child abuse."

"Excuse me?" Kogorou-oji-san bellowed from the hallway. At this point, Ran looked at Conan in horror, her head twisting toward the door. Suddenly the request for a full set of x-rays and why the doctors had been less than forth coming about why made terrible sense.

"After taking a series of x-rays, it's appalling to see the amount of healed fractures this child has. There are old fractures located in his spinouse processes, sternum, ribs, and acromion. There are bucket handle fractures and corner fractures in his metaphyseal region and even diaphyseal and spiral fractures. These are indicative of a child who is grabbed and shaken forcibly by an adult resulting in serious fractures that have had to heal on their own. The boy was lucky that he didn't receive more damage from the fall, but we were appalled to see the healed fractures because it means that these injuries are all old – and they're all extensive. It's like looking at the image of a child who has had most of the major bones in his skeleton broken and put back together again," the doctor explained, his voice harsh.

Conan froze. That actually might not be far from the truth in his case, though not because of child abuse. As far as he knew, Haibara had never taken x-rays of his body before and after his experiments with the temporary cures for APTX 4869, but he was fairly certain he would have sustained some sort of injury. Idiotically, he'd never really thought about what it had done to his body. His bones would have had to grow and expand when he returned to normal and then break and fuse back together again when he shrank. It would make a lot of sense for there to be evidence that his bones had shrunk and compressed back together. While it all seemed to heal (he didn't want to say magically since he didn't believe in magic or miraculously because that also indicated something he couldn't explain) it all just seemed to heal without a hitch.

He had never stopped to wonder how or why. While Mouri Kogorou could be physically aggressive at times, Conan had never felt particularly threatened by him. The only injury he would have likely sustained from Mouri would have been a cerebral fracture (one that the doctor hadn't mentioned) meaning Mouri had never bashed his head in hard enough to fracture his skull. Which...well, wasn't good that he did that, but meant that Conan wasn't abused...much.

"Well, it wasn't me! Probably his parents! They dropped him off on us. You said they were all old, right? Makes a lot of sense that his parents did it since he never talks about them and doesn't want to go back to them, come to think of it. He looked horrified the one time his mother did appear."

Conan felt like someone had struck him in the stomach. That had been true. He had been mortified. It had been his mother disguised as…his mother, strangely enough, but he hadn't known it was her since she was wearing a disguise, and he hadn't known that his parents knew that he'd shrunk. He fervently hoped that the doctors didn't try to contact his mother. Conan was without his phone and hadn't gotten a chance to call and talk to her.

Too late he realized he hadn't masked the surprise and fear on his face. Ran looked at him in something akin to horror, misinterpreting his fear. Conan quickly schooled his features, but the damage was already done.

"The signs are clear. If it wasn't you, it had to have been someone. Even so, we need to talk with him to ascertain who did this to him."

"His parents probably abused him. You can't take him away from us, or they'll probably do it again," Occhan argued.

Thinking fast, Conan had to come up with a believable lie as to how he may have sustained injuries he didn't even know about. Doctors who found abuse injuries could tell from the type of incident if it could have possibly inflicted the injury mentioned. Without knowing all the injuries his growth spurts had given him, it would be hard to come up with believable stories. The door opened, and Conan's mind whirled.

Next Chapter: Blatant Lies

All the fractures mentioned are generally signs of children who have been harshly shaken or hurt due to abuse. More information on them can be found here (replace the word dot with a period): radiologyassistant dot nl/en/p43c63c41ef792

(For anyone who didn't understand why Conan was bothered by the voice actress who does the Japanese voice for Kiki in the Kiki's Delivery Service is because she is the same actress who does the voice for Conan. Kudos to those who caught it!)

~ Jelp