Title: I'm Not Well, But I'm Better
Characters: Rin, and Naraku, mainly - we'll see who else show's up
Genre: I don't knowwwwww... pr0nish suspense, maybe? I'd like to go for a Daschel Hammett-sort of vibe, without the private eye schtick
Universe: AU, a modernish sort of world, not dissimilar from our own
Word Count: A lot... over 2,500 and I'm just getting into it - epic, ya dig? Everything involving Naraku seems to want to be epic in scope and length... I just don't know when to let him go.
Rating: Adult
Summary: Saving the world one person at a time is a dangerous business; good and evil are just easy easy words for your mouth to say.

A/N: All copywritten characters are the sole properties of their respective owners. I own nothing InuYasha-related except a set of DVDs. I make no money and intend no infringement.

"You are late on your rounds, Nurse Taisho."

Dark red eyes glared over the isolation mask but she could still feel the sneer and could still picture the thin line of this demon's lips twisting in anger over her perceived tardiness for grand rounds.

He wouldn't care what her excuse was – she could have been elbows deep in an open cardiac massage during some hellish trauma and Rin Taisho knew Dr. Onigumo could have cared less. She truly hated the man. How he had become an intensivist was anyone's unholy guess. Mail order form Dr. Mengele's School of Medicine was her personal opinion.

"Yes Doctor, I am sorry.", Rin kept her dark brown eyes suitably lowered in as much false chagrin as she could muster for this egotistical monster and as his tall back turned upon her with a disdainful snort, she stuck her tongue out and gave him a rather rude send-off.

"Rin!" Higurashsi Kagome, this morning's charge nurse on the unit hissed angrily and shooed her off with the Good Doctor Onigumo for grand rounds. Rin knew her friend Kagome was just jealous she didn't think of the raspberry first; hell, all the nurses, most of the respiratory therapists and even some of the house keeping staff hated Onigumo. He was a fucking menace to the living and the dead, in her opinion.

Grabbing the nearest isolation mask from a container on the wall, Rin composed herself and taking two large professionally cleansing breaths (she hoped goddamnit) let herself quietly into the small cramped private room where Onigumo was holding court. His back was to her and by the look upon the pt.'s wan face Rin could tell the news had not been good. It hardly ever was on this floor; you were either fine and going home or you were dying – and going home. The ICU was after all, at its basest nature, a transient place.

"You can't breathe because you smoke, Mr. Kyosuke. Let me guess, sir – you continue to smoke even now, prior to your admission." Onigumo's voice fell like lead without an once of compassion; he was passing judgment. Rin hated the uncaring flippancy she imagined she heard in that somehow deep, merciless voice. If she had been further through the door she might has been able to tell herself the Doctor's eyes appeared saddened by his poor prognosis, that in the end it saddened him just a tiny bit to tell another soul there was little time and no hope. Anger forced its way hard up Rin's belly and into her throat but she was a professional. If Doctor Onigumo was the devil, she would be a compassionate angel – as much as she hated it when nurses were compared as such, she would stay with this patient after the orders were decreed and the physician had both literally and figuratively washed his hands of poor Mr. Kyosuke. Rin could be rude, she could be stubborn, hell – she could really be a little bitch when she put her head into it, but she was compassionate! Could Onigumo hear her grinding her teeth behind her white mask? Probably. She figured he was smiling, the prick.

Tossing his complexly braided hair behind him in a measured way, Onigumo performed a physical exam. "Breathe, sir." He commanded impatiently, stethoscope poised over the bony, heaving chest.

"I'm trying, Doctor but I just can-", Kyosuke's breathy, straggling voice struggled out. He was drowning in air, gasping in the beginning of true respiratory failure. Rin wanted to hold his frail hand and encourage him to concentrate on his oxygen mask – in through the nose, out the mouth. But then she'd be in Doctor Mengele's way – ooh, she had to stop calling him that! She was going to slip up one of these days and say it out loud!

"That's our problem, isn't it, Mr. Kyosuke? I'm afraid this is why we tell the public that they should not smoke." Onigumo nearly spat in self-righteous smugness as he straightened his tall back and replaced his stethoscope in his dark purple lab coat.

"Nurse Taisho, you will assist this man to sit on the side of the bed, now." he commanded looking out the small window into the asphalt jungle below.

Gently Rin eased the thin, skeletal man to sit up, and then put his feet over the side of the skinny mattress. His legs and feet were swollen and his skin was a nasty sallow color Rin didn't like at all. He had a day, maybe a day and a half left on this Earth and he had to deal with Oni-fucking-gumo. Poor, poor man. Rin held Kyosuke forward as he huffed and puffed, completely winded from the tiny exertion it had taken to reposition. His face was grey and Rin found herself looking at the room's oxygen set up, what would be needed for compressions and suction and the defibrillator and… then watched the clock – so she'd know when to time the code. The patient eventually caught his breath enough to return to his baseline and Rin relaxed, minutely. She heard some hollow tapping and when Onigumo's hard eyes met her own, she knew it was going to be a messy, ugly day.

Onigumo eyes were narrowed, the dark red irises boring into her with something she never hoped to see. Rin was very, very glad she could not see most of the monster's hard pale face. He was smiling at her.

She narrowed her eyes back and instinctively hugged poor Mr. Kyosuke.

"Thorocentesis kit, size 7 sterile gloves, 1 red top, 2 purple and 1 green top specimen tubes and you will assist me, Nurse Taisho." Naraku Onigumo listed out across the patient's thin back. He then did something that froze her blood just a little; Doctor Naraku Onigumo, the devil incarnate and her sworn professional enemy, winked at her.

Rin was so shocked she nearly dropped Mr. Kyosuke when he leaned against her to cough.

Onigumo began a very well-practiced spiel about what exactly a thorocentesis entailed, why it was necessary and causally glossed right over the risks it might entail.

"Of course there is always the risk of perforation, infection, pneumothorax, or collapsed lung, hemothorax or blood in the lungs and/or death. I'd say given your current prognosis, Mr. Kyosuke, those things are the least of your worries but it is for legal reasons I must tell you these things. Do you agree to the procedure, sir?" Onigumo ended on a confrontational note, daring the patient to refuse his most honored help.

To refuse his most delicious fun.

It made Rin sick to her stomach to see the confusion and last embers of a dying hope for recovery light the old man's rheumy eyes. She could tell Kyosuke had no idea what Onigumo had just said other than the long word was necessary and involved fluid off of his lungs. This was the Doctor, and the Doctor was God so this must be what had to be done. Without question he whispered a sibilant, "Yes, I agree." giving Onigumo a watery, wan smile through his oxygen mask that the looming Doctor ignored utterly.

"Put that bedside table under him, Taisho and let him lean on it. Now, supplies please." All the emphasis was on the "now" – the "please" was like a fart in the wind, obscene and gone before you knew it. Rin helped the elderly man into position, turned up his oxygen a smidge to help him through the procedure and exited to do as the Lord God Onigumo had commanded.

"Kagome, where are the thorocentesis kits and I need consent for Room 7113; Onigumo's gonna tap him now." Rin called to her coworker at the main desk as she went in search of gloves, gowns and hazmat supplies. When she found all that was required, Rin Taisho, RN picked up her consent form in one swift, economical move and returned to Yuugi Kyosuke's room.

"That took far too much time, didn't it?" Onigumo lobbed archly at her as Rin closed the door. "I was under the impression that ICU nurses were more professional."

Rin was seeing red, and the next words out her mouth dropped past her surgical mask without any warning. "Well, after working with you, Doctor Onigumo, it's only natural for your habits to rub off on me, sir." Rin snarked out with all the fake nicety she could muster. Onigumo's wide eyes were like a breath of fresh air and Rin nearly cheered herself for her cleverness, then she remembered the patient… and swallowing quickly went about the business of setting up and getting the consent signed. Onigumo nearly tore the top off the thorocentesis kit in his quiet fury. Squirting out iodine, he nearly slammed the debris left over into the biohazard bag. Rin bit her lip behind her mask; she really had pissed the high and mighty Doctor Onigumo off righteously. Biting her lip helped keep her from giggling; Rin knew giggling would be doom. But kami above, it was a close one!

A thorocentsis needle is a long one and it was always quite disconcerting to watch the foot long thing disappear into a person's body with really very little resistance. Onigumo met her eyes only once more during the procedure, just before the physician would inject a little subcutaneous anesthetic around the incision site and Rin was appalled when Onigumo grabbed the small glass vial of anesthetic and shook it at her – then tossed it into the biohazard bag with the trash. He was going to insert a foot long needle into a patient's chest without anesthetic – just because he was pissy with her? Not wanting to alert the patient prepped and draped for sterility, Rin narrowed her eyes above her mask and cursed Onigumo over and over in her angry mind.

She heard a pop, Kyosuke tightened up with a pained hiss and then clutched onto both her and the table before him for the next 15 minutes. Onigumo continued working on the back of the old man with his usual cold-mannered precision.

"Hand me a syringe."

"Yes, Doctor – here."

"Label the specimens for the lab – I want cultures. Now, please."

"Of course. Do you want the results also faxed to your office?"

"Yes." To Mr. Kyosuke, Onigumo directed his deep voice, "There was quite a bit more fluid there than anticipated, sir – have you ever been diagnosed with hepatitis?"

"I'm not sure, doctor…" the patient stammered, sounding worried.

"Well, I'm not surprised. Add a hepatitis titer to the specimen orders, Taisho. That will be all. Put pressure on this dressing for at least 3 minutes. We're finished; good day, Mr. Kyosuke. You will be transferred to hospice tomorrow should you be here to see it." Onigumo proclaimed, stripped his long white hands of his gloves and left the room without looking at either Rin or his poor patient, hunched over the bedside table. White lines of pain began to ease on the old man's face and Rin tried to make small talk and keep pressure on his back as she leaned protectively over him.

"Did it hurt as much as you feared, Mr. Kyosuke? At least now you have more room to breathe with all that fluid off your chest." Rin smiled down at the white fringed head at her shoulder.

"Nurse, it hurt a great deal and now I'm afraid I'm too scared to breathe. What does it matter if I have hepatitis if I am dying now? What does any of this matter if I am dying?" he nearly wailed in a breathless rush, rubbing his small nose on her sleeve.

She loathed Onigumo, she really did – he was the worst kind of sadist, egotistical butcher… c'mon – be professional Rin, channel some of that detached and logical demeanor Dad was so famous for, she chided herself.

"If Doctor Onigumo's treatment has given you another day, another two days with your family, then it was worth it, right?", she softly cradled the old dying man with her voice and left him no room for argument. What was done was done and that included him.

~*~

When Rin returned to the main desk to continue grand rounds, she was met with a pair of huge, worried eyes from Kagome. Looking over her friend 's thin shoulder and scanning the computers the physicians used to dictate and do non-bedside work, Rin hoped to see a furious Onigumo hunched over a terminal, scaring the bejesus out a transcriptionist with his rancor. She wanted him to remember it, dwell on and never forget it was her, a lowly handmaiden, a veritable insect that made the great Naraku Onigumo, MD impotent with fury!

"He's not here, Rin. He slammed his charts down on the rack and stalked out of here without saying a word. He looked like a demon in that creepy coat of his. God, that man is a freaky weirdo, and Rin – you are going to be in deep shit…" (whispered because Kagome was from a religious family and kind of a good girl that way)"… if he submits this little incident to the head Nursing officer!" Kagome worried as she put orders into her computer with well-practiced ease.

"What incident? You weren't even there, Kagome!" Rin whispered back, tiptoes flexing as she leaned over the mammoth counter in aggravation.

"I don't have to be there Rin – I know you…" Kagome chided and tossed her pen across the chart she was working on. "After work, the bar – you and me. Pronto. I want to hear every single incriminating word, Rin."

"What? Why?" Rin smirked at her friend and bounced on one small foot.

"Why? Because you're fucked, that's why!" Kagome hissed out with comic intensity and yanked on Rin's collar.

"Kagome! Such language! Call me on my cell when you're clocking out and we'll go together." Patting down one of her many pockets Rin checked for her cell phone – except it wasn't there. It was always there. Work phone in one pocket, real-life phone in the other, always! Swinging her fists in a show of mock tantrum, Rin railed at the universe for what seemed like the umpteenth time today.

"What's the matter with you now, you nut?" Kagome leveled an eyebrow at her groaning friend. With Rin it was all fun and games until someone lost an eye – then it was just fun. But really, the girl was the most compassionate nurse Kagome had ever worked with and that was something which made the prick Onigumo want to torment her so much. Rin made him look awful.

Why were all the pretty ones dumb or evil? Kagome mused to herself and told her frustrated friend to backtrack her steps. It wasn't a large unit; the phone had to be somewhere.

"Check the thorocentesis trays, oh I know – go check the biohazard bins! Maybe you threw it in the red bag with the wet stuff." Kagome giggled out and went back to her work.

"Oh man, gross! I sure as hell hope I didn't do that…" Rin moaned and slumped off to look for her missing phone.