Another BB Fic
Brought to you by Sakin-chan
Disclaimer:
I don't own Beyblade.A/N:
And the story continues…Chapter 1 – His Name
"Scalpels!"
"Here, doc."
"He's going into arrest, quick, give me 640!"
"640 watts, coming up!"
Beep!
"CLEAR!"
"Again!"
Beep!!
"CLEAR!!!"
"…Doctor, he's stabilized. Congratulations."
"Thank you, Nurse…?"
"Chloe, sir. Nurse Chloe."
"Ah, you're our transfer from New York! Welcome aboard, nurse."
"Thank you, Doctor Kasumi."
The young woman with the wide black eyes in the green surgery gear looked down at the boy lying on the cot, and smoothed his blue hair away from his eyes. His face was cut and scarred, and his cheeks were bloody and raw, but Chloe could tell he was handsome.
"Poor boy. What could have done this to him?"
The doctor pulled off his mask; those things were horrible to wear. Kasumi was a veteran surgeon, and had seen far too many deaths in his forty years. His once black hair was now almost completely gray, and his wife pointed out to him that he was getting premature wrinkles. That night, he'd slept on the couch. Again. He ran an experienced eye over the boy's injuries, and sighed.
"Well, he's damaged his spinal cord, particularly the vertebrae around the lower left ribcage, and there are signs of trauma to his kidneys and lungs. Both of his lower legs are broken, which increases the chance of him being wheelchaired for life. He's lucky – only a mild concussion, no signs of brain-damage whatsoever. It's just his spine I'm worried about."
Chloe smoothed back her short brown hair, and frowned. "Looks like he was hit by something hard, or-"
"-Fell off a high place. Potential suicide?"
She shook her head. "Somehow, it doesn't seem like it."
Kasumi gazed at her, wondering if Nurse Chloe would last for the year she had her nurse-training here. She was too green around the gills, a complete newbie, no matter how good her scientific essays were, or how high her marks on the tests.
He left her to it, deciding to give her the responsibility of treating his patient for the next few weeks and alerting him if there was any trouble. Before he left, he looked back at the 26-year old nurse, and said:
"Chloe, I'll give a piece of advice. Don't get too attached to your charges. They're your patients, ill people who need your help. Nothing more, nothing less. While you work here, it's possible that some of them may die. And none of us want to lose someone we care about." He paused, fiddling with his apron.
"Let's just say… doctors have lost their jobs grieving for patients they cared about who died. Don't get yourself into a similar position."
With that, he walked away, leaving Chloe to escort her patient to his room in the Intensive Care Unit of Minaba Memorial Hospital, Tokyo.
Chloe was monitoring the mystery patient's heartbeat. It was pretty steady, though occasionally it dropped, making her panic for a few seconds, then it went back up to normal.
Nobody had said anything about who he was, or where he'd come from, or even his name; the paramedics said that some middle-aged foreign lady spotted him lying on the ground and ran screaming for help. "She wouldn't give her own name, never mind the kids," they had told Dr. Kasumi.
Chloe got up, and adjusted the IV drip. They were only giving him glucose water, feeding it into his bloodstream until he woke up and told them exactly where it hurt. Surgery was more than possible, the doctor had assured her, unless he woke up soon. She sincerely hoped he would.
He looked about 17 years old, much too young to be attempting suicide.
Chloe left the room to fetch herself a cup of coffee, passing Reynolds, her fellow transfer-nurse and also known as Rain, because he got these sudden bouts of depression, taking anyone nearby with him into the depths of self-condemnation. He rained on you, soaking you with misery.
Right now, however, he was pretty cheerful, excited about coming to Japan, and working in a genuine Japanese Hospital. She sat in the dingy staff-room, sharing a coffee with him as he babbled non-stop about some hot nurse he saw working in the Casualty Unit.
"Rain?" Chloe said after a while, and he stopped mid-sentence.
"Yeah, Chloe?"
"Just shut up."
And she went back to her patient, wondering why she'd snapped at him like that. But when she got to the ICU, she immediately forgot all about it.
Her patient was waking up.
Before he even opened his eyes, he was hit by a solid wall of pain. He gasped; even his nails hurt!
He slowly opened one eye, then the other, and looked around. The place he was in was white, and a regular beeping noise filled his ears. He stared harder, and saw that he was lying in a white bed, with a hospital bracelet on his left arm and a needle in his right. He tried to move, wondering how he came to the hospital, and what had happened to make him hurt so much all over.
Gradually, two faces appeared in front of him, one male and the other female. The woman looked young, and the man looked older, with graying hair. The man reminded him of someone he knew, and the boy felt a brief flare of panic, before the woman spoke to him. He felt a warm hand gently touch his shoulder, and his fear subsided.
"Can you speak? What's your name?" she said gently, her green eyes shining at him.
He tried to say something, but his mouth was dry. He swallowed, and moved his aching jaw, and croaked: "Wa… ter…"
The man brought a glass of cool water, and the woman helped him up, holding the glass to his lips. "Easy, now…"
She laid him back onto the pillow, and looked at the man, who frowned at the boy. "What's your name, son?" he said, and the boy felt a little uncomfortable. The man reminded him so much of… ugh, his head hut too much to remember. He looked at the woman, and she smiled at him, and nodded.
The boy cleared his throat.
"My name… is…" he frowned, his head aching insanely.
"…Kai."