I've never actually written a fic like this. It was 1am. I threw myself down on the mattress in frustration with a writing pad that was falling to bits and a pen that was nearly out of ink, and announced to the world at large [or my sister. :] that I was going to write a FujiHana, don't know how, don't know what, I just miss them too much. One and a half hours, and having switched to a torch for light, fearing that my dad would visit me with hellfire if he saw our lamp on, later, I scribbled 'End' and looked up to see 2.30 on the clock. Whee. I still don't know what I was doing, but here it is, this little ficlet, for better or worse. [The medical terms, however, were researched, this morning, while I typed up the scribbled mess.

Technical Notes : Just a one-shot that loomed out of nowhere. There were a lot more issues I could have associated with the subject, but I decided to keep it sweet and simple in the end.

All the Right Words
by Djinn

"EKG reading dropping to 90!"

"Blood-oxygen levels falling - we might lose him!"

The limousine drew up outside the unassuming grey and white facade of hospital grace. He threw the door open with less of the same, strode purposefully across the lots, almost but not quite running.

"Where's the AED - here, give it to me, dammit!"

"200 - Clear!"

The doors flew open to grant him and the frosty Kanagawa wind entrance. Documents scattered; the endless rows of patient hopefuls huddled further into their overcoats, shooting baleful, hateful little glances at him. He ignored them; in truth, he never noticed.

"250. Clear!"

He had a purpose. He was going to find it.

"Heart rate's rising again, but we might'nt be able to keep it up for long -"

"Just - just try to keep it stable for as long as possible. Come on, people! We're almost there!"

The interminable hallways stretched before him like a labyrinth, for all any untrained eyes knew, identical. He paid all this no heed, he barely registered the steps that had passed. He knew he could find it, he knew he could.

"Alright, one, two, three, lift - that's it. God."

Perhaps here, likely here, most likely, he didn't know why, suspected it was merely empty comfort. But there was no time to spare words now - the important ones were still inside, bursting to get out, and there were no other words to spare. And it was doubtful, anyway, that anyone could help him even if he slowed to ask, even just a little bit, it was a hospital. It had to be here; he didn't have time.

"This looks bad, very bad - wha - what's that guy doing here, dammit?! Hey! Kid!"

"Sorry, sir, you'll have to leave, this is the trauma center -"

He ignored them, pushed through them, even knocked the kindly advancing nurses away to the floor. It was here, he was here, and he didn't have time, and the words were there and they had to be said, and he didn't, he didn't have time, and the EKG reading was flatlining - flatlining, he needed, he needed, he didn't have time, and the words were bursting out -

"Hanagata Touru!"

The nurses and orderlies stopped in their effort to hustle him out, even the touchy EP paused halfway through lifting the plastic-metal paddles off the Crash Cart. He stood there, resolute, eyes wild and angry, flashing, majestic, before his purpose.

"If I don't give you permission to leave me, you don't leave me! Do you understand?! You'd better come back now, you useless fuck, because I SURE AS HELL DON'T GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO LEAVE ME!!!"

There was almost-silence for a moment, a frozen moment, as if time stood still, where even the critical wail of the cardiac monitor seemed muted.

Then there was really silence, in starts and stops, and starts and stops, in between the little blips on the screen as the glaring red line somehow lifted itself into green.

He held his breath, lips that slight bit parted, a crushing, mounting, frightened, crushing hope in his heart. The personnel in the room did the same, the EP slowly lowered the defibrillator paddles.

Then, only then, the long, dark lashes fluttered, lifted from the pallid skin, paler even than usual. Then, did the achingly familiar grey, dark grey, coal-grey eyes, now achingly hazy, wander, and came to rest on his own hopeful, crushing hopeful blue ones. The pale lips, that he privately admired, knew so well, romanced so often, flickered in the briefest of wan smiles, parted, slightly, much like his own, moved to utter, in that soft voice he so often took for granted, never now,

"Ken...ji..."

Then the lashes fell again, but the green rhythm did not.

The doctor moved now, passing swift hands over the body he touched so often, tormented so well, smiled a relieved smile of his own, turned to the room at large, but, it seemed, largely to him, and announced,

"We're not going to lose him."

Then, only then, did he weep, collapsing bonelessly against the orderlies who took him gently and led him from the room.

* * * * * * *

"I was scared shitless." He said flatly.

Hasegawa shifted uneasily, kept warily silent.

"I didn't know what I was doing. I was scared shitless that I could really lose him."

He regarded his captain contemplatively, nodded. "I can imagine. It was pretty nasty, I heard."

"As far as I can tell, the doctors thought we might lose him too."

"But he's alright now, isn't he?"

"Thank God."

"Yeah."

They sat there in tense silence, detached from the dim hubbub of hectic hospital life from beyond the corridor.

Hasegawa shifted again, throwing a fleeting glance at the door.

"What horrible luck. It's so unfair, really. Hanagata's such a stickler for rules and all that law shit. If the driver hadn't been drunk, he'd have made it to the other side of the road no problem."

"If they ever catch the bastard, I'd like to have more than just a word with him."

He noted the cold fury, the disconcerting way his captain's skin turned red and white around the tightly-drawn knuckles; inched ever so cautiously away.

Only to return in relief as the anger suddenly and swiftly drained, for his captain to slump back in his seat.

"At least the guy was sober enough to call the cops before he bolted."

"Maybe he wasn't so drunk after all." He tried, as much as for something to say as anything else. His captain shrugged.

"Maybe. The cops said he sounded drunk, who knows? It'd be pretty hard to miss 197cm of pure toned muscle otherwise; and he's pale enough to show up under any kind of light, and what with that cream cardigan he's always wearing. It doesn't make a difference to me, either way. I still think he should pay for what he did."

"Yeah."

They lapsed into silence once more. Hasegawa was almost glad. He wasn't used to his cool, unflappable captain being so real...being so raw.

But it wasn't over, he noted to his dismay.

"I was scared shitless."

That line was just about scaring him shitless by now. He searched desperately for something to say, gave up, and maintained the silence he'd taken refuge in the first time around. To his relief, his captain didn't seem to mind - or notice - his reticence.

"His mother called me almost immediately after they found out, I think. Inconsolable, frantic. I dropped the phone - couldn't have helped much, huh? - rushed here. I was so scared you wouldn't believe. All my life, I'd never been so scared. I think I got here before his parents did. Thank God, or they'd have thrown me out when I did what I did."

He resisted the urge to question. It would sound almost vulgarly curious, and his captain hardly needed the prompting.

"I marched straight into the ER where they were trying to revive him - he was flatlining, God, I was so scared. And there were these words that were fighting inside me, and I had to say them."

He waited. His captain was clenching and unclenching his fists now. Swallowing thickly.

"I don't know." He finally continued, more to himself, he suspected, than for his audience's benefit.

"I don't know if I was right or wrong, if what I did was right, but he looked at me and smiled."

He looked up at him sharply, suddenly, helplessly. The sheer intensity of his gaze nearly knocked him back. As it were, he was transfixed.

"He said my name."

"Kenji-kun?"

The pleasant, but weary, voice of Mrs. Hanagata, so much, he noted disconcertedly, like a bizarre echo of his vice-captain's, drifted out of the ward before she opened the door. They turned to her instantly, awkwardly.

"Touru-chan's awake, Kenji-kun, and he asked for you. Could you come in in a while? Right after his father's done being sentimental..." She laughed lightly, but it was too easy to catch her own ragged emotion, and the tears behind her smile.

"Of course! Of course." He rose hastily, and bowed. She smiled once more, and retreated. Hasegawa maintained his position, eyeing his now-silent captain with trepidation, wondering vaguely, and a little ashamedly, feeling like a voyeur, if he would continue his narration.

"There's just one thing that bothers me." Abrupt. It startled him.

"Huh?"

"What I said. They weren't the words I meant to say, that were fighting to get out."

"What did you say?"

"I shouted at him. Called him a useless fuck, told him that he couldn't leave me because I didn't give him permission to."

Awkwardly, embarrassedly, Hasegawa replied,

"Well, it worked, didn't it? He's okay now."

"I guess. But it just bothers me a bit. They weren't the words that I wanted to say."

"Kenji-kun? Please come in now."

As he reached out to push open the heavy, pink-formica'd ward door, he turned one last time, regarded him - no, not him, but some point behind him or through him as if he didn't really exist, that didn't really exist, thoughtfully, and said.

"The words that were bursting out, that I really wanted to say was...well. It was 'I love you'. That's all."

And the door was open, and swinging shut, and he was gone.

END

Whoo, what a strange ride. I hope that was alright and that someone enjoyed it. ^^;; Viva la FujiHana!