Passionate Quandary [Chapter 2]
Title: Passionate Quandary
Author: fangirlism_era
Summary: One incident changed it all, six people, six lives are changed forever. Will they be able to survive the impending doom or will they succumb to eternal sleep?
Rating: PG for kissing
Pairings: RyoShige
Disclaimer: Not mine. Everything’s from my imagination. That’s why this is called fan fiction.
A/N: I stressed so much on the illnesses, gawd. Hope you like it! :)
[Prologue] || [Chapter 1]
Chapter 2: Every Hour Until Noon Before Everything Falls
That fateful day started like any other day in the hospital. Doctors were doing their daily rounds, nursing taking vital signs at six in the morning, giving the patients their medicines and changing linens. Doctors who spent the night in the hospital and who will still be staying are getting their triple dose of caffeine to get them through the day and nurses who were assigned in the night shift started endorsing patients and packing up.
5:00 AM
Masuda Takahisa’s alarm rings happily in his bedside table, belching out a loud, obnoxious tone. Massu takes the phone, closes the alarm and gets up slowly for work.
6:00 AM
Koyama Keiichiro clocks in at the nick of time. He’s usually about thirty minutes early for duty but on that day, he woke a little bit late. He checks over his patients’ charts and listens to the previous shift’s nurses endorse several patients. He’s going to assist in three deliveries today and hopefully, everything will be Normal Spontaneous Deliveries[1] with all babies alive and healthy. He goes to the labour room to check on his patients. One is almost fully dilated so he scrubs in to assist in the delivery. He will be doing the newborn care too. While waiting for one of them to deliver the baby, he checks the vital signs of the other labouring patients and other stuff needed to be checked.
Nishikido Ryo peacefully sleeps in his office, waiting for the alarm to ring in time to start his daily rounds.
Kato Shigeaki woke up late, he knows. His house is about thirty minutes away from the hospital and he usually wakes up at around 5:30 AM to make sure he will not be late. Today is different though, he came home at about 1 AM early this morning because of that meeting with Nishikido-sensei. He rushes through his daily routine and makes it out of the house at record time.
Masuda Takahisa is slowly but surely eating his breakfast. His shift starts at eight, unlike other health professionals.
Tegoshi Yuya wakes up with his dog, Tinny, barking at him. He blinks at the red blinking numbers of his clock and plumps his head back to the pillow. It’s way too early and the hospital is only a few blocks away.
Yamashita Tomohisa is at the emergency room, he’s running on coffee now, being as he’s been in the hospital close to 48 hours now. The person that was supposed to replace him called in sick so he just decided to continue. He rubbed his eyes for the nth time since the clock striked 6 AM. It’s time for another cup of coffee with a triple dose of caffeine.
7:00 AM
Nishikido Ryo downed another cup of coffee before going off to do his rounds. He spent the night in the hospital because of a child who is having intermittent heart attacks and constant seizures throughout the night. To add to the stress, he’s currently working with Kato Shigeaki to diagnose the child’s disease correctly. He clearly remembers the night.
“Nishikido-sensei, maybe this is a simple case of syncope or something. You did an ECG and he had Torsades de Pointes[2] . He’s been having seizure-like attacks connected to intermittent tachycardia. It’s definitely Long QT Syndrome[3]. Why are you still keeping me here? He’s your patient, we diagnosed him now. Can I go home?” Kato Shigeaki argued heatedly with the older doctor.
“I know it’s LQTS, Kato-sensei. I just want to keep you here,” The doctor answered casually.
“Why would you want to keep me here?” The younger doctor tilted his head, confusion written all over his face.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“What’s obvious?”
“I like you. I have liked you ever since I entered the hospital. You’re a snarky bastard and I don’t know how and why I like you but I do. I think I might even love you,” Ryo told the man softly.
“What?”
“Give me a better response, Kato-sensei, I don’t just like you to get into your pants,” The Osakan muttered impatiently.
“Then yes, I like you too.” Ryo looked up to find the young doctor mere inches from his face.
“Good,” Ryo breathed out before capturing the man’s lips.
“I recommend undergoing defibrillator transplant. This will not only regulate the heartbeat but also prevent seizure-like occurrences within your son’s body. I think performing the transplant as soon as possible is best for your son’s health,” The Osakan doctor finished the explanations with a smile to the child’s parents.
“Thank you, Nishikido-sensei,” The child’s father said honestly, bowing and smiling.
Ryo bows slightly and marches out the door, ready to pounce on his Shigeaki the moment he sees the younger doctor. After that kiss last night, Shige went home to rest. He’s been working non-stop for 24 hours already so Ryo let him go home. Unlike Shige, Ryo spent the night arranging everything for the transplant and to have everything ready for the operation at noon.
Kato Shigeaki entered the hospital sleepy and in a dream-like haze. Last night was wonderful, Shige thought. He never expected the Osakan doctor to confess so abruptly. He likes the doctor, ever since he entered the hospital and that like just developed into love through time. He shakes his head. I can’t think this way when I have an operation scheduled at noon, Shige thought to himself. And yes, he has an open-brain surgery scheduled at noon. His patient has Disembryoplastic neuroepithelial tumour[4] and brain surgery is best for him to remove the abnormal tissue growth.
He downs a cup of coffee before going off to his rounds, checking on patients and making sure they’re okay. He entered his patient’s room and sees the man vomiting while also complaining of severe headache. Classic signs of a brain tumour, Shige thinks. It’s a good thing the operation is scheduled mere hours from now because if not, the patient would have suffered more. But as much as Shige wants to get everything over and done with in an instant, he knows that performing brain surgery is not only strenuous to the patient but also to the surgeon. It may take hours, even more than a day but he knows that at the end of it all, his patients’ and their families’ smiles are worth it.
After about an hour of waiting for the patient’s uterus to be fully dilated, Koyama Keiichiro finally has the baby in his arms, ready to be transferred to the nursery after going through newborn care. A healthy baby girl, and like all Koyama’s previous deliveries, he kisses the baby’s forehead before giving the baby to the nursery nurse. He goes to the canteen to get breakfast since he wasn’t able to eat before leaving the house. He knows he’s smiling like a dork right now but he can’t help it, every delivery for him is a miracle.
“You do know that you’re smiling like a dork right now,” A deep, baritone voice speaks from behind before Koyama feels knuckles knocking on his forehead playfully.
He looks up to find his best friend. He smiles wider, if that was even possible.
“You look more than a dork now,” Shige sits down across Koyama and smiles at him.
“Congratulations on a successful delivery,” He tells the nurse softly, with much gentleness.
“A baby girl, Shige,” Koyama tells his best friends in wonder and awe.
“After all the deliveries you assisted in, you’re still in awe at the miracle of life. You should see the operating room then,” The young doctor tells Koyama jokingly. He knows Koyama hates the operating room, he sees adult people being opened and sometimes patients will die.
“You know I don’t like that,” Koyama answers.
“I know,” Shige laughs at the man’s face. “So what’s the agenda for today?” The neurologist asked casually.
“You ask like we’re having a date or something,” Koyama laughed. “I have two more deliveries to go. You?”
“Open Brain Surgery at noon then I’m done for the day. Nishikido-sensei kept me up last night trying to diagnose a patient.”
“Oh, good luck then,” Koyama muttered hurriedly.
“You don’t want to watch? It’s going to be quite fun,” Shige asked his best friend.
“No thanks. You know me, I get queasy when I see brains.”
“I know. Dinner later, I have something to tell you. Good luck with the remaining deliveries, be a hero, okay?”
They go off to different directions like that, wishing each other luck with the whole day.
Masuda Takahisa is in a train, squished between giggling high school students and a sleepy businessman. That’s normal occurrence and he thinks he’s quite early for work today. He was able to sing obnoxiously in the shower and eat a leisurely breakfast before carefully picking his clothes for the day.
Tegoshi Yuya is rushing, running for his life. Well, not really. He’s going to be late and now he’s rushing. He’s about a block away from the hospital and it is almost 7 AM. I knew I should have gotten that apartment right next to the hospital, Tegoshi thought to himself. The psychologist keeps running until he reached the hospital, immediately clocking in and then sighing in relief when he sees the time: 7:00 AM. Just in time.
Yamashita Tomohisa is tired, he’s been on duty since yesterday, or was that two days ago. He’s not keeping track anymore. Maybe a nap in the doctors’ dorms is in order. Yamapi tells his colleagues that he’s going to take a nap first then goes off. Once inside one of the rooms, he sighs, setting his alarm to four hours from now before finally succumbing to much-needed sleep.
8:00 AM
At an island in Japan, just off the coast of Sapporo, a patient needs to be transferred to a Tokyo hospital because of lack of resources. The doctors get the patient ready for airlifting.
Masuda Takahisa arrives at the hospital, looks over his list of patients for today and keeps smiling all the way to the rehabilitation facility all the while making everyone who sees him smile.
9:00 AM
Kato Shigeaki’s patient is sweating because of nervousness for his upcoming operation, his wife is right beside him, holding his hand, assuring him that everything will be alright.
Kato Shigeaki is in his office, getting himself ready for the operation because contrary to popular belief that he is as strong as steel, he still needs to mentally prepare himself for every operation, asking whatever deity to help him not kill his patient and to heal him instead. Nishikido Ryo quietly enters the younger man’s office and takes the man into his arms, whispering comforting words that only a fellow doctor can tell him, reassuring words that will help Shigeaki get through the operation, assuring him that he is one of the best and he will be able to heal this patient.
Masuda Takahisa is worried, his current patient is not affected by his encouragements nor his smile. His patient, Haruka, has been in the hospital for about a month now. She’s been hospitalized because of anorexia and she sustained enough injury to cause muscle atrophy and eventually, she lost power over her motor skills. He’s been helping her for a month now and like always, he couldn’t make her smile or work harder for the rehabilitation. Like always, she leaves the rehabilitation facility to go back to her room with zero to little progress.
10:00 AM
Kato Shigeaki takes a final check on his patient before he barks off orders on his pre-op medicines and procedures that have to be done before taking the man into the operating room. The patient has been NPO[5] ever since he was admitted four days ago for vomiting and intermittent headache ranging from mild to severe. He takes a seat in his office and drinks a cup of coffee, this is going to be a long procedure, he thought.
Nishikido Ryo is seeing patients in the out-patients department of the hospital. He spends most of his free time there instead of terrorizing junior doctors. He encounters lots of patients who only complained of chest pain so he manages to control his temper because patients bring in the money, as he says.
Tegoshi Yuya is observing a patient with dementia. He just gave the old man a cognitive test and his results showed him positive for dementia so the doctor tells the elder man everything he needs to know about the illness and to come back every month for a check-up and to make sure that he brings a relative with him. The man leaves sad and Tegoshi couldn’t help but feel sad too.
Masuda Takahisa is on a break. After his non-smiling patient, he decided he would go on a much-needed break. All the smiling and no progress tired him out after all.
Koyama Keiichiro is crying. He just lost a baby, the baby was born dead. To his defence, the baby was bound to die, his mother has been on labour for more than 24 hours already and he was bound to swallow meconium[6] and eventually cause infection. The baby had many complications during the duration of the pregnancy. His mother smoked, had measles, drinks alcohol and generally doesn’t care about her health even after learning of the pregnancy. Still, Koyama, as a nurse couldn’t help but feel sorry for the life lost on that day.
Yamashita Tomohisa lay peacefully in the bed, snoozing off his stress.
11:00 AM
Kato Shigeaki’s patient was taken to the operating room, prepped for the operation and finally administering anaesthesia. Meanwhile, his wife is at the hospital’s chapel, praying for the success of her husband’s operation. On the other hand, Kato Shigeaki is going over notes on his head to make sure that he remembers everything for the operation.
Yamashita Tomohisa’s alarm clock rings, waking the man up from his slumber. The emergency room doctor sits up, stretches his arms, stands up then fixes his clothing, time to face the world again.
12:00 NN
Kato Shigeaki enters the operating room, ready to make his patient better. He knows the operation can last for hours so he ate lunch before everything else. He opens the man’s skull and proceeds with the procedure.
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[1] Normal delivery of the baby without much need of an incision.
[2] Irregular heartbeat shown by irregular waves on an ECG.
[3] Disorder on the heart’s electrical activity. May cause arrhythmia or irregular heartbeat.
[4] Abnormal tissue growth in the brain, may be malignant or benign.
[5] None per orem or not allowed to eat anything orally.
[6] Baby’s first poop. Usually greenish in color, may pass out inside the uterus because of fetal distress due to prolonged labour.