InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Open Your Eyes ❯ When First You Woke ( Chapter 1 )

Open Your Eyes - When First You Woke

Hojo slowed his car to a stop as he approached the Jicharu Hospital. "Here you go, Kagome." The young woman opened the door without a word, excitement in her heart.

Drawing her coat tightly around herself, she stepped out into the snowstorm. Kagome thanked Hojo with a smile and hurried down the sidewalk to the hospital entrance. He waved to her unseeing back before pulling away from the curb and disappearing into the white.

Not bothering with the motion-activated main entrance, Kagome pulled open a door to the side. Her father was on duty tonight, and she had wanted to surprise him with an early Christmas gift. She had just gotten home from college an hour ago, and was eager to see her father again, just as she hoped he would be to see her.

Pausing at the information desk, Kagome smiled at the woman there. "Hello Yoko! Long time no see!"

The brunette turned around, shock in her eyes and a smile on her lips. "Kagome! You're back from college!" The young woman nodded, her own smile glowing. Yoko continued on, exiting her little office to come around and hug the younger woman. "Does your father know you're back yet?"

Kagome shook her head in negation, a devious smile decorating her face. "I wanted to surprise him."

Yoko nodded in understanding, holding Kagome at arms length. "Well, I'd better let you go surprise him, then. Tonight's been rather quiet, if you know what I mean."

Moving away as Yoko dropped her arms, Kagome nodded. "I do. Nice seeing you again, Yoko."

The woman smiled, in a matronly way. "You too, honey. Oh, you might want to stop by Tamika's desk. She'd never forgive me if I didn't send you by."

Kagome nodded again, setting off at a brisk pace down the corridor. After a short time, another desk appeared in the hall. Another woman, much more stout than the first with hair much darker, sat in her scrubs looking through patient's files. Kagome suspected that Tamika was about to run her last round of the day before switching off with the nurse on zombie watch. That term still gave Kagome the shivers.

"Tamika?"

The woman turned around with a great big smile on her face. "Kagome! It is you! How have you been, my little college-kid?"

One advantage to having often visited the hospital her father worked at was that pretty much everyone knew her. They became a rather extended family, a whole slew of aunts and uncles to Kagome and her younger brother Souta. Especially after. . . The accident.

She supposed she would stop by to visit her brother before finding her father, speaking of which, "Tamika, do you know where daddy is?"

Tamika was still smiling, though it was still a bit forced. "He's in surgery for the next hour at least. We're hoping that this one won't go comatose, but there was severe damage to their cranium. It's a miracle that they have survived for this long. However, a bit of good news! Souta's been showing more brain activity recently! It's possible that he might wake up soon, but after that. . . " The nurse didn't continue, knowing full well that Kagome had already weighed the probabilities.

The young woman nodded, eyes slightly saddened but still hopeful. "I know, Tamika. Do you think I could-?"

Tamika smiled once more, though now there was the slightest sad tinge. "Of course, Kagome. It's the least I could do for you. He's in the same room as always." The nurse seemed to remember something, snapping her fingers. "If you're going that way, could you do me a favor? One of the assistants is sick, and another is snowed in at her apartment. Do you think you could drop these records off in one of the patient's rooms?"

Kagome nodded, perplexed. "Are they in Souta's section?"

"Yep. They were transferred from the hospital in southern Tokyo a few weeks ago, but I hadn't been able to get around to updating their records. One of the charity cases your father decided on taking on. No living family as far as anyone could find out, and only a first name from the girlfriend before she passed away from injuries. Sad, if you ask me." Tamika was digging through the papers on the counter, before pulling the file she had been searching for out and handing the papers to Kagome. "If you could drop them off after visiting with Souta, I'd be forever in your debt."

Kagome waved a dismissing hand, one corner of her mouth quirking upward. "It's nothing, Tamika. Don't worry about the file; it'll get where it needs to go." Kagome started off, heading toward the elevators. She hadn't visited in months, but her heart knew the way as well as her feet did. Up three floors, through the doors on the left, down the hall and right into the third passageway, fifth door on the left.

The beeping of several different machines assaulted her ears, as they always did. The steady breathing of her brother with the help of yet more machines brought a grateful tear to Kagome's eyes, as she wandered to the chair at her brother's bedside, file in hand. "Hey there, Souta. How's it going? It's getting close to Christmas again."

There was no acknowledgement, not even a change in brain wave length. He wasn't responding, which seemed to be rather normal for the teenager. Normal, but so terribly unnatural.

Squeezing her brother's limp hand, Kagome sighed. Her gaze traveled down to the file that she had set in her lap, anything to distract her from the somewhat depressive sight of her younger sibling. Kagome was slightly surprised as she read the patients name, understanding how hard it would be to place them. "Inuyasha?"

A sudden change in the noise the machine monitoring Souta's brain function caused Kagome to look up. There had been activity. For one moment, Souta was even closer to waking up.

"Souta? Souta! Can you hear me? Are you somewhere in there? Can you wake up? Souta!"

The effort was futile. The machine had settled back into its pattern of monotony, and for all Kagome called, begged, and pleaded her brother never responded. Tears sprung to her eyes, and for shame of her weakness Kagome stood, readying herself to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow, little brother." Hurriedly, the twenty-one year old exited the room that had held her little brother prisoner for the past two years.

Closing the door, Kagome leaned back against the cold wooden surface. Tears still coursed down her face. How can it still hurt this much?

Perhaps because Kagome still believed in her heart of hearts that she could have done something to have stopped Souta from leaving that day, stopped him from being hit by that car. No matter that she had been half-way across the country; she still should have been able to do something to somehow save her brother. Yet she couldn't.

She had to face the facts, and deal. She had been doing rather well, until she saw his sleeping face. So peaceful, so empty. Like a dolls face, pale and worn but eternally youthful.

Pushing away from the door, Kagome took a deep breath, allowing her natural good cheer to inch back in. Souta would recover, eventually. To see him laugh once more would be the greatest joy in Kagome's life.

Yet right now she had a duty to attend to. Looking at the room number listed on the file she had never let go of, she was surprised to see that the room was two down from Souta's. Opening the door, Kagome was greeted with emptiness. "What? Who did these charts?" Confused, Kagome decided to check the room number again.

Small wonder that she had read it incorrectly. Backtracking, she found herself in front of the door directly next to her brother's own. Sighing for the millionth time that night, she pushed open the indifferent door to be greeted by the sight of someone actually in the room. In the bed, that is.

"Great." Walking to the foot of the patient's bed, she checked to make sure she hadn't misread the number for a second time. No files rested there, allowing Kagome to be relatively sure that this person was Inuyasha. Sliding the file into its cradle, Kagome gazed upon the man lying so motionless, like her brother. Yet this wasn't what caught her attention. Rather it was the mane of silver-white hair, and the unmistakable sight of dog-like ears on his head.

Quickly pulling the file out again, Kagome walked over to the wall light and furiously flipped through papers when it flickered to life. "Just what kind of accident was this guy in?"

Her answer stared her in the face, a cruel response that brought to mind her brother lying in the next room. "Car accident." Looking at the man lying in the hospital bed, Kagome's eyes grew sad. "He was in a car accident."

Returning to her reading, the sable haired young woman did all she could not to cry. Apparently, his ears had been so terribly damaged that they had tried an animal implant, though they wouldn't know if it was successful until the subject woke. Kagome shivered.

Subject was such a very cruel word.

The hair was genetically colorless, though privately Kagome disagreed. There was just. . . A somewhat different color, not an absence. That was perhaps what she least liked about her father's profession. There was a tendency to overanalyze, and unromanticize. This, she supposed, was a good thing.

Another side note caught her eye, the report of the nurse that had been put in charge of the young man when he was brought in. Apparently, he had been awake enough then to murmur words, evidenced by the nurse's report of the young man going on about something "Shikon".

Nor had he been the only one involved in the accident. His passenger, a young lady that most likely was his girlfriend, died not long after arriving at the hospital. The paramedics had gotten two words from her incoherent screams, among them "Inuyasha" and "Help." It was assumed that "Inuyasha" was the name of the driver.

That had been five years ago.

Kagome looked up, closing the file guiltily. Five years ago this young man, according to the early reports of the doctors, had been her age.

No one had ever come for him; no one had ever named him family. For some inexplicable reason, this made Kagome sad. Or maybe not so inexplicable.

Everyone needed family, even if you didn't know they were there.

Walking to the foot of the bed once more, Kagome slid the file into the cradle for the last time. Walking back up the head of the bed, she started to turn the small knob on the light that would send the room crashing into darkness. Once the lamp had gone black, the darkness overtook her. Artificial light shone through the open door in a slice of warmth, a contrast to the outside weather. Glancing at the impassive face of the mysterious Inuyasha, comatose and unmoving, Kagome felt moved to do what she had always done with her brother when she was able.

Reaching a hand out, she softly brushed the man's cheek, remarkably smooth. "Good night, Inuyasha. Wake up soon."

Odd sentiment, as well as misconduct, but even opening his files when she wasn't an employee at the hospital was illegal. Kagome turned to leave, almost reluctant to join the world again. For a moment, here in a stranger's room, she had felt important, integral even. Once she left, it was back to being Kagome, good ol' reliable Kagome with her brother that hadn't woken for years and was prone to pulling a Rip Van Winkle. Kagome with her slightly insane mother and Neurosurgeon father. Kagome of the bright future and dark past. Kagome.

Something stopped her. Something physical, tangible. Her eyes drifted to her hand in shock, noticing the hand grabbing her wrist. A voice spoke from the bed.

"Who are you?"

Impossible. A man that had been comatose for five years just grabbed her by the wrist and asked her who she was. "My god, I'm hallucinating." Kagome attempted to walk away, but was pulled back and twisted around to face the man on the bed. "Or maybe not."

"Answer me." The man met Kagome's confused, disbelieving gaze with dark eyes. "Are you a nurse?"

"No. Now could you please let go of my wrist?" Kagome stopped. "My god, I'm even talking with my hallucination. I must be going insane."

The man growled, or at least Kagome thought he did. She couldn't tell, and wasn't about to ask.

"I am not a hallucination, bitch."

That killed Kagome's weak excuse. "You're right. I'd never have such a vulgar mouth on any hallucination of mine. Maybe I'm just dreaming. I must have fallen asleep at Souta's bedside. But then that means I still have to deliver Inuyasha's records!" Something akin to panic alighted in the young woman's eyes. "I need to wake up!"

The man on the bed was getting more annoyed, evidenced by his cruel yanking on Kagome's arm to bring her closer. Ripping the IV's out of his arm with his other hand, the man then rudely pinched Kagome's cheek.

"Ow!" Kagome said in surprise as she lifted a hand to her reddening face. "That hurt!"

"You are awake. Now tell me, who are you and how do you know my name?"

Kagome stared at the man in mortification. "So you are Inuyasha? I thought that was just a. . . "

"Just a what, bitch?" Inuyasha looked confused, though his piercing eyes never left Kagome's.

". . . Nothing."

Inuyasha was growing angrier by the moment. Still locking gazes with Kagome, he began taking out the remaining IV's. "Who ARE you?"

Why was it that this Inuyasha had been in a coma for the past five years and still he was strong enough to pull Kagome back toward the bed against her will? He must have had some dedicated nurse at his previous hospital. "Higurashi. Kagome Higurashi."

"Never heard of you."

Why would you have? She wondered to herself. "Why did you wake up?"

Inuyasha growled, and there was no mistaking the sound. "Why wouldn't I?" He began to rise, pushing back the sheets and standing in his ridiculous hospital gown. "I'm a light sleeper."

Kagome was confounded. "A light sleeper? You've been in a coma for the past five years, and you wonder why you wouldn't spontaneously wake up?"

Inuyasha froze, turning his hard gaze on Kagome, who was forced to look up to meet his eyes. "What," he asked in a low and dangerous voice, "Did you just say?"

"You heard me." Kagome's voice had dropped, noticeably sad. "You've been comatose for five years. Ever since you were twenty-one."

Inuyasha was shocked. After a moment of silence, in which Kagome desperately tried to fight back tears, he spoke. "Where's Kikyou?"

"Kiky-" Kagome started, before realizing something. She probably was the young woman who died. "I'm sorry, Inuyasha. She died."

His head fell in regret, though not a sound escaped his lips. Kagome tried to use this opportunity to leave, and so exited through the door. Without hesitating, she reopened her own brother's room, closing the heavy door behind her. "Oh, Souta. . . "

Things were deteriorating, falling down about her as quickly as the snow fell in the night. She sat herself down in the bedside chair for a second time, reaching for Souta's lifeless hand. "Why couldn't it have been you?"

The tears she had held back earlier flowed freely now. "How is it," she gasped between sobs she hadn't thought she'd utter tonight, "That I can wake a stranger, yet my own family is beyond my reach?"

There was no response.

That is, if she ignored the voice that spoke from the reopened door. "Son?"

Kagome felt hollow, so different that what she had felt in the room with Inuyasha not partaking in the world's activities. "No," she replied, voice hoarse from tears. "Brother."

Silence, followed by, "Feh. Siblings aren't worth the tears."

Kagome took a calming breath, deep and long. This man sounded like the typical `I've got a dark past I say I don't want to talk about but really deep down I do' case her roommate Sakki spoke of at college. That's what you get for having a Psychology major as a best friend.

So Kagome did the exact opposite of what Sakki would have done. "Get the hell back in your room." Her voice was perfectly calm and controlled.

Inuyasha snorted. "Like hell I am. I'm getting out of this place."

A prison. Inuyasha made the hospital sound like a prison. Yet hadn't Kagome thought much the same thing when she'd see Souta, lying so still between the pristine sheets?

Never mind that. The young woman stood, letting her brother's hand fall back to the bed unharmed. Turning, she glared at the man who should still be hooked up to God-knows how many IV's, dead to the world. Like her brother. Like her Souta.

But no, here he stood outside her brother's door, clad in that absurd hospital gown and meeting her gaze stare for stare. The unfairness of it all bombarded Kagome's reserve until she tore down her own placid walls. "Get. Back. In. Your. Room." The words sounded bitten off and harsh to Kagome's ears, and made the fantastical ones on Inuyasha's head twitch.

Kagome wondered at the miracles of neurotransmitters before moving toward the man, forcing him to back off to let her out of the room.

"Who do you think you are, my mother?" Kagome could almost swear she heard the man growl, but let it roll off her back like everything else.

"No, I-" Kagome cut herself short, hearing voices coming toward them from the main hallway. "Someone's coming," she whispered, frightened of discover by any of the nurses she didn't know, let alone the ones she did.

"I'm not deaf, bitch," Inuyasha answered back, completely unconcerned.

Kagome, however, was reverting to her teenage years. "Hurry," she hissed at the patient, grabbing his arm and yanking him back into her brother's room.

"Hey, what the hell do you think-" Inuyasha's flow of words was cut off when Kagome slapped her hand over his mouth.

"Shut up, idiot," she hissed, mentally calculating the nurses' progress. The ones assigned to this corridor weren't here tonight, and seeing as how Souta and Inuyasha were the only ones in this section at the moment, the others should just pass on by.

Of course, nothing seemed to want to go her way as she heard footsteps walking down their hallway. Inuyasha stopped trying to pry her hand off his mouth as the threat made itself known to him.

Kagome saw his questioning gaze, and used her other arm to yank his shoulder down so she could whisper into his canine ears. "There shouldn't be anyone monitoring this hall tonight. The nurses assigned here are out for the night, and Tamika won't make her rounds until much later. Regardless, if those nurses find you out of your room, I'm in big trouble."

The man rudely succeeded in dislodging her hand from his face. "Why would you be in trouble bitch?" His whispered tone was throaty if understandable.

"Would you believe that someone just happened to wake up from a five year coma and just happened to disappear when you went into their room? I'd be charged with abducting a patient!"

Inuyasha gave her a disbelieving stare. "Wouldn't you just have to show them me? I can speak for myself, you know. Moron." He added under his breath, though Kagome still heard.

"No!" she whispered furiously. "Then I'd have to explain how you woke up, or why I was in your room long enough to witness your awakening!"

He raised an eyebrow, lowering his head a bit. "How long were you in my room?"

Kagome grimaced, returning her senses to what lie outside her brother's home of two years. "Long enough."

Inuyasha began to ask yet another question, but Kagome slapped her hand over his mouth again to his great annoyance. "Shush!"

Voices reached her straining ears, first before their door, then in front of it, then a small distance beyond. "This is his room, right?"

"Yep. This is the transfer from a few weeks back. What did that man call him?"

"Inuyasha. It's on the records, you idiot. Let's just hurry up and get this over with."

"Won't anyone suspect anything?"

"Nope. He doesn't seem to have any family, and is basically a charity case. They'll probably just think he finally croaked."

The man whom the two female nurses spoke of sent a chilling look at the solid door that separated him from them. Hands clenched in fists at his side while Kagome continued to concentrate her attention on what was being said.

"But, but I don't know, Kazumi. . . "

"There's a lot worse you could do for ten million American dollars, Hanishi. Think of this as putting him out of his pain." With that, `Kazumi' opened the door.

"What the!"

"Kazumi! Please, be quiet! Someone might hear you!"

"Don't worry, they're a whole bunch of heavy sleepers anyway Hanishi. It's who should be here that I'm worried about!"

". . . He's gone?" Hanishi asked in a small voice.

"Yes! So put your damn conscious to rest! I don't look forward to telling this to Nasai."

"Kazumi. . . "

"Yes?"

"He scares me."

"Shut up, Hanishi. Just shut up."

The door shut with a bang, two sets of feet clicking away in a hurry.

Kagome waited for a while, counting her breaths. Finally, she let a sigh escape. "They're gone."

The patient glared at her, and she noticed that her hand still covered him mouth. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I'm sure," he grumbled. Kagome was slightly peeved. Couldn't he even thank her for just saving his life?

Not that she knew she was saving his life, but still. The thoughts of the two nurses, with names Kagome wasn't familiar with, stealing into any patient's room and messing with the medication or equipment was enough to send her into cold shivers.

The fact that someone had paid them to do it froze her soul.

"So," she said, turning to glare at the man to her side. "Got anything you'd like to tell me?"

He didn't answer, eyes stuck to the relative area of her bosom. "What are you looking at?" Her tone of voice was slightly angered.

"The Shikon. How did you get the Shikon?" He reached out toward Kagome's chest, but she stepped backward, noticing for the first time that the necklace her brother had given her four years ago for her birthday was now out in plain view.

"What are you talking about? Are you some religious fanatic or something?" Kagome felt a corner of her brother's bed nudge her leg. The man walking toward her looked ready to pounce at any moment, and in fear of her brother's continued existence, Kagome darted around Inuyasha.

The door flew open under her frightened hands. Why the hell did she have to wake up an insane, sex-deprived, and thoroughly disturbing man?

Who knew. Yet however this had happened, Kagome was now fully in play.

In her slight panic, Kagome found herself opening the door to Inuyasha's room once more, closing it behind her.

This was to little avail, as she soon learned. The man whom by all logical reasoning should have trouble standing, let along walking, burst through the door with strength few healthy men had in their prime. "Give me the Shikon, bitch!"

Kagome stumbled back as he threw himself at her, fingernails drawing blood as they scraped her chest, coming away with the prize. The small trinket, the present of her un-acknowledging brother. Fortunately, not her shirt.

"Give that back!" Kagome was desperate. She didn't want to lose the small reminder of her brother, or her past. "Please, give that back to me!"

Inuyasha gave off a feral growl that Kagome couldn't believe she had heard. She wondered briefly if the doctors that had transplanted his ears had transplanted a bit more than that. This thought was stopped when Inuyasha crashed through the window in the room and went plunging trough the snow three stories to the ground.

Kagome was shocked. After all that, he was suicidal? Praying that somehow the man was still alive, or that at least her brother's gift was intact, Kagome raced back into the hallway, finding her way to the emergency staircase and all but flying down to the ground floor.

She pushed open the emergency exit, running out into the snowstorm. Slipping slightly in the snow, Kagome raced around the corner-And slid to a stop in absolute surprise.

Ten yards off, Inuyasha stood shivering in the cold, trinket clutched in hand, without a mark on his body. Slowly, he inclined his head toward Kagome, as his knees gave out from under him. "It's. . . Winter. . . "

Kagome watched the man fall, dumbfounded. He had just fallen three stories, and was collapsing because of the cold?

Through her incredulity, Kagome managed to make herself move toward the still man. Small wonder he was freezing, considering it was below zero Celsius outside and he was only wearing a hospital gown.

Taking the coat that she had been wearing since first entering the hospital off her shoulders, Kagome draped it over Inuyasha's shoulders. The man that had seemed so large a minute ago was once more slender and life-size. Pulling his upper body up, Kagome huffed as she held him halfway in her lap, looking up at the broken window far above to her right.

"How to get you back, I wonder." Kagome knew it was the correct and legal thing to do. In fact, she was determined to drag the limp patient all the way back up the stairs if she had to. Until. . .

Until she heard the voices from earlier call out from above. Thankfully the snow was too thick to part easily with the eyes, for Kagome was suddenly sure that the nurses would have seen them otherwise. She also felt her heart fall at the dreadful certainty that they would kill the man in her unwilling arms if she brought him back.

"Just what are you, Inuyasha, that someone would want you dead?"

Mulling over options in an increasingly less lucid mind, Kagome found herself coming to a greatly disliked conclusion. She was going to have to bring the man home with her.

And in her father's BMW.

Hooking her arms under Inuyasha's own, Kagome began to drag the dead-weight through the deepening snow toward the employee parking garage. She knew where her father's car would be, if only she could make it. . .

And after a half hour of struggling, cursing, and creative pulling, she managed to do the impossible. Leaning Inuyasha against the vehicle, she held her breath as she pulled a single undecorated key from her jean pocket. "Thank you Daddy," she murmured, using the key to unlock the door to the import car.

With a final heave, Kagome managed to get Inuyasha into the passenger seat. What should have been a driver's seat, but because of her father's love of cars better suited for other countries, the reverse was true.

Propping the unconscious yet breathing man up, Kagome struggled to get the seatbelt strapped. She felt awkward leaning over his lap to see the buckle, but brushed the feeling off. Awkwardness could come later, just not right now.

Finally Kagome was able to close the passenger door, and quickly she made her way to the driver's side. Making her securing much more quickly, Kagome started the engine and backed out little by little.

With an unconscious person in the seat beside her, an American import CD playing `Jazz for Lovers' on the speakers, and a snowstorm making bleached clothing look colorful raging about her once she left the confines of the garage, Kagome knew it was going to be a long drive home.