Bloody Rose

Coma!

Chapter Fifty-Two:

Coma!

Shinichi blinked open his eyes, the white of the ceiling causing him pause. This wasn't his room, was it? Turning his head he looked around. Hospital...duh. Everything about the fire and explosions came rushing back and he sighed. Trouble always did seem to follow him.

"Shinichi?" a voice asked to his right.

He turned, nearly giving himself whiplash to see who had spoken. He hadn't even realized anyone was in the room with him. Ai and Agasa stared back at him.

"Ai, Doctor", he panted, "Don't startle me like that."

Ai merely grinned a somewhat grim smile and Agasa huffed in relief.

"You are lucky to even be alive Kudo-Kun", she stated evenly, her voice devoid of emotion. He had scared her, badly and he knew it.

"I'm alright Haibara", he stated, but she glared at him, silencing his words.

"You are NOT alright", she stated evenly again, "you, Hattori, Kuroba and even Hakuba are not even a little bit alright."

He winced at her loud volume. A single tear slipped down her face, but she angrily pushed it away as she turned back to glare at the wall, refusing to face him when she couldn't seem to keep a handle on her emotions.

"Sorry", he whispered, "I didn't mean to get into this mess."

Ai didn't say anything, so Agasa spoke up.

"We went back to the site after we spoke to Agent Starling. She told us about the briefcase."

"Is she okay?" he asked, concerned.

"She is fine, just has a slight concussion and couple broken ribs. She got away rather unscathed compared to the rest of you."

"What about the briefcase, did you get it back?"

"We dug around and one of the firefighters apparently had found it and threw it into a junk pile where most of the un-ruined equipment, furniture and things were put to be sorted through later. It was pretty easy to find with her description of it.

"Good" sighed Shinichi in relief, he wanted to take a closer look at its contents.

"I will be going through the contents later", Agasa stated, "in the meantime, we wanted to stick around until you woke up."

"Thanks", he whispered, "So how am I?"

"Major concussion, grade four. The doctors were worried for a while if you would even wake, but then you seemed to start coming out of it. Obviously you won't be up to anything big for a while though. You are pretty doped right now, which is the only reason we can even have a conversation without your head splitting open."

Shinichi winced. He hated to think about what it would be like when the drugs wore off. The thought made him cringe even more.

"How are the others?"

"Hakuba-kun is resting well. His leg was broken and sliced open rather deeply, so he lost a lot of blood but he is on the mend already."

"That's good", Shinichi nodded.

"Kuroba-Kun is also doing well. I didn't get the opportunity to go into his room as he had company, but he is resting comfortably..."

"But?" asked Shinichi seeing her gloomy face.

"He can't feel and move anything below his waist" she whispered.

Shinichi flinched at the words as though they had tried to bite him. Kaio Kuroba...the Kaitou Kid, was paralyzed? That was just...just...