If Love Could Be The Cure We Need - A MakoHaru Medical AU

Chapter 24: To My Parents

Makoto Tachibana

The medical building is one of the places you want to spend as few moments as possible. The sounds of heart monitors and respirators can always be heard when you're here.

This is the first morning I woke up to the bright light of the fierce hospital lamps. Everything hurt when my eyes opened; my tongue was completely numb, my head felt like I slammed it against something with full force and most of all my stomach and chest hurt.

I had internal bleeding from the spleen last night and therefore they had to rush me to the emergency room. At least that's what doctor Daiki told me when he came by this morning.

I'm hooked up to an IV and completely drugged up with painkillers right now, that way I won't feel the incision that much. But it still hurts and even though I'm exhausted I can't sleep because of the stitches and the noise of the heart monitor.

My tongue is feeling less numb than before, which is good since I want to bring the news to my parents on my own. I don't want them to be called by a nurse or doctor, telling them that they had to pull me from my bed, screaming and crying, yesterday evening. I want them to hear it from me, so they know I'm completely fine and all the pain I have is from the surgery itself.

When nurse Danuja walks into my room, she smiles and hands me the phone I asked her to get me. "Just try not to stay on the phone for too long, okay?" she says when I take the phone from her. "It's important that you try to rest as much as possible."

She told me I had to rest when I just had woken up from the anesthetics I was under. "That's why your friends can't visit," she said with a stern look on her face.

I bet she told that to Rin, Haruka, Nagisa and Rei as well and they probably made a scene about wanting to see me. Especially Nagisa, he probably made it hard for her to tell them "no".

I wonder if they saw what happened to me, but I don't think they have. Everyone was sleeping when it happened, that much I know, but I have no idea who was woken up by my med sensor going off in the middle of the night.

"Yeah, yeah," I tell her, typing in my mom's phone number. "I know."

I wait until nurse Danuja has left the room before I start calling. I'm completely silent, heart racing while I wait for her to pick up her phone.

After a moment her voice sounds on the other side of the line. I'm not sure what time of the day it is, but hearing Ren and Ran's voices in the background it's probably evening, otherwise they'd be in school or at child care.

"Hi, mom," I say, and when I hear my voice echoing through the speakers I realize how much my voice is slurred.

"Oh, Makoto." Every time she picks up the phone and I greet her she immediately sounds worried. Normally I roll my eyes at how worried she sounds, but right now I'm actually more terrified than she is; I don't want to tell her what happened, but I have to.

"Why are you calling at this time?" she asks, her voice moves away from the microphone and I hear her telling Ren and Ran to, please, put on their pajamas and brush their teeth. "Anyway, how are you, dear?"

Before I can answer her question I hear Ren's voice asking, "Mom? Is that Makoto?" followed by Ran's voice begging her to put me on loudspeaker. Mom tells them that that's okay, but that makes it worse for me to tell her what happened.

"Hey, big brother Makoto!" they chime on the other side of the line. Their little voices sound tired, but at the same time they seem very hyper like always.

I'm almost sure it's bedtime for them, which worries me since I had no idea I was unconscious for that long.

"Hi," I reply, smiling to no one since I'm alone in the little room with clean white walls. "How are my little siblings?"

Ren and Ran tell me about everything they've been doing for the past week; going to school, seeing friends, swimming and helping mom do the household when dad's not home. And when they're done rattling on about it, we're almost half an hour further.

Mom tells them to go to bed before she comes back on the phone again. Her voice sounds worried when she asks, "So, why did you call, dear?"

I take a deep breath while slowly tracing the place where the surgery marks sting my skin with my trembling fingers. I'm trying to find a way to tell her without making it sound worse than it is, because I don't want to worry her.

"Well," I mumble, staring at my lap. "I-I, uhm."

"Please don't tell me you had another episode," she asks, her voice even more worried than anytime I spoke to her on the phone before. "Or a seizure? God, please no."

I close my eyes, sighing. "No, I'm okay," I say. "It's just, well, they removed my spleen last night and I wanted to share the news."

There's a silent on the other side of the line and after a while mom's voice sounds again. "And they didn't bother to call me to discuss this with your dad and me?" She sounds annoyed and clearly bothered by the fact that they didn't reflect this over with her. "That's just... they're supposed to call us before they make such decisions, because what if something had happened? What if you didn't wake up from the anesthetics? What if--"

"Mom," I interrupt her, my voice as calm as possible. "They would've called you if- if this wasn't an emergency surgery."

"An emergency surgery," mom stammers. "Makoto, what are you talking about?"

This is what I didn't want to tell her, but seems that I have to explain what happened anyway, even though I don't remember anything from last night.

"Last night, when I was sleeping," I begin. "my spleen sort of bled, causing internal bleeding and they had to remove my spleen."

Mom stays silent.

"Otherwise I could've died," I explain. "They didn't have time to call you. That's why I'm calling right now."

Another long silence before mom eventually replies, "Are you okay?" Her voice sounds much softer and she doesn't sound as annoyed anymore.

I nod to myself and tell her that I wouldn't be calling if I didn't feel good enough. "I'm awake, alive and well," I reassure her. "No need to worry. Doctor Daiki says that I'll probably be able to get out of bed and back to school again in about a week from now. That's not such a long recovery time, right?"

I hear rustling on the other side of the line, so I guess mom nodded.

"But I have to go," I tell her, even though I could stay on the phone for at least two more hours if I had to. "Nurse Danuja told me to rest as much as possible, so I promised I wouldn't call that long, okay?"

"Yes, okay," she replies, almost in whispers. "Be careful and recover quickly. And call me when you're out of the medical building again, okay?"

"Promise," I reply and after saying another "goodbye" I have to break the connection. And even though I'm not that tired and I don't feel like sleeping, I pass out not much later.

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Next Chapter: 
Haruka still doesn't know much; is Makoto even still alive?