[Fic Stuff] Saying Hi
As I've mentioned before, I initially wrote a lot of hospital fic involving the whole Yukimura family. By far, my favorite chunks involve interactions between Seiichi and his younger sister. So, if you like OCs and sibling interactions and eventually want to see the powers of persausion reversed on our dear Seiichi, read on. There's more than what I've got in this post, but it would take forever to sort through all of it.
Title: Saying Hi
Characters: Yukimura, his family, and hospital staff
Rating: PG/K+, perhaps PG-13/T for hospital situations
Warnings: Hospital/ICU stuff
On most weekday evenings and Sunday mornings Yukimura Hiromi comes with her parents and sometimes her grandmother to visit her brother in the ICU. It is not really a place an eight year old girl should visit several times a week, but then, it is also not a place where a thirteen year old boy should temporarily live. She comes in pink sneakers and pastel or bright tutti-frutti colored outfits, her bag of books and dolls and crayons secured to her back. The nurses who spot her always point the grade-schooler out to each other, smiling and commenting that she must be all girl, the ballerina-princess-tea party sort. They are mostly right.
Hiromi, for her part, notices the nurses as well. Even though she has been visiting for nearly a whole month, her smiles toward them are still wary and tentative. It is always impossible to tell when one of them is going to come into Seiichi’s room and announce that he needs something, usually to be moved or suctioned or given some kind of medicine. Hiromi has seen too many needles for her own liking and been sent out of the room more times than she would prefer. When she sees Nurse Nakata standing at the head of Seiichi’s bed, she hurries her pace a little to reach the room and find out just what the nurse is doing to her brother.
Nurse Nakata marks Hiromi’s arrival by the sound of the girl’s father telling her to slow down. She pauses in making an adjustment to Seiichi’s IV pump, glancing over her shoulder. Hiromi is stubbornly pushing open the sliding glass door enough to come in. She has abandoned her coat somewhere, but Nurse Nakata notices that she is still hanging onto a pair of white polar bear earmuffs and some fuzzy mittens. “Hello, Hiromi-chan.”
“Hello,” Hiromi responds politely enough, though she goes straight to the foot of the bed so that she can watch the nurse. The uniformed woman is just fiddling with the IV pump. Satisfied that whatever Nurse Nakata is doing isn’t hurting Seiichi, she brightens a little and peers over the side rail to look at her brother. He is half-asleep, his blinking occasionally and the blankets pulled up around his shoulders. Hiromi leans close enough to see the mist appear and disappear in his breathing tube with each breath. It reminds her of breathing against the living room windows with him while kneeling on the couch, of drawing pictures with her fingers in the cold wet mist and Obaasan’s chiding. “Hi Onii-chan,” Hiromi coos, leaning on the side-rail of the bed. “I love you.”
“Don’t bother your brother,” her mother gently instructs as she walks into the room. Kaasan touches Seiichi’s hair and hand and then leads Hiromi away from the bed. “He needs all the rest he can get.”
“Yukimura-san?” Nurse Nakata gently interrupts the exchange just as Seiichi’s father finally arrives with both his own coat and Hiromi’s. She glances between both adults. “Dr. Tanaka asked to speak with both of you. I think he’s still looking at charts at the nurses’ station.” She looks at Hiromi. “Why don’t you stay here, Hiromi-chan? The doctor will want your brother wide awake when he comes in, and I’m sure he’ll perk up a little more after a bit if you’re here.”
Hiromi watches as her parents leave with the doctor, then turns her attention to Nurse Nakata. The nurse is sitting in a chair in one corner with Seiichi’s chart on her lap, writing down things with a ballpoint pen. Hiromi slips back to her brother’s bed again now that Kaasan is not around to tell her to leave him alone. She briefly debates crawling up there to sit, but Nurse Nakata has risen from her chair. The nurse stands next to her, crouching down a little. “We shouldn’t bother him just yet,” the nurse whispers with a little smile. “I have your stickers if you want them.”
Nurse Nakata goes to the supply cart in the room and opens several drawers, sorting through them. She eventually finds a roll of shiny pink and purple stickers. They don’t usually keep reward stickers in the ICU, but apparently Seiichi agreed to ask for them when Hiromi suggested he could give them all to her. Nurse Nakata tears off three of the few that are left on the dwindling roll. “Here they are.”
Hiromi leaves the bed and steps over, accepting the stickers. She has several like these already: a pink pony, a princess riding a unicorn, and a butterfly in front of a castle. They decorate her notebooks and photo album and she’s traded them to her friends for candy and bracelets. She fingers them and looks up at the nurse. “Why did Seiichi get these this time?”
Nurse Nakata doubts Seiichi would appreciate being the intended recipient of such glitzy stickers, but she smiles. “He got the same shot he gets everyday,” Nurse Nakata holds up one finger. Hiromi insists on knowing what each sticker is for every time. The nurse continues, holding up two more fingers, “And then he had a blood test, but they had to poke him two times instead of just one.”
“Where?” Hiromi demands, walking determinately back to the bed.
“Right here,” Nurse Nakata points to the bandage still on Seiichi’s right wrist where they drew blood gases an hour earlier. She notes that he has woken up a bit more and is paying attention to what they’re saying.
Hiromi examines the piece of tape, noting the pad of gauze under it and the tiny dot of blood that leaked through. They’re always poking her brother somewhere. She crawls onto the foot of the bed and faces Seiichi, who is definitely awake now. “Did it hurt?”
Sometimes Seiichi shakes his head no, but this time he nods a little. Blood gases are nasty to draw. Nurse Nakata puts in, “That one hurt more than most of them do.”
“What was it for?” Hiromi makes her next inquisition, crawling next to her brother and checking his arm to make sure his PICC is still there. The PICC is purple and Hiromi thinks that makes it look a little less creepy and hospital-y. The bandage they keep wrapped around the tube is still in place and Seiichi’s IV is hooked up. She points to it. “Why didn’t they get the blood from this?”
“They needed blood from an artery,” Nurse Nakata tries to explain, “They can only get blood from veins from the PICC.”
“Oh.” Hiromi frowns. She knows veins are what they stick IVs into, and that blood is in veins, but arteries are a whole new story. She sighs and carefully lifts Seiichi’s arm so that she can squeeze next to him on the bed. She just sits there for awhile.
“Do you miss having your brother at home?” Nurse Nakata interrupts the silence in the room after a few minutes.
Hiromi nods, pressing her lips together. The house isn’t the same without Seiichi there. Sometimes she goes into his room, just to look around or sit on his bed. Even though he’s been in the hospital for over a month, no one has put away the books lying out on his desk or changed his calendar. It’s weird, being able to go in there without asking or knocking. She has free access to all the puzzles and games stored in the closet, can borrow his things whenever she wants. She lies down, even though it means getting squished between her brother and the side-rail. “I miss doing stuff.”
“What kinds of things did you do together before?” Nurse Nakata asks, walking over to the bed. She lowers the side-rail on Seiichi’s side of the bed and addresses him, “Seiichi-kun, I’m going to move you over a little so your sister has more room.” She looks at Hiromi. “Hiromi-chan, get off of the bed for a moment, please.”
“Go to the park sometimes,” Hiromi doesn’t miss a beat as she slips down off of the bed. She watches as the nurse uses the bed linens under her brother to pull him to one side of the bed. It’s not as though she and Seiichi did all kinds of things together, but it’s strange not having him around. She walks by herself to the corner to meet Manami-chan now and nobody argues with her over what TV channel to watch. Nobody else is in the bathroom when she brushes her teeth before school. She has the whole backseat to herself in the car and doesn’t need to share her candy with anyone. It is too quiet and too lonely. “Swim. Play games.” She reaches for her backpack at the foot of the bed and pulls out a book before climbing back onto the bed and flopping down. “Now all we do is read and watch TV.”
Nurse Nakata stays perched on her stool, but she tries to get a better look at the cover of the book. “What are you reading?”
“Harry Potter number two,” Hiromi turns the book so the nurse can see it. She examines the cover for a moment. “Did you know that in this book some people get all…what is it?” She struggles to remember the word. “Petrified. Like paralyzed.”
“I haven’t read it,” Nurse Nakata replies. It seems like Harry Potter is all the rage every now and again, but she hasn’t gotten around to looking into it much. Before she can speculate on Hiromi’s comment, the small girl continues.
“They get better though,” Hiromi adds. In Harry Potter people being paralyzed wasn’t as scary as in real life. They didn’t even take them to a big hospital. She sighs and rubs her feet against the sheets. “And they can breathe, I think. I can’t remember if they’re awake.”
“Your brother is awake,” Nurse Nakata rests her elbows on her knees and laces her fingers together. She smiles. “Except when he’s asleep.”
“I know,” Hiromi replies. Of course Seiichi is awake - what would be the point of reading with someone who is asleep? She turns her head to look at him and he blinks and raises his eyebrows a little as if to say that anyone suggesting otherwise is stupid. His sister considers reading her book, but then crawls to the foot of the bed again and trades it for her coloring book and crayons instead. Her parents bought the book from the hospital gift shop three weeks ago to keep her quiet and occupied. It now has only six or seven uncolored pages left. She flips through the remaining ones, choosing a picture of several kittens.
“You still go to school, right, Hiromi-chan?” Nurse Nakata walks over to Seiichi’s IV pump when it starts to beep. She glances down to see Seiichi watching as his little sister shades in the picture.
Hiromi nods, sorting through her box of crayons. She didn’t go to school the first few days Seiichi was in the hospital, but her parents made her go back not long after. She didn’t want to go. It seemed wrong, going to school when Seiichi was at the hospital. Her mom said it would feel good, and sometimes it does. Music and reading are fun, and she gets to see her friends, but some parts are bad too. She draws the pink crayon out of the box. “Sometimes people are mean.”
Nurse Nakata marks the way Seiichi glances at his sister, concerned. She presses a little, since he can’t ask any questions himself. “What do you mean?”
“Not mean, really,” Hiromi shrugs, sliding the pink crayon back into the box. “Just…not very smart.” She focuses her attention on her coloring book, filling in the smiling sun over the kittens with her yellow crayon. Every time she tries to explain to her friends that her brother is in the hospital, they don’t get it. When she tells them that he can’t breathe or move, they think he’s in some kind of coma or something. It makes her frustrated and she tells them that he’s not in a coma, he’s sick. They still don’t understand, because then they ask if he’s like the disabled kids who go on fieldtrips with her class. Sometimes her friends are stupid. They’ve met Seiichi. She just wants them to say that they hope he gets better. She shoves the yellow crayon into the box. “Seiichi is going to get better and come home.” She grins widely and leans in close to her brother’s face. “Right, Onii-chan?”
Seiichi nods and Nurse Nakata smiles again. She glances up when the siblings’ parents come into the room with one of Seiichi’s doctors, as well as a respiratory therapist and an additional nurse. Both Hiromi and Seiichi seem slightly alarmed when the whole crew of people enter, each on guard for their own reasons.
“Come on, Hiro-chan,” Hiromi’s dad says as he holds out his hands to lift her down from the bed. “The doctor wants to listen to Seiichi. Take your book into the hall, all right?”
Hiromi peers over her shoulder after her dad sets her on the ground, still holding her coloring book in one hand and her pink crayon in the other. Nurse Nakata and someone she doesn’t even know are already helping her brother sit up so that the doctor can listen to his lungs. It looks uncomfortable and the nurse is talking to him a lot, although she can’t hear what’s being said. She looks up at her dad. “I want to stay.”
“I don’t think Seiichi is going to want you in here right now. The doctor wants to look at his breathing tube,” Tou-san says, quickly picking up Hiromi’s box of crayons from Seiichi’s bed. He starts walking to the door. “Go out and sit, Hiro. I’ll come out in a little bit.”
So Hiromi goes out rather reluctantly, coloring book and crayons in hand. If she gets all six unfinished pages colored before they’re finished in there, she’s going back in.
--
Hiromi sits in the chair outside her brother’s room. It is made of metal and hard, plain white plastic. How many times have they made her sit in this boring chair? Go and sit outside for a moment, Hiromi-chan, they say, The doctors need to show your parents something. We just need to do a quick test. Your brother needs to use the bathroom. They have sent her out again and pulled the curtains across the window so that she can’t see anything besides everyone’s feet. This time they say it is because they need to work on Seiichi’s breathing tube. Maybe she can’t see anything, but Hiromi can still catch voices and the almost constant sound of the suction machine. What are they doing with that thing? It’s similar to the suction thing at the dentist’s office, but they stick it down Seiichi’s tube sometimes and it sounds gross and usually makes her brother choke and gag.
“…O2 ready? Hold his head steady. Here we go…”
There is suddenly a series of rapid, weak coughs from the room and a clamor of voices. Hiromi scrambles up on her chair, but still can’t see anything through the tiny gap in the curtains. What are they doing?
“Big breaths, cough it up!” Someone is saying in a firm, coaching voice. “Come on, cough, cough, cough. Tube’s out, you’ve got to do it yourself now. Good, good, good. Keep coughing.”
There are more coughs and voices, but Tousan comes out of the room and he doesn’t look upset. “Let’s go for a little walk,” he says, holding out one hand for hers. “It will be a few more minutes.”
“Did they take Seiichi’s tube out?” Hiromi asks, trying to peek past him into the room, but her dad has already let go of the curtain. It waves a little, but all she can see is part of the wall.
“His breathing tube,” Tousan says, nodding. “They want to make sure he’ll be okay without it though, and they need to get him settled. Kaasan is going to stay with him.”
They leave the ICU and walk down some hallways and through the hospital lobby. If they’ve really taken Seiichi’s breathing tube out, Hiromi wonders why Tousan isn’t more excited. He’s just calm and once in a while she sees him smiling. They go into the gift shop and he lets her pick out candy. On the walk back, Hiromi pops rainbow colored sweets into her mouth and Tousan doesn’t make her stop when she swings their joined hands back and forth.
Everything has quieted down by the time they return, and Kaasan is standing outside with one of Seiichi’s doctors. She has her arms folded across her chest and is nodding a lot. It’s her down-to-business look, Hiromi recognizes, the one she uses when teachers tell her what they’re working on in school.
“It’s out,” she says to Tousan in a serious voice. “They have him on a little oxygen.” She turns her attention to Hiromi, and she finally looks as happy as Hiromi thinks she should. “Seiichi has his breathing tube out, Hiro-chan. Why don’t you go say hi?”
They have her brother sitting up in bed when she comes in, and Hiromi immediately climbs up next to him. The ventilator is still next to the bed, but the big blue tubing is all disconnected. All the tape around Seiichi’s mouth and on the sides of his face is gone, though it has left some red marks. The big tube is out of his mouth and instead he just has plain old oxygen tubing like sick old people have. He is awake and he is still breathing and he is smiling.
“I love your real face!” Hiromi announces excitedly, kneeling on the bed.
Seiichi’s smile widens with a silent laugh and he blinks tiredly at her. “Hi, Hiro.” His voice is too quiet and too scratchy and too loose, but it makes Hiromi bounce a little just to hear it.
She grabs both his hands, can feel a few of his fingers twitching against hers before she lets go and slides off the bed. Hiromi just hops a little at first, but it is only seconds before she is dancing in irregular little circles. She pokes the air above her head with both index fingers, tilts her head back and forth, wiggles her backside. “I’m doing a happy dance for you,” she announces, hopping some more.
Seiichi just smiles, again almost laughing. “Thanks.”
--
Hmm...I've probably screwed up titles/honorifics somewhere along the way. And...since originally deciding on a personality, name, and age for Yukimura's little sister, I've seen her written multiple ways. I kind of like her like this.
Title: Saying Hi
Characters: Yukimura, his family, and hospital staff
Rating: PG/K+, perhaps PG-13/T for hospital situations
Warnings: Hospital/ICU stuff
On most weekday evenings and Sunday mornings Yukimura Hiromi comes with her parents and sometimes her grandmother to visit her brother in the ICU. It is not really a place an eight year old girl should visit several times a week, but then, it is also not a place where a thirteen year old boy should temporarily live. She comes in pink sneakers and pastel or bright tutti-frutti colored outfits, her bag of books and dolls and crayons secured to her back. The nurses who spot her always point the grade-schooler out to each other, smiling and commenting that she must be all girl, the ballerina-princess-tea party sort. They are mostly right.
Hiromi, for her part, notices the nurses as well. Even though she has been visiting for nearly a whole month, her smiles toward them are still wary and tentative. It is always impossible to tell when one of them is going to come into Seiichi’s room and announce that he needs something, usually to be moved or suctioned or given some kind of medicine. Hiromi has seen too many needles for her own liking and been sent out of the room more times than she would prefer. When she sees Nurse Nakata standing at the head of Seiichi’s bed, she hurries her pace a little to reach the room and find out just what the nurse is doing to her brother.
Nurse Nakata marks Hiromi’s arrival by the sound of the girl’s father telling her to slow down. She pauses in making an adjustment to Seiichi’s IV pump, glancing over her shoulder. Hiromi is stubbornly pushing open the sliding glass door enough to come in. She has abandoned her coat somewhere, but Nurse Nakata notices that she is still hanging onto a pair of white polar bear earmuffs and some fuzzy mittens. “Hello, Hiromi-chan.”
“Hello,” Hiromi responds politely enough, though she goes straight to the foot of the bed so that she can watch the nurse. The uniformed woman is just fiddling with the IV pump. Satisfied that whatever Nurse Nakata is doing isn’t hurting Seiichi, she brightens a little and peers over the side rail to look at her brother. He is half-asleep, his blinking occasionally and the blankets pulled up around his shoulders. Hiromi leans close enough to see the mist appear and disappear in his breathing tube with each breath. It reminds her of breathing against the living room windows with him while kneeling on the couch, of drawing pictures with her fingers in the cold wet mist and Obaasan’s chiding. “Hi Onii-chan,” Hiromi coos, leaning on the side-rail of the bed. “I love you.”
“Don’t bother your brother,” her mother gently instructs as she walks into the room. Kaasan touches Seiichi’s hair and hand and then leads Hiromi away from the bed. “He needs all the rest he can get.”
“Yukimura-san?” Nurse Nakata gently interrupts the exchange just as Seiichi’s father finally arrives with both his own coat and Hiromi’s. She glances between both adults. “Dr. Tanaka asked to speak with both of you. I think he’s still looking at charts at the nurses’ station.” She looks at Hiromi. “Why don’t you stay here, Hiromi-chan? The doctor will want your brother wide awake when he comes in, and I’m sure he’ll perk up a little more after a bit if you’re here.”
Hiromi watches as her parents leave with the doctor, then turns her attention to Nurse Nakata. The nurse is sitting in a chair in one corner with Seiichi’s chart on her lap, writing down things with a ballpoint pen. Hiromi slips back to her brother’s bed again now that Kaasan is not around to tell her to leave him alone. She briefly debates crawling up there to sit, but Nurse Nakata has risen from her chair. The nurse stands next to her, crouching down a little. “We shouldn’t bother him just yet,” the nurse whispers with a little smile. “I have your stickers if you want them.”
Nurse Nakata goes to the supply cart in the room and opens several drawers, sorting through them. She eventually finds a roll of shiny pink and purple stickers. They don’t usually keep reward stickers in the ICU, but apparently Seiichi agreed to ask for them when Hiromi suggested he could give them all to her. Nurse Nakata tears off three of the few that are left on the dwindling roll. “Here they are.”
Hiromi leaves the bed and steps over, accepting the stickers. She has several like these already: a pink pony, a princess riding a unicorn, and a butterfly in front of a castle. They decorate her notebooks and photo album and she’s traded them to her friends for candy and bracelets. She fingers them and looks up at the nurse. “Why did Seiichi get these this time?”
Nurse Nakata doubts Seiichi would appreciate being the intended recipient of such glitzy stickers, but she smiles. “He got the same shot he gets everyday,” Nurse Nakata holds up one finger. Hiromi insists on knowing what each sticker is for every time. The nurse continues, holding up two more fingers, “And then he had a blood test, but they had to poke him two times instead of just one.”
“Where?” Hiromi demands, walking determinately back to the bed.
“Right here,” Nurse Nakata points to the bandage still on Seiichi’s right wrist where they drew blood gases an hour earlier. She notes that he has woken up a bit more and is paying attention to what they’re saying.
Hiromi examines the piece of tape, noting the pad of gauze under it and the tiny dot of blood that leaked through. They’re always poking her brother somewhere. She crawls onto the foot of the bed and faces Seiichi, who is definitely awake now. “Did it hurt?”
Sometimes Seiichi shakes his head no, but this time he nods a little. Blood gases are nasty to draw. Nurse Nakata puts in, “That one hurt more than most of them do.”
“What was it for?” Hiromi makes her next inquisition, crawling next to her brother and checking his arm to make sure his PICC is still there. The PICC is purple and Hiromi thinks that makes it look a little less creepy and hospital-y. The bandage they keep wrapped around the tube is still in place and Seiichi’s IV is hooked up. She points to it. “Why didn’t they get the blood from this?”
“They needed blood from an artery,” Nurse Nakata tries to explain, “They can only get blood from veins from the PICC.”
“Oh.” Hiromi frowns. She knows veins are what they stick IVs into, and that blood is in veins, but arteries are a whole new story. She sighs and carefully lifts Seiichi’s arm so that she can squeeze next to him on the bed. She just sits there for awhile.
“Do you miss having your brother at home?” Nurse Nakata interrupts the silence in the room after a few minutes.
Hiromi nods, pressing her lips together. The house isn’t the same without Seiichi there. Sometimes she goes into his room, just to look around or sit on his bed. Even though he’s been in the hospital for over a month, no one has put away the books lying out on his desk or changed his calendar. It’s weird, being able to go in there without asking or knocking. She has free access to all the puzzles and games stored in the closet, can borrow his things whenever she wants. She lies down, even though it means getting squished between her brother and the side-rail. “I miss doing stuff.”
“What kinds of things did you do together before?” Nurse Nakata asks, walking over to the bed. She lowers the side-rail on Seiichi’s side of the bed and addresses him, “Seiichi-kun, I’m going to move you over a little so your sister has more room.” She looks at Hiromi. “Hiromi-chan, get off of the bed for a moment, please.”
“Go to the park sometimes,” Hiromi doesn’t miss a beat as she slips down off of the bed. She watches as the nurse uses the bed linens under her brother to pull him to one side of the bed. It’s not as though she and Seiichi did all kinds of things together, but it’s strange not having him around. She walks by herself to the corner to meet Manami-chan now and nobody argues with her over what TV channel to watch. Nobody else is in the bathroom when she brushes her teeth before school. She has the whole backseat to herself in the car and doesn’t need to share her candy with anyone. It is too quiet and too lonely. “Swim. Play games.” She reaches for her backpack at the foot of the bed and pulls out a book before climbing back onto the bed and flopping down. “Now all we do is read and watch TV.”
Nurse Nakata stays perched on her stool, but she tries to get a better look at the cover of the book. “What are you reading?”
“Harry Potter number two,” Hiromi turns the book so the nurse can see it. She examines the cover for a moment. “Did you know that in this book some people get all…what is it?” She struggles to remember the word. “Petrified. Like paralyzed.”
“I haven’t read it,” Nurse Nakata replies. It seems like Harry Potter is all the rage every now and again, but she hasn’t gotten around to looking into it much. Before she can speculate on Hiromi’s comment, the small girl continues.
“They get better though,” Hiromi adds. In Harry Potter people being paralyzed wasn’t as scary as in real life. They didn’t even take them to a big hospital. She sighs and rubs her feet against the sheets. “And they can breathe, I think. I can’t remember if they’re awake.”
“Your brother is awake,” Nurse Nakata rests her elbows on her knees and laces her fingers together. She smiles. “Except when he’s asleep.”
“I know,” Hiromi replies. Of course Seiichi is awake - what would be the point of reading with someone who is asleep? She turns her head to look at him and he blinks and raises his eyebrows a little as if to say that anyone suggesting otherwise is stupid. His sister considers reading her book, but then crawls to the foot of the bed again and trades it for her coloring book and crayons instead. Her parents bought the book from the hospital gift shop three weeks ago to keep her quiet and occupied. It now has only six or seven uncolored pages left. She flips through the remaining ones, choosing a picture of several kittens.
“You still go to school, right, Hiromi-chan?” Nurse Nakata walks over to Seiichi’s IV pump when it starts to beep. She glances down to see Seiichi watching as his little sister shades in the picture.
Hiromi nods, sorting through her box of crayons. She didn’t go to school the first few days Seiichi was in the hospital, but her parents made her go back not long after. She didn’t want to go. It seemed wrong, going to school when Seiichi was at the hospital. Her mom said it would feel good, and sometimes it does. Music and reading are fun, and she gets to see her friends, but some parts are bad too. She draws the pink crayon out of the box. “Sometimes people are mean.”
Nurse Nakata marks the way Seiichi glances at his sister, concerned. She presses a little, since he can’t ask any questions himself. “What do you mean?”
“Not mean, really,” Hiromi shrugs, sliding the pink crayon back into the box. “Just…not very smart.” She focuses her attention on her coloring book, filling in the smiling sun over the kittens with her yellow crayon. Every time she tries to explain to her friends that her brother is in the hospital, they don’t get it. When she tells them that he can’t breathe or move, they think he’s in some kind of coma or something. It makes her frustrated and she tells them that he’s not in a coma, he’s sick. They still don’t understand, because then they ask if he’s like the disabled kids who go on fieldtrips with her class. Sometimes her friends are stupid. They’ve met Seiichi. She just wants them to say that they hope he gets better. She shoves the yellow crayon into the box. “Seiichi is going to get better and come home.” She grins widely and leans in close to her brother’s face. “Right, Onii-chan?”
Seiichi nods and Nurse Nakata smiles again. She glances up when the siblings’ parents come into the room with one of Seiichi’s doctors, as well as a respiratory therapist and an additional nurse. Both Hiromi and Seiichi seem slightly alarmed when the whole crew of people enter, each on guard for their own reasons.
“Come on, Hiro-chan,” Hiromi’s dad says as he holds out his hands to lift her down from the bed. “The doctor wants to listen to Seiichi. Take your book into the hall, all right?”
Hiromi peers over her shoulder after her dad sets her on the ground, still holding her coloring book in one hand and her pink crayon in the other. Nurse Nakata and someone she doesn’t even know are already helping her brother sit up so that the doctor can listen to his lungs. It looks uncomfortable and the nurse is talking to him a lot, although she can’t hear what’s being said. She looks up at her dad. “I want to stay.”
“I don’t think Seiichi is going to want you in here right now. The doctor wants to look at his breathing tube,” Tou-san says, quickly picking up Hiromi’s box of crayons from Seiichi’s bed. He starts walking to the door. “Go out and sit, Hiro. I’ll come out in a little bit.”
So Hiromi goes out rather reluctantly, coloring book and crayons in hand. If she gets all six unfinished pages colored before they’re finished in there, she’s going back in.
--
Hiromi sits in the chair outside her brother’s room. It is made of metal and hard, plain white plastic. How many times have they made her sit in this boring chair? Go and sit outside for a moment, Hiromi-chan, they say, The doctors need to show your parents something. We just need to do a quick test. Your brother needs to use the bathroom. They have sent her out again and pulled the curtains across the window so that she can’t see anything besides everyone’s feet. This time they say it is because they need to work on Seiichi’s breathing tube. Maybe she can’t see anything, but Hiromi can still catch voices and the almost constant sound of the suction machine. What are they doing with that thing? It’s similar to the suction thing at the dentist’s office, but they stick it down Seiichi’s tube sometimes and it sounds gross and usually makes her brother choke and gag.
“…O2 ready? Hold his head steady. Here we go…”
There is suddenly a series of rapid, weak coughs from the room and a clamor of voices. Hiromi scrambles up on her chair, but still can’t see anything through the tiny gap in the curtains. What are they doing?
“Big breaths, cough it up!” Someone is saying in a firm, coaching voice. “Come on, cough, cough, cough. Tube’s out, you’ve got to do it yourself now. Good, good, good. Keep coughing.”
There are more coughs and voices, but Tousan comes out of the room and he doesn’t look upset. “Let’s go for a little walk,” he says, holding out one hand for hers. “It will be a few more minutes.”
“Did they take Seiichi’s tube out?” Hiromi asks, trying to peek past him into the room, but her dad has already let go of the curtain. It waves a little, but all she can see is part of the wall.
“His breathing tube,” Tousan says, nodding. “They want to make sure he’ll be okay without it though, and they need to get him settled. Kaasan is going to stay with him.”
They leave the ICU and walk down some hallways and through the hospital lobby. If they’ve really taken Seiichi’s breathing tube out, Hiromi wonders why Tousan isn’t more excited. He’s just calm and once in a while she sees him smiling. They go into the gift shop and he lets her pick out candy. On the walk back, Hiromi pops rainbow colored sweets into her mouth and Tousan doesn’t make her stop when she swings their joined hands back and forth.
Everything has quieted down by the time they return, and Kaasan is standing outside with one of Seiichi’s doctors. She has her arms folded across her chest and is nodding a lot. It’s her down-to-business look, Hiromi recognizes, the one she uses when teachers tell her what they’re working on in school.
“It’s out,” she says to Tousan in a serious voice. “They have him on a little oxygen.” She turns her attention to Hiromi, and she finally looks as happy as Hiromi thinks she should. “Seiichi has his breathing tube out, Hiro-chan. Why don’t you go say hi?”
They have her brother sitting up in bed when she comes in, and Hiromi immediately climbs up next to him. The ventilator is still next to the bed, but the big blue tubing is all disconnected. All the tape around Seiichi’s mouth and on the sides of his face is gone, though it has left some red marks. The big tube is out of his mouth and instead he just has plain old oxygen tubing like sick old people have. He is awake and he is still breathing and he is smiling.
“I love your real face!” Hiromi announces excitedly, kneeling on the bed.
Seiichi’s smile widens with a silent laugh and he blinks tiredly at her. “Hi, Hiro.” His voice is too quiet and too scratchy and too loose, but it makes Hiromi bounce a little just to hear it.
She grabs both his hands, can feel a few of his fingers twitching against hers before she lets go and slides off the bed. Hiromi just hops a little at first, but it is only seconds before she is dancing in irregular little circles. She pokes the air above her head with both index fingers, tilts her head back and forth, wiggles her backside. “I’m doing a happy dance for you,” she announces, hopping some more.
Seiichi just smiles, again almost laughing. “Thanks.”
--
Hmm...I've probably screwed up titles/honorifics somewhere along the way. And...since originally deciding on a personality, name, and age for Yukimura's little sister, I've seen her written multiple ways. I kind of like her like this.