damned_institute | Nightshift 30: M35, Clinic

The way the blond snapped to at that information was somehow reassuring. His expression said that the situation wasn't anything good, but that as well as his apparent confidence in his actions proved that he knew what to do. That was good.

While it was true that Kurogane was a little panicked, he wasn't so flustered that he couldn't answer the questions posed. "Coughed..." he provided, but to no end. It seemed the blond was thinking for the best course of action instead of mulling over questions. Kurogane was better with action than thinking anyway.

He nodded to the boy's first instructions, ready to follow. He had already resolved to do as told by someone who knew what they were doing, having done the same with Tamaki. The earlier instructions, however, had only involved blankets and helping Fai to sit up. Nothing then had involved breathing into his mouth twice. How the hell was that supposed to help?!

"You want me to what?"

"I want you to put air in his lungs so he doesn't die of oxygen deprivation," Mello said flatly, lifting his head. Was that so hard to understand? "I'd do it myself, but someone has to listen to his lungs, and you don't know what to listen for." Did this guy want his friend to live, or not? Mello couldn't waste time justifying every little detail. He knew what to do, the other man didn't. That should have been enough.

Again, things were said that Kurogane wasn't quite able to follow for the terminology. Even so, he could figure that the words once again amounted to breathe into his mouth twice.

"And that's going to help?" he sneered disbelievingly. The kid still sounded like he knew what he was doing, and Kurogane couldn't deny that, but some part of him just did not want to believe that something so... their mouths were going to have to... just how could that...! Fai still wasn't breathing, and this person wasn't pulling some kind of sick joke either. He'd even explained why he wasn't the one doing the breathing into his mouth twice part.

...

... he had no choice. Kurogane wasn't about to let the magician die because he couldn't handle all but kissing him. Unable to help how his lip twitched with the words, he finally forced out a, "Fine," with a hiss, then put his eyes on Fai's face, focusing on one particular feature. Dammit. This was not happening... it was not happening, and if Fai said anything later, he'd really die for the incident that didn't happen, plain and simple. The same went for any other idiot in the room that was watching.

Just two times... He thought as the only comfort, then took a deep breath, bent low, closed his eyes, and unwillingly gave away his first kiss.

Mello returned his head to the man's chest and listened closely. There was a low, rough sound as air was forced into his lungs, but the deep, gurgling rattle he'd expected to hear was absent. Fantastic. "Wait a second," he said as he listened to the sighing exhale. Three seconds, and nothing. He reached for the blond's unbandaged arm and held his fingers against the wrist as he counted seconds, waiting. Still weak. Weaker, it seemed, but that could be because he was measuring the radial pulse rather than the carotid. Five seconds, and still no inhale. That was long enough.

"Two more breaths, and then count five seconds," he said in a voice that clearly didn't expect argument. "I'm watching his pulse. Keep doing that until I tell you to stop."

Edited 2008-03-22 09:55 (UTC)

He paused when told, relieved for only having to give one breath before being stopped. The one had been bad enough, so he would have been more than happy not to have to follow through with the second. Unfortunately, as he could see thanks to how close he was with the magician's face, he could tell that Fai still was not breathing. One more then... until the blond went and changed his instructions.

"What...?!" his eyes shot back and glared. Two, he'd said only two! Now it was up to three and then two every five seconds?! The hell?! But Kurogane had already started with this breathing thing, so he couldn't very well back out now. This had better be helping! He drew in a breath again, this one sounding much more like a growl, then breathed into Fai's mouth again. If he answered the blond now, he'd end up too flustered to be able to do anything further.

Mello opened his mouth to tell the man to quit bitching and start breathing, but fortunately, he came to his senses quickly enough and resumed the task he'd been given. The man's pulse wasn't getting any stronger, but it wasn't getting weaker either. He didn't want to perform chest compressions on someone with fractured ribs and internal bleeding, but as long as his heart didn't stop, Mello was confident about his recovery. His brain was getting oxygen, and that was what mattered.

Because he had nothing at stake, Mello had remained calm through the ordeal, but even if he had nothing to lose he didn't enjoy being confronted with something he couldn't do. If this guy died, he'd be extremely, extremely annoyed.

"He's still got a pulse," he announced. "He'll be okay as long as he keeps getting air." It was possible that brain damage had occurred in the moments before they'd started treating him, but Mello could deal with that possibility later. Hopefully, the blond would start breathing on his own within a minute or two.

He'd long since gotten a taste of Fai's blood in his mouth, but there were worse problems that he was having to deal with. Breathing and counting was more annoying than one would have thought, and it took a bit more concentration than Kurogane really wanted to give. Every blasted second he had to count on the break was treated as a curse word in his mind.

"You mean I have to keep doing this?" he hissed on one of the five second counts. He hadn't stopped himself just yet, but the only reason behind that was because the blond hadn't told him he could. Now it sounded like he would be stuck doing this until the magician started breathing on his own. Not something he wanted to do.

"Well, he's not doing it himself," Mello said. This case was unusual, and he wasn't going to take any chances. It was rare for someone to stop breathing while they maintained a pulse, especially when their lungs weren't badly damaged. He had a long list of questions for the tall man once the blond was stable. The injuries covered a broad range of trauma: burns on his legs, heavy bleeding somewhere in his abdomen, what seemed to be a compound fracture based on the angle of his hand and the soaked gauze. Had all of this been caused by one creature?

Mello was grateful that the hospital's nurses would take over soon. He wasn't out of his depth (he was never out of his depth, he thought firmly) but the limited supplies would make keeping the man alive for more than thirty or forty minutes a very difficult task, even if he could breathe on his own.

Not what he wanted to hear either. He gave the kid another quick glare, but no words this time. He look should have said enough. Why wasn't he taking over with this now that he wasn't doing anything else? Of course, Kurogane could guess that the kid had no more intention of breathing for Fai than he did himself, but still, he wanted a way to not have to do this anymore!

Breathe, you idiot! he mentally yelled at Fai and kept at it.

One moment he'd been allowed to fall into a nice, quiet sleep, the next he was being rudely awakened, not for the first time this evening. He coughed and his throat felt raw, but the air passed through on its own. And while it certainly hurt plenty to keep breathing, he did so, breaths shallow and slow, but still coming once every few seconds.

His face scrunched up for a moment before he opened his eyes. His drug addled mind must be showing him some kind of hallucination, he concurred. Why else would Kurogane be leaning over him like... like he was some princess in a fairy tale? His expression was one of confusion, lasting only a few moments before it melted into a childish and entirely inappropriate smile.

Yuuhi's voice was hardly audible, but his lips still formed "Ku... ro..." and ended with a short giggle of "eh hee..."

When the unconscious man finally coughed and took a shallow inhale, Mello grinned. Victory. He lifted his hand to indicate that it was alright for the dark-haired man to stop breathing into his mouth, though he imagined the whispered words had gotten the message across. He was awake? If he could stay that way, it'd be much easier to keep him from sliding back into the deepest part of shock. As far as near-death cases go, this guy was pretty damn lucky.

"Now keep him conscious," he said as he reached up to take his pulse from the neck. That point would give him a better estimation of the strength of the blond's heartbeat.

When he felt air hit him in the form of Fai coughing, he instantly drew back, stopping the breathing. Finally. His face didn't show any relief at the fact outside of the faint red tint that came following Fai's idiotic giggling. He didn't tell the magician to shut up for it though, hoping that, come morning, the man would remember nothing of this. After all, this hadn't happened, and it still wasn't happening. Because of that, Kurogane found no problem with wiping the blood from Fai's mouth either.

Then he looked back. "I am not doing that again," he told the kid in an impressively restrained tone as he brushed Fai's blood from his own mouth. Saying so didn't really mean that he wouldn't though - his actions had already betrayed that he very well would if the options ran out - but it at least made him feel better.

He wasn't sure what Kuro and that new boy were talking about, but it was too hard to concentrate on it for very long. Kurogane was upset about something, but that wasn't really very surprising, he was usually upset. That was half the fun of teasing him, he remembered.

However, he didn't usually see Kuro's cheeks tinged pink like that. He was embarrassed about something, though Yuuhi had no idea what it was. Maybe he'd done something? But he didn't remember teasing him especially well recently. It was all kind of foggy. He still felt the pain, but it was far away and disconnected.

He turned his head slowly in a weak attempt to avoid Kurogane's hand, but only managed to blurt "tickles..." as the fingers brushed his lip. A sliver of pink showed as he stuck out his tongue, pulling a face and tasting some of his own blood as he caught the side of Kurogane's hand. He gave another giggle, for some reason the thought of having licked the angry ninja's hand was infinitely amusing with the strange drugs in his system.

"Nya~" he said sluggishly as his mouth curled into a cheshire smile.

The pulse was more stable now, and Mello was satisfied. He wasn't paying attention to whatever nonsense the blond gurgled. As long as he was speaking, he was breathing, and as long as he was breathing, he'd stay alive. He pulled his hand back from his neck and straightened up, barely resisting the impulse to raise his fingers to his mouth.

The next most important thing was to stop the bleeding, and most of the bleeding seemed to come from the man's forearm. The gauze wasn't stopping much, but once he pressed his hands over the wet fabric, he could feel that the fracture had already been aligned. Why was there so much blood?

Maybe there were different requirements for survival here, he thought as he checked the distal pulse to be sure that blood was making its way through the man's forearm. Maybe this was some kind of proving ground for people who'd lived and died violently. That wouldn't explain L's presence, though, and Tamaki didn't seem to be the type either.

He stood quietly, frowning in thought. Nothing about this made sense.

"What the hell?!" he shouted at Fai's sudden licking of his hand, yanking it away instantly. Of all the things he might have expected, Fai maybe coughing up some more blood or passing out again, getting licked had not been on the list!

Resisting the urge to smack him for the action, Kurogane could only glare down at Fai. He'd preferred when the idiot had been unconscious! Now he was acting strangely and...

... and meowing...

Dammit, not again!

Kurogane's shouting only made him giggle again, though this time it turned into coughing that shook his thin shoulders and he wrinkled his nose as he tasted blood again. "Icky... nya..."

Had he the presence of mind and the energy for it, he might have tried to tell his new doctor where it hurt most and why, but for now it was one thing at a time. All he could really put his finger on was that he felt tired and very strange at the same time. He didn't feel worried, Kurogane was right here, but he did want to sleep. It seemed like every time he tried though, people got upset with him. "M'tired... can we go... bed... now...?" He looked hopefully up at Kurogane and his blonde friend.

"No," Mello said, his voice still flat. "You're going to stay awake until morning. Sleep then."

There was no empathy or conventional beside manner in his demeanor as he once again took the man's pulse. "It's stable," he told the taller one. "Weak, but stable. As long as his blood pressure doesn't drop again, he'll be okay. Keep him talking."

He only needed a few more hours...maybe a few more minutes. Mello's expression was pleased, and showed no glint of insecurity. Everything was under control.

"What's wrong with him?" Kurogane said, not necessarily addressing anyone. The meowing was certainly familiar from... that night,... but the rest was different, and he knew Fai hadn't had any alcohol to speak of. Was he in so much pain that he was acting like this? Maybe that was it. He didn't like not knowing though.

He had no idea what Mello kept doing to Fai (pulse, he'd said?), but it was apparently important since he kept checking it over and over. The kid still knew what he was doing, and he'd proved that he really did know his stuff since Fai was breathing again.

Even so, Kurogane did not want to keep Fai talking. Even if Fai hadn't had any alcohol, he was acting remarkably as though he had. Talking to him like this would be... annoying. He sighed hard, absentmindedly wiping his hand against his shirt a few times. "No, don't sleep," he ordered at Fai as a follow up to the blond's own demand, "Stay awake and explain. What were you doing on the second floor?" Bringing up that point would probably keep Fai talking, even if he was likely to just avoid the subject as always.

"Eeeeeh?" Yuuhi found himself surprised by how stern the young boy was. How come he had to stay awake so long! Morning would take forever to get here! "So mean... nya..." he pouted childishly.

"Kuro-chii said no..." he insisted, "no talk...ing." He'd already been yelled at a couple of times for that one! Were they trying to play a trick on him? It didn't help when Kuro started asking questions. What had he been doing on the second floor? Yuuhi's brow furrowed as though he'd been asked a terribly difficult question. He should know this one.

"Don't wanna..." he frowned at Kurogane's question. "he'll get... mad a' me."

"Yeah, well, he'll deal." Mello didn't know who Kuro-chii was, but he was pretty sure that he was incompetent.

With his fingers still firm against the person's neck, he looked up to the dark haired man. "He's lost a lot of blood," he explained, assuming the question had been directed to him. "If Tamaki gave him any painkillers, there's that too. Unless you're actually asking what's wrong with him." He'd assumed the question was about the blond's demeanor, not his physical condition. "Hypervolemic shock, probably due to abdominal bleeding, second degree burns over..." he paused for an instant as he looked over the semiconscious man "...about 25% of his body, from some kind of liquid or chemical. Compound fracture, probably radial? I can't tell with all of this shit." He indicated the gauze with his other hand. It was stopping the bleeding, but it didn't make diagnosis simple. "He's in bad shape, but as long as he stays breathing, he'll be okay until morning."

Kurogane couldn't help growling, but he was more irritated by the blond's response to Fai's words than the magician's own words. Kurogane would deal, not "Kuro-chii"! "I'm the one asking, so I'm not going to get mad," he spoke again, ignoring that Fai was using nicknames again, "Talk."

He watched the boy with a blank expression, only understanding every other word he used. When he finished, Kurogane nodded that he understood the gist of everything. That stuff Tamaki had given him was the cause behind Fai's near-drunken state, probably, and the rest was the result of the pain. Made sense. All of it basically amounted to things not being good, but that was obvious.

Not gonna get mad... Yuuhi didn't believe that for a moment, even in his current state. Maybe he wouldn't get mad about him talking, but he was always mad about something. He tried to understand what the other boy was saying, but so much of it sounded like gibberish.

"I just... fell," he insisted. "Clumsy." Yuuhi tried to force a smile, though somehow he knew it wouldn't help. Kuro always seemed to see right through it. He took a breath and let it out slowly, coughing again, but not quite as rough as the last.

He'd needed something. The file. Because it would tell him about Robin, the man he was supposed to be. The man Ashura needed him to be. The only one that could save him. "He needs... Robin," Yuuhi mumbled quietly.

Just what they needed. More nonsense. As long as it was audible, Mello was fine with it. He ignored the conversation and continued counting heartbeats as he scanned the rest of the clinic. If this was what it was like every night, things were going to have to change. They needed a better triage system, and more space. They needed to conserve resources like needles and surgical thread for when they were absolutely necessary, and they needed to cycle the stable patients out of the emergency area to create room for new arrivals.

Although he monitored the blond's tone of voice, the words didn't matter to him. Mello's mind was focused on creating a list of suggestions to propose to Tamaki in the morning.

"I'm not going to believe that," Kurogane sneered. He could believe the falling part easily since the brown-haired boy had already confirmed that Fai probably had fallen, but Fai saying he had been clumsy had to be the furthest thing from the truth.

Kurogane didn't expect to get much out of Fai though. Or at least nothing that would be believable. The magician was too dazed, even if somewhat aware of the things going on around him. So long as he responded and stayed awake, that was enough. The real interrogation would be coming later, once Kurogane knew Fai was thinking clearly. "Who's Robin?" he asked, "And who needs him?" Those words seemed to break from Kurogane's original question completely. Was it just some nonsense, or something more?

"Hnn..." Yuuhi commented, tone somewhat frustrated, but mostly just disappointed. He knew Kuro wouldn't believe him so easily, not after all the lies he'd told. "M' cold," he said instead, hoping to focus on a different subject.

Of course, Kurogane wasn't about to drop things. Not so easily. It was plain from the expression on Yuuhi's face that he didn't want to talk about it. He looked away, tilting his head aside was the only way he could really try to avoid conversation at this point. His eyes grew troubled, somewhat sad, "Aa... shura."

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