Chapter One First, Do No Harm #2
"I acknowledged tiredness. Not limitation."
"When did you last sleep?"
Renji considered the question. Akiko's expression changed.
"That long?"
"I slept yesterday."
"For how many hours?"
"It depends how strictly you define sleep."
"Renji."
"Two."
Aoi groaned.
"You were here the night before as well."
"There was a ruptured aneurysm."
"There is always something," Akiko said.
She took the coffee out of his hand before he could protest and held it beyond his reach.
"Go speak to the family. Then you are sitting down for twenty minutes."
"I have patients."
"You have colleagues."
"I'm aware."
"Are you?"
He looked between them. Aoi attempted a stern expression, though concern sat too openly beneath it; Akiko had no such difficulty — her sternness was perfectly genuine. Renji held out his hand for the coffee.
"Twenty minutes."
"Thirty."
"Twenty-five."
Akiko returned the cup.
"Agreed."
They all knew he was lying. It was easier to pretend otherwise.
The patient's mother stood when Renji entered the consultation room. She was a small woman in a cream cardigan, perhaps in her late fifties, her hands clasped so tightly the knuckles had gone white. Beside her, the patient's sister remained seated, staring at the floor.
"Are you the surgeon?" the mother asked.
"I'm Dr Takahara."
"Is my son alive?"
Renji closed the door behind him.
"Yes."
Her knees nearly gave way. The sister caught her arm and helped her back into the chair. Renji sat across from them. He always sat — bad news delivered from above felt like judgement, and good news delivered while standing could be mistaken for haste.
"He suffered several severe injuries," Renji said. "There was significant bleeding inside his chest, abdomen and pelvis. His heart stopped shortly after he arrived."
The mother covered her mouth.
"We were able to restart it."
"Is he awake?"
"No. He is being transferred to intensive care and will remain sedated. We controlled the most dangerous bleeding, but his condition is still extremely serious."
The sister looked up.
"Is he going to die?"
Renji had been asked the question thousands of times. It never became easier. He could have softened the answer with percentages, favourable signs or cautious optimism, but families often heard certainty where none existed.
"I don't know," he said.
The mother began to cry. Renji let the silence remain.
"We have given him the best chance we can," he continued. "Tonight, his body needs time. The intensive care team will support him while we watch for further bleeding, infection and organ injury. The next twenty-four hours will tell us more."
"Can we see him?"
"Once the nurses have settled him."
The sister swallowed.
"He hates hospitals."
"Most people do."
That earned the faintest, broken laugh from the mother. Renji leaned forward slightly.
"He will have tubes and machines around him. He may look swollen. There will be blood on some of the dressings. I'm telling you now because the first sight can be frightening."
The mother nodded repeatedly.
"Can he hear us?"
"Possibly. Speak to him as though he can."
"What should we say?"
Renji looked at her.
"Anything that reminds him why he should come back."
The mother's face folded. Renji waited until she could breathe again. He explained the injuries once more, more slowly, and answered every question, including those they had already asked. When the intensive care nurse arrived to escort them upstairs, the mother stopped beside him.
"You saved him."
"We helped him."
"You saved him," she repeated.
Renji inclined his head. He did not argue. Not this time.
The consultation room remained quiet after they left.
Renji sat alone for several seconds. On the table between the chairs, someone had abandoned a paper cup filled with cold tea, a tissue crushed beside it.
He looked down at his hands. They were clean now, though he could still feel the weight of the young man's heart against his palm — the sensation lingered after certain surgeries, not physical memory exactly, something deeper.
Renji flexed his fingers until it passed.
The wall clock read 3:47 a.m. Twenty-five minutes of rest, Akiko had demanded; he had already spent twelve of them speaking to the family. He stood.
Takamori University Medical Centre had a different personality after three in the morning.
During the day, it was all movement and interruption: consultants surrounded by trainees, relatives asking for directions, porters weaving beds through crowded corridors, phones ringing before anyone had finished answering the previous call.
At night, the hospital seemed to draw inward — lights dimmed in unused hallways, voices lowered, the air-conditioning became audible, and every squeak of rubber soles travelled further than it should.
Renji walked through the surgical ward with his coffee in one hand and a tablet in the other, reviewing blood results as he moved. Room twelve: post-operative haemoglobin stable. Room sixteen: inflammatory markers rising. Room twenty-one: pain poorly controlled.
He stopped outside room nine. An elderly man lay asleep beneath a thin blanket, his mouth slightly open; his daughter had fallen asleep in the chair beside him with her head resting against the mattress.
Renji entered quietly, adjusted the blanket over her shoulders and checked the patient's intravenous line. Neither woke. He moved on.