Chapter Nineteen The Night Shift
Chapter Nineteen
The Night Shift
At three in the morning, the hospital belonged to different people.
The day staff were gone. Visitors had thinned to those too frightened to leave.
Corridors that usually carried voices, alarms and hurried shoes had settled into a quieter rhythm: the roll of supply carts, the soft pulse of monitors, the occasional announcement spoken low enough not to wake the sleeping.
Haruki had always preferred cities at that hour.
People became more honest when exhaustion stripped away performance.
The same seemed true of hospitals. No polished explanations.
No reassuring smiles for relatives. Only fluorescent light, half-empty coffee and the truth of who remained when there was no one left to impress.
Haruki sat alone in the waiting area outside surgical recovery with a paper cup cooling between his hands.
Ken was somewhere downstairs arguing with security about bringing in food after visiting hours.
Reina had gone home under protest. Hiroshi had been forbidden from coming at all after declaring he could improve morale by bringing alcohol.
Haruki remained because Daisuke was still in surgery. A bullet had entered beneath his left shoulder during what should have been a routine collection from one of the Family's businesses. The shooter was dead. The second man had escaped.
Haruki had received the call shortly after midnight.
By twelve thirty, he had been at the hospital.
By twelve thirty-two, Renji had appeared in the emergency department wearing dark trousers, an unbuttoned coat and the expression he reserved for situations in which everyone else had already disappointed him.
He had not been assigned to Daisuke's case.
That had not stopped him. He reviewed the scans, questioned the trauma surgeon, ordered Haruki to sit down when he began following the gurney towards theatre.
Then Renji vanished into the machinery of the hospital.
Haruki had seen him only twice since. Once crossing the corridor while speaking rapidly to a nurse. Once through the glass of the recovery desk, reading something on a monitor with his glasses low on his nose.
Neither had acknowledged the kiss. Not because it was being denied.
That was the difference. Haruki no longer feared Renji would dismiss it as exhaustion, grief or a moment of poor judgement.
They had not spoken about what came next because neither knew.
But when Haruki arrived, Renji had taken his wrist briefly beneath the harsh emergency lights — two fingers against his pulse, and then he had said, "He is alive. "
Not for now. Not probably. Alive. Haruki had held onto the word for three hours.
He took another drink of coffee. It had gone cold. He drank it anyway.
Across the waiting area, a television mounted near the ceiling played a muted documentary about deep-sea fish.
No one watched it. An elderly man slept with his chin against his chest. A woman in a business suit stared at a closed consultation-room door.
Two teenagers shared earphones beneath a blanket while their father paced near the vending machines.
At the far end of the corridor, a child sat alone.
Haruki had noticed her several minutes earlier — six or seven years old, perhaps younger, wearing a yellow coat over pink pyjamas and holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear.
Her dark hair had been gathered into two uneven pigtails, one nearly undone.
She sat on a plastic chair with her feet several inches above the floor.
An adult should have been beside her. No one was.
Haruki looked towards the nurses' station. The night nurse was on the telephone, one hand raised towards a man demanding information through the glass.
Haruki stood. He had taken only two steps when another figure appeared from the adjoining corridor.
Renji. He had removed his coat. His shirt sleeves were rolled to his forearms, and a hospital identification badge hung from his collar.
Fatigue showed in the looseness of his posture, though his face remained composed. He carried a chart in one hand.
He walked past the child. Stopped. Then turned back.
Haruki paused beside a pillar. Renji looked down at the girl. She stared ahead. Not crying. That was worse. Children who cried still expected someone to answer. This child appeared to be concentrating on not becoming a problem.
Renji crouched several feet away rather than approaching her chair.
"Are you lost?" he asked.
The girl shook her head. Her grip tightened around the rabbit's ear. Renji waited. He did not fill the silence. After several seconds, she whispered, "My mummy is here."
"I see."
"She went through those doors."
The girl pointed towards surgery. Renji followed the gesture.
"Who brought you?"
"My aunt."
"Where is she?"
"She went to call my dad."
Renji looked towards the corridor. No adult hurried back. The child's lower lip trembled.
"She said she would only be a minute."
Renji placed the chart on the chair beside him.
"What is your name?"
"Yumi."
"My name is Renji."
She looked at his identification badge.
"It says Doctor Takahara."
"That is also me."
"Are you a real doctor?"
"I am."
"Do you help people?"
"When they allow me."
Yumi considered this.
"My mummy didn't want to come."
"Most people do not."
"She said her tummy just hurt."
Renji's expression did not change. Haruki saw the pause beneath it — the calculation of what he knew, what the child knew and what kindness required him not to say.
"Sometimes pain needs more help than we can give it at home," Renji said.
"Is she going to die?"
The question crossed the corridor with the clean violence only children could manage. Haruki felt his body tighten. Renji remained crouched.
"I do not know what is wrong with your mother," he said.
No false reassurance. No easy promise. Yumi looked down at the rabbit.
"My aunt said she'll be okay."
"She may be."
"That means she might not."
"Yes."
Haruki expected the girl to cry. Instead, she looked at Renji with frightened anger.
"You're supposed to say yes."
"Would you believe me?"
Yumi did not answer. Renji's voice softened.
"I think you are old enough to know when someone is lying because they are afraid of upsetting you."
Her eyes filled. Renji stayed where he was.
"But not knowing is not the same as something bad happening," he continued. "Right now, your mother is with people whose only work is helping her."
"Are they good?"
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"I have argued with most of them."
A tiny crease appeared between Yumi's eyebrows.
"Why?"
"They are very stubborn."
"Are you?"
"No."
Haruki covered his mouth with one hand. Yumi stared at Renji. Then, despite herself, gave a small sound that might have been a laugh. Renji's expression remained perfectly serious.
"One of us is mistaken," he said.
"You are."
"That is possible."
Haruki leaned back against the pillar. Renji had not seen him. Or, if he had, gave no sign.
The girl looked again towards the surgical doors.
"My aunt has been gone ages."
"Three minutes."
"You counted?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I count most things."
"That's weird."
"So I have been told."
Yumi's feet swung once beneath the chair. The movement loosened something in her.
"Can you stay until she comes back?"
Renji looked down the corridor. A nurse waved towards him from the station, then pointed to the chart he had abandoned. Renji lifted one finger. Wait. The nurse looked surprised. Then nodded.
"I can stay for a few minutes," he told Yumi.
He sat on the floor. Haruki blinked. Renji Takahara, who objected to poorly aligned furniture and refused to place books face-down, lowered himself onto hospital linoleum at three in the morning without hesitation.
He sat with his back against the wall, leaving space between himself and the child.
Yumi watched him.
"Doctors don't sit on floors."
"They do when chairs are occupied."
"There's one there."
"That is your rabbit's chair."
Yumi looked at the empty chair beside her. Then at the toy in her lap.
"He can share."
"I would not want to impose."
The girl moved the rabbit to the other side. Renji took the chair. Not immediately. Only after she had invited him.
Haruki felt something shift inside his chest. Small. Quiet. More dangerous than the kiss had been. The kiss had confirmed desire. This was something else.
Renji picked up the chart again. Yumi looked at it.
"Do you have work?"
"Yes."
"Will you get in trouble?"
"Frequently."
"For sitting with me?"
"No."
"You don't know."
"I am difficult to discipline."
Haruki nearly laughed. Yumi seemed less impressed.
"My teacher says everyone has to follow rules."
"Your teacher has not met enough adults."
"She says adults make the rules."
"That is why many of them are poor."
Yumi thought about this.
"My mummy says I shouldn't listen to strangers."
"She is correct."
"But you're a doctor."
"That does not make me less strange."
"You told me your name."
"Yes."
"So you're not a stranger now."
The logic seemed to surprise Renji. His face changed. Barely. A softness around the eyes Haruki recognised from Sunday dinner — from the moment the Takahara journal revealed that Renji had once saved children he believed he had failed.
"What happened to your rabbit?" Renji asked.
One of its legs had been repaired with blue thread. Yumi held it up.
"He got hurt."
"Who fixed him?"
"My mummy."
"She did good work."
"The stitches are ugly."
"They are holding."
Yumi rubbed one finger over the blue thread.
"Mummy says that's what matters."
"She is right."
"Do you fix people with stitches?"
"Sometimes."
"Do they look ugly?"
"Usually."
The girl looked scandalised. Renji's mouth moved faintly.
"But they hold," he added.
Yumi looked down at the rabbit again. Her fear had not disappeared. It remained in the stiffness of her shoulders and the way she checked the surgical doors every few seconds. Renji had not distracted her from it. He had made room beside it.