Ranko blinked, surveying the little waiting room outside the intensive care unit of Ikebara Hospital. The unit normally only allowed one visitor at a time, though the staff had continued to make exceptions for Akane due to her position as a student intern. As a result, the windowless family waiting room was fairly small, with a mere twelve chairs in a mauve vinyl, in three banks of four chairs connected by their wooden armrests. Ranko was therefore surprised to find not one, but three, of her sisters in the room as she entered.
“You guys? What’s going on?” Ranko’s voice took on a worried tone as her eyes darted from Mei to Izumi and then Ayako, trying to determine the mood in the room.
Mei bounded up to her youngest sister in her flouncy pastel blue dress, squeezing Ranko’s hand with a bright smile. “Mama’s awake!”
Ranko gasped audibly, turning and grinning to Akane at her side. “Seriously?! Why didn’t you guys call us?!”
Ayako waved from her seat closest to the little television set in the room, on which some inane game show was playing and being entirely ignored by everyone in the room. “I did. I got your machine; you must’ve already left. It was less than a half an hour ago.”
“Can we see her,” Ranko asked hopefully, turning back toward the door.
“Not yet, Ran-chan.” Izumi took her arm back from around Hoshi’s shoulder, standing and walking over to join her sister and her bride. “The doctor’s in with her now doing stuff. They said they’d let us know.”
Ranko nodded in understanding. “Did they say if she’s… ya know, okay?”
Izumi shook her head. “That’s what the doctors are checking on now, I think.”
As her sister answered, Ranko walked over to where Izumi had been sitting, crouching down in front of the chair next to the one her sister had just vacated. “Hey, little man,” she said with a smile, tousling Hoshi’s hair. “Your dad was telling me the other day all about how awesome you’ve been helping your mom out with things while your grandma’s been sick, and I just wanted to tell you how proud of you I am.”
Hoshi dove forward, wrapping his arms tight around Ranko’s neck. “I missed you so much, Auntie Ranko! We gotta play my new Super Famicom game! You run around fighting people! You’re gonna love it! How was Australia? Did you see any kangaroos?”
The redhead chuckled, her cheeks catching flame. “I can’t say as we did.” She swiveled her neck swiftly to face the door as she heard it open again, but it was not the doctor that entered. Instead, it was a pair of women, one of which Ranko did not expect to see. “Yui! Sakura?! What are you doing here,” she asked excitedly.
Yui squeezed Sakura’s hand, smiling up at her sisters. “Sake’s gonna help us out for a while until Mom’s better. I know we normally run all hires past the whole family, but I didn’t think any of you would mind me saying yes to her help.”
“Absolutely not!” Ranko grinned, closing the distance and giving Yui a tight hug. “I’m so happy for you both.” She released Yui, turning and offering Sakura a hug as well. “Welcome home, Sakura.”
The tall woman in the lime-green business suit hugged Ranko back tightly. “Hey, Ran-chan. It’s good to see you! And I gotta tell you, girl. Your show is fucking nuts.”
“Huh?” Ranko blinked, thinking for a moment. “Fukuoka? You came?!”
Sakura smiled, nodding. “I wasn’t gonna miss your first big concert tour! Are you kidding? Had to get a ticket in the nosebleed section off of a scalper, but you bet your ass I was there.”
Ranko shook her head, laughing as her ponytail tickled her shoulders. “You shoulda told me you were coming, dipshit! I’d have gotten you some VIP passes or something!”
The elder woman crinkled her nose, frowning a bit. “I wasn’t sure I should, considering where things were at the time. But that’s all in the past now.” She turned, beaming into Yui’s face. “I’m back, Ranko’s back, your mom’s gonna be back… We’re finally gonna have everything the way it’s supposed to be again.”
“I can’t wait,” Yui volunteered, squeezing Sakura’s hand with a simpering smile.
“So… Sake?” Ayako poked her little sister in the shoulder with her finger through her black leather jacket.
“Yeah, well…” Yui blushed deeply, continuing to stare lovingly at Sakura as if she were still in a state of disbelief that her presence was even real. “What can I say? She’s intoxicating.”
Mei chuckled, rolling her eyes with a shake of her head. “I swear, you two are gonna make me gag.”
The blonde bartender turned to Mei with her trademark devious smirk. “I thought that was Seiichi’s j…”
She trailed off as the door opened behind her, admitting a tall, muscular American man in his late thirties. His blond hair was short and spiky, and he wore a white lab coat over his pale blue scrubs. “Hello. You all are Ms. Takahashi’s family, right?”
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A chorus of affirmations rose in response to his question, and everyone began to gather around the doctor. Izumi squeezed Hoshi tight, holding her breath as she waited for the young doctor’s words.
“Okay,” he began, turning to try to let everyone get a chance to look into his piercing blue eyes as he smiled reassuringly. “My name’s Dr. Reynalt, and I’m the attending physician here tonight. So, there’s a lot of news, and most of it is good.” He gave the eight people in the room a moment to process the information, waiting until the murmur in the little waiting room died down before he continued. “So, to start with. Our tests show that she does have some fairly significant damage to her heart, and the damaged parts don’t necessarily get better. That’s the bad news. But what she’s still got is working pretty well.”
He leaned on the wall wearily, sighing softly in exhaustion at the tail end of his twelve-hour shift. “The reality is, your mom’s a sixty-one year old woman, and she’s probably going to have to start living like it a little bit. You can’t beat Father Time forever, I’m afraid. She isn’t going to have the stamina to work twelve-hour shifts on her feet six days a week. Not for a good long while, at the very least. She’s gonna have to take it a little easy. But if she can do that, and make a few other lifestyle changes like changing up her diet, I don’t see any reason that she can’t recover just fine from this and see this little guy grow up.” He grinned, motioning down to Hoshi, who smiled brightly at being acknowledged.
“We’ll be sending her home with some medication that she’ll be on for the rest of her life, to help prevent this from happening again, and she’ll want to keep up with regular testing and stuff to make sure problems aren’t creeping up on us, but that’s just the reality of getting older, I think. It’s nothing that’ll be a big deal for her.”
Yui raised her hand, waiting for eye contact before she spoke. “What about now? What kind of state is she in? Is she… you know, talking and stuff?”
The young doctor smiled. “That was the most important thing we were worried about. With her heart, we could mostly know what we were dealing with from the tests before she ever woke up. But we didn’t know how long she was without oxygen before you ladies found her, and what that would do to her brain. But the first thing she did when we took the ventilator tube out of her mouth was ask me where her girls were. That’s an excellent sign.”
A gasp of relief rose from the eight women in the room as Dr. Reynalt continued. “As for her physical state… She’s gonna be weak, and very tired. She’s been out of it for a few days. Her voice is gonna be pretty weak for a while; you gotta remember, her throat’s sore as hell from having that big plastic tube shoved down it this whole time. You’re gonna want to take it a little easy hugging her, too. She’s got a couple of broken ribs from the chest compressions.”
Akane winced, looking up at Ranko’s sisters guiltily. “Shit, I’m sorry…”
The doctor laughed. “Don’t be. It’s pretty common when performing CPR, even for professional paramedics. I bet if you asked her, she’d say it beats the heck out of being dead. You didn’t do anything wrong. You saved her life.” He smiled up at Akane reassuringly. “Doctor Okano’s just about done in there with her, and then you can go back one at a time to see her.”
Stepping forward, Akane looked the doctor over with a pleading countenance. “Doc, could we please just have a couple of minutes with her as a family?”
The young medic sighed, nodding softly. “Ten minutes, and then all but one of you’s gotta come out, okay?”
“We promise,” Akane said, smiling gratefully.
----------------------------------------
“Hey, Mama,” Mei said softly, as the first to enter the hospital room.
Hana lay on her back in the narrow adjustable bed, propped up slightly on a pillow. The ventilator tube had been replaced with a simple oxygen cannula under her nose, but her face was devoid of nearly all color. IV lines and EKG cables still trailed every which way under the thin white hospital blanket, connected to various equipment mounted to the back wall. Weakly, Hana lifted her hand a few centimeters to wave, but a smile crossed her dry lips.
“There she is,” Izumi said, slipping in next to her sister with Hoshi in tow.
“Hi, Grandma,” Hoshi offered with a wave and a smile. Hana turned her head slightly to look at him, as he stood at roughly eye level to the mattress, and flashed him a wider smile.
Ayako took the right side of the bed, walking up near her mother’s head and sliding a wheeled tray out of the way. “Doc says you’re a tough old bird, not that we didn’t already know it.”
“Hey, Mom,” Ranko offered with a wave, slipping in next to Ayako. She was still holding Akane’s hand as the pair leaned on the wall of the narrow room.
“We’re here, Mama. All of us,” Yui said, swallowing hard as she stepped into the jam-packed room and stood at the foot of the bed, Sakura at her side with her arm wrapped around Yui’s shoulder.
“My girls,” Hana whispered, smiling softly. She moved her head slowly, trying to make eye contact with all of them.
Ayako reached down, taking Hana’s left hand in her own. “We love you, Mom.” A chorus of assent rose around her statement.
“Love you too,” Hana said, her voice strengthening a little. “Yui?”
The blonde stepped forward, putting her hand on Hana’s foot through the pastel green hospital sock she wore. “I’m here, Mama. Sakura, too. She came home.”
“Good,” Hana said, her smile widening. “Are you okay, Yui?”
With a chuckle and a shake of her head, Yui smiled. “Now that you’re back with us, yeah, I’m gonna be okay. I can’t believe you, though. Everything you’ve been through, and the first thing you do is worry about me?”
“I’m your mom,” Hana whispered, lifting her head a little to try and look more directly at Yui. “It’ll take more than death to stop me.”
“Well, you’re not gonna die, so we don’t have anything to worry about.” Ranko rested her hand on Hana’s knee, smiling brightly down at her. “We’re gonna get you better, and everything’s gonna be just like it was.”
“That’s right!” Mei nodded resolutely, resting her hand on her mother’s shoulder through her paper-thin hospital gown. “You’re gonna outlive all of us, lady.”
“Little star,” Hana said weakly, turning her head to the left to face Ranko. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re on the wrong continent.”
Ranko crinkled her nose, shaking her head and laughing as she squeezed Hana’s bare knee with her hand. “No, Mom. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.” She smiled up at Sakura. “We all are.”