Bungou stray dogs: Dazai overdose

Chapter 16

Kunikida pov
It was the next day and Ranpo and I were on our way to visit Dazai. Fukuzawa wanted to come with us, but he had abandoned in his work for two days now and if he didn't start doing them, he would never get back on scheduel, so Ranpo kinda forced him to work and come in his break. We didn't bother to ask wich room and just went straight upstairs. Turns out, we should have asked, as the room wasn't his anymore. And we ran into a pair of twins and a women standing next to a bed talking to the person in it. They stared at us in confusion, so we apologized and went back down to ask for his room. On our way we ran into Dr. Jackson.

''Hello, You're looking for Dazai right?'' He asked
''Yes, we were just in the room and he wasn't there'' I said
''Ah yes, we switched his and her room, because it would be easier to take care of his condition there and the woman who was there previously doesn't need it that much. I was just on my way there, follow me'' He said and walked into a small hallway.
''This is the part of the hospital, where we have many coma patients, there are life support machines in the walls, so they're not in the way. They're a lot more modern than the others. Here each patient has a doctor assigned to him. This is where I usually work. We had planned to treat him there from the beginning, but there was no space, luckily, in one or another way thanks to the power failure, one patient woke up and we were able to swich their rooms. '' We went along the slim hallway and stopped infont of a door. Then we entered.

The room was smaller, than the previouss one, but that made sense, for what would a coma patient need a big room. It was bright, it had a big window and, wich didn't make sense to me, a balcony, but I just ignored it. In the room one bed with the head side on the wall. In the wall a heart and brain wave monitor, a nebulizer , a respirator and a couple of hooks, where infusions were hanging, basically everything for life support. Across the bed on the other side of the room, a table and three chairs.

I looked at the bed. Dazai was there. He barely looked like himslef anymore, especially with all the tubes in his body. Still even if no one had told me, I would have immediantly recognized him as Dazai. Dr. Jackson (btw I only named him, because it's easier to write that way) walked up to him and put his hand flat onto his forehead. Then he sighed and shook his head. ''I don't get it, what's up with that fever?'' He mumbled, looked at the monitors and infusions, nodded and then and then turned to us. ''I'll be back in an hour, he should be stable, we haven't had many problems since yesterday after the surgery. If there is anything, please press the button on door or puss the emergency call on the wall. Other than that, you are allowed to do anyything, as long as no other visitors are annoyed by it.'' Then he left.

We grabbed two chairs and sat down on each side of the bed. We heard the sound of the heart rading monitor. It was low and uneven, but it was there stable.
''Seems the surgery helped this time'' Ranpo said.
''Yeah, thank god'' I grabbed his hand. It was warm, not a big surprise though. This time he was lying with a blanket, that covered only from the waist down, the rest was revealed. I still didnt understand why he had a body full of scars. At first I thought it was only his arms, but then I saw his upper body. They had covered the wounds from the surgeries with big plasters (Is that the right word, you know that stuff you put idk on your knee when you scratched it open, that's not a bandage and sticks to it, you know what I mean). I wanted to know though, so I decided to ask Ranpo

''Hey, ehm can I ask you somehting?''
''You want to know where all these scars come from right?''
I nodded. ''I just can't think of anything, that makes sense''
''From all I know, Fukuzawa found him like that, as a 9 year old child in the uderground. He was already covering himself with bandages. When Mori took them off, his body was full of scars, boiling, beating, cuts, later he told us he was abused and raped by both his parents and others. He had many bruises and incorrectly healed injuries. He was put into an orphanage, that shortly after burned down, due to a childs ability, he was the only one to survive. That's how his ability was awakened. Fukuzawa found him uncosciouss days later with high fever from smoke inhalation and injuries from the fire. From then on he could barely see anything with his right eye and the burning scars never healed. He was then put in another orphanage, before Mori took him to the mafia. Since then he received new cuts on his arms and those strangeling marks, but I guess that was his own doing. I haven't seen his body without bandages since the second time I visited him with Fukuzawa in the orphanage, he has a lot more scars than before.''
With terror I listened to Ranpo telling me a shortcut of Dazais life. I knew, that he had been in the mafia, but he always avoided talking about his childhood, before fourteen. Not that he talked about the stuff after fourteen unless someone was forcing him.

We were sitting here for half an hour now. Nothing happened. I mean, it's not like I wanted something to happen, but until noe there has always been a problem at some point, he coughed or something else, but right now, there was nothing. I knew I was supposed to be relieved, but it did more the opposite, it scared me, it looked as if he was dead. He wasn't but it looked like it. I lowered my head down to the bed and rested it there. A while it was silent.

''Somehow, I can never predict his next move. I just can't read what is going through his head. It's like as if you're throwing a cube with numbers from one to six and you get 11. Ever since I first met him, when he was a kid, I couldn't figure him out. I used to be annoyed by that, because it meant, that there is a flaw in my ability. (Let's just say he by now knows he doesn't have one) The I found out his ability and blsmed it on that. But then I figured out that what I do isn't an ability and I'm just a regular human, It started to bother me again. Or It was more, that he had a very useful ability and was a strategical genius like me. Not in a way of being jealous, but in a way of power comparing, our ability to influence with what we wee able to predict. I always wanted to know what he was thinking, to be sure he wasn't still with the mafia, not that I suspected it, it just bothered me. But now I just wish I had predicted something in this direction. If I had, then we might not be in this situation right now. I would really like to know what he was thinking.''

I didn't really know what to answer. It was true, Dazai was unpredictable, that's what made him so damn good at his job. But I just hadn't expected Ranpo to say that. He was always a little childish, but reliable when it came down to it. A little like Dazai. Childish and unbelievebly annoying, but reliable. I looked back up at him. It was almost unimaginable, that the child of a grown man was the same miserable fragil shell of himself lying here on the bed infront of me. It was sad to see, this revealed what was really inside of him. And none of us had seen it. We sat there for another 30 min, then Dr. Jackson came back. He knocked on the door and then entered.

''Ok let's see'' He said and walked up to the bed. Ranpo stood up from his chair, as he sat on the side Dr. Jackson was heading for. He checked the monitors and wrote stuff down on a paper, then he changed the plasters and checked the wounds. Fterwards he listened to the sound his lungs made, while breathing. He seemed  pleased. Then he wrote more on the paper. At last he took his temperature, his face changed back to worry. He wrote on the paper again. THen he turned to us.
''He's fine for now, form all I can tell right now. However, due to the rest of the pillst still in his body, he probably won't regsin consciousness any time soon.''
We nodded. Then he took his blood and left again.

I pulled out my phone and saw a message from Fukuzawa. send: 20 min ago. He said, he was gonna be here in half an hour. I told Ranpo and we decided to pick him up, due to the new room.