Breaking the wall von hideplueschtier ================================================================================ Kapitel 4: Pieces of memory --------------------------- Chapter 4: Pieces of memory It was late morning of the next day when O-jiro visited Gisho at the hospital. His friend Yasumi suggested to come with him, but the drummer had declined this offer. After all, he didn’t know what to expect from this visit, so surely it was better to go alone. But at this moment, standing before Gisho’s hospital room and hesitating to enter it, the small man wished Yasumi-chan would be here to encourage him. Facing his band mate caused a slight feeling of insecurity to him, because he feared that maybe the bassist doesn’t want to see him and - what was worse - that he possibly won’t remember O-jiro as the long-time friend and band mate he was. Finally he plucked enough courage to knock at the door and went in after he was told to. Contrary to his expectations Gisho wasn’t alone; a young woman, sitting at his band mate’s bed, turned into the direction of the door and said with a polite but nevertheless determining voice, “I’m sorry but this isn’t visiting time. Would you come back later, please?” O-jiro slightly blushed, murmuring an excuse and was about to leave the room when a quiet and hoarsely voice stopped him. “Wait… please, don’t go,” Gisho said, resting in the bed in a half laying, half sitting position, staring at the drummer wide-eyed and as pale as a sheet. After all, the dark haired man doesn’t know why he had said this, but somehow the small other one seemed to be familiar. If he only would know who this guy was… O-jiro gave a shy and surprised smile to him and explained, “I would stay here, but I’m not allowed to disturb your medical check-up, I guess.” A suppliant gaze was addressed to the female doctor by the bassist. It could be clearly seen that she wasn’t happy with this, but finally she gave her allowance to O-jiro for staying, under the condition that she and the patient could finish the check-up without being interrupted. Penicillin’s young drummer sat down in a corner of the room silently and listened to the questions the doctor asked to his friend. “So, where did we stop? Ah, I see… Which university did you attend?” the woman asked, gazing to her clipboard first and thereafter looking to Gisho. The bassist needed some time to realize that he was asked something, because his thoughts still were busy with the other man. After a while he replied, “Tokai University.” “In which subject do you have a degree?” was the next question and again it took a few minutes before Gisho gave a short answer, “Economics.” ‘If I only would remember where I’ve seen him before… This round cute face, his shy but infectious smile…’ he thought and tried to find any sort of hint in his memories why this man seemed to be so familiar to him, but there was nothing. During this he stared at O-jiro as if it would help him to recover the missing puzzle-pieces. After a while in his mind slowly a blurry image emerged from gazing at the young man. But when his train of thoughts was interrupted by another question, the memory vanished. “Can you remember what you did the day the accident happened? Or do you know what you’ve done the day before?” “I don’t know!” Gisho replied, slightly annoyed because there had been so many questions before he wasn’t able to answer and now the useless ask disturbed him with the try to pick up the crushed pieces of his memory. The doctor noted something down at her clipboard again, explaining thereafter, “You have to concentrate more otherwise we can’t figure out how much of your memory is lost. So please cooperate, will you?” Giving a short nod the dark haired man retried to pay more attention towards the questions, but nevertheless his thoughts again circled around the drummer. “Where and when are you born?” “Hyogo prefecture; May 20th, 1971,” the patient responded to the question but when he was asked when the band, he was a member of, had formed, he only shook his head quietly. And it was the same reaction for the question about his solo career; Gisho wasn’t even able to remember the name he had chosen for it. With a tired and depressed sounding voice he asked, “Can we stop this, please? We’ve been doing this for almost an hour and there’s no use in it. I can’t remember anything what happened after I graduated from University; if I could, I would tell you, that’s for sure.” A sigh escaped the doctor’s lips but she agreed with that, only saying, “We’ll make a Computer Tomography of your head and some other tests later.” After the doc left the room, O-jiro went to his friend’s bed, sitting down at the chair the woman used before. He really was shocked from the bassist’s words, because if Gisho lacked memories for such a long space of time it was worse than he had expected. When he gave a glance to the other one’s face it became clear that Gisho was aware of this; he looked terribly depressed and exhausted. O-jiro felt pity for his friend, who apologized, “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name, even if you seem familiar to me.” “It’s okay, don’t worry about this. I’m Yoshihiko Tsuna, but for you I’ve always been O-jiro or O-chan,” the younger one replied, giving another shy smile to his friend. Suddenly Gisho’s eyes widened again, when the cognition hit him like a heavy punch would do, and exited he asked, “You went to Tokai too, didn’t you? You were a really shy one, but after we became friends you blossomed out…” “I’m glad that you remember this,” O-jiro said, continuing thereafter, “You helped me a lot at this time, because you were one of the few students who fought against all other ones which had bullied me… And so our friendship started.” Gisho gave a bright and happy smile to the small man next to him and explained, “Yes, I remember this as if it happened yesterday. Well, it doesn’t seem to be a long time since then for me…” Saying this, his facial expression became dark and depressed again, caused by the time period he lacked in his memories, which gave him the feeling that his time at Tokai wasn’t that far away. He was annoyed with himself, because he wasn’t able to understand how it could happen that he had forgotten more than a decade of his life. The drummer patted his friend’s shoulder gently, but when the thin hospital gown slips down from Gisho’s shoulder, exposing the bare skin, his hand froze in the movement. A tattooed cherry blossom could be seen there, but what was a beautiful piece of art before, now had turned into a ruined one, destroyed by countless bloody scratches and bruises. Following O-jiro’s gaze the other man hastily grabbed the fabric and covered his shoulder again. Slightly ashamed he quietly said, “Please, don’t stare at this, it’s so ugly. I should find someone who’s able to erase it from my skin.” Sighing sadly the other one replied, “You definitely shouldn’t… Hakuei gave this tattoo as this year’s birthday present to you.” “Well… Who is Hakuei? If he gave a birthday present to me I should know him, I guess?” Gisho asked in response, absolutely puzzled and frowning, so that O-jiro explained, “He visited you yesterday and…” “Oh, you mean this weird, impudent, rude and tattooed one?” the bassist requested, interrupting his friend, who originally wanted to say something more. Hearing this, Penicillin’s youngest member blurted out without thinking thoroughly about it, “Do you really think about him like that?! After all, he’s your lover, man!” “My… lover?! Do you call that a joke? This isn’t very funny!” was the answer O-jiro got from his annoyed sounding band mate. It was the moment Gisho gave a death glare, which could scare even the devil in person, towards the other man, when the drummer realized that he had made a terrible mistake. If his friend wasn’t able to remember Hakuei, of course he wouldn’t know that he and the vocalist were a couple for a long time now. O-jiro stayed silent for a minute, brooding over what he should say now. ‘I can’t say that this wasn’t a joke, can I? He already seems to be angry… But if I say that he and Haku aren’t lovers I’ll soon be caught up in lies, like a fly would be caught into a spider’s web. After all, this won’t be a favor to him, nor to Hakuei.’ Telling his band mate the truth gave a feeling of uneasiness to O-jiro, but in fact Gisho would find it out sooner or later. So maybe it was better to do it right now, compared with the alternative that he might hear it at random. And being told from Hakuei could turn out worse for the vocalist. With a shy and hesitating look towards the older one and a hardly hearable voice, he answered, “I won’t joke about such a theme. You and Hakuei… well, the two of you are a couple nearly from the beginning of Penicillin on.” Waiting for any sort of response the drummer looked at the dark haired man who became pale as death, but wasn’t saying anything. Instead he grabbed his forehead with both hands as if he was tortured by a heavy headache, the shock about the explanation he just had heard was written clearly in his eyes. O-jiro gently touched the other one’s hands, noticing that Gisho’s forehead was covered with cold sweat. Suddenly he was pushed back hard and with a loaded look out of eyes that were small and dark because of anger, Gisho screamed, “I’m not gay! Damn it! Stop telling me lies, will you?!” After all O-jiro hadn’t expected this reaction and he was a little bit afraid of his friend now, because the bassist never had screamed at him like this before. Not knowing what else he could say, he only answered with a quiet voice, “I’m sorry… But it’s the truth. I know this is surely to be a shock, nevertheless… it’s the way it is, this can’t be helped.” After a while in which the small man watched Gisho, who totally lost his poise now, he added, “I’ll leave for a minute… have to visit the bathroom.” But this was more an elusion and alibi then anything else, because O-jiro wanted to give his friend some time to calm down, to manage his feelings and state of confusion. So after he left the room, the brown haired leaned against the wall of the hospital corridor and while he was waiting for the time to elapse, he thought, ‘This really is the worst! Gisho… how could this happen to you? Hakuei was the most important person in your life, and now you even can’t remember having a relationship with him?! I can’t believe it; don’t you have any feelings left for him? If it’s like that, Haku won’t be able to stand this situation… I hope the two of you will go through this without… no, I don’t want to think of it!’ After nearly ten minutes the drummer knocked at the door again, but when he doesn’t get a response he reentered quickly, worrying about his friend. Realizing that Gisho lay down onto the floor without a movement, instead of staying in his bed, he wondered if the older one had passed out or if something worse happened. The young man hastily dashed towards the older one, grabbed the bassist’s shoulders and with a voice in which his fears clearly could be heard, he asked, “Are you alright? Is everything okay with you, can you hear me?!” Gisho tried to manage getting himself into a sitting position, but he wasn’t able to move without the other one’s help. He felt horribly weak, his fractured ribs hurting as if they had been crushed totally and his thoughts and feelings were absolutely messed up. “What the hell are you thinking? You can’t move out of your bed in your state, stupid!” O-jiro scolded the black haired one, giving a concerned look to him. The bassist, who had been the one who never showed weakness in front of others before, now totally broke down. “I want to go home… please… I can’t stand it, I don’t know how to deal with all of this…” the older one finally whispered in a hoarse tone, trying to hide his red and swollen eyes from his friend’s scrutiny, trembling all over and letting faint whimpers out. Suddenly, he tried to get out of the other one’s hold, crawling into the direction of the door. Hastily, O-jiro reached out to hold the other one back and at this moment he really was happy for training his muscles with playing drums daily, because he needed all of his strength to hinder Gisho to escape from his tight grab. “Will you stop this! You can’t leave! Gisho!” Penicillin’s youngest member said furiously, but when the black haired one continued to fight against him, he decided to scream for a doctor, because he doesn’t know what else to do. It took only a few minutes until the arriving of a doctor, who quickly realized what the situation was about and sedated the patient thereafter. O-jiro let out a sigh of relief when Gisho collapsed down into the drummer’s arms. Of course this was not because he was happy with the problems his friend had to deal with the issue, but he felt eased that the bassist would be out of the danger to hurt himself by his own behavior now. “Don’t go… don’t… please…” the other man whispered, panic written in his face and with tears in sedated-blurry eyes, Gisho leeched on to his band mate. Together with the doctor the small man managed to get Gisho into his bed again and both men stayed there until the patient finally fell asleep. But even if the black haired one was sedated now, it didn’t seem like he was able to rest easy. With his hands gripping the blanket tightly, giving a totally worn out expression and still whimpering quietly, he looked like a frightened child, who was haunted by nightmares. Seeing his friend in a state like this caused a deep and aching pain in the drummer’s heart and sorrowfully he thought, ‘Maybe he really feels like that. Left behind by everything he had known before, not able to remember the people who care for him or what was his life like in the last years, he surely feels like he’s all alone and caught in a horrible nightmare…’ He wanted to stay a little bit longer, but at this moment the doctor indicated to him that he had to leave the room, so O-jiro only gave a sad smile towards Penicillin’s bassist. ‘I’ll do everything possible to help you to go through this, my friend… And that’s a promise’, he thought and left the room. When he walked across the hospital’s entrance hall, O-jiro suddenly ran into the female doctor who had done the medical checkup with Gisho before. “Please excuse me,” she said and wanted to walk away, but the young man hindered her with asking, “Can you tell me if he’ll recover?” “Who do you mean?” she replied in response and thereafter giving a closer look to the questioner. Then she seemed to remember him and explained, “So you’re speaking about Yoshiaki Kondou, aren’t you?” “Yes. Please tell me, will he recover soon?” O-jiro asked again with a voice full of sorrow. The young doctor searched for her papers, but she doesn’t seem to be able to find Gisho’s patient documentation, so she only explained, “Speaking honestly, no one can know this for sure. After all his amnesia was caused by a heavy craniocerberal injury what resulted in a disorder of short-term and long-term memory. Normally you can hope for about a year that memory will regenerate itself, but thereafter… no one can tell. In fact, most times patients only can’t remember the time they had been unconscious, but since he has forgotten so many years, he must do a lot of comprehensive training for memory, concentration and cognitive abilities with surveillance of a neurologist. He’ll surely need some time to recover again.” Hearing this, really didn’t calm O-jiro down or even made his fears easier to deal with, but he knew that he couldn’t do anything. All of Penicillin’s other members only would be able to support Gisho in the best way when they gave him the time he needed for recovering from amnesia and encourage him with his training. ‘And maybe even that won’t help…’ the brown haired man thought depressed when he left the hospital and went on his way to Chisato’s apartment. When he arrived at Chisato’s place, he hesitated for a moment. What should he tell his band mates? Of course they needed to know what the doc had told him before, but he wasn’t sure if he also should mention what he had talked about with the bassist and what problems Gisho had to deal with the matter of being gay. Surely this would hurt Hakuei more than O-jiro wanted him to, so maybe it would be better not to tell him. Chisato opened the door and the drummer quickly realized that Penicillin’s leader was happy, even assuaged to see him. After greeting each other both men went into the kitchen where Hakuei sat, pecking at his food instead of eating it. “Hi, O-chan… You aren’t hungry by any chance and want to have this?” the vocalist asked, pointing at his meal which suspiciously looked like it was something with natto included. The younger one sat down at the table near Hakuei and replied, “Eh…no, thank you. I’m not very hungry right now.” “Me neither,” Hakuei said with a disappointed sigh, gave a glance towards the guitarist which clearly showed that he was pissed off and continued thereafter, “But Chisa is forcing me to eat something and he can’t stop to baby me. Maybe you can tell him that I’m already an adult and able to take care for myself?!” “You know why I’m doing this, Haku-chan, don’t you? Since yesterday morning you have ignored your empty stomach and that’s unhealthy. And it’s the same for that!” Penicillin’s leader explained and snatched the cigarette the other one had lightened up a few seconds before from Hakuei. With a little smile on his face, he smoked it and asked O-jiro, “So how was your visit?” “Well… Gisho is doing as well as can be expected, under the circumstances…” he replied vaguely and afterwards repeated for his friends what the doctor had said. Frustrated the brown haired man killed his cigarette stub in the ashtray, folding his arms and leaned back onto his seat, before he spoke out the question his mind had been busy with since this morning, “So what do you think we should do if he won’t recover soon? Cancel the whole planned tour?! We’ll get in a real bunch of trouble if we do so!” “Chisa, I know this pretty well, but… Even if Gisho didn’t have amnesia and a head injury, he still has fractured ribs. He won’t stand it to go through a whole tour! If you force him to do this, you’ll surely make everything worse. And with amnesia I really doubt that he’ll be able to remember the songs in such a short time. Maybe we can do it with a support bassist, but it’s in fact impossible to give concerts with Gisho right now,” the youngest Penicillin member explained calmly. The guitarist sighed and apologized, “I’m sorry. Of course right now the most important thing should be to regenerate Gisho’s health. It’s only that we have worked so hard for the tour… well, maybe the idea with a support bassist will work.” Glancing towards Hakuei, who hadn’t said anything for the theme until now, Chisato asked, “What do you think? Do you have any suggestions who could play bass for the tour?” “No”, the blonde haired man chuntered, and while he lighted up another cigarette he continued, “To be honest, I don’t want to do this tour. Leaving him alone for such a long time… I absolutely don’t want to do this. Let’s cancel it, please.” O-jiro gave a short nod in agreement, because he totally was able to understand the vocalist’s feelings, but Penicillin’s leader wasn’t happy to hear this at all. Slightly annoyed he said, “It won’t change anything if you stay with him or if you don’t, Hakuei! In fact, Gisho can’t even remember you, so it won’t help to sit at his bed, holding his hand! He doesn’t even want you to do this, as far as you told me yesterday!” Depressed by these words, the tall man drooped. He was pretty well aware of this, but he doesn’t want to believe that there was nothing what he could do for his beloved. When he felt a hand gently patting his head, he saw O-jiro who smiled encouragingly and explained, “Haku… Gisho was able to remember me and our friendship, so maybe after a while he’ll be able to remember you, too.” But the words which were meant as a comfort, turned out into the opposite, because realizing that Gisho had memories of O-jiro, but not for his loved one, dissatisfied the vocalist more than he already was. All of a sudden, Hakuei jumped up from his seat, which fell to the ground with a loud noise, and stared angrily at the younger one. “Why can he remember you instead of me?! Damn, is your friendship more important than our love to him?! Can you tell me?! Can you?!” he screamed out furiously and frustrated, then turned around and hastily left the room. Tears made his sight blurry, but angrily Hakuei wiped them away with the back of his hand. The drummer was absolutely puzzled for a moment, but then he hastily caught up to his friend, followed by Chisato. “I’m sorry, really. I didn’t want to hurt you with what I said, please believe me and…” O-jiro explained, but when he wanted to bring up more apologies he was interrupted by the guitarist’s question. “What are you doing, Hakuei?” Continuing to get his boots on and again fighting with tears, the blonde replied, “I’m going home!” With these words, he left the apartment, slammed the door, and left two speechless band mates behind. Hosted by Animexx e.V. (http://www.animexx.de)