COURTING DEATH

Chapter 4

Consciousness returns to me, first in small soft pieces of light and dark, then all at once. My eyes open and I stare up at an unfamiliar ceiling. I'm not in my bed either. A cast covers my left arm which lies on stiff white sheets and not the RoboKnights comforter that has been on my bed since I was ten years old. My right leg is held up at an angle by some sort of complicated stand and pulley arrangement.

That's right. There was an accident. I vaguely remember a loud noise and blurred spinning pain...and blood, lots of blood.

"Oh! You're awake."

I turn my head, feeling a sharp stab in the ribs on my left side, and see a strange woman getting up from one of the visitors' chairs. She's not a nurse and she's not my mom—unless the accident caused amnesia—but no, I remember my mom and this isn't her. She's about my mom's age, very pretty and strangely familiar. I try and think back on all the teachers I've had, but I don't think she can be any of them.

"Wha-?" I try to speak, but my throat is parched from having carefully, conditioned, dry air pumped down it.

"You're in a hospital." The woman smiles down on me. "You've been asleep for nearly three days. Your mother was here earlier, but she had to go to work. I've been watching over you while she's away."

"Who—?"

"Oh! I'm sorry. I didn't introduce myself. I'm Fukui Makoto, Kyoko's mother." She bows, deeper than what is appropriate.

Remembering Kyoko, panic seizes me and I try to sit up though the sling holding my leg and the broken ribs make that impossible. "Kyoko-san!" I fall back in bed gasping in pain.

Mrs. Fukui touches me gently on my good arm. "Don't worry. She's fine, thanks to you. In fact, she's at school today."

The image of her lifeless, blood-speckled body lying next to me flashes in my memory. "What do you mean? How is that possible?"

She looks at me sympathetically "Do you not remember?"

"It's all kind of a blur," I mumble.

Mrs. Fukui smiles at me. She really is pretty and I realize why she seems familiar. I can see her resemblance to Kyoko and I wonder if Kyoko will look like this someday.

"Kyoko doesn't remember much either. Perhaps that's for the best. She just remembers feeling a jerk when you grabbed her before the accident. She woke up in your arms." Tears rise up in Mrs. Fukui's eyes. "You were unconscious then, but you had protected her with your own body." Her gaze slides down my body from my bandaged head and broken arm to my leg in traction. "Kyoko is alive and well because of you." She turns aside to hide her face, produces a tissue and dabs at her eyes sniffing.

I don't know whether to feel relieved or scared. I'm pretty sure Kyoko had died in that accident. I also feel like I'm forgetting something—something important. Hearing that Kyoko is actually at school, however, brings a smile to my face. "I'm glad."

"So, you don't have to worry about her." Mrs. Fukui takes a deep breath and turns back to me. "You just concentrate on getting better. She will come see you after school." A strange knowing smile crosses her face. It shines with hidden glee. It's the face of someone who knows a secret that they want to talk about. "I didn't know Kyoko already had a boyfriend," she says in a teasing tone, "and such a nice young man, too."

My face burns with embarrassment and my heart reminds me that it is still beating. I can't believe I'm lying here talking to my girlfriend's mother like this. This is not how I imagined meeting her parents, but then I hadn't expected to meet them so soon. If my temperature and heart rate are being monitored at some nurses' station, then somewhere a nurse has to be panicking right now. "Uh, yeah..." I turn away.