Father and Son - Shattered Bonds

A Complicated Situation

"Well done Ayanakouji-sensei, pleasure to be in your team again. Looking forward to working with you again in the future!"

'Yes sensei we will be in your care."

He sighed, "Yes I look forward to working with you all in the future too."

With that the medical team of 6 dispersed. It was already 10 p.m. so all of them would be going home as they had night shifts for the past few days already.

Ayanakouji Kiyotaka went back to his personal office and started packing up his belongings. He opened his desk drawer to find his neck pillow inside. He pondered for a few moments before putting it around his neck and sitting down on his chair with a sigh. He was 31 years old and was relatively fit for someone his age but long surgeries like the previous one often strained his neck. 

He sat in his leather chair and looked at all the awards on his desk, in fact they were only his most recent ones. He had many more at home. He was considered to be the most prolific doctor to date in all of Japan and many international medical magazines had written high praises for his breakthroughs in the field. 

He couldn't consider them as anything special to him. He looked at the picture of a family on his desk. This brought a smile to his face. It represented the very thing he had strived for. A peaceful life. 

Wonder what's for dinner today...

After a few minutes of rest, he got up and went out of his office with a briefcase in his hand. As he was leaving the hospital, all the people around him greeted him and wished him good night as he walked past them. He reached his luxury car in the parking lot, the Subaru Legacy. 

As he was making his way out of hospital's grounds, he saw an ambulance rushing inside. He made way for the ambulance and after it passed him he got onto the streets ready to head back to his family at home. 

It was pretty late at night and the roads were much pretty empty. He rolled down the windows enjoying the cool night air when suddenly he got a call. He rolled up the car windows and touched the answer button on his car's tablet.

"Ayanakouji-sensei I know it's past your working hours but we have an emergency right now and we need someone of your caliber to perform a open heart surgery immediately for a heart attack patient who we have discovered to have a hole in their heart. It's a 50 year old male. Can you make it?"

He stopped his car at the side of the road. Calculating the time it had been since the ambulance had arrived at the hospital and the time it would take before success rate of an OH surgery would fall below acceptable levels. 

"I'll be there in a few minutes."

"That's great sir. We will get everything ready for the surgery by the time you're here."

He was already racing past cars after making a quick U-turn. Frankly, he could have said no and been on his way home, eating a nice dinner, kissing his kids good night and sleeping with his wife but he didn't want to put a colleague's reputation at risk. If anyone could deal with a failed surgery it would be him mainly because it didn't bother him as much as the others and also because patients' families would understand that if he failed there was nothing else that could have saved the patient.

"Umm... sensei I don't know how to tell this to you, but it appears that the patient is a relative of yours."

?!

"I see... I'll be there in a minute."

"As calm as always I see. We will we waiting. See you."

There was a little devil inside of him that nagged at him to say that he couldn't make due to a roadblock or something. The same devil that had done countless sins in the past. 

The same devil that had killed people.

He hoped that it wouldn't come out while he was operating on his father's heart.