Free! - Sink to the Bottom

(1) - Chapter 7: Questions and Scans

Haruka Nanase

The nurse starts asking all kinds of questions. She starts with "How are you feeling, Haruka?"

I look at her and answer by saying that she shouldn't call me Haruka. I hate her when she decides to ignore me and asks the question again.

"I'm fine," I say. "Why does everyone keep asking that?"

She takes a deep breath and looks at me with a serious look on her face.

"Do you know why you are in the hospital?" she asks.

I slightly shake my head after trying to remember how I got here.

She writes something down on a piece of paper and it's just now that I notice the file, which is lying on her lap.

It looks like one of the tests I would get in school; fat question followed by a line to write on.

My name is written down already. Her handwriting is so bad I almost don't notice she wrote down my full name.

I look back at her when she clears her throat. "You don't recall getting hit by a car, somewhere yesterday night?"

I think back, but I don't recall... wait... Yesterday night was a few hours before the Regionals.

I gasp.

"What day is it?" I mumble.

The nurse looks at me and frowns lightly. She tells me what day and time it is and I can't help it when a disappointed sigh escapes my mouth.

I missed the Regionals... but what about my friends? They couldn't swim the relay because of me.

Makoto sounded to irritable. Was that... because of me?

I just hope they're not mad at me.

The nurse's eyes are staring at me while I'm lost in my thoughts.

"I take that as a no?" she says after a while. "You don't recall it?"

I shake my head.

I vaguely remember a hard pain in my back all of a sudden, but I can't find any memories of how it happened.

"Okay." She writes something down again. I wish her handwriting was a little bit less awful, maybe I could figure out what she's writing about me.

"What about your back? Does it hurt?"

I try to focus on my back. I haven't thought of the possibility of it being able to hurt. Even after long days of training, I never have experienced any backaches.

Now, at this exact moment, my back does hurt... a lot. It feels like it's on fire, and like things are trying to squeeze through my skin from the inside.

It's weird.

Only the upper halve of my back hurts, below that I don't feel any pain.

"No." I glance away to hide that I'm lying.

She squints, looking at me in a way my mother would look at me when she caught me lying. "That's strange."

I try not to show that I'm not speaking the truth, but she's looking straight through me.

"We made a scan and saw that your spine was fractured quite badly in some spots," she says, her tone slightly annoyed, or maybe it's just my imagination. "It's expected for a person to feel at least some pain." She pauses. "But if you don't feel any pain, we should maybe make another scan of your back, but you would have to stay still in scan for quite a while."