RING! RING!
"Hello, Kido Residence, Shin speaking."
Kari gripped the phone tightly and opened her mouth to speak.
"Hello, Shin-sempai," she said into the phone, "it's Hikari...Hikari Kamiya."
"Oh, hey Kari," Shin replied with a smile, "what can I do for ya?"
"I was hoping to speak with your brother," she responded, "is he home?"
"Sure, hang on a second." Shin placed his palm over the microphone at the bottom of the receiver and shouted, "Ototo-chan! Phone for you! It's Taichi's little sister!" Kari giggled. "He's coming," Shin said into the phone.
"Okay, arigatou, Shin-sempai," Kari replied, and she heard him set the phone down onto the table.
A few seconds later, Jyou picked up the phone.
"Kari?"
"Hi, Jyou," she said, a little unsure of how to ask for his help.
"Are you okay?" he asked, a little confused. He hadn't spoken to Kari on the phone in a long time. Come to think of it, he hadn't spoken to Tai recently either...or ANY of the others, for that matter. He made a mental note to start keeping in better touch with them. "Are you all right, Kari?"
Kari smiled at the concern in his voice. Jyou might have seemed a little fickle or flippant...even a little cowardly to anyone who didn't take the time to look deeper, but beneath his loquacious and awkward exterior, Jyou was a loyal young man who would have given his last irrelevant factoid to help a friend. "Yeah, I'm fine, Jyou," Kari said, "thanks." The smile on her face faded. "but I had a question."
"Go for it."
"Well..." she began, "Jyou...how much....how much does your dad know about...about eyes?"
"Eyes?" he echoed.
"Yes, eyes," she affirmed. "I know he isn't an eye doctor, but I was kinda hoping he might know something..."
Jyou narrowed one dark blue eye.
"My dad doesn't really work much with eyes," he admitted, pushing his glasses back up on his nose, "but I've read a lot about opthamology, because everyone in my family wears some sort of corrective eyewear, so I might be able to answer your question." He hesitated. "Is...is something wrong?" Kari balked. Jyou pushed the phone a little harder against his ear. "Kari?"
Hikari took a deep breath. Tai's gonna kill me, she thought, and clenched her jaw.
"Well..." She hesitated.
"Kari, what happened?" Jyou demanded. He was really starting to worry now. Kari squeezed her eyes shut. "Kar--"
"Tai can't see," she blurted out before Jyou could finish his sentence. "He woke up this morning and he just couldn't see anything."
Jyou about dropped the phone, unable to believe what he had just heard.
"WHAT??" he cried. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shin look up. Lowering his voice, Jyou cupped his hands around the phone receiver. "What??" he whispered fiercely. "What do you mean?? You can't be serious!"
"I am VERY serious," Kari said slowly, clenching her hands. She gasped when a thunderclap rattled through the sky above. Her face hardened. "I'm very serious, Jyou," she repeated, "this isn't exactly something I would joke about. He's blind, Jyou, his eyes are all glassy and one color...Izzy says something is blocking the light from reaching his eyes."
"Izzy is there?" Jyou asked.
"Yes."
"And he doesn't know what's causing this?"
Kari shook her head. "He can see what's causing the problem, but what we really need is a doctor's opinion," Kari said, feeling helpless. "Maybe...maybe once the storm is over..." Her voice trailed off.
Jyou grit his teeth and glanced out the window. The storm was right over the city, roaring with thunder louder than he had ever heard before. Rain fell in sheets, pounding down on the roof of the apartment building like a drum. Jyou set his jaw and clenched his fist, pumping on arm up into the air. "I'll be right over!"
Kari gasped, and her eyes darted back to the window.
"No, Jyou," she cried, "you can't!" She gripped the phone tighter and hurried over to the glass door. "You're crazy, you can't come over here now, not in this weather," she went on, staring at the black sky. "Have you looked out your window recently? It's SUICIDE out there!"
Jyou squared his slim shoulders. "I have to, Kari," he said severely, "and there's nothing you can say that will make me change my mind." He smiled, and his tone softened. "Don't worry, I only live a few blocks away, I'll be there before you can say 'Bob's your uncle'."
"But I don't HAVE an Uncle Bob!" Kari protested, and Jyou laughed.
"It's a figure of speech, Kari," he explained. "I'll be there in a jiffy."
"O...okay Jyou," she said softly, "But please be careful!" She hung up the phone and turned around, fear clouding her eyes.
Koushiro, standing nearby, saw the concern on his friend's face, and frowned.
"Kari?"
She glanced up, startled. She hadn't seen him standing there.
"Jyou is coming over," she said quietly, and her eyes moved to the window.
Izzy stumbled backward.
"Inconceivable!" he cried, staring at the storm outside. "He's crazy!!"
"I tried to talk him out of it," Kari said, lowering her eyes to the floor, "I tried to tell him to wait till the storm was over...but he...he wouldn't listen to me!" She paused. "I hope he'll be okay."
Izzy smiled.
"I'm sure Jyou will be fine, Kari," he said reassuringly. "Jyou may not always be known for his courage, and he may be a little prone to only the occasional spontaneous act of bravery,"--he made a face--"VERY spontaneous...but he's always come out all right before."
Kari felt a little better. She smiled at Izzy.
"I sure hope you're right," she said, then suggested he go and check on Tai while they waited for Jyou to show up.
As Izzy headed back down the hallway, he watched as Kari approached the linen closet and pulled out a dark green towel. She hurried to the dryer and opened it, tossing the towel inside and slamming the door shut. Puzzled, Izzy stopped in the middle of the hallway.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"Putting a towel in the dryer," she grunted, attempting fruitlessly to reach the start button that was just beyond her reach, "so it will be warm when Jyou gets here. You know how he's always so worried about catching cold." She glanced outside again as Izzy walked up behind her and pressed the evasive start button and the dryer hummed to life. "I get the feeling he's gonna need more than just a towel by the time he gets here," she added, watching the rain slide down the windows in torrents. Izzy squeezed her shoulder consolingly, and then headed back down the hall.
About ten minutes later, there was an urgent knocking at the door. Kari glanced up from where she had been sitting on the couch, and cocked one ear toward the door. The knocking came again, and she quickly turned off the weather channel she had been watching, hoping to learn something about the unusually violent storm that seemed to have overtaken the city. She hurried over to the door.
"Jyou?" she called through the door. The only reply she got was the angry howl of the wind and the spattering of the rain against the apartment building. Izzy hurried down the hall at the sound of Kari's shout, and watched as she carefully opened the door--
--and was promptly thrown backward as the powerful winds blasted the door open the rest of the way. With a cry, Izzy lunged forward and caught Kari under the arms as she fell backward. He glanced up in time to see Jyou stumble in the door and lean hard on the wall, catching his breath.
"Jyou!" Kari cried, and jumped up, pulling the tall, slender boy into the apartment. "You're DRENCHED!" she said, horrified, as she struggled to close the door against the raging wind. Finally managing to get the door latched and locked, she leaned her back on it for a moment before hurrying over to the laundry closet. Pulling the dryer door open, she grabbed the green towel, now warm and soft, and rushed back out into the main room. "Jyou, you maniac," she chided as Izzy helped the older boy over toward the couch. "You could've been KILLED out there in this weather. Now, look at you, you’re soaked, you'll catch your DEATH!"
Jyou looked up at her, still leaning over, his hands on his knees.
"I had to come, Kari," he said as she extended the hand she held the towel in, "I had to. All those times when all of us were in the digital world, when we were in trouble, when we were lost, when we would have fallen apart...Tai was always there for us, to pull us together. To remind us that, as long as we worked as a team, we couldn't be beaten." He raised his hand and tapped his index finger under Kari's chin. "Now what kind of friend would I be if I just abandoned him when he was the one who needed help?"
Kari grinned, and tossed the towel onto Jyou's hair, shaking her head at his reckless loyalty. Jyou vigorously rubbed the towel over his saturated dark indigo hair, then wiped the raindrops from his large rounded glasses. Pushing the lenses back up onto the bridge of his nose, he stood up straight and looked down at Kari.
"All right," he said, "let's see if we can't do something to help your brother."
Kari and Izzy nodded together, and the three of them started down the hall.
"Now, mind you, Jyou," Kari said softly without looking back at him, "this is really hitting Tai hard." She turned around and stared hard at Jyou. "He'll never admit it, but he's totally a mess. Whatever you do, whatever the true prognosis you have is...try to sound optimistic about it..." She lowered her eyes and tapped her fingertips together.
"And, for Pete's sake, Jyou," Izzy added, "TRY to be tactful..."
Jyou nodded, wondering who in the world this Pete character was. "Tactful," Jyou repeated. He nodded. "You got it."
Kari looked at Izzy helplessly, and Izzy just shrugged. Kari slowly turned the doorknob, and Jyou stepped into the room as Tai lifted his head and sat up.
"Hey, there, Tai," Jyou called, waving one arm up in the air, "long time no see!"
Kari let out a moan and slapped her hands over her face. Koushiro's shoulders slumped, and he raised one hand to his brow, shaking his head. Jyou balked when he realized what he had said.
"Oops..." he said, his face reddening.
Surprisingly enough, Tai laughed. Kari snapped her head up.
"Jyou?" Tai asked in disbelief, flopping backward onto the bed again. "What the heck are you doing here?"
Jyou blinked.
"Kari told me what happened," he said seriously, pulling a chair over to the bed and sitting down on it. "I came to see if there was anything I could do to help."
"In this weather?" Tai said, astonished. "Man, you're NUTS! You know a storm is bad when you can hear the rain louder than your own doorbell."
Kari walked up behind Jyou and took her brother by the wrist. "What do you say, Tai," she asked, "will you let him take a look? Maybe he can help you."
Tai shrugged and sat up again.
"I suppose he can't really do any more damage than what's already been done..." he said with a wry smile. Jyou beamed.
"Okay!" he said, and reached into the large duffel he wore over one shoulder. He pulled out a small flashlight. "You're in good hands, Tai, just trust me."
Tai made a face, looking rather like he was about to throw up, then sighed.
"Right," he muttered. "So, Doc, what do I do?"
"Just hold still a second," Jyou replied, shining the flashlight into Tai's eyes. He watched in amazement as the pupil of the eye tried to constrict itself in the sudden light, but failed. "Hmmm..." he said softly, and tried the other eye. "Any difference, Tai?" he asked. "Any change in light...or...or anything?"
"No," Tai replied. "What are you doing?"
Jyou didn't reply, rather turned to Koushiro, who had lingered in the doorway.
"Izzy," he said, "Kari told me you knew what was causing the problem?"
Izzy snapped to attention.
"Yes," he said, and walked to where he had left his computer sitting on the floor. Tapping at the keyboard, he again brought up the diagram of Tai's eye.
"Wonderful!" Jyou exclaimed, looking at the scan.
"I assume you can make more sense of this than I could..." Izzy said, scratching his head. "I can hack into high-security computer systems and read encryption codes and other various forms of technobabble," he went on, "but I could never make heads or tails of an anatomy blueprint."
Jyou barely heard what the younger boy had said as he sidled up beside him to look closer at the monitor. He pointed at the screen.
"Can you rotate this?' he asked, moving his fingertip across a part of the screen. Izzy tapped at the keyboard, and the diagram moved.
"There!" Jyou said, poking at the monitor. "Enlarge this area." Izzy did so. "That there," Jyou said excitedly as Izzy and Kari frowned at each other in confusion. "This opaque lens here is blocking any light from reaching the retina."
"Meaning what?" Kari asked.
Jyou paused. "Okay..." he sighed, "a quick lesson in the anatomy of the human eye. The eye is composed of three parts," he said, feeling rather like a professor. "The cornea is the outermost part of the eye; it bends the light that hits the eye and enables you to focus. The iris is the colored portion that controls how much light actually enters the eye, that's why the pupil--the hole in the center of the iris--dilates when it's dark, so it can let as much light into your eyes as possible."
"Uh huh..." Kari said, not quite sure where this was going.
"The last major part of the eye is the retina," Jyou continued, "which is the part that does most of the work. Once the light is bent off the cornea and filtered through the iris and pupil, it hits the retina, and the retina sends an electrical impulse to the brain. The brain then turns that impulse into an image."
"So whatever that black thing is," Koushiro said, more to himself than anyone else, "it's blocking the light from filtering through the iris or going beyond it, preventing the retina from identifying anything."
"Precisely," Jyou said, pleased that he had explained sufficiently. He looked back at the screen, and ran his finger over the lines. "There doesn't appear to be any actual damage to the eye," he said, "which is good. The sclera is in tact--"
"The...the what?" Kari asked.
"The sclera," Jyou repeated, "the white part of your eye."
"Ah."
"So..." Koushiro began, "if the sclera and the cornea and...all that other stuff is fine..." He tapped his finger on his chin. "All we really have to do is get the black lens out of there, right?"
"Theoretically, yes," Jyou replied.
"Excuse me," Tai interrupted, slicing one hand through the air, "that’s all very fascinating and stuff...but nobody's going to test out their surgical abilities on MY eyeballs..."
Jyou shook his head.
"Wouldn't dream of it, Tai," he said with a grin. His expression hardened. "Eventually, however," he went on, "something will have to be done. If this doesn't rectify itself on it's own, we'll have to figure something out."
Taichi sighed, and draped his arm over his forehead, listening as the rain slapped heavily against the apartment. There was absolute silence for a few unbearable seconds, then Tai made a sound as he fingered something near his collarbone.
"Kari..." he said.
She perked up like a cat who had seen something move in the grass.
"Yes?"
Tai sat up, and pulled at the collar of his shirt. Kari tilted her head to the side when she saw him tug on a small whitish object near the neck of the shirt. He rubbed it between his fingers.
"Kari," he said again, and paused a moment, still holding the small whitish object attached to the shirt, "why didn't you tell me my shirt was on inside-out and backwards??"
Please review!! Tell me what you think! Oh, and in case any of you wondered, yes, all that medical jargon about your eyes is true...I
have an interest in medicine myself, so Jyou makes for a fun character to write, I can rattle off all my medical stuff and feel all
smart. ^__^ More to come soon! Yakusoku shimasen! ^_^ Oyasumi nasai!
~~hikari
Back to the First Part of Chapter 2
