Torn

Phoenix Odyssey

Book XI: Oceania

"Put me DOWN!"

Ranko wailed, her left leg racked with sharp, biting pain that radiated through the inside of her knee. Wannabe samurai Tatewaki Kuno, who had just moments before been her final opponent in the 1992 Honshu Mixed-Style Martial Arts Tournament, had scooped her from the blue vinyl mat the second he'd heard her scream. Kuno kicked the blue steel double door separating the arena floor from the locker areas at waist level, hard enough to send the handles on the opposite side crashing against the back side of the wall. Ranko did her best to stabilize her knee with her hands as the jostling of her legs dangling over his forearm sent another laser of pain up her leg with his every hurried step.

"Hey, where do you think you're…"

"Where in this blasted labyrinth is the medical staff? Can you not see an angel has fallen, man?!" Kuno roared at the young security agent that addressed him in frustration, a frenzied glare in his cobalt eyes. He turned to his left, storming down a long, nondescript cinder block hallway in the direction the stunned young man had pointed.

"Fear not, fair Ranko! I shall see thee made well!"

"If you were so worried about hurting me, ya shouldn't have kicked my knee out in the first place, ya pigfucker! Put me the fuck down!" She punched downward at his shoulders through his silver silk kendo uniform, as she was carried, but the young kendo practitioner was as a man possessed.

"Akane?!" Ranko wailed desperately, craning her neck in every direction looking for her sensei and wife as she was trundled down another featureless concrete corridor. She bit her tongue hard as Kuno bumped her leg into the door frame, bracing her leg in her hands again and whining loudly.

I don't care if they saw my fucking leg off, Tatewaki motherfucking Kuno is not seeing me cry.

"What the hell?!" A short man in his mid-forties, a dumpy fellow in a wrinkled blue polo shirt and khakis, whirled to face the door as it crashed open.

Kuno charged into the room, dumping Ranko quickly onto a padded waist-high steel table. "Well?! Be quick, man!"

The medic rubbed his chin, taking in the situation. "I don't even know what happened. What's going on, miss?"

"Get rid of him!" Ranko glared up at Kuno, growling through gritted teeth. Her leg throbbed furiously, and she winced as she pulled up the leg of her purple gi pants to look at it. A deep purple bruise was forming on the inside of her left knee, and something about her kneecap looked… off, and she wasn't quite sure she could put her finger on how.

"I'm sorry, sir, but she's right. If you're not family, I need you to step out now." The medic did not look up from Ranko, but his stern voice left little room for argument, and Kuno nodded, stepping out of the room without another word and closing the door gently behind him.

"Okay, honey. Now do you wanna tell me what ha…"

"Gyaaaaah!" Ranko screamed, arching her back off the brown vinyl covering of the table as he began a physical examination of her left knee, pressing gently in various places around the joint. The physician wasn't sure how much of her wail was a result of his ministrations and how much was pent up agony that she'd just refused to let out in the presence of her opponent.

"When he kicked it, it bent funny. I felt something pop. Fuck me, it hurts!"

The medic frowned. From the description alone, he had a fair guess what had happened, and he doubted she was going to like the diagnosis. "Alright. We'll get it checked out. Try to take a couple deep breaths, okay? What's your name, honey?"

"Ra… Ranko. Ranko T-tendo." She sniffled quietly, the small of her back returning to the table as he finished his examination and stopped prodding at her injury.

"No kidding? Not the same one whose CD has been playing on repeat in my daughter's room for a month straight, I'd guess?"

Smiling at the nod he received in reply, the middle-aged doctor walked to a small steel refrigerator in one corner of the room, removing a cyan cloth bag containing some sort of gel. He wiggled it in his hand, bending it into a curve. "Okay. I'm gonna get some ice on this thing and get the swelling down, so we can see what we're dealing with, okay?"

Ranko shook her head in panic. "No! Put it in something, please! I can't… ha… handle the c-cold…" Her knee was firing every alarm in her nervous system as it was; the last thing she needed was the Cat's Tongue reacting to the sudden introduction of ice to her flesh.

He complied, and once the ice pack had been ensconced in a white cotton pillowcase, she consented to his wrapping it around her knee. She still whimpered as he nestled it into place, and she could have sworn she felt her kneecap… move… under his hand.

"Where's Akane?" Ranko raised herself up on her elbows behind her to try and follow the medic with her eyes as he moved about the room.

"I'll do you one better," he said with a gentle smile, trying to calm the frantic girl on his exam table down. "Who's Akane?"

"My wi… my sensei." Ranko remembered what the medic had told Kuno about only family being allowed in the small exam room. "And also my sss… sister." Ranko shivered under the ice, the throbbing beginning to dull somewhat.

The kindly man nodded. "We'll find her for you in just a second, sweetheart. Let me just get you s…"

The door crashed open again, and a broad-shouldered woman with short black hair, clad in a black gi, barreled into the room. "Ranko!"

Ranko reached toward the door, grasping with her fingers. "Akane! I…"

"Good news," the doctor said with a chuckle. "I found her."

"What's wrong with her," Akane demanded, taking her wife's hand while following the medic around the room with deep brown eyes filled with urgency. A second person entered the room, a matronly brunette in a green silk kimono, and she was in turn followed by a tall, mustachioed man in a brown gi.

"Ma, Dad, hey…" Ranko waved weakly, letting her elbows unlock and dropping her shoulders back to the table.

"I'm so proud of you, Ranko," Nodoka began. "You fought so well. Truly incredi…"

Akane shook her head at the older woman. "Ma Shimizu, please. Not now with that."

"Izzi?" Ranko looked up hopefully for the one adult member of her Phoenix family that had been in attendance during her match.

Akane bit her lip, shaking her head slightly again. "She ran Hoshi home, but we'll call her as soon as we figure out what's going on. Kaito should be home by now, so he can watch Hoshi and she can come back if we need her. She said she loves you."

The medic sighed, sitting on a short wheeled stool and sliding it closer to the examination table. "Okay, so listen, Ranko. I want you to go up to the emergency room and get this looked at, okay? They're gonna want to do an MRI. Once they do, they'll be able to let you know what's going on in there, and what we're gonna need to do to get you back to fighting form. Okay?"

"What's an MRI," Ranko asked, looking up at Akane with doe-eyed terror.

Akane squeezed her lover's hand gently in quiet reassurance. "It's like an X-ray, but it takes pictures of muscles, tendons and stuff instead of bones. It doesn't hurt. They're gonna slide your leg in this big tube, and it's gonna make a bunch of loud noise, and that's it. Easy."

"Will you be with me," the redhead pled hopefully.

Akane shook her head. "I can't. Nobody else can be in the room when they do it. But it only takes a few minutes, and I'll be right outside, princess. I promise."

As they spoke, the medic retreated to a small closet, returning with a piece of folded vinyl stretched over an aluminum frame on two large wheels. He spread the handles apart, locking the frame of the wheelchair in the open position. "Miss Tendo, your chariot awaits. Do you have a way to get to the hospital?"

Nodoka nodded. "I can drive her." Last month, she'd sold the house in Yokohama that she had shared with Ranko's father all those years ago in order to move closer to her daughter and her family, and when she did, she splurged and bought herself an old beige Toyota Corolla. She had considered it to be a terribly frivolous decision at the time, but she silently thanked the gods for her moment of prescient self-indulgence.

"I'm not gettin' in no damn wheelchair. Not me. The pain's dying down some. I think I can walk on it." Ranko started to slide off the table, but Akane placed her hand on her lover's chest between her breasts, locking her elbow and holding her in place on the exam table.

"Are you out of your damned mind? Get in the freakin' chair, Ranko."

Nodoka nodded hopefully. "Maybe it's best to do what the doctor says, little orchid?"

Ranko pushed Akane's hand aside. "I am not leaving my first real martial arts tournament in a freakin' wheelchair. It's not happeni… urk!"

Her feet touched the white linoleum tile of the little clinic in the bowels of the Tokyo Budokan, and her left leg buckled under her the moment she attempted to bear weight on it.

"... Shit." She sighed heavily, lifting her leg gently from the floor. She shifted all her weight to her right leg, leaning against the table as Soun pulled the chair closer.

"Come now, Ranko. You fought well, and made us all very proud, but it's time to prioritize your health." Soun patted the seat of the chair.

Ranko looked up at him with a dejected sigh, a sadness in her eyes. She wanted to win so badly for him and for Akane. To prove that, Cat's Tongue be damned, femininity be damned, she could still fight. And here she was, crippled by a freak accident when she was one point from victory. Done in by a freaking puddle of water, of all things. Why did it always have to be water?! The whole thing made her sick.

She leaned on Akane's shoulder for support, hopping twice on her good leg to turn her body, and let herself fall heavily backward into the black vinyl sling that made up the wheelchair's seat.

"Alright, Ranko," the doctor said, walking around the chair to re-enter his patient's field of vision. "Keep it as still as you can until you get there, okay? I know it feels weird, but if it's unstable in there, the more you fidget with it, the more damage you could do. Got it?"

Ranko nodded, and the pudgy man continued. "Alright. Anything else you need from me before I get you on your way?"

Akane shook her head with a bit of a smirk up at her wife. "Between us, we'll manage. But I'm pretty sure the guy in the hallway has a broken nose."

~~~

"Okay, Miss Tendo?"

Both of the young women in emergency exam room number three looked up in response to the name they shared. Akane reached for the clipboard in the blonde doctor's hand, but the young medic in the too-long white lab coat did not hand it over.

Makes sense. She doesn't know I've had any medical training, Akane thought to herself.

The doctor smiled in amusement. "Let's try this again. I'd ask which one of you is Ranko, but I'm guessing it's the one in the bed with the ice on her knee?"

Ranko rolled her eyes with a groan. "You figured that out all by yourself, huh?"

Akane sighed, squeezing her wife's hand. "Ranko, c'mon. Be nice." She looked back up to the doctor with a grimace. "Sorry about that."

Dr. Ozuda waved Akane off with a smile. "It's okay. The pain meds we gave her can make people a little irritable sometimes, and well, we usually don't see too many people in here who are having a good day, if you catch my drift." She sat on a small round stool, reaching into one of the wooden cabinets mounted to the wall beneath the counter and removing a resin model that looked like it might have been made of bone. She wheeled closer to Ranko's bed on the stool, holding up the model of a human knee.

"Okay. Let's talk about your results, honey. So, this is your knee, right? And you've got these four ligaments here, that are in charge of keeping your knee stable." She tapped a stringy-looking red structure with the tip of a pen. "You've got the anterior cruciate ligament, the posterior cruciate ligament, the lateral collateral ligament and the medial collateral ligament," she said, moving her pen to each on the model as she spoke.

"So, your medial collateral ligament, here on the inside of your knee, connects your femur and your tibia, these bones here and here. It basically provides support and stability to your knee, so it doesn't wobble side to side too much. And, well, it seems you went and tore yours."

Akane winced. That was my guess based on what she described, but fuck, I'd hoped I was wrong. "What grade?"

"Two," the doctor said. "By the hair of her chin."

Ranko looked up, blinking droopily. She was confused, and she wasn't sure how much of it was the medication she'd been administered. "What did I have to do to get a better grade?"

Akane laughed, shaking her head and kissing Ranko's forehead. "No, Ranko. For this, lower is better, I promise."

Dr. Ozuda continued. "Your sister's right. A grade one tear basically means you nicked it. It's sore for a week or two, and you're good. A grade three tear is the worst; that's where you've completely ripped the thing in half. You've got a grade two, which is somewhere in between, but if there was such a thing as a grade two-and-three-quarters, that's about where you'd be right now."

"Will she need surgery," Akane asked worriedly.

Ranko lolled her head to the side and gave her lover a dreamy smile, glad her wife knew what she was talking about. All those late nights of homework are paying off, baby. You sound like you know as much about this as she does. I'm so flippin' proud of you. And I'm not just thinking that 'cause I'm high as a kite on whatever the shit that white pill was, neither.

The doctor shook her head. "No, but that doesn't mean recovery's gonna be easy. You should be walking on it in a few weeks, though."

"A few weeks?! But… I've gotta…" Ranko's eyes were wild, adrenaline overcoming her sedation.

Akane patted her hand, willing her love to calm down and let her do the talking. "Sorry. She's a professional singer, and a cheerleader, and she has a bunch of big shows coming up. She's going on tour in March, and the cheerleading competition's in what, three weeks?"

The doctor cringed as Ranko nodded in confirmation. "Yeah, I said she'd be walking in a few weeks. I didn't say anything about athletics."

"It doesn't even hurt anymore. Gimme s'more of these pills the lady gave me, and I'll be fine. I gotta do the… thing!" Ranko slammed her hand down on the arm rail of her bed.

Akane sighed. "Isn't there anything we can do? Elective surgery, even?"

The young doctor shook her head. "It wouldn't make much of a difference, honestly. The recovery would be about the same. You said her tour's in March?"

The elder Tendo girl nodded. "First show's at the end of March; rehearsals have already started."

"And she does a lot of dancing, I'd guess?"

Again, Akane nodded.

The doctor sighed, pausing for a moment to think through her options before replying. "Alright. So listen to me, Ranko. I think we can get you back to a hundred percent, or darn close, in time for your tour. But that means you're going to have to be incredibly dedicated to your recovery. No pushing yourself. As much rest as humanly possible. In fact, I don't even want you bearing weight on it for at least a month. You'll have to evaluate with an orthopedic specialist, but that's my recommendation, anyway. We need to let it get as strong as we can in the amount of time you have."

Ranko adjusted in the bed, sitting up on the vinyl mattress with a most unflattering sound. "But if it doesn't hurt, or I work through it, can I… Akane, the Invitational…"

The doctor sighed, setting her model on the bed at Ranko's feet. "Listen, Miss Tendo. I don't want to sugar coat this. You have a significant injury. If you play your cards right, come April, it'll be almost like it never happened and you can go on with your life. But if you don't take this seriously, and you damage the structure of your leg any more…"

Akane cut her off, squeezing Ranko's hand tight. "You could wreck your knee permanently."

The doctor bobbed her head in agreement. "Potentially to the point that not even surgery could fix it."

"And that would…" Ranko bit her lip sadly.

"It would ruin everything, baby," Akane said, gazing pitifully down at her beloved. "You wouldn't be able to dance, or cheer, or fight. None of it. So you can't screw around with this. No big, tough macho girl act this time, you hear me?"