Though the horrid weather had brought most other activities in Bunkyou to a screaming halt, the hospital was a hive of movement. Doctors and nurses were in too short supply to properly deal with the number of patients in varying states of triage that needed their help. They darted recklessly from room to room, treating and healing what they could with what little time they could allot to each person. Mucking up the works in particular had been a bus accident only shortly ago, bringing in over a dozen wounded.

The four host club members who had arrived via car barely noticed the chaos around them as they entered the vestibule of the ER. Tamaki asked the rather frazzled receptionist as to Haruhi's location and, without a moment's hesitation, took off at a jog down the tiled hallway, bobbing and weaving around personnel and patients. It took concentrated effort for the others to not lose him in the mass of humanity.

Despite the hospital's labyrinthine layout, it only took the men a few minutes to come across Kyouya pacing in a small waiting room surprisingly unaffected by the mayhem. Tamaki, Hikaru and Kaoru all began speaking at once.

"What room is Haruhi in?"

"How is she?"

"Is she going to-"

Kyouya wearily held up a hand to stop the onslaught of questions. "She's in the operating room at the moment. I pulled every string I could to get the best doctors and nurses on-shift in there with her, but I'm afraid this storm has this hospital running beyond its means." He removed his glasses and fiddled with them, clearly needing something to do with his hands. Such an idle, meaningless action was rather uncharacteristic of the normally composed man, and seeing that disquieted Mori.

Takashi dropped into an uncomfortable plastic chair. His emotions had run him ragged and he could feel the beginnings of a knot where his head had met pavement. Regardless, fatigue and physical discomfort were both obscured by his grief and guilt. He kept replaying the scene in his head: the screeching tires, his delayed reflexes, Haruhi's broken body lying in the pristine snow. The concern for him plain in her eyes even as her lungs filled with blood.

Are you alright, Mori?

He stood abruptly with the intent to pace, to burn off some of the anger he felt boiling in his belly. The moment he was fully straightened, however, the world began spinning. Legs feeling weak, Takashi sat back down and dropped his head between his knees. He must've hit his head harder than he originally thought; he was fairly sure he was concussed. He'd gotten a concussion once before during a slip-up in kendo and he remembered the vertigo and disorientation, though that likely was not quite as severe as the one he had now.

Takashi felt something cool on his forehead and realized that someone was gently pressing an icepack to his blossoming bruise. Carefully he sat up, propping his elbows on his knees and found Tamaki staring at him critically.

"Kyouya went to fetch someone to take a look at you," the Host Club's leader told him, unusually subdued albeit noticeably concerned. "You should've said something, Mori-sempai."

"I'm fine," the older host insisted stubbornly, even as he had the icepack shoved into his hands. "Just a bump."

"The last thing I need is another friend in a hospital bed," Tamaki replied as he dragged a spare waiting room chair over to create a make-shift ottoman for his sempai. Kaoru handed Mori a water bottle he had purchased from a nearby vending machine. Hikaru set off to see if Kyouya had been successful in finding a health professional with a modicum of free time to spare. Whatever protests Mori had been ready to give against their doting behavior died in his throat when he realized how badly his friends needed to do this.

The air in the waiting room up until moments ago had been thick with despair. Filthy rich, intelligent, and handsome young men were not used to feeling useless. So many problems in life could be solved with quick charm, clever wit, and a wad of yen in the right hands. When one got used to absolute control over themselves and their circumstances, having it unexpectedly taken away was devastating.

Now, a bit of that despair had lifted as the boys kept themselves busy fussing over him. Had circumstances been different, Takashi might have even found it amusing. He was about to put his foot down when he overheard Tamaki musing the logistics of bringing in a catering crew to feed the entire occupancy of a hospital when Hikaru, Kyouya, and a harried-looking companion arrived. A petite woman dressed in a well-worn navy uniform, the paramedic identified herself and asked for permission to treat him. Takashi accepted her help with a grunt.

The paramedic looked him over thoroughly, checking for the gamut of possible symptoms that came with a head injury. "Going to have a nice shiner," she said conversationally as she shone a small flashlight into either of his eyes. "And you've got yourself a pretty severe concussion, too. Not exactly my place to make the call, but I'd recommend staying here overnight for observation - preferably in a bed," she paused, casting an appraising glance at Mori's piecemeal recliner. "The last thing you want with a concussion and possible neck injury is to spend the night in these plastic pieces of shit they call chairs around here. No offense, Ootori-sama."

"None taken," Kyouya said as he made notes on his tablet. He would be looking into refurnishing the hospital waiting rooms in the near future. "Spare beds and rooms are scarce at the moment, but I've managed to find a spot on the fourth floor-"

"No," Takashi refused.

"Mori-sempai, you're wounded!" Tamaki insisted. "Listen to them."

"No," he repeated, firmly. The tone he used left no room for argument, though Tamaki didn't quite seem to grasp that. The blonde was about to dial the doting father angle up a notch when the paramedic cleared her throat to interject.

"Pardon my interruption. Could you guys - er...if I may ask for your assistance," she corrected herself, schooling her speech into more formal tones in front of the hospital owner's son. "The hospital is running drastically low on blood and we lost contact with the nearest auxiliary blood bank an hour ago." The storm outside was doing an excellent job of taking out phone landlines and messing with cell phone service. "If any of you young men would be willing to donate-"

Even before she had a chance to finish talking, each member of the Host Club was on their feet and rolling up their sleeves. There was even a twinkle in Tamaki's eye as he winked at the woman.

"My dear, you can take any part of me," he crooned, a bit of his normal self eking through, clearly grateful to have been offered a way to help out.

"Yeah, yeah," the paramedic muttered under her breath as she ushered them out of the room, a small smile pulling at her lips despite her best efforts. "Men."

Takashi gently rolled his neck and winced at the stab of pain that sang down his back. He sipped periodically on a juice he didn't really want but had had pushed on him by one of the phlebotomists. The hospital's blood supply was in such dire straits that they had allowed him, concussion and all, to donate, though they hadn't allowed him to give as many pints as his fellow Host Club members. On the table across from him the twins had their heads down, clearly wiped out by their respective double plasma donations on top of the day's rather strenuous events.

Kyouya stood not far away, trying once again to reach Ryoji Fujioka on his cell phone. From the slight scowl on his face, it was evident his attempt wasn't going well. Tamaki was standing on the other side of the room, staring into space. The false bravado he had shown on his way into the donation room had dwindled once the deed had actually been done. There was nothing else for him to concentrate on but the gravity of the situation, and on Haruhi.

Takashi shut his eyes and tried not to think of her, lying motionless in the snow. He instead forced himself to conjure up a picture of him and her, together. Cradling her in his arms while searching for Hunny at Kyouya's tropical water park. Rescuing her from Tamaki's overbearing the day she had walked into their lives and realizing that she was a girl. The abrupt kiss on the cheek she had given him as thanks for seeing her home safely, only just the other day.

Without realizing it, he had begun to nod off. The last thing he thought of before falling asleep was Haruhi's earnest face, eyelashes blinking away freshly fallen snow, as she told him that she didn't regret it.

Strapped to the half-dozen machines monitoring her vital signs and drenched in the harsh florescent light of the operating room, Haruhi looked much younger than her sixteen years. An exhausted surgeon worked diligently on her broken body, trying his best to staunch the hemorrhaging that was slowly draining the life out of his patient.

The surgeon barked out an order to his assisting nurse for a new clamp and cursed. He had been near-certain that he had located the elusive source of the bleeding but he had been mistaken. His nurse, bless her, saw the sweat beading on his brow and wiped it away with a sterile wipe before it could drip into his eyes.

The girl was dying, and it didn't take a trained surgeon to see that. She didn't have much longer if the bleeding couldn't be staunched; ten minutes at the most.

With renewed furvor, the surgeon continued his search.

Haruhi's hands were starting to get pruny. She had washed the same plate at least five times now, but every time she placed it on the drying rack it somehow managed to make its way back into the sink with the other dirty dishes. Under normal circumstances this would strike her as downright bizarre, but at the moment she was so overwhelmed with delight from spending time with her mother again that she barely noticed. They stood side-by-side in the small Fujioka kitchen, cleaning up from the night's meal.

The apartment was a tableau of the one Haruhi had lived in all of her life; everything was in its proper place and orientation, but all of the family's belongings that were so threadbare and well-loved were inexplicably pristine. The normally colorful floral curtains in the front window seemed drab and were missing the small mark Haruhi had made with a crayon as a child. The lopsided leg to the coffee table that her father had drunkenly attempted to put together was the suddenly the proper length and was missing the marks made by an errant nail. She was aware of the wrongness of the situation, but at the same time, she wasn't altogether concerned. Haruhi glanced over at her mother and smiled.

Communication with her mother had been difficult at first, but it was becoming easier the longer they stayed together. They had been conversing as if they hadn't been apart a day.

"So tell me about the man in your life," the older Fujioka said abruptly, anticipating her daughter's reaction. She wasn't disappointed, as Haruhi dropped her plate and began to sputter. "There is one, right? Mori-san."

"Y-Yes, I mean... he's just a friend," she replied, feeling the heat rise in her face. She didn't bother to reach for the dish again. "All of the guys in the Host Club are my friends."

Mrs. Fujioka hummed, a noise that belied just how little she believed what she was hearing. "Altruistic as you may be, honey, very few people would do what you did for just a friend." She smiled sadly at the younger woman. "Not many people would throw themselves in front of a speeding car in the dead of winter, period."

Haruhi sighed, stepping back from the sink. She supposed there was no point in lying to a ghost. "Mori gives me peace of mind, mom. He's the only person in my life - other than dad - who doesn't see me as some sort of exiled princess or...or a charity case." She threw up her hands. "The rest of the Host Club members are good people, don't get me wrong, but I don't think I'll ever understand them."

"They mean more to you than you'll admit, even to yourself," her mother amended gently.

Haruhi opened her mouth to deny it, and stopped. She was right. Ouran High School confused the hell out of her on the regular and its students might as well be from Mars as far as she was concerned, but the boys of the Host Club had become dear to her. She couldn't bear to think of never seeing them again. "I need to go back, mom. I have to go back to them." When her mother didn't respond, she quickly added, "but I don't want to leave you! I have so much I want to talk to you about, to learn from you."

"Oh, Haruhi," her mother whispered, wrapping her arms around her daughter. "You can't stay here. You can't stay with me."

"Why not?" She protested, though she already knew the answer.

Haruhi was lucky the accident hadn't killed her on impact. If not for the cushioning of the snow, she likely would have cracked her head open like an egg. So now here she was, doing her damndest to pretend that nothing was wrong as she embraced the embodiment of the spirit of her long-dead mother in a too-perfect facsimile of the apartment they had shared.

She didn't want to die. The opportunity to speak with her mother was one she never thought she would have, but it wasn't meant to last. She had too much to say, to do, to accomplish left in life. She wanted to confess her feelings to Mori-sempai before he graduated. She wanted to enjoy her remaining days with the Host Club, and as a high school student at one of the strangest places in Japan. She was going to go to university, meet interesting people, eat bizarre food, become a damn good lawyer, and make her family proud. She wanted to die quietly and peacefully with people she loved at her side, decades and decades down the road... not like this. Not like this.

Haruhi choked back a sob and buried her face into the gentle fabric of her mother's blouse, waiting and hoping for a second chance.