At the hospital they check her white blood cells, and they say she most likely has lupus, though the doctor who says it has a sour look on his face, like he doesn't think it's a good explanation. It's not that Chieko notices any of this, of course; she's busy with the pain, and the coughing that only makes the pain worse. But Mariko and Ryouko love to gossip and pick apart how other people say things, and she's accustomed by long habit to listening, so that if they start to fight she knows when to intervene.

But they're on their best behavior today, doing what they can to make Chieko's sickness easy. She'd like to tell them not to bother, but that would involve talking, and that still hurts.

And then her heart feels terribly funny, and it stutters for a moment, and there's a long and piercing beep.

Things start happening rather quickly, then. There are several more doctors, and they stick her with needles and fix her with tubes until she must look like something out of science fiction. She keeps drifting in and out of consciousness, even with all of the beeping and carrying on. At one point they rub her chest in a way that makes it feel like she's been punched full-force, at which she squeaks pathetically and receives a muttered apology.

They give her drugs that make her head ache, and drugs that make her heart race, and drugs that make it even harder to tell if she's asleep or awake. She stops hurting as much, but stays weak and disoriented and, all things considered, quite miserable.

When someone is undergoing an esper awakening, their hair's root color can change, or their eye color. This is often noticed especially early among East Asian espers, starting as they often do from black and black respectively.

Hata Chieko's hair follicles have been severely damaged in the process of her awakening, and will not recover for some time. Her eyes are changing from dark brown to a slightly lighter brown, and most of the time, they are closed.

When someone finishes undergoing an esper awakening, there is often some mental motion that they can undertake which will engage their power. Sometimes there is a physical element to this trigger, which can cause it to be missed until the esper stumbles over it.

Hata Chieko's power does not trigger intuitively, not when she's lying in a hospital bed and can barely move her hands.

When someone finishes undergoing an esper awakening, it is usually very obvious in the case of a psychological backlash, and sometimes even more obvious in the case of physical backlash. Sometimes, though, the results are subtle, or damage has accumulated that doesn't go away.

Hata Chieko has been undergoing a ravaging deterioration of almost every biological system in her body for almost a week.

The only thing that changes, when she finishes awakening, is that her condition stops actively worsening. Medications that would have done nothing a few days ago can ameliorate some of her symptoms. Her care can transition from palliative to curative. Her nurses can leave the room without experiencing a nagging fear that her condition will abruptly explode.

It still takes her five days to wake up.

Everything hurts even worse than it did last time she was conscious. This should really not be allowed.

There are so many tubes in her. Tubes in her face. Tubes in her arms. Tubes in places she would really prefer didn't have tubes in them.

There is a button she can push for assistance. Through heroic effort, she pushes it.

A nurse comes running. "You're awake!" she says, awed.

Chieko coughs feebly around a tube.

The nurse checks her vitals, while she's there. "You're recovering very well," she says. "You frightened us very badly, last week, but I think you'll be alright."

She would ask when she can get the tubes out, if there were not a tube in her mouth. As it is, she coughs again and releases her hold on consciousness.

Once she's strong enough to breathe without the mouth tube (they give her a nose tube instead), she can say hello to her family. Her father is quietly apologetic, for what, she doesn't know. Her stepmother cries on her. Her stepsisters give her cheerful updates on the world outside, including a large card signed by her classmates. (She'd be surprised they know her name, if it weren't for the fact she knows how this works; they were prompted with her name, and the card came after.)

The next day, she begins physical therapy. She's frustratingly weak, but when they give her a squishy ball to squeeze, she hesitates.

"Feels... strange," she whispers.

"What does?" asks the physical therapist.

She considers trying to explain. But it seems hard to put into words without understanding it better herself. So she does something.

The ball drips through her fingers like she's squeezing a scoop of ice cream.