Once You Were My Friend

September 2023 (Four Months Later)

It was all too familiar. The sanitation, the boring pastel blue distilled walls and robotic movements. The sound of the heart monitor and its monotone repetitive beeps, papers being flicked over onto the next page. The echoing footsteps along the rubber tiles. Nami was sitting by the bedside watching her father sleep. Last time she was at a hospital, it was for her grandmother. She wasn't sure what feeling this was. Frustrated, numb, despondent, not knowing which feeling to champion. It all rested in her throat like an anchor in the vast, relentless sea. Her mother went to the cafeteria to find something to eat for them. He looked so weak and powerless. The thought that anyone could do anything to him and he wouldn't be able to lift a finger to stop it made her feel cruel. She didn't know why she thought of these things as he laid there helpless. A bag of thick and dark liquids pumped into his bloodstream as the nurse sitting across her continued to monitor the iron transfusion, reading a tattered book.

          Nami was just on her way to work when her mother frantically called her. Ichika could barely string any sentences together as she wept. The next thing Nami knew, she was on a plane back to New York, jobless and afraid. Takeshi had suffered a minor heart attack last month. There was no underlying cause as he was quite healthy for a man in his late sixties. The doctors later said it may have been related to overworking himself. It unearthed some other health conditions that needed tending to, making his recovery a strenuous journey. This kind of information seemed humorous to Nami. She thought about the women he had affairs with. Would the women who he lusted for take care of him in this near vegetative state with his peeling skin and unkempt hair or be repulsed by his illness, as if it were something contagious? Nami herself barely had the inclination to feel sorry for him, yet here she was, on the fourth consecutive week, never missing a day to be by his bedside, watching him sleep.

          Ichika came into the room holding a cup of coffee and a sandwich. They would take turns keeping watch of an old man who continued to sleep, though he was mostly coherent during the day making limited conversations with Nami. The conversations end with, "have you eaten yet?" or he'd drift off into a sleep in the middle of his sentences. She spent her days like this as of late and Ichika would sleep here at night. It was what Ichika wanted. Nami knew her mother was over-exhausting herself, yet there was still a radiance in the way she carried herself. Mothers wouldn't allow themselves to look or be vulnerable in front of their daughters. This was a common thing. She gestured the sandwich toward Nami and Nami took it in her hands. It was a sad looking egg sandwich that barely had any filling in it. "Thanks," Nami said. "I'm not that hungry." She then gave it back to her mother.

          "I'm sorry. It was all I could find," Ichika said. "You should go home and check on the house. Come back in the morning."

          "Okay," she said, breathing deeply into her stomach.

          Nami caught the last bus service that night. The house felt larger than usual. Every movement in the house seemed to echo and amplify as if she were intruding in her own home. She had been living here now. Finding her days passed by like it was nothing. Sebastian would come and see her every week now since she's been back, visiting on the weekends. It was probably what she looked forward to the most living back home now.

          Carolina had told him what happened. He was just having a cigarette outside in the back, watching ants follow each other in a line to a dead bug close by. "You should go see Nami," Carolina said to him. He fought a snicker from his lips, "I can't exactly buy a ticket and leave."

          "No, she's here. You don't know?"

          He paused at this as his chest swelled, a mixture of excitement he had to conceal from this bit of information. It was news to him. He wasn't sure why she didn't tell him as they were on speaking terms. But he thought the best about her. Perhaps there was a reason. There were things he didn't tell her either. Privacy was different to secrecy. Nami would often do things like this, while Sebastian lacked the patience to keep things from her, often finding it a stressful exercise.