The exercise:
Another late in the month edition of Hindsight, coming right up.
Mine:
I woke alone in a hospital room, though it took several minutes for me to figure that out. Sure, the IV drip and beeping machine to my left should have made my location pretty clear pretty quick but in my defence I wasn't even aware that I had already been diagnosed with yet another concussion.
It wasn't long after understanding dawned and a partial memory of the events that led me to my current situation returned that a young Japanese nurse entered the room. She smiled kindly as she checked my vitals and I watched her in silence until my eyes fell on her name badge.
"Georgina?" I rasped, then fell into a coughing fit. I clearly had not spoken or had anything to drink in a while. Once I'd regained some semblance of control she handed me a paper cup filled with water and watched me drink.
"My great-grandmother's name," she told me after I handed the cup back. Her English was flawless. My addled brain was having a lot of trouble processing this woman. "On my father's side - he's American."
"Oh," I said, not knowing what other response was appropriate. At least I didn't start coughing again.
"How's your head doing?"
"Slowly," I said and she laughed. I scowled. I wasn't trying to be funny, just accurate.
"Well, from what I understand, you did hit your head pretty hard," Georgina said, then added with a wink: "Chasing after girls, I hear."
"Just the one," I said, closing my eyes with a sigh. "Away from the other."
"Popular boy," she said with another laugh. I was beginning to like her laugh, for all that it hurt my brain to hear it at the time. "Will one of these girls be coming to take you home?"
I thought about that for a few seconds. "I doubt it."
"Well we can't let you leave the hospital unless you have someone to monitor you, to make sure your symptoms aren't getting worse."
"Well then," I said, the words inching their way out of my mouth as the waking world began to go dark, "I guess you're stuck with me."
3 comments:
I see from your edit to yesterday's post that the invisible prompt was not just to vex and confuse me :)
Hmm, another Gina to add to the mix and the confusion (perhaps the other Gina should be short for Regina to be on the same side) though this one seems a bit more stable than a lot of the people our hero has met on his travels so far. I like her bedside manner and it's definitely true that our hero could use a break. I shall try, very hard, not to burn the hospital down around him.
Hindsight
When I woke up again it was dark, so I went back to sleep. The next time there was a doctor there; short and tanned and he spoke no English. We had a brief conversation with me using my business Japanese that I'd learned the first time I was over here and him using medical Japanese that I didn't really understand. He sounded angry, then calmer, then angry again. He wore me out so much that I think I fell asleep before he left. When I woke the next time, Georgina was just coming into my room.
"Oh, you're awake! Dr. Hitoki will be coming in to evaluate you soon. Can you stay awake this time for him?"
"Dr. Hitoki?" I smiled, wondering who this might be.
"You spoke to him already," she said, and smiled back brightly. "You kept calling him Dr. Hyundai. He found it funny until you asked him if he had four-wheel drive. Now he things you're a rude American." Her voice was light and I found myself wishing she'd laugh again. I rubbed my head, which felt tender but had stopped aching.
"I'm actually Canadian," I said. "I don't remember any of that, sorry."
Now she laughed, and it was like the world's most charming alarm clock. "Go Canucks!" she said, and offered me a fist-bump. She must have seen my face change, because she quickly added, "that's the only team I know. They play for the Livingstone Cup, right?"
"Stanley Cup," I said, and decided to forgive her. I bumped her fist gently, just as Dr. Hitoki arrived.
With Georgina to help the understanding along we ran through his little battery of tests quite quickly and I apologised five times (which was probably one too few, but Japanese diplomacy can be tricky) for my mispronunciation of his name which at least appeased him.
"You may leave," he said in Japanese, and waved a hand. "We need the bed for a real person." Yep, definitely needed a sixth apology in there somewhere.
Georgina checked her watch. "I can help you gather your things," she said. "I have ten minutes."
Much to my disappointment she didn't actually take me home to monitor me (yes, I remembered that conversation!) but she did ask me where I was staying and wrote down my hotel and room number, and phone number, and put me in a taxi and gave them directions, so when I sank down on the hotel bed, exhausted from what was really very little travelling, I fell asleep, again, with a smile on my face.
I was woken by my phone ringing and realised from the twilight of the room that it was evening already. As I hoped it was Georgina, asking me what I was doing.
"I haven't made any plans yet," I said, truthfully, and she laughed her delightful laugh again. "Would you like to come with me to Yasukuni?" The name rang a faint bell in my head, which hurt slightly even though it wasn't real, and I agreed quickly. A date is a date, after all, and the one with Melina had started out well but ended up with me in a hospital. This one surely couldn't be worse. Though with Hindsight, I suppose what I should have done is lock myself in my room, order room service twice a day, and refuse to see anyone until the cloud of bad luck went off to rain on some other poor soul.
The taxi driver knew Yasukuni and dropped me off there without trouble, and I found myself standing next to Georgina looking at the Shinto temple in Tokyo. The magnificent green-roofed building had a wide square in front of it, and the roof spread out like arms, welcoming visitors into its embrace.
The protest going on in front of the building was polite and quiet; there were a couple of signs, and the protestors very discretely let visitors going into the Haiden know what they were protesting about without causing a fuss.
"They are strange people," said Georgina, pulling me to the side and away from them. "They protest that ancestors may not be enshrined because of the acts they committed in life. But if we cannot learn from what they did, what was the point of their living?" We walked around the side of the main building and I saw smaller shrines set off at the edges, looking as though they had been recently built. "A war criminal is a bad person, but the war is over and that person is dead. Can we punish an ancestor in death?"
I was silent until I realised that she was expecting an answer. As she selected a shrine, and pulled aside a silk curtain to allow us access, I struggled to find an answer.
"Maybe you could exorcise their ghost?"
She laughed, and I relaxed. "That would be murder," she said, and I tensed again. "An ancestor would surely become an Oni if you tried that."
I tried to remember my Japanese mythology, but all I could think of was watching The Ring two years back and having nightmares for a week. "No, ancestors must be respected, even if they are not revered. They teach us, even when they teach us what not to do. Now, we need to make a small blood offering at this shrine."
Greg - I appreciate your resisting the temptation to burn the hospital down. I'm unsure if that blood offering at the end is ominous or not. But this Gina (I think I'll definitely just refer to her as Georgina from now on to avoid confusion) seems like less trouble than... uh, every single other woman our hero has encountered to this point.
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