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THEY SPENT THE DAY wheeling Mrs. Hino from room to room for tests, with never enough downtime for her to rest. She hardly ate any of her own dinner before falling asleep, the monitors humming as slow and soft as her breath. A Filipino nurse bustled in, her wide eyes and heart-shaped face a specific kind of beauty that appealed to Ryan. Her smile was familiar.
She said, “Hey, you’re Hector’s friend from high school, aren’t you? Yeah, Ryan. I remember you used to be at Lola’s house all the time. I haven’t seen you since Teto’s wedding. You guys still tight?”
The jolt of recognition, painful given everything going on, shook her name loose from locked memories. One of Hector’s many cousins. “Yeah, hey. It’s Aurelia, right? I see Teto around. I mean you know how it is. Kind of drift apart when you’re working and everything.” Lying sucked, even as a necessity; but Ryan was too wiped to have a heart-to-heart with an ex’s cousin.
“Don’t I know it. So nice you’re here with Mrs. Hino. I’m glad she’s got someone from around the way looking out for her. Doesn’t your grandmother come to our church with her? I never see you there...” Aurelia grinned, chiding, but kind, like she knew he wasn’t going to start showing up.
“Just life, you know. Interferes in the best plans.” Her kindness was welcome, breaking through the detachment of spending a night and a day in this unpleasantly artificial place. But the lost detachment launched a struggle to bury all those feelings about Hector, especially now when everything else in his life felt so raw.
“You been here with Mrs. Hino all day?”
Ryan nodded.
“Cool, I have a few questions.”
Ryan answered the now-familiar questions: How long has she been asleep? Did she have any issues? Did she know where she was? But he answered quickly and politely, eager to escape to the cafeteria. His lunch of a Snickers bar and a bag of chips from a vending machine left him convinced hospital cafeteria food would be delicious.
At dinner, Ryan’s thoughts drifted to his family history. Professor Langdon once admonished Ryan to tap into his heritage for his art, but the connection was tenuous. Recently, he’d connected more deeply with his western-style oils than an ancient art style never practiced by his family, as far as he knew. Would it be different if he studied in Japan?
When he was younger, Japan seemed distant, a country that his grandmother’s parents came from, a mythical place. Interested in hearing her stories about it, he often pestered Gramma but she never wanted to talk about the past. As a teenager, he scorned his parents’ community activism and their exploration of the roots they felt cut off from. Teenage rebellion: not cool to like what your parents liked. When he immersed himself in East Asian art while at art school, his family treated it as if he were finally coming around to search for his own connection to the past. He’d sought his identity in that art, but it only informed his skill, not his soul.
After dinner, he passed the nurses’ station at the end of their floor. The black-haired nurse called to him. “The phone rang in your room while you were gone.”
Back in the room, Ryan dialed Garrett again. Still no answer. Ben, however, picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, B.”
“Hey, Sunshine. I’ve been worried about you.”
Ryan tensed. “I called a bunch last night. The voicemail is full. You need to delete messages after you listen to them.”
“Fuck, sorry.”
“Where were you, B?”
“I covered a hospice shift last night.”
“This week? You already have extra chorus for the Queer Youth Resource Alliance benefit.” Ben’s schedule had been getting worse since summer. And once this benefit was past, the chorus would start rehearsals for Christmas shows. Finding time would get harder.
“It’s been crazy. I tried to call Mrs. Hino’s room yesterday, but it was either busy or there was no answer.” As Ben spoke, Ryan pictured the way Ben pushed his hair back in annoyance. “Then the front desk said I had the wrong room number. But still no answer.”
“Oh shit, they switched rooms yesterday. I thought they’d forward calls. I’ve been to all these tests with her and trying to call her nephew. It’s been weird here.”
Ben’s voice softened. “Do you need anything? Are you still at the hospital? Should I come up there?”
“No, but can you check on my grandmother?”
“Fuck, I should have called her. I forgot you were going over there. I’ll go as soon as we get off the phone.”
Ryan glanced at the clock: only six p.m. Gramma would be watching her shows. “Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. This place is totally disconnected from reality.”
Sympathy warmed Ben’s voice. “It’s a hard place to be. When are you coming home?”
“As soon as Mrs. Hino’s nephew gets here. I can’t get a hold of him.”
“Wait, is his name Garrett?”
“Yes, why?”
Ben’s rumble of laughter filled Ryan’s heart. “Oh, fuck. I am so sorry.”
“What?”
“He left a bunch of messages yesterday.” That meant Ryan must have rattled off his own phone number in the first anxious messages he left for Garrett. “I didn’t know what they were. Just some guy saying, ‘I’m on my way to you, but I have to take care of a few things first.’ I, uh, might have thought, briefly, that you were running away with him.”
“What the fuck?” Ryan checked Mrs. Hino. She appeared to be sleeping soundly. Ryan’s goodwill toward Ben dissolved. “You thought I’d run away with Mrs. Hino’s nephew?”
“No, not really. Just—I didn’t know who he was.” At least Ben sounded contrite. But his unexpected distrust was one more burden on their pile of problems.
The monitors beeped more rapidly. Mrs. Hino stirred in her bed. Not the time to argue about Ben’s catastrophic interpretation. “Can we talk about this when I’m home?”
“Yes.” The ambient sounds of shuffled papers and the familiar clang of a coffee cup set in the sink filled the silence. “What about Steven’s launch party tomorrow?”
“I won’t miss it. I’ll figure something out. I’ll see you soon, okay, B?”
“I miss you, Sunshine. Good night.”
The switch from name to nickname should have dampened Ryan’s ire. But before Ben hung up the phone, Ryan heard an unfamiliar voice in the background, asking, “Is he coming home? Or do we have another night?”
Travis. Ben’s ex was visiting. Ryan should be home mending their rift. Instead Ben was with Travis.
Mrs. Hino never woke completely, so Ryan settled into the awful chair with his sketch book, listing project ideas he might complete for the Exposed! show. But his mind kept drifting to Ben. He wanted enough uninterrupted time with Ben to relax and open up to each other again, free from all other obligations. Maybe his parents were on to something with that Alaskan cruise. Unreachable and alone together sounded so attractive right now. Much better than being trapped in hospital room without your boyfriend.
Ryan drew Ben from memory, loosely sketching expressions he recalled from their first date. They had wandered along the waterfront, through Myrtle Edwards Park, talking art and Ben’s recent move from California. When Ben said he was hungry, Ryan had steered them up Republican Street toward lower Queen Anne Hill and the restaurants there.
◊
Ben’s laughter rang down the quiet street. “Dick’s? Really? Dare I ask how the food is?”
“It’s a Seattle institution. This one we call Richard’s.” Ryan drawled a French pronunciation: Reeee-char’s. “This is the fancy one. You can sit inside.”
“Sitting inside for burgers in what looks like an unremodeled McDonalds from 1965—that’s fancy?” Ben’s suspicion, as if Ryan was trying to trick him was as gloriously appealing as everything else Ben did or said all night.
“You really did just move here, didn’t you?”
Ryan dragged Ben inside and advised him on what to order. At the table, which probably was from 1965, Ben declared the fries the best he’d had.
Ryan grinned. “Well, we’ll have to do this again another night at a different location, so I can give you the proper Dick’s experience. The others aren’t like this.”
Deadpan also suited Ben. “You’re going to give me a dick experience? Do I wait for the second date for that? Or does this one count?”
Ryan rolled eyes. “Drink your shake.”
Ben smirked and picked up his strawberry shake.
◊
“Whoever that is, he’s handsome. Like that actor from those old movies.”
Ryan blinked up at clock behind the red-haired nurse. After midnight. Shift change again.
“Montgomery Clift?” Ryan asked.
“Is that who it is? I was thinking young Ray Danton, from the westerns. But yeah, with those eyebrows, Montgomery Clift.”
He only saw Ben in the sketches, though he’d often made the Montgomery Clift comparison. He’d have to look up Ray Danton at the library.
“Has she been sleeping soundly?”
Once more, he answered all the usual questions.
Alone again, he drifted until an unfamiliar distressed beep from a monitor jolted him. He jumped up to find a nurse, stumbling back into the chair, leg asleep, a painful prickle shooting from knee to ankle. Before he could shake it off, the red-haired nurse came in and administered oxygen to Mrs. Hino.
“It’s fine,” she assured him. “Often after a heart attack, the lung function is uneven. You needn’t worry, even though her blood oxygen was a little low.”
“Does she need a doctor?”
“I’ve paged him.”
The sleep-deprived intern who finally arrived said not to worry. Ryan must have slept after that, because he struggled through deep underwater drifts, fighting invisible things that evaporated at the sound of Mrs. Hino’s voice.
“I was just thinking about you,” she said.
At four a.m., Ryan wasn’t sure that they both weren’t dreaming. “What about me?”
“When Garrett told me he had a boyfriend and not a girlfriend, I thought of you.”
“Oh?” Did she want to set Ryan up with her nephew?
“You’re the only gay I ever met. I thought you were such a good boy that it must be okay for Garrett, too. I worry about both you boys, but you’re no different from anyone else, are you?”
She drifted off again before Ryan decided how to answer. He was different. He wasn’t. It depended on context.
Too tired to draw, and unable to get comfortable, Ryan read a National Geographic magazine he’d found in the cafeteria. But photos of eerie deep-sea creatures weren’t enough to stop his mind drifting back to Mrs. Hino’s revelation of Ikeda family secrets.
Invisible creatures twisted around Ryan’s ankles, swimming away when he reached for them. A deep underwater nurse asked about his DNR, choking him with panic as he swam to tell Ben he wanted to be resuscitated. Sunlight glittered on the waves above him, but no matter how hard he swam, the surface never got closer.
“Hey, uh...”
Ryan blinked. He’d forgotten to close the curtains last night. No, he wasn’t in his bed. Which explained the back pain, but not the handsome, fresh-faced young man standing over him. Japanese and younger than Ryan, dressed in a cotton Ralph Lauren sweater over a polo shirt, as if ready for a sporty magazine shoot.
“Hi. I didn’t mean to wake you. Are you Ryan?”
Shaking off the oceanic nightmares, Ryan sat up, his mother’s training so ingrained that his hand was already out to shake. “Yes. I’m Ryan Ikeda. Are you Garrett?”
“I am. Garrett Hino. So nice to meet you.” He closed both hands around Ryan’s as they shook. “Thank you for looking after my aunt Ida.”
Garrett’s tidily styled hair was cut short. His beaming smile overtook his whole face, with cheery eyes and pinchable cheeks. He had tawny gold skin bronzed by the Hawaiian sun and the bright, even white teeth of a catalog model. A vision from Ryan’s teenage masturbatory fantasies.
“Of course. No trouble at all.” Ryan ran a hand through his hair. After two days in the same t-shirt and jeans, plus bathing in the little bathroom sink, he was a ragamuffin next to Garrett’s polished professionalism.
“Garrett! I was worried about you.”
“Aunt Ida!” Garrett kissed her cheeks. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. Terry is traveling, so I had to find someone to take care of the cats and close up the house. It seems Ryan took good care of you. How are you feeling?”
Ryan excused himself to the small bathroom, leaving them to catch up in private. When he returned, Garrett propped awkwardly on the edge of the bed. Mrs. Hino sat up, perkier. She clutched Garrett’s hand tightly. She waved Ryan over.
“You met Ryan?”
“Yes.”
“He’s the artist I was telling you about.”
Garrett’s focus on Ryan sharpened. “Of course. Is there anything I can do to thank you for your kindness?”
“No, no. I’m glad to help. Without each other to help when we can, where would any of us be?” Ryan considered how different his own life might have been without the Hinos’ help years before his birth.
“Maybe Ryan can take you out while you’re here, Garrett. Help you get to know the city.”
Garrett’s cheeks pinked faintly. “Auntie, I don’t think— ”
“Don’t you fuss. I’m no good as a tour guide now. Ryan, Garrett has only visited a few times, and he’s moving here soon. Might be nice for him to make a new friend, too.”
“I’d very much like for you to show me the city, Ryan.” Garrett sounded so formal. “I don’t know my schedule for this trip. My partner is coming, so we can look at apartments. But perhaps once we’re all settled?”
“Of course. Please call if I can help while you’re in town. I should go. Mrs. Hino, thank you for your good company. I’ll be back to visit.”
Leaving the hospital, reality settled quickly: He barely had time to get home, change clothes, and make it to Steven’s party as promised. All he wanted was to see Ben and have a talk, let Ben’s touch calm a week’s worth of jangly nerves.
However, there was a party in the way. And Travis.