FIFTY-SIX

As the ambulance attendants help Jake into the ambulance he tells them something as he points at me. The bleeding from where I gashed my arm has mostly stopped, but Jake convinces them that I need help too. I try to explain that the cuts look a lot worse than they are, but neither of the EMTs has time for a discussion. They’ve already got a patient on the stretcher, and the old woman needs help a lot more than either Jake or I do. The second EMT hops in back with us, the doors slam, and we speed off as rapidly as the crowd can clear out of our way.

“Jake, how are you?” I ask as the Okinawan EMT shines a penlight into Jake’s eyes and orders him to follow its beam.

“Seriously, I’m fine,” he answers, after telling the attendant how many fingers he’s holding up.

“Seriously, you got hit by an ambulance.”

“Bumped is more like it. I was stunned for a minute, but I’m okay now. The real question is, what the hell were you doing sauntering across the street? It was a miracle that my drum team was stopped at that spot right when you ran out in front of an ambulance. An ambulance that had its lights and siren on. What is up with that?” Jake looks at me and waits for an answer. He is still in his Eisā drummer’s costume.

I consider lying. But I don’t and simply answer, “I saw her. The girl from the cave.”

Jake nods, and I’m surprised at how unsurprised he is. “Yeah, I thought it might be something like that. Happens on the last day of Obon. Lot of the dead have too good a time and don’t want to go back. Hope someone else chases her back to her world.”

The ambulance, blaring its horn to clear the crowd, gains speed. Before I can say anything more, the old woman strapped onto the stretcher a few inches from us opens her eyes and looks around, a confused, haunted expression on her face. She moves her mouth like a fish gasping for oxygen. “Jake, she needs something. What should we do?”

Jake speaks to the attendant, who explains that the old woman is stabilized and they’re not supposed to do anything more except transport her to the hospital.

But she clearly needs help. A pair of glasses, their thick, heavy lenses shattered, lies on the stretcher next to her. I realize she can’t see and how scared and disoriented she must be. There’s so little room between us that I only have to bend forward to enter into her field of vision. Though I’m certain I’m nothing more than a blurry smudge to her, the old lady smiles a smile like angels on Christmas morning when she sees me. But then, as she reaches a trembling hand up, I realize that the smile is not for me. It’s for the object that she strokes while exhaling a trembling sigh of relief deeper than any I’ve ever heard. It’s for the lily brooch still pinned on my blouse.

At the hospital, the old woman seems agitated when I have to step away so that the nurses and orderlies who rush out to greet us can transfer her to a gurney. She reaches out her hand to me, and I take it. Though he objects, Jake is ordered to ride in a wheelchair.

The emergency room smells of sweat and vomit and is packed with casualties of the combustion of three days of drinking and close contact with extended family, all coming to a mad crescendo at the Ten Thousand Eisā Dance Parade. We are rushed through the waiting room, back to the examining area. Doctors in white lab coats, nurses in blue scrubs, techs in green whip past, their shoes brushing the floor in a brisk rhythm punctuated by the constant beeping of monitors. A young female physician directs the gurney to be wheeled into a newly vacated examining room. I try to slip away, but the woman only hangs on to my hand more tightly.

Whether they assume we’re family, or simply because all the other rooms are full, Jake and I are waved in while the old woman is examined, a heart monitor hooked up, and an IV started. The odors, human and medicinal, combined with the general frenzy of the emergency room act on her like smelling salts under a boxer’s nose. She shakes her head and, blinking wildly, struggles as if she were expected to get up and perform vital duties. I hurry over to calm her. She clutches my hand and reaches out again for the lily pin. Her fingers close around it, and words that sound even more foreign to me than Japanese tumble out as if a timer is running and she can’t talk fast enough.

I lean in close, stroke her face, and croon, “Shi-shi-shi.” She relaxes her clawing grip and I pin the lily brooch on her blouse. I place her free hand on the pin, and her face lights up. She grins as if this were part of a secret joke between us and pulls me close. I am enclosed in a cloud of memory and the smells of Pond’s cold cream, green tea, and a vinegary body odor. Her voice falls to a whisper as she speaks only to me. I am distressed, confused by the urgency of her feverish monologue that she seems to expect me to understand. Then, from out of the cacophony, a name spoken by a nurse reporting to a doctor about the new patient emerges as clearly as if it were my own: Kokuba Hatsuko. The only Princess Lily girl without a pin. The big sister.

I lean in and listen.