White Elephant by Mako Idemitsu

Author:Mako Idemitsu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chin Music Press Inc.
Published: 2017-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

5 Car Accident

Through the open door of the hospital room she had finally located came the sound of someone screeching at the top of her lungs. Sakiko set her suitcase down in the hallway, gave it a kick, and stood in the doorway. The ward was crowded with beds, and in the middle stood a woman with abundant black hair and tattoos on her brown skin, waving her arms and jabbering. It was hard to tell if she was angry or jubilant. She wasn’t Mexican. This was New York, so she was probably Puerto Rican. The others were all black or Asian, no whites. All were too engrossed in their own affairs to pay Sakiko any attention. Her nostrils were assailed by the mingled smells of many races and of the poor.

Sakiko looked around the room, searching for her sister Hiroko.

The hospital had telephoned Sakiko in Los Angeles: “Do you know Hiroko Morimoto? She says she is your sister. She was injured in a car accident and has been admitted to the hospital.” Paul’s works were being exhibited in Boston, and Hiroko had set out by herself to drive to the opening, but before ever leaving Manhattan she had gotten in an accident. Sakiko left Hideto with Ryoko and rushed to her sister’s side.

Hiroko was lying asleep in a bed by the door, an intravenous tube in her arm. The Puerto Rican woman had been so distracting that Sakiko failed to see what was right in front of her. Though no doubt drugs had something to do with it, her sister’s ability to sleep through the racket seemed miraculous. Marveling, Sakiko sat in a bedside chair and heard a raspy, metallic sound. She looked in that direction and saw a cockroach creeping across the floor.

The springs of the mattress were worn out and Hiroko lay sunken, her face pale and her lips purple. Of her normal self-defensiveness there was no sign. She was pathetically defenseless.

A nurse came to change the IV bag. Sakiko said, “I am her sister. I’d like to speak to her doctor and find out how she’s doing.” The nurse glanced at her, smiled slightly, and left the room without a word. Sakiko thought of following after her, but was immobilized by timidity.

Hiroko slightly opened her eyelids. Recognizing Sakiko, she said immediately, as if this were the only thing on her mind, “Hurry and get me a private room.”

•

The woman behind the counter looked suspicious. “What’d you say?”

“I want to put my sister in a private room,” Sakiko repeated.

The woman made a gesture of disbelief, and heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Do you have any idea how much a private room costs?”

“No. But…” I can pay, Sakiko started to say, but the woman cut her off in a stinging tone.

“I bet you don’t. You have no idea, and that’s why you can ask such a thing.” She informed her of the price of a private room in the aggravated tone a mother might use to tell a

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