Clinical Geneticist at St Christopher’s
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Shanghai School of Medicine
Chair of the Asymmetrical Biodiversity Studies
Papua New Guinea
Dr Ishihara stammers. “That’s unfortunate, but I can explain. It’s your psychosis, you wanted it so much that, er, you had these cards printed. I kept a copy of one. I must have got this muddled with my regular cards, just a moment…”
I look at Firefly. He has been listening but hasn’t been following what was said, I don’t think. I turn to him. “If you are my friend, if you truly have my best interests at heart, help me now. One last time, do this for me. I can’t do this alone. My life is in your hands.”
I doubt he understands my words, but I’m betting my actions will speak loud and clear.
Dr Ishihara moves forward and reaches out the hand with the syringe, he’s aiming for my calf.
Firefly grabs his hand. I scoot away from him. I crawl away from him and find the winch for the window cleaner’s platform. I clamber on. The wind picks up.
Maybe Ishihara is right, maybe Firefly is right. That I’m mad. But all I know is if Firefly saves me, I will know who to trust. I find myself undoing the rope and throw it over to Firefly.
“You saved me before. Now you have to save me one more time.”
I lie on the two planks of wood that form the window-cleaning platform. A gust of wind blows up from beneath me and from the sides at the same time, sending my hair all over the place and into my eyes. But I’m not about to brush it away to get a clearer view of the ground. All around me is the nightscape of Tokyo. The twinkling lights of skyscrapers in the distance is like a galaxy far away in the artificial skies. But there is something not reassuring. Something about the fact I’m five stories up and the lights are far away, and many more are below me. Except one. The lights are on at the Tokyo Skytree. It dwarfs everything around, making regular skyscrapers look like shacks. But a wave of fear pulses through me as my body tells me I’m high up, if I can believe what I’m feeling. I’m over the edge. It’s a long way down. I lose all function in my legs; they are like natto. My hands are sweating and I feel like I can’t hold on to the wood. I want to scream, instead I shout “It’s just my perception.”
The platform clatters and falls. I close my eyes and hold on with my nails digging in to the wooden plank. I can only hope I’m strong enough not to let go. My instincts are all I have left. Maybe they were all I ever had. I’m building up speed. I just want this to stop, but it’s out of my control. I think. I can’t tell if my head or the platform is spinning, but I have nothing solid to plant myself on. I have no choice but to fall.
The platform shudders to a halt. My body is thrown up in the air but my hands and fingernails dig in and it’s enough to stop me falling over the edge. I swing violently right to left.
Had the rope got caught in a cog or had Firefly saved me? I have no way of knowing, but the platform is swaying. In front of me is the building. A glass front with lights on. A cafeteria, with food left on the tables. A few people are inside.
I’m clinging on, but still three floors up. I’m not going anywhere here and if I don’t do something I’ll fall off. Or be caught. I straddle the platform and stick my legs straight out over the left, then the right. Like I’m on a swing.
It does the trick. Now I’m making the platform move in a circle. I slip my legs over one side, then the other and the platform is now swinging back and forth against the window. I bring my legs back onto the plank of wood just as the platform grazes against the glass. If I can do this more strongly, maybe I can shatter the glass and get back in? I throw my legs violently over the right side and get the platform on a collision course with the glass. Close, but not close enough. I need more swing to get a strong enough impact to shatter the glass. Then I just have to hop in at the right moment. Who am I kidding?
But it’s just perception. If I can see it, I can do it, maybe. I keep swinging. Inside the cafeteria, people run to the window. Men and women in white coats.
They are watching helplessly as I swing the board ever closer to the window. So if I hit the window and survive, I’m basically handing myself in. I don’t think I’ll ever get away then. That will be it for me and for Aoi. And for the truth about Steve. I can’t think that now though. It’s all I can do not to fall. Not think of what lies below me. And yet all the while I’m sure I will fall. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
I look down.
Below is an awning for the entrance to the hospital and all around are fire engines, people lining up and nurses in hard hats. My arms are trembling from the strain of holding on.
Now what? I really need to think. I hold on, but the momentum I’ve started has no other place to go. The platform strikes the glass, and bounces off. The impact sends a shudder through the board. It shakes my hands, dead wood like when you smack a ruler against a desk. Only I’m not at school. I can’t hold on. I’m losing my grip. My hands were too sweaty to hold on to anything. My legs are over the edge. I see Detective Watanabe’s face in a window. He looks terrified. Why is he so upset? He isn’t the one about to die. Perception is a bitch.
I scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ask anyone Japanese what their dream is and they will tell you: to sleep. But I’m not asleep exactly. It’s night, I can tell that much. And I’m outside. But that is about it. I can’t make sense of what my eyes are telling me. Above me is a crumpled cloth flapping in the wind and behind that is the sky. There are people running around me. But no one is paying me any attention. And then I feel my back. I’m lying on the floor and everything hurts. I try to stand and stabbing pain, pins and needles prick me.
I’m at the entrance to a hospital. A girl with a mask on is in my face talking in Japanese. I don’t know what she’s saying, but it sounds soothing. She’s about my age. She holds my hand. She helps me to my feet and we shuffle away from the hospital. She unfolds a newspaper onto a curb and we sit on it with our backs to the hospital entrance. She puts a flu mask over my face.
She disappears and comes back in a moment. She’s holding something in her hands wrapped in her apron pocket. It’s a can of royal milk tea and another of green tea. I reach for the milk tea. She speaks to me. I don’t know how, but I get what she’s saying. I have fallen from somewhere. But I’m still here. Not exactly sure where here is, but she tells me I have to get away from here. Someone is after me. I’m being watched. I know something that someone doesn’t want me to tell. But what is the secret, and who is after me? I look around. Is this woman who is giving me drinks after me? What about the doctors spilling out of the front door? What about the policeman stumbling around in the bushes near the entrance to the car park? I reach for my telephone. I’m in a hospital gown. I have nothing. Maybe that’s for the best. If I have nothing, there is nothing for anyone to trace. But I have to get away from here, from them. Wherever here is and whoever they are.
The woman next to me makes a sad face. She gets up and waves at me as if she was shooing away a fly. I can’t read her expression. She goes back into the hospital.
I watch her disappear into the lobby. I force myself to my feet and walk in the other direction. It isn’t so easy. I have to stop and hold on to a wall to stop myself from falling.
I make it past a fire engine and past elderly patients, some in beds, some walking with drips in their arms. I figure none of these people are after me, but there are far too many people around in uniform to make me feel safe. If I can walk, I can get to a busy road and get my bearings from a road sign. Maybe.
A nurse shouts at me from across the car park. She squints at the name tag strapped to my wrist. I shuffle out of her reach. But I can’t really hope to escape in this state.
The best I can do is hide. But where? Dressed in a hospital gown there is only one place to go. Back into the hospital. I shuffle my way through the patients to the side of the building and find a si
de door. But since I can’t remember who else I’m trying to avoid, this maybe isn’t the best idea. I can hardly avoid everyone. But I’ll start with avoiding the doctors, nurses and anyone else in a uniform. That leaves the patients.
The hospital looks like the arrivals lounge of Narita Airport. In the centre is a bank of lifts going up the four floors. I shudder. To my left is a row of massage chairs facing a two-storey-high glass roof like you get between gates in the airport. Only here, instead of passengers wandering along with a cappuccino in one hand and wheeling a suitcase behind them, there are old men in pyjamas wheeling their drips behind them. Their view isn’t of airplanes taxiing to take them off to sunny lands. It’s a couple of fire engines and doctors and nurses running about with clipboards and hard hats. One man in a white coat is shouting instructions in Japanese.
I sit on a seat in a row of plastic chairs and tug at my plastic medical bracelet. It’s not going to come off. To my right, running the length of the building, is a desk full of women in masks. Everyone is wearing a mask: the receptionists, the doctors, the nurses, the cleaners and the patients. The policeman who was searching the bushes comes in through the entrance. He looks around. Then talks to a woman patient. And then another. He smiles and bows and then checks the patient’s bracelet. Smiles and bows and moves on. If he’s looking for me, why doesn’t he look at the patients’ faces?
I tug at my bracelet and turn it to read what’s written there. I can’t make sense of it. There’s Japanese characters and a number, 6-1-1. I again try to pull the strap off, but it won’t budge. If the policeman sees it, I’ve had it. And he will see it. He’s looking at all the women, one by one.
I scan the room for just the right person. An old lady asleep in her chair. Her bracelet hangs loose around her arm. With a little tug I’m sure I could get it off. The cop is five chairs away. If I can’t remove my bracelet, maybe I can cover it with the lady’s. Her face is shrunken. She hasn’t got her false teeth in. She’s so skinny, her arms are little more than bone. I could easily pull her name bracelet off, but I don’t. I can’t do it. It doesn’t seem right to take a person’s identity. Two natto rolls are on a plate in front of her. I suddenly realise how hungry I am. I pick them up.
“I’m sorry to take this, but I need it more than you.”
I stuff one roll into my mouth. It’s not exactly delicious, but I keep it down. Some of the fermented beans ooze out onto my fingers and I wipe the sticky mess on my gown. I pick up the other roll and put it in my gown pocket.
I get up and wander as far away from the cop as I can get, but my walking is hard going. I feel tireder than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I’m lost, alone and confused. I need to get out of here. They won’t stop looking for me until I die.
The thought gives me an idea. I smile.
The morgue. Of course. No one would look for a missing patient down there. Because who in their right mind would go to the morgue unless they had no other choice? The cop has run out of women to check. He looks around. He sees me. I try to walk as fast as I can without looking as if that’s what I’m doing. I make it to the bank of lifts. Where is the morgue? All the signs are in Japanese. Think. I know Japanese children sleep on the top floor of a house, the parents sleep on the middle and the grandparents on the ground floor. As you get older, you move down the floors, closer to the ground, until you are buried in it. There is a basement marked with a P for parking and something in Japanese and English saying “Private”. I decide this is the morgue. It must be.
I have little strength to move. I hear a nurse shout something. She’s saying something to me. Then she turns to call the policeman across the room. I can’t wait a second longer. My legs are heavy and my head throbs, I don’t know if I can bend my legs to go down the stairs, but the chances of getting me in a lift are zero. I push the door next to it and it opens up onto a dark stairwell.
I shuffle down the steps as quickly as I can, but it’s slow going. The door clicks shut behind me. A light flickers on, I hope automatically. I ease my legs down a flight of stairs without falling or hurting myself and then the next light comes on to show me the way as the one behind me turns itself off.
There’s a strange smell in the stairwell, like something rotting or dripping. A dampness that has never dried. The kind of smell you get when natural light never falls and nothing is ever ever properly cleaned. Nothing like a hospital. A memory returns. It’s the 40-year-old Family Heights flat I grew up in. From the outside, it looks wonderful, all pastel colours, but on the inside, are dark stairwells lit at night by humming fluorescent lights. The stucco skin of the walls rots from the inside, beneath the skin of the building. You can clean and spray from the outside all you like, repaint the outside every year before the rainy season, but the cancer within keeps spreading. The bleached-clean corridors and entrance halls of the hospital, the soaring high glass, and plastic grass were there, but with no room for real flowers. It’s a Disneyland of plastics and smooth surfaces where the sick arrive by air-conditioned minivan with carpet seats and curtains to be whisked to their examination room to drink medical milkshakes and be spun around, scanned with the latest technology. The cast members wear white gloves and wave and smile until it’s time to close the gates. But still, something stinks.
A new worry: is there a TV camera watching me? Is a security guard watching my every move? Maybe I’m losing it. Given that I have no mother and father now, it seems unlikely anyone else cares. I’m pretty sure I have something to hide, but apart from the natto in my pocket, I can’t think what it could be.
I go down another flight of stairs and again the lights go off behind me, but new ones flicker into life. A sign saying B2 alongside a picture of a cute penguin pointing over its shoulder to a “P” sign. I push the bar on the door and it opens out onto a vast car park. Car parks mean guards. Feeble old men with light-sticks and an old walkie talkie. But in my state I can’t out-hobble even the oldest of guards. I step back into the stairwell and let the door close on its own compressed air. There are no more floors below. I’m at the bottom. I have no alternative but to take the lift. I guess I haven’t been hobbling vigorously enough, because the light turns itself off, but not before I catch a glimpse of something shiny on the wall on the floor above. I decide to go up. But my body doesn’t want to comply. My legs are telling me to stay down, they can’t remember how to climb. I pick one leg up with my hands and put my weight on it. Then I do the same with my other leg. With this movement, the light comes on again, but goes off by the time I have the energy to move up to the next step. It stays on long enough for me to realise the glare is from a chrome handle that I’d missed on my way down. There’s a door on a landing but no happy faces and no explanation of what it is. No cartoon skeleton pointing to a morgue “Death this way”, but I don’t see why not. I have three more steps to make it, but each one is like the eighth stage of Mount Fuji. High above me, there’s a change of air pressure, a door unlocking. Or a gun. I heave myself up one more step.
A light comes on two flights above me. I go up one more step. I muffle a cry as I stub my toe on the step. Footsteps above me. The sound of boots on concrete. One or two people? They’re getting closer. Another step. One more to go. They‘ll be coming round the corner at any moment. I reach out for the shiny handle and push it weakly. It opens and I fall through the door. I hold on to the handle on the other side and before I can even think, the door closes behind me. I can’t grab it to stop it making a noise. But my gown gets caught in the door. Through a crack of light I can see the boots crunch past, on their way to the bottom of the stairwell. I hear the door below opening and shutting. So. They must be searching the parking deck.
I tug at my gown. It comes free and the door clicks shut. I’m inside an office but it’s colder than any office I’ve ever been in. The floors are bare concrete and the walls are a pinky magnolia. A row of unlit capsules along the length of the room. It’s a giant-sized vending machine, only no one wants what they’re sel
ling. The feet of the dead are behind glass doors. Two bodies here. Three there and a single one further away from the group. The capsules are stacked in fours. I pull one open, and see the cold body of a thin woman wrapped in a cotton yukata. I don’t pull the tray out far enough to see her face. I don’t suppose it makes any difference seeing her face, a dead body is a dead body. But when you see a face, you should say something. But I don’t know what. It’s the kind of situation Uncle Kentaro knows exactly what to do in. “Ah yes, when accidentally encountering the dead, you should throw salt over yourself, pray to the gods and remember to leave a gift.” Something like that. I have no gifts. Unless someone wants the natto roll in the folds of my gown. There’s nothing that needs to be said that can’t fit on a tombstone. Only there are no tombstones. But there is something. Here, just a piece of string tied around her big toe and, at the other end, a brown paper label with a white ring around the hole punched through it. A number and name written in ink. Showa 16. The 16th year of the previous emperor. 1941.
I have an idea. I carefully unwind the string from her big toe and take the label. I bow my head in apology and say, arigatou gozaimashita, thank you. I slide the drawer shut.
I walk along to the right and pull out a capsule on wheels. It rolls out like one of those drawers on compressed air for storing your futon. But there are no sheets or blankets here. Just a cold steel slab. I ease myself onto it and lay down like the old lady. My hospital gown is white, not grey-and-white gingham like the gowns of the dead, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I use my hands on the roof of the capsule to monkey-bar my capsule closed. I hear the door to the morgue opening. I tie the tag to my big toe and lay as still as possible and close my eyes.
Then I remember that the lady I took the tag from has no toe tag. And badly bruised and cut up though I am, I don’t think I’ll pass for a 70-year-old.
Year of the Talking Dog: A Hana Walker Mystery (The Hana Walker Mysteries Book 2) Page 13
