I was doing what I usually did at this time of day; sitting around, reading medical files of the few patients I had helped with, spacing off and humming whatever song happened to be stuck in my head at the time. This time, it was Something by Escape the Fate.
Out of sight, out of mind
We've been through this a thousand times
Turn your back and then you make me feel so crazy
Can you help me understand?
I turned to look at the clock – I had about three more hours until my shift ended. Since this was a small town, there really wasn't much going on every day. We'd get a few emergency room false alarms, maybe, but nothing really much more than that. Yes, we had patients, because there were always those that had somehow contracted pneumonia or bronchitis or meningitis and there were always our cancer patients and the careless kids on the skateboards, but that wasn't enough to fill a whole hospital and a 2050-person staff for 24 hours.
Still being a medical student who was training at a hospital, most of the time, I got left out of the really exciting stuff, since "I have no experience" but that's not really much of a how I learn, either. Either way, I didn't really care. I was only interested in specializing in psychiatry after I finally get my official medical license, when I graduate – that will be in two years - and the nearest psych ward – real psych ward - was in Tokyo – more than 200 miles away.
Granted, we had sort of a mock-psych-ward here, but it had all of five people admitted in it and they were just depressed and slightly suicidal and that's why their family took them here. All they really needed on a daily basis was their daily anti-depressants and a piece of paper to write their thoughts out; most of them didn't really like talking. The nurses' station at this psychiatry unit was currently my hang-out place, as my eyes glanced over the Japanese writing on post-it notes. I was very fluent in this language, though it still took me a moment or so to translate the writing. This wasn't my first time in Japan, though my first time working/living in it. I'll stay here for another 2 to 2 and a half months before the semester ends and I return home to my little Chicago suburb.
I sighed as I glanced at the clock once more. I had already been asked if I had wanted to go home early, because of our lack of work today, but there really wasn't much to do where I lived, either. At least here at the hospital, I felt like I was doing something useful with my time.
The phone rang on the desk on the nurse's station, snapping me out of my trance. I cleared my throat and switched to my professional, no-nonsense voice that I use all the time when answering the phone at the hospital – it always made me feel so bad ass.
"Dr. Owens here," I answered in the voice I'd practiced so many times over and over to the bathroom mirror of my little, studio apartment.
"Ah, just the person I was looking for," a cheery voice answered from the other line.
"Dr. Sasaki?" He was the one who showed me around the hospital and introduced me to a bunch of people on my first day. I usually get most of my "assignments" from him, so getting a call gave me this giddy, excited feeling in my stomach. Since I was a student and not specialized in any one field of medicine, they had me all over the hospital, wherever they needed help. One day, I might be in the surgery recovery room, and I might find myself in the oncology ward the next. It was always a surprise.
"Are you busy right now, Dr. Owens?" he asked.
"No, not at all."
"Good. Meet me on the third floor as soon as you can get down here. You have a new assignment."
I found Dr. Sasaki in front of an exam room with the "#3" painted on a little sign hanging from a file holder.
"The patient is a twenty-six-year-old male who claims he isn't feeing well," he explained handing me a medical file that said Hibari Kyoya on the tab.
"What's wrong with him?" I asked, taking the file. I was amazed at how…how light it was.
"That," he placed a hand on my shoulder, "is your job today. Diagnose him."
He slid open the door and pushed – yes pushed like shoved – me in the room, causing me to lose my balance and almost face plant onto the cold, linoleum floor.
"Goodness gracious," hissed under my breath in English, before noticing my patient, who was staring at me with his head cocked to one side and an eyebrow raised. Before anything else, I momentarily had taken in his appearance. He had stunning, dark blue-gray eyes, a near-perfect skin complexion, and a sleek cap of black hair. He was wearing a white button-down dress shirt and black dress pants. A dressy black jacket was draped over the chair in the exam room, though he was sitting on the table.
"Konichiwa," I smiled, trying to act like nothing happened. "I'm Bethany Owens and I am your doctor for today."
"Nice to meet you," he smiled – I shouldn't say smiled. Smirked, more like. A slight upward twitch at the corner of his mouth does not make a smile.
I flipped through the pages of his medical chart. Annual check-ups, vaccinations, and a few flu shots were documented, but nothing other than that. He's never had to have been on any serious medications, or anything that's had to be prescribed.
"So, Dr. Sasaki tells me that you haven't been feeling well lately?" I asked.
"That's correct. I've just been a little…under the weather and decided to seek medical help, just to be cautious," he explained.
"I see."
I stood there for a moment, trying to remember what I should do next. Physicals, physicals, physicals, physicals, physicals. I tried to ring up in my mind the voice of my professors' lectures about this. Okay, he says he's sick. Temperature! An elevated temperature is always a sure sign of a disease! I walked over and rested the back of my hand on his forehead (after battling with his long, shaggy bangs, of course).
"Well," I began, "You do feel a little warm."
I turned my back to rifle through the egg-shell-colored cabinet behind me for one of those thermometer covers.
"You're not a doctor," he stated from behind me.
"Excuse me?"
"You're not really a doctor," he stated. "You don't have an ID badge, for one, and two, when you walked in, you just introduced yourself as Bethany Owens and not Dr. Bethany Owens. How are you even allowed back here?"
"You're observant," I agreed. "I still have two more months of medical school before I can get my official license. I'm training over here right now. This is my make-it-or-break-it test. If I completely fail here, I can kiss my license goodbye."
"So I'm a guinea pig?"
I whirled around and the smirk on his face rose into a sarcastic smile.
"No...Yes….no…yes…no," I paused. "Sort of…I guess."
"Just wondering," he said, never dropping the smirk. "Are you going to check my temperature or not?"
I had completely forgotten about the thermometers in my hand. "Uh…yeah! Yes."
I gave him the thermometer to place under his tongue and turned so my back was to him and pretended to read something in his file.
Shit, Bethany! Get it together! I screamed at myself.
It was only a few seconds after that that the timer on the thermometer beeped. I turned around to take it from him and read the temperature it had detected.
"38.5?" I was shocked before I remembered that they used Celsius and the metric system here in Japan. "Oh…101.3. So you've got a little bit of a temperature."
"What's the 101.3 for?"
"Fahrenheit. It's what's used in normal households in America and what I grew up with. In Fahrenheit, 98.6 is the normal body temperature, so yours is definitely elevated."
It was silent for a moment as I wrote his temperature down and thought of what else needed to be done.
Heart rate.
"Damn," I said under my breath and I looked around my neck and remembered that my stethoscope was still up in my corner of the psych ward's nurses' station. "Can you tilt your head back just a little, please?"
He did as I told and I placed two fingers on the side of neck where his jugular vein would be and felt around for a moment or so until I felt a small, repeated thump under his skin. I looked down at my watch and counted the number of times his pulse gave my fingers a little tap in that ten silent seconds.
"100," I concluded. "Slightly elevated to fight off a disease."
He kept a straight face.
"Have you…" I thought for a moment. "Had a bad cough lately? Congested sinuses? Been feeling icky? Achy muscles, maybe? Sore throat? Headache?"
"All of the above except the cough and congested sinuses."
"Hmm," I thought for a moment longer. "From the symptoms you've described, I'd say you have nothing really to worry about. It sounds like it's just a seasonal cold. I'd say maybe take a pain reliever for the headache and sore throat and get plenty of fluids and rest and you should be fine after a few days. But of course, if you don't get better and/or other more serious signs occur, please do not hesitate to give us a call. One thing they emphasized a lot in Med School was that even something as simple as a small seasonal cold, if left untreated, can get very nasty very quick."
"Miss Owens," a bass voice rang from the door, making me jump. I turned quickly to see the hospital direction – which we just called Director, since his name was so long no one could really remember it. "Hibari-san!"
I stared blankly.
"They put you with a novice doctor not even out of medical school?" Director exclaimed, looking around.
I sighed. "Here we go," I hissed in English under my breath.
After a minute or so of the Director's yelling, Dr. Sasaki appeared just outside the door. "Do you know how important this patient is to the community? And you put him with an under educated, under qualified doctor? Do you know how embarrassing this is on behalf of me and the entire hospital?"
Does he know how embarrassing this is for me, as I could feel my patient's eyes gazing at the tears forming in mine?
"In her defense, Director, she will be graduating in less than two months," I was ecstatic that Dr. Sasaki stood up for me. He flashed me a small smile. "She is perfectly qualified to diagnose and treat this patient."
"No, Dr. Sasaki, she is not. Apparently, you do not understand! This patient is much too important to be left in the hands of this amateur "doctor" that does not know what she's doing!"
"I give up," I snapped.
"Excuse me?" both of them said at once.
"I'm sick and tired of your bullshit," I hissed. "So I'm going home. Hopefully hospitals in America that I apply for will understand why I don't know what to do for anything, since I never learned. So I'll go back to college and change my major, though I'm already up to my eyes in student loans I will probably die before I pay off. You don't want me here, and I'm not stupid. I'll leave."
I walked away, out the door, out to my car.
Graduation came and went smoothly. I was, in fact, able to find a psychiatric hospital that was willing to train me to become a psychiatrist, and not just a medical doctor like well-rounded med school had required. I had a kick-ass job, which meant a steady paycheck, my own place, my hometown only fifty miles away, which meant I could come home anytime. It was the end of my shift when I was walking out to my car and taking in just how blessed I'd been.
But there was still something missing, something else I found myself needing. Ever since that fateful meeting day, when I'd stormed out of that hospital, never to look back, his stormy blue eyes had been stuck in my mind.
I sighed. There wasn't really much I could do about it now – I didn't even remember his name.
I remember fumbling with my keys, looking for the one that went with the ignition, when I heard screaming…and everything just went black….
"An escaped convict?" I asked, astounded, as I sat up more in my hospital bed.
Dr. Jones nodded. "The damages could have been much worse, had it not been for the young man that saved you, of course."
"Who? Anyone I would know?"
"I don't know. He left before we had a chance to ask him who he was. Though he returned a few hours later, we couldn't get his name."
"Why did he return?" I asked.
"To make sure you were okay…and to tell us to give you these," Dr. Jones took a bunch of small pink flowers from a nurse. "There's a note attached to it."
"Cherry blossoms," I whispered, though Dr. Jones had already left the room. The note had calligraphic Japanese writing on the front, saying "happiness". I opened the note slowly and softly read it aloud:
To the most professional doctor who'd ever treated me.
Please feel better soon.
-Kyoya.
"The Sakura festival in Namimori is soon, if you can find the time to come back to Japan," a distinct voice that stuck out in my memory said – in Japanese, mind you – from the door. "I know of the best place to watch the fireworks."
I looked up, seeing the stormy-blue eyes that had haunted my memories since I left that little Japanese town.
Kyoya. I would never forget that name, I realized, smiling.
He smiled back at me from the doorway, another bunch of cherry blossoms in his hands.