Chapter 18
When they arrived at the hospital, Greg noticed that there was a lot of activity going on in and around Declan's room. Doctors and nurses came and went with efficient purpose, their rapidly spoken Japanese a discordant sound while the three of them watched helplessly from the outside.
The opening of the elevator door caught Greg's eye, and he recognized the slightly stooped older man who exited the car as the janitor who had directed them to the Emergency Department a couple of days before. He was no longer dressed in his work clothes. Instead he was dressed simply, yet none too neatly, and passed through the ward unacknowledged by any of the staff. Greg noticed that some of the nurses went so far as to avert their eyes with a look of disgust as he walked past them, and he couldn't help but wonder why. The janitor made his way toward where Greg and the Hanovers stood, and entered Declan's room as if he belonged there.
Suddenly all activity in the room stopped, the pointed voices of the hospital staff dissolving into quiet murmurs. Greg watched in awe as Dr. Nakano and the other doctors and nurses in the room bowed respectfully to the janitor before giving him a wide berth to examine Declan. A myriad of questions flooded his mind: Who the hell is this guy? Why are they deferring to him? The guy's a janitor - what could he possibly do to help?
Declan's parents looked on, seeming to grasp the situation far better than Greg. When the janitor had finished his examination, he conferred with Declan's doctors, who nodded and took notes as he spoke. When he had finished, the doctors and nurses once again bowed in deference to the janitor, who turned and left the room as unobtrusively as he had entered. Greg's eyes followed the janitor as he made his way back to the elevator, ignored by the rest of the staff as if he didn't exist.
As soon as the janitor was gone, the doctors set to work, directing the nurses and ordering medication to replace what was being fed into Declan's IV. When there was a lull in the activity, Greg took the opportunity to ask Mr. Hanover about the janitor and why staff on the ward reacted the way they did to his presence, even as the doctors themselves seemed to hang on his every word.
"The janitor is what the Japanese refer to as buraku, citizens who have been deemed untouchable for any number of reasons." Declan's dad explained. "His ancestors may have been gravediggers or maybe slaughterers. But he is also dokutoru, a doctor. They would never have asked for him to come if they had any other choice. You saw the way the other doctors deferred to him? How they took notes?"
Greg nodded as Mr. Hanover continued. "I didn't catch what the janitor's specialty was, but I could tell by the way the doctors and nurses paid close attention to what he had to say that he knew what he was talking about. And yet once he had done his job, it was obvious that they wanted nothing more to do with him. He knew it, they knew it - and he was used to being treated that way."
Greg pulled the chair up to Declan's bedside as Dr. Nakano met with the Hanovers to discuss their son's case with them, never once mentioning the janitor. He watched as a nurse came in with the new medicine to replace what was hanging from the IV stand and wondered how it was that a simple janitor could know so much more than the doctors on staff yet go through his days barely acknowledged by anyone. He flipped through one of the magazines mindlessly, his thoughts focused on the janitor. He admired what he had seen in the man as he confidently took over from the other doctors in the room, the way the janitor seemingly knew exactly what he was seeing as he examined the patient, then directing Dr. Nakano and the others on how to treat his findings. If I was going to be a doctor, that's the kind of doctor I would want to be, Greg thought.
Several minutes later Declan's parents came into the room, looking far less worried than they had when the three of them had first arrived on the ward. They explained to Greg what the janitor had found during his exam of their son, an infection within Declan's kidneys that had somehow been missed by Dr. Nakano and his staff. Mr. Hanover told Greg that the new medication the janitor had ordered should start to work quickly to stop the infection from spreading, and that Dr. Nakano expected Declan to start to show signs of improvement within an hour or two.