Hashiba looked overjoyed that Saeko had regained consciousness, and his haggard face flushed with color.
“I’m so glad you’re awake!” He looked almost tearful with relief. Immediately, he hit the call button to summon the nurse. He had been instructed to let the doctors know as soon as Saeko woke up.
It took less than a minute for the nurse to arrive, but as they waited, Hashiba gave Saeko a quick rundown of how an ambulance had picked her up at the Fujimura residence.
At 3:54 that afternoon, an earthquake with an intensity of between four and five on the Japanese scale had struck the Suwa Lake area. Nobody had been killed, but a number of homes right at the epicenter at Suwa Lake had been damaged. A handful of people who had been unluckily struck by falling objects had been injured, including Saeko. The ambulance had taken her to the Emergency Room at the Ina General Hospital. All together, five people who had been injured in the earthquake had been brought here.
In the ambulance, the paramedics had made sure Saeko’s airway was open so that she could breathe. As soon as they arrived at the hospital, they had hooked her up to an IV, measured her blood pressure, and assessed her breathing. With all of the emergency staff working together, it had taken mere minutes. They had proceeded to give Saeko a CT scan, and the entire process was finished in just twenty minutes.
The CT scan revealed that there was no lethal damage to her brain. There was some concern over the fact that she had remained unconscious for two hours. The doctors worried that she might show symptoms of subdural hemorrhage or a cerebral contusion and deemed it necessary to monitor her carefully.
Saeko had been moved into one of the standard hospital rooms, with a curtain that screened off her bed from the other bed. Her breath and heart rate were being recorded by a monitor next to the bed, but she couldn’t read the display from where she lay.
The nurse called in Saeko’s doctor, and Hashiba stood up quickly to make room. The doctor checked the numbers on the monitor and asked Saeko various questions. He seemed satisfied by her responses.
“Yes, yes …” he nodded vigorously.
Encouraged, Saeko asked a question of her own. “Doctor, how much longer do I need to stay here?” The words came out in a tumble.
“If you’d only been unconscious for a few minutes, we would have classified it as a minor concussion. But two hours is rather long. You may feel fine right now, but it’s safest to assume that you’ve experienced some brain damage. We don’t want to run the risk of bringing on serious complications later, so we’ll need you to stick around until we can be sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
With a slight groan, Saeko shut her eyes and conjured up an image of her day planner.
Today and tomorrow are fine because I’m supposed to be working on the TV project. But I need to be in Gifu the day after to report on a different project …
“How long will the tests take?” Saeko asked.
“At least three days, a week at the longest.”
Saeko shuddered at the thought of being shut up in the hospital for a week. After the report in Gifu, she needed to write up her article and send it in to the magazine, and then she was scheduled to head up to Hokkaido for a different project. No matter how she looked at it, there was no way to extend the deadlines.
“Please take it easy. We need to keep an eye on you for a little while.”
With that, the doctor gave the nurse a few words of instruction and they both filed out.
Hashiba disappeared after them but returned moments later, dejectedly taking a seat once more at Saeko’s bedside.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, bowing deeply.
Saeko was startled. Why was he apologizing to her? “For what?” she asked.
“This wouldn’t have happened to you if I hadn’t asked you to come here.” Hashiba’s hands were on his thighs, his elbows bowed out to the side. His head was so low, it was almost right in front of Saeko’s face.
“It was just bad luck. And I should’ve been more careful.”
“But if you hadn’t been there, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Saeko didn’t really care that she’d gotten injured. She wasn’t in pain, and she felt completely normal. The main issue was the trouble it would cause if she had to stay at the hospital for too long. But she bit back on her frustration and asked after the staff instead.
“Was everyone else okay?”
“Yes, fortunately,” Hashiba assured her. Saeko alone had drawn the short straw.
“What about the project? Did you get some good footage?”
When Saeko brought up the show, Hashiba almost leapt to his feet. “Did we ever!” he began, before quickly checking himself. He shook his head, realizing how insensitive it was to get excited about the footage they’d gotten when a member of the team was incapacitated.
“As a collaborator, it would make me glad if you did,” Saeko reassured him.
“I don’t know if you’d call it good footage, but we definitely captured some interesting material. Do you remember what happened? Shigeko Torii predicted the earthquake right before it happened. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day — capturing a prediction, and then having it realized and getting the whole thing on camera.”
“But does that bear any relationship to the missing persons case?”
“Ms. Torii has given us some descriptions that are good hints as to the family’s current whereabouts. We plan to look for places corresponding to her descriptions tomorrow and the next day to get some footage at those locations.”
“I hope you find something.”
“Yes, that would be great. But even if we don’t, we have a perfectly viable show. Thanks to you, Saeko.”
“Not at all. I’m so sorry I wasn’t more helpful …” Saeko had been scheduled to attend the filming tomorrow as well, but that wouldn’t be possible now.
“Don’t worry about that. Just rest and take it easy. And please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. What about your family? Do you want me to call them and explain what happened?”
Saeko looked the other way with a forlorn smile. “I don’t have a family,” she informed him.
“What?”
“There’s no one to contact.”
Hashiba looked disconcerted as he took in this information. If nothing more, at least he knew now that Saeko was single.
“In that case, let me get you whatever you need. The hospital shop has pretty much everything.” Memo pad in hand, Hashiba waited for instructions, but Saeko hesitated.
Even without checking, she could already tell. The nurses had changed her out of the clothes she had been wearing earlier, leaving only her underwear, and dressed her in a hospital gown. The travel bag Saeko had left in the van was by the side of the bed. It had a change of clothes in it, but since Saeko had expected to spend only one night away from home, she hadn’t brought any feminine hygiene products. Psychological duress always made Saeko’s period come early. But she found herself unable to tell Hashiba what she needed most at the moment.
Besides, I can ask the nurse later …
Saeko decided against asking for sanitary products and instead told Hashiba, “I’m thirsty.”
“Fine. I’ll get you some juice or something.”
“Thank you. Just a minute,” she said as Hashiba rose to leave. “What happened to the clothes I was wearing when I got here?” For some reason, talking to Hashiba reminded Saeko of her father, and she’d remembered the old day planner she had been looking at when the earthquake struck.