“Here. It should all be here in this wardrobe.”
“Would you hand me my jacket?” She remembered dropping the day planner into the pocket of her buckskin jacket. Unless it had slipped out when she’d fallen, it should still be there.
Hashiba circled around the foot of the bed and retrieved the jacket from the wardrobe. “Is this it?” he asked, proffering it to Saeko across his forearm.
Please, let it be there, Saeko prayed as she reached into the pocket. Her fingers encountered the texture of smooth leather. It is! Without thinking, Saeko hugged the little book to her chest.
“Your day planner?” Hashiba asked. He didn’t seem to realize that Saeko had taken the book from the Fujimuras’ home. As he stood up with Saeko’s jacket over his arm, his expression was one of innocent curiosity.
Saeko didn’t respond. A thought flashed through her mind: I wonder if he’s married?
It was the second time the question had occurred to her.
Night came early in the hospital wing. The overhead lights were switched off at nine o’clock, and the patients were only allowed to keep their bedside lamps on until ten.
Almost two hours had passed since Hashiba had left at the end of visiting hours.
Normally, Saeko never went to bed at this hour. She usually stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m., and to fall asleep any earlier than that she needed a drink. If she stayed in the hospital a while, Saeko was sure she’d get used to the schedule, but it was going to be a challenge falling asleep this first night.
Determined to make herself go to sleep, Saeko turned off her bedside lamp and set down the manuscript she’d been reading on her bedside table. After skimming through her father’s day planner, she had recalled that the article Toshiya had given her was still in her bag and had pulled it out to pass the time.
Just as Toshiya had said, Jack Thorne’s paper specifically addressed the relationship between black holes and information theory. The thesis was that information was the fundamental component of both matter and life and that black holes were a sort of massive information disposal mechanism.
A black hole came into being when a massive star went extinct and its own powerful gravity caused it to get smaller and smaller until it occupied zero space, becoming a sort of rift in space-time. No particle sucked into the hole could escape, including light, meaning that any information in the vicinity was completely swallowed up.
Terrifying though they sounded, Saeko knew that black holes actually existed. There was one close to the center of the Milky Way, near the Sagittarius Constellation, that was 2.5 million times the mass of the sun.
The more Saeko contemplated the vast reaches of space, the further she felt from sleep. As she lay awake on the hospital bed with her eyes closed, the shuffling of slippers interrupted her thoughts. She opened her eyes slightly to the silhouette of an old woman on the curtain that partitioned off Saeko’s bed on three sides. The old woman’s hair was pulled up in a round bun on the top of her head, and her baggy hospital gown made her distorted shadow look like the paper dolls children made to ward off rain.
Saeko had thought the other woman was asleep, but apparently she’d gone to the bathroom and was just now returning. “All right, everyone. Let’s get some shut-eye now!” the woman declared in an oddly cheerful tone as she made her way to her bed.
It was just the two of them in the room. Saeko had heard that the old woman had undergone surgery for a subarachnoid hemorrhage and had been transferred to the general ward two weeks ago for rehabilitation since she was recovering smoothly. Sometimes she suddenly let out joyful little shouts for no obvious reason — perhaps an effect of the stress her brain had been through. At dinnertime she had raised quite a commotion and startled Hashiba by complaining of a huge purple spider on the ceiling.
“Good night,” Saeko responded in a low voice, closing her eyes once more.
Even after lights out, the ward was full of sounds. The old woman rustled her sheets in the next bed over, humming happily to herself. Oogh, an old man moaned in the six-person room across the hallway, as if in pain or having a bad dream. Here and there bedsprings creaked as patients rolled over, and the footsteps of passers-by drifted in from the outward window along with the hum of traffic and the rumble of passing trains.
Having been brought to the hospital unconscious in an ambulance, Saeko knew very little about her surroundings. She had no idea what part of Ina City she was in, or what the rest of the ward was like. The lack of information was vexing. It made her uneasy to be in a place she knew so little about, in an unfamiliar city.
“Nurse, come here, please! Nurse!”
It was the voice of the old man in the room across the hall. He sobbed for help, his voice trembling, even though pressing the call button next to his pillow would have served the same purpose.
“There he goes again,” another voice lamented.
Next, Saeko heard the footsteps of a nurse coming down the hallway, their rhythm slow, as if she were in no hurry. She was probably used to being called in after lights out. Perhaps the old man just wanted some attention. In any case, the others seemed accustomed to his wails.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Yasuda? How many times do I have to tell you to use the call button?”
Saeko could hear the young woman’s low whisper faintly through the door. The old man seemed oblivious to those around him, but the nurse was at least making an effort to be quiet.
Someone began to wheeze in another room, and a number of other patients began to cough, as if triggered by the first. It reminded Saeko of the dogs baying just before the earthquake. Once the first dog started, every dog in the entire neighborhood had chimed in, like flames spreading across a dry field, filling the sky with their ominous harmony.
It wasn’t the noises that prevented Saeko from sleeping. Each individual noise triggered various associations, sparking unwelcome thoughts. The images the sounds triggered weighed her down, dragging her towards the bottom of a dark abyss. She was in no state to sleep.
Saeko tried to think about something fun. It was a trick she often employed when she was having trouble sleeping. She thought about things she was looking forward to or planned imaginary trips to places she wanted to see. Of course, the ideal travel companion would be a handsome man. If she had to pick from the men she knew, a prime candidate was Hashiba. The chances of a woman meeting a man she wouldn’t mind sleeping with were extremely low. When Saeko had first met her ex-husband, she’d felt that way about him, but by the end of their marriage the mere touch of his hand sparked a wave of loathing in her. Perhaps there was no hope of ever meeting a man she would always want to touch. But right now, Saeko felt like the possibility might exist with Hashiba. The kindness he’d shown in this hospital room had spurred the positive emotions she felt toward him. But the fact that he was thirty-five, like Saeko, was a bad sign. The chances of him being single were slim.
Still, she was free to fantasize. Saeko imagined drawing close to Hashiba. It didn’t excite her so much as inspire a slow, melting feeling. She imagined not the act of love, but the resonance of it, his warmth enveloping her. She relaxed her shoulders, then her back, then her arms and legs all the way to her fingers and toes, letting herself drift in the sweet fantasy.
How many hours had passed since she’d turned off her bedside lamp? Saeko wasn’t sure if she’d nodded off for five minutes or an hour. Both of her eyes were still closed, but her mind had popped back into wakefulness. Something had woken her up, but she didn’t know what it was.