EDGE (16 page)

“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.

“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.

14
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.

Without opening her eyes, Saeko probed with her other senses to gauge her surroundings. The space was full with a strange presence. There was a wall behind Saeko’s head and the other three sides of the bed were curtained off. To her left, the curtain nearest the hallway was fluttering gently. She could feel the faint breeze caused by its movement against her cheek.

Someone had pushed through the curtain and come inside.

That someone was standing right next to Saeko’s bed, looking down at her. Saeko could sense it clearly even with her eyes shut. The image crystallized in her consciousness and bore down on her.

She tried to raise a hand but couldn’t move, tried to cry out but found her throat constricted. Even her eyelids were paralyzed, and she couldn’t open them. Perhaps this was what it felt like to fall into a black hole—she had lost all control of her body. It was the same intense sleep paralysis that she always suffered.

She could hear the intruder breathing in and out, not in one spot, but slowly crawling across the room, low to the floor. The presence gave off a familiar stench, and Saeko knew exactly whose smell it was. A sour smell, like rancid sweat.