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  • Friends
  • Youmi Park (bio)

My friend Nanako is about to become a doctor. I’d never want her to be my doctor, even if I were desperate, even if I were already dead. It’s like when you make a joke about something awful happening and it’s all funny until that awful thing actually happens—she doesn’t have the sensitivity, the heart. I just didn’t think it would be that easy for my friend Nanako to become a real doctor.

We had cake today out on a patio deck of a posh little café in Daikanyama. The place was too pricey for me to go to without feeling guilt. For similar reasons, I usually don’t visit Tokyo, but Nanako promised that this café, this part of town, was the place to be—the place if you were anyone.

“Anyone like who?” I asked.

“Anyone worth … blah-blah,” she said. “You get it. Just shut up and eat. It’s my treat.”

Over her shoulder I could see the hospital. She is finishing up her clinical training there before her six-year program ends. It’s not a very tall facility, but quite wide, spreading languidly over a patch of city like a spider splattered by a swat. A promising young architect designed the place, Nanako told me on the phone. He’s now building a planetarium atop a little hill on the west side of the hospital and putting a twelve-foot telescope in it. “Cute, right?” Nanako said. “You must visit.”

So here we were. Nanako had just finished her afternoon rotations and looked more tired than I was used to seeing her. Her makeup seemed to hover over her face, and her Swarovski hairpin was drooping to the side. The skin above her upper lip was pink and dry, a remnant of the eczema she suffered from as a child and for which she constantly blames her mother.

“Our house was always too clean. I had no immunity to the real world,” she says. “She’d even sterilize her nipple every time she breastfed me.”

We’ve known each other for a long time, long enough that I can remember Nanako’s mother rubbing our toddler bodies down with disinfectant any time we went in or out of their house. So long, I think, that we’ve become greedy with what we share and what we expect each other to gauge from what we do not share.

Like at the café: I watched Nanako lick tiramisu off her fork in a manner that I’d describe as pensive, suggestive. Her lips pouted. I said nothing, concentrating on the 1,600-yen cheesecake in front of me. She tapped her cheek with the tines of her fork until finally, sighing deeply, she said, “I’m having a bad day.” [End Page 112]

I didn’t really care to hear more. Whenever Nanako tells me about her bad days, I feel like I lose more than I gain. An ankle-deep puddle can ruin her day, an unruly cowlick ruins her week. Last month was the worst month of her life because a lounge she frequents stopped serving her favorite cocktail.

But we all have our obligations. “What’s gone wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Tell me, please. I’m dying to know.”

Nanako laid down her fork on her napkin and stroked the handle with her index finger. “I had the worst rotation today,” she said. “It wasn’t supposed to be, but it was. I was supposed to observe an open lobectomy with this salt-and-pepper-haired pulmonologist, but I get there with this other girl and he says no. No, we cannot come into the OR.”

“That sounds awful,” I said. “Just awful.”

Nanako nodded sincerely. “The patient’s parents aren’t comfortable with us newbies hovering over their son,” she said, “which I find offensive because I know more than those parents do. Still, the answer is no. The pulmonologist tells us instead to get to the East Wing and he gives us these.”

She reached into her red bag and pulled out a series of field guides and pamphlets...

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