The Last Leaves Falling (35 page)

“I hope you’re hungry.”

As she turns away, I see what it will be like when I am gone: an empty table in my mind’s eye, and my mother standing here alone with a pot too big for single portions.

Will she turn, expecting me to be here? Ask the empty room to taste her food?

I picture her sitting here in the silence, listening to one less set of chopsticks against china, and I hate it. I want to scream at her to get out. Run. Sit in cafés and restaurants and sweaty, thumping nightclubs. Anything to not be here alone. I want her to promise me, right now.

But she’s humming to herself, almost happy, and I can’t take that away.

88

Mai and Kaito would not stay to hear the details of my plan. I understand, I do, it is a lot to take in, and even more to ask of them, but we have not spoken since, and I
wish
they’d come online.

What if they tell their parents? Mine? What will happen then?

Will I be locked away inside some psychiatric ward? Strapped to a bed until my body holds me prisoner all by itself?

Or maybe they won’t tell, but they’ll hide from me until it is too late. Until I could not swallow anything they tried to give me anyway.

Would they still come to visit?

I log in to an open chat room, try to fill my head with familiar voices, lose myself in other people’s chatter; other people’s chatter, but above them all my inner voice is screaming out in fear.

Meekkat:
I give you: PIE.

BambooPanda:
Did you MAKE that?

Chocol8pocky:
WOW

Meekkat:
Yup. In HomeSkills. It is chocolate cherry.

LikesEmWithSparkle:
That’s AMAZING Meekkat. Good work!

Chocol8pocky:
GIMMEE

BambooPanda:
CHOCOLATE cherry? How do you do that?

Meekkat:
Sorry, pocky, I already gave it to my sister.

Meekkat:
I put in squares of chocolate with the cherries, silly.

BaSeBaLlWiNs:
O_o if you could make like, a dozen of those, you’d have a whole team fighting over you.

Chocol8pocky :
Awww :(

Meekkat:
Hahaha, but Baseball, pie makes u fat. It is not good for athletes.

BaSeBaLlWiNs:
PIE IS VERY GOOD FOR HUNGRY ATHLETES! Pie and pizzas and ice creams. Don’t you know that’s why we play?

BaSeBaLlWiNs:
Especially THAT pie.

Meekkat:
Awww, thanks ^_^ Maybe I will make some more and then invite you over sometime.

It does look exceptionally good, golden pastry and shiny purple cherries. I wish that I could make one. Three: for Mama, Mai, and Kaito. And I’d write messages on top in extra pastry. “I love you.” “I’m Sorry.” “Everything will be all right.”

And, at least until they’d finished eating, they’d believe it, and everything
would
be all right. Because the pastry does not lie.

•  •  •  •

“Why?” Kaito’s determined face fills my screen.

“Because—” But too many answers crowd my brain, half-finished and unutterable.

“See! You don’t
know
. You can’t just
do
this!”

“I’m not—”

“No, Sora, you are. And I just don’t understand how you
of all people
could throw your time away.”

Me of all people? What’s that supposed to mean?

“Sorry?”

“You already have limited time. It sucks. It’s stupid. But why would you throw that away? Why aren’t you grabbing every single second that you have and clinging on?”

“I . . . Because . . .”

“Because what?
Tell me, please,
because I’m trying to understand how you could do it. Even
before
you add asking your friends to commit
murder
. Fuck, dude! That’s what this is. You’re asking me to pull the trigger.”

“It’s not like that!”

“It is! In the eyes of the law, and the blood on my hands, it is!”

He’s so indignant, so
sure
, that I want to punch him, to scream at him that at least his stupid games would be useful for something then. Target practice for the real thing.

But I don’t. I take a deep breath and I look him in the eye and say, “It’s not that simple, there isn’t actually a legal—”

“Ugh! Not the point, even without all that, even just the you-leaving-everything-behind part, I’m
trying
to understand Sora, but I can’t. I can’t, I can’t,
I can’t
.”

I think of Yamada-san, lying in that hospital bed, gasping, desperate, trapped and reliant. Which is worse:
arguably-murder
, or that? And I have an idea.

“Let me show you?”

89

After the usual questions—How are you? How is the pain?—we fall quiet, and I know she’s waiting for me to start the conversation. But I don’t know how.

The bonsai’s trunk looks pale and weak, as though the centrally heated air has sapped the life from it, and I wish that I could open a window and help it to revive.

Doctor Kobayashi shifts in her chair, half-watching me, waiting.

I take a breath, and break the silence. “I’ve been thinking.”

She stops her idle half-stare to really look at me.

“Yes?”

“It’s about the wishes.”

“Yes?” Her eyes brighten, and I’m almost sorry for what I’m going to ask.

“There’s something I want to do, but it’s . . . not your normal wish.”

“What is it? The foundation is very good. I’m sure that we could make a plan.”

“I . . . actually, I don’t think Wish4Life will help me. I was hoping
you
might.”

“Oh?”

“Mister Yamada-san . . .” Something careful and guarded flickers across her face, and I know I have to watch my words, choose carefully. “He was all alone,” I say, thinking,
and hurt and scared and it was far too late.
“I don’t want that.”

“Okay?”

“But I can’t let it destroy my friends. I need to prepare them.”

“Prepare them?”

“For seeing me like that. I need them to know what it will be like. What I’ll be like.”

She sighs, picks up a pen I hadn’t noticed from the table, and twirls it in her fingers. I do not think I’ve ever seen her this unsettled. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

“I want to show them.”

“You want,” she speaks slowly, emphasizing every word as though it’s foreign on her tongue, “to bring your friends here? To the ICU?”

“Yes.”

The pen stills. She is a sika deer, caught in the hunter’s lamplight. “I’m sorry. I don’t think it is possible.”

“You did it for
me
.”

“That was different. You’re a patient. I’m looking after your well-being.”

I know I should be quiet. Bow my head, accept her answer. But I do not have the time for such politeness anymore. “And I’m still your patient. I need this. Please.”

She frowns. Was that hesitation in her eyes, or shock that I would speak against her? It is gone before I can decide, so I push further. “
Please.
Help me? It is my dying wish.”

She does not answer right away, and I know I’ve got her.

I see the decision settle just behind her eyes, and then she gives me a thin smile full of duty, not of joy. “I will see what I can do.”

90

Somehow, Doctor Kobayashi got permission from the patients and their families, and so the next weekend, instead of sitting in my room, we board a train to the hospital. My friends are nervous. Mai is chewing on a strand of hair, swinging her legs beneath her chair, and Kaito has not said a word since we left the house. I stare out of the window, try to ignore the sharp-toothed nerves battling in my stomach as the city rattles past.

We brought flowers, which sit heavy and fragrant on my lap; a huge bunch of oranges and reds that look a little like the autumn trees. I remember that room, and if we can do a little bit to brighten it, maybe I will not feel so bad for this.

Kai draws the air in through his teeth, looks at me with this sad anger, and pushes it back out again.

“I’m sorry,” I say, quietly so nobody else in the carriage can hear. “I’m sorry I had to ask, and that you’re here, but I need you to know why.”

Mai tries to smile. “I need to, too.”

“What if we say no?”

The nerves bite harder. I don’t know what to say. What
if
?

“What if we see everything and we say no?” he asks again.

“I don’t know.”

•  •  •  •

The doors slide open and Kaito wheels me into the familiar rancid air of hospital corridors.

Beside me, Mai’s nose wrinkles, and if I weren’t so nervous, I would laugh.

“Which way?”

“Right.”

We walk past the reception desk, follow the brightly colored arrows to the elevator, and along the corridor again.

“All these people,” Mai whispers, “are they all sick?”

“Some,” I say as we pass a gray-haired woman slowly staggering along with a walker and an IV stand. “Some are probably just visiting.”

We round the final corner. Up ahead is the ICU. The door is firmly shut, but I imagine I can hear the sucking of fake lungs, beeping monitors, and groans, which only serve to make the overlaying silence louder. And suddenly I’m not so sure.

“We don’t have to do this.”

“Yes we do.” Kaito’s voice surprises me. “I do. I need to know how you could even think—”

Mai reaches out to squeeze my hand. “Me too.”

We pass the door, and glide on toward Doctor Kobayashi’s room, where she greets us with a wide smile, too big for her face.

“Good morning. You must be Sora’s friends.”

“Good morning, Kobayashi-san.” They bow.

“Come in.” She opens her door wider, gestures to two cushioned chairs that she has placed beside the coffee table.

Once we are settled, Doctor Kobayashi perches opposite. “Okay. So, I assume you both know why you are here?”

“They do,” I answer hurriedly, before my friends say something that will give my plan away.

Doctor Kobayashi ignores me and continues. “You’re going to meet some people who are . . . well, they’re very sick.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay with this? It might be shocking.”

She explains that we’ll be going into the ICU, where the patients are sick enough to need special care; that there will be tubes and monitors and one of the three men in the room can’t speak at all. That even though they’re all much older and don’t have exactly the same thing as me, there is one patient who has something similar, neurodegeneration of some kind. And she tells them that some of the treatments will be much the same as I might be given in the future. “We’ll come back here when we’re done, and I’ll try to answer any questions that you have. Okay?”