Chapter 15
Aya
“Physician, heal thyself,” said Aya as Emi stretched out on the couch.
It was the wrong joke. Aya was sitting at her mother’s kitchen table, using her laptop to try to make sure they had finalized the right type of accommodations for a guest who was in a wheelchair.
Only two hotels in town had rooms that were not only accessible but also convenient, and the Love Hollow College vacant dorm rooms they had rented out for the rest of the crew were not going to work.
Aya had to pray that nobody had made a mistake and booked out one of those rooms she’d reserved at the Valley Inn and Suites, but when she’d called earlier, the receptionist hadn’t seemed sure about the whole thing.
If she had found a minute to go over there, she could probably have worked it out, but she had been too busy dealing with the festival—the same festival that was behind all those hotel reservations.
If they had taken that room to give to some stupid “celebrity” singer, Aya would have to find a way around it.
Aya’s mom had always panicked when her children were sick. She had one hand on Emi’s back. As soon as she’d come home from the dance studio, she’d rushed over, shocked to find her houseguest ill.
Aya, on the other hand, hadn’t even bothered with a hot shower when they’d come in, soaked to the skin. She’d gone right back to work, but somehow, Emi was the one who had gotten sick.
“Aya, can you put on some water for tea?” asked her mother. There was a note of reprimand in her voice. Japanese American mothers did not let wet children come into their home without rushing them into a hot bath, and tea was almost as essential.
Emi spoke. “Is there an Urgent Care-type place in Love Hollow these days? No, right?”
Her voice sounded terrible. Aya looked up. “Can’t you just go to bed and sleep it off?”
“This level of… shortness of breath could be dangerous,” said Emi. “It could be a PE.”
Aya’s face must have been blank. She could tell her mom didn’t know the term either.
“Pulmonary embolism,” said Emi. “In other words, serious.”
She was leaning over, her head practically on her knees, and Aya blinked. “Pulmonary embolism? What are we supposed to do for that?”
“In the city, I would say ambulance,” said Emi. “But we’re so close to the hospital. Maybe you could just drive me.”
Aya’s mother drove them both. She was worried, her hands shaking as she parked right at the entrance.
Aya walked in with her friend. Emi was rushed right back as soon as they arrived at the Love Hollow United Hospital emergency room, which made Aya feel even worse.
She held Emi’s arm throughout the triage process.
Emi had to shake her off in order to get her blood pressure taken, and the nurse tutted at the numbers.
“It’s a little high, probably because I’m stressed,” said Emi.
The nurse nodded. “Well, let’s get you into a room.”
It must have been the wrong thing to say. Aya thought Emi looked a little paler. And after they were shown to a room, Emi leaned back on the hospital bed.
“What’s going to happen now?” Aya asked as soon as the nurse had left.
It seemed like nobody was explaining anything to her, but she didn’t want to ask.
Everyone seemed to agree with Emi that she might be having a so-called “PE,” and that was sending Aya into a doom spiral. “They can do something soon, right?”
It appeared her questions were still not going to be answered.
“Aya,” said Emi. “I love you. But your panic right now? It’s not helping.”
Aya’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hate hospitals.”
Emi’s breathing was ragged, but she squeezed Aya’s hand. She had been right by Aya’s side as Aya’s dad suffered through cancer treatment, a harsh and devastating regime that hadn’t ended up working. She understood.
“I know hospitals,” she managed. “So go to the cafeteria, and don’t come back until you’ve gotten some work done.”
“Work? I can’t work.”
“Pilgrimage,” said Emi, and she coughed. “Don’t you have more hotel rooms to fix?”
Aya did have various things she could have fixed.
But she had brought only her phone, not a computer, so she found herself in the hospital cafeteria half an hour later, staring at a piece of pumpkin pie.
It put her in mind of Thanksgiving. She hadn’t been thankful for much of anything lately, she realized.
Whatever the opposite of gratitude was seemed to have taken over her life, so much so that she had been sent away from the bedside of her best friend.
Emi had said she wanted to text Charles herself, so Aya didn’t even have that task to distract her. She flicked through different national news sites, feeling progressively worse with each one. But without something else to read, she didn’t know what she would do.
“Hey,” said Noah. “What’s going on?”
Aya almost jumped out of her seat. He was there, wearing black pants and a mauve jacket that must have been borrowed from his brother, concern etched across his face. “Has the doctor seen Emi yet?”
“No,” said Aya. “Though I guess she’s seen herself.”
He smiled. “It’s still so weird to think of her as a doctor. It’s like she went on that trip to China then came back with this crazy obsession with knocking out life milestones all at once.”
Out of loyalty, Aya didn’t say anything, but she had noticed the same thing. When Emi came back from China, she’d definitely seemed depressed. But shortly after, she started looking at property, married Charles, and decided to spend her last days of freedom volunteering for the Pilgrimage.
“She’s worried it might be a lung problem,” said Aya. “How did you know she was here anyway?”
He shrugged. “I could just say Love Hollow, but it’s actually more than that. I owed Twyla a phone call, and she said you guys were here. So now I owe her a favor too.”
Aya touched her pie with a fork and caught Noah looking at her.
“Do you want to talk about some new terms now that we’re both here?” he asked. “Honestly, I really think we can make it work. I just need a little more time.”
She recoiled. Talking with Noah had been such a relief, so peaceful, that it had lulled her into believing they were back in high school.
They used to sit together at lunch every day, sneaking off to eat in different parts of the building.
She knew there were rumors that they did more than eat bento boxes together, but there was nothing to those rumors.
Just being in the same room as Noah had been a balm to her soul and also so electrifying that she could hardly think straight.
“I only want to deal with Grace,” she said abruptly.
He shook his head. “Aya, why not me? Couldn’t we just have a conversation?”
“No,” she said shortly, and she pushed the pie to one side.
“Look, I don’t know what I’m going to do about this festival.
But just thinking about it is making me angry.
The one strategy I had was this amateur photoshoot in the rain, and it seems like I almost killed my best friend trying to get a good angle. ”
“That sounds like something Chen would do,” said Noah, but his grin faded as he saw that Aya was crying.
“Look,” he said, reaching for her hand. “We don’t have to talk about it. I promise. But can I stay?”
“Sure,” she said, too shocked to remove her hand from his grip. Eventually, she had to, daubing at her tears with her sleeve.
Noah got up then returned with napkins. “One minute,” he said. He came back with two steaming Styrofoam cups of tea, a carton of milk, and three sugar packets.
“I did rinse your tea bag,” he said. “But since it’s the second brew, it’s not going to have as much caffeine. So let me know if you want another cup after this.”
She gave him a grateful smile. Since most of the people she’d grown up with were not Japanese, the custom she’d learned from her family of “rinsing” the tea leaves before steeping them in hot water was considered strange.
One of her pet peeves was paying a hefty sum of money for a cup of tea with old leaves that hadn’t been rinsed.
She tended to drink coffee for that reason but figured that Noah had probably made the right call in avoiding the hospital coffee.
“Why did you bring a carton of milk?” she asked. “Are you on a calcium kick?”
He shook his head. “Low-quality tea,” he said, apologetically. “It’s chai too. Plenty of milk and sugar will make it slightly better. Good thing you have pie.”
She instantly felt her lack of manners. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Do you want some?”
He shook his head. “I’m on a cleanse. There’s a photo shoot in a month. The label guys wouldn’t even want me to put sugar in my tea, actually.”
Aya looked disbelieving. “And you’re staying with your family right now, even though you’re on this cleanse thing?”
He gave her a smile, but it looked sad. “Yeah, Dad can’t stand to see me diet. Mom objects on principle, but as long as I’m cooking, she’s less pushy about what I eat.”
Aya smiled. She’d always remembered that about the Kato family.
Though the grandparents and parents took on most of the cooking on weekends, each child had been responsible for one weekday meal from a fairly young age.
Noah had always cooked on Tuesdays, generally chicken curry rice, his favorite.
Aya, whose mother never let her do anything in the kitchen, always found the arrangement rather shocking.
She found herself unable to eat her pie. As it turned out, sitting with someone who was on a work-mandated diet killed her appetite.
“Aya,” said Noah, and she snapped back to herself.
“Hmm?”
“You didn’t kill your best friend,” he said, “or almost kill her.”
She took a sip of the tea, willing herself to calm down. “I was the one who got her out in the rain,” she said. “If not for that, she wouldn’t even be here.”
“Typically, healthy young people don’t have severe lung problems after getting a little wet during a storm,” he said. “I’m not a doctor, but even I know that.”
“Well, she was fine before,” snapped Aya. “So obviously I didn’t intend for this to happen, but you’re not talking me out of what I saw.”
Her phone began to buzz.
“I have to go,” she told him.
She didn’t turn around to see whether he would finish her slice of pie, but as soon as she left, she wished she had taken it with her.