How High We Go in the Dark(24)

“Your family really did right by you,” the old woman says. She’s sitting on my single bed surrounded by Gundam robots. She’s studying my father, staring straight into his eyes.

“I didn’t tell them that enough,” I say.

When we leave the orb, I call out to the darkness and pray, thinking about each and every memory I have of my parents. I want to see the moments I never knew, relive the ones I took for granted. The lawyer leaves us to find his family. The man from the theme park heads off in search of the orb where I found him, if it even still exists. But the old woman remains at my side as I’m drawn forward. She begins telling me stories of her thirty years as a nurse, her love affair with a major league ballplayer.

“Once in the dugout,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t care if I was only the side action. It was an exciting time in my life. I was using him, too. Season tickets for five years.”

When a new orb fills our path, I see a doctor talking to my parents in a packed hospital waiting room. On the televisions hanging from the ceiling, a talk-show host blames the plague on the governments of the world, calls it an orchestrated attempt to reduce the population— Less people, more water and food, lower carbon emissions. Think about it! This was the only way they could think of to dig us out of this mess.

“We’ve stabilized him,” the doctor says to my parents. “But you need to understand that most patients at this stage will eventually lose all brain activity.”

“What happened to his skin?” my father asks.

“We don’t know,” the doctor says.

My mother studies the other families waiting, crying, each cluster separated by clear cubicle dividers. A little boy in an enclosed biohazard gurney rolls past, staring dead-eyed at the ceiling. The talk-show host on the television tells his audience that our utilities have been compromised— Don’t drink the water. Don’t take public transit. They say the plague isn’t airborne anymore. Okay, maybe. But they’re sure as shit getting the virus to people somehow. And do I need to say it? Cut out the goddamn sushi. Cut out all food coming from over there—Russia, Asia, all the first epicenters. If you don’t hunt it, don’t trust it. I see my mother looking down when the talk-show host says this, the waiting room filled with other Asian families.

“Surprisingly, our readings show that his brain is incredibly active,” the doctor explains. “We’ve been seeing wave spikes before activity flatlines.”

“Can he hear us?” my father asks.

“We can’t know for sure, but he’s in there somewhere, dreaming.”

Suddenly the orb shakes, the scene shifts to a hospital room I’m sharing with a dozen other patients. A plastic partition surrounding my bed prevents my parents from holding me.

“Find a way back to us. Believe. Any moment now. Wake up, Jun. Wake up now,” my father says.

The remaining memories, snapshots of the world, cluster and wither into the ether, the last fragments of light extinguishing like the afterglow of fireworks. The crowd is silent, shuffling about in the darkness once again.

“What the hell was that about?” someone finally says. “If we can’t fucking change anything.”

“I had forgotten a lot of my childhood,” the lawyer says. “I got to see my grandparents. Friends I hadn’t thought about in years.”

“Maybe we understand each other more now that we’ve sampled each other’s lives,” the old woman says, as if she’s standing on a soapbox at a protest. “Maybe we can be kinder to one another.”

“Again, lady,” someone says, “what good does that do in the world if we’re trapped here?”

“Maybe it’s a sign we’re supposed to go back?” I answer.

“Maybe this is where we need to be,” someone else says. “I can relive my life with my husband.”

“I had shit to do, you know?” the felon says. “I got a fucking life.”

I can feel his breath behind me. My eyes are still adjusting to the dark.

“He’s right. I mean, how many of us have families?” the bus driver says.

“I have a son,” someone else adds. “He’s working for Doctors Without Borders to help the plague relief efforts. The French have a drug that might slow the transformation of internal organs. Not a cure, but the drugs are being piloted in hard-hit villages in the South Pacific.”

“Give me a break. Nobody knows how this virus works,” says a man with an Australian accent.

Silence fills the crowd for a moment.

“I was watching my little cousin. We were playing Twister. I put a Band-Aid on him when he fell. I don’t know. Maybe it was the contact. Maybe I accidentally drank out of the wrong juice glass,” I explain.

“I slept with someone who turned out to be infected,” someone else says.

“What if this is some kind of punishment?” the felon says.

“I’m pregnant,” someone says. “I’m due next month. What could my baby possibly have done to deserve this? You tell me that.”

For the first time in who knows how long, I sit down on the ground (or space or whatever it is). Something like static electricity fills my body, and I wonder if this is it—perpetual bickering, wallowing, or if, perhaps one day (whatever time counts for here), we’ll find another way to occupy the dark, figure out how to fill it with all we were and all we know, now that we’ve been separated from the slog of life. But right now, all I want to do is cry, for myself, for my parents who I never thanked enough, for the long days and nights they’ll spend beside my body, waiting. I see my mother bringing flowers to my room, my father reading stacks of my stories, practicing his English. Maybe he’ll read the one I wrote about a salaryman in Osaka who falls asleep on the train and wakes in a world that has forgotten who he is. The old woman, no doubt searching for my presence, brushes her hand over my head. I let her frail fingers rest on my shoulders.