Unbreak My Heart(45)

A few minutes later, he returns. “I tossed them in the trash can on the corner. They’re gone. I don’t need them.”

I can see that he believes what he’s saying, and I can see how far he’s come. But I’ll feel better about us when I’m certain I’m not his crutch, and that I am the woman he can’t live without simply because he loves me. Not because he needs me to keep his demons at bay.

I spend the night curled up in his arms. In the morning, when the sun rises, I leave, saying a silent prayer to the universe that he’ll come back to me at the end of his journey.





28





Andrew



Four days.

Four brutal days where June melts into July and a sticky blanket of heat sinks down on the city as the calendar flips. The streets radiate heat, and the sun throws it right back again, like it’s casting bolts of fire. June was a temptress, a tantalizing geisha with a come-hither wave and a sway of the hips. July, with this cruel combination of intense heat and Holland’s ultimatum, is a wicked stepmother.

Fine, technically Holland didn’t give me an ultimatum, but it feels like one.

Get your shit together or else. Prove to me that you can.

Maybe she was right to ask the tough questions. I’m determined to function without her to prove she’s not the one who stitched my heart back together.

I’m the one.

And in true Peterson fighting form, I’ve crushed it solo-style. The first day after PercocetGate, waking up alone, I snagged a guest pass to a local gym and lifted weights.

Then, I visited that food stall, and Mike and I shot the breeze about music and weather and the latest fish hauls.

The next two days, I buried myself in books, studying for the Bar, heading out only for sushi or noodles, and to wander Shibuya at night, becoming part of the crowds.

Today is Sunday and I venture to the Tatsuma Teahouse, reflecting on my conversation with Kana when we were here. I don’t go inside, but I stop at the end of the stone path before the wrought-iron fence. I gaze at the garden, the trees and bushes, and the small, unassuming teahouse at the edge of a pond.

I squint, trying to see it through Ian’s eyes, to picture how it looked to him the first time he arrived here.

Such a simple place.

But when I reflect back on Kana’s reaction to it, I know this wasn’t an ordinary teahouse. I’m not sure it was mystical but it meant something to Ian. Something important. Something vital to his health, or maybe, vital to his healing.

I remember my own words that day. “Sometimes healing isn’t about our bodies.”

Ian wasn't healing in the conventional sense, but in some ways, perhaps he was recovering.

But what did I do when faced with a shitty hand? Did I take the painkillers for my body?

No, I didn’t.

I took them for another reason. To numb my life. But now as I stare at this teahouse once more, seeing, really seeing Ian here, I don’t feel the potency of that reason so much anymore.

I don’t hang around for long. I’m not a lingerer.

I take off, heading across the city. My destination is the temple my brother went to, since I recognized it as a well-known one from some of the pictures he took.

When I reach it and head up the steps, I bow my head.

I’m not a temple guy, so the bowing doesn't mean much to me personally, but it seems like that’s what you should do when you go inside one.

The silence is eerie. The temple is nearly empty. Only a few people are inside, kneeling on the carpet in front of a small Buddha statue.

Quietly, I wander, inhaling the incense, checking out the candles, trying to imagine what Ian did when he was here. If he sat cross-legged on the red carpet. If he bowed. If he prayed even.

Maybe he became a Buddhist.

Maybe he always was one.

Or maybe he came here for the quiet.

For the contemplation.

Because that’s what I’m doing, I realize. Taking the time to think, to reflect, to ask questions.

I’m not sure I have all the answers yet, but I believe I’m coming closer. I leave and walk around the streets, looking at shop windows, checking out ramen menus, perusing sections of the city I haven’t visited before.

In the afternoon, when the temperature hits eighty-nine, my California soul cries for mercy, and I retreat to the apartment to worship at the altar of air-conditioning and case law.

Kate worked her magic and rescheduled me for the February Bar exam. I hunker down for an hour or two to study for it, but an idea keeps nagging at me.

Tomorrow is my meeting with the doctor. I researched him when Kana first wrote to me, but it wouldn’t hurt to refresh. Like exam prep, you read your notes one more time the day before.

I toggle over to Google and review the basic details.

Dr. Takahashi was educated at Kyoto University, did a residency at Mount Sinai, then studied traditional Chinese medicine, especially herbal treatments for cancer. He’s known for bringing a rigorous mix of Western and Eastern medicine to patients—collaborative cancer treatment, he calls it. I scroll through a journal article he penned on new anticancer drugs and advanced therapies then another one on the roles of nutrition, physical exercise, and emotional health in recovery from the disease. I pause at those words—emotional health.

I push away from the table, wander to the window, and stare six flights down to the trash can where I tossed the pills the other night. I don’t miss them.