THERE IS NOTHING to fear, she tells herself. She heads along the path, toward the little red footbridge. The Garden is tranquil; it’s the middle of a school day, a work day, and there is an audible lack of family or tourist noise. A discreet cricket or two, a muted breeze through a world-famous variety of trees, loosening their dying autumn leaves. The river wholly still, as if empty of life. It’s just as she hoped this time. This is the experience she’s come for. This serenity, this peace. She inserts a quarter in the almost-empty gumball machine, receives her pellets of food. There’s a flicker in the river, perhaps a trick of current and algae and sungleam. Then, that’s all. She exhales, steps upon the red wooden slats of the bridge. A tailfin flaps; by the time she is midway across the bridge a single fish has appeared, its black-and-white spotted fish skin clearly visible through the clear liquid green. A small koi, sweet, perhaps not fully grown. It raises its mouth to the surface, partly open, polite, a hopeful request without insistence or force. She drops a few pellets into the fish’s mouth and watches it swim away, appeased. Then another mouth appears; another fish, this one marked in pretty lemon stripes, has surfaced without causing a ripple in the water, must have swum straight up from the murky below. The first fish returns, quietly, its mouth apologetic and grateful. The beauty and tranquillity of koi, how true. She decides to spend another quarter on another fistful of food. She steps back on the bridge and there, the flapping begins again, more and more fish now, the river is abruptly alive with their thrashing and foam, their garish colors mottling the green. Those appalling mouthtubes, thrusting out of the water at her. She shakes her hand over them, releasing the food straight down into gullets, but their frenzy grows. The large red one lunges up, its black, yellow-gleam eyes glaring. It remembers her, she is sure. She looks around for help — where are the families, the tourists? The food is all gone; she searches in her pockets for something, finds only an empty cellophane wrapper and hard bits of, what? She scoops the nail clippings up, mingled with bits of lint, leans, drops them into the red fish’s mouth. She hopes the sharp sickles pierce holes in its fish insides, tear its guts apart. But its thrashing, its glaring at her goes on. Its appetite is livid, obscene, impossible to satisfy. She backs up and away, she flees the Garden. At least she can do that now, at least she has the power to run away.
THERE IS A new party line: This Could Take Awhile. His signs, the output of fluids, the cell counts, are not all merely holding steady, they are improving. He is a very strong man, they tell her. He could live to be a hundred, at this rate. She is furious, feels lured here by false promises. She is suddenly suspicious of the hospital staff; have they been conducting procedures behind her back? Deliberately prolonging this, putting heroic measures or artificial means into play the moment she leaves the room? Are they ignoring the family’s wishes, misusing their authority? She cannot imagine staying here much longer; she has a life, after all. What will she do, she wonders, with his plastic bag of clothes? With his mail? Will he stay here, or will she have to find him a nursing facility? How much more will she have to do? To manage? To pay? And what if he becomes fully conscious again, becomes aware of her, regains the power of speech?
She thanks the morning nurse for the good news, says she’ll be back that evening.
Her cell phone startles her. She is at the coffee shop next to the hospital, eating a club sandwich whose asymmetrical layers look nothing like the photograph on the menu. She is embarrassed by the loud ringtone but then notices other people on cell phones, locals talking in between large mouthfuls and swallows of their fatty food. Perhaps they are all playing the Waiting Game, too, on the phone with the doctors next door, getting updates on liver enzymes and biopsies and heart rates. Perhaps it’s a mishap at work, a minor emergency she’ll need to fly home and attend to at once. She answers her phone.
It’s her mother. Again, she is startled. She has not spoken to her mother in over a year.
How is he? her mother wants to know. Are they taking good care of him, is there anything he needs?
She tells her mother her uncle is doing fine. Better than fine. Doing very well. He could live to be a hundred, at this rate. Under the right conditions.
Her mother does not ask what conditions those would be. Instead, she asks if he is in any pain.
She assures her mother he is in no discomfort at all. That all his needs are being tended to. Her mother can call the hospital herself, to check, if she wants. Really.
No, no, dear, that isn’t necessary. Her mother is sure the doctors know what they’re doing, that they are doing what’s best.
Let go, let go, let go, she thinks.
Such a shame, her mother continues, Such a shame it all had to be this way. There’s a pause, then: You aren’t, you aren’t bringing up any of that old fuss to the doctors, are you?
No, Mom. I am being a wonderful niece, she says. She sips coffee into her dry mouth. She feels again the conflicting yet familiar sense of both tribute and blame.
I’m sure you are, her mother says. But the voice sounds skeptical. Of course, her mother rarely believes her, or takes her side, about anything. She rarely ever has, in the end.
SHE RETURNS TO her uncle’s hospital room to find the piggy nurse’s aide giving him a trim, snipping the hairline clean above her uncle’s baggy ears. The aide is in on it, he must be. They are trying to bring him back to life. There would be no need, otherwise, to keep her uncle so tidy and trim.
Well, you’re back! the aide says. Weren’t you already here this morning?
Yes, she says.
She watches the steady spikes on the monitor, listens to the regular beeps, tries to hear if his breathing has become stronger, more profound. She watches thin snips of hair fall to the pillow. She could gather those up, make a clump, tell the nurse’s aide it’s for a mourning locket, like in Victorian times. She could gather up more nail clippings. She could keep snipping away at him in the guise of care, cutting off bits of flesh here and there, calluses, moles, a polyp, those fleshy earlobes, work her way up to fingers and toes. Split his belly when no one is there to see, tug out a shiny organ or two. Cut out his fat tongue. Yes, perhaps the red fish would choke on that. Or perhaps it would be satisfied, at last, to have eaten its fill.
THE FOOD MACHINE has yet to be refilled. She wonders what on earth her Botanical Garden admission fees are being spent on. She should complain to someone. Make a fuss. Never mind. She is determined, wrapping her sweater around herself tight. She’ll stand her ground, this time. Let it thrash. Let it scream those silent screams. It can’t touch her. The Garden seems deserted. A few leaves float down. The little river is still. There’s no disturbance when she steps up on the bridge. She waits a moment, then marches across to her spot. No sound, no uproar. She peers down into flat, immobile water, sees nothing. Stomps her foot. A leaf lands on the empty clear water, skates lazily along. It must be hiding. Lying in wait for her. Waiting to catch her alone like this, get her off-guard. She backs off the bridge, grabs a handful of pebbles from the nearest raked row. She throws a few pebbles into the water, causes minor ripples. She can see the pebbles sink clear to the river floor. She throws a few more, harder. Nothing. Are they sick? Have they died? She imagines tourist families fishing, angling for the fish, laughing as they bait and hook them, swinging them bleeding through the air, dumping them to choke and gasp on the bridge, gutting them, taking them away to a cornmeal dip and hot oil fry for Sunday dinner.