Part 7 (2/2)

FLAP.

And that was when she'd wake up.

A worried nurse tried to comfort her and wiped the perspiration from her forehead. But upon waking up, unable to separate dream from reality, Mariko would scream. By midnight her temperature had risen far past 100 F. While she fought the fever, she had the same dream over and over.

On the second day of recovery, she was allowed to sit up just a little. The upper half of the bed was jacked up thirty degrees. Yos.h.i.+zumi came in with some nurses early that morning to collect more samples. Mariko noted her father's presence as well.

”Everything okay? I heard you had a bad dream last night,” Dr. Yos.h.i.+zumi asked smiling, taking her pulse. That grin, practically pasted onto him, frightened Mariko. He's never forgiven me for it, she thought, and turned away from him.

”Mariko. Talk to me please?”

Yos.h.i.+zumi would not shut up. He treated her like a child half her age and it made her nauseous. She was still in grade school when she had her first transplant and maybe back then it was okay to treat her like a kid. But she was in middle school now and Yos.h.i.+zumi didn't seem to notice.

”You still have a bit of a fever, hm?” Unable to get any sort of response from her, Yos.h.i.+zumi may as well have been talking to himself. ”You also have a little blood in your pee. We totaled the protein count yesterday at a whopping 2.7 grams. That's not good, but it won't stay that way. Don't worry, it's quite normal right after a transplant. And I expect your fever will have gone down by tomorrow. What matters is that you're peeing. You know, that pretty much means the operation was a success. No signs of infection, either.”

Yos.h.i.+zumi's voice rang in her ears, and scenes from after her first transplant came back to her. Yos.h.i.+zumi's expression when he began suspecting that she'd failed to take her meds.

The look in her father's eyes. Mariko closed her eyes and shook her head but was unable to rid those looks from her mind. She couldn't stand it any longer.

She was screaming, ”You want this transplant to fail, don't you!”

Yos.h.i.+zumi drew back in shock. The nurses and Mariko's father stood completely motionless with eyes wide open, unsure of how to react. ”What are you saying..

”I know you do!” Mariko screamed, interrupting him. ”You think it's my fault it didn't work the last time. You think I'm a bad girl, so you want this transplant to fail too!”

”Mariko, stop! Please...” said her father, visibly upset. But she could not suppress her rage. She was no longer in control of the words spilling from her mouth. Yos.h.i.+zumi tried to touch her, to which she objected loudly and started weeping. The nurses were equally overwhelmed. One of them took Mariko's hand, trying her best to appease her. Mariko pried it away from her grasp.

At that moment the drainage tube in her side twisted and pain shot through her entire body. She cried out and buried her face in the pillow. She realized what she'd been doing, and her anger subsided.

While she lay quietly, her back and waist began to hurt. At her request the nurse s.h.i.+fted her body, but the pain didn't recede. Her perceptions grew dim from the fever and the searing pain in her back. Simply keeping her eyes open was becoming impossible without discomfort.

Mariko dreamt again that night. She was sleeping in the same dark room and the footsteps returned on cue. Slowly but surely, they were approaching her door. Her eyes were glued to the light leaking from under it.

Why did the sound frighten her so much?

She kept telling herself it was just a nurse making her rounds, but this did not shake the uneasiness that gripped her heart. Someone was coming and it was no nurse or doctor. This was something, she thought, far more scary.

Two things were beating so fast in her body that it was hard for her to breathe: one, her heart racing with fright; the other, something less familiar that was clearly enjoying itself, quivering excitedly in her abdomen every time the sound drew closer. Both seemed to pound in her head and ears, and her entire body was hot. Her chest and her abdomen, running away each with their wild beat, threatened to tear her asunder at any moment.

Flap.

The shadow of a figure entered the glow under the door. Mariko let out a voiceless scream. For a moment the shadow stood motionless outside her door. Then, with a light flap, it turned toward the door. Mariko's heart nearly jumped from her body, and the thing that dwelled in her abdomen squirmed around ecstatically. Her waist rumbled, making the bed creak. Her back was drenched with sweat.

Mariko's eyes were fixed on the door. And she was aghast.

For the k.n.o.b was turning, ever so slightly. Silently, and so slowly you could hardly tell it was moving at all, the k.n.o.b was turning. Whatever was on the other side was trying to get in. THUMP.

Mariko's abdomen leapt up. The bed bounced and her body was in the air for a second.

The kidney, she thought. The new kidney was trying to come out of her. Choked with fear, Mariko still could not take her eyes from the door k.n.o.b. She finally realized who was coming for her. She despaired. Her heart, which had been beating so wildly, fell silent.

The door began to open. Light poured in through the crack.

Mariko screamed, and woke up.

4.

Tos.h.i.+aki resumed his duties the day after the funeral. As always, he parked his car in the college parking lot at 8:20 and was in his lab by 8:30.

No one else was in yet this morning. He turned on the light and walked over to his desk, now overflowing with a week's worth of leaflets and pamphlets from various companies extolling their new products. He'd usually, at least, skim through the English-language catalogues of cloning vectors and cytokines, but he was hardly in the mood right now and placed them in a rack at the side of his desk. He heard a clanging noise and the door opened. He looked up and turned around.

Asakura put her hand over her mouth as she saw him, her body straightening from surprise.

For a while, neither could speak, and the awkwardness was quite something. Asakura moved her mouth like a dying fish as she searched for words, while her eyes darted nervously about the room.

Tos.h.i.+aki managed a smile and raised his hand in greeting.

”...morning.”

Asakura started, but the tension was now gone.

”Good morning!” she said with a smile and a bow.

The awkwardness faded. Tos.h.i.+aki apologized for the inconvenience of his absence and thanked Asakura for her help at the funeral.

”Please, think nothing of it,” she said.

”How are the data coming along?”

Asakura's face beamed when she heard these words, and she nodded.

In most science departments, undergraduates were a.s.signed to staff members and conducted experiments on their own in their instructors' field, and the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences was no exception. Ten seniors were a.s.signed every year to Tos.h.i.+aki's Biofunctional Pharmaceuticals course. Aside from the professor, the staff included an a.s.sociate professor, an a.s.sistant professor, and two research a.s.sociates, who were each charged with certain students. Tos.h.i.+aki had taken two under his wing this year. Having already completed their first term exams, they were now able to devote themselves to lab work. However, they both hoped to enter the graduate program and would be taking a vacation, once August came around, to prepare for their entrance exams at the end of the month.

Asakura had gone through all this and was part of the graduate program now. Tos.h.i.+aki had mentored her throughout her senior year, and she had continued with the same concentration, with him, for her master's. Now in her second year, she would be graduating soon; in fact, she'd already secured employment at a leading pharmaceutical firm. All she needed to do now was a.s.semble her data for her master's thesis.

”The MOM 19 level has increased, as you expected,” explained Asakura as she showed Tos.h.i.+aki a printout of the previous week's results. During her senior year and her first master's year, there was still something rickety about the experiments she set up, but her intuition and versatility were now those of a real researcher. Her explanations were concise, yet thorough, and Tos.h.i.+aki understood her perfectly.

”Also, the cells you'd transfected were growing fast, so I had to transpose them. I mean the ones you introduced the retinoid receptors into.”

Asakura stated these words without fanfare, but they gave Tos.h.i.+aki chills.

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