Week 9 Story: A Memoir

I want someone to know my story, so I will do my best to write down what I can, while I can...

It is just another day in paradise...

The air conditioning had just kicked on and now the white linen curtains around my bed are beginning to sway in a solemn dance, it feels so refreshing against my hot skin. If I pretend hard enough, the cool air almost felt like the ocean wind blowing through my window at home and sometimes I can also smell freshly cut grass and tropical flowers… I just had another coughing fit, I need to do my best to stifle the noise so I don’t alert the scary men in space suits outside my door, they always poke me with needles and never answer my questions…

I remember the first day I was brought to this lonely room - it was about a week after my father had returned home to Okinawa from his military deployment in China. My family was so relieved when he came back okay and was showing no signs of sickness. I mean who would expect him, my father of all people, getting sick? He is a doctor after all...

Cape Manamo in Okinawa, Japan 

According to the news, it all happened so suddenly, one person got sick in China and the doctors could not figure out what was wrong. They thought maybe it was just pneumonia or maybe the flu, so they prescribed some antibiotics and gave him some steroids and let him be on his way, he was found dead the next day… Soon his family members and others who had had close contact with him went to the hospital for the same symptoms, then the nurse and other medical staff that cared for him also became sick, then the friends and family of them. Apparently it is the world’s biggest outbreak of the 21st century. Or so they say, I don’t get out much anymore…

My father’s cough started a few days after he returned home from China. Soon everyone in my family was also sick. The scariest part about this all was the uncertainty… No one knew what was going on. Because his rank in the military and his connections with doctors in the US. My father was able to get us all on a plane to New York where “we will be getting the best treatment possible,” he assured us. He died soon after the plane left the Kadena Air Force Base…

When he died my mother didn’t say a word to my sister or me. She sat there with his head on her lap trying to breathe between her coughing fits and sobs. She died soon after we landed in the states… Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep, I imagine them both here with me. She is holding my hand and wiping the sweat from my forehead and my dad is checking over my medical charts, smiling at me reassuringly…

My sister and I shared a room at first... I remember she would hold me tight and kiss the places they gave us shots and then sing me to sleep. Out of our entire family she was the only one who didn't have a cough. The doctors were hopeful too for her recovery, until she died just a few days ago… I’ve begun to lose hope…

Sometimes I imagine my sister here with me too. She always tugs on my hand asking me to play with her, but I’m too weak to move. “Just try, silly!” she always says... One day I finally worked up the energy to play with my sister, I was surprised by how easy it was to get out of bed. Maybe I am getting better! My sister tells me that she knows where they keep the extra jello, but we would have to sneak outside the room. She grabs my hand and leads me outside, the doctors look at me, but it is as if they do not see me… She leads me down a dark hallway to a door with a bright light behind it…

She looks at me and says, “I lied, I don’t know where they keep the extra jello. I am really here to bring you home to mommy and daddy.”

The Light at the end of the tunnel

THE END

Author’s Note:

This story is inspired from “Qalagánguasê, Who Passed to the Land of Ghosts” from the Inuit Folktale section. In this story, Qalagánguasê’s family eat some bad seaweed and fall ill, dying off one by one. Qalagánguasê is the only survivor, but he too is on the verge of death. The closer he becomes with the afterlife, the more different ghosts start to visit him. He is eventually lead to the afterlife by his sister’s ghost. I decided to take this story and make it have a more modern feeling to it. I decided to use SARS as the disease that is causing his family’s death. Other than the whole family dying, and a few other details, I made this story very personal to me since I grew up in Japan during the initial outbreak of SARS in China and the rest of Eastern Asia, it is also one of the main reasons why the military returned my  family  to the States. I personally credit my experience with this disease for the main reason why I am pursuing a degree in microbiology.

Bibliography:

“Qalagánguasê, Who Passed to the Land of Ghosts.” Eskimo Folk-Tales. By Knud Rasmussen