Shiki Volume 1 Chapter 3 part2

2

Seishin crossed the temple grounds, calling out to Mitsuo to take care of the temple in his stead. From the cemetery into the mountains thrust a path through the forest down the slope. It went through the sawmill lot across a ditch coming out at the bank. At the bank was a trodden route like a pathway that came to a dreary concrete building. Beyond the gate of branches in the hedges was the Ozaki Hospital back yard. It was a route he'd taken countless times since he was a child. In the country there were endless routes that weren't roads.

Crossing the back yard at his convenience, he opened the door he had been coming towards. At the service entryway staff used for coming and going was a step up into a small hallway and in that hall a glass sliding door cutting it off. He let himself in, arranging his shoes at the door just as the female nurse Ritsuko was passing by the other side of the partitioning door.

With a face that said 'Oh my', she was soon coming down the corridor to open the door.

"Good morning. Are you here for the doctor?"

"Yes. I'm sorry for coming during examination hours."

"Think nothing of it. Please come in." Ritsuko motioned to the examination room but Seishin refused.

"No, I'm dressed for duty, so here will be fine."

"Are you certain? Then, it will just be a minute if you could wait, please."

Ritsuko trotted briskly down the hall towards the examination room and returned promptly, gesturing behind her.

"He'll see you in the director's office---no, the waiting room, he says." Ritsuko giggled. "The doctor's face was practically saying 'I'm saved!'"

Somehow able to imagine that, Seishin smiled. Rumors of Shuuji's death were bound to be flying everywhere already. Patients probably took up more time gossiping than having their medical examinations---.

He bowed his head lightly and entered the waiting room. The former director's office was demolished when the addition was put on and was no longer there. In its place, a small closet was made out next to the examination rooms, which Toshio made into his own waiting room. Different from the former director, there was no special decor in the function-first, drab room. The guest's sofa belonged to the predecessor but it was always primed for napping with a pillow and blanket out over it, and the walls were packed with catalogues and such materials crammed in place. He knocked strictly as a formality before letting himself in, just as Toshio was entering from the examination room.

"A literal Buddha in Hell."

"Sorry about this."

"Right now I can see a halo glowing around your head. It's like I've been suffering penances for something one after another since this morning," Toshio said pushing the blanket aside and sitting on the sofa, stretching his feet out over the table. "The people that usually have no problem just coming in to pick up their meds from the pharmacy and going home today suddenly want a consultation. Then in the end, when you ask what they want to talk about, it's all about Gotouda."

Seishin smiled bitterly. Most of his patients were elderly, so there were all the more whose conditions were one step forward, one step back. Arthritis and lower back pain, skin diseases, high blood pressure and the like weren't the worst conditions to be inflicted with but it was hard to call those who made up the majority of his patients healthy. Some of the patients who had been coming in for the longest time would only give word to the nurses before letting themselves into the treatment rooms, or would call up and demand a certain medication and that their family would be by to pick it up. Three years ago, when Toshio had inherited the hospital, he was eager to abolish such disorder but he immediately threw up both hands in defeat. He'd learned that in a village overrun by the elderly, if the patients didn't want to cooperate, the hospital couldn't do a thing about it.

Toshio stretched his body out over the sofa and looked up at Seishin. "And? After all, I'm sure you came about Shuuji-san too. I'll just be saying the same story to you too. ---On your way to do the bedside sutras?"

"Mm. Before that, I thought I would ask you about the state of things."

Toshio nodded. Toshio knew that it was a tradition Seishin was taking over from his father. There was no need to say what he was here to ask about or why.

"By the time I was called and hurried in by his mother, Shuuji-san was long gone. Livor mortis was showing and rigor mortis had set in. It's likely he died during the night. I got there a little before seven in the morning, I guess? I can at least say he didn't just die at dawn. It was probably something that happened late at night."

"What was the cause?"

Toshio's eyes widened as if he were utterly shocked that he was even being asked. "It's not like I was tending to him! Before that when he was laid up in bed, I didn't do any kind of medical examination, so how would I know what the cause of death was? The last time I examined Shuuji-san, he looked beyond healthy. ---Besides having to take off a toe nail from his big toe when he dropped something on his foot. And we're talking about half a year ago with that!"

As Seishin gave a bitter smile, there was a knock. The nurse Ritsuko entered carrying a tray.

"Is he grumbling to you?" Ritsuko laughed with a wry smile, then scowled at Toshio. "Doctor, manners."

"This table is from today forward a footstool."

"Then, please move your feet off of the foot stool so that I may set the tea down," Ritsuko said lightly smacking Toshio's legs, putting the tea cups set aside on the low table into place.

"Good grief," Toshio stated, lowering his feet.

"Oh, Doctor. You're crabby, just because your patients won't leave you alone."

"I'm going cockeyed here. No matter where I look, it's nothing but old people pouring in. On top of that the old farts were lined up outside the entryway first thing in the morning! Thanks to that I've been dancing around with things to do non-stop. It's only the patients who actually need an examination who wait until it's beyond help to try coming in. In the first place," Toshio said thrusting his cup out towards Seishin. "It's not like the people who never seem to be bedridden are people who never get sick, they're the people who can hold out even when their condition's more or less crappy. They've got a good grip on themselves, so if it's just a cold, they'll let it heal while they work. They push through pain. When those kind of people are bedridden, it's something really keeping them in bed. Then the people around them figure since they're rarely laid up, it'll fix itself soon enough and wave it off, but they'll tend to the spoiled babies who'll go 'this hurts' or 'that's bad' all the time."

"That's an overstatement," Seishin said with a wry smile.

"Gotouda's Shuuji-san was like that. Even though the man was laid up three days before, his mother never called a doctor, didn't bring him to the hospital. Then in the end, she goes to try to wake him up and he's dead. He didn't have much of a fever, so she thought he had a light summer cold or heatstroke."

"I see...."

"With just asking what happened, I don't have a damn clue what the hell was wrong with him, what had him bedridden. No cough, no fever hot enough to notice, didn't seem like any place in particular was hurting. Still, his complexion was bad, he seemed like he was extremely worn out, and he didn't seem like he was eating, she said."

And with that in the end she made the decision not to have a doctor see him, Seishin thought casting his eyes down. Nobody wanted to think that someone in their family had a serious illness. They averted their eyes and wrapped it up it with the words 'it couldn't be', pretending that possibility didn't exist. By doing that, they determinedly keep it from floating to mind.

Toshio breathed a dejected sigh. "It's what they call sudden death. We won't know the cause of death without an autopsy, and even with an autopsy, if it was so-called sudden death, we won't know the reason. Besides, the Missus of the Gotoudas herself said no to an autopsy."

"Did you recommend something like that?"

"As a necessary formality. But, you can't just force the body away from a bereaved family. It wasn't an administrative autopsy or a legally ordered one after all. There's no choice when it gets like this. I used my last resort and went with 'acute heart failure' on the death certificate. It's like a trump card."

Seishin figured that Toshio was dissatisfied with that end result. When a villager came to the hospital, there was nothing to do but determine whether or not to send them to a larger hospital that could do a thorough investigation. They wanted someone to screen them to see whether they should tend to themselves at home or entrust themselves to a doctor's care. Patients not seeking that were seeking harmless medications, someone to listen to them complain, and that was it. Toshio had always resisted being put in that position but he didn't think there was really any way something like that could be fought.

"The one left behind is the one acting more like a patient. Well, I did let her cry out all her complaints."

Seishin nodded, glancing at his wristwatch. He had to go now. He grasped, at least, that to the family it was a sudden---a no doubt unreasonable death. It was hard to ask the details of a bereaved family stricken with grief. But without knowing the circumstances of the death, there was no telling what kind of careless things might be said. So, the Ozaki Hospital was asked about these matters in advance. The village only had one hospital. For the most part, no dead could be buried without first passing through Toshio's hands.

The village is surrounded by death.

---What was surrounded may have been Seishin as a monk, Toshio as a doctor.

Chapter end