Drabble for Musemuggers Challenge #425
musemuggers prompt here, option 2
I've been shying away from writing about Tsutomu's character, since he recently woke up from a coma, and I've been reluctant to research comas. ._. Somehow I managed to skirt that issue entirely, and just focus on his experiences upon waking. I've had his character for ten years or so... I'm glad to finally start writing about him. :)
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The Lady in the Bath
Tsutomu stayed in the garden beside the hospital in the afternoons, watching the dying rays of the sun through the trees.
"It's not a hospital," Gil had told him a few days after he'd woken up. "Think of it as...a rest house, with a full medical staff." The pause was uncharacteristic for Gil; perhaps he was overworked, since Tsutomu was no longer able to assist him. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes and around his high cheekbones were more prominent, as if he had neglected to have them smoothed over in the past few months. Even his hands, once delicate, were rough and chapped. Tsutomu hardly recognized their touch.
After Gil left, Tsutomu had asked to be brought to his window so he could see the garden. It was more of a back yard than a garden; patches of sparse grass covered the ground, and the trees clustered as they would in a forest, without the guidance of a paid gardener. In a small clearing near his window stood a marble birdbath, its surface roughened and speckled with age. A female nude sat on a round island in its center, one hand placed on its lap for modesty. The break on its neck where its head used to be was clean; Tsutomu suspected that it had gone missing just before he woke up. It slouched forward slightly, shoulders drooping in resignation. He wondered if it mourned the loss of its head, and the memories that it may have had.
When he started therapy for his legs he took to walking out into the garden to watch the skies change color towards sunset. The hospital was more of a clinic, in that it had no second floor, and could only hold twenty patients at a time, yet its staff included full-time surgeons and specialists. However, like Tsutomu, these doctors were no longer registered with the city board. The hospital itself did not accept ordinary patients, unless they had the proper connections. Tsutomu disliked the silence inside the hospital; it was a silence of secrets, negotiations gone bad, near-brushes with death. His own experience was no different. Yet he found peace in the quiet of the garden, in the company of a statue that had no mouth to speak or mind to remember, had it been able to communicate. It had no eyes to see his loneliness.
Gil's visits gave him news, and a sense of passing time. Giulia had scared a new recruit by slashing her own arm to the bone, then making the man watch as her flesh knit itself back together; Chris had broken up with his sixth wife, the pretty half-Japanese woman to whom Tsutomu had sent a box of his favorite green tea as a wedding present; Rick had found the hitman who shot Tsutomu by mistake in the man's apartment, hanging by his belt from the ceiling. None of them were allowed to visit him; not so long ago, each of them would spend two hours at the end of each month sitting in the couch across his desk and talking to him about their work. He had kept to the rules and stayed aloof, yet he could not avoid knowing the details. Gil himself was breaking protocol by telling him these small things, even showing him a video of Rick in a session with his replacement. Upon seeing it he voiced his concern that Rick was being more evasive than usual; sure enough, the following week Gil reported that Rick had gone MIA. Tsutomu only shook his head. Rick would be back soon, he knew. Rick always came back.
As the garden grew dark with the approaching twilight, he carefully got up, feeling his leg and thigh muscles flex as he did so. Shadows shrouded the figure in the birdbath. From where he stood, it could have been gazing into the gathering darkness beyond the trees, waiting for something. Or someone.
He bid it a silent goodbye, knowing full well that he would resume his own waiting the next day, in the same spot, with only the forlorn statue for company.
I've been shying away from writing about Tsutomu's character, since he recently woke up from a coma, and I've been reluctant to research comas. ._. Somehow I managed to skirt that issue entirely, and just focus on his experiences upon waking. I've had his character for ten years or so... I'm glad to finally start writing about him. :)
---
The Lady in the Bath
Tsutomu stayed in the garden beside the hospital in the afternoons, watching the dying rays of the sun through the trees.
"It's not a hospital," Gil had told him a few days after he'd woken up. "Think of it as...a rest house, with a full medical staff." The pause was uncharacteristic for Gil; perhaps he was overworked, since Tsutomu was no longer able to assist him. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes and around his high cheekbones were more prominent, as if he had neglected to have them smoothed over in the past few months. Even his hands, once delicate, were rough and chapped. Tsutomu hardly recognized their touch.
After Gil left, Tsutomu had asked to be brought to his window so he could see the garden. It was more of a back yard than a garden; patches of sparse grass covered the ground, and the trees clustered as they would in a forest, without the guidance of a paid gardener. In a small clearing near his window stood a marble birdbath, its surface roughened and speckled with age. A female nude sat on a round island in its center, one hand placed on its lap for modesty. The break on its neck where its head used to be was clean; Tsutomu suspected that it had gone missing just before he woke up. It slouched forward slightly, shoulders drooping in resignation. He wondered if it mourned the loss of its head, and the memories that it may have had.
When he started therapy for his legs he took to walking out into the garden to watch the skies change color towards sunset. The hospital was more of a clinic, in that it had no second floor, and could only hold twenty patients at a time, yet its staff included full-time surgeons and specialists. However, like Tsutomu, these doctors were no longer registered with the city board. The hospital itself did not accept ordinary patients, unless they had the proper connections. Tsutomu disliked the silence inside the hospital; it was a silence of secrets, negotiations gone bad, near-brushes with death. His own experience was no different. Yet he found peace in the quiet of the garden, in the company of a statue that had no mouth to speak or mind to remember, had it been able to communicate. It had no eyes to see his loneliness.
Gil's visits gave him news, and a sense of passing time. Giulia had scared a new recruit by slashing her own arm to the bone, then making the man watch as her flesh knit itself back together; Chris had broken up with his sixth wife, the pretty half-Japanese woman to whom Tsutomu had sent a box of his favorite green tea as a wedding present; Rick had found the hitman who shot Tsutomu by mistake in the man's apartment, hanging by his belt from the ceiling. None of them were allowed to visit him; not so long ago, each of them would spend two hours at the end of each month sitting in the couch across his desk and talking to him about their work. He had kept to the rules and stayed aloof, yet he could not avoid knowing the details. Gil himself was breaking protocol by telling him these small things, even showing him a video of Rick in a session with his replacement. Upon seeing it he voiced his concern that Rick was being more evasive than usual; sure enough, the following week Gil reported that Rick had gone MIA. Tsutomu only shook his head. Rick would be back soon, he knew. Rick always came back.
As the garden grew dark with the approaching twilight, he carefully got up, feeling his leg and thigh muscles flex as he did so. Shadows shrouded the figure in the birdbath. From where he stood, it could have been gazing into the gathering darkness beyond the trees, waiting for something. Or someone.
He bid it a silent goodbye, knowing full well that he would resume his own waiting the next day, in the same spot, with only the forlorn statue for company.