“Just a Good Thermal Burn”
A baby’s wail and nonchalant chattering swirled and drifted through the paper-thin shoji walls, as shivering and shaking people paced half-clothed and wrapped in blankets in the courtyard outside the thin opening to the cramped room. This room, being the most private I could find in the area, became my temporary office. Knees aching as I knelt on my matted and dirt-stained zabuton, I used to demand respect from each patient who approached, though now such social expectations feel pointless. A compact wooden radio with broken and missing plastic dials leaned lopsided against a table leg. It crackled in nonsensical English and Japanese, my attempt at privacy from the wandering sick and lame outside, as bellowing, exaggerated laughter punctuated by simple, musical interludes filled the horrific space left by the disaster.
‘Neighbouring towns and cities are still recovering from the disaster which hit the city of Hiroshima three weeks ago. Doctors are establishing make shift practices for families and survivors to visit free of charge, stay tuned for a list of locations.’
Finalising and clarifying my recommended treatment of a woman’s sister-in-law, she begged for more than what I was able to provide. I was a doctor, not a god.
‘Please, give us medicine! I can’t keep feeding her dried roots and carrots, and we’re running out of food! There must be something else! She’s so weak and frail!’ Her dirt crusted fingernails grabbed at the torn hem of my shirt as her round, brown eyes watered, her face contorting in fear. Her unkempt hair, matted handfuls of ebony wisps framing her youthful complexion, was her last concern throughout this tragedy. Shoulders shivering, barely clothed, I rested my hands on her skeletal figure.
‘She needs natural vitamin A. The only thing that shall aid her at this point is patience. Return to me if she does not heal significantly within the next fortnight.’ I released my grasp, her quivering form recoiling from my touch. I focussed my attention on the wooden floor, eyes tracing over the lines, spots and imperfections of the wood as the woman staggered out of the room, into the courtyard, her stomping feet and swaying figure audible, before reaching equilibrium with the brash chatter.
The subsequent patient who wandered through the opening was another woman, holding what seemed to be a bundle of thick blankets on her hip. She meekly slid off each sandal, bowing her head, before approaching and crouching before me. She shook like a dried leaf in an autumn breeze, her hair unbecomingly chopped to the ear lobes. Dark eyes sunken into her sallow skin, she breathed heavily, sliding the mass of blankets off her knees, and onto the stained wooden floor between us.
Without the exchange of any pleasantries, an unnecessary tradition in our society following the tragedy, she carefully unwound the mound of fabric, revealing a small child. She looked to be no older than 6, naked, her bones clear through her paper-thin skin, which was spotted and blistered by numerous petichiae. Her nostrils were thinly crusted by a layer of dark blood, which also streaked up the backs of her hands, fresh and a nuisance to the small child. A striking feature of the tiny girl was her immensely obvious lack of hair. Not completely bald though, as patches of short tendrils clung hopefully to her skin, though areas of completely exposed spotted, red skin bled, thus accounting for the blood under her small fingernails.
Her mother smoothed the hair back from her child’s face, and described all her symptoms. A lack of appetite, blue and red spots, bruising, constant bleeding from the nose and mouth, diarrhoea. She described walking death. A girl who desperately needed professional medical attention from a hospital. There were none nearby.
The girl’s eyes finally left her hands and the ground, meeting with mine, as her mother described in anguish the extent of her young daughter’s mysterious disease. Wide and hazel brown, sparkling, and filled with life, her fingers itched and twitched at not holding a bundle of brightly coloured pencils, her mouth concealing a cheeky smirk. Her defiant attitude reminded me of my own daughter.
I was working when the horror struck my hometown of Hiroshima, annihilating the entire city, rendering the buildings unrecognisable, as the churches fell to the dust. The blinding flash shocked my nearby naval city, Kure, as the Americans obliterated the potatoes in my elderly parents’ garden and the finger paintings in my childhood school. My daughter, a curious child, who possessed no interest in the feminine affairs of the household, who dreamed of serving with the navy aboard their shiny, gleaming ships, was interested in this sudden and mysterious flash. I ducked under a table, scared of the ensuing unknown. She leapt to the open window, watching the ships bobbing and swaying in the harbour, searching for the source of such a magnificent light. The shock tore through our home, the windows cracking and bursting, the bamboo walls pushing inwards. My daughter’s frail skeleton was sliced by what seemed to be a thousand shards of glass, some becoming lodged in her fair skin. Deep lacerations marked her throat and arms as her frail body toppled to the ground.
I hauled her light form into my lap, red crystals sparkling on her skin, lips, and eyelids. Cursing the Shakyamuni, the American Messiah, and that damned star-spangled banner, I rocked her to sleep, cooing a Japanese lullaby, as her bright eyes lost their twinkle.
‘Sleep my baby and let me sleep till tomorrow morning,
Today I’m going back to my home over the mountain,
I can see my parent’s humble house over there.’
The mother exhibited a similar desperation and fear to myself. She shivered and begged, her fingers running through the remains of her daughter’s hair. The daughter, unbeknown to the horror of the world, incapable of understanding how something so cruel could occur in her innocent and pure life, stared at me. She refused to comfort or look at her mother, her tiny hands resting indifferently on the folds of the numerous thick blankets. Her face was sunken. She shouldn’t be here. She knew that. Where was her father? Her friends and dolls?
The mother paused her lament, sighing in sorrow and gazing at her daughter’s patched scalp. I felt her pain too, the hope and dreams for her daughter. Her hands shall never carefully prepare a takikomi gohan, and her hazel eyes shall never see her future babbling babies.
There was nothing I could do. She was too sick. She only had days, perhaps hours.
‘Take her home.’ My words pierced the silence. ‘Take her home, wrap her in every blanket and fabric, the most beautiful and soft which you can find, and hold her. Give to her her favourite flowers and herbs, let her enjoy their scent, her favourite drawings and dolls, let her fingers run through their hair. That’s the only thing which can help her at this point.’
My speech cracked her face. Tears welled in her eyes, quickly wiped by her sleeve, as to not allow her beautiful little girl see her broken mother. She nodded to me, bowing her head in gratitude. She did not beg, she did not wail nor scream, she was peaceful. I watched with cold hands and a heavy heart as she wrapped the tiny figure in the dark blankets, her eyes and patchy hair disappearing amongst the fabric. Pulling the bundle back onto her hip, she crept slowly out of the room, all confidence in her footing having disappeared at my harsh words, at the news that her daughter would not survive this tragedy, would never marry or bear children of her own. She slid the sandals between her toes, looking once more with puffy red eyes to my kneeling figure. I stared back at her blankly. She slipped through the opening and disappeared into the wailing and yelling crowd of sound.
My skin crawled, like a thousand beetles nestling between the layers, their miniscule legs creeping and scratching my bones, their wings pushing against my blood vessels. The radio on the wall filled the silent void the woman and her daughter had created, as it crackled in English a fragmented sentence, said with a heavy southern American accent,
‘I would say this… I think what these people have, they just got a good thermal burn, that’s what it is.’
