Shimura Trouble

33

“YOU HERE AT last!” Edwin shot a glare at me, filled with what looked like a mixture of relief and anger. “Your dad’s not feeling good at all.”

“How long has this been going on?” I was already at the couch, looking at my father’s closed eyes and sweating forehead, despite the full-force air-conditioning. He was alive, but he needed a doctor. “Has Tom examined him?”

“Tom and Hiroshi are still playing golf on the other side of the island, we think,” Margaret said. “We think we got Tom’s voicemail, but we’re not positive, because the message was in Japanese.”

“Yeah, fat lot of good your lawyer’s done, taking away the family doctor when we need him. I sent Braden and Courtney to get that Calvin who lives with the Kikuchis,” Edwin said.

My father’s eyes flickered open as I leaned over him. I whispered, ‘What’s going on?”

My father’s eyes remained closed, but he muttered, ‘Headache. The worst I’ve ever had.”

The night before, I’d worried that my working with the police might raise my father’s blood pressure. Now I knew that the worry had been valid, and blood pressure was the least of it. I held my father tightly, willing him to live as I prayed. No. Don’t let this happen. It’s not fair!

“We should call an ambulance.” Michael’s voice cut through my desperate prayers.

“Ambulance ride around here starts at six hundred dollars,” Edwin said. “If you don’t call the insurance first, they won’t pay. And you better find out if the hospital’s pre-approved.”

“Enough,” Michael snapped; he’d already made it to the kitchen, and the telephone on the counter.

The ambulance came within fifteen minutes, the slowest quarter of an hour that I’d ever passed. But in this time, I learned from Margaret that about thirty minutes had passed since my father had telephoned them, asking if they’d heard from me and then admitting he had a headache he was worried about. Now, I calculated, it would be around forty minutes to Queen’s Medical Center, even in an ambulance speeding along the shoulder. And that could be too long, from what I’d read in all my stroke books.

Honolulu was too distant, but there was another option. I remembered Michael mentioning an emergency clinic in the other direction, up the coast.

“Can they treat stroke at the Waianae Comprehensive Health Care Center? And how far is it?” I asked the lead paramedic as they shifted my father from the couch to a gurney.

“Sure they can treat it. And it’s ten miles away, a third of the distance to Queen’s.”

“Well, that’s where my father’s going, then.” I said.

I rode along in the ambulance, an experience in itself with all the paraphernalia on the walls of the small van-tubes, canisters, pumps and paddles-all the things that could continue life. My father had an oxygen mask over his face and a paramedic at his side monitoring blood pressure and heartbeat.

The ambulance made a sharp right and began climbing a curving road up to the clinic. The land around the clinic was scrubby and rocky, and its small parking lot was filled with a mix of late-model cars and shabby older vehicles, some of them with surfboards strapped on top.

As the paramedics started unloading my father on his stretcher, Michael pulled up in the Sebring. He handed me my father’s wallet. “I found this. It’s got his insurance card in it.”

“Thanks.” I hugged him for a long moment, thinking how odd it was that responsibility, and sexiness, seemed to be part of Michael in equal measures.

Michael kept his arm around me as I filled out my father’s paperwork in the waiting room, and a few minutes after I’d handed it back to the nurse at the desk, the attending physician, Dr. Yamashiro, emerged to get me. I waved to Michael and went off, shoulders squared and preparing for the worst.

“You are his daughter, right?”

I nodded, preparing for the worst. “It’s not another stroke. His brain looks good. Heart, too. But did your father have…psychiatric problems?”

“No, he didn’t. Why do you ask that?”

“He’s overdosed on lithium. We asked him for his list of regular medications and he didn’t mention it, but sometimes, people are ashamed-”

“He was poisoned. I know for sure, because the same thing happened to me.”

“What do you mean?” The doctor looked at me with concern.

“Someone tampered with my food, sticking in a mixture of lithium and Motrin. I had more than my dad, because it sent me into a kind of psychosis. I had to undergo hemodialysis at Queen’s.”

“You mean…you didn’t accidentally take these medicines together?” the doctor pushed.

Sometimes people were really slow. “No. I was poisoned. Call the people at Queen’s, compare what happened to me to what’s going on with him.”

“Yes, you can release your medical records to us, if you’d like.” The doctor was already signaling to the nurse. “Did you ever find the substance containing the drugs?”

“No. But if you let me talk to my father, maybe I will finally be able to find it.”

MY FATHER HAD two IV lines running in his arm, but was sitting up on the gurney when I was allowed back behind the curtains. I embraced him, and told him what a scare he’d given everyone. He told me that the doctors had already spoken to him about the charcoal, and he was prepared to undergo two days of what I’d been through.

“The good thing is you never went as nuts as I did-and you can help me figure out what you ate that did this.”

“I have an idea, but I’m afraid to tell you.” My father’s voice was weak. “The last time I went to Safeway, to buy new food to replace that which was taken for examination, I bought a few Japanese-brand instant noodle bowls. Today, I couldn’t resist the temptation.”

“It couldn’t be the noodles. What did you drink today?”

“I made one cup of green tea with a new tea bag, and drank water the rest of the day. Bottled water, the Fiji brand.”

“You had nothing extra? You didn’t add anything to the noodle bowl?”

“I chopped green onions and stirred them in to make it a little healthier.” He shook his head. “You know, I feel bad about preparing the noodles, because I felt quite fine until about an hour after eating. Now I understand that kind of processed food isn’t nearly as good as homemade.”

My father’s propensity to tinker made me think he might not have stopped at green onions. I asked, ‘Was there anything else you added to the noodle soup?”

“Well, I would have liked to add Sriracha sauce, but we don’t have the bottle anymore, so I used a pinch of wasabi.” He made a pinching gesture with his finger.

“Wasabi? Did you order sushi for dinner last night?” By the time Michael and I had arrived home, the kitchen had all been cleaned up; I had no idea what they’d eaten.

“No, I grilled an ahi tuna and ears of corn. Tom steamed brown rice, too.”

“But where did the wasabi come from?”

“The fridge-a small container.” At my shocked expression, he said, “I believe it must be something that Hiroshi and Tom brought back from the pool concession stand. They serve sushi there, you know. I found it in a corner of the refrigerator’s door.”

“What did the wasabi look like?” I asked.

“Quite pale; it’s the fresh wasabi without an artificial color. It came in a small, covered plastic cup.”

“That sounds like the condiment Calvin brought along with the restaurant sushi, earlier in the week.” My thoughts were racing faster than the words could come out. “I must have taken the wasabi container out of the sushi box, when I was fixing my own plate, and put it down somewhere else in the fridge, where it was missed by the police inspectors.”

“I can’t believe it.” My father sounded as dazed as I felt.

“Why would Calvin do it?” I asked, then moved on to something more important. “Dad, what did you do with the wasabi container after you were finished seasoning the soup?”

“I returned it to the refrigerator, but this time on the top shelf.”

I recalled Calvin’s most recent, annoying visit. Uninvited, he’d opened our fridge to get himself a drink. Perhaps that had been his intent; to check that the wasabi was gone-or had he intended to add more poison to it?

“Dad, if it’s OK with you, I’m going home for a while. I have to find that wasabi.” I stood up.

“Just wait. I’m thinking, Rei-chan,” my father said. “Don’t jump to conclusions about Calvin’s behavior. There’s a chance he’s suffering an illness.”

“What do you mean?”

“To behave like this makes me think of one disease in particular: Munchausen’s-by-proxy.”

“I don’t think so. He’s super-fit; he didn’t look like he had any kind of disease, let alone a German-sounding one.”

“Munchausen’s is a psychiatric disorder, named for a German doctor who studied a woman who intentionally made herself very ill, repeatedly, because she craved the attention of a physician. In Munchausen’s-by-proxy, some people-often the parents of helpless children-intentionally sicken or disable someone.”

“Weird,” I said. “Very weird.” But I could see my father’s point, because ever since we’d arrived at Kainani, Calvin had been overly interested in our family. Perhaps he thought that if one of us became quite ill, he could become indispensable.

“I can understand that a few people out of every ten thousand or so might have this problem, but a psychiatrist with a great job in Oahu?” I couldn’t hide my skepticism.

“Maybe he chose to work with a private patient because he had trouble in a hospital setting,” my father said. “Another reason is that many are attracted to psychiatry or psychology careers to find answers to their own problems. Not everyone succeeds.”

“I hope to God that somebody remembered to lock our house.” I’d been the first one out, following my father to the ambulance, with Michael right after me. Edwin and Margaret were still at the resort, trying to find Courtney and Braden. I hadn’t thought to leave them my key to lock the door.

“Rei-chan, please relax. I’m so relieved the cause was found quickly, and…” Looking bilious, my father cut himself off. I looked wildly around until I spotted a bedpan. Afterward, my father’s voice was barely a whisper. “The more I get out, the better.”

“I’ll stay longer,” I said.

My father shook his head. “I’m in good hands here, so please do what you need to-check the house lock. But not alone, go with your…with Michael.”

After the nurse I’d summoned had arrived to help my father clean up, I said goodbye and went to the waiting room, where I found Michael had been joined by Edwin and Margaret.

“My father’s stable,” I said. “He’s sick to his stomach and still has the headache, but it turned out he was poisoned. It wasn’t another stroke.”

Michael sat bolt upright, and looked ready to say something, but Edwin spoke first.

“Food poisoning can come from shopping at chains stocking mainland food. You should have shopped at the Kapolei farmer’s market. Your Uncle Yosh will take you there next time.”

“I know where the poison was: in the wasabi, which was leftover from sushi that Calvin brought for me. It must have fallen into a place in the refrigerator where the health inspector missed it, but unfortunately, my father found it today and ate some.”

“But why?” Margaret sounded incredulous.

“He may have been concerned I was going to muck up the land deal for his boss. Perhaps they talked about it privately, and it was decided that Calvin needed to make me sick enough, at least, to stop pursuing the matter,” I said.

“I’m sorry.” Edwin’s voice came slowly, and there was a tone to it that I hadn’t heard before. “I invited you to visit Hawaii, thinking many good things could come out of it. I never dreamed…this. But it’s my fault, I guess, just like everything that happened with Braden.”

“Edwin, it’s not your fault,” I said, and was surprised to realize that I meant this wholeheartedly.

“It’s Calvin’s fault,” Michael said crisply. “And we’re going to do something about it, as soon as possible.”

“Braden and Courtney went to find him,” Margaret said. “Thank God they didn’t, and we brought them with us-”

“Before you left, did you lock the door?”

Edwin and Margaret exchanged glances, and shook their heads. “Sorry,” Edwin said again. “Here in Hawaii, we don’t always think of that.”

“It’s OK. If you’d wait here, I’m sure you can see my father in a bit. Michael and I will go back and take care of locking up.”

“Say something to Courtney and Braden on the way out. They’re waiting outside the clinic,” Margaret said.

Michael and I walked out of the clinic together, and found Braden lounging on a low retaining wall, smoking. At the sight of us, he dropped the cigarette in the scrubby area on the other side of the wall.

“That’s how fires start, Braden. Put it out.” Michael’s voice was tight, and I realized he was very angry.

“I did, man.”

Michael picked up the cigarette and stuck the ashy butt right between Braden’s lips. He yelped, and then spit it out on the cement.

“Always extinguish it with something wet,” Michael said. “Now throw it away.”

“How’s Uncle Toshiro?” Courtney sounded anxious.

I answered, ‘He’s going to be just fine, but I want to ask you both what happened when you went to look for Calvin Morita.”

“We went all the way to the Kikuchi house and rang the doorbell, but nobody answered. A person came by and said he thought the Kikuchis went to Maui. He saw Calvin out around the resort, jogging.”

“We better get back.” I pulled on Michael’s hand.

“Isn’t there something you want to tell Braden?” Michael asked. “About the cops taking in Gerry Liang?”

“Oh, of course.” Quickly, I told Braden that Gerry Liang had been recorded admitting that he contracted underlings to dig up rocks all over the island, and that was his smallest problem, given that he’d been booked for attempted assault and kidnapping.

“Is Kainoa going to go to jail, too?” Braden asked at the end of it.

“He’ll probably get some fine or minor punishment for being a middleman in the business, but the more he talks about Gerald Liang’s business practices, the easier things will be for him,” Michael explained.

I was impressed that Braden had asked about Kainoa first, rather than whether he, himself, was out of trouble. I wasn’t sure of the reason, though. “Braden, I wanted to ask you something you couldn’t answer before. It’s about the guy who threatened to kill you-was it really Kainoa?”

Braden looked around as if to make sure there really were other listeners before he answered. “No, I like Kainoa. It was Gerry Liang. He said that to Kainoa, in front of me. If a guy as big as Kainoa looked like he was about to shit bricks, it taught me to look the other way, and keep the mouth shut.”

“Things will work better for you, Braden, from now on.” Michael’s voice was warm. “But I want you to think about what kind of man you want to become, now that you won’t be charged with arson.”

“Whaddya mean, I won’t be charged?”

“No, the arson investigator is definitely dropping charges, but the police expect you to testify in the case they’re building against Liang.”

“Michael, he still needs professional legal help, if he’s going to talk to anyone,” I pointed out.

“He’s got that.” Michael grinned at me. “Hugh talked to Edwin and convinced him to apologize to Lisa Ping and rehire her. It was a good decision, because she’s the one who called with the news about the legal break that’s opened for Braden, if he’s strong enough to take it.”

As Michael spoke, a range of emotions passed across Braden’s face-disbelief followed by apprehension. Finally, he asked, ‘Why did you do this for me?”

“You know my answer already,” Michael said. “I know what it’s like to stand at the edge of a cliff. I stepped back, and look where I am today.”

“It’s a little different for me,” I said, looking warmly at both Braden and Courtney. “I never had any brothers and sisters, and I thought I’d have a child by now, but I don’t. “You two are the only kids in my life. That’s why I don’t want you in reform school or jail, OK?”

“We’re going back to the house now.” Michael clapped Braden on the shoulder, and ruffled Courtney’s hair. To her, he said, “You’re the one who puts up with nonsense all the time, aren’t you? We need to think of something special to do for you, before we all leave.”