The Nail That Sticks Out

Prologue

Olivia Mei Sasaki

The heart is a profound muscle, if you think about it. Pumping blood over a hundred thousand times a day, moving oxygen along the arteries strenuously, furiously, ceaselessly. Until it ceases to work.

So it should be no surprise that heart disease is the leading cause of death here, in the United States. They say that here, a person has a heart attack every forty seconds. I count to forty in my head.

Boom.

There goes one heart attack.

And I sure hope that that this person won't be going through what my mom had just gone through in the past 24 hours.

Her heart attack happened yesterday, in the morning, as we sat at our small table for two. Scooping cereal into my mouth, I noticed she wasn't eating. When I had asked her why, she simply told me she didn't have the appetite. Said there was some kind of pressure on her stomach, like a painful bloating. But when she could barely stand, I knew something was wrong. I drove her to the San Francisco VA Medical Center in a panic while she nagged endlessly, telling me it was nothing serious.

It was a heart attack, the doctor said.

Not a major one, so no surgical procedures were required. An ECG test and a bag of blood-thinning medication was all it took before I was driving us back home. I steamed fish that night. Japanese cuisine is not usually my thing (despite my being three quarters Japanese), but an online article said that fish is a heart-healthy food and deep frying it into fish and chips didn't seem like a very healthy idea. Before we went to bed, I boiled some edamame and brewed a pot of green tea for the next morning. Those were in the article too.

It's too bad we couldn't have neither the edamame nor the green tea. That night, a soft knocking and the sound of my door creaking open woke me up with a start. I flipped my lamp switch on to see my mom's face as white as a sheet. Her lips almost blue. She clutched her chest with her eyes screwed shut, her breaths coming out in short and shallow bursts. I had never seen her so... weak.

Horrified, it took me a second before came to my senses and reached for my phone to dial 911 with trembling hands. I held her cold body the entire time, words spilling out my mouth as I explained to the operator what she looked like, where we lived. When they asked me if her speech had been impaired, I looked at her and spoke. She couldn't answer. She couldn't move. Her eyes, no longer screwed shut, were peacefully closed as if she were in deep sleep. I remember screaming for her over and over. I remember feeling nauseous, my throat burning like I had swallowed fire. I remember watching through blurry eyes as people in white coats lifted her out of my hands and onto a stretcher.

And now I'm here. Sitting outside the emergency room, staring blankly at the small TV in the corner. I don't know what's being shown on the TV, though I've been in this position for...

Huh. Not sure how long it's been, actually.

I'm exhausted from the events of the day. My head lifts every time the double doors open, but no one comes to speak to me. I wonder if she'll be awake or sleeping. I wonder how many days it'll take before she can be released from this depressing hospital.

"Miss Sasaki?"

I look up as a doctor walks towards my seat. He looks around forty or fifty with thick-rimmed eyeglasses. I stand.

"May I know your relation to Miss Sarah Sasaki?"

"I'm her daughter. Olivia Mei Sasaki," I answer.

"And your age?"

"Seventeen."

His gaze shifts to the side as he reaches to remove his eyeglasses. "Have you contacted any other relatives? Is, uh, anyone else on the way?"

I know what he's asking. Do I have a father?

"I sent a message to my father," I replied. "He is on a business trip in Tokyo. My grandparents are living in Tokyo and I haven't contacted them yet."

"I see," he nods slowly. "Any aunts or uncles?"

I shake my head and try to hide my annoyance. Does he think I'm too young to take care of my own mother?

"Can I go see her now?" I ask.

He looks at me. Sighs. My blood turns to ice as I recognize his expression. The same expression my mom would give me every year on my birthday when my father would call, telling us not to wait up. The expression my third grade teacher gave me on father's day, when I told her that I had no plans to spend time with my father and that he'd be busy anyway. Never, not once, had anyone given me this look with regards to my mom.

Pity.

What an ugly, pathetic, embarrassing expression to receive.

"Olivia," he says in a gentle voice. "Your mother has died. I'm afraid she could not be saved and I am truly sorry on behalf of our team. She has suffered a sudden cardiac arrest wherein her heart had ceased to function. We will contact your father immediately if you could give us his phone number. I am sorry, Olivia."