SUE'S CLASSMATE
"Are you a gift or a curse?"
"Hi, Sue!" Shiori-senpai greeted me cheerily as I entered the student council boardroom lunch break the following day. She placed down the Obstetrics book she had been reading and took off her thick reading glasses, "How was the outreach trip yesterday?"
"It was okay," I said passively. Despite the fact that we were accompanied by 'unexpected guests' and that the activity left me completely exhausted right after, the medical mission in Hachiōji was generally a success. We attended to more than two hundred fifty orphanage kids. TEAM A and TEAM B switched roles, and so I was the one tasked to give vaccines, administer booster shots, and draw venous blood for complete blood counts. Each child would take about five to ten minutes on the examining table, often times extending another five minutes for struggling and wrestling. Ninety-nine percent of them were afraid of needles and blood, and so Sen and Albert made themselves useful by helping me keep the kids steady as I poked needles into their muscles or veins.
"Well, you don't look okay," Shiori commented.
I placed my bag on top of my desk and sat down on my comfy recliner, closing my eyes. "We finished at eight and made it back at around ten. Of course we had to carry the medical kits and machines back to the hospital. I stayed behind after to do the auditing."
"What? You did the audit by yourself?" Shiori said disbelievingly. "What time did you finish then?"
"Four A.M.," I replied yawning. "I'm beat. If only I could have an IV coffee inserted in my brain or something. It's a good thing we're off early today."
"You're already dismissed? Agh, you lucky creature…" Shiori frowned, looking at her wristwatch which read 12:45pm. She picked up her book again, sighing. "I have exams at one o'clock and I haven't even finished half of this! How come you don't have classes anymore?"
"Our lecturer's out of the country," I shrugged.
"Who's your lecturer?"
"Your father."
"Oh…" Shiori nodded, wearing her reading glasses back on as she turned the pages. "Well, enjoy more upcoming 'vacations' because otou-san won't be around for another two weeks."
"Another two weeks?"
I was about to ask her further until something on my desk suddenly caught my attention – a thick brown folder, which I immediately opened out of curiosity. Inside it were several medical histories of Obstetrics and Gynecology patients. On the lower portion of each page was my older brother's name and signature.
"I hope you don't mind returning them to him for me," Shiori said. "I borrowed those records the other day for an epidemiology study."
"You and onii-san…" I exclaimed in surprise. "… talked?"
"In Facebook," Shiori chuckled, pretty much expecting my startled reaction right after, "I'm not quite sure if you can call that 'talking'."
"But still…"
"Well, gotta go," Shiori stood up from her seat as the school bell rang. She took off her eyeglasses and placed it and her book inside her bag. She waved to me before exiting, "Thanks Sue… and keep up the good work!"
Keep up the good work, her words lingered on my mind. How many times have I heard someone say that to me? People were always fond of acknowledging the right things I do just as much as they were fond of criticizing every little mistake I made. One wrong move, you're judged – the other good things you do either just earn you this five-word sentence with a tap on the shoulder or just pass you by like all the others, then forgotten. What's next to being right? Are there other benefits for being good besides praises and being likable? What if I don't find my 'righteous side' right? What if what's right does not make me happy? It usually seemed like the good I do never matters.
