Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

"Relatives come to visit and they eat with me here, and they always leave half their food, just like you. And they always say, "Oh, Midori, it's wonderful you've got such a healthy appetite. I'm too upset to eat.'

But get serious, I'm the one who's actually here taking care of the patient! They just have to drop by and show a little sympathy.

I'm the one who wipes up the shit and collects the phlegm and mops the brows. If sympathy was all it took to clean up shit, I'd have 50 times as much sympathy as anybody else! Instead, they see me eating all my food and they give me this look and say, "Oh Midori, you've got such a healthy appetite.' What do they think I am, a donkey pulling a cart?

They're old enough to know how the world really works, so why are they so stupid? It's easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit. I can be hurt, you know. I can get as exhausted as anyone else. I can feel so bad I want to cry, too. I mean, you try watching a gang of doctors get together and cut open somebody's head when there's no hope of saving them, and stirring things up in there, and doing it again and again, and every time they do it it makes the person worse and a little bit crazier, and see how you like it! And on top of it, you see your savings disappear. I don't know if I can keep going to university for another three-and-a-half years, and there's no way my sister can afford a wedding ceremony at this rate."

"How many days a week do you come here?" I asked.

"Usually four," said Midori. "This place claims to offer total nursing care, and the nurses are great, but there's just too much for them to do.

Some member of the family has to be around to take up the slack. My sister's watching the shop, and I've got my studies. Still, she manages to get here three days a week, and I come four. And we sneak in every now and then. Believe me, it's a full schedule!"

"How can you spend time with me if you're so busy?"

"I like spending time with you," said Midori, playing with a plastic cup.

"Get out of here for a couple of hours and go for a walk," I said. "I'll take care of your father for a while."

"Why?"

"You need to get away from the hospital and relax by yourself - not talk to anybody, just clear your mind."

Midori thought about it for a minute and nodded. "Hmm, you may be right. But do you know what to do? How to take care of him?"

"I've been watching. I've p retty much got it. You check the intravenous thing, give him water, wipe the sweat off, and help him spit phlegm. The bedpan's under the bed, and if he gets hungry I feed him the rest of his lunch. Anything I can't work out I'll ask the nurse."

"I think that should do it," said Midori with a smile. "There's just one thing, though. He's starting to get a little funny in the head, so he says weird things once in a while - things that nobody can understand.

Don't let it bother you if he does that."

"I'll be fine," I said.

Back in the room, Midori told her father she had some business to take care of and that I would be watching him while she was out. He seemed to have nothing to say to this. It might have meant nothing to him. He just lay there on his back, staring at the ceiling. If he hadn't been blinking every once in a while, he could have passed for dead.

His eyes were bloodshot as if he had been drinking, and each time he took a deep breath his nostrils flared a little. Other than that, he didn't move a muscle, and made no effort to reply to Midori. I couldn't begin to grasp what he might be thinking or feeling in the murky depths of his consciousness.

After Midori left, I thought I might try speaking to her father, but I had no idea what to say to him or how to say it, so I just kept quiet.

Before long, he closed his eyes and went to sleep. I sat on the stool by the head of the bed and studied the occasional twitching of his nose, hoping all the while that he wouldn't die now. How strange it would be, I thought, if this man were to breathe his last with me by his side.

After all, I had just met him for the first time in my life, and the only thing binding us together was Midori, a girl I happened to know from my History of Drama class.

He was not dying, though, just sleeping peacefully. Bringing my ear close to his face, I could hear his faint breathing. I relaxed and chatted to the wife of the man in the next bed. She talked of nothing but Midori, assuming I was her boyfriend.

"She's a really wonderful girl," she said. "She takes great care of her father; she's kind and gentle and sensitive and solid, and on top of all that, she's pretty. You'd better treat her right. Don't ever let her go.

You won't find another one like her."

"I'll treat her right," I said without elaborating.

"I have a son and daughter at home. He's 17, she's 21, and neither of them would ever think of coming to the hospital. The minute school finishes, they're off surfing or dating or whatever. They're terrible.

They squeeze me for all the pocket money they can get and then they disappear."

At 1.30 she left the hospital to do some shopping. Both men were sound asleep. Gentle afternoon sunlight flooded the room, and I felt as though I might drift off at any moment perching on my stool. Yellow and white chrysanthemums in a vase on the table by the window reminded people it was autumn. In the air floated the sweet smell of boiled fish left over from lunch. The nurses continued to clip-clop up and down the hall, talking to each other in clear, penetrating voices.

They would peep into the room now and then and flash me a smile when they saw that both patients were sleeping. I wished I had something to read, but there were no books or magazines or newspapers in the room, just a calendar on the wall.

I thought about Naoko. I thought about her naked, wearing only her hairslide. I thought about the curve of her waist and the dark shadow of her pubic hair. Why had she shown herself to me like that? Had she been sleep-walking? Or was it just a fantasy of mine? As time went by and that little world receded into the distance, I grew increasingly uncertain whether the events of that night had actually happened. If I told myself they were real, I believed they were, and if I told myself they were a fantasy, they seemed like a fantasy. They were too clear and detailed to have been a fantasy, and too whole and beautiful to have been real: Naoko's body and the moonlight.

Midori's father woke suddenly and started coughing, which put a stop to my daydreaming. I helped him spit his phlegm into a tissue, and wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel.

"Would you like some water?" I asked, to which he gave a four- millimetre nod. I held the small glass water bottle so that he could sip a little bit at a time, dry lips trembling, throat twitching. He drank every bit of the lukewarm water in the bottle.

"Would you like some more?" I asked. He seemed to be trying to speak, so I brought my ear closer.

he said in a small, dry voice - a voice even smaller and dryer than before.

"Why don't you eat something? You must be hungry." He answered with a slight nod. As Midori had done, I cranked his bed up and started feeding him alternating spoonfuls of vegetable jelly and boiled fish. It took an incredibly long time to get through half his food, at which point he shook his head a little to signal he had had enough.

The movement was almost imperceptible; it apparently hurt him to make larger gestures.

"What about the fruit?" I asked him.

he said. I wiped the corners of his mouth with a towel and made the bed level again before taking the dishes to the corridor.