Nelson makes the best stir fry. I remember the first time he knocked on the call room door, a few years back, when he was still new. He wore a doo rag that tied behind his ears, round glasses with silver rims, and that easy smile that seems a birthright of every man, woman, and child who call Moloka’i their home.
Dinner, doc.
Come in, I said.
The hospital kitchen closes at 5:00 on Moloka’i. Which makes for an early dinner. And far too many hours left in the 24-shift for terror to walk through the door.
The stir fry was delicious. That night, nobody tried to die.
The next morning, I looked for the new guy. I looked for Nelson. His stir fry was that good, good enough to remember his name. My search for him was cursory, as all things post-call are. Blanketed by the fog of sleeplessness, I could still sense the ghosts. The ones that linger like fog as the Sun peels lasts night’s rain from the black streets. The 57-year-old with chest pain, the 3-year-old with a 104 fever, the suicidal teen whose girlfriend told him she was done. I’d sent them all home. What if I was wrong?
The alarm’s shrill. Denial. Snooze. Repeat. There is a cruelty to morning. It’s right there, mixed in with the beauty and the miracle that dangles the false promise of something new. Three hours of sleep is never enough. Ah, math and its truth. Nothing grey. Black and white. Yes or no. I packed my bags. I made my flight.
Nelson wasn’t there on the next shift either. 48 hours. What were the odds?
But the shift after that one, past the tipping point beyond which I’d remembered, there he was. Nelson. Knocking on the call room door. I looked at the clock. 4:15. It was too early for dinner. But there he was.
Hey, doc.
Come in, I commanded. For here I am king.
His doo rag was different. This one had yellow flames with orange tips.
What do you want for dinner tonight?
Nelson! I was excited to see him, like a teenage boy who sees the girl walk in. That stir fry you made last time was the best I’ve ever had.
It’s the fish sauce, Nelson said in that sing-song pitch of pidgin, the accent rising with the sauce.
I should back up, tell the reader the food on Molokai is one of the worst parts of the job. Too much meat. Two scoops too many of rice, rice too white, rice too often. Two scoops for dinner. Two scoops for lunch. Two scoops with my eggs. The food comes heavy and hot in a white Styrofoam box. I could fill a hole in the Earth the size of my house with all the plastic water bottles they’ve given me over 20 years.
Do you think you could make it again? I asked.
Sometimes the thinnest threads hold the world’s weight and all that’s right.
You got it, doc.
After so many years, Nelson doesn’t bother to ask any more.
How long has it been since Nelson’s stir fry brought new joy to my life? Three years? Six? Nine? Time stretches and recoils like a yo-yo’s string. Yet Nelson is one constant, like a gift beneath the tree. Through all that time, spanning that chasm over so much agony and broken pieces, there is Nelson. Beyond death and the peeling grief that slowly stretches like a newborn’s pink and vernixed arms, there is Nelson. His doo rag and glasses. That same joyful smile. Something kind in this place that seldom is. Something of love. Something maternal. A miracle not only in the form of man, but in man’s offering — a Styrofoam box filled with tenderness dripping in fish sauce.
Sometimes the yo-yo stops. Life alights. And a man can recoil from the world and its demands. A break from all the doing. Something selfish. An act of greed. A Neanderthal crouched in flickering shadows, his cupped hands shoveling meat into his hole. Nourishment is a primal force. It compels one to stop, to breathe, to be. And in the stopping, a reflection. The image of the me that gets lost.
And images too of the people who bring joy to our lives, the color between the lines. People like Nelson. People whose smile makes me smile. But who was Nelson? How many words had we even shared? Twenty? Twenty-five? Dinner doc. Stir fry, my favorite. Have a good night. You too. Thanks. Have a quiet night. Like a stone on a familiar path, sometimes we forget to appreciate the things right in front of us, the people along the way.
Tonight was a good night. Nelson was on. And the patients weren’t too sick. I saw him in the hall, doo ragged up, carrying my tray. He walked past me as I worked, a doctor staring at his screen. He was gone long enough to knock, to enter, to drop the tray. He passed again. I said thanks. My bowels grumbled. My phone dinged. I looked at the list of patients. Two more were waiting to be seen. Then there was bed 2, the 82 year-old with low sodium, the one on oxygen for two days. His CT would be back soon, then I could figure out what to do with him. And then this note to finish right here. I typed. I clicked. Another one gone. Just three left. Three more lives between me and Nelson’s stir fry.
Oh, how I longed for that fish sauce. 9 hours in, I craved both its sustenance and its reprieve. This was my first shift since Corona changed the world. I’d been afraid. Of how to deal with the onslaught, of how to deal with the fear. But truth is, not much had changed. Not yet, at least. Hawai’i lags behind the world. Moloka’i farther still. The patients came. The patients went. The only thing new was the doctoring in the parking lot, the healing through windows rolled down, patients in seatbelts still strapped.
It was hard to breathe through the mask, hard to see through the face-shield’s fog.
So too was it my first shift since that tree had ripped the ligaments off the bones of my knee. And parking lots have no stools. I longed for one now, the ones on wheels. I longed for a stool almost as much as the stir fry.
When did the cough start?
I had a bag of frozen peas in the call room’s freezer.
And when did you arrive from the mainland?
I had bought them on the way from the airport.
Do you have a thermometer at home?
It’s two flights from Kaua’I to here. At the airport, my leg brace had set off the metal detector’s alarm.
Any fevers?
TSA had searched me, my arms outstretched like a savior’s, to be searched like a criminal. I tried to avoid the eyes all around. I tried not to think of his cupped hands on my right testicle, on my left, from the front, from behind.
We’ll swab you for flu. If it’s negative, we’ll send it for Covid.
I was glad I remembered the peas. I’d forgotten my laptop after the violation at TSA. I’d had to go back, face the man with gloved hands.
It will take a week for the results. Stay at home until then.
He drove away. To his home and his fear. To pray and to wait. To watch the news and be shunned. The sky was the color of a peach in July. It pained me to go back in. To the world of controlled climate, of fluorescent lights.
I saw the second patient. He had gout. I gave him meds. The CT came back. It looked like cancer. I would tell him tomorrow. One of us deserved a good sleep tonight.
The stir fry was getting closer. The computer’s glow on my face. The peas with their frost. The sound of decisions as they click. I imagined the tang of fish sauce on my tongue. The icy embrace of peas wrapped ‘round my knee.
And then, for a blessed moment, the river stopped. I felt my leg like a swollen stump of wet wood. I limped to my room. The zip of Velcro straps. Dents in my skin where the brace pressed in. This knee didn’t seem like mine, as if it was someone else’s, grafted onto this body that was mine. This life felt that way too. As if it, too, was no longer mine. I limped to the freezer. I limped back to the bed. I lifted my leg on the bed. I wrapped the peas around the pain.
This was the moment. Reflections all around.
I looked at my phone, remembered the ding. It was my wife. She had texted 3 hours before.
Text me when you can, it said.
Nelson’s stir fry was on the table at the foot of the bed. I stretched but couldn’t reach. Damned tree. Damned pain. Damned Covid. I peeled the peas from my skin. I stretched too far, the tips of my fingers scratching at the box. Then, I felt a new pain, like a searing needle, deep inside.
But the stir fry was in my grasp.
I opened the box.
Green beans and carrots. Onions turned soft and sweet. Red peppers still crispy. Chicken the color of shoyu and fish sauce and fire. The steam was long gone. The rice had turned to stone. But Nelson’s stir fry is delicious, fresh or old, warm or cold.
Happiness and peace can seem so fleeting at times. Then there are moments like these. The frozen peas like ecstasy’s first kiss, the pain turned to numb, time stretching out, all the noise and the needs and the lives of others swept away.
Life can be hard. And life can be good.
I picked up my phone, too tired to text. Call Tracey, I barked at Siri.
Hey.
Hey.
I have some bad news, she said.
I watched the plastic fork as it stabbed at the chicken. It scooped an onion, a carrot, some rice that fell tiny stones.
What’s up?
I know you’re working. But it doesn’t feel right to wait.
What is it?
Moseley’s dead.
And there, truth and life and all that matters in a flash. Time’s hurried flight like an arrow, frozen in an air turned to ice, suspended, hanging, not even falling down. Just this open expanse of infinity, like the ocean’s azure blue that bleeds to sky. Duality compressed from either end to a point. Words gone. No after. No before. Just the vacuum of timeless nothingness that existed long before. That will continue long beyond. Every experience, every memory, turned to cloud, then dust, then gone.
He was playing with the puppy. The way they always do. Then he let out a scream.
The white fork. Its tiny tongs. The brown chicken. The red and yellow curls.
We all ran to him. All the kids were there. He screamed again. We held him. He screamed one more time.
The frozen peas. My throbbing knee. The image of my wife, the three kids, all hunched over on the lawn. The dog that raised them, the dog that loved them, the dog that lay dying, dying, dead.
And me, their father, here on Moloka’i. Caring for everyone but them. Holding back a surging flood that isn’t mine. My body on this bed. My back against this wall. Two flights between here and home. A mask around my neck to keep the virus out. The virus that leaves 20, 30, 40% of them dead. This hole of emptiness that’s follows death like a silent wake.
Part of me doesn’t want the clock to restart. It doesn’t want to fill this space with words, to fracture the frozen silence, to watch the arrow fall. Even Nelson’s stir fry can’t tempt me. I want to stay here. Because here, I’m closer to before. The before where Moseley’s waiting. At the top of the stairs for me to come home, with his toothy smile. His wrinkled forehead. His scrunched-up eyes that know love. I can see Moseley now. His tail’s about to wag.
And because here, I’m farther from after. After Hawai’i and Moloka’i catch up with the rest of the world. After I eventually catch the virus and tell the kids to stop at six feet. After the numbers turn to names and regret fills the void beyond the silent wake.
And then there’s Nelson. The man, not his stir fry. Beneath the doo rag. Behind the smile. The stranger turned to friend whose mere presence brings me joy. It’s as simple as that, really. And I’m not even sure he knows. Maybe I should tell him. That I love him. That he’s a gift. That his smile makes me smile. That my life is better because of him.
And there, another gift of this virus, this pandemic, this loss and this fear. A reminder in the contrast, through the silence. A reflection of all we have. The beauty in the people, the stones along the way.
I think I’ll look for Nelson on my next shift. Before the rain falls. Before the ghosts return.