What's Up?
Before I landed in Tokyo I knew three things:1. The GF was pregnant
2. There were some complications with the pregnancy that seemed to be getting worse
3. The doctors warned her that she may have to be hospitalized
I arrived on a Friday and she had another doctor appointment scheduled for Saturday. Sitting in a Japanese waiting room pondering the life or death of your unborn child (whom you've only known about for 5 days) is a strange experience. You don't feel entirely connected to the child yet, but you understand it is your child. Your connection to it is through the mother. They are joined together and she wants to do all she can to help the child fight to survive.
After twenty minutes distracting myself with a Japanese phrasebook, they call her name and she disappears behind the frosted glass door. They will give an ultrasound and quiz her about her symptoms. In ten minutes time I can see her figure through the frosted glass. She has paused on the other side of the door before opening it. She's dabbing her eyes with tissue, composing herself, and eventually re-entering the waiting room.
They want to hospitalize her, but she refuses. She'll get her bed rest at home with my tending to her. A week where I thought I'd be taking photos from Tokyo tower, strolling Shimbuku, relaxing at the Basho museum, and climbing the 60 stories of Sunshine city turned about to be a week spent within her small one bedroom apartment, making her food, doing her dishes, cleaning up, and generally caring for my bedridden GF.
It was great.
Sure, there was less excitement and exploration than I planned, but we made do.
Unfortunately, we didn't do enough. On Tuesday she was told she needed to be hospitalized to keep her off her feet and to allow them to keep a closer eye on her symptoms. The baby was too small and there was too much blood obscuring the ultrasound to see how well it was doing. I was scheduled to leave Thursday, but I can't leave her like this, so I tell her I will extend my stay indefinitely. I can arrange to do some work from her apartment in the mornings and nights, and spend my afternoons and evenings visiting her in the hospital.
Tuesday night was my birthday. She had planned a dinner for us at some nice top floor restaurant in Shimbuku, but those plans needed to be cancelled. Instead, I pan fried some thinly sliced steak, some rice, and leftover potatos flavored with oils and rosemary. After a long, strange prelude, I officially began the next chapter in my life by formally asking her to marry me. It was just after dinner. We were sitting on her hand-me-down couch, amongst the remains of our meal and the knowledge that tonight would be our last night together for some time. She said yes, as both of us counted down the hours until 2m Wednesday afternoon when the nurse would place her name on a chart next to a room number and close a curtain around us.
It wasn't all bad. I did still get to see her quite often. Every day I got up and made breakfest, fed her bird, clean up, checked email, got some work done, then made the short walk to the Haijima station, got off at Fussa, and walked three blocks to the hospital where she was staying. I'd sit with her as long as visiting hours would allow, 5 hours on M-S, 9.5 hours on Sunday.
They told her she would be in for about two weeks, but we thought she would be able to return home when the pain and bleeding ceased. On Thursday we got the news that she would be there for two weeks regardless, and that another ultrasound wasn't even scheduled until her two weeks were up. Complicating matters, I had to return home soon, and it looked inevitable that I would be returning home without knowing what was up.
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