When You Were Here

for the help.”
    “I imagine they are.”
    He sucks on the lemon candy, his cheek pouching out as he does. Should I ask him next if he’s climbed Mount Everest? Because that’s about all I know of Tibet—that the big peak is nearby. But I don’t ask that. He doesn’t go to Tibet to climb Mount Everest. I bet he goes there because it is part of his way of life, part of his beliefs.
    “What do you do there? In Tibet?” I ask, because it is so much easier to say that than, Did my mom stop taking her medicine?
    He tells me about his work there. I hear maybe every three words, and though I tell myself to focus, to listen, inside I’m scrambling to figure out how to ask what I most want to know.
    “But I suspect that is not why you are here,” he says gently, and I want to thank him profusely for putting me out of my small-talk misery.
    “No. That’s not why I’m here, Dr. Takahashi. You treated my mom,” I say, stating the obvious, as if I can just ease into the difficult conversation.
    He nods and begins to explain his credentials, his approach. But I know what he’s written, I know the research he’s done, the awards he’s received.
    “She thought of you as a medicine man, some kind of healer. Like a spiritual healer,” I continue, starting smaller, circling the big question.
    He nods. “I am flattered.”
    But I’m not here to flatter him. “Are you?”
    “A spiritual healer?”
    “Yes. You sent her to drink that tea. She thought it would heal her.”
    “She was looking for all sorts of healing,” he says, and I’m tossed back to the afternoon at the teahouse, to Kana’s words to me as well.
    Sometimes healing isn’t about our bodies.
    “Do you believe in that legend, then? The one about the tea, about the emperor and his wife?”
    “I believe that sometimes if you believe you are healthy, you are healthy.”
    “Mind over matter?”
    “There is something to it, Danny. There is something to the energy in the universe, the energy you put out, the energy you take in.”
    “And does that work for cancer treatment? Or is that more for, say, nerves or headaches?” I ask, and I’m instantly embarrassed because I sound so sarcastic, so snippy. I didn’t come here to accuse or to interrogate, but my old habits die hard.
    But before I can apologize, he speaks again. Calm and gentle. Every word chosen with care, it seems.
    “I am saying that if you have someone who wants to heal, sometimes they will respond to the unconventional. Their minds are more open to healing, so their bodies become more willing too. I believe that medication, while a wonderful thing, has its limits. That there are answers to be found in the unconventional. And she wanted that. Sheasked for that. I treated her with traditional cancer meds, and also with Chinese herbs and acupuncture, to minimize the effects of the chemo. I was in touch with her doctors in LA. As I’m sure you know, they were following this protocol too. And yes, I encouraged her to go to the teahouse and to see the temples and to keep her mind and her heart open to new ways of healing.”
    “She was open to healing. She was willing. And it still didn’t work.” I hold out my hands, waiting for an answer. “So why did she keep coming over here every month? When the cancer came back, why did she come back? What did she think was going to happen? She talked about you as a miracle doctor. She thought you were going to save her,” I say, working hard to keep my voice measured now, to hold back all my darkest fears. My jaw is tight, I’m clenching my fists, and all my muscles are tense, but this time it’s not because I’m angry. It’s because I’m terrified of what he’s going to say. I’m petrified of falling apart again. “And when my mom first saw you, she was great,” I say slowly, doling out each word so I can keep it together. “She was doing better than in years. She was so sure she was going to be in the clear.” I try to speak again, but the sounds in my mouth are a chasm, and I am at the edge. Somehow I manage to say, in the barest of whispers, “ I was so sure you would save her. I wanted you to save her.”
    I wanted it more than anything. More than Holland, even.
    I look at him, but it’s not him anymore; he’s twenty,thirty, forty feet away, and everything is shrinking and expanding, and I don’t think I can even see the walls in the room anymore. I’m cycling back over everything I hoped for. Everything I wished for in