The Waiting Room - Part IV
In Part III, the pact made, our narrator and the grandma become inseparable, visiting a temple and the mall and attending their doctors’ appointments together. The doctors tell the narrator that religious interventions may be necessary. At the mall, the grandma buys our narrator a wedding dress.
On our last day together we go to the zoo. It’s another sunny day, not too hot this time, but perfect. Grandma’s like me in her approach to the zoo: meandering, silent, and observational. It’s midday on a Saturday, so we weave slowly between racing children, baby strollers, and haggard parents. We watch as children point and laugh, ooh-ing and ah-ing at various critters with the novelty of discovery. Only the pitch-black building housing the nocturnal creatures is empty. It takes a moment for our eyes to adjust to the crepuscule, for our ears to tune into the satisfying absence of children’s screams. A mother bat cradles her daughter bat, swaying and rocking like an electric bassinet. Grandma holds my hand, too, as we watch.
“Do you think this is what death feels like?” Grandma whispers.
“Like what?” I squeeze her hand with my inquiry.
“Total darkness,” she says. “Like being back in a womb.”
I hear an unfamiliar uncertainty in her voice. A fear buried under her nonchalance.
“Not for you,” I assure her before the tarantula display. “Aren’t you flying far, far away as a crane?” Grandma guffaws, and that’s that. We leave the bats, snakes, and beetles behind in the deadened darkness.
The sunlight blinds us at first. We walk slowly with our arms linked, readjusting to the land of the living. When we turn, that’s when we see them: six red-crowned cranes, standing straight as sentinels. Other animals roam the artificial marsh, but the cranes command my focus with their stature, some of them well over five feet tall. Grandma and I pause at their majesty. Other visitors bypass the gated field, the attention span of children too porous to withstand observation of static creatures. Instead, they pull their adult companions in the direction of the large metal arrow pointing toward the panda display. Only Grandma and I stay to watch.
She lets go of my hand and approaches the fence, overtaken by the same solemn reverence she had at her daughter’s temple. The cranes begin a delicate arabesque around the sedge-speckled pond, weaving between cattails and guzzling water with a dip and an upturned beak.
“They’re beautiful,” I say. Grandma nods in agreement.
“This zoo was small when I first visited in my childhood. They didn’t have as many animals back then. But I remember these cranes,” she says. “I was so young but I never forgot them.”
“All my other classmates were off petting horses or looking at lions but I couldn’t stop staring at these cranes. They seemed to defy gravity with their movements. I didn’t know birds could be so big. Even now, some of them must be taller than I am! They are still the most beautiful things I have seen in my long life.” She stares as two cranes flap their wings toward each other and laughs, remembering.
“That time I came with my class, there were two cranes jumping toward each other just like this. I remember thinking, ‘What are they doing? Are they fighting or flirting?’ Many years later whenever my husband teased me I thought of those cranes—fighting, or flirting?
“Eventually, I understood the cranes were dancing. They were playing! I recognized it in the lightness of their feet, their bows, and their curtsies. I thought, ‘That! That is what love is. Play and dance.’ When I met my husband, I married him within a month because of how much he made me laugh. How light he made me feel when we danced. The cranes end their dance by crossing their necks together. When my husband and I slept, we tangled our legs together the very same way. Every night, for sixty years. For sixty years, we danced. For sixty years, we played. Even when we fought, we laughed.”
Grandma turns to me and though her mouth ticks upward, her eyes betray her sorrow. This is the first time I hear Grandma speak about her husband, her voice redolent of persistent love, the kind indistinguishable from grief. The love of loss, the loss of love.
****
Grandma doesn’t show up to the waiting room the next day. Or the one after that.
Meanwhile, my condition shows no sign of improvement or deterioration. To feel pain would be a confirmation of my condition’s oddity. Instead, I live with the sober clarity that my body has holes and there is nothing I can do about it. It is in this strange limbo I find peace. At night, I dream of the vapid doctor with a pair of tongs, yanking the spots out from a giant laceration on my splayed body. I wake up frantically, patting my chest to confirm my structural integrity.
Without Grandma, my days are supine. I imagine what we would be doing if we were together and I do them anyway. I visit museums, gorge myself on delicious treats, take naps on park benches, burn paper money at street-side temples and pray for my ancestors. I have stopped asking them for their blessings. Instead, I talk to them, telling them about my 44 years on this strange modern earth. Laugh when I remember my foolish anxieties. Forgive my parents for their faults. I wander and start conversations with strangers, my Mandarin vastly improved after all my time with Grandma. Despite my deteriorating body, I feel strong in my mind and my heart. On a hike up Tiger Mountain, my only companions are the wild kittens and geriatric athletes who climb these wooden steps daily, doing push-ups against the railings to strengthen their aging muscles. We gaze in silent communion at the skyline, Taipei 101’s circular window staring back at us like the eye of Sauron.
In the mornings I hear karaoke wafting from open doors and windows—yearning ballads and languid torch songs—and I make up stories for the lost loves the early singers lament. I accidentally make eye contact with a crooning grandpa and though his expression is one of anguish, his smile when he meets my eyes reveals the overlaps in his wrinkles and his laugh lines.
Whenever I try to remember my life in America, I receive only the static of a distant nostalgia. I try to conjure the exact shade of my apartment kitchen’s blue walls (or were they more of a periwinkle?), the books on my shelves (which spine sat next to Pachinko?), the spices in my cabinets (did I have turmeric?), and draw blanks. It takes me a full five minutes to recall the name of my mailman whom I interacted with on a daily basis in my apartment lobby. My barista, who always gave Bucky a plastic cup of whipped cream, is faceless to me, like a character in a movie I watched long ago.
The only acute trigger is a wafting smell from a bakery that makes me float like a cartoon character toward the aromatic plume of a faraway pie. When I arrive, I’m delighted to discover the egg tarts are exactly like the ones I used to get from my favorite bakery in Manhattan’s Chinatown: a flaky shell, its center warm and melt-in-your-mouth gooey. My body, not my mind, holds my strongest memories. The only tethers I have to my past life.
*****
My anxiety hardens on the third day Grandma doesn’t show.
Sitting on the pink plastic chair in the waiting room, I remember with a sudden acuity her forlorn glance the last time we said goodbye.
As I pet the squealing pigs at the zoo, a morbid craving for pork belly hit my stomach.
“I’m going to Wufenpu for gua bao. Want to join?” I asked Grandma. She shook her head. “I’m having too much fun here,” she said with a smile. “Maybe I’ll go pay my elegant friends another visit.” We said goodbye beside a food cart, the smell of fried dough mixing with nearby manure. I glanced behind me, putting my earbuds in as I watched Grandma walk away: her tiny frame drowning in her favorite cream linen vest and loose tan sweatpants, her soft hands clasped behind her back, and the puff of crimson hair a nest around her visor. Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta by Geto Boys autoplayed in my headphones; I smiled at the fitting send-off to Grandma’s saunter.
At the hospital now I wonder: What happened after I left? Did she ever go back to see the cranes? Was this white dress her parting gift? I put it on this morning because I hoped it would serve as an incantation, as if Grandma would hear its calling and appear if only to witness me in it. I feel silly now, foolishly overdressed for a hospital visit, with no plans afterward. If Grandma doesn’t show, I’ll probably go home and change. My all-white outfit matches the doctor’s robes. Never wear white to a wedding, people say, but no one ever tells you the same rule applies to hospitals.
My eyes flit nervously around the waiting room, which is abnormally busy for this time of day. Grandma is still nowhere to be found. I reluctantly submit when the nurse summons my name, but keep an eye on the hallway for Grandma’s shadow. I slip on my jacket so the doctor won’t comment on my outfit. Of course, he does anyway.
“All dressed up, huh! Got somewhere fancy to go after?” The doctor waggles his eyebrows, his unprofessionalism no longer shocking to me. I bunch my arms across my chest in silent protestation. “Well, maybe the dress is good luck.” He directs my attention to the day’s scans. “Take a look—the holes have disappeared!”
I’m incredulous, but it appears to be true. Yesterday’s black spots were bulbous and perilously close to my heart but today, they’ve evaporated completely. A full-body scan shows a normal body with a rod-straight back, white dress be damned, no black spots to be found. My hand shoots up to trail the skeleton’s skull, down my spine, all the way down to my feet, standing up close like the doctor on our very first interaction. I trace my finger down as if searching for Waldo in a sea of striped characters.
“What does this mean?” I spin and face the doctor, a hesitant hope blooming for the first time.
“Well, we don’t want to celebrate too soon but it’s a good sign. We should continue monitoring, but perhaps divine intervention truly did work its magic. Whatever you’ve been doing, keep it up.” The rest of his words trail into a distant hum, almost as if on a different plane or energy field. I can’t stop staring at my clean scan. I think back to all the temples I stumbled upon on my walks, the arbitrary incense and joss paper I burned, the round echoes of prayer bowls in my eardrums. Could this really be divine intervention?
I stumble back to the waiting room, my disbelief shrouding me in a panoramic stupor. I collapse in the chair, surrounded by the low buzz of polite hospital whispers and the occasional plop of a bottle falling from the vending machine. My excitement suddenly bursts upward, dying to spill from my mouth. I try on the unfamiliar hope like I did this dress a few days ago. My leg shakes with impatient adrenaline. I want to tell Grandma the good news. As the initial adrenaline rush fades, I can feel a languid exhaustion spread across my collarbones. I sprawl across three seats and, without meaning to, fall asleep waiting. Today is my birthday: the last thought I catch before I surrender to slumber.
When I wake up, the waiting room is empty again. I look up in my haze, and my eyes focus on a handsome man in solemn conversation with the icy-eyed nurse. The sky is black through the window. I’m never here this late. The nurse points at me and I hear the Chinese words for your little sister flit from her faraway mouth. He turns quickly, craning his long neck in my direction. Confusion somehow renders more beauty to his face. His eyes lock with mine. He has his mother’s elegant neck and his dead sister’s flat nose. The waiting room’s fluorescents flare in a white, phosphorus blaze. I raise my hand to shield my eyes and see my arm has transformed into a feathered wing. I give the man a wave. My entire body feels light as it rises, taking flight.
Jun Chou is a solar-powered human, Brooklyn-based writer, and Asian American Writers’ Workshop 2025 Margins Fellow. Her writing has previously appeared in Electric Literature, Cake Zine, Hobart, and is upcoming in Honey Literary. She also interviews creatives of all disciplines as a regular contributor to The Creative Independent. During the day, she improves recipe discovery for The New York Times Cooking. Other times you can find her belting karaoke, adding to her Letterboxd, rock climbing, or drafting her debut novel.