I sit upright in shock. Yoshino is kneeling before me. “Oh my gosh, you’re okay! What happened?” She hugs me without waiting for an answer. “Are you okay? Wow, you’re so dusty. How’d that happen? And you have something in your hair …”

“I’m okay, it’s just — gah!” I recoil in horror as Yoshino draws a spiderweb from my hair and lets it fall to the hospital floor like it’s nothing. “Um. I’m okay. It wasn’t me who got admitted; it was my … er, I … he’s, um …” I glance at the clipboard just past my feet. It’s devoid of paper now.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Lieko has it. She’s already filling it out for you.” She sits down next to me. “Tell me what happened.”

As I wipe my face for drool, I look over toward the entrance. Lieko is talking quietly with another nurse. “What is she doing here?”

“I called Manager as soon as I saw your text. I’m sorry, I panicked! I didn’t know he was going to call her. I guess it makes sense; she lives closest to this hospital. He figured she could get here faster than I could. We ended up running into each other just outside the doors.” Lieko is too far to hear her, but Yoshino drops her voice to a whisper, anyway. “I wouldn’t get too friendly with her though. She technically offered, but she’s still got a stick up her butt about it.”

Lieko heads toward us with her own clipboard as the nurse trots off in another direction. She doesn’t sit with us though; she takes a seat back where I was sitting with the old man and whips out her cellphone. Yoshino gestures with her head and we get up to go over.

“So,” I begin awkwardly. “Tricky form, eh?”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about it,” Yoshino cuts in before Lieko has a chance to speak. “We’ll wait for him to wake up and he can give us all his information. Hey, we’re just glad it isn’t you in a hospital bed!” She shakes her head. “Who is this person, anyway? A friend of yours or something?”

“What? Yoshino, he’s the guy you —”

Lieko looks up from her phone, directly at me, horrified. In all the months I’ve known her, I’ve seen this look on her face only once before. She looks like she’s about to cry.

“Um, he’s … you know, the guy you see passed out on the street, and you can’t, you know, help feeling sorry for? So, I bent down and asked if he was okay. He wasn’t, but when I started to call 119 he said not to. So, I did a quick Google search and saw this hospital was nearby. Cab ride took less than five minutes.”