Sakura

A heartwarming and poignant short story by S. H. Miah, set in the alluring town of Blueridge.

Sixteen year old Sakura loves watching the spring cherry blossoms in Blueridge Park with her family.

But strained family relations and an ailing mother in hospital force her to confront those closest to her.

And in doing so confront herself.

An emotional heartwarmer, S. H. Miah delights in this Blueridge short story about a girl's fight for familial love when the world seems against her.

Sakura - A Blueridge Short Story

Chapter 1

Hino Sakura, commonly referred to as Sakura by her friends in secondary school, loved cherry blossom trees more than almost anything. She loved the sweet pink tinge they took on when spring rolled its windows down and shone on the world. She loved the luscious swaying of the petals and soft branches when a breeze tickled them. She loved the not-so-soft not-so-strong aroma drifting off the trees as though giving Sakura's nostrils a warm embrace, the scent akin to a light vanilla mixed with various other flowers.

Most of all, she loved walking through Blueridge Park, which had its fair share of bright cherry blossoms, with Okaa-san and Otou-san (her mother and father) during the April holidays. Where they could be together, revelling in each other's company with whatever days they had left.

Sakura, whose name itself was spelt with the Japanese kanji for cherry blossoms. The kanji which Sakura had committed to so much finger muscle memory she half expected her hand to fall off from writing so much. When young, she would practice writing that kanji on little sheets of paper and stick them on the walls, on the fridge, on her homework desk, and even sneak one inside her primary school bookbag.

All of those had now been taken down. And stored away after Otou-san got a little annoyed at not being able to see a wall not covered with ink. Sakura didn't need the reference sheets anymore, anyway.

She stood, currently, under those brilliant cherry blossoms, alone in Blueridge Park, with that familiar soft breeze her companion, the lush grass tickling her feet beneath the equally green abaya she wore. The comfort of her purple scarf cradled her head, whilst the most amazing sunlight streamed from the heavens to bless the world.

The air was light to touch, light to breathe, and Sakura let that sweet scent of cherry blossoms overtake her. The concrete path meandering through the grass to her left only added to the serenity she felt within herself. Children played on swings and climbing frames in the distance, their giggles music to Sakura’s ears—not that she listened to music, what with it being haram and all.

She sighed, then breathed the cool relaxing air once more. Let it fill her up. Let it soothe the sinking in her chest.

It was near-magical, this scene, and would always burrow a delight within Sakura’s heart that nothing else could.

But one thing eluded her, a fact she couldn't forget no matter how many times she came here alone attempting to relive the past.

That Okaa-san, her mother, couldn't come with her, because she was in hospital and too ill to leave for long periods of time. She was ill with cancer, a worsening cancer, and her body was weakening with every passing day.

Sakura wanted to yell at the nurses and doctors to put Okaa-san in a wheelchair and let her breathe fresh air for the first time in months—but no one ever listened to Sakura.

Not the nurses, doctors. Not Otou-san. And certainly not Nee-san, Sakura's older sister Haruka, who was eighteen years old.

No one listened to Sakura except Okaa-san herself.

“It's okay, Sakura,” Okaa-san would say, rubbing Sakura’s hair and carding her fingers through it. Her hands felt cold, but her touch was warm. Always warm. “Mama will always be here.”

The words were full, yet meaningless at the same time. They both knew it wasn't true.

“But what if…”

Sakura hadn't wanted to say what she feared would happen. She knew everyone would die one day—Allah said it in the Qur'an, after all, that every soul shall taste death.

And anything in the Qur’an, Sakura had learnt, was truer than truth itself.

But when that possibility hung over her own mother, her dear Okaa-san, Sakura couldn't even attempt to hold herself together.

In their family, a previously happy family, Okaa-san was the glue that held them together. The chain with them as the links. The light with them as the lit.

Without her, with Okaa-san gone, how would they continue living? How would any of them, Sakura the most, find it within them to fight for life when their biggest ally had been defeated?

Sakura didn't know. Hadn't a clue. Watched the cherry blossoms glisten as if trying to comfort her. Smelled the vanilla scent settling in her nose like a bird in a nest. Sighed as the green grass floated along and the majestic sky brought its light and the children with both parents continued giggling in the distance.

Sakura felt the odd one out. Everything here was filled with light and warmth.

She was not.

Chapter 2

Hospitals were two main colours, at least Blueridge Central hospital was. This sky-light blue type of thing, as well as the whitest shade of white that Sakura had ever seen.

As she stood outside the ward where Okaa-san was kept locked up, Sakura stared at the white walls and ceiling, and then at the blue receptionist desk on the far side, about ten or fifteen metres away.

The receptionist was on a lunch break, cracking up jokes with a colleague of hers whilst chucking crackers into her mouth. Crunching them whilst chatting at the same time.

Sakura remembered Okaa-san feeding her biscuits like that when she was young. Now, Okaa-san was too weak to do anything except stroke Sakura's hair and give her light kisses.

At least that was the narrative the nurses were feeding Sakura and her family. Going outside to Blueridge Park to see the cherry blossoms in the spring?

Not a chance.

The smell of detergent wafted through the hospital corridors, mixed with that sterile cleanliness one would expect from the best (and only) hospital in Blueridge. Sakura breathed it in. Then out. Then put it out of her mind.

Otou-san sighed from beside Sakura, wearing the light leather jacket Okaa-san had bought for him, whilst Nee-san had taken a seat on one of those sky-blue chairs to the left of the visitor's area and was texting on her phone. Her black scarf probably matched her heart, given how she practically ignored everyone else since Okaa-san was admitted with the terrible news.

That annoyed Sakura, and that familiar annoyance swelled up inside her chest. How could Nee-san just start texting her friends, or whoever it was on the other end, and then ignore her family, when they were waiting to see their mother with cancer?

Why couldn't she understand that there were times for texting and this wasn't one of them?

But the same way no one ever listened to Sakura, no one ever told her anything. Sakura couldn't ask Nee-san why she did what she did, and Nee-san wouldn't tell her.

That was the state of things between them, after all. And it was all Nee-san's fault. If she just raised her head from the screen and looked around, she would see the pain she'd caused.

Sakura's shoulders slumped and she turned to Otou-san. “How much longer is there until we can see her?” she asked.

“Not much more,” Otou-san said, his Japanese far more refined and proper than Sakura's since he grew up there. “We shall have to wait, I believe.”

Ever since Okaa-san was diagnosed with cancer after a nurse noticed irregularities in her blood sample for an unrelated illness (Sakura even forgot the name of that illness since it was nothing compared to cancer), more stress lines grabbed down on Otou-san's forehead and squished together.

There used to be none, and then one appeared, then three. And now it seemed like his forehead resembled the spine of a book, creased everywhere, torn apart, the lines bunching together.

It took half an hour for the nurse to return and let them inside. Usually, it took fifteen minutes, some days ten, some days less, but today had been a particularly slow day apparently, with lots of visitors streaming into the hospital and various tasks to deal with.

The nurse said it all with a smile of course, polite as ever, eyes shining despite the grimness of her job—aiding those who had little chance of living.

Sakura didn't care about the explanation, to be honest. She looked at her watch—a little gold-plated trinket that Okaa-san had bought her for Eid a few years ago. There was an hour till visiting time ended, meaning a precious hour for Sakura to spend with Okaa-san.

Before they would come back the next day. And the next, as a family but feeling broken. One day after the other, hoping beyond anything that Okaa-san would find peace in her heart and rest in her soul and health in her body.

Sakura tapped Nee-san, who was still gazing at her phone, on the shoulder. “They said we can see Mum,” Sakura muttered.

Nee-san just nodded and stood up, not even meeting Sakura's eye, which annoyed her even more.

“What's wrong with you?” Sakura said, anger flinging out the words before she could stop them.

“Nothing,” Nee-san muttered, her brown eyes looking positively black, and she pushed past Sakura to join Otou-san by the door.

Rude. And for no reason too.

Sakura sighed, glanced at the blue and white around her, smelled the ever-lingering detergent and sanitation, and drowned out the noises of that receptionist crunching crackers, before following her father and older sister into the ward.

After all, any time with Okaa-san was time well spent. And Sakura wasn't about to let an annoying older sister get in the way of that.

Chapter 3

The ward was normally a dire place, if Sakura had to put a word to it. Of course, housing lots of ill people, some howling and wailing, others sitting quietly staring at the shades of white and blue and thinking about their life, would cause a sombre atmosphere. An atmosphere that would turn anyone's mood from good to bad, would turn that smile upside down.

But Okaa-san's bed and the curtains around it always glowed bright, as if opening those curtains and stepping inside transported Sakura to another world like Narnia.

Today, Okaa-san wore her typical white clothes down to the feet, with a loose scarf wrapped over her thinning hair. She leaned against the bed's soft backrest that moulded to her body, duvet wrapped over her lower half. Sakura watched as Okaa-san took a second to notice them, whilst Otou-san closed the curtains behind them, and then—

That bright smile. Brighter than the cherry blossoms in Blueridge Park. It always cheered Sakura up, and this time she nicked the chair nearest to Okaa-san first before Nee-san could even move a muscle.

Ha, Sakura had won this time. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

They gave salaam to Okaa-san, and then asked about how she was doing, how treatment was going, updates on the timeline for her second round of chemotherapy after the first had failed, asked about hospital food and whether it tasted nice, asked about whether Okaa-san was allowed to eat a chocolate bar or even a single Ferrero Rocher since she'd loved them so much back when healthy.

And Okaa-san, as she always did, answered calmly, answered with eyes shining as if, though her health was bleak, she viewed the world differently.

Sometimes, the darkest of times brought the brightest out of a person. With Okaa-san, Sakura was basking in that light.

“How have the two of you been doing?” Okaa-san said, smiling at Sakura and the figure to her left, Nee-san.

“I've got this new project at school,” Sakura blurted out, unable to contain her excitement. “It's about dinosaurs and it's a research project for History.”

“Does it count towards your GCSEs?” Okaa-san asked, like she always did.

Sakura fought the urge to roll her eyes—a happy roll of the eyes, however. Here Okaa-san was, in a hospital bed ridden with cancer, and yet she still cared about Sakura's education over and above all else.

It made Sakura feel warm inside, made the air taste sweeter, the white covers of Okaa-san's bed glow brighter, made the sounds of murmuring patients and bustling nurses outside dim to allow Sakura and her family alone time.

“It's an extra credit assignment,” Sakura said. “It doesn't count, but it's so cool and we get to see all the different dinosaurs and do a presentation about how they lived.”

“Make sure to focus on your exams, though,” Otou-san muttered from the other side of the bed, stress lines in a crunch like he was the one sitting the exams. “Your GCSEs are in a couple of months—we cannot be too distracted with the side quests of life.”

Despite Otou-san being as traditional as a father could get, he was still, surprisingly, an avid gamer in what little free time he had. Sakura had tried to play games with him once, in her younger years, but the RPG (Sakura might have misremembered the name) had way too much customisation to the point that it just overwhelmed her and she quit.

“You can quit a game and that is all well,” Otou-san had said, taking the controller back. “But in real life you must deal with the choices you make, so choose well, Sakura.”

“She will try her best, inshAllah,” Okaa-san said, back in the hospital ward. Since she had Japanese pronunciation of Arabic after accepting Islam as an adult, her words were always rushed.

However, they sounded the most sincere. Sakura always believed that if Okaa-san made dua for her it would be accepted.

“What about you, Haruka?” Okaa-san said, floating her gaze to Nee-san.

“Fine,” Nee-san muttered, not even bothering to look Okaa-san in the eyes.

“Have you been revising well for your A-Levels?”

“Said I'm fine,” Nee-san said, voice rising, and that anger within Sakura rose along with it. “You don't have to keep asking me, you know.”

Sakura wanted to shout at Nee-san, to tell her she was wrong for reacting like she did. But Sakura held her tongue, words lodging in her throat, because she didn't want to cause a scene.

But her anger was rising. That fact, at least, was undeniable.

Okaa-san and Otou-san, who would've before torn Nee-san's head off for speaking in such a way to her mother, merely smiled and chuckled the comments away, before talking about something else amongst themselves.

And Sakura couldn't understand why.

Okaa-san was in hospital, for crying out loud. With cancer of all things. An illness that she hadn't shaken off yet, that she hadn't been cured of yet. And she could, in the future…pass away from it.

A fact Sakura didn't want to acknowledge, but had to. Because it was the truth, and nothing but the truth.

And here Nee-san was, acting all sulky like she was the only one suffering in that ward. Like it was oh-so-hard for her to just muster up the bother to at least speak properly once or twice.

That anger within Sakura swelled like the roots of a volcano, deep within the earth.

And then her anger erupted.

“Don't bother coming next time!” Sakura sniped. Her words were biting, and Nee-san flinched at them, before a nasty glare volleyed itself at Sakura.

Sakura's sister wasn't one to take insults lightly. Not at all.

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Nee-san said. Her eyes were wide, and angry, lips and cheeks trembling whilst framed by a sizzling scarf. “You little know-it-all, always on my bloody case about everything. Just like the rest of you.”

“Okaa-san's here and she could die for all we know,” Sakura said, words squeezing through a tight throat. Her eyes stung, but she held the tears inside.

She stood up, fast, the chair toppling behind her. Hitting the ground with a thump. Her own heart thumping like mad along with it.

“If you don't care about that and wanna act like you're the one dying, then just stay home. We don't need you here if you're gonna be a waste of space.”

Sakura had said her piece, and now her breath released in pants, as though her heart didn't want to pump blood around her body but was forced to do so.

The blue and white of the ward dimmed. White turning shadowy, blue more like violent tides than the calm waves off Blueridge's shoreline. The silence ate into her skin, even beneath her abaya, and Sakura just couldn't take it anymore.

Without thinking twice, Sakura stormed out of the ward, pushing through the curtains, her eyes as moist and as grainy as the sand on Blueridge Beach after a night of torrid rain.

Chapter 4

After storming out of the ward, Sakura had no clue where to go or what to do. So she followed her anger to the front desk of the visiting area, and sighed. Her shoulders deflating, the blue and white of her surroundings turning from violent shades to something more lukewarm.

The sting in her eyes disappeared, replaced by an enduring tiredness. Sakura looked back, but she couldn't handle going back in there. Okaa-san and Otou-san would make her apologise. And Sakura wasn't prepared to do that, ever.

Blueridge’s only hospital was meant to be a beautiful place, a place where healing occurred. Where lives were saved.

But here, in this visiting area with stupid seats and stupid surgical smells and that stupid receptionist still crunching on her stupid crackers—

Sakura just didn't want to deal with any of it at all.

She pushed through a crowd of similarly dressed people likely coming in for one person's visitation and reached another hallway, then rushed to the exit of the hospital. There, outside the hospital, Sakura glimpsed the radiant cherry blossoms encircling the car park like flowery guards.

Purple and pink shades absolutely mesmerising, and Sakura was once again reminded of the times she’d spent with Okaa-san and Otou-san in Blueridge Park, staring at the wondrous sights therein.

She just stood there, in the light breeze Blueridge had to offer, staring at the sway of the cherry blossoms under a waning sun and a wistful wind.

Maghrib was in a couple of hours, but visiting hours would end within that time. Sakura would have plenty of opportunity to pray when the azan was called.

She sighed, watched as families both happy and sad, grieving and glad, trod through the car park to visit their loved ones. Disappearing behind the revolving doors and heading to the visiting area, where Sakura was supposed to be but wasn't.

And those first spikes of guilt pierced into Sakura's heart.

How would Okaa-san recover from her illness when Sakura had shouted like that? How could Sakura have worried her mother like that? If Okaa-san wasn't even angry about the way Nee-san behaved, then what gave Sakura the right to lash out?

Sakura didn't know, and didn't have any answers. So she clamped down on the guilt inside her like Otou-san sat on his suitcase before zipping it up and heading to the airport to visit Japan.

“They're nice, aren't they?” a voice said from Sakura's left.

A voice she definitely didn't want to hear right now.

“Why are you here?” Sakura asked, a little of the earlier venom still in her voice.

Nee-san held her hands up to show she wasn't a threat. “No need to get angry at me. I'm not even mad at you, trust me.”

“Could've fooled me,” Sakura scoffed. Then she sighed again. She'd stormed out of a visitation with her ailing mother—she couldn’t be the one getting angry in this scenario, despite how much that rage built in her chest. “What do you want?” she eventually asked.

“I think you need to answer that question more than anyone,” Nee-san said. “You're the one flipping your lid at everyone every two minutes, aren't you?”

Sakura turned to Nee-san, who was leaning against the wall beside the entrance, and her eyes flared. “And what's that supposed to mean?”

Nee-san didn't reply at first, a detail that seriously annoyed Sakura. Instead, her sister stared at the cherry blossoms, then at the parked cars, then at the blue sky customary of Blueridge, which was how the name of the town came about.

“Look, we're both upset at Okaa-san being in hospital—”

“You dont look like it—”

“Just shut your mouth and listen for once.”

Sakura opened her mouth again, retort ready at the rip. But she decided to listen to her older sister, for the first time in what felt like years. Her mouth closed, the insult finding its way back down her throat.

“Good,” Nee-san said. “We're both pissed that Okaa-san's in there, and we both want her to get better. But…people got different ways of dealing with things.”

“That doesn't mean you can get angry at her for asking you a question.”

“You're not the only one hurting, you know. Otou-san's struggling every day, trying to look after us. I'm struggling too, even if I look angry all the time. You ain't the only one with exams, with the world on their shoulders.”

Sakura gulped, and let the thoughts trickle through her mind. Okaa-san had always harboured high hopes for her daughters and their education. Anything less than stellar was a disappointment, as Sakura had discovered early in her childhood with a few failed tests. But so far, on the important ones, she and Nee-san had been able to weather the storm, so to speak.

But after Okaa-san was diagnosed, that pressure on their heads multiplied a thousand times. Those stones turned to boulders, and Sakura found herself nearly crumbling every time she got out her science or maths textbook.

Fun history projects were easy, light, calm, like cherry blossoms in Blueridge Park swaying in a nice breeze. But the actual exam content—that was like climbing Everest whilst on stilts, and during an avalanche to boot.

Just…downright impossible.

But Nee-san was right—Sakura wasn't the only one with turmoil in their bones. Everyone felt that stress over Okaa-san's condition, everyone connected to them, whether neighbours or family, and that included Otou-san and Nee-san.

And for Sakura to stand there acting like only she suffered in the world, only she felt that pain…it was incredibly selfish.

And those pangs on guilt in her chest transformed to throbs seizing her heart, stings in her eyes, a drowning in her ears constantly telling her she was going about things the wrong way.

“Sorry,” she muttered, though she spoke Japanese instead of English, as if that would change anything. Perhaps tapping into her culture would convey a greater depth of meaning.

“No worries,” Nee-san said, and then she smiled like she used to, almost as if every worry in her mind had disappeared for a few seconds. “It's what older sisters are for, after all. To teach the younger ones.”

Sakura smiled. “You know I'll beat your GCSE grades, right?”

Nee-san just laughed, then looked over at the cherry blossoms, then glanced at Sakura. “I just wanna see you try. You'll never beat them.”

And Sakura laughed this time, and the air felt easy to breathe. They were well away from Blueridge Park, but it felt like Sakura walked along that central stone path, staring at the calm surroundings and beautiful trees and elegant cherry blossoms.

“I hope they let Okaa-san out some day so we can see it with her again,” Sakura muttered, words carried by the breath of the wind.

In all the visits to Blueridge Park with Otou-san and Okaa-san, Sakura had forgotten one crucial detail.

Nee-san had been there as well, right by her side. And getting through the pressure, the struggle, of knowing their mother had cancer—they would overcome that side by side too.

Nee-san lent a hand, and Sakura grasped its warmth. And together, they walked back into Blueridge Central Hospital, and back to the ones they loved.

Feel free to read any of my other free short stories, or click the all fiction tab above for info on where to find my longer works.

JazakAllahu Khayran for reading.