The partner patient was very quiet in contrast to Jerry. He was usually listening to our conversation. But he once asked me, “ Tom, you are a doctor yourself, aren’t you? Yet, you are assigned to a two-patient room and don’t have any special treatment. Are you satisfied with it?” I knew as a physician there was no special treatment for my kind of injury, and also I was quite satisfied with some companionship, like Jerry. I answered as such.

He then told me, “ Okay, if you think that way, no problem. You Japanese think very modestly. We Jewish people are little bit hypersensitive about our rights stemming from what we experienced in our history, you know. We have lived the history in which we loose our lives if we concede even a little bit, and we are still living that way.”

They were very serious words usually only spoken by someone Jewish of that age. The mood became more serious and Tom & Jerry didn’t exchange any funny remarks for the next one hour or so.