Authors: C. K. Kelly Martin
“How is she?” I
ask, my heart knocking against my ribcage.
Sumi pulls her
dark hair forward and holds it taut against one side of her neck. Her shoulders
look thin and delicate under her cardigan and her voice is so quiet that we all
have to lean forward to hear her say, “The doctor told my parents there were a
lot of cut blood vessels in her abdomen. They were really deep wounds but the
knife didn’t hit any of the vital organs.”
“Is she still in
ICU?” Chas asks.
Sumi bobs her
head, her eyes glazed with a mix of dread and disbelief. “My dad said you
should probably go home now. Only family can see her. We’re going to check into
a hotel later. I’ll call if anything changes.”
“Please, take my
number too,” Chas urges.
Sumi pulls out
her phone to enter his digits into memory. Then she stares off in the distance,
rubbing her arms as she says, “I better get going.”
I tell her to
please let us know if she or her parents need anything. None of us move from
our seats until she’s gone, and then Vishaya looks from one of us to the other
and says, “What’s everybody going to do?”
“I don’t want to
go back to Oakville now,” I tell her. It’s too far away. I want to know I can
be back at the hospital within minutes if I need to be. “Can I sleep on your
couch tonight?” There’s a lot of day left. Anything could happen and I don’t
want to be alone in the meantime.
“Of course you
can,” Vishaya says, like I didn’t even need to ask.
Katie and Chas
aren’t ready to break away from the group either. We pool our money together
and take a cab to Vishaya and Yunhee’s apartment so we won’t have to face the
subway—all the anonymous strangers who don’t know or care about Yunhee.
At the
apartment, Chas flips on the TV to news and leaves it there all day as we camp
on Yunhee’s orange couch and the surrounding chairs. The incessant chatter from
news anchors and journalists doesn’t really help, but we need the noise. For
hours the four of us stare trance-like at reports of political battles, acts of
senseless violence, random accidents and Hollywood celebrities. The atmosphere
is no different than it was at the hospital. There’s no way out of the waiting,
no matter where we are.
The rain stops
in the early evening but the clouds still hover, gray and hostile. Chas, who’s
been up all night, falls asleep on the couch and we tiptoe around him, making coffee
and chewing on chocolate chip cookies out of the box. Later Katie and I drop
into the supermarket, only steps from Vishaya and Yunhee’s apartment, and buy a
selection of things from the deli so no one will have to worry about cooking.
At about nine-thirty
Mr. Kang calls Vishaya from his hotel room to let her know nothing’s changed.
He thanks her for everything she’s done and says that either he or Sumi will be
in touch when there’s more information. Vishaya assures him she’ll pass any
news she gets on to Yunhee’s other friends. Knowing that we might not hear
anything definitive for some time cues a whole other level of exhaustion that
none of us can fight.
Vishaya drags
out a double airbed for Katie and me. We leave the couch to Chas, who has been
even quieter than the rest of us since we arrived at Vishaya and Yunhee’s
apartment. In theory we could sleep in Yunhee’s queen size bed, but no one
suggests that because it doesn’t feel right.
Even asleep I
don’t feel right. My mind doesn’t for one second forget that Yunhee’s in
trouble. It’s the second longest night of my life and there’s no sign of
daylight yet.
I dream of the hospital and
Yunhee’s parents. I dream of more harrowing news than we’ve heard so far. Being
asleep is worse than being awake: unchecked, my mind runs wild. In the middle
of the night I can’t stand it anymore and I roll off the airbed and tiptoe into
the kitchen, where Chas is leaning against the counter and popping a pill into
his mouth in the dark.
“My hands were
sore,” he says quietly.
“They looked
painful earlier, at the hospital.” I park my weight against the counter too.
The bamboo venetian blind slats are tilted at a sharp angle, allowing slashes
of bright moonlight into the kitchen. The clouds must be gone.
Chas’s head
wilts on his shoulders. “It’s nothing in comparison. I keep going over it in my
head. If she doesn’t come out of this…”
I don’t want to
hear any talk about Yunhee not coming through this; there’s enough of it
streaming through my own mind. “We can’t think like that. Don’t let yourself do
it.”
“I don’t know
how to stop,” he says in a voice like a paper cut.
I nod in
sympathy. I haven’t ever stopped trying to bring Bastien back. His accident
didn’t involve me but I still feel like it should’ve been within my power to
prevent it, and I explain this to Chas under cover of darkness. I never
imagined, the day Yunhee and I ran into him in the library when he was still
sporting those ridiculous midway-between-1977-Elvis-and-Wolverine sideburns,
that we’d someday have a conversation like this.
Chas shakes his
head and turns his back to the moonlight. “I know what you’re trying to say but
it’s not the same thing, Leah. There was nothing you could have done about your
boyfriend, but I
caused
this.”
“
He
caused it,” I argue. “The guy with the knife. Him alone. He set what happened
in motion, like a domino effect.” I clear my throat, which is dry from hours of
tossing and turning. “I know how Yunhee thinks—and I know that you do too—so we
both know that if you didn’t shout at the guy to stop, she would’ve. You just
happened to do it first. And if you hadn’t, he might have come at you both
anyway. You said yourself he was high on something.”
“He was
twitching,” Chas agrees, raising his head a few degrees. “He was out of his
mind.”
And he’s still
out there somewhere, or so I assume as Chas hasn’t heard anything else from the
police since they came to take his description this morning.
I don’t know
what else to say. I’m so tired. And so thirsty. So afraid. “We can’t give up on
her in our heads,” I choke out.
Chas steps
towards me to grip my arm. “We won’t,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
The phrase
reminds me of Liam when he told me I didn’t have to be sorry. I don’t want Chas
to be sorry either; I understand how he’s feeling all too well. I just want
things to be different.
I ask him if he
wants any coffee, since we’re obviously not going to do much sleeping anyway,
and Chas nods and says, in the closest tone to levity he can muster under the
circumstances, “But you know they only have instant.” He turns to pull open a
cupboard behind him.
“I’ll make it,”
I tell him. “Sit down. Wait for the painkillers to kick in.” I twist the lid
off the instant coffee, grab two mugs from the hideous antler mug stand the
Kangs won in a charity draw and pawned off on Yunhee when she we went away for
university, and then flick on the kettle.
We drink our
coffees at the kitchen table and talk a little about the two things we have in
common, Yunhee and the University of Toronto. Chas is a TA/graduate student who
is also trying to write a novel about a twin brother and sister with the gift
(or curse) of second sight in Dark Age Scotland. He says he’s getting bogged
down in research and I mention the work I’ve been doing on Bastien’s project,
Johnny
Yang, Merman at Large
. Chas is encouraging about it but neither of us
really feels like making conversation and soon we creep back into the living
room and watch the sci-fi network on mute.
When Katie and
Vishaya wake up in the morning the four of us exchange phone numbers. It’s
clear that we all can’t continue to camp out in the apartment forever, and
after more instant coffee and lingering reluctant goodbyes, Katie and Chas walk
out to catch the subway home. Vishaya has to hand in an essay that, thankfully,
she finished early days ago, and I hole up in the apartment awhile longer,
calling Yunhee’s work to explain the situation and waiting for Vishaya to come
back, still not ready to put more distance between myself and Yunhee. But by
one o’clock, once Vishaya’s returned and we’ve eaten leftover samosas and rice
pilaf together, I can’t continue to put off leaving.
I need to
shower. I need a change of clothes. And I’m due in at work tomorrow at three.
Somehow, between now and then, I need to get some more sleep.
Vishaya and I
both tear up as we hug goodbye. There were so many months when being alone
seemed easier, and today I feel just the opposite.
“You know I’ll
call you the second I hear anything,” she promises. I jot O’Keefe’s phone
number down for her along with my hours so that she can get in touch with me
there if I’m not home, but as soon as I’m back on the train to Oakville my
panic deepens at the thought of being temporarily out of communication’s reach.
The only message
for me on Abigail’s phone when I reach home is from my parents, but the lack of
news from Yunhee’s family doesn’t make me feel better either. At the moment
nothing will, nothing but hearing she’s been transferred out of ICU. Like a
robot, I feed Armstrong and clean his cage. Like a zombie, I shower—cordless
telephone resting on the bathroom counter so I won’t miss a call. And then,
because my parents will worry if they don’t hear from me, I call home and leave
a quick message explaining what’s happened and that I’m trying to keep the
phone line clear.
The silence in
the house is deafening. I can’t sit still with it a moment longer and I dig out
the handful of remaining foil art boards and etch away at them on the kitchen
table, radio on behind me, until I fall asleep with my cheek pressed to the
image of the Sphinx of Giza.
My brain’s foggy
when I wake up. For a few seconds the weariness won’t let me remember where I
am. The last time I felt like this I collapsed at the supermarket.
Something’s
ringing. An alarm? The telephone? No, it’s the front door bell. I’m too tired
to question whether I need to answer it or not. I’m rubbing my eyes and
lumbering towards it as I remember, in a flash that nearly knocks me off
balance, the events of the last day and a half. Yunhee. The hospital. Sumi’s
eyes as she told us her sister was transferred to ICU.
These are the
things I’m thinking about as I open the door and I see, in Marta’s eyes, that
I’m wearing the thoughts on my face. “What’s wrong, Leah?” she asks worriedly,
her right hand reaching out to touch my face. She lifts her palm to display the
black residue on her fingers.
I rub at the
spot where she touched me, the part of my cheek that was resting on the black
engraving board while I slept. “My friend’s in the hospital,” I tell her,
sounding like the robot I was when I fed Armstrong. “In ICU.” I explain about
the stabbing as Marta’s chin drops ever nearer to the ground underneath her
feet.
“I’m so sorry,”
she says in a hushed voice.
I’m beginning to
hate the word sorry. It makes it sound like Yunhee’s already been lost.
Marta tells me
that the reason she came over isn’t at all important and not to worry about it.
She’s holding a folded slip of paper in her left hand and she presents it to me
as she says, “A man dropped into the store looking for you and then asked for
your phone number, said he knew you but that he didn’t happen to have your
number. Of course I wouldn’t give it to him, so…”
I unfold the
scrap of paper where Liam has printed out his first name along with a telephone
number. I can’t understand why he’d want to talk me. It seems he said
everything he needed to say the last time he came into O’Keefe’s.
“Anyway,” Marta
say, “I’ll just leave that with you. If he becomes a nuisance we can—”
“I don’t think
we’ll have to worry about that,” I interrupt. “But thanks for passing it on.”
Not that I plan on calling him, because that thought couldn’t be further from
my mind.
Marta nods. “I
hope you hear better news about your friend soon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Thanks. See you
tomorrow.”
I close the
door, crumple up Liam’s number, drop it on the coffee table and sprawl out on
the couch, waiting for Vishaya to call, which doesn’t happen until just before
ten and even then there’s no news—no change in Yunhee’s condition. Vishaya has
to call Chas and Katie too so we can’t talk for long, and soon I’m lying in bed
listening to Armstrong whirl on his wheel, my right eyelid twitching with
tension and my head beginning to ache.
If I don’t sleep
I’ll be useless at O’Keefe’s tomorrow, but my mind won’t let go. Every time I
begin to drift off I jerk back to wakefulness like a body realizing it’s in
free fall. I begin to dread the sensation itself and relocate myself to
Abigail’s couch, where I eventually manage to sleep in hour-long bursts
punctuated by equally long periods of anxious wakefulness.
I rise with the
morning light. Bathe. Eat. Do laundry. Iron. Risk a quick call to Chas to see
how he’s doing. He tells me he’s not sleeping well either but that he can’t
miss another class so is on his way there now.
“Sometimes it’s
better to be busy anyway,” I say. This is what people used to tell me shortly
after Bastien died and being busy didn’t work for me then, but every situation
is different and everyone has their own way of trying to cope. Today I actually
believe what I’m telling Chas. If I wasn’t afraid to leave the phone I’d be out
in the backyard raking leaves and pulling at weeds, never mind that Abigail
pays a landscaping company to keep up with the yard maintenance.
It’s only
because I’m stuck indoors until my shift at O’Keefe’s later, a blend of
restlessness and anxiety spiraling inside me, that I snatch Liam’s number off
the coffee table early in the afternoon and punch his digits into the cordless.
After two rings I decide calling him while I’m in this agitated and still
exhausted state is a terrible idea, and I’m about to hang up when I hear the
ringing stop and his voice say, “Hello.”