Chapter 4
Irolled over in bed and stared at the watery dawn as it seeped through the gaps in my curtains.
I’d spent so long travelling and moving through time zones that I should be bone-tired. But mostly I felt… numb. Too much had happened and it felt like everything that needed processing was on a waiting list.
Sighing, I reached out to grab my phone off the nightstand.
My chest squeezed as I saw Jihoon’s message.
Joon
Good morning, sleepyhead. Saranghae.
[sent 07:37]
Me
I love you, too.
I tried not to dwell on the useless thought that I wished I could have told him in person, and I decided to get up, and get dressed for the day.
I found Dad in the kitchen, and together, we fell into an easy rhythm.
We talked as we moved around each other, catching up on the lighter moments of life, like how Becka was getting on at work, what new shops had opened in the village.
Light, early-morning conversation that was as easily consumed as breakfast.
Dad called the hospital as soon as he finished eating and asked if he could go in and visit.
“They said not until later,” he grumbled, sitting heavily back down at the table, pushing aside his glass of juice. “They’re confident she’ll be discharged on time, and they’re limiting visitor numbers so there’s not too many people in the ward at the same time.”
“Oh, well, that seems fair enough,” I said evenly, watching the way his jaw flexed. On the surface, I understood the safety measures – there was a brochure taped to the fridge with clear guidelines from the hospital – but it didn’t settle the nervous thrum that vibrated beneath my skin.
He huffed out a sharp breath before grunting in agreement.
While I finished breakfast, I watched as Dad moved around the house in obvious agitation.
He put the dishwasher on, despite it still being full with a clean load from last night.
He clattered around doing God-only-knows-what in the cupboard under the stairs.
He walked from room-to-room like he was looking for something.
He was like a ghost, searching for his unfinished business, and I watched in bemusement until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Hey, Pops,” I called out, “can you show me where you keep the weedkiller?”
I knew where it was, but as I’d expected, my dad popped his head round the corner, his face a comical mix between concern, and concentration.
“Why?” He asked, suspiciously.
I shrugged. “Thought I’d help out in the garden.”
I had no desire to do any such thing, but Dad clearly needed a distraction.
“I better help.” He stepped out into the hallway, more focused now that he had a mission. “I don’t want my only daughter endangering the local bee population.”
I rolled my eyes, but turned around to hide my smile.
My plan worked better than expected, and we spent the entire morning doing everything except talking about the subjects that hurt us the most – Mum, and Jihoon. Perhaps this plan had been as much for me as it had for my dad.
We weeded the front driveway, tidied up the flower beds and then, as we’d accidentally stomped mud through the downstairs, we spent most of the early afternoon cleaning the house until it gleamed.
We spent hours this way, finding odd jobs to occupy ourselves with until I’d drawn the line at Dad’s suggestion of snaking the drains.
By the time the sun was sinking beyond the horizon, orange light spilling across the newly-cleaned floors through the patio doors, I was exhausted. Finally. It had taken this long for the jet lag and the emotional fallout to catch up with me, but I was finally so bone-weary I could barely stand.
Dad had gone to the hospital to visit Mum, and I sat in the quiet house, feeling the weight of everything settle on my shoulders. It dragged me down, and I allowed myself to slump into the chair as I propped my phone up on the table in front of me.
When he answered, his face filling my screen, I felt some of that weight fall away, and even though my smile was tremulous, it felt like I’d inhaled my first full breath in hours.
“Jagiya,” he said, sounding as relieved as I felt.
“Hey, you,” I sighed happily.
At that moment, everything felt a little easier.
Mum’s surgeon was apparently happy enough with her recovery that she would be able to come home this afternoon, which naturally meant spending the first half of the day in nervous motion, while pretending everything was normal.
We were sitting down for a cup of tea – I had kept trying to explain that I didn’t drink tea anymore, but for fear of overriding his auto-pilot, I’d let him make me one anyway – when the phone rang.
Dad practically jumped over the counter to reach for it.
“Hello?” He sounded breathless. “I see. What time? And is she… Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright, I’ll be in then. Okay, thank you. Cheerio.”
Listening to his one-sided conversation hadn’t given me much insight, and I watched him with barely contained impatience as he hung up the phone. He took a deep breath, put his hands on his hips and stood there, looking out the window.
I waited. And waited.
“Dad!” I cried, patience exhausted.
He jumped and spun to face me, looking for all the world like he was surprised to see me.
“Oh, sorry love. Your mum is being discharged in a couple hours. They want to make sure she’s not feeling too poorly on her medications, and what-have-yous, and then she–” he cleared his throat, “and then she’ll be home. Right as rain.”
I nodded, processing the information.
Once I’d moved past the initial shock of what my Mum had had done, I found I could be more analytical about it. It helped to think about the process from here, rather than the reason for it.
My mum had had an operation.
She was going to be on medication.
She would need help around the house.
That was easy. I could safely think about those things. What I absolutely could not stop to think about was the illness, because that subject was a precarious house of cards in my mind, and once you removed one card, it would all come toppling down.
“Right then,” I said briskly, getting to my feet, “we better get a shop in. I’ve had a look in the fridge, and I don’t think we can survive on cheese and condiments.”
“Righto,” Dad nodded, clearly more comfortable now that he’d been given a task.
I smiled as I realised my accent had come back since I’d been home. It had softened somewhat, since I’d moved to London a few years ago, but it always became more pronounced with every visit.
Jihoon had always laughed when I slipped into it, especially when I abbreviated ‘the’ with a soft ‘t’. He’d found endless amusement trying to say, ‘down t’shops’.
Though the memory was a happy one, thinking of it in the middle of my parent’s kitchen felt raw. The twanging of an exposed nerve. It was too conflicting, this happy thought in the middle of such devastation.
“You alright, love?” Dad’s voice shook me out of my reverie, and I quickly papered a smile over the crack in my composure.
“Just making a shopping list in my head,” I lied, easily.
“Come on then,” he urged, moving his glasses from atop his head to the bridge of his nose, “get your shoes on.”
As if I were a little girl again, I did as instructed and we set off in the car, down t’shops.
Shopping trip completed, we laughed in the car all the way home.
Despite the bizarre experience of the one-way system round the shop, the stickers all over floor and the very serious looking employees, there had been one incident that had reminded us that no matter the circumstances, there was always absurdity to be found.
A man had been stopped at the till, because he’d been trying to buy two massive packs of toilet paper, despite the clear signage forbidding stockpiling. Predictably, this caused a loud argument that echoed around the otherwise quiet shop.
Dad and I hadn’t even tried to pretend that we weren’t listening. To be fair, it would have been nigh-impossible to not hear as the man had loudly protested his ‘right to buy loo roll’.
“Of all the hills to die on,” Dad said, wiping his eyes as his shoulders shook, “toilet paper would not be the one I’d choose.”
Laughing about that had made the strange shopping experience seem less… apocalyptic, because besides that little snippet of human folly, it was hard to deny that things really were not okay in Britain.
There were signs everywhere, telling you how to wash your hands, telling you to keep six feet apart and advice on stopping the spread.
It had been easy to ignore while I’d been in Seoul, but here and now, it was so overt that it was startling.
Until now, the virus had been a sort of niggling backdrop to my days; news bulletins I’d get periodically on my phone, accompanied by the assumption it would all blow over soon.
But it wasn’t, and now that I was back home, it was starting to feel… like we stood on the edge of a cliff.
We got the phone call from the hospital as we were packing away the shopping, telling us Mum was ready to be discharged.
“I’ll be back soon,” Dad said, dithering as if he was trying to remember what he’d forgotten, but I knew it was because he was anxious.
“Go,” I urged, shooing him out the kitchen. I heard the front door slam a few moments later.
Because of the new social distancing measures, only one person was allowed to go into the hospital, so I’d had to make peace with the notion of staying here. Waiting.
Suddenly, I understood why Dad had moved through the house like a bee in a hive, constantly on the move. Being still made it easier for the intrusive thoughts to settle, so I searched for things to do.
Once I finished putting away the shopping, I busied myself by tidying up things that really didn’t need it, trying to do anything rather than face the reality of my mum’s illness. Up until this point, it had been theoretical in my mind.