Chapter 1: The Things We Carry
The single bulb over Jihyo’s kitchen sink buzzed, a tired fly trapped in glass. Its light fell across the half-empty wine bottle on the counter, the label soft and peeling at the edges. She traced a finger along the damp ring it had left on the wood, the chill seeping into her skin. The apartment was quiet, the kind of quiet that had weight, filled with the ghosts of a thrift-store couch that still carried the faint, impossible scent of her mother’s perfume buried deep in its fibers.
Her phone screamed on the Formica.
She stared at it. Unknown number. It was just past one in the morning. No one good called at one in the morning.
She let it ring three times, four, the vibration skittering the device toward the edge. On the fifth, she snatched it up. “Yeah.”
“Is this Park Jihyo?” A woman’s voice, calm, professional, stripped of all time.
“Who is this?”
“This is Nurse Kwon from Seoul National University Hospital. We have your sister, Im Nayeon. There’s been an accident.”
Jihyo’s body went very still. The details of the kitchen—the chip in the yellow tile, the single dish in the drying rack—came into a horrific, sharp focus. “What kind of accident.”
“A vehicular collision. She was driving. She’s in critical condition. We also treated her for acute alcohol poisoning prior to the surgical intervention.”
Surgical intervention. The words were bricks, dropped one by one into the silence of her. Jihyo leaned her hip hard against the counter. The old wood creaked.
“Is she alive?”
“She is. But we need you to come in. We have decisions to discuss regarding her care. The police will also need a statement.”
Jihyo closed her eyes. She saw Nayeon at sixteen, dyed hair and a sneer, slamming the front door so hard the frame shook. She saw her at eight, sticky-fingered, pressing a clumsily wrapped candy into Jihyo’s hand. For you, unnie.
“How bad.”
A pause on the line, the soft rustle of paper. “Multiple fractures, internal bleeding. A severe head trauma. The vehicle struck a concrete barrier at high speed. The investigators are determining whether mechanical failure was a factor.”
Jihyo heard the thing the nurse wasn’t saying. It hung in the static between them. She opened her eyes. “You’re checking if she meant to hit it.”
Another pause. Briefer this time. “We assess all factors, Ms. Park. We need her nearest relative here. Now.”
“I’m on my way.”
She didn’t move after hanging up. The quiet rushed back in, louder than before. Critical condition. Alcohol poisoning. High speed. She looked at the wine bottle. Peeling label, like skin. She thought of Nayeon’s skin, always wan lately, like she was slowly erasing herself.
Her coat was hung neatly by the door. She shoved her arms into it, fingers clumsy. Her keys were in a ceramic bowl she’d made in high school, a lopsided thing. Her mother had kept it. She grabbed them.
The hallway outside her apartment was a tunnel of fluorescent light. Her footsteps echoed. Reckless. Trouble. Couldn’t care less. The accusations she’d screamed, the pleas she’d whispered, all tangled together into a single, choking vine in her throat. She was seventeen again, standing in the empty space where their parents’ suitcases had been, Nayeon’s small, furious hand in hers, the other clutching their middle sister, Sana. I’ll fix this. A lie she’d been telling for thirteen years.
The night air in the parking garage was cold and smelled of concrete and oil. Her car, a sensible sedan, beeped once when she unlocked it. The interior light felt like an interrogation.
She turned the key. The engine was too loud. The radio, left on a soft pop station, chirped about love. She killed it.
The streets at this hour were empty stretches of black asphalt gleaming under orange streetlights. The world was reduced to the dash glow, the white lines rushing toward her, the steady, stupid rhythm of the turn signal. She drove the way she did everything: efficiently, directly, no room for error.
They aren’t sure.
A red light. She stopped. Her hands were tight on the wheel, knuckles pale. She watched the light, a single, unblinking eye. What was the last thing she’d said to Nayeon? It was a text. Four days ago. Nayeon had asked for money. Again. Jihyo had typed out Are you eating? then deleted it. Sent Again? What for? instead. The reply had been a shrugging emoji. Then nothing.
The light turned green.
The hospital emerged like a dreadnought, a block of lit windows in the dark. The Emergency entrance was a canyon of harsh white light. She parked in a zone marked for ambulances. Let them tow it.
The automatic doors hissed open. The air inside was warm, thick with the smell of antiseptic and stale coffee and underlying fear. A triage desk, a bored security guard, a man holding a bloody towel to his hand. The noise was a low hum of misery.
She approached the desk. “I’m here for Im Nayeon. They called me.”
The clerk tapped on a keyboard. “Third floor. Surgical Intensive Care. Check in at the nursing station.”
The elevator was slow. It chimed. The doors opened to a different kind of quiet, a held-breath silence broken only by the distant, rhythmic beep of machinery. The floor was shiny, clean. Her shoes squeaked.
A nurse at a circular desk looked up. “Family for?”
“Im Nayeon. My sister.”
The nurse’s eyes changed. A subtle shift, from procedural to pity. Jihyo hated it. “Room 312. Dr. Seo is with her now. He’ll be out to speak with you shortly. You can wait just outside the room.”
The hallway seemed to stretch. Room 308… 310… 312.
The door was partly open. Jihyo stopped. She could see the edge of a raised bed, a tangle of clear tubing, the green blip of a monitor tracing a jagged mountain range of a life. A figure in a white coat, his back to her, moved slightly.
She couldn’t go in. Not yet. She leaned her back against the cool wall beside the door, sliding down until she was sitting on the floor, her knees pulled up. The linoleum was cold. She could hear the precise, clipped tones of the doctor talking to another nurse inside. “…ICP monitor… response to stimuli…”
She put her head in her hands. The smell of her mother’s perfume, from the couch, from a memory, was suddenly in her nose. A ghost. She was so tired.
From inside the room, a machine alarm gave a short, sharp bleat. It was silenced a second later. Jihyo’s head snapped up, her heart a hammer against her ribs.
Footsteps approached the door.