Chapter 2: The Call That Bridges Four Years of Silence
The footsteps stopped just beyond the doorframe. Jihyo looked up, the harsh hallway light carving the doctor’s face into sharp planes of exhaustion. He was young, but his eyes were old. He held a clipboard, Nayeon’s name visible in bold, red letters.
“Park Jihyo?”
She pushed herself off the floor, her legs stiff. “Yeah. That’s me.”
“I’m Dr. Seo. Let’s talk over here.” He gestured to a vinyl-lined bench under the humming lights. He didn’t wait for her to sit. “Your sister is in a medically induced coma. The intracranial pressure from the trauma was too high. This gives her brain time to swell without causing more damage.”
Jihyo didn’t sit either. She stood there, absorbing the words. Coma. Brain swell. Damage. “Will she wake up?”
“We don’t know. The next 72 hours are critical. The impact caused a subdural hematoma—bleeding on the brain—which we evacuated. There’s also a fractured pelvis, three broken ribs, a collapsed lung.” He recited it all calmly, each injury a stone dropped into Jihyo’s stomach. “Her blood alcohol level was 0.18. More than twice the legal limit.”
The number hung in the air. Jihyo pictured it. A specific, measurable quantity of not caring.
“The police?”
“They’ll be by later. The car’s black box showed no braking before impact.” Dr. Seo adjusted his glasses. “I need to ask. Has your sister exhibited signs of depression? Has she ever expressed a desire to harm herself?”
The directness was a slap. Jihyo thought of the last year. Nayeon’s empty apartment, the unopened bills, the silence that was louder than any scream. “She’s… sad. She hasn’t been okay for a long time. But she never said…” She trailed off. Had she ever really asked? The fights were always about surface things: money, responsibility, coming home late. Never the rot beneath.
Dr. Seo nodded, a grim understanding. “We’ll need to monitor for that closely when—if—she regains consciousness. For now, she’s stable. But only just. You can see her. Briefly. Don’t expect a response.”
He walked away, his white coat flapping, swallowed by the hallway.
Jihyo turned to the door. Her hand was cold on the metal handle. She pushed it open.
The room was a cave of sound. The rhythmic whoosh of the ventilator, the steady ping of the heart monitor, the softer blips of other machines. Nayeon was a small mound under a stiff white sheet, rendered unfamiliar by a nest of tubes and wires. A thick bandage wrapped her head, hair shaved at the temples. One side of her face was a landscape of purple and black swelling, the skin split near her eyebrow, held together by stark white stitches. Her lips were parted around the breathing tube.
Jihyo’s breath left her in a rush. She groped for the chair by the bed and sat, the plastic cold through her trousers.
This wasn’t her sister. Her sister was fury and motion. This was stillness. This was broken pottery.
Tentatively, she reached out. Her fingers brushed the back of Nayeon’s hand, the skin cool, tracing the edge of a plastic cannula taped there. She didn’t hold it. Just touched.
“You idiot,” she whispered. The words came out cracked, devoid of heat. Just a statement of fact.
The machines beeped on, indifferent.
Her phone, still clutched in her other hand, felt like a live wire. She had to call Sana. The thought was a fresh wave of dread. Sana, who called every Sunday, who Jihyo often let go to voicemail because her cheerfulness felt like an accusation. Sana, who had given up trying to fix them and just… loved them, from a distance.
She scrolled past work contacts, past numbers she didn’t recognize. There it was: Sana ♡. A relic. She pressed it.
It rang. Once, twice, three times. In her mind, she saw Sana’s apartment, the one she shared with Momo. She’d only been there once. It was full of plants and soft light.
Four rings. A click.
“Hello?” Sana’s voice was thick with sleep, rough at the edges. “Jihyo-unnie? It’s… what time is it?”
Jihyo opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She watched the ventilator force Nayeon’s chest to rise in a false, mechanical breath.
“Jihyo? You there?”
“It’s Nayeon.” The name was a splinter in her throat.
Silence on the line. Then the rustle of sheets, a muffled, concerned voice in the background—Momo. “What about her? Is she in jail again? I can bail her out, just tell me which—”
“She’s in the hospital. ICU.” Jihyo forced the words out, flat and hard, like driving nails. “Car accident. Drunk. It’s bad, Sana. They put her in a coma.”
The sound that came through the phone wasn’t a sob. It was a sharp, inhaled gasp, like someone had punched her in the stomach. Then a shaky, “Which hospital.”
Jihyo told her. More rustling, a low, urgent exchange she couldn’t make out.
“I’m coming. I’m coming right now. Is she… is she going to die?” Sana’s voice broke on the last word, the bubbly facade gone, revealing the raw fear beneath.
Jihyo looked at her sister’s ruined face. At the steady, mocking green line on the monitor. “I don’t know.”
“I’m on my way. Don’t move. Just… be there.”
The call ended. Jihyo lowered the phone. The silence in the room was now filled with Sana’s panic, echoing in her head. She looked back at Nayeon.
“Sana’s coming,” she said to the unmoving body. “You know she’s going to cry. A lot. It’s going to be a whole thing.” Her attempt at their old, dry humor fell into the sterile air and died.
She just sat. She watched the clock. She counted the ventilator breaths. She thought about the wine bottle on her counter, the peeling label. She thought about the scent of perfume in a couch no one ever sat on. The loneliness in her apartment was a physical thing, but it was nothing compared to the loneliness in this room, hooked up to these singing machines.
About twenty minutes later, she heard the rapid, frantic tap of footsteps in the hall. They were too light to be a doctor’s. They stopped outside, hesitated.
Jihyo didn’t turn.
The door opened slowly. Sana stood there, backlit by the hallway. She was wearing mismatched sweatpants and a hoodie, her hair a wild cloud. Her face was bare, her eyes wide and already red-rimmed. She looked about sixteen.
Her gaze locked on the bed. Her hand flew to her mouth.
She took one step in, then two, then stumbled the rest of the way, collapsing into the chair Jihyo hadn’t pulled out for her. She didn’t touch Nayeon. She just stared, her whole body trembling.
“Oh, Nayeonnie,” she whispered. A tear tracked straight down her cheek, followed by another. She didn’t wipe them away. “What did you do?”
Jihyo finally looked at her. Saw the genuine, uncomplicated grief. It made her own frozen numbness feel like a failure. “The doctor said she didn’t brake.”
Sana flinched. She wrapped her arms around herself, shaking her head in tiny, desperate motions. “No. No, she wouldn’t. She’s selfish, but she’s not… she wasn’t…” She couldn’t finish. The possibility was too dark to say aloud.
They sat in the terrible symphony of the machines. Sana cried, silent now, her shoulders shaking. Jihyo watched the door, waiting for the police, waiting for the next bad thing.
After a long time, Sana sniffled, wiping her nose with her sleeve. She looked at Jihyo, really looked at her. “When did you get here? Are you okay?”
The question was so absurd, so Sana, that Jihyo almost laughed. It came out as a choked sound. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” Sana’s voice was soft. “You never are.”
Jihyo had no answer to that. She just looked back at Nayeon, at the rise and fall that wasn’t her own. The cracked nameplate on the rolling tray beside the bed seemed to glare up at them: Nayeon Kim (ICU). A temporary label for a person in a temporary state. The edges, she noticed, were worn smooth.
Sana reached out then, her movement hesitant. She placed her hand over Nayeon’s foot, under the blanket, a small point of contact. “We’re here, unnie,” she said, her voice trembling but clear. “We’re both here now.”
Jihyo heard the words. We. She looked from Sana’s hand on the blanket to Nayeon’s stitched face. The loneliness in the room shifted, just a fraction. It was no longer just hers. It was theirs. A shared, heavy, awful thing.
And for the first time since the phone rang, that felt worse.