It was the moment I had thought I’d lost her for good.
I hauled her to the rocky shore and performed CPR as rain poured down around us and I desperately breathed air into her lungs.
When she jerked awake, gasping and coughing up seawater, I barely remembered to breathe myself. I was so damn relieved to see her large brown eyes meet mine after worrying they never would again that I couldn’t move for the seconds that followed.
I was in a state of total shock.
Days later, I’m still shocked to have been so fortunate. Things could’ve ended far worse than they have.
There’s a quick tap on the door as my assigned nurse breezes into the hospital room. She’s an older round woman with silvery hair and a no-nonsense attitude. She crosses the room and sets down my lunch tray on the rolling table beside my bed.
“Lunch time, Jin-tae,” she says in Hangugeo. “Jello and broth today.”
I scowl, immediately disgruntled. “Isn’t that every day I’ve been here?”
“I don’t want to hear any complaints,” she answers loftily. “With all the injuries you have, you’re lucky to be alive. You should be grateful for the broth.”
“I was stabbed a few times. My digestive system wasn’t destroyed. Give me some japchae and I’ll be fine.”
She merely shakes her head like a mother denying their child dessert, then marches out the room as abruptly as she appeared.
My scowl remains even after she’s gone.
I’m a man who eats real food, like grilled meat and hearty stews. Meals that actually sustain a toned physique like mine. Not this hospital slop designed for invalids and the elderly.
Lucky for her, I’m too tired to argue, so I just grunt to myself and pick up the bowl with the broth, draining it in several long, greedy gulps. It’s warm and salty and completely unsatisfying, but at least it’s better than nothing.
It’s only once I move onto the Jello that I realize the nurse didn’t leave me a utensil.
I consider pressing the call button until I remember it hasn’t been working. Dead or broken, or maybe they disabled it to prevent my complaints.
Every doctor and nurse on this floor has made it abundantly clear I’m not supposed to be walking right now, but I’m also not going to lie here staring at a cup of Jello I can’t eat.
Pain radiates up my side and through the rest of my body as I pull myself out of bed and start hobbling toward the doorway. Even my toes ache from the pressure that I accidentally apply to them.
Unfortunately, I’m too stubborn to quit, pushing on until I make it to the doorway.
It’s a chance moment. Some would say asign.
As I’m about to call out to the nurse down the corridor, my gaze lands on a mother and daughter duo standing at the counter of the nurse’s desk.
Monroe’s with her mother, Daisha, as they fill out paperwork on a clipboard. Even from afar, I can tell my rabbitisn’t yet herself. She’s wearing normal clothes instead of the standard hospital gown, but she doesn’t carry the usual healthy glow she’d normally have. She has a cast on her right wrist that peeks out from the sleeve of her sweater and makes it much more difficult for her to write.
She’s obviously being discharged. She’s leaving the hospital.
I don’t realize I’m frozen in the doorway and staring until Daisha happens to look up. She glances over to the corridor on their left and instantly notices the unruly haired, tattooed Korean man in a hospital gown gawking at her and her daughter. Recognition gleams in her eyes and softens her expression as she gives me what can only be described as a sympathetic look.
It’s as she does that Monroe senses something has caught her mother’s attention. She’s much more startled to find me staring, her eyes widening and lashes fluttering from the long, slow blink she takes.
A second goes by with us staring at each other from across the hospital ward as if we’re rooted in place and an invisible wall separates us.
My heart beats twice as fast as I falter on what to do or how to respond. The Great Silent Hunter who is normally so confident it borders on cocky.
Fuck the Jello. I’m not hungry anymore.
I turn my back and retreat into my room, lamenting my inability to do what I truly want. It’s a paradox I don’t fucking understand—how I can so desperately want and need my rabbit but find myself trapped behind the wall I’ve erected?
The same wall that allowed me to become the man I am today. The orphan boy who transformed into the sharp, disciplined gangster ruling the Baekho Pa.
