by Rissa Brahm
“Jana, and this is my mother, Jin Park.” She gave him a firm shake and made sure to include a warm smile. The man in front of her might very well be her only shot in bringing her parents down to reality.
“Sorry, but…can I take that in with me?” He smiled, gesturing to her father’s medical chart in Jana’s tight grasp.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She looked down at the chart and their awkward handshake lock. “I’m a BRN at MMU Hospital, Head Trauma Team. Just explaining to my mother how serious this all is.”
“Ah, good. Good to have a family member who speaks the language. Your father could really use knowledgeable support by his side.” He smiled at her, almost respectfully.
She didn’t expect it, not of a resident, a young one at that. In her experience, they always had something to prove, and to speak to a nurse without condescension, she almost wondered what was wrong with him. There had to be an agenda. In fact, with people in general, wasn’t there always? And in her experience, men especially always had some ulterior motive.
During her mental analysis of Dr. Brighton, she felt a nudge from her mother, not a subtle one either. She could feel her mother’s vibe, her urgency, that a young doctor with no wedding ring was present. The only communication she ever got from her mother beyond “You hungry?” was “You dating?” But the nudge wouldn’t do. Jin liked to go the extra mile when it had to do with a potential match.
“My daughter is single, all alone in Manhattan if you can believe it!”
For Christ’s sakes, Ma. Jana could only smile apologetically to the doctor.
He smiled back and went to the door. “Very good. Well, again, it’s nice to officially meet you, single Jana”—he winked—“and Mrs. Park. Shall we check on the patient?”
Her mother followed the doctor close behind and Jana next, trying to get her questions in before her father woke up, or she’d have no shot. “So a quadruple bypass with monitoring. Recovery time is what, five days? Ten?” Jana asked from behind her hovering mother.
“The surgery went well, so probably three days in the ICU, but then yes, five to ten more upstairs once he’s in the clear. And then many weeks of solid bed rest at home. Six at least.”
“And of course, the smoking must stop,” Jana said with a volume unconsciously louder than her hallway whisper.
Chang Park’s eyes opened.
Yes, she sure as hell wanted her parents to be called out in front of the young Dr. B. A male, a doctor, her ticket to getting through to them. The necessary piece.
“Hello, Mr. Park. I’m your cardiologist, Dr. Brighton. You probably feel—”
“Like hell,” he grumbled. “And I need my smokes.” He coughed then scowled.
“You’ll feel soreness and pain, sir, for a—”
“I said I need my cigarettes. Jin? My smokes.”
“Daddy, you came out of surgery. You’ve got to listen to Dr. Brighton.”
Her father respected professional men. A sleazy lawyer, a dirty cop, a crooked stock broker–they’d still stand a better chance than a woman–even his loving daughter, a medical professional–when it came to advice meeting the ears of Chang Park. So, Dr. B., even with his too-youthful glow, would do. Well, he’d have to. Although, he’d become a fast enemy by denying her father his cancer sticks for sure. God, none of this would be easy.
Chang squinted at them all, then narrowed his eyes at his daughter. “My cigarettes. Help me up, Jin.”
“Dad. You can’t—” she started, but a light touch to her elbow by Dr. Brighton paused her wasted words.
“Mr. Park, it’s vital that a complete lifestyle change is enforced. No smoking, no stress. A drastic change in diet. Or you won’t live long at all. Not beyond a week or so, sir.”
“And the restaurant has got to go, Dad,” Jana blurted, unable to control herself. “It’s a very large source of stress for my father. For both my parents.”
“It isn’t stressful; it’s relaxing.” Her father got his words out slowly, but they were laced with venom, no doubt.
“Either way, Mr. Park, it will be at least six weeks before you’re relaxing anywhere other than in a bed,” Dr. B. stated warmly.
“Dad, you can’t be at the restaurant anymore. Period. You just can’t,” Jana asserted.
He took a deep, wheezing breath. “You and your mother will cover for a few weeks until I am better.”
A surge shot up her spine. With that same familiar loss of air in her atmosphere as she had every time her father said anything non-negotiable. She was twenty-seven years old for God’s sake. She had a career, despite Chang Park’s definition. “Dad, of course, Mom and I will help at the restaurant. We’ll find a real manager while a business broker can list it for sale and—”
“No. No manager. No broker, no sale,” he whispered through his strained wheezing.
Despite the fact that other than her parents owning the building free and clear, thanks to Jana, the business had zero value. After Jana had dug them out from the debt incurred by Dane, the best the restaurant ever did was break even. It was Chang Park working a job…for free. His very own non-profit.
“Dad, be reasonable.”
He slowly filled his lungs, wincing from the pain, and said, “I will be back in half the time this doctor says. Half. No one but family runs my place. The restaurant,”—he paused to cough while the doctor and Jana both glanced at the monitor’s spike—“will be yours someday, and you can stop that bedpan slavery.”
The bright-eyed doctor cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable by the family dynamics and definitely concerned by his patient’s increase in blood pressure. He bravely ventured a comment anyway. “I like your spirit, Mr. Park. You’ll need it to move toward your new, healthier lifestyle. But to do that, I’ll need you to understand how extremely serious your situation is.” He moved closer to the patient, which apparently gave Jin direct access to Jana’s arm.
“I need to talk to you outside while the doctor is with Daddy.”
Her mother had the worst timing. She needed both her parents to hear, to wake up, and to be on board. How clueless they were as to the magnitude of her father’s state, even though Jin knew it when she called her work and her cell phone and then her brother’s. Why did the fact that Jana’s father was out of surgery make Jin less worried about the man? The woman was back to oblivious now, almost more in denial than ever.
“Mom, we should all be here with Daddy and the doctor.”
“It’s really okay. I’ll be back several times over the next couple of days,” the doctor said, overhearing Jana.
Not part of the unspoken plan, Doc, but thanks. Jana grinned to be polite. Fine. “Daddy, I’ll be back later tonight to relieve Mom. I’ll get settled at the house and check in on the restaurant, okay?”
And she’d check the financials in the restaurant’s back office, as well. She had to strengthen her case for selling the damn lead weight her father loved so much.
Chang nodded and returned his attention to the doctor, who was now only looking at Jana a little too conscientiously.
Jin pinched Jana’s arm and whispered, “Smile!” in her ear.
Again, not subtle at all.
“It was nice meeting you, Dr. Brighton. Thank you for everything.”
Then Jin pulled Jana outside the room as if an urgent wartime message had to be conveyed before the world came to an end.
*
Jana’s mother was all nerves, and her anxiety was more than contagious.
“Mom, what is it? You’re making me nervous, and I’m an ER nurse. Dad has already had a quadruple bypass today. How much worse could it be? Please relax and say what you have to say.” And please make it something other than asking about the status of her food intake, and if she’d met a man to sweep her off her fucking feet like Chang Park had done for Jin. Right.
But there, outside the hospital room, her mother transformed into a different person, a person so serious, so strained by some infinite weight, a responsibility,
maybe a heavily-toted secret, and so out of character, that Jana couldn’t help smirking. And like the time she was caught smirking at her grandmother’s funeral—just a coping mechanism—and she’d gotten slapped from then to her next birthday, she thought her mother might lift her hand and do it again, twenty years later.
But her mother didn’t. Instead, Jin narrowed her eyes and spoke in hushed Korean. “Ja-Na Sun.”
Nearly ten years ago was the last she’d heard her whole Korean name uttered by her mother, and it made Jana shudder.
“We, your father and me, you know, are so strong and healthy, always eating good Korean food. Well, you know, we don’t really need or have health insurance.”
“Don’t be absurd, Ma. I got you and Daddy set up on a policy like three years ago, despite your ludicrous argument.”
“Daddy canceled.”
Jana’s lungs deflated. And there was no next breath.
“He needed the money for something else, for the restaurant, and so many of Daddy’s business club friends don’t have insurance. So expensive, those monthly payments. Such a scam, they all say.”
Right. A scam. It felt like the scam was on her because she knew very well what was coming. Her heart began to race.
Breathe!
But still, nothing.
Breathe damn it!
Through her nostrils, she inhaled. The sterile hospital air was thin, bleach-scented. Although she’d willed her lungs to work now, she couldn’t fill them with a whole, satisfying breath. She needed to sit down. But no chair. Anywhere. So she leaned against the scuff-marked wall and stared at her mother.
“So now, here is the hospital bill statement or whatever they call it”—her mother pulled out a folded mess from her purse—“and we need you to take care of it because there isn’t enough, you know, in our bank to pay with.” Then Jin looked down at her purse. At least she knew to look away, not daring to meet Jana’s eyes. Because Jana didn’t know if her death stare would actually kill her mother, and worse, she didn’t know if she wanted it to.
But it wasn’t her mother’s fault. It was her father. Chang Park and his coronary had pushed Jin against the metaphorical wall. Just like when Jana had run to them, screaming with excitement with her Manhattan Metro University acceptance letter in hand a decade ago. Her mother was the one to break the news: “Ja-Na Sun, there is no money.” And the woman looked away in the same guilt-stricken way.
“The billing lady assigned to us wants to speak to someone about the ambulance and the rest of the expenses to come. She didn’t understand me, with my accent.”
Of course, her accent, after forty fucking years in the US. “What did she not understand you saying, Mom? That your eldest child, the god-blessed son, is a selfish, broke asshole, so your ‘pathetic, unmarried nurse’ of a daughter will come to the rescue? Again!”
Jin shot Jana a look that was equal to slapping her clear across the face. Hard. Again, Jana was shocked her mother didn’t actually raise her hand and do it, first the smirk, then this? And they both knew Jana wouldn’t have had the balls to ever speak that way to her father. Why then was it passable to disrespect her mother?
Jana had no answer for that. Damn it, she should really speak this way to both of them, to finally turn off the spigot of her ever-flowing support and the full financial coverage of her fully grown fucking parents. And goddamn her siphon of a brother.
Jana shook her head as her eyes darted to the gleaming white floor. Remember, Mom is under his thumb, Jana. How could she even put this on Jin? If Jin ran things, if her mother was in a different marriage, a different life, and if her mother was more like Jana’s iron-fisted grandmother, Jin might have stopped Chang’s absolutely ludicrous decision to cancel their health insurance, and they’d have their own resources to cover this mess. And maybe even have life insurance and other contingency plans.
So, just how much was the burden they lovingly heaped on her shoulders? She dreaded opening the folded mangle of a bill, but her fumbling fingers opened it anyway.
First page, “ambulance,” sans health insurance, “twelve hundred dollars”. She swallowed back a ball of tightly-wound fear as she flipped to the next page because she knew. She knew what was coming, being in the damn medical field. She wished to God she didn’t though.
Line item, “quadruple bypass.” Her eyes followed across the page, and her knees got weak. Her head throbbed. One hundred and fifty-two thousand. She stood there with the paper rattling in her cold trembling hands. Still seven to ten more days to go in the hospital. Then the follow-ups, drugs, physical therapy, home care, and all the rest.
All Jana felt was nausea. A panic attack would have been welcome at that point, or mild hysteria, even. But no, nothing. Any and all emotion including the hope and joy she’d accumulated over the last year of living her dream, her nursing position at one of the most prestigious hospitals the world over, all vacated her being that instant, leaving a cold robotic numbness.
Jana lifted her eyes and looked up at her mother. Then like a zombie, she kissed her mother’s cheek and left the small cowering woman outside her father’s hospital room, as Jana dutifully made her way toward the business office to discuss her father’s financial situation—now Jana’s situation.
And it all begins again.
CHAPTER 4
She tipped the cab driver well, despite her new completely fucked situation. He’d driven well enough, but most of all, he’d stayed quiet. Noiselessness was what she needed, vitally. Anything else would have been the tipping point. In her fragile, icy state, she thought for sure she’d shatter into pieces. She laughed as the green bills left her hand and slid into those of the bearded driver. What was the difference anymore between twenty dollars and twenty thousand? Or two hundred grand even?
At one time, while selling her soul, dancing on top of her obliterated moral compass, the cash she’d have lying around, all stuffed in shoeboxes and tucked under her mattress, was too much to count. And as she inserted her key to unlock the glass door of the Park family’s walk-up, her overactive mind heard her mother telling her to “smile” at the doctor. Why not say, “Land him, Jana!” She cringed at the thought. Being with a man for his money wasn’t something she was capable of. Her mother could keep her fantasies because that’s all her mother had. And as for her mother’s reality, Jin Park could keep that too. If Jana wanted to be a trophy on a leash, she’d have snagged one of her doting club regulars years ago.
No, she’d be deeply connected and enthralled and in total symbiosis with whomever her future partner would be. A long time away, though, not until she cleaned up her parents’ new mess. Because she couldn’t burden anyone else with this load; she had her pride and she had a conscience. Even if her parents so obviously did not.
But, she’d admit at her lowest points, like now, it was tempting to just connect with a man who had resources. But she also remembered the daytime talk shows she’d zoned out to for the years she worked nights, disbelieving the women who had strategized marrying rich. The thought made her ill, especially knowing that the husbands those women manipulated around the chessboard to hit their wallets, well, those men had been coming to her for lap dances every week. She’d have none of that. No marriage of convenience, no money contract. She’d rather stay alone than ever, ever buy in.
The musty stairwell smell was familiar enough, but the hint of seafood and pickled cabbage in the air was what hit home. She watched the top of the stairs get closer, her purse threatening to fall off her sagging shoulder and her roller bag thumping up each mocking step, each thud making her flinch as the throbbing in her head marched to the beat.
Jana got to the top, got the house door open, and fell into the cluttered apartment with a surrender and a disdain that matched the energy of her ER on a night of a massive city train wreck.
Tossing her purse and dropping the roller bag where she stood, she moved her limp body to the brown plaid couch, the one she’d known as a child, the very same. She’d
offered to replace the repulsive thing a billion times over, but her father would have none of it. He’d take what will no doubt be hundreds of thousands from her now—actually, again!—but not a new couch.
Her hands went up to her pounding head, fingers massaging her temples. Not helpful, not a dent of relief. Exhale.
Sleep? Eat? Neither was even thinkable.
Action. She had to do something. She had to attack.
She grabbed her purse and headed back down the stairs fumbling through the clanking ring of unmarked keys as she went. God, how many times had she told them to label the keys? Taking no care on the steps, she stumbled but caught herself on the rickety banister. Her heart pounded through the scare until her fingers found the jagged silver key by memory. She caught her breath and put the key into the side door at the bottom of the stairwell.
*
The chairs were up on the larger round tops, but the two-tops lining the walls were still dirty, chairs only pushed in by the assumedly rushed closing kitchen crew, unmonitored since ten hours ago, so why would he or she or they give a shit, right? The floor had definitely not been swept, but again, who, if not her father, would be there to say—or yell in her father’s case—a thing about it. There was a makeshift closed sign hanging on the front door, but she’d definitely need to give her and her mother at least two days’ leeway. She pulled the paper down, grabbed a pen from her bag and hand wrote, ‘Until further notice, due to Family Emergency.’
She walked back through the kitchen, which reeked because, in addition to the floors, the damn garbage had been skipped. She decided then that she’d find the papers she needed to run preliminary numbers and get the hell out of there, out of the entire building for that matter. The option to sleep in her childhood bedroom upstairs was out too, since the ventilation from the kitchen was building-wide. And Jana’s old bedroom had the benefit of being directly above the kitchen, closest to the stench.
