I checked on the IV tubes while biting my tongue to swallow all the words I’m dying to say. What was she doing here? What happened to her? Where was Jihyuk? Did she know her sister was here? Why did she lie to me? I checked her charts. She was admitted weeks ago, almost a few days after I found Jihyuk waiting tables.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed out, almost as if it pained her to say it.

“For what?” I said, amused, before sitting at the foot of her bed.

“I took her away from you.”

“What are you talking about?”

It took her a while to answer. Her breathing was heavy and coarse. “Jihyuk,” Sunmi said after a moment. The skin around her lips was blue due to lack of oxygen. “It’s all my fault.”

I pushed myself to sit nearer her and her hair gently. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I consoled. “It’s just…”

“She loves you, do you know that?”

I chuckled. “She never did.” Even though it was almost a week after the incident, the gaping hole inside me still burned at the edges and seemed to grow wider and wider. “But that’s okay. That’s not your fault.”

“She loves you,” Sunmi protested and pushed herself up to sit. “She does, and she may never tell you, but she does. No matter what my parents say or what your brother says, she loves you. She loves you so much I feel sick to my guts knowing it’s my fault.”

“I don’t get you.”

She was tearing up, which made me even more confused. “Please don’t get mad at me,” Sunmi said, rubbing my forearm. “I just… The doctor said I could have surgery and Jihyuk would be the donor and we just… we didn’t have enough to pay for it.” She started crying, and I didn’t know how to comfort her. “Then your brother heard it.” At the mention of Donghwa, I tensed. “He offered to pay for the transplant if Jihyuk would stay away from you.”

I was gripping the bed sheets too hard and I couldn’t say anything. I was too stunned to speak.

“I told her I’ll be fine,” she continued. “I’m incurable anyway. The transplant wouldn’t guarantee I’d be cured. She didn’t answer your brother right away. She worked so hard. She worked so hard thinking maybe she didn’t have to make the choice. Maybe she could pay for it herself.”

“She waited tables,” I muttered.

Sunmi nodded. “She quit teaching. She loved teaching so much and she threw it away. But she started earning almost twice from waiting tables in that restaurant. Then she stopped going home because she knew that working overtime would pay more.”

“The bruises…?”

I felt guilty for asking about it because Sunmi sobbed harder. “That’s the thing,” she added. “The owner let her stay. Do you know where she sleeps?”

I looked away, staring out the window. I knew I couldn’t bear to hear the truth, but somehow I wanted to know. Maybe knowing was tantamount to understanding. If Jihyuk had a pretty reasonable excuse for leaving me and acting like the past two months didn’t matter then maybe I could accept it.

“She sleeps on the sink,” Sunmi wept. “The owner told her she was nothing but a waitress. So she let it be. And when she messes up…” She took a deep breath, which was not so deep regarding her condition. “The owner’s sadistic. He hurts her – puts out his lit cigarette on her skin like she’s some garbage bin – and I told her, told her so many times to just quit and let me be, but you know Jihyuk, she doesn’t listen.”

And now everything had clicked into place – the wounds, the bruises, the late night calls – everything happened for a reason. “She visits me and maybe she doesn’t know it but she cries so silently. It’s my fault it’s been so hard on her. She wanted to see you as often as she could but the job takes most of her time. One night when she stayed her for the night, she was sleep talking about seeing ‘that bastard’ and skateboarding.” Her statement caused me to smile a little but nothing more. The pain had anchored its way deep inside me it was hard to ignore.

“And one day I saw her making a list,” Sunmi said and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from under her pillow. It listed a lot of things. “She told those are things she wanted to give you if only she could.” And at that, I wanted to die a little more inside. “It’s so unfair to her and I feel so sorry for Jihyuk. I feel so sorry for you. She worked so hard for nothing. And I begged her and pleaded her and persuaded her not to take your brother’s offer.”

My nails dug into the mattress as I fought hard not to cry. “But she did, didn’t she?”

Sunmi nodded while drying her cheeks, which was useless since she kept on crying. “The surgery was successful. Jihyuk gave me a part of her left lung. After the surgery, she only slept for a few hours and then left for work again. We all know that it isn’t enough to last me a lifetime. I’m going to die anyway so why bother…” she said with a small smile.

“Don’t say that.”

“Please don’t be so kind to me. It’s my fault she broke up with you,” she sniffled.

“Ya,” I said, trying not to look like I’ve been trying hard not to cry. “Don’t worry about it, okay?” I grabbed her and ruffled her hair. “All you have to do now is get better.”

“I won’t get better.”

“Ya, you have a part of Jihyuk’s lungs in you so you better be a fighter,” I said, standing up and fixing my coat. “If you die, who will serve me my food when I eat at your parents’?”

She laughed until it turned into a throaty cough. “Promise me you’ll get back with her.”

“If she still wants me back…”

“Promise me.”

Rolling my eyes at her, “Fine, I promise,” I said, holding my right hand up to swear. She smiled at me, her eyes not crinkling at the same corners, not twisted up in the same mischievous way unlike her Jihyuk’s. She smiled at me. I smiled back, and quickly left.  Ignoring the next name on my clipboard, I rushed to the men’s room, locked myself in, and broke down on the floor.