Page 75 of The Love of My Afterlife
“You’rechucklingright now?” I goggle. “Okay. That’s a very good sign actually. Good. Chuckle away. But calmly. The doctor said you need to stay calm. Stop jiggling your shoulders like that.”
Mr. Yoon lifts up his other hand and clenches his fist—the sign he used to make when he was looking for a fresh pencil before I bought him a box of a hundred.
“You want to write something?” I ask. “Now?”
He nods. I go out to the nurses’ bay and ask for a pen and paper. I expect the nurse to grumble because she’s busy doing other important things, but she smiles at me, leans over one of the desks, and hands me a biro and a fresh ring-bound notebook as if people ask for pens and paper all the time.
I take the writing instruments back to Mr. Yoon, who tries to pull himself up in the bed. I help him and rearrange the pillows so that he has more support around his creaky back. He blinks slowly, and it occurs to me that he’s probably been given sedatives.
He grabs the pen and starts to scrawl over the page, the letters neat and even but shaky.
YOU LOOK ALIVE.
I feel myself go red in the cheeks. I probably look like I’ve had a lot of sex in a short space of time.
“I’ll take that as a compliment?” I say. “Hadn’t realised I was looking not alive but…thanks.”
Mr. Yoon smiles and writes on the page again.
IT’S NICE TO SEE YOU LOOKING HAPPY.
My chest aches at the notion that any happiness I might be feeling is temporary. Jonah will never kiss me of his own free will and Merritt has all but disappeared. My fate is set.
Mr. Yoon soon falls into a soft sleep, his monitors beating steadily. I swallow hard, sorrow submerging me as I think about the fact that Mr. Yoon has no family. No friends. Just me. And when I’m gone, who will be there for him besides Cooper? Who will have been a witness to his life, so that he is truly remembered after he’s gone?
I gently take the pen and paper out of Mr. Yoon’s hand. I look outside for the doctor. No-one is telling me to get out yet. I hunch over and, without being forced to by anyone, just because I want to, I start to sketch the outline of Mr. Yoon’s face. My shoulders relax with the feeling of it, and I soon lose myself in the lines and crevices, the long earlobes, his thin smiling lips, and the small shaving cut on his friendly round jaw.
I peek at the clock and realise that a whole forty minutes has passed by the time the doctor reappears.
“Ms. Bookham, we have to run some more tests on Mr. Yoon just to make sure we’ve covered everything, but you can come by again in the morning if you like? We will do more tests, as Isaid, but the likely outcome is that he’ll be discharged tomorrow after a full review from a cardiothoracic specialist.”
Out tomorrow. I nod, expelling the air through my cheeks, placing the paper and pad at the side of Mr. Yoon’s bed table.
“He’ll write down answers to your questions if you need him to,” I tell her. “Took me three years to figure that one out.”
The doctor smiles, glancing down at my drawing. Her eyebrows shoot up. “That is excellent. You’re an artist?”
“God no,” I say, immediately turning red. “Ha!”
I reach down and turn the page onto the one where Mr. Yoon has written that I look alive. The doctor reads it and gives me a curious look. There’s a lurch in my stomach as I realise that not only am I going to snuff it in two days, but I have no idea how it will happen. I mean, there’s no way I’ll let myself choke on a burger again. How will I die? Will it be painful? Will I end up right here, where Mr. Yoon is, being treated by a team of experts trying hard to save a life that has already been reserved for Evermore?
I shove the morose thoughts away. “I will be here tomorrow!” I say brightly, backing out of the room. “You have my number. Please call if anything changes.”
I race into the A&E waiting area to see that Cooper is hunched over, quickly tapping his shiny-shoed foot and flipping his phone about in his hands. I race over to him. He jumps up as soon as he sees me. He still looks panicked.
“Did you not get my text?” I ask.
He looks down at his phone and shakes his head.
“I sent one. The reception must be bad here. Mr. Yoon is okay. He’s going to be just fine.”
Cooper exhales, his shoulders dropping in relief as he pulls me into a hug. He presses his hand against the back of my head.I close my eyes and feel a softness spread through my body, a calming of sorts. All this time when my muscles were painfully tight, my jaw rigid and tense, was the key just another human body pressing itself against mine?
His human body.
I sigh, long and low. Everything would be so much easier if Cooper was my literal soulmate on Earth, rather than just someone to have some fun with. I’ve already kissed him a gazillion times—my life would have been saved a gazillion times over.
Cooper’s forefinger trails absently from my hair to my neck, and I shiver.
