HIS PRINCESS | K.TH

A Sound in the Night

AERI

The next day, Mom collapses.

Dad carries her to the hospital— the entire ten miles— by hand. He tells me to stay home, but I follow anyway.

Stay home for what? So I could go crazy by myself, not knowing?

I trail behind him the entire way. And more than once, I see his legs tremble with Mom's limp body in his arms. She doesn't wake up.

None of us had ever visited the hospital before.

It's a huge, scary place. Everywhere there's white, and it smells like death inside. As I hide behind a vending machine, peeking out at Dad sitting with his head in his hands in the waiting room, I hear occasional screams from the hallway far down.

It echoes through the halls. Almost like they were meant to echo like that.

Eventually I have to show myself.

Dad is too tired to say anything. He just motions weakly for me to sit next to him, and puts his head back in his hands. And I sit, just feeling numb to it all.

It feels like my heart has just shut down. I'm just looking, my eyes fixed on the television hung in the corner of the silent room. It doesn't even work.

And maybe the numbness is actually a blessing.

It is a blessing.

Because when two men dressed in white come up to us and say that Mom is dead, I don't really feel anything. They say that she already had a cancer that had been developing in her heart, and hearing that Aemin had died had caused a seizure.

I don't really know. I can't really understand what they're saying, anyways.

Dad doubles down on the chair he's sitting on. Unlike Mom, he cries softly and quietly. But the weight of the grief is nothing less than Mom's yesterday.

I want to leave this place.

I need to take Dad out of here.

"Dad, come on." I say, grabbing hold of his arm and slinging it around my shoulder. "We need to get back. And it's a long walk."

He keeps crying, shaking against my smaller figure.

And I can't stand the looks the white-coated men are giving us. We didn't need their pity. We were going to do fine by ourselves.

Everything— Everything was going to be fine.

"Thanks. We'll be leaving now." I say to them, voice cold and eyes narrowed.

But somehow the bad things don't stop there.

They exchange looks with each other. And then one of them— the taller one with hair dyed blonde— speaks up hesitantly.

"The nurse will be here shortly with the total payment bills for the surgery."

...surgery? Bills?

And payment? For what?

For failing to save my Mom?

The nurse comes right after they leave. She's a short woman, a little taller than me. She gives me another sympathetic look, a paper between her fingertips.

That look.

I hate that look. I hate it.

"Here is the payment invoice." She says, and I snatch the paper from her. My eyes quickly scan down for the numbers. Dad wasn't in a state where he could read this right now.