TANGLED - TK

Chapter 20( Mihan)

CHAPTER TWENTY

TAE

There was a detail of my life I didn't really shared with anyone. Well it wasn't a detail. It was a person. Kim Mihan. My parents adopted him when I was a newborn. He was five at the time. His parents left him at the hospital with a letter.

It was Dad who was his treating doctor. It was Dad that read the letter saying that his parents weren't coming back for him. Mihan was malnourished, skinny, covered in bruises, a clear case of abuse.

Mom was due to have me any day. But Dad couldn't hand Mihan over to the system. So they made a decision that most people couldn't and wouldn't ever do. They adopted Mihan. And they may have greased a few palms to make it happen.

The adoption went through the day after I was born. I still don't know how my mom did it. She managed to raise a newborn and a child who didn't trust her.

But Mum and Dad never gave up on Mihan. They treated him like he was their blood because, in my parents eyes, he was.

And Mihan slowly accepted them. He had never been shown love, or simple things like a meal three times a day. I still remember Mom telling me she had never cried as much as she did when Mihan couldn't fill his stomach with food cause his body wasn't used to it.

His body was used to liquids and sometimes the odd meal.

Mom and Dad him under every specialist to help mihan learn to eat. Mom always said mihy's biggest fear was they would leave him, like his parents left them. He would have nightmares about it every night. His biggest fear: being left by himself again.

So they did something that goes against Mom and Dad's image of professional surgeons. They both got mihan's name tattooed on them.

Mihan, I think, was around seven when Mom and Dad did it. Mom told me from the day mihan saw those tattoos he stopped having nightmares.

Mum and Dad supported Mihan in everything he did, just like they did for me.

Then on his eighteen birthday we had a family party. I was thirteen. Mihan and I were always close. He was there for me as I grew up. Every photo of me had him in it. He was my brother. And he saw me as his lil. Brother.

We were best friends. And I thought he would always be there for me. But the day after his eighteenth birthday, he left my parents a note thanking them, and that was it. Not telling them why he left. Not one word directed at me. No I'll miss you. No I'm sorry. Nothing.

Just two words: thank you.

My parents were heartbroken. Mum stopped working, and for the first time in her life she stopped doing what she loved-helping people. Dad threw himself into work, started to miss important events in my life, sports games, achievement awards. Then on my first day of high school mum didn't even get out of bed for it and Dad, well, he was working a double shift and seemed to forget his only son was facing the biggest fear in his life.

It was on the first day of high school, when I had to walk there in the rain, I realized my parents loved Mihan more than me.

I can't remember how long that went on. We were a fractured family. Mom and Dad weren't even sleeping in the same room. My love for Mihan turned to hate because he had cost me my parents, and most of all my happy family.

Instead, I had a mom that was dosed up on prescription pills and dad that lived at the hospital. And then there was me; I had never felt more lost then in the first year after Mihan left.

Thank god for Uncle Carl.

One day, I can't remember how long it had been, but I do remember the day clearly it was a Saturday, I walked downstairs ready to have another breakfast alone when I found Mum and Dad talking and cooking breakfast.