Doctor Kim

Chapter 31

Danielle told me it would get easier, but it didn't.

At least, not the following week. After the break-up with Jay, it hadn't been that hard to quit him cold turkey. But Minji? I couldn't stop thinking about her, wondering what she was doing, and if she was missing me. Was she doing anything to try to change her son's mind?

And if she was able to get Jay to budge, what then? We felt . . . over. Minji and I hadn't spoken since that night. She'd sent me one text a little after I'd left her house.

Minji: Did you make it to your friend's? Are you okay?

When my phone had chimed, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, my back against Danielle's couch and my grimy feet tucked under me.

Hanni: Yes.

Hanni: You were right. My 20th birthday was the worst.

I regretted sending it later, after I'd calmed down. I hadn't meant to be mean. Jay had put Minji in an impossible situation, and she'd had to bear most of the anger I should have directed at Jay.

My mother picked up on my sullen mood, and I finally told her Jay and I had broken up. I didn't tell her when it had happened—I let her assume it was recent and the reason I was mopey.

I counted down the days until I'd be back at school, in a new environment where I hoped I'd be magically free from my thoughts about the surgeon with dark eyes and great hands.

I only had three more days to go when the universe decided to be downright vicious. I'd just downed two ibuprofens for my killer headache when my mom asked me to go to the store. We needed fixings for dinner, she'd said.

I was shopping in the bread aisle when I saw her.

Minji stood in the bustling produce area hovered over tomatoes, a plastic bag held in one hand as she examined the bin. Nearby, a woman clearly wanted to get to the onions, which she was blocking, but she hesitated in asking her to move. Too polite or shy, or maybe too taken with her. Her long fingers selected the tomato she was looking for, slipped it into the bag, and then she turned.

My stomach hurt, seeing her again.

She noticed the woman waiting, said something, and pushed her cart quickly out of her way. As she tossed what seemed to be an apology to her, she gave a sheepish smile. Just that flash of a smile lit up her face.

The pain in my belly was a band, low and tight across my hips.

Had she sensed my gaze on her?

Minji's head lifted, and her attention turned my way. And as she recognized me, standing wooden with a package of hamburger buns in my hands, her posture went alert. I had to move. Warning signs flashed in my body, telling me to get the fuck out of there before I broke down. No one wanted a blubbering twenty-year-old girl in the bread aisle, trying to hide sobs between loaves and baguettes.

My stomach churned the whole time I stood in the checkout lane. I was sweaty and nauseated, anxious to be done and back home. But when I returned, the feeling didn't subside, not even after dinner. I cursed myself for letting the near run-in get to me like this.

It was stupid. My overreaction, my feelings. I hadn't even been in love with Minji. Why was I acting like I had?

"I don't feel well," I said to my mom soon after we'd finished the dishes. "I'm going to bed."

She looked concerned. "You need anything?"

Just to stop thinking about her. "No, I'm fine. Goodnight."

I plodded up the stairs, changed into my pajamas, and curled up under the covers, closing my eyes and hoping to shut off my feelings for a few hours.

I awoke chilled, but also covered with a thin layer of sweat.

My room was dark, and the alarm clock on my side table said it was a little after two in the morning. The dull ache in my stomach had graduated into full-out pain. Burning, centered pain.

I rolled over onto my other side, willing it to go away, but it only seemed to intensify as I tried to go back to sleep. It got to the point where I started to wonder if something was wrong. Why did it hurt so much?

Thirty more minutes was all I could take before I dragged myself from the bed down to my mom's room, my phone clutched in a hand. She'd always been a deep sleeper and put her phone on 'Do Not Disturb' after eleven. Texting her from my bed wouldn't do any good.

She was snoring quietly, lying sprawled out in the center of her queen-sized bed. "Mom," I said. "Mom, wake up."

She jerked from sleep, blinked her disoriented eyes at me, then launched upright. "What's wrong?"

"My stomach hurts." I had to band my arms across it. "It hurts really bad."

I was seated in the passenger seat of her car in less than five minutes. Her face was completely white as she raced toward the emergency room. I'd been a lucky kid. No broken bones, no major health scares, so we were both in foreign, scary territory. I tried not to think about what was wrong, because my mind immediately went to terrible scenarios and made my anxiety worse.

We'd barely taken our seats in the waiting area before they called us back into a room. People said the emergency room was slow, but it seemed to move at lightning speed for me. The nurse, a woman who looked like she'd seen it all—and probably multiple times—came into the room and took my vitals.

"What do you think's wrong?" my mom asked.

"I'm not the doctor," the nurse said automatically.

My mom wasn't deterred. "Right, but what do you suspect?"

The woman swiped a thermometer across my forehead as I shivered. The "bed" in the room was more like a table with a bend in it, and really uncomfortable. I wanted to curl up into a ball and couldn't, so instead I gripped one of the metal side arms.

"Is there a chance you could be pregnant?" she asked.

My heart stopped at the same instant my gaze flew to my mother. She knew I was sexually active and had actively encouraged safe sex. But she believed that was happening with Jay, and if I was somehow pregnant? It wouldn't be by him.

"I'm good about taking my pill," I said quickly. "And using condoms."

"Temp is one-oh-one," she commented, although I wasn't sure to whom. "My guess would be appendicitis."

The seasoned nurse was absolutely right—a CT scan confirmed it. By four a.m. I'd been admitted, taken to a room on the third floor, and antibiotics started through my IV. The pain medication they gave me helped, but it also made me shake worse than before.

While we waited for my doctor to come in and talk about the next steps, my mom, wearing the clothes she'd haphazardly thrown on hours ago, dozed upright in a chair beside my bed. I eyed her with a bit of jealousy. I was exhausted, but too miserable and freaked out to sleep. I was hooked up to machines that clicked and hummed, and the room never got quite dark, even with the lights off. Sounds from the hall were steady as well. Heavy beds rolling by. Shoes squeaking on the polished floor.

"Twenty-year-old female. Acute appendicitis," a female voice said just on the other side of my door. "We've got you scheduled for OR two at five-twenty."

A set of footsteps faded at the same moment a short knock rang out, and the heavy wooden door to my room pushed open without waiting for my reply. My mother stirred and straightened in her chair, perking up as the doctor entered. She made it two steps into the room before she looked at me.

All the air whooshed from my lungs.

Minji froze, disbelief streaked on her face.