Koon Chai Cafe

Chapter Thirty - Blame

Kopter

Everything happened in a blur. 

One minute we were all standing in the kitchen in silence and the next we were running into the kitchen to find Park screaming for help holding his unconscious father. 

The ambulance arrived in a matter of minutes and with just enough space for one person to ride along, Park had gone with them. 

We drove in complete silence to the hospital, none of us knowing what to say and none of us wanting to voice the dark thoughts that we were all thinking. I stared out of my car window, listening and watching the rain thunder down onto grey sidewalk, soaking everything in its path.

My head pounded with unanswered questions and fears. 

What happened? Had they fought? Had something one of them said caused a heart attack or something? 

What does a heart attack even look like? Park was the medical expert out of the two of us, I could just about figure out how to put on a bandaid without it sticking to my fingers but not much else. I hadn't heard a word the paramedics had said either, it was all just a haze of 'stat' this and 'gurney' that. I hadn't even had a chance to ask Park before he had left with them. 

When I pictured Park my chest tightened painfully and I felt a rising sense of guilt and shame in my stomach. He'd looked so scared and frightened in that moment, like he had been completely overcome with fear and despair. Like he was lost all over again. 

All I ever wanted was to protect him, to give him the world he had been denied and deserved more than anyone else. So far, I had been the reason that he had to watch everything he loved be torn away from him. I was the reason he had had to come out prematurely to his family, my neediness, my stubbornness and my recklessness had taken everything away from the person I loved, and now he might lose his father too. 

I had to face my greatest fear, the one that had been chipping away at my confidence ever since that night. I had tried with all my might to bury it deep down, but it was rearing its ugly head once again. 

Was I harmful for Park? No matter how I tried to see it, his life had gotten worse ever since I stepped into it, and there was no one else to blame. 

I absentmindedly flipped my phone in my hand, hoping to all hopes that no news was good news. 

I felt a warm hand press on my knee and looked up to see Mom glancing back at me from the passenger seat. "We're almost there, love." She said in a calm, reassuring voice. "Do you know where you need to go?" 

"Emergency room." I said automatically. I had no idea if he had been moved elsewhere but that was my best guess. I trusted my instincts that I'd be able to find Park. 

We pulled into the front of the hospital and I stepped out. I was instantly pelted by sharp sheets of painful ice-cold rain that made me gasp for air. "We'll be in the waiting area, okay?" Nok called after me, concerned. "Let us know what's happening." 

Covering my head with my hands, I rushed through the automatic glass doors of the hospital and into the crowded reception. I hastily wiped away the hair plastered to my face and made my way over to the desk where a tired looking woman in purple scrubs was hastily taking down notes. 

"Excuse me." She turned to look at me, her eye bags were so deep you could've stored loose change in them. "I'm looking for my friend, he arrived not too long ago accompanying his father." 

She gave me a withering look. "Last name Park?" I added hopefully. She sighed and pulled out a series of files to her right out of an 'admissions' tray. "Park, Park, Park..." she muttered, following her finger down the long list of names. "Eugene Park?" she asked, "Fourty-five year old male admitted twenty-nine minutes ago with minor injuries?"