“What’s the difference?” Hyonsu asked.
“Viral meningitis is easy to treat, and he’ll be fine,” the doctor said.
“And bacterial?”
“He might experience some residual effects. It could be anything from hearing loss to developmental delays to epilepsy . . .”
Everything turned black before Hyonsu’s eyes. His legs shook and he couldn’t read the release. He dropped the pen several times before he could write his own name.
They wheeled Sowon away. Hyonsu went with them while Eunju remained outside. An assistant removed Sowon’s shirt and had him curl into a fetal position while lying on one side. Sowon began to squirm. The assistant tried to hold him down, but it wasn’t enough to keep the frightened child still. Sowon had glimpsed the long, thin needle. He looked up at Hyonsu with a silent request for help, and the doctor did, too. “Can you make sure he doesn’t move?”
Hyonsu crouched next to the gurney, squeezing himself between its side and the wall, sweating, his breathing ragged. “Sowon,” he said gently. “Remember what I do whenever I get scared?”
Sowon stopped wriggling.
“Remember?”
Sowon pursed his lips as if to whistle.
“That’s right. That’s what we’re going to do. I’ll whistle out loud and you whistle along in your head. Once we finish the song, this scary thing is going to be over. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”
“That’s right,” the doctor said, preparing a local anesthetic.
“What should we whistle?”
Sowon straightened his pointer and middle fingers, wordlessly forming legs. Hyonsu recalled the first scene of The Bridge on the River Kwai, a movie they often watched together. A unit of British POWs marched toward a Japanese prison camp, whistling the “Colonel Bogey March.” Sowon didn’t really understand the film, but he would rewind and watch that scene over and over again.
Hyonsu put his forefinger and middle finger on the edge of the gurney and whistled, their signal to begin the march. He began to whistle the tune, marching his fingers along the edge, tripping and twisting and wagging to the beat. A faint smile appeared on his son’s face.
Sowon fell asleep as soon as the procedure was over. The doctor explained that he must be feeling more comfortable now that the pressure in his brain had eased, but Hyonsu remained crouched next to him, shaking. What if something happened to Sowon? What if he couldn’t hear or walk or ride his bike or climb on the jungle gym or had seizures? It was a terrible night, the most terrifying of his thirty-six years. When he raised his head, Eunju’s black gaze hit him like a wave of cold water, a mixture of disgust and resentment and fear and tears. He didn’t know what to say to console her.
It turned out to be a viral infection, but Sowon was hospitalized for almost a month because the pressure in his brain proved difficult to regulate. They had to perform two additional spinal taps. All kinds of drugs were pumped into his small body.
Hyonsu commuted from the hospital to home to work. He brought food for his wife and son, ran errands, and took turns staying overnight. He didn’t have the chance to tell Eunju about his suspended license. His anxiety about getting behind the wheel without a license gradually dulled, and by the time Sowon was ready to come home, he’d practically forgotten about it.
Everything went back to normal. Eunju went back to work at the high school cafeteria, and Hyonsu worked at the security company, went to the bar, watched baseball, and forgot or put off things he had to do, sliding behind the wheel at the end of each night. He continued to ignore Eunju’s calls when he was out drinking and, like now, only gave any thought to whether he ought to be driving drunk when he was about to be stopped at a checkpoint.
* * *
Hyonsu peered out the driver’s-side window. The line of cars in front of him began to move. It wasn’t a checkpoint, thankfully—there had been an accident. The police had closed one lane and were dealing with the aftermath. An officer waved him through. He drove by carefully, but, as soon as he merged onto the highway, accelerated to seventy-five miles per hour. The engine whined and the body of the car shook, but Hyonsu didn’t feel it; he just felt tired and depressed. He was thinking about the new apartment they’d just bought, or, rather, that Eunju had bought.
Ten days before, Eunju announced that she wanted to purchase a 1,200-square-foot apartment in Ilsan. Hyonsu studied his wife. She must be out of her mind. There was a cheap unit on the market, Eunju explained; the owner was going bankrupt and trying to sell quickly. It was in a nice neighborhood with good schools.
Hyonsu figured it was a good apartment if Eunju said so, but he couldn’t square the cost in his head. It didn’t make any financial sense. Even if they took the security deposit from their current apartment and drained their savings, they would still be short thirty million won. They couldn’t possibly get a loan for that sum. And even if they could, what would they do about the taxes and how would they pay off the enormous interest? It would be better to eat three square meals a day in a rental, Hyonsu thought, than to suck hungrily on their fingers in a place they owned.
“That’s why your life is the way it is,” Eunju insisted. Her calculations were different. She set five account books down in front of Hyonsu.
“What’s all this?”
“What do you think?”
It was money, a lot of money, that could cover the missing thirty million won and the taxes. Eunju began with what she said each time Hyonsu drank. “You think I scrimp and save for myself? No. I’ve been setting aside this money for us.”
“What about the interest payments? How will we cover them?”
“We can put the new apartment up for rent.”
“Then where are we going to live?”
“In housing provided by the company.”
That meant volunteering to be stationed in the sticks somewhere. Hyonsu had his own reasons for not wanting to leave Seoul. He worked for a security company with contracts at important government facilities; he’d been with them since he retired from baseball. His first assignment was at a dam in the hills of Chungchong Province. The air was clean and tranquil, and the company provided free housing. The only problem was that all the amenities, from Sowon’s kindergarten to the supermarket, were located in the larger town on the other side of the mountain. Eunju dipped into her savings and bought him a used Matiz. He was grateful for the car, but she had overlooked his physique when selecting it. It felt like he was stuffing himself into a suit of armor. He had to push the seat all the way back in order to be able to drive. Hyonsu wanted to insist on buying a slightly bigger car, but he knew he would only get shot down. He grumbled to himself about how everything in his life was so small and constricting.