“Is anyone sitting here?” he asks.
“No. Go ahead.”
I move my purse that I had placed there carelessly, not to intentionally ward off strangers.
I am distracted watching Steve Wilkos on the TV. No volume, just closed-caption, which lags, so I practice my lip-reading skills and test my accuracy with the captions that come a second later.
“Are you Korean?” the man asks in Korean.
“I am,” I reply in Korean, “but my Korean isn’t very good.”
“Well, it’s much better than my English.”
Silence. Not awkward or uncomfortable. Just pensive, both of us likely curious what brings the other here.
“Here for family? Friend?” he asks first.
I guess we’re speaking Korean.
“A friend.”
I pause, not to be reticent, but I don’t know what the Korean word is for “food poisoning”, so I say, “I think he ate something bad. He is throwing up a lot.”
I hesitate to ask the same question back because the answer might not be as easy.
“How about you?”
“My sister. Cancer. Stomach. It....it doesn’t look good.”
I shouldn’t have asked, although he doesn’t seem too shaken, more quietly defeated.
“My grandfather had that. He’s okay now. He had surgery.”
“Yeah, I think it’s too late for that. I’ve been here so many times in the past couple months. I always wonder each time if it’s going to be the last, but this time, I think it might be.”
Again, I wonder if I should have said what I said, but he continues.
“She drank a lot of alcohol. Messed up her insides. But it wasn’t her fault. Her husband was a very bad man. He hit her. A lot. For no good reason. He gambled a lot, too. Sometimes, he would leave her for weeks with the kids and they didn’t respect her. So she drank a lot because she was very sad and unhappy.” He uses easier words so I can understand him better. I appreciate the conscientious effort.
He has a Korean newspaper tucked under his arm. He unfolds it, trying to keep it from tenting over the worn center crease. It’s the same one my parents subscribed to growing up. My picture was in there once as a teen because I won a scholarship the paper was sponsoring. That was back when I felt invincible because the world seemed smaller and easier and your success in relation to your peers was really only determined by measurable merits, like grades and awards. I turn my attention back to the silent TV. A Febreze ad. Then a low-budget commercial for a career college. It reminds me of the fact that I’m the only person that my friend knew was unemployed on a weekday and therefore, available to bring him to ER.
“Have you eaten lunch?” he asks.
It’s about 2pm. I’m starving.
“No I haven’t.”
“I haven’t either. Barely ate breakfast. I’ve been here since 6am. There’s a Subway across the street.”
I order first. I try to pay for my meal, which he finds silly. “That’s ah-juh-shi’s job! I’m always here by myself, so please, I must. Thank you for keeping me company today.” Ah-juh-shi is a friendly term referring to an elder male in Korean, similar to “uncle”. He orders a turkey sandwich and asks for everything on it, even black olives, something my parents would never do because it’s unfamiliar to their palate. He asks me where I’m from, about my family, what my parents do, what church do they go to.
“That’s the one with Pastor Lee?”
“Noh.”
“No?”
“Pastor Noh.”
He’s sure he knows someone there, but can’t remember. We finish our meal in minutes mostly because we’re famished, but also because we know we shouldn’t stay away too long — he more than I. When we return, he goes to check in at the desk to make sure they didn’t call him while we were away.
“Same thing always. ‘We’ll call you when we need you. Please take a seat, sir,’” he mocks. But before he reaches the desk, his sister’s name is called.
“That’s me. If you’re not here when I get back, I enjoyed talking with you.”
“Thank you for the sandwich. I hope your sister will be okay.”
“I just want her to be happy. Just once.”
As he walks in, the nurse speaks to him. I can’t hear anything, but try to gauge how bad the news is on a scale of no news to the worst by using my freshly honed lip-reading skills. Before I can tell, the door closes.
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