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At first, all I could hear was the monitor’s beeping as I tried to open my eyes. It wasn’t a pleasant sound, but it was something for my mind to focus on while I struggled to come to. Even with that guideline, it wasn’t easy. My eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, but really, they might have just been pushed down by whatever was causing the pounding in my head. Instinctively, I took a deep breath and sighed with an unfamiliar ease. As my chest settled back into place, the significance of the movement hit me. That shock woke me up. I could breathe. And I could do so easily.
My eyes opened to see an off-white void staring back at me. Neither my eyes or brain could fully make sense of the sight, but there was a foreboding aura that came with it, like this was the sort of place I should not have been, that I had been trying to avoid. I couldn’t identify it but something in me knew to dread it. And I gave in to that part of me. Plagued with that unnamed fear, I tried to sit up.
“Careful,” I heard a familiar voice say.
I froze at first, but my heart continued to rise, nearly leaping out of my chest. “Professor?”
At my call, Professor Evory came towards me. His movements were quick but calm. And as he drew closer, my vision came into focus. It used the sight of him to anchor itself, drawing from what was familiar, but he was more disheveled than I had ever seen him. His shirt was wrinkled, his tie was loosened, and his jacket had disappeared. That was yet another thing to stun me.
I started to move again.
Before I could do much, he shushed me. “I’m here. Don’t push yourself.”
“Where’s here?” I asked, muffled by the mask on my face.
It might have gone without saying. I could feel the plastic of the oxygen mask, and the beeping that had guided me belonged in a very specific context. But even with all the evidence that was laid out, my mind struggled to make the connection. It needed him to say it. I didn’t know why, but it needed the confirmation.
“The hospital,” he said. “Chris just left. We didn’t think you were going to wake up so soon.”
It was a simple sentence, “Chris just left,” but it left me on the verge of tears. Chris had come to see me, to be with me like a boyfriend would. If I had to guess, Professor Evory had called him because he remembered we were together, because he had been happy for me when I told him, and because I never told him about my slip.
And just as I was about to cry, Professor Evory sat on the bed beside me. His presence steadied me and stopped the tears.
“You’re safe,” he said. “The doctors think you had a bad asthma attack. The seasonal changes probably magnified the issue. Stress also might have played a role.”
He was just reciting things, throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if something stuck, but my mind had latched onto something else. I started to shake my head, but the movement didn’t come easily. I was too focused on holding back the tears gathering in my eyes.
Before either of us could address the storm happening in me, we heard a knock on the door. A young woman stood in the doorway. She was Filipina, if I had to guess. Her features reminded me of that part of my bloodline, of the family I hardly saw across my life, and the place I did my best not to think about. And she wanted to make the same sort of guess about me, but my ethnicity was a bit more ambiguous. She labored over it for a moment from the doorway before she stepped inside.
“Good morning,” she said.
Her accent was fairly thick. If I had any doubts about where she was from, those two words would have wiped them away.
As she came into the room, she was smiling at me as if she knew that was what I needed to see, as if that was a medicine on its own. The expression was magnified by the bright pink of her scrubs. She was like a star, in some ways, but she took that way of being and made it entirely her own.
When Crystal, as her name tag read, came up to me, she put her hand on my arm, signaling to Professor Evory that he needed to move back lest he hinder her work. Without a complaint, he did what he was silently told.
“Ineng,” she whispered to me, testing her own theory that I was partially Filipina.
In some ways, there was no point in doing so, but it wasn’t just a guess to test a pointless theory. Crystal was seeking out that commonality, that sign that we were connected in some way. It was a habit, a quirk of our culture to seek out those like us in a sea of unfamiliar faces. It was comfort, in some ways. It was a reprieve from the challenges of being so far from everything you knew. It was something I understood only theoretically, and yet, that was enough for me to give her what she was looking for. I nodded.
She smiled brighter. The corners of her mouth extended almost impossibly far in either direction.
“Alright, Ineng, we can give you the nasal cannula, so you can talk a bit, alright?” she said with a gentle nudge of my arm. “Just a bit, okay. No more than a bit. Don’t strain yourself.”
“I will make sure she behaves,” Professor Evory promised.
When I heard his voice, instinctively, I turned to face him. And when I did so, the white of the bandages wrapped tightly around his hand caught my eye. The guilt came before I really understood what I was looking at. And when the truth of it hit me, it did so with all of that additional force. Heroism was seldom without a price, but I didn’t know how I felt about Professor Evory paying it.
Crystal’s fingers were kind but insisting as she leaned me forward and pulled the mask off of my face. Swiftly, she then laid the tubing against my cheeks and behind my ears. The skin of my cheeks was sensitive after the oxygen mask sat on it for as long as it did. She seemed to know about it. That might have been the sort of complaint she heard all the time. So as she moved about my face, she was careful and deliberate.
“There we go,” she whispered to me as she stood back to take in the sight. She smiled, pleased with what was in front of her. “You’re doing so well.”
Her joy landed flat in front of me. I had only been awake for a few minutes, and I failed to see how that deserved a compliment. It seemed rude to argue, though. So I nodded and listened intently as she went over the bed controls, including but especially the call button.
After her presentation, she turned to Professor Evory. “If she starts gasping again, run out and get us. It’s quicker.”
Professor Evory grimaced but masked it with a nod. There was no need to go too much into this, to my potential, sudden decline. Silently, he watched her leave before he went back to sit on the bed again. We still needed to talk, but he could admit that there was a limit on the volume I could muster.
At first, he said, “Honestly, when I found you, I thought you were having an anxiety attack. I know the doctor said it was asthma, which would make sense, but I... Well, I want to know what your thoughts are on that matter.”
That was the obvious question phrased as kindly as it could be. But despite the approach, it still overwhelmed me. I turned away and looked down at his bandaged hand.
I needed to answer him. I owed him that much for saving my life. And yet, I couldn’t figure out what to say. What could be said at that point? It was too late to save face, too late to protect him, and too late to lie. He was already hurt. He was already scarred for knowing me, for caring about me. Damage was already done.
When he felt the weight of my glance, Professor Evory pulled his hand back against his body. I could still see it, though. It made its presence known against the fabric of his pastel green shirt. And once I saw it, that was all I could think about. That was the only thought my mind could grasp.
“Mia,” he whispered. “I’d do it again.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say, however.
He insisted, “You didn’t ask that of me. I chose to do it. I will always choose to help you.”
But in the face of that thought, I could only ask, “Why?”
He seemed taken aback by my question. “There is no why,” he replied.
I watched him as he turned my single word question over in his head. He took the main letter apart strand by strand and held it up to the light. Only then did he really see what I was getting at. Or he suspected that he was, but he required the sort of confirmation only I could give.
“Mia,” he said, “is this about your dad?”
It was but not in the way he was thinking.