Chapter 33

33

It turns out that after all these years, I might actually have been a latent slut, just waiting for the opportunity to bloom. Because once Cooper’s friend has dropped off his keys and we’re driving back to London, I can think of nothing else except for having sex again. Specifically with Cooper. At the very least it’s the only thing that feels like it will take my mind off (a) impending death in two days and (b) the pervading sense of regret that I didn’t try this out sooner.

Cooper stops the car behind a hedge on a silent country lane, pushes the car seat back, and uses his tongue to make me come again. But I need more, and as we near our building, I ask him if we can try the doggy-style position, to which he says that we certainly can, but we should probably shower first. To which I ask if we can shower together. To which he answers that we can do whatever I want. I feel bold and unconcerned about any consequences. Having a death sentence will do that to you.

We turn onto Westbourne Hyde Road and our giggles stop short when we notice there’s an ambulance parked outside the building. Two paramedics wheel someone out of the front door. I see immediately that it’s Mr. Yoon, an oxygen mask on his face. Was there a fire? Did he leave his cigarette lit? I open the car door before the car has fully stopped moving, and run over to Mr. Yoon, who is being loaded quickly into the back of the ambulance.

“Mr. Yoon!” I cry. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Are you a family member?” the paramedic asks, barely making eye contact.

“I, no. I’m his neighbour. His friend.” I step up to get into the ambulance, but the paramedic stops me.

“Only family members can travel in the ambulance. We’ll be at UCL, okay?”

Mr. Yoon lifts his hand and reaches towards me.

“I’ll be there soon!” I call over to him as another paramedic presses wired stickers over his chest. Mr. Yoon’s face is wet. I think he’s crying. No!

“Cooper!” I spin around. Cooper is looking into the ambulance, his face pale. “Come on,” he says. “Get back in the car.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “How do I not know?” I turn to Cooper. “Do you know his full name?”

He shakes his head. “He’s just always been Mr. Yoon, for as long as I’ve known him.”

“Y-O-O-N.” I spell out to the receptionist. “He was born in Korea and now lives in Bayswater, if that helps?”

“Yoon. Got him,” the receptionist says. “Someone will be out to update you soon.”

“Oh god.” I turn to Cooper. “I can’t bear this.”

“It’s going to be okay,” he says, giving the receptionist my name, then taking my arm and leading me to the waiting area, where we find two free seats beside a lad with a bleeding forehead and a woman with a horribly quiet toddler.

We sit there in silence until a tall woman in green scrubs with a stethoscope round her neck calls my name. Cooper grabs my hand as we walk through, but it doesn’t feel right, so I let go. The woman pulls us into a side bay.

“You’re Mr. Yoon’s neighbour, yes?”

“Yes,” I say, the anticipation of her words making my voice shake.

“I’m Dr. Chizimu. We’re running tests because it seemed that Mr. Yoon was having a cardiac event.”

“Oh god. Oh no. Can I see him?”

The woman holds her hands up. “But it appears that he has had a very painful gastritis episode, which then set off a rather extreme panic attack.”

A panic attack? And he was all alone. My god. “Please let me see him.”

“We usually only allow family members to see patients.”

“She is his family,” Cooper interrupts. “She sees him every morning, makes him breakfast, checks he’s got everything he needs.”

I nod. I do that. “Please let me see him.”

The doctor nods her assent. “Okay. But no excitement. He needs calm. So just you.” She points at me.

“I’ll wait out here,” Cooper says, thumbing back to the Accident and Emergency reception.

I follow the doctor to a private, glass-walled room, and there, half sitting, half lying and covered in wires, is Mr. Yoon. He looks tired, but other than that, pretty much like he always does.

“Mr. Yoon!” I cry, before lowering my voice so that it sounds less frantic and more calm. I take a seat by his bed and grab his thumb, because the rest of his hand is taken up with a cannula. Mr. Yoon smiles at me and rolls his eyes as if to apologise.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there last night. I got stuck in Duckett’s Edge with Cooper and—”

Mr. Yoon chuckles silently, his shoulders jiggling.

“You’re chuckling right now?” I goggle. “Okay. That’s a very good sign actually. Good. Chuckle away. But calmly. The doctor said you need to stay calm. Stop jiggling your shoulders like that.”

Mr. Yoon lifts up his other hand and clenches his fist—the sign he used to make when he was looking for a fresh pencil before I bought him a box of a hundred.

“You want to write something?” I ask. “Now?”

He nods. I go out to the nurses’ bay and ask for a pen and paper. I expect the nurse to grumble because she’s busy doing other important things, but she smiles at me, leans over one of the desks, and hands me a biro and a fresh ring-bound notebook as if people ask for pens and paper all the time.

I take the writing instruments back to Mr. Yoon, who tries to pull himself up in the bed. I help him and rearrange the pillows so that he has more support around his creaky back. He blinks slowly, and it occurs to me that he’s probably been given sedatives.

He grabs the pen and starts to scrawl over the page, the letters neat and even but shaky.

YOU LOOK ALIVE.

I feel myself go red in the cheeks. I probably look like I’ve had a lot of sex in a short space of time.

“I’ll take that as a compliment?” I say. “Hadn’t realised I was looking not alive but…thanks.”

Mr. Yoon smiles and writes on the page again.

IT’S NICE TO SEE YOU LOOKING HAPPY.

My chest aches at the notion that any happiness I might be feeling is temporary. Jonah will never kiss me of his own free will and Merritt has all but disappeared. My fate is set.

Mr. Yoon soon falls into a soft sleep, his monitors beating steadily. I swallow hard, sorrow submerging me as I think about the fact that Mr. Yoon has no family. No friends. Just me. And when I’m gone, who will be there for him besides Cooper? Who will have been a witness to his life, so that he is truly remembered after he’s gone?

I gently take the pen and paper out of Mr. Yoon’s hand. I look outside for the doctor. No-one is telling me to get out yet. I hunch over and, without being forced to by anyone, just because I want to, I start to sketch the outline of Mr. Yoon’s face. My shoulders relax with the feeling of it, and I soon lose myself in the lines and crevices, the long earlobes, his thin smiling lips, and the small shaving cut on his friendly round jaw.

I peek at the clock and realise that a whole forty minutes has passed by the time the doctor reappears.

“Ms. Bookham, we have to run some more tests on Mr. Yoon just to make sure we’ve covered everything, but you can come by again in the morning if you like? We will do more tests, as I said, but the likely outcome is that he’ll be discharged tomorrow after a full review from a cardiothoracic specialist.”

Out tomorrow. I nod, expelling the air through my cheeks, placing the paper and pad at the side of Mr. Yoon’s bed table.

“He’ll write down answers to your questions if you need him to,” I tell her. “Took me three years to figure that one out.”

The doctor smiles, glancing down at my drawing. Her eyebrows shoot up. “That is excellent. You’re an artist?”

“God no,” I say, immediately turning red. “Ha!”

I reach down and turn the page onto the one where Mr. Yoon has written that I look alive. The doctor reads it and gives me a curious look. There’s a lurch in my stomach as I realise that not only am I going to snuff it in two days, but I have no idea how it will happen. I mean, there’s no way I’ll let myself choke on a burger again. How will I die? Will it be painful? Will I end up right here, where Mr. Yoon is, being treated by a team of experts trying hard to save a life that has already been reserved for Evermore?

I shove the morose thoughts away. “I will be here tomorrow!” I say brightly, backing out of the room. “You have my number. Please call if anything changes.”

I race into the A&E waiting area to see that Cooper is hunched over, quickly tapping his shiny-shoed foot and flipping his phone about in his hands. I race over to him. He jumps up as soon as he sees me. He still looks panicked.

“Did you not get my text?” I ask.

He looks down at his phone and shakes his head.

“I sent one. The reception must be bad here. Mr. Yoon is okay. He’s going to be just fine.”

Cooper exhales, his shoulders dropping in relief as he pulls me into a hug. He presses his hand against the back of my head. I close my eyes and feel a softness spread through my body, a calming of sorts. All this time when my muscles were painfully tight, my jaw rigid and tense, was the key just another human body pressing itself against mine?

His human body.

I sigh, long and low. Everything would be so much easier if Cooper was my literal soulmate on Earth, rather than just someone to have some fun with. I’ve already kissed him a gazillion times—my life would have been saved a gazillion times over.

Cooper’s forefinger trails absently from my hair to my neck, and I shiver.

I pull myself away from the hug and mentally slap some sense into myself, because having an erotic thought about your downstairs neighbour in an Accident and Emergency department is wrong on so many levels.

“Let’s go.”

When we reach our building, we stand in the lobby like a couple of gawps just staring at each other.

“I…” Cooper murmurs, looking back towards his door.

“Thanks for…” I trail off, shrugging so that a wayward shoulder feather pokes me in the cheek.

“I’m sorry that…”

Mrs. Ernestine’s door creaks open, and she pokes her head around it. She takes a bite of a red apple and munches loudly before tutting.

“If neither of you are gonna finish a fucking sentence, will you bugger off and let me get back to Better Call Saul? Jesus!”

Cooper apologises and smiles his charming smile, but it has zero effect on Mrs. Ernestine’s glare. I see her Never Againtattoo and I wonder if the thing she is reminding herself to never again do is murder someone.

I do not want to find out, so I wave goodbye to Cooper and the pair of us do as she says and bugger off to our respective apartments, a multitude of unfinished sentences hanging heavy in the air.