The calligrapher's daughter_ a novel - Eugenia Kim [166]
When I returned the hoe to the outbuilding, a spray of striped yellow crocus caught my eye. I unearthed the sprouted bulbs whole and potted them in a crock for Unsook. It might encourage her to see a token of the earth’s miracle of rebirth.
Wearing a facemask and carrying the crocus and a gourd of hot water for a sponge bath, I slid the door to the sickroom open. She was asleep. I set everything down quietly and straightened her blanket over her feet. A small choking noise made me turn. Unsook stared at the crocus, tears spilling. She coughed, then gasped for air, and I leaped to help her sit. Unsook’s shoulders heaved as her body worked to claim breath. Her fit subsided, leaving her wheezing and feverish. The sputum in the bowl I’d held to her mouth was yellow and gray. I felt awful. “I’m so sorry!” I folded pillows and blankets and propped her upright. “I thought the flowers would cheer you, but I’ve only brought misery! Say nothing— you’ll have another fit.” I rubbed her back until her shaking subsided.
“Beautiful— I didn’t mean—” she whispered.
“Quiet. Not a word. Stay sitting up. I’ll get fresh water.” I flew out the door and returned as quickly as it took to wash and fill the bowl with heated water. Gently, I massaged Unsook’s neck and shoulders and bathed her. I smoothed the bedding, changed her bedclothes and sat behind her, holding her in my arms like a child, humming, until she breathed evenly. “Can you say what’s wrong?”
Unsook’s next breath was a sob, which she controlled. She steadied her intake with effort, her breaths shallow. Newly combed into a long braid, her hair fell from her back to her lap. She twisted the braid into a bun, arms gaunt and tinged blue, and covered her eyes. “I think I must be going mad.”
Alarmed by her dead tone, I said, “Hush. Jesus is with us, you’ve got to trust him,” and was dismayed to hear how empty those words sounded.
“It’s nightmares or demons. No—the Devil himself! Or my imagination. Oh, Hyung-nim!” She fell against me and I held and rubbed her cold arms.
“Quiet now. We can pray. We can ask Mother.”
Unsook turned and grasped my hands. “No! Say nothing to Mother. It will kill her. Tonight—it will happen tonight! I know you shouldn’t— you’ll get sick—but won’t you, can you stay with me tonight, say that I’m not imagining it, I beg you—”
“Shh, let me feel your forehead.” Her irrationality made me worry if fever had done its damage. Unsook’s pupils were huge and black, imploring, and I said, “Of course I’ll stay. Don’t worry, nurses never get sick.”
“Tonight again. He was here today, so tonight— It was as if, as if—the demon!”
“No more talking. You’re getting excited over— Don’t fret, I’ll stay with you for as long as you want. Tonight, tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. We’ll pray. It’s nightmares or fever. Hush now.”
“You won’t say anything to Mother?”
“No.” Gently massaging, I simultaneously pressed her furrowed brow and the top of her spine to release tension. “But if I’m to spend the night I’ll have to tell her something.” I wondered fleetingly about hiring a shaman to exorcise the nightmares, but there was no money for a mudang and her entourage, and besides, who knew what such a woman would do to my poor patient? “We wanted to try the other steam treatment overnight. We can tell her that I must tend to it, and also that you’re feeling lonely and cooped up in the springtime.”
She slumped in gratitude and whispered, “I thought I would go mad.”
“No tears! You mustn’t cry! Think of the baby!” The forbidden word slipped out like an easy delivery, and I felt Unsook stiffen. Her unborn baby had been much on my mind. Surrounded by the obvious parallel of a profusion of greens sprouting from the inanimate earth, I couldn’t avoid harboring hope. We were told the fetus would not survive her illness, that her disease would become too advanced to expect a healthy outcome. As if a pact had been made, no one ever mentioned the doomed baby. But seven months had passed and my