Nae Chingu (My Friends) Chapter Twelve

Nae Chingu (My Friends)

Chapter Twelve

Jong Hwa...

I hadn't slept for very long, about an hour or so. My mind was alert but my body felt like I had exhausted it to the brink and I knew I had. I sighed as quietly as I could as I leaned against the wall of the guest bedroom. I'd come in to see if Lily was awake but she was still sleeping. I hoped she stayed like that for awhile or at least long enough for me to figure out what to do.

How could her father just shut her out like that? The memory still made me angry. He had looked so cold and uncaring when he shut the door. I was glad I moved Lily at the last minute because her father would have broken her hand with he force he used to shut the door in her face. I squeezed my eyes shut and let that thought go, it wasn't going to help Lily now. I'd stayed up all night, worrying over her and even more so after she'd briefly woken up and screamed my name. I'd been afraid to sleep just in case she needed me again.

I touched my chest, the spot over my heart and rubbed it to help ease the pain. The second I mentioned the depression her face had closed down. A few minutes before she'd been touching my face and telling me how handsome I was and then she'd just...pulled away. For the first time I cursed myself for speaking English. If I'd known that one day I would have to translate something for her that could ultimately cost me her friendship, I would never have asked her to teach me in the first place.

I walked quietly over to the side of the bed and watched her sleep. She looked normal now; there was no evidence of the trauma she'd experienced or the after affects. I would do whatever it took to make her feel better. Abeonim said that it might take a few days or even a few weeks for the trauma to subside and for her recovery to begin, that was the problem with emotional trauma, it wasn't biological. Emotional trauma only worked itself through at the behest of the victim and their willingness to move on.

I didn't see any reason for Lily to not want to move on but then again, that was before I'd learned about her history with depression. It bothered me that she'd never told me; I'd always felt like she told me everything but it was very obvious from her reaction earlier that she'd had no intention of revealing this side of herself. Did she think it would make me change my opinion of her? Was she ashamed? Depression wasn't uncommon, I mean we all had depressing times in our lives, right? Maybe her's had been harder to bare than most. Scratch that, of course it had. She'd even told me once how hard it had been to move from Germany to Korea and I wasn't as blind as that I couldn't see the effect her mother's abandonment had had on her. And now her father...

I shook my head as all these thoughts swam around. I didn't even know where to begin to fix her. No, I told myself. She wasn't broken, just-just bruised a bit. Lily was strong, she had to be to come to Korea and made a life for herself. She'd become fluent in the Korean language in six months. She self taught herself how to use chopsticks during lunchtime and never hid her face if someone teased her for her nationality. She'd adapted, she was an adapter and I had no reason to think she wouldn't adapt now and it wasn't like she was alone. She had me. No, don't think like that, I told myself. She had us; Mae Ri, Ji Soo and I, she had all of us to help her.

I just needed to make sure she knew that when she woke up. I reached down and moved a stray strand of hair off her forehead. I nearly jumped back in shock when her eyes opened wide and stared straight up at me.

***

Lily...

I had been fighting against consciousness but could no longer ignore that I was slowly waking  up. Especially not when someone touched my forehead. My body froze but my eyes opened wide to see who was there.  Jong Hwa was staring down at me and looked pretty guilty.

I was so happy to see him but I couldn't let him know that. My hand tingled with the need to reach out and touch his skin. I tried to get angry about being so dependent upon his presence but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I wasn't sure if that was because it was Jong Hwa or because I was just too exhausted to even make the attempt.

I sat up even though I felt like lying in bed all day. I couldn't have been asleep for every long based off the sun that was still streaming through the window. I looked back at Jong Hwa, who hadn't moved since I opened my eyes. He didn't look much better than he had before but his eyes weren't as red.

    "Did you get some sleep," I asked quietly, unsure of my own voice.

    "A little," he shrugged like it didn't matter but it mattered to me.

    "Stop worrying about me and go get some sleep," I blearily gestured towards the door. "I'm fine," I said without gumption.

    "Liar," he said. "You think I don't know you?" He pushed his hand through his hair and I finally realized why his hair was in such disarray. "I know you're not fine," he muttered.

    "You're right, my head--" I stopped. How could I possibly even describe how I was feeling to him? I didn't even understand it myself. "My head is all messed up and I'm feelings things I've never felt before, I just--" I shrugged and just stopped. There was no way I could describe the confusion I felt.

    "What are you feeling," he asked me.

    "It's nothing," I waved it off. I'd shown him enough of my dark side that I didn't feel like pulling him in any farther. I was lucky he was still here even after everything that happened earlier.

    "Stop pushing me away," he forced out. He let out a frustrated breath and only made me feel worse. I'd made him this way, it was my fault.

    "I have too," I retaliated. My voice came out loud and I quickly looked at the door. I expected someone to come but no one did. "I have too," I told him in a quieter voice.

    "Why, why do you have too," he asked me eagerly. He was trying to understand, I could see that but my muddled brain kept telling me he'd never understand and honestly, how could he? Who would understand this? Even I didn't understand this, whatever 'this' was!

I clutched my temples just trying to get my brain to make sense. I needed Jong Hwa so why was I pushing him away? I needed him like I needed my next breath so why was I torturing myself? Because he didn't need me like I needed him. He'd never need me like I needed him and it wasn't fair to drag him down with me. That's right. I forced this upon him and Jong Hwa was just such a good person that he was allowing me to drag him with me. Just look what I'd done, I told myself. Look at his face, I did that, I thought. He was looking at me in confusion, waiting for me to answer, I supposed. He looked tired, so, so tired. He couldn't even sleep because of me.

    "Why do you have to push me away," he asked me again, pleading this time.

    "Because I need you too much," I looked down and told my hands. I couldn't bare to look at his face. "I feel like the world doesn't make sense if you're not in the same room as me. I feel like I'm never safe unless you're around. It isn't fair to you," I sucked in a breath, tears were already building in the back of my eyes. I felt shame, I felt so ashamed for saying this to him. "I've never been dependent on anyone, for any reason. Because of--" I took a breath. "Because of last night I have become so dependent on you and I can't help it. I know it's an effect of the shock but it doesn't mean it's okay."

    "It's ok to depend on people," Jong Hwa said and reached out to me but I shuffled away from his hand. I was afraid that if he touched me now, I'd give in and cling to him.

    "No, it's not." I shook my head and stood up on the other side of the bed so now the bed was between Jong Hwa and I. "They just leave," I whispered mostly to myself.

    "Lily--"

    "I don't want to depend on you," I said forcefully. "I hate myself for depending on you."

Jong Hwa sucked in a breath.

    "I'm sorry, Jong Hwa, but that's the truth," I said and looked away from his face.

    "Is it so bad to depend on me," he asked quietly.

No! I wanted to yell, I wanted to tell him that I loved that I could depend on him. I loved that he'd never let me down. But then I had the creeping thought: you never thought your mother would let you down either. And she had. She'd let me down so much. And now, with my father... I didn't think I'd live through it if Jong Hwa let me down. I wouldn't give him the chance...

    "Yes," I finally said. I turned around and left Jong Hwa standing in the bedroom by himself. I found the bathroom and locked myself in. I grabbed the hand towel off the counter and covered my mouth with it as I finally let the tears fall. I'd never cried so hard in my life.

***

Ji Soo...

I knocked on my dad's office door just in case he was on the phone with a patient. He called me in almost immediately and I pushed open the door to go inside. I always felt overwhelmed when I walked into my dad's home office. He had certificates and degrees on his wall along with all his academic achievements and I couldn't help being proud of all the work my father had accomplished in his fifty years of life.

I also felt overwhelmed because his office was cramped full of filing cabinets which accounted for the lack of space, well, that and the U-shaped desk he used. There was just enough space to walk comfortable around the desk but the filing cabinets had to be opened from the side since there was no more room.

    "Just one second while I finish this email," my father said as he clicked the keys on the keyboard. When he was done he turned to me and smiled, "What do you need?"

    "Abeoji," I had a fifty-fifty chance that my father would deny my request but I wanted to give it a try anyway. "What's going on with Lily," I asked him.

    "You know if I tell you it's a violation of doctor-patient confidentiality," he told me.

    "I know," I admitted. "Think you could tell me anyway?"

    "Ji Soo," he warned.

    "Think of it as training," I said quickly. "You could present it as a case study, you've done those with me before," I finished. It wasn't uncommon for my father to put a file on my desk and tell me my thoughts on it. He knew I wanted to become a doctor although I had no idea what field I'd enter so he habitually put different types of cases on my desk for me to look through and see what peaked my interest. They were just redacted copies of real patients.

    "My sneaky son," my father chuckled and I knew I'd won.

    "I just want to help, she's my friend," I admitted. I didn't know how much I'd be able to help but maybe if I had some insider knowledge, then maybe I could tell Jong Hwa what to do, he'd be the most help to her anyway.

    "I know, I know, I know," my father waved me off. He thought it over for a moment but eventually gestured for me to sit down. I did what I normally did when I came into this office and sat on the edge of his desk.  "What do you want to know," he asked me.

    "Well, first off, what happened?" I was still unclear on that whole subject. I'd been listening earlier when he explained it to Lily but I was still fuzzy on a few details.

    "It's called emotional trauma," my father took a breath and I could see him flipping through the encyclopedia that was his brain as he tried to find the words to describe the condition. "It's exactly what it sounds like. The patient suffers some traumatizing event that sends their system into chaos. It could be anything from a death of a family member, an accident, or, in Lily's case, the feeling of total abandonment."

I nodded to indicated I was following along.

    "It says in Lily's file that her mother left when she was sixteen, right after they moved to Korea," my father pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's when Lily's symptoms first started. She started to become more withdrawn, it says her father noticed that she rarely left her bedroom except to buy groceries. For awhile he assumed it was because she was in a foreign country but he realized it was something more when she stopped talking to him altogether. For all intents and purposes, she'd become a mute," the person my father was describing was completely unknown to me. It wasn't the Lily I'd met or the Lily I'd grown to know and befriend. "Eventually her father took her in to get evaluated and that's when she started seeing a therapist. He prescribed her antidepressants and she began to improve," my father continued.

    "When was that," I asked, curious. Lily rarely spoke about her first few months here. I knew she hadn't started school right away but that was all I knew about those early days.

    "Ah," my father turned around at his desk and picked up a file. He opened it and began paging through the information. "She came to Korea in November of 2010," he said and continued to peruse the sheet.

If Lily came to Korea at the end of 2010, then she'd been here a full four months before she started at SFLHS, and another six months before she joined the regular classes. Four months before she'd even met Jong Hwa, it made me wonder even more about how she'd spent those four months.

    "It says the therapist started noticing improvement around March and April," my dad said as he continued to look through her file.

So she'd started to improve right after she'd met Jong Hwa, it just further proved that Jong Hwa would be the one to help her now. For some reason, that news reassured me.

    "She had her last therapy appointment in October, 2011 and stopped taking the antidepressants in December of that same year," my father finished.

    "Ok, so she became depressed after her mom left and then she got better, right," I said trying to make sure I understood what he was saying.

    "It's not that simple, Ji Soo," my father said. "She'd felt abandoned; her mother left her with a father who was constantly disrupting her life by moving her and it sounds like he was pretty neglectful based off some of Lily's recorded statements. Her file states she felt "alone", "forgotten", "burdensome". She displayed emotions such as self-loathing and and guilt for the role she played in her parent's lives. She blamed herself for her mother's departure and attempted to make herself as invisible as possible," my father explained and I began to realize that Lily had had a harder time than we'd ever predicted. "On top of all that, she was in a new country with a completely new language and she felt even more isolated."

    "But it also says in her file that she'd met some friends," my father looked up at me. "I would imagine that was Jong Hwa, Mae Ri and yourself," he said. "She eventually showed signs of appreciating her self worth and the therapist saw her fit and able to stop taking the antidepressants. So, as you can imagine, if her mother's absence made her feel all that, what do you think her father's departure will do?"

    "Aish," I rubbed my face. Helping Lily was going to be harder than I'd thought.

    "Smart boy," my father sighed. "I would imagine Lily will go through exactly what she went through before but on a deeper level because now both her parent's are gone, she's more alone than ever. She's going to withdraw, she's going to have feelings of self-loathing and she is going to push everyone away but due to the emotional shock, it's going to pull her in two completely different directions."

    "What do you mean," I asked, confused.

    "In most cases, when someone loses someone and the end result is emotional shock, it causes that person to attach themselves to someone who is close to them. I believe this has already happened," my father said.

I thought about my father's words and understood almost immediately, "Jong Hwa."

    "Exactly," my father confirmed. "I believe Lily has emotionally anchored herself to Jong Hwa and will want to be with him at all times in order to feel safe, in order to feel like she's not alone but her father's actions have compounded the issues of abandonment that Lily already harbored from three years ago."

    "So she's going to want to push Jong Hwa away," I said. "Push him away and still want him near." Oh man, this just got messier and messier by the minute.

    "Take it a step further, Ji Soo," my father prompted.

Take it a step further? I thought over everything we'd talked about. "She's going to push everyone away, she's going to seclude herself. She's going to feel guilty," at this point I was just speculating until I came to the conclusion my father had already reached. "She'll think it's her fault that her father and mother left, she's going to think everyone will leave her eventually but at the same time, she's going to want to stay near people, or at least Jong Hwa, that'll be the shock. She's going to be pulled in both directions," I kept going back and forth, it was enough to make anyone... "Crazy," I said out loud.

My father nodded, "I wouldn't be surprised if Lily had a complete mental break unless we're able to pull her out of her trauma as soon as we can. It's why I wanted to start her on the antidepressants as soon as possible, maybe if we can get the medication into her system before the emotional shock wears off, we can nip this in the bud before she breaks down."

    "How long until the emotional shock wears off," I asked but not entirely sure I wanted the answer.

    "It could be a few weeks, a couple of months," he said. "Or it could be days."

    "Days?" That, I thought to myself, was hardly any time at all. I thought back to another case study my father had me read awhile back about a patient suffering from depression.  I knew that antidepressants could take anywhere from four to six weeks to start to work and that was only if they'd found an antidepressant that worked. Sometimes antidepressants backfired and made the patient feel worse, even suicidal.

    "I'm afraid so," my father admitted after a beat.

To Be Continued...