I tried to temper my frustration, transform my disappointment into the anxious patience of a new mother with a colicky infant. How often must my mother have negotiated with and maneuvered around my infantile pickiness?

“Umma, I made it for you,” I said. “You have to at least try it, just like you always taught me.”

I was able to coax her into only a single bite before she retreated back to bed.

On the morning of the fourth day my mother became nauseous and threw up for the first time. I couldn’t help but selfishly envision all my hard work flushed down the drain. I tried to keep her hydrated, insisting she drink water throughout the day, but every hour she rushed back to the bathroom, unable to keep anything down. By four o’clock I discovered her curled over the toilet, pushing her fingers down her throat in search of relief. My father and I pulled her up together and brought her back to bed. We scolded her, saying if she didn’t work harder to try to keep food down, she wouldn’t get better.

In the evening I called Seoul Cafe and phoned in an order of tteokguk, rice cake soup served in a mild beef broth. I figured if she wouldn’t eat anything I made, maybe something from her favorite restaurant could entice her. At home, I ladled it out into another enormous bowl and brought it to her in bed. Again she resisted, managing only a few bites, which she vomited later that night.

We hoped we’d hit the peak of her side effects, but the next day was even worse. Depleted, she became too weak to leave her bed for the bathroom, and I’d have to rush to her bedside with the heart-shaped pink plastic bucket that held my bath toys when I was a child. Often by the time I rinsed it out in the tub, I’d have to run back to use it again. By the sixth day, her condition began to feel abnormal. She was scheduled for a checkup with the oncologist in the afternoon and we decided to bring her in early.

This was when we realized my mother had lost her mind. She couldn’t stand on her own. She couldn’t speak and only moaned softly, rocking back and forth as if she were hallucinating. Together, my father and I brought her to the car, wrapping her arms around our necks to support her weight. We propped her up in the passenger seat and I sat in the back while he drove. I watched her eyes roll back. It was as if her person had disappeared completely and she was entering another mental plane. In an effort to escape whatever hell she was enduring, she began to claw violently at the door to try to break free. My father howled for her to stop. He struggled to steer with one hand as he barred his other arm across her.

“Pull over!” I cried, terrified she’d wrestle out of his grip and tumble onto the pavement.

My father carried her to the back seat, where I pulled her in from beneath her arms. I laid her body over mine and held her as she moaned and wriggled against me, trying to reach for a way out. When we finally arrived at the oncology clinic, they took one look at her and told us we needed to head directly to the ER.

At Riverbend Hospital my father hooked his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into a wheelchair. Two men in blue scrubs at the front desk told us to take a seat in the waiting room. There were no rooms available. They glanced without sympathy at my mother and me as I tried to keep her from falling out of the wheelchair. She was moaning and rocking and extending her arms outward as if she were fighting against an invisible force. My father slammed the palms of his hands against the front desk.

“LOOK AT HER—SHE IS GOING TO DIE HERE IF YOU DON’T HELP US.”

He looked rabid. A white foam formed at the corners of his lips, and I thought for a moment he might reach over and hit one of them.

“There!” I said, eyeing an empty room. “That room is empty! Please!”

They relented and let us take the room. After what felt like an eternity, the doctor finally arrived. My mother was dehydrated, and from what I can remember, her magnesium and potassium levels were dangerously low. She’d have to stay overnight. Nurses wheeled her away on a hospital bed to a new room upstairs, where they hooked her up to a series of IVs to stabilize her condition. My father sent me home to gather some of her things for the night.

* * *

—

BY THE TIME I LEFT it was already dark. Alone in the privacy of the car I finally let the shock melt away into tears. Everything I had ever done in my life felt so monumentally selfish and insignificant. I hated myself for not writing to Eunmi every day she was sick, for not calling more, for not comprehending what Nami Emo had endured as a caretaker. I hated myself for not arriving in Eugene earlier, for not being at the appointments, for not knowing the signs to look out for, and perhaps desperate to shirk responsibility, my hatred seeped toward my father and the warnings he’d failed to heed, the suffering that could have been avoided if we had just brought her to the hospital when the symptoms first began to appear.

I wiped my face with my sleeve and rolled the windows down. It was the first week of June and the breeze was warm. The moon was a luminescent little cuticle, my mother’s favorite crescent shape. I used to mock her every time she said it, telling her it was an arbitrary preference when there were only three phases from which to pick. I took I-5 past Lane Community College and sped up on Willamette. I tried to shift my thoughts and focus on the road ahead, looking out for deer along the bends.

At home I grabbed a soft throw from the living room; my mother’s lotions, cleanser, toner, serum, and ChapStick from the bathroom counter; a soft gray cardigan from her closet. I packed an overnight bag for myself and new clothes for her to wear once we were allowed to leave. When I returned to Riverbend, my mother was sleeping. My father suggested we go back to the house together, but I couldn’t stand the thought of her waking up alone in the hospital, confused as to how she’d even gotten there. I told him to go get some rest and come back in the morning, and I stretched out on the padded bench by the window.

That night, lying beside her, I remembered how when I was a child I would slip my cold feet between my mother’s thighs to warm them. How she’d shiver and whisper that she would always suffer to bring me comfort, that that was how you knew someone really loved you. I remembered the boots she’d broken in so that by the time I got them I could go on unbothered, without harm. Now, more than ever, I wished desperately for a way to transfer pain, wished I could prove to my mother just how much I loved her, that I could just crawl into her hospital cot and press my body close enough to absorb her burden. It seemed only fair that life should present such an opportunity to prove one’s filial piety. That the months my mother had been a vessel for me, her organs shifting and cramping together to make room for my existence, and the agony she’d endured upon my exit could be repaid by carrying this pain in her place. The rite of an only daughter. But I could do no more than lie nearby, ready to be her advocate, listening to the slow and steady beeping of machinery, the soft sounds of her breathing in and out.

* * *

—

IT TOOK DAYS for my mother to speak again. She remained in the hospital for two weeks. My father stayed with her during the day and I would stay with her in the evenings and overnight.

This new working order did not bode well for my father. He had the luxury of taking time off to help my mother through her treatment, but he was not a natural caretaker; a fateful challenge, perhaps, for a man who was not raised with the privilege of being cared for.