The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient 3)

When we reach my dad’s room, I release Quan’s hand and take a moment to gather myself. I shut my eyes and automatically reach for the appropriate persona. My posture changes. I change.

I knock once to announce my presence and open the door to step inside while Quan hangs behind. It’s a big double room, but the second bed is empty. There’s a blue curtain around the occupied half of the room, and I pull it aside. My dad’s asleep in the bed, connected to various tubes and wires, and seated next to him, holding his hand, is my mom. Her face is unnaturally pale, but as always, she’s impeccably dressed in a black cashmere sweater with decorative gold and pearl beading and black slacks.

“Ma,” I say, careful not to be too loud. “How is he?”

She covers her mouth and shakes her head.

Swallowing, I approach the bed slowly. My dad has always been on the tall, sturdy side, but he looks small now. Thin. Fragile. His hair wasn’t this gray before. I didn’t notice all these sunspots on his face before. His vitality dimmed them into irrelevance. When I saw him a few months ago, I couldn’t understand why my mom bothered him so relentlessly about applying sunscreen. It’s like he’s aged ten years since then. He doesn’t look like the man who used to buy me candy while he was away and hide it in the trunk of his car so I’d find it when I went to bring his luggage into the house, a ritual solely between the two of us, kept secret from my mom, who would have disapproved.

I reach out to rest my hand on top of my dad’s free one. He’s cool to the touch and unresponsive, and I glance at the screen next to him where the numbers and lines move, reassuring myself that he’s alive.

“Ba, it’s me, Anna. I came to see you,” I say.

His eyes drift open, and he blinks sleepily at the room for a while before focusing on me. I expect to see recognition light up his eyes. I expect him to smile, just a small one, and say my name.

But his eyes don’t light up. He doesn’t smile. When he speaks, the words seem to take a massive effort and come out slurred and garbled. I can’t make sense of them. I’m not even sure what language he’s trying to speak.

“What was that?” I ask, urging him to repeat himself.

His eyelids droop shut, and his forehead creases as more garbled sounds fall painstakingly from his lips. Eventually, his face relaxes, and his breathing evens out. He’s gone back to sleep.

I look up at my mom, at a complete loss.

Shaking with quiet sobs, she buries her face in her hands. In a tormented whisper, she says, “I told him to take a nap. I thought he’d feel better tomorrow.”

A doctor enters the room, a tall woman with the regular white lab coat, long braids pulled back in a thick ponytail, and red glasses. In a low voice, she says, “I just wanted to check up on him before my shift ends.” She acknowledges my mom with a compassionate nod. “Mrs. Sun.” To me, she says, “I’m Dr. Robinson,” and shakes my hand in a firm grip.

“I’m Anna, his daughter,” I manage to reply. I realize I forgot to smile, and I do it belatedly, though my lips feel like plastic.

As she examines my dad, scrutinizing his vitals, making sure the IV and medications look right, she explains, “As I already told your mom . . .”

I feel like I step outside myself as she goes into detail regarding my dad’s condition. I hear her talking. I hear myself asking questions from a distance, like it’s someone else. I see her, my dad, my mom. I feel like I see myself, too, that clueless, ineffectual woman, even though it’s impossible. Quan is somewhere on the other side of the blue curtain. Dr. Robinson uses medical terminology that I’m not familiar with, but I come to understand that my dad suffered significant brain damage because he didn’t receive medical treatment soon enough after his stroke. The doctor doesn’t recommend surgery because of my dad’s age, and there’s little they can do anyway. He might not make it through the week. If he does, half of his body is paralyzed. His cognitive ability may be impaired. With the proper therapies, he might someday be able to talk, sit up on his own, and eat solids.

Does he have an advance directive?

My mom tells her no.

When the doctor leaves, a heavy silence descends upon us. I’m so overwhelmed I don’t know what to think or do. I think my mom feels the same. She must be waiting for Priscilla to come and take charge. We just have to wait until morning.

Fifteen minutes pass while we sit there, wooden and speechless, and finally I say, “Ma, you look tired. You should go home and get some rest.”

“I can’t. What if he . . .” Her face crumples, and she doesn’t finish her sentence.

“I’ll stay. If something happens, I’ll call you right away. You need to take it easy. You’ll get sick otherwise.” Adrenaline is running through my body, giving me energy that my mom has clearly run out of.

She thinks it over a moment, and I can see that she’s torn. She wants to stay, but today must have been horrible. She doesn’t look like she can take much more, let alone handle an all-nighter.

“Please, Ma. Home isn’t far from here. If you come right when I call, it shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to get here.”

She finally nods and gets slowly to her feet. “Okay, this way I can clean the mess at home. People will come to visit, and they need somewhere to stay.”

As she loops her Louis Vuitton purse over her arm, Quan steps around the curtain, and she physically recoils at the sight of him.

“I can drive you home if you need. I’m Quan, Anna’s . . . friend. Nice to meet you.” He holds his hand out to shake my mom’s, smiling in his disarming way.

It doesn’t work on her like it does on me. She just stares at him with unnaturally wide eyes, like she’s being held up at gunpoint. I know what she’s seeing—his tattoos, his buzzed head, his motorcycle jacket. I know what she’s thinking. And I start sweating uncontrollably.

“Your friend?” she asks me in a stunned voice.