I shook my head. Getting pictures taken of my brain was not a pleasant memory.
“I don’t plan on getting one yet. I want to wait until my amygdalae grow big enough. Actually, I don’t even know if this is something to celebrate. It’s uncomfortable. I also didn’t get enough sleep.”
“That’s what happens when you have a crush on somebody.”
“Do you think I have a crush on her?” I regretted asking him the question as soon as I asked.
“Well. Only your heart knows,” he said, still smiling.
“You mean my brain, not my heart. We do whatever the brain tells us to do.”
“Technically, yes, but we still say it’s from our heart.”
*
As Dr. Shim said, I was changing little by little. I had more questions, but I didn’t feel like sharing all of them with Dr. Shim as I had before. I babbled and got tongue-tied with even simple questions. I started doodling, hoping it would clear my thoughts. But somehow I kept writing down not sentences but the same word over and over again. When I realized what I had written, I immediately crumpled up the paper or leaped from my seat.
My annoying symptoms continued. No, they actually got worse with each day. My temples throbbed at the sight of Dora, and my ears pricked up when I heard her voice from however far away, among however many people. I felt my body had outpaced my mind, and that it was as unnecessary and bothersome as a long overcoat in summer. I wanted so much to take it off. If only I could.
57
Dora started coming by the bookstore often. The time of her visits was irregular. Sometimes she would turn up on a weekend and sometimes on a weeknight. But always around the time she was about to visit, my backbone would ache. Like an animal instinctively sensing an impending earthquake, like a worm squirming out of the earth before a rainstorm.
Whenever I felt my body itch, I would walk out of the bookstore, and there she would appear, the tip of her head rising into view from the horizon. I would scramble back inside as if I’d just seen something ominous, then I would go about my work as if nothing had happened.
Dora said she would help clear out the books, but when she found a book she liked, she would sit reading the same page for a long time. She was interested in encyclopedias of animals, insects, and nature. Dora found beauty in everything. She found nature’s magnificent work and incredible symmetry in a turtle’s carapace, or a stork’s egg, or an autumn reed from a swamp. How wonderful, she would often say. I understood the meaning of the word, but I could never feel the splendor it carried.
As fall ripened and the books were being sorted out, Dora and I talked about the cosmos, flowers, and nature—how big the universe is, how there’s a flower that eats insects by melting them, and how some fish swim upside down.
“You know what? We assume all dinosaurs are huge, but there were some as small as a double bass, called Compsognathus. They must’ve been so cute,” said Dora, a colorful children’s book spread open on her knees.
“I used to read this book when I was little. My mom read it to me,” I said.
“Do you remember your mom reading it to you?”
I nodded. Hypsilophodon were the ones as big as a bathtub, Microceratus were as big as a puppy, Micropachyce-phalosaurus was around nineteen inches tall, and Mussaurus were the size of a small teddy bear. I remembered all these long, strange names.
The corners of Dora’s lips turned upward.
“Do you go see your mom often?” she asked.
“Yeah, every day.”
She hesitated for a moment. “Can I come too?”
“Sure,” I blurted out even before thinking.
*
A small stuffed dinosaur sat by a window in Mom’s hospital ward. Dora had bought it on the way. I hadn’t brought anyone here before. I knew Dr. Shim stopped by every so often, but neither of us had ever suggested visiting Mom together. Dora leaned over, smiling, and carefully held Mom’s hands. She stroked them.
“Hello, Mrs. Seon. I’m Dora, Yunjae’s friend. You’re so beautiful. Yunjae is doing great at school, all healthy and well. You should wake up and see him. I’m sure you will soon.”
Then she stepped back, her smile fading a little. She whispered to me, “Now it’s your turn.”
“What?”
“Do what I just did.”
“Mom can’t hear anything anyway,” I said in a normal voice, unlike Dora, who had lowered hers.
“It’s no big deal. It’s just saying hi.” She gave me a gentle push.
Slowly, I took a few steps toward Mom. She looked exactly the same as she had for the last couple of months. I could barely open my mouth. I hadn’t tried this before.