BIA Ch. 82

Day Nine

“So?”

Isaiah asked, closing the taxi door. The taxi driver, having received a generous tip, shouted his thanks to Isaiah, who was on a call, and then drove off.

“What do you mean ‘so’? Grace is going crazy. Cedric will definitely go ballistic if he finds out, so she can’t tell Cedric and is asking me to do something, but what can I do to stop a drug addict? If I had that kind of talent, I would have opened a counseling center a long time ago, why would I be in the mafia?”

Manny was unusually complaining about Chester. It was understandable. It had already been three days since Cedric ordered his two sons to forcibly build their brotherly bond. That meant Manny had been Chester’s punching bag for three days straight.

Of course, Manny had been Chester’s punching bag before, but this time it was severe. Two days ago, Isaiah took one look at Chester’s condition in the afternoon and thought it best to avoid that guy for the time being. That was barely half a day after he had spent ‘Brother’s Day’ with Bran. Meaning, he had slept in the same room with Bran for the first time after hearing Cedric’s order the previous evening, and had just come out after having breakfast together the next day.

Yet, Chester already looked like he was about to die and had been lying in his office all day. According to Manny, he threw up everything he ate at breakfast.

‘He couldn’t sleep properly last night either, it seems. Bran didn’t turn off the lights in his room until late because he was working….’

Before Manny could even finish his sentence, Chester grabbed a vase on the desk and threw it. While yelling, ‘I told you not to say that bastard’s name in front of me!’ he was clearly not in his right mind. At this point, there was no need to wait and see what would happen next.

Sure enough, yesterday his condition was even worse, and as soon as he left the house, he didn’t even go to the office but barged into a bar he managed and started drinking from the middle of the day. Chester was the type who liked the atmosphere more than the alcohol, so he never drank alone. He would call his underlings, order them around, and play nasty pranks, enjoying it while he drank. But seeing him drinking straight from the bottle alone before sunset, he seemed quite exhausted both mentally and physically. According to what Manny secretly told him in the bathroom, he had played chess with Bran in front of Cedric after dinner last night and lost all seven games. Cedric, unable to watch any longer, had them switch to Othello, a game Chester showed talent for as a child, but he lost five games in a row as well.

‘Try to cheer him up a bit today.’

Manny said, pleading. It wasn’t because of that, but when Chester handed him a new smartphone in the afternoon, Isaiah accepted it without a word.

‘Make sure the GPS is on. If you turn it off, you’re dead. And answer the phone no matter what.’

Even when Chester was glaring at him and giving him strict instructions, Isaiah just replied with a disgruntled ‘okay.’

Perhaps thanks to that, when he said he would go to Virginia today, Chester didn’t act like a jealous husband, saying things like he was going to meet Bran behind his back again. But…

“Cedric was wrong. There’s no way a guy as weak to hardship as Chester can endure this situation. Why didn’t he think he would quickly escape into alcohol or drugs?”

Strangely, Manny was calling every hour and whining. His original role would have been to report Isaiah’s whereabouts to Chester every hour. But ever since the call started, he hadn’t even asked where he was, just kept complaining about how he was going to die because of Chester. It was understandable that he was suffering, being tormented by Chester and now even by his mother, but still.

“He was smoking marijuana anyway.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s no different. Drugs are all the same. And if he’s going to go back to drugs over something like this, he would have gone back anytime, with any excuse.”

“I guess so, but…”

“I’m at the hospital. I’m hanging up.”

Isaiah said curtly and hung up.

As soon as he entered the hospital building, he went to the 4th floor where the intensive care unit was. After filling out the license application at the nurse’s station and waiting for a while, the nurse in charge came and called his name.

“Are you the guardian of patient Joseph Cole?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Please come this way.”

Isaiah followed the nurse down the familiar hallway. She opened the door to the second-to-last room in the ICU and said,

“Visiting hours in the ICU are limited to ten minutes. As you know.”

As the nurse closed the door and left, Isaiah approached the bed. His adoptive father, barely breathing while relying on all sorts of machines, looked even smaller and more emaciated than before. Perhaps because of the blue fluorescent light shining down from above, he looked even more like a corpse.

When he first came to the ICU, he hated that blue light so much. He even thought he hoped he would be moved to a regular room soon because of that light. But now, he didn’t think much of it. Three years might be too early to give up, but it was also too long to hold onto hope.

The intensive care unit at Fairfax Medical Center was made up of single rooms. The daily cost was about ten thousand dollars. It was significantly discounted with insurance, but it was still a lot. A regular room was also about five or six thousand dollars a day, so it was easier to calculate it as costing over two hundred thousand dollars a year, one way or another.

In fact, it wasn’t an expense he couldn’t handle himself. If necessary, he could sell the house in Charlottesville. But for now, he didn’t need to touch that house and could just work a bit harder.

‘How about this? We’ll cover all of Jacana’s hospital expenses, and during that time, you’ll sign an exclusive contract with WD. On a salary basis. That way, you’ll receive the same pay regardless of performance, rather than per project like before. To put it bluntly, even if you don’t work at all for a year, we’ll still pay the agreed amount. For Jacana’s hospital bills.’

At first glance, it seemed like a good deal, but in reality, there was nothing beneficial for him. Once the contract was signed, there was no way WD would just let this expensive manpower sit idle, and before that, he himself wasn’t the type to do that. He would definitely work more and harder than anyone else. He had always been like that.

Did Morgan know why he accepted that absurd offer? Yes, he probably did. That was why, at this particular time, when he was worried that he might run away, he was trying to find any excuse to show him his adoptive father’s face. Trying to grab his ankle one more time.

“Visiting hours are over.”

The door opened and the nurse came out carefully. Isaiah left the room with her. While they were talking about his adoptive father’s condition at the nurse’s station, a middle-aged doctor approached. The doctor, wearing a black turtleneck, filled out a chart on the spot and handed it to the nurse. Then he got on the elevator with Isaiah to go down to the first floor.

“Why aren’t you considering hospice^[1]?”

As soon as the elevator doors closed and they were alone, the doctor said. Isaiah was a little surprised. Not because the doctor suddenly spoke to him, but because he was surprised that he knew about him and his adoptive father.

“If he were my patient, I would have discharged him three years ago.”

It wasn’t just a story he overheard while writing the chart, the doctor knew exactly when Joseph had collapsed. Only then did Isaiah realize that Joseph was a frequent topic of conversation among the medical staff in this ward.

“Would that have been better for my father?”

“It would have been better for everyone.”

The elevator reached the first floor.

“Think carefully about what’s best for you too.”

The doctor said that and got off first.

Watching the doctor’s receding back, Isaiah felt his heart pounding.

What was it? It felt like he had had this kind of conversation before. He had definitely talked about the dignified death of a human with someone. Who was it… Bran? Was it Bran? Yes, it was Bran. But when was it? Was it when he brought the champagne?

“…Damn it.”

As soon as he thought of it, his back itched. Isaiah bit his lip and quickly left the hospital. As the cold wind touched his skin, the tingling sensation seemed to slightly mask the itching. Isaiah hailed a taxi, and as soon as he told the driver his destination, he sighed and leaned back in his seat.

It felt like he was going through a severe withdrawal. From the feeling of something crawling and wriggling on his skin to the impulsive urges, it was exactly like drug withdrawal. The only difference was that the withdrawal symptoms appeared at any time, while this itching only appeared when he thought about Bran.

He decided to search about henna on his smartphone since he was thinking about it. It seemed to take at least two weeks for the color to completely fade. Would this itching disappear when the color completely faded? It would be a relief if it did.

What Isaiah feared was that this itching would never disappear. That it would remain in its place like phantom pain, and that he would have to fight this torment every time he thought about Bran. Like experiencing withdrawal symptoms for him until he died.