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From the diary of Monica Tsai, backed up on three servers spanning two continents

November 23, 2018 (2018-11-23T09:49:14.

489947)

loc: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

United States of America (42.

3742289,71.

133843)

I’m in a hospital waiting room.

I can hear each tick of the clock.

Time advances and I am frozen in place.

It feels as if

we have sped through the events of the last few days, and I must now make up for it by staying very still.

Only my fingers

can move.

The sound of my tapping joins the clock’s tick, urging it forward, or backward.

I’m not sure which direction I’d

prefer.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend.

For a few days, things were normal.

Grandfather hates turkey, so I stocked up on our usual hot

pot ingredients—thinly sliced pork, napa cabbage, enoki mushrooms, every kind of tofu I could find.

The perfect meal for the

chilly season.

My father video called to check on me.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Monica,” he said.

He was in his office, windows bright, a hint at the busy world outside.

He asked how

grandmother and grandfather were doing, and I asked if he was still planning to come back before the end of the year.

“Ah, well, I have to take care of a few business opportunities, and it’d really be better for everyone—you included—if I stayed a bit longer.”

I let the silence hang between us.

I wanted his guilt to fester while I stared at him from behind his screen.

“You should start your spring semester though,” he continued.

“I will probably come back in the middle of it.”

“That’s months where grandmother and grandfather would be by themselves.”

“A few months. They’ll be fine. They have each other.”

“You think they’ll be fine because you haven’t seen them in years.”

“I can hire someone to check in on them,” he said, running his hand through his still-dark hair.

“A nurse to make sure they

take their medicine. Someone to buy their groceries.”

“If that is what you think is best.” And I meant it, too.

Who was I to say he should sacrifice his goals to take care of his

parents?

They would not want that any more than he did.

“Alright. I will think about it. It’s late for you, isn’t it? Get some sleep. Good night, my love.”

I sat with the idea for a few minutes, returning to school, leaving grandmother and grandfather to strangers for a few months

until my father could return.

I hated it.

There was another option, the one Prof.

Logan had offered me.

It would solve all my problems.

Staying home, making money,

working on the kinds of coding projects I love.

And yet I’ve never been less sure about EMbrS.

Prof.

Logan recently shared

some of the investors’ emails.

They are enthusiastic about the potential.

He was deep in talks about the business model.

He

wasn’t worried that we’d lose our access to all the social media posts because of our status as an academic project.

The journal

entries were data gold, he explained, and though I wondered what he meant by that, I didn’t press.

It was too easy to just keep working, so that’s what I did.

Grandmother told me she was confident I could now Reforge Meng’s pencil, and that it would help me sort through some of these feelings.

“Whenever you are ready,” grandmother had said.

I planned to do it the very next day, since I had off from work.

I had my usual chat with Louise that night.

Our conversations since my Reforging had been chaste, easy, comfortable.

We recounted

what was and about our days.

And then I went to bed.

I woke up when my whole room shook.

My eyes opened, my body would not move.

Something had fallen, something much larger than

a picture frame.

My room was next to the stairs.

It was a pure Schrodinger’s cat problem.

As I lay there in bed, there was a chance that once I got up and looked, my life

would never be the same, and I would think back to this moment, with my head buried against the pillow, my heart pounding,

when everything was still okay.

I squeezed my eyes shut, then threw off the blanket.

I peered out my door, still the dead of the night, and I could just make out her body, crumpled at the base of the stairs.

When I knelt beside her, she made no sound.

Her neck was bent forward at an alarming angle.

I have trouble remembering what happened after that.

I probably stammered something, gathered that she was alive if unable

to speak.

Somewhere along the way I woke grandfather, who creaked out of bed so slowly yet as fast as he could, and then we

were at the hospital, grandmother carted off while we waited in the lobby.

I was shaking badly.

I had forgotten to grab a jacket, and winter was descending.

Grandfather looked sharp in his overcoat,

even in his pajama pants, sitting stately while I trembled in the chair next to his, trying to warm up.

“Are you scared?” I asked when I could no longer stand the silence.

He gave only a small nod.

“But we have been through worse.”

I started to pace, to work some blood through my limbs.

Sure, he could stay calm and collected because he was right—they had been through worse as immigrants.

They had lost their home and their families.

But I had not.

He shrugged off his overcoat.

Though he was a tall man, he looked so small sitting in the blue padded chair of the ER in his

threadbare pajamas.

He handed his coat to me.

“Get some fresh air,” he said.

“What if they come back with an update?”

“I can talk to them.”

“No, I need to be here too—”

“You won’t be of any help in your state. Go outside.”

I took his coat.

Outside, the air cut into my lungs.

I leaned against the wall.

There was somebody else there, not too far down, doing the

same, smoking.

I buried my head in grandfather’s coat, breathing in the sandalwood scent of him, attempting to override the

smell of cigarette smoke.

“You okay?” the smoker asked.

“Yeah,” I said automatically, a stupid answer, since I was obviously very much not okay.

“You have someone you can talk to?”

How very Boston of him, I thought, to suggest a solution that did not involve himself.

He was right though.

He could not talk

me through anything, but perhaps a friend could.

are you awake?

Immediately after sending the message, I regretted it.

It was well past midnight.

She would not see it until she woke the

next day, and she would see my desperation.

And then my phone was ringing.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Why are you awake?” My breath puffed in front of me, even if my voice did not shake this time.

“My brother and my mom are fighting downstairs. I was eavesdropping. Is something wrong?”

I swallowed.

I caught the smoker glancing at me and buried my face farther in grandfather’s jacket.

“Monica?”

“I’m at the hospital,” I said finally.

“What? What happened? Your grandparents—”

“She fell down the stairs. Her neck was bent. She couldn’t speak. We’re waiting. I can’t take all of this waiting. I need

to know if she will be okay or if I will be alone. I need her to be okay, because I can’t be alone—I can’t—”

“You’re not alone—”

“I am!” My nails dug into my palm, clenched together in grandfather’s oversized pocket.

“I’m not like you. I don’t have siblings

or even parents. I only have them, and if they’re gone, then I’ll have nothing. And you’d think I’d be better prepared because

they’re so old, that I should be prepared when any day I could wake up and find them dead. But they are all I’ve ever known,

and how can anyone be ready for their whole world to fall apart around them, even if they are warned? What’s that noise? Are

you listening to me?” My hands were shaking even worse than when I had no coat.

“I am. I’m just grabbing some things—”

“Never mind.” I closed my eyes.

“Forget I said anything. I’m—I’m being overdramatic.”

I hung up before she could respond.

For a while I stared at my phone, hoping she would call or at least text me back.

Neither

came.

The smoker walked past me, heading inside.

He stopped to offer me a cigarette.

I took it even though I have never smoked

in my life.

A small bit of kindness that made me cry after he left me alone outside.

It was then that I realized who would be awake.

Who would have to listen to me, even if he did not want to.

Who owed me, at

least that much.

“Grandmother is in the hospital,” I said as soon as my father picked up.

“We are all here. Except for you.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice through the phone sounding so far away.

“You left,” I said, even though it was obvious that was not what he was asking.

I wanted him to hurt, to feel even a fraction

of what I was feeling.

“You left even though my mother had already left. You left and didn’t come back, not even now when

grandmother is sick. You left them to take care of your child, and now you’ve left me to take care of your parents. And I

never hated you because I trusted you had your reasons to leave, and I love them, you have no idea how much I love them—”

“Monica—”

“I never hated you,” I repeated.

“Until now.”

I gave him a chance to say something.

When it was only silence from the other end, I hung up.

I turned off my phone.

I did not want to talk to anyone.

I did not want even my service provider or whatever apps running

on my phone to know I was at a hospital, to know I was facing something I might not be able to handle.

And then I thought

of grandfather, alone in the waiting room in his faded pajamas, and began to cry all over again.

I returned to the waiting room to find grandfather dozing.

I draped his coat over him.

He shook his head awake.

He looked

at me and his face fell.

I turned away to try to hide the streaks of tears.

It was too late.

“Go home,” he said softly.

“I’m worried we left the stove on.”

“There is no way the stove is on.” I almost laughed.

It was grandmother’s job to fret about the stove being left on.

How many

times had we circled back to the house to confirm it was indeed off?

“We had hot pot for dinner.”

“But then grandmother used the stove to braise eggs. Please go check. It is really worrying me.”

“I’m not going to leave you by yourself—”

“Go home, check the stove, and sleep. Then you can take over sitting here and I’ll get to sleep peacefully. Okay?”

He was trying to get me to leave.

It was too easy to imagine the worst here.

Even he knew I was weak.

I crumpled in the seat

next to him.

“Okay,” I said finally because I was tired, because I was afraid, and because I thought it might be the last time I could

act like a child, like their grandchild, shielded and loved.

He handed me his T pass.

I was the only one on the bus.

The house was dark when I got home.

The stove was off.

I twisted the knobs again to give my hands something to do.

I turned the knobs on, off, on, off, watching

the flame flicker alive and wipe back to darkness just as quickly.

Sudden memories came—grandmother cooking, arranging a little

altar.

I don’t know the occasion, but pictures of family I never knew would sometimes appear on the dining table, fruits laid

out on red plates before them.

A cushion from our couch on the floor.

Incense burning on either side of the frames.

She and

grandfather would take turns kneeling on the cushion, bowing to the portraits.

Not all of them had been captured by a camera.

A few were pencil sketches done by grandmother.

I knelt beside them, even though I didn’t understand what I was doing.

The

memory was so vivid: grandmother digging through the drawer searching for a lighter and instead sticking a bundle of incense

directly into the stove’s flame before whisking them to the altar.

Without quite realizing what I was doing, I went to search for the altar.

The portraits were stacked above the bookshelf.

The incense in the same drawer as the lighter, their holders in the glass cabinet with my high school math trophies.

I lined

the portraits along the dining table, lit the incense, and threw a couch cushion on the floor.

I had done this same ceremony in Taiwan, deep in the mountains, where grandfather had relatives buried.

We built a large fire

for burning paper money, separate fires for ancestors and for gods.

Here all we had was incense and these portraits of people

I did not know.

The sketches were from grandmother’s side, and the pictures from grandfather’s.

Their mothers, fathers, siblings?

Somewhere in there were people who knew my grandmother, how strong she could be, who could lend me the conviction that she would not leave me, not now, not when I was just beginning to understand her, flaws and all.

“Please,” I whispered to the empty house.

A clump of burnt incense fell onto the table.

I gripped the corner of the cushion,

bunching the fabric between my fingers.

I don’t know who I was addressing—one of grandfather’s relatives, or maybe grandmother’s

mother, or her aunt, or maybe even her own grandmother.

“Please,” I whispered again, my voice shaking as the tears came, thinking of grandmother alone in an unfamiliar room, hurt

and terrified, and grandfather alone in the hospital waiting room, waiting for news of his lifelong companion, wearing his

fraying pajamas.

And to think only a few days earlier, I had been so confident that I would have time to connect with grandmother,

believing the pencil and whatever Meng had to say would solve my problems.

To think I had basked in the strength of a Reforged

word, believed I could claim this small advantage against the world.

The power was ultimately useless when it mattered.

Instead

of all that time spent learning about pencils, or working on EMbrS, perhaps the right thing to do had been to talk to her.

Pencils and technology—could they really be a substitute for human connection?

I bowed my head to the cushion, my forehead meeting the cool fabric.

My tears fell in heavy drops.

“Please don’t leave us alone,” I whispered.

I did manage to sleep, the tears tiring me out.

I woke to the sun shining into my room.

It could have been late morning.

The

sooner I got out of bed, the better.

But it was another case of confirming reality, so instead I lay there staring up at the

ceiling.

The worst possibility was the doctors were not able to save her, that she was dead.

Grandfather would be heartbroken.

I would take over cooking.

Maybe my father would return.

I would take the next semester off.

Grandfather could be convinced to move to a smaller place with no stairs.

I would take the job with Prof.

Logan so I could stay home with grandfather, to ensure he wouldn’t be alone.

I thought mechanically, logistics only.

It was all I could manage.

Prepared for the worst, I reached for my phone, fingers

tapping the carpet, coming back with nothing.

I leaned over to find the place where my phone normally sat empty.

I remembered turning it off after calling my father.

I ran to my laptop to check the time.

Seven in the morning.

I had not

slept as long as I thought.

Still, it had to be enough.

I had to get back to the hospital.

Grabbing a coat this time, I ran out of the house, then ran back in to double-check the stove and to grab grandfather’s T

pass.

As I began the walk to the bus stop, a car horn blared.

It came in stuttered intervals after that, clearly trying to get someone’s attention, as if they had just realized it was

early in the morning on a holiday weekend.

I kept my head down, frankly, embarrassed for them, and increased my speed.

The

car horn eventually stopped, to my relief.

I was nearly at the bus stop when a car slowed down beside me.

I sped up again, heart hammering.

I had always thought seven

in the morning a safe time from kidnappers.

“Get in here, you doofus.”

I barely recognized her through the half-rolled-down window.

Her hair was pulled into a messy bun, her eyes framed by glasses

I never knew she needed, and the car—a rust-red hatchback, paint flaking—so antithetical to her usual polish.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said stupidly.

“Just get in already.”

She had to lean over to manually unlock the passenger side door.

The car smelled like herbal medicine.

She cranked her window back up.

Then she tilted her head toward me, eyes meeting mine, and gave a tired smile.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

I fumbled with grandfather’s T pass.

“Put in the hospital name?” She handed me her phone.

I set the destination.

The phone was plugged into a battery pack.

It

was probably too much to ask this car to drive and have a port to charge a phone at the same time.

She began to drive.

“You hate driving,” I mumbled.

“Sure do.”

I gripped the door handle as she switched lanes barely in time to manage a left turn.

“You drove all night?” I looked out the window, or else I knew the tears would start again.

“Yeah. Luckily my brother was still distracting my parents. Turns out he was having an affair and told us he’s getting divorced.”

She took one hand off the wheel to drink her coffee.

I braced as the car swerved.

She quickly righted it.

“So my parents were

furious, and nobody noticed when I slipped out of the house with the only car they let me drive.”

“You could have told me you were coming.”

She slammed the brake as soon as the light turned yellow.

We lurched forward.

“You’re the one who hung up on me. And then blocked all of my calls afterward.”

“I didn’t...” Then I remembered turning off my phone.

“I didn’t mean to.” But maybe I had.

“Well, what did you expect me to do? You were in pain, going through something terrible. You thought you were alone. And your

phone—have you ever not had it on you before? I was freaking out.”

“I think I left it in grandfather’s coat. He’s still at the hospital.”

She turned smoothly into the hospital parking lot.

Only after she parked was it noticeable just how loud the car had been.

The quiet morning enveloped us.

The sun shone brightly through the windshield.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, staring straight out the window, at the hospital door, where some sort of fate awaited me—and

then I stopped trying to keep the tears at bay.

I let them roll freely and drop onto the ripped cushion of her passenger seat.

I thought about her driving all night long, at least five hours, just for us, veering off her Ivy League path to this little

side road where we had ended up, otherwise forgotten.

I felt a bit less alone, and that made all the difference.

“I think this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” I said.

Whatever anger she held against me for abandoning my phone vanished.

“Of course,” she said gently.

I unbuckled my seat belt, and we climbed out of the car.

At the entrance to the hospital, she waited for me to enter first.

I paused far enough away the automatic doors didn’t detect me, not yet.

“I’m here with you,” she promised.

And then the doors opened for us.