Page 25 of Vital Signs

I opened the FindMe app with trembling fingers. The AirTag I'd slipped into Hunter’s jacket showed his location: deep in the Hocking State Forest. Miles from any road. Not moving.

Either he was using in privacy, or hurt, or doing whatever the fuck homeless people did in the woods to survive.

None of the options were good.

I grabbed my jacket and keys. The Laskins would never forgive this. Hunter might not even want my help. I might be driving into the woods to find a corpse or someone too high to remember my name.

But I was done asking permission to exist.

Done letting other people decide what I could handle.

Done being the victim everyone needed to protect.

If Hunter was in trouble, I'd find him. If he'd chosen drugs over our plan, I'd make him choose again. If he tried to push me away, I'd push back harder.

I'd burned my bridges. Might as well own it.

This was probably a mistake, but it wasmymistake to make.

Hunter

The thirty dollars inmy pocket had cost me everything my parents crossed oceans to build.

They'd sacrificed so their son could have a chance at the American dream. Given up everything they knew, learned a new language, worked sixteen-hour days in restaurants and factories so I could have the American dream they'd never touch. They'd built their hopes into my bones, cell by cell, weaving in my father's Korean work ethic and my mother's Chinese determination to survive anything until I carried their sacrifices in my bloodstream.

Four years ago, I was everything they'd dreamed of. ER nurse, steady paycheck, apartment with my name on the lease.

Now I was breaking people for pocket change in the woods behind a trailer park.

What remained of their investment was forty percent withdrawal, thirty percent rage, and thirty percent regret.

The math of survival in rural Ohio winter was simple: twenty dollars got me through tomorrow, forty got me through the weekend, sixty if I wanted to eat something besides gas station coffee and whatever I could steal. Tonight's winnings so far? Thirty bucks.

The "ring" was a cleared patch of dirt behind Greg Kodski's trailer, surrounded by rusted cars and broken dreams. Christmas lights strung between the vehicles provided the only illumination, casting everything in sickly red and green. A handful of people gathered around, most of them day laborers, unemployed factory workers, or junkies like me.

My opponent cracked his knuckles. Billy Hendricks was two hundred twenty pounds of farm muscle and generational anger. Worked construction until his back gave out. Now he survived on disability checks and whatever he could win breaking faces.

"Ready to get schooled, college boy?" Billy called out, rolling his shoulders. The crowd laughed.

College boy. They still called me that, even after four years of sleeping under bridges. Like education was something tattooed on my forehead instead of something I'd pissed away one needle at a time.

"Ready when you are, Billy."

Greg collected the money. "Same rules as always. Fight until someone can't get up or taps out. No weapons, no eye-gouging, no biting. Everything else goes."

Billy bounced on his toes, shadowboxing the cold air. His stance was all wrong, hands too low, chin exposed. Classic untrained fighter who'd watched too many movies and thought size trumped technique.

The first rule of emergency medicine had been to assess the threat before you acted. Where was the danger coming from? What was the most efficient way to neutralize it? How did you stop someone from hurting themselves or others?

The same principle applied to dismantling people.

"Fight!"

Billy charged straight at me, telegraphing a haymaker that would have been obvious to a white belt. I slipped into a perfect stance and waited. I'd trained in a dojang in Koreatown, where my father had driven me twice a week so I could "stay connected to our heritage."

Part of me wondered if he was watching. Misha, with his perfect face and expensive van. The thought shouldn't have made me fight harder, shouldn't have made me want to prove I was still capable of something beyond begging for change. But it did.

I was performing. Not for Greg, or Billy, or the crowd. For a man who wasn't even here. For brown eyes that had looked at me like I mattered.