Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

Pilar looked at the cooler, studying the way someone had attempted to scrape away the Red Cross insignia. “My nephew Manny drives a truck that moves organs and eyes and things between hospitals,” she said, “He uses a cooler just like this.”

The Senator’s wife popped on latex gloves. “Actually,” she said, “I don’t think a John Doe is a missing person. I think it’s when you have the person, just not his identity.”

Wanda blew into her latex gloves. “A John Doe has an exact identity,” she said, and considered the patient. “It’s just yet to be discovered.”

The Senator’s wife poured hydrogen peroxide up and down his arm, massaging it into the wounds. “This will loosen the sutures,” she said.

For a moment, there was only the hiss of his arm foaming white. It didn’t hurt, exactly—it felt like ants, maybe, swarming in and out of him.

Wanda said, “Are you all right being treated by a female doctor?”

Jun Do nodded. “Most of the doctors in Korea are women,” he said. “Though I’ve never seen one.”

“A woman doctor?” Wanda asked.

“Or any doctor?” the Senator’s wife asked.

“Any doctor,” he said.

“Not even in the military, for a physical?” the Senator’s wife asked.

“I guess I’ve never been sick,” he said.

“Who patched you up?”

“A friend,” Jun Do said.

“A friend?”

“A guy I work with.”

While the wound foamed, the Senator’s wife lifted his arms, spread them wide, then brought them forward, her eyes following invisible lines on his body. He watched as she noted the burns on the undersides of his arms—candle marks from his pain training. She touched the ridges of the scars with her fingertips. “A bad place to get burned,” she said. “The skin is quite sensitive here.” She ran her hand across his chest to the collarbone. “This knitting,” she said. “That’s a fresh break to the clavicle.” She brought his hands up, as though she were going to kiss a ring—instead, she studied the alignment of his finger bones. “Do you want me to look you over? Do you have any complaints?”

He wasn’t as muscular as when he’d been in the military, but his physique was strong, and he could feel the women looking at him.

“No,” he said. “It’s just these stitches. They itch like crazy.”

“We’ll get those out in no time,” she said. “Can I ask what happened?”

“It’s a story I’d rather not tell,” he said. “But it was a shark that did it.”

“Madre de Dios,” Pilar said.

Wanda was standing next to the Senator’s wife. She held open a white first-aid kit the size of a briefcase. “You mean the kind with the fins, that live in the ocean?” Wanda asked.

“I lost a lot of blood,” he said.

They just stared at him.

“My friend wasn’t so lucky,” he added.

“I understand,” the Senator’s wife said. “Take a deep breath.”

Jun Do inhaled.

“Really deep,” she said. “Lift your shoulders.”

He took a breath, deep as he could. It came with a wince.

The Senator’s wife nodded. “Your eleventh rib,” she said. “Still healing. Seriously, you want a full checkup, now’s your chance.”

Did she sniff his breath? Jun Do had the feeling there were things she was noting but no longer pointing out. “No, ma’am,” he told her.

Wanda found a pair of tweezers and some finger scissors with pointed, baby blades. He had nine lacerations total, each one laced shut, and the Senator’s wife started with the longest one, along the peak of his biceps.

Pilar pointed at his chest. “Who’s she?”

Jun Do looked down. He didn’t know what to say. “That’s my wife,” he said.

“Very beautiful,” Pilar said.

“She is beautiful,” Wanda said. “It’s a beautiful tattoo, too. Do you mind if I take a pic?”

Jun Do had only had his photograph taken that one time, by the old Japanese woman with the wooden camera, and he never saw the picture that came of it. But it haunted him, what she must have seen. Still, he didn’t know how to say no.

“Great,” Wanda said, and with a small camera, she snapped a picture of his chest, then his injured arm, and finally she lifted the camera to his face and there was a flash in his eyes.

Pilar asked, “Is she a translator, too?”

“My wife’s an actress,” he said.

“What’s her name?” Wanda asked.

“Her name?” Jun Do asked. “Her name is Sun Moon.”

The name was beautiful, he noticed, and it felt good in his mouth and to say aloud, the name of his wife, to these three women. Sun Moon .

“What is this stuff?” the Senator’s wife asked. She held up a strand of suturing she’d removed. It was variously clear, yellow, and rust-colored.

“It’s fishing line,” he said.

“I guess if you’d caught tetanus, we’d already know by now,” she said. “In med school, they taught us never to use monofilament, but I can’t for the life of me remember why.”

“What are you going to bring her?” Wanda asked. “As a souvenir of your trip to Texas?”

Jun Do shook his head. “What do you suggest?”

Distractedly, the Senator’s wife asked, “What’s she like?”

“She likes traditional dresses. Her yellow one is my favorite. She wears her hair back to show off her gold earrings. She likes to sing karaoke. She likes movies.”

“No,” Wanda said. “What’s she like, her personality?”

Jun Do took a moment. “She needs lots of attention,” he said, then paused, unsure how to proceed. “She is not free with her love. Her father was afraid that men would take advantage of her beauty, that they would be drawn to her for the wrong reasons, so when she was sixteen, he got her a job in a fish factory, where no men from Pyongyang would find her. That experience shaped her, made her strive for what she wanted. Still, she found a husband who is domineering. They say he can be a real asshole. And she is trapped by the state. She cannot choose her own movie roles. Except for karaoke, she can only sing the songs they tell her to sing. I suppose what matters is that, despite her success and stardom, her beauty and her children, Sun Moon is a sad woman. She is unaccountably alone. She plays the gayageum all day, plucking notes that are lonesome and forlorn.”

There was a pause, and Jun Do realized all three women were staring at him.

“You’re not an asshole husband,” Wanda said. “I know the look of one.”

The Senator’s wife stopped tugging sutures, and wholly without guile, appraised his eyes. She looked at the tattoo on Jun Do’s chest. She asked, “Is there a way I could talk to her? I feel that if I could just speak to her, I would be able to help.” On the counter was a phone, one with a loopy cord that connected the handset to the base. “Can you get her on the line?” she asked.

“There are few phones,” Jun Do said.

Pilar opened her cell phone. “I have international minutes,” she said.

Wanda said, “I don’t think North Korea works like that.”

The Senator’s wife nodded and finished removing the stitches in silence. When she was done, she irrigated the wounds again, then stripped off her gloves.

Jun Do pulled on the driver’s shirt he’d been wearing for two days. His arm felt as thick and raw as the day of the bite. As for the tie, he held it in his hand as the Senator’s wife did his buttons—her fingers strong and measured as they coaxed each button through its eye.

“Was the Senator an astronaut?” he asked her.

“He trained as one,” the Senator’s wife said. “But he never got the call.”

“Do you know the satellite?” he asked. “The one that orbits with people from many nations aboard?”