Read Seoul Survivors for Free Online

handed her the spoon.
    She wanted to say no, to tell them why, but the words were trapped inside her, while the fragrance of the miyeok curled around her like a cat demanding to be stroked. Helplessly, in silence, she ate, her tears dissolving in the soup. The doctors and the nurse beamed and chuckled as if she were a child. Finally the bowl was empty and the warmth in her stomach was spreading through her aching limbs. The nurse picked up a folded piece of white linen from the tray and held it out to her.
    “It’s a napkin.” Dr. Tae Sun smiled and pointed at his chin, just at the place where on her own face she could feel a spot of soup.
    A linen napkin. It was far too beautiful to make dirty, but everyone was looking at her, waiting. Gingerly, Mee Hee dabbed at her mouth as the nurse removed the tray and bustled from the room.
    “Thank you,” she whispered.
    “It is our honor to feed you.” Dr. Dong Sun bowed low.
    “I didn’t know you had a twin brother,” she said to Dr. Tae Sun, her voice gaining in strength. “And a doctor, too. Your parents must be very proud.”
    The two brothers exchanged glances. Dr. Tae Sun cleared his throat, and Mee Hee crumpled the napkin in her hand. She must have said entirely the wrong thing—what made her think she knew how to speak to doctors?
    But when Dr. Tae Sun spoke, his voice was quiet and kind. “If our parents were still alive, they would be very proud and happy to know we are together at last.”
    Boldly, she dared to meet his gleaming eyes, but it was his brother who continued the story.
    “We were separated as infants, you see, when our uncle escaped from the North.” Dr. Dong Sun leaned against the bed frame with the air of a man accustomed to attention. “He walked across the frozen Yalu River, with me bundled underneath his coat. Our father had died, and our mother—”
    “—who was very ill—” Che Tae Sun piped up.
    His brother nodded briskly. “—begged him to take us both—”
    “—but he couldn’t carry two babies—”
    “—as well as everything he needed to survive.”
    “Uncle walked all the way to Seoul with Dong Sun and when he got there, he brought him up as if he were his own son.” Dr. Tae Sun swept on. “All his life my twin was determined to find me and now, by a miracle, we have been brought together again.”
    “But . . . how—?” Mee Hee gaped at the doctors, so caught up in the story she almost forgot to cover her mouth with her hand. Of course she knew of countless people who yearned to be reunited with their families in the South, but she had never before heard of it really happening.
    Dr. Dong Sun brandished his clipboard in a gesture of triumph. “Our mother recovered, and she lived long enough to see my brother became a doctor—and such a good doctor that one day he was permitted to attend a conference in China. Because of this, his photo was put up on a website, where Dr. Kim, my employer, saw it. When she told me, I was so happy I thought my heart would burst, andDr. Kim was nearly as excited as I was. She has many friends in the medical world, and so she arranged for my brother to be invited to another conference, one that she could also attend.”
    Website . Conference . Mee Hee scrambled for a thread of meaning. “Did you go too?” she asked Dr. Dong Sun.
    “Of course I wanted to. Desperately. But that would have alerted my brother’s colleagues; they would think that he would surely want to leave them. So I had to be patient. But Dr. Kim was on our side and I knew that if I waited, I would soon have my brother with me forever.”
    The doctors’ faces were glowing, and for a moment Mee Hee was a little girl again, being told a story by her grandfather. But at the same time it was difficult to believe that anything—the room, the two identical doctors, the miracle of their reunion—was real. If she fell asleep and woke up again, she might be back in the box, or shivering in her hut in her