After morning roll call, Seojin Yoon came in.

She did not close the door. The doors in the medical housing unit could not be locked from the inside, and even during treatment they were never shut completely. A gap remained wide enough for Correctional Officer Doyun Na to see in from the corridor. Seojin unfolded a privacy screen and placed it between the bed and the door. The white fabric had a brown stain that washing had never removed.

"Turn onto your side."

She said.

I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling. Jeongho had gone out for morning exercise, so the room was empty. My exercise was scheduled separately in the rehabilitation room. I could not decide whether his absence was fortunate. I disliked being watched, but I also disliked putting my body in someone else's hands when no one else was there.

"Which side?"

"Left. We checked the right side last time."

I grabbed the bed rail. I pulled with my right arm and pushed against the mattress with my left. My upper body turned first. My pelvis and everything below it stayed where they were for a moment, then dragged after me across the sheet. Seojin took my right knee and moved it forward.

"I'll do it."

"Your knee is caught in the gap."

"If you tell me, I'll do it."

"If I'd told you first, it would've taken longer than this."

She let go of my leg and put on gloves. The plastic clung to her wrists with a faint snap.

"I'm going to pull your pants down."

"I can do it."

"Not in this position."

Her words did not sound like a question. I left my hands on the rail and did not move. I could faintly feel the clothes being pulled below my waist. It wasn't that I had no sensation at all. I could not tell exactly where I was being touched, but the movement of fabric and the pressure against skin reached me like a vibration traveling from far away.

Before the accident, getting dressed or undressed had required no thought.

I showered, put on a shirt, fastened buttons, tied a necktie, pulled on socks, and put on shoes. My hands knew what to do. On overseas business trips I could pack a hotel-room suitcase with my eyes closed. Laptop in the right compartment, charger in the outer pocket, receipt envelope behind the inner zipper. My body, too, had seemed like an object with a fixed place in the bag.

I thought all I had to do was give my body orders.

If I told it to stay awake all night, it did. If I told it to get up at six after drinking the night before, it did. If I had a fever and told it to go to the site, it went. If my legs hurt, I took painkillers. If my stomach burned, I drank milk. The body was equipment that could be serviced later.

Equipment has an owner.

I believed I owned my body.

Seojin slipped a hand beneath my lower back and pulled the sheet taut. Cold air touched my skin.

"Did you reposition yourself last night?"

"I did."

"What time?"

"I don't remember exactly."

"The chart says nine and midnight. You didn't do it at midnight, did you?"

"I fell asleep."

"Then you can't mark that you did."

"Mr. Lee probably did it."

"Jeongho Lee took a sleeping pill at eleven-thirty last night."

My grip tightened around the rail.

"Wouldn't it be stranger for one inmate to inspect another inmate's body every night?"

"That's why you need to call someone yourself."

"Call an officer every two hours?"

"If you need to."

"I'm not the only person in this unit."

"That's why there's a chart."

Seojin pressed her fingers around my sacrum. I felt no pressure. I could only make out where she was looking by watching her blurred reflection in the metal cabinet beyond the privacy screen.

"The red area has spread."

"It was red last time too."

"Last time the color returned when I pressed it. Today it's slower."

"It doesn't hurt."

Her hand stopped.

"Not hurting is the problem."

I had heard that sentence many times.

They had said the same thing at the hospital. Because I did not feel pain, I needed to check more often. I could burn myself in hot water and not know. A toenail could grow into the flesh and I might not notice. A wound could deepen all the way to bone without my feeling it.

Not knowing is the problem.

That sentence had followed me since the accident.

I said I hadn't known the crack was dangerous.

I said I hadn't known the inspection figures had been manipulated.

I said I hadn't known then that the people above me were shifting responsibility onto me.

I said I hadn't known what the workers were saying to one another at the site.

The more things I did not know, the smaller my responsibility seemed. At the same time, the claim that I had been the person responsible sounded stranger and stranger.

"I'm going to take a picture."

Seojin said.

"Why?"

"We need to document the change."

"Can't you compare it with the last picture?"

"Today's condition needs today's picture."

"My face won't be in it, right?"

"Only your patient number and the wound area."

Patient number.

Here I was both an inmate number and a patient number. It felt strange that one person needed two numbers: one to manage his crime, another to manage his body.

The camera shutter clicked once.

I looked at the ceiling above the privacy screen. One fluorescent light flickered. It never went completely dark; the brightness only trembled slightly. The temporary lights at the accident site had been the same. The generator voltage had been unstable, and the white light had quivered.

The last thing I saw before the collapse was not a column.

It was a work light hanging near the ceiling.

The lamp swung hard. Someone shouted, "Get out!" I looked up. The light moved left, then swung back to the right. Dust fell. Then came the sound.

People describe a collapse as a roar.

In reality, many sounds overlapped.

Steel bending. Bolts snapping free. Concrete breaking. People running. Someone on the radio calling my name over and over. So many sounds came at once that for a while it seemed as if I could hear nothing at all.

There was light when I opened my eyes again.

The light in the hospital intensive-care unit.

I tried to move my body. My fingers moved first. My arms moved. I could turn my neck. When I tried to move my legs, nothing happened.

I gave the order again.

Lift the right leg.

Nothing happened.

Move the toes.

Nothing happened.

There was a tube in my mouth, so I couldn't speak. I struck the bed rail with my hand. A nurse came and held my hand. She told me to calm down, said the surgery was over and the doctor would come soon.

With my finger, I wrote in the air.

Legs.

The nurse did not understand.

I wrote again.

People.

She did not understand that word either.

Even now, I cannot be sure whether the first thing I wanted to know was what had happened to my legs or whether the people at the site were alive. Memory can change the order of things. Shame that comes later can enter earlier scenes.

I want to believe I asked about the people first.

But my first conscious sensation was trying to move my legs.

I have never told anyone that.

"Mr. Han."

I heard Seojin's voice.

I lowered my gaze from the fluorescent light.

"Yes."

"I'm going to apply a protective barrier around the wound. It'll feel cold."

I couldn't tell whether it was cold.

"All right."

She applied the medication and covered the area with a thin foam dressing. The plastic wrapper tore open with a crisp sound.

"For the next three days we're reducing your rehabilitation-room exercise."

"There's no need."

"You need to reduce pressure."

"If I stop exercising, my shoulders will stiffen more."

"Do upper-body work in bed."

"Isn't the rehabilitation therapist supposed to decide my schedule?"

"I'll report the condition of the wound."

"If you stop everything over one wound—"

"It's not just one thing."

Seojin said.

"Right now it's a red patch. If you don't manage it and the skin opens, then it gets infected, rehabilitation stops, parole preparation stops—everything stops."

When she said parole, I turned my head.

"That has nothing to do with this treatment."

"Your body does."

"Don't talk about my parole."

"I brought it up first. You're right. I'm sorry."

She apologized immediately.

When someone apologized that quickly, there was nowhere for my anger to continue.

"I'm going to pull your pants back up."

She said.

I gripped the rail again. My body rocked a little as she pulled the clothing into place. Even after the treatment was finished, I stayed lying on my side.

"You can roll back now."

"I'll stay like this for a minute."

Seojin removed her gloves and dropped them in the medical-waste bag. Before folding the privacy screen, she checked the urine bag beside the bed.

"It's dark. You haven't been drinking enough water, have you?"

"I had soup."

"Don't count soup as water."

"Why not?"

"Too much sodium."

She ran a finger along the tubing from the urine bag, checking for kinks. The transparent tube disappeared inside my pants. Something that had come out of my body was collecting in a plastic bag beside my bed.

At first I turned my head every time I saw it.

At the hospital, nurses read the urine volume aloud. Twelve hundred. Eight hundred fifty. Six hundred. Fluid from my body became numbers. Bowel movements were recorded. Water intake was recorded. At thirty-six, I became a person who reported to someone else when he urinated and defecated.

I remembered the first time Sujin emptied the urine bag in my hospital room.

A nurse was teaching her how. She placed a container underneath and opened the clamp. Sujin's hands were shaking. I stared at the ceiling and said,

"You don't have to do that."

Sujin did not answer.

"You can call the nurse."

"The nurses are busy too."

"Still, this isn't your job."

Then Sujin looked at me.

"Whose job is it, then?"

I couldn't answer.

After that, Sujin emptied my urine bag many times. She washed my body, checked my skin, pushed my wheelchair in time for rehabilitation. I remembered everything she did, yet on some days I resented her for failing to hide her expressions.

A tired expression.

A frightened expression.

A brief grimace.

I took those expressions as betrayal. I thought that if she loved me, none of it should affect her. I refused to admit that the changes in my body could be unfamiliar and frightening to her too.

Seojin hung the urine bag back on the hook beneath the bed.

"Drink two cups of water before lunch."

"If I drink it all at once, it'll disrupt my bladder schedule."

"Then divide it up."

"All right."

She folded the privacy screen. The corridor light entered again.

Doyun Na asked from the doorway,

"Finished?"

"Yes. I went over the repositioning record again."

Seojin wrote something in the medical chart. Her handwriting was small and even. I wanted to see what she was writing, but I did not turn my head.

Patient uncooperative.

Insufficient understanding of treatment necessity.

Poor self-management.

I imagined sentences like those.

Records are said to preserve facts, but they preserve only the facts chosen by the person doing the recording.

"Nurse."

I called.

Seojin stopped her pen.

"It's true I didn't reposition at midnight."

"Yes."

"I marked the chart myself."

"I know."

"Mr. Lee didn't do it."

"I know that too."

Her saying she already knew irritated me.

"Then why did you ask?"

"To see whether you could say it yourself."

"Were you testing me?"

"I was checking so I could treat you."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"No."

She put her pen back to the chart.

"If you mark the chart falsely, the next shift assumes you were actually repositioned. If your skin gets worse, it becomes harder to judge why."

"You're saying this happened because I skipped it once?"

"We don't know whether it was once or ten times. That's why we record it."

Her words resembled something the safety inspector had said.

I can't be certain.

But I recommend stopping.

Back then, I had used uncertainty as a reason not to act. Seojin said uncertainty was exactly why one had to document and act.

There was a small difference between the two sentences.

I did not yet want to think about whether it was large enough for two people to die inside it.

"I'll correct the record."

Seojin said.

She brought the chart, drew a line through the circle in the midnight box, and wrote: NOT PERFORMED, CONFIRMED BY PATIENT. The lie I had written did not disappear. It remained beneath the strike-through.

"Done."

She started to leave.

"Nurse Yoon."

I called again.

She turned.

There were two things I needed to say.

I could tell her not to touch my body without warning. I could ask her to explain first each time she treated me. Both were necessary.

There was another thing too: thank you.

The words did not come easily. Saying thank you felt like confirming that I had received help. Even though I already had, part of me acted as though it would remain unconfirmed if I never said it aloud.

"Next time, tell me before you move my knee."

I said.

"All right."

She nodded.

"And..."

I rubbed the sheet with my fingertips.

"Thank you for treating me."

Seojin did not smile.

"It's my job."

Then she left.

I liked the answer.

It sounded as though she had not done it in order to be thanked. It also meant that even if I felt no gratitude, it was still something she was required to do.

After she left, the smell of disinfectant remained where the privacy screen had been.

I transferred into the wheelchair and went to the washroom at the end of the corridor. As I was filling a cup, my right leg suddenly shot straight. My foot slipped sideways off the footrest and the tip of my sneaker dragged along the floor. I grabbed the wheel rims to stop myself, but the spasm continued independently of anything I did.

An inmate coming up behind me grabbed my shoulder.

"Hold still. I'll put your leg back up."

Without waiting for an answer, he slid a hand beneath my knee.

"Let go."

My voice came out loud.

The man released me.

"Why are you yelling? I was trying to help."

"You should ask first."

"You looked like you were going to fall, so I grabbed you."

"I wasn't falling."

"Fine. Do everything yourself."

He walked past me. Several people in the corridor looked our way. With my left hand, I lifted my right knee and placed my foot back on the footrest. The spasm had already stopped.

I might not have fallen even if the man had not grabbed me. Or perhaps I had not fallen because he did. There was no way to know which was true.

I reached the sink and filled a cup. Water from the faucet struck the inside of it. My hand was shaking slightly.

I did not hate help itself. I hated disappearing from the scene in which I was being helped. Other people looked at my body and decided first. Grab him. Move him. Push him. Only after their decision did I become the person who said thank you or got angry.

Before the accident, I had judged other people's bodies that way.

When I saw workers carrying heavy material, I calculated whether to assign more people or increase the work speed. If someone looked tired, I adjusted the shift. If someone's hands were slow, I rated his skill lower. I almost never asked whether it was all right to place a hand on him then and there. I assumed consent was included in the work order.

After drinking my water, I went looking for the man from the corridor. He was watching television in the common area.

"I'm sorry about earlier."

I said.

Without taking his eyes off the screen, he answered,

"Forget it."

"I meant that I'd like you to say something before you grab me."

"If you're falling, I'm supposed to ask permission first?"

"If there's time."

He looked at me.

"And if there isn't?"

I thought for a moment.

"Then you can grab me."

"How am I supposed to know?"

"If you don't know, ask."

The man let out a short laugh.

"All right. Next time I'll ask, 'Are you falling?'"

He turned back to the television. I couldn't tell whether the conversation had ended well. I had apologized and he had accepted it, but both of us seemed to think the other was being difficult.

On the way back to the room, Doyun Na asked,

"Was there a problem?"

"No."

Then I corrected myself.

"My leg spasmed and another inmate grabbed me. I raised my voice."

Doyun did not write anything down.

"Any injury?"

"No."

"Then that's enough."

He said it as if something had been settled, but I did not know what. Did no injury mean no incident? Did the apology mean the relationship was finished? Did it mean there was nothing worth recording?

Back in the room, I wrote in a blank space on the monitoring sheet.

10:40 a.m. One spasm, right leg.

Beneath it, in smaller writing, I added:

Another person grabbed wheelchair. No injury.

The record did not explain my feelings or the man's intentions. Still, it was more accurate than saying nothing had happened.

Jeongho returned from exercise afterward, a sweat-soaked towel around his neck.

"Treatment today?"

"Yes."

"The wound?"

"A little worse, apparently."

Jeongho looked at the monitoring sheet beside my bed.

"Didn't turn at midnight."

"Don't read that."

"It's on the wall. How am I supposed not to see it?"

"You took a sleeping pill."

"That's why I couldn't help you."

"I never asked you to."

Jeongho said nothing and went to his bed. The button that had fallen the day before was still beside his pillow, a long white thread trailing from it.

"You still haven't sewn it on?"

"The nurse was busy."

"Did you ask?"

"No."

"Then how do you know she was busy?"

"She's always busy."

I looked at the statement of remorse on the table.

Today I picked up a button.

The sentence I had written yesterday was still there. It seemed strange that the paper had not changed overnight. I tried to add something beneath it.

Today I entrusted my body to someone else.

I formed the sentence in my head and did not write it. Entrusted made it sound as though I had chosen freely. In reality, the range of choices had been narrow.

Today someone else treated my body.

That was closer to the facts. But if I wrote someone else, Seojin's face disappeared.

Today Nurse Seojin Yoon treated my wound.

I picked up the pen.

I wrote the first letter on the paper.

T.

Then my leg spasmed.

My right knee jerked upward and dropped back onto the bed. I had done nothing, but my body moved. The bed frame rang softly.

Jeongho looked over.

"You all right?"

"I'm fine."

I answered automatically.

My body no longer obeyed my words, but my mouth still knew that sentence perfectly.

Only the letter T remained on the page.

It could have been the first letter of Today. Or, in Korean, the first sound of another name might have seemed to begin there.

I slowly blacked it out with the ballpoint pen. Ink layered over ink until it spread like a small black wound.

Before lunch, I drank two cups of water.

I drank half of the first at once. I left the second beside the bed for a long time. Sunlight passed through the cup and made a wavering rectangle on the floor.

After I finished the water, I pressed the call button for repositioning.

Doyun Na came in.

"What is it?"

"I need to turn onto my right side."

"Can't you do that yourself?"

"I can."

I paused.

"But check the position of my legs for me."

Without saying anything, he put on gloves.

I grabbed the rail and turned. I moved my upper body, dragged my pelvis, bent my knees. Doyun shifted my ankle so it would not become caught in the gap beside the bed.

The body was mine.

At the same time, it was something that could not be kept functioning for long without other people's hands, records, and rules.

Maybe I did not need to choose which of those was the truth.

Lying on my right side, I looked at the window.

My face was faintly reflected in the glass. Below it, only half my body could be seen.

The half that could not be seen had not disappeared.

I heard my name being entered in the call record. Doyun's pen scratched across the paper.

Today I asked for help.

I did not write that sentence on the page.

Something that happened did not vanish simply because I did not write it down.