The snow had not stopped. It packed the world in a soundless white, turning footprints into questions and distance into a blur.
Hanaya could hardly think — only feel: a dull, pounding need that made her lungs ache. Her legs moved before her brain agreed, dragging her body over the frozen ground. Malaa's voice had been a distant siren at first; then an anchor. Now both of them pushed through the cold toward the place where they had last seen him.
There he lay: smaller somehow in the gray light, his face pale and frozen, breath shallow as a frightened animal's. Hanaya dropped to her knees and gathered him into her arms as if she could hold the night away.
Hanaya:
"MK… no — don't leave me. Please, please don't go."
Her voice tore. The boy's lips moved, a whisper she could not catch. Malaa fumbled with her phone and dialed for an ambulance with hands that shook.
Sirens came like a promise, red and blue bleeding through the whiteness. Paramedics worked quickly — voices clipped and professional. A police cruiser's headlights painted the snow. Someone had seen Jin's car and traced it; people had called it in. The quiet, careful net around the night was forming.
At the ambulance door, Hanaya touched MK's cheek, numb and ice-cold. She pressed her forehead to his.
Hanaya:
"I couldn't— I should have protected you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Malaa's face was streaked with tears. She could not stop saying his name: "MK… MK… hold on." They lifted him into the ambulance and shut the doors on the world of falling snow.
The emergency room smelled of antiseptic and urgency. Hanaya and Malaa followed, running, panting, leaving footprints like desperate prayers. In a small triage room, the lights were bright and merciless.
A doctor came out to meet them — face grave but steady.
Doctor:
"You two are family?"
Hanaya:
"He's— he's mine. Please, tell me what's happening."
Doctor:
"We'll do everything we can, but I need to be direct. He arrived with severe trauma to his head and both arms. There's also a complication with his heart condition; it's been triggered. We'll need to operate immediately. Right now the chances are guarded — roughly twenty percent survival through the immediate operation. If you wish to speak to someone about consent for surgery, we need to do it quickly."
The words landed like stones. Hanaya felt the floor tilt. Twenty percent. The doctor's voice repeated itself in her skull like a metronome.
Malaa:
"You mean— only twenty percent?"
Doctor:
"Yes. It's severe. He is very young, but his injuries are complicated. We'll move him to the OR now."
They were led to a bench in a quiet corridor outside the operating suite. The hospital's waiting area smelled of coffee and sadness. Hanaya sat down and folded in on herself, her hands raw from holding him. Malaa kept pacing, pressing and releasing the phone, trying to find someone in the police station who knew where Jin had gone.
A police officer approached, footsteps soft.
Officer:
"We've detained a suspect. The man who brought him in was reported leaving the scene. We have a vehicle and witnesses. We're processing him now."
Hanaya's head snapped up like a struck bird.
Hanaya:
"Where— is he arrested? Where is he?"
Officer:
"In custody. We'll take his statement and that will help the doctors as well."
Relief and fury braided together in Hanaya's chest. She had been saved from rage by the situation itself; there would be questions, blame, and answers in time.
Time settled into a small and cruel rhythm: updates that tasted like ice. The OR door opened, a nurse whispered a name, and the surgeon appeared briefly afterwards.
Surgeon:
"We've begun. We're doing our best. He's very young. Please stay here. We'll come out when we have a clearer picture."
Hanaya clutched at Malaa's sleeve. She felt suddenly very old and very fragile, the kind of fragility that makes wrong things happen on purpose.
"Please," she kept saying into her hands. "Please, please."
Then, as the hours folded, a woman came into the corridor like a tide lifting something up — not a police uniform or hospital gown, but the raw shape of a mother who had been pulled by some private chain. She was older than Hanaya, eyes rimmed in red, but when she saw Hanaya she did not ask first. She knelt and took Hanaya's hands in her own as if they belonged there.
MK's Real Mother:
"My son. I heard… I heard what happened. Where is he?"
Hanaya:
"He— he's in surgery. The doctors said twenty percent. I'm so sorry, I didn't— I didn't know how to keep him safe."
MK's mother breathed in a way that made the whole corridor hush.
MK's Real Mother:
"I gave him life. I left once — the man I married left me alone with a child and a life I couldn't hold. I missed years. I did not know how to be enough. But when I heard… when I heard he was here… I came."
Her voice was even and simple, framed in a regret that felt like a confession.
MK's Real Mother:
"You must understand — he chose who he clung to in the dark. He called someone 'mummy' because he was small and afraid. That word does not belong to the one who abandoned him. It belongs to the one who answers."
Hanaya's shoulders shook. Words pooled like water in her mouth and she could not make them into sentences. The two women did not speak of blame; they spoke of failure and of need.
Outside the OR, an attending physician finally emerged. He spoke to them in measured tones.
Attending Physician:
"The surgery is longer than anticipated. He sustained severe injuries to both upper limbs that will require extensive repair and treatment to preserve function. The head injury was significant. We were able to stabilize the immediate bleed, but this will be a long recovery if he survives. The heart complication was addressed during surgery; we stabilized him for the moment. Again, the immediate prognosis is guarded. We will update you as soon as we can."
Hanaya felt as if a great expanse opened and swallowed her words. Twenty percent. Stabilized for the moment. Long recovery.
Malaa:
"He fought? He's so young — how could someone do this to him?"
MK's mother held Hanaya's hand firmly.
MK's Real Mother:
"We will be here. I am here now. I will not leave him."
Later, when the bustle slowed and the emergency lights softened to ordinary fluorescent hum, the police returned. They sat across from Hanaya at the bench and explained what they had recovered: witnesses, the car, the way the suspect had behaved.
Officer:
"We have enough to charge him with assault and endangerment. He will be held. The hospital will follow up with the statements. For now, we need you to try to rest. We will update you in the morning."
Hanaya nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Jin, the man whose presence had rewritten her life, was now on the other side of a charge taped into paper and procedure. That knowledge gave her something like steadiness, but it did not mend the hole that had been left in the white place where MK had been.
Night thinned into something quieter, and someone wheeled a tiny cot into a small family room near the pediatric ward. They told them he was in recovery; a nurse said: he was breathing on his own for now and the ICU bed was ready if necessary. They told them to go see him when it was permitted.
Hanaya stood beside the small window of the recovery room and looked down at the tiny figure under the blanket — the boy who had crossed oceans in a promise, the boy who had called her a name she had not known how to hold.
She bent and pressed her forehead to the glass, whispering in a voice that was torn rag and prayer.
Hanaya:
"MK… please wake up. Please let me be the person you need."
At her back, MK's mother spoke in a voice that had the quiet of someone who had learned to wait for things to be earned.
MK's Real Mother:
"He will need both of us, if he wakes. You chose to come for him. That counts."
Hanaya inhaled and for the first time since the ambulance, something like resolve blinked into being.
Outside, the snow had stopped falling. The city lights were wet and honest in the puddles. The night had been long and had reshaped everything they had thought immovable.
On a bench by the hospital entrance, Hanaya, Malaa, and MK's mother sat close, linked in their fear. Each of them had their own weight of regret; each had their own reason to stay.
T
he night had given them a wound — and now the rest of the story would be the long and quiet work of tending it.