Eomma's Warning

The garden door stuck in its frame the way it always did in winter, swollen wood grinding against swollen wood until I put my shoulder into it and felt the whole thing shudder open. Cold air rushed in — not the brutal cold of mainland winters, but Tasmania's particular brand of damp chill, the kind that bypassed your skin and settled directly into your joints.

I stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind me.

The Vaucluse gardens were modest by any standard — a rectangle of lawn bordered by native shrubs, a few benches positioned for views of the Derwent, a vegetable patch that the activities coordinator maintained with more enthusiasm than skill. But they served their purpose. Residents who could manage the paths came out here to feel sun on their faces, to remember what grass smelled like, to escape the recycled air and fluorescent hum that defined institutional living.

Right now, in the flat grey light of a July afternoon, the garden was empty. Too cold for most of the residents, too early for the smokers who gathered near the back fence during shift changes. I had perhaps ten minutes before someone noticed I wasn't where I was supposed to be.

I walked to the bench beneath the liquidambar — bare now, its branches like cracks in the sky — and sat down without bothering to brush away the moisture beading on the slats. The cold seeped through my uniform trousers immediately. I let it. There was something clarifying about discomfort, a way it pulled you out of your head and into your body.

I needed that right now.

The morning had started normally enough. Handover at seven, the night staff's voices muzzy with fatigue as they ran through the usual updates — Mrs Patterson's blood pressure still elevated, Mr Hennessy refusing his evening medications again, the woman in 12B whose name none of us could remember asking repeatedly for her daughter who'd died in 1987. The ordinary sorrows of aged care, parcelled into dot points and medication charts.

Then Gangley.

I pressed my fingers against my eyelids until colours bloomed in the darkness. The image was still there, waiting: the old man's face twisted with righteous disgust, his finger jabbing toward my chest, the word hanky-panky delivered like a stone through glass.

Not a stone. Something else. A word that shattered on impact and left splinters everywhere.

And Jamie. Jamie standing there with that expression I couldn't read, watching me be accused of something I hadn't done with the person I wished it had been.

아이고. The Korean exclamation escaped under my breath, the sound my grandmother made when something was too complicated for English. Because that was the shape of it, wasn't it? The cosmic joke at the centre of this disaster. Gangley had seen me kissing someone in the stairwell — had appointed himself moral guardian of Vaucluse's professional standards — but he'd gotten the wrong name. The wrong story. He'd handed Jamie a piece of information about me that was simultaneously true and completely misleading.

I had kissed someone in that stairwell. Just not Jamie.

Never Jamie.

The thought of Jamie carried its own particular weight — a pressure behind my sternum that I'd learned to breathe around, the way you learn to accommodate a chronic ache. I'd watched him for months now, cataloguing the small details the way I'd been trained to observe patients: the specific angle of his shoulders when he was stressed, the way he pulled at his left earlobe when thinking, the unconscious kindness in how he touched the elderly, never rushed, never rough. I knew things about Jamie Greyson that he probably didn't know about himself.

And now he knew something about me.

The wrong thing. The useless thing. The fact that I'd kissed someone who wasn't him, in a moment of weakness I'd regretted before it was even finished. A temporary anaesthetic for a longing I couldn't act on and couldn't seem to cure.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out expecting a message from Virginia — some follow-up to the Gangley incident, more careful diplomacy to navigate — but the screen showed something else. A photograph of my mother at Eleanor's graduation, her good coat buttoned to the collar, her smile carrying that particular mixture of pride and worry that seemed encoded in Korean maternal DNA.

엄마

I could let it go to voicemail. She'd understand. I was at work, I was busy, I'd call her back tonight from the flat while the kettle boiled and the day's tension slowly unwound.

But I'd been raised better than that. Some reflexes went deeper than convenience.

"여보세요, 엄마."

"아들아." The warmth in her voice was immediate, enveloping, the vocal equivalent of being wrapped in a blanket you'd known since childhood. "I tried the flat first. No answer, so I thought you must be at work."

"I'm on break." Technically true. "Is everything alright?"

"Everything is fine. Does something need to be wrong for a mother to call?" The familiar deflection, delivered with familiar rhythm. I could picture her in the kitchen of the Glenorchy house, phone tucked between ear and shoulder while her hands did something else — chopping vegetables, sorting laundry, the perpetual motion that had defined her for as long as I could remember. "I wanted to remind you about Sunday. Your 아빠 is making a big deal about the garden, wants to show you what he's done with the native section."

"I'll be there." The promise came automatically. After this morning, after Gangley and Jamie and the wreckage of a secret I hadn't meant to have exposed, the prospect of my parents' kitchen — warm light, familiar smells, the uncomplicated comfort of family — felt like something I needed.

"Good. 할머니 is asking about you."

The mention of my grandmother sent a familiar pulse of guilt through my chest. Three weeks since my last visit. Her Alzheimer's had been advancing slowly, each week erasing a little more of the woman who'd helped raise me, but she still remembered my Korean name. Still asked for 상훈이, even when she couldn't remember what year it was or that her husband had been dead for a decade.

"How is she?"

"The same. Yesterday she thought your 아빠 was her brother." A small sigh, the sound of someone who had made peace with grief by parcelling it into manageable portions. "But she's comfortable. The staff at Rosewood are good with her."

"I should visit more."

"You should. But I understand. Work is hard." A pause. I heard the particular creak of the kitchen floorboard, the one near the doorway that had been squeaking since I was twelve. "Speaking of work — how are things at Vaucluse? Any problems?"

The question landed differently than it should have. There was something beneath it, a weight in the words that didn't match their surface meaning. My mother had a gift for this — for asking ordinary questions that carried extraordinary cargo, for leaving space in conversations that invited confession.

"Fine," I said. "The usual challenges. Nothing I can't handle."

"Mmm." A sound that could have meant anything or nothing. "Any interesting patients lately? New admissions?"

Now I was certain. Something was happening beneath this conversation, a current I couldn't quite see.

"Why do you ask?"

"Just curious. You know how it is — I spent thirty years in hospitals, I can't help being interested." The words were casual, but the delivery was too careful. My mother was building toward something, constructing her approach the way she might construct a care plan — methodical, considered, each element placed with intention. "Actually, I heard something recently. Through 진영 언니. You remember her? She was at Royal Hobart with me in the nineties, moved to Willowbrook in Queensland after her divorce."

I didn't remember, but the ACMAN network was vast — decades of professional relationships maintained through conference catch-ups and consultation requests and the peculiar loyalty that seemed to develop among nurses who'd worked the same wards, handled the same crises, learned the same hard lessons about institutional care.

"What did you hear?"

"Probably nothing. Old gossip, you know how it circulates." But her voice had tightened slightly, the way it did when she was approaching a topic that worried her. "She mentioned that someone had been transferred back to Tasmania recently. From an Obsidian facility on the mainland. A woman who used to work in the system here, years ago. Before my time, but—" She paused. "Her name was Trenowyth. Before she married. Constance Trenowyth."

The name landed in my chest like a held breath.

"엄마—"

"진영 remembered the name from when the institutions were closing. In the nineties, when everything was being restructured, staff reassigned. There was talk then, among the nurses, about certain people who... who shouldn't be given access to vulnerable patients. Names that circulated quietly. Warnings passed between colleagues." Another pause. "Trenowyth was one of those names."

I stared out at the garden without seeing it. The Derwent beyond the hedgerow had disappeared into the grey, water and sky merging into a single flat plane. Constance's face rose in my mind — those clear eyes, that measured voice, the particular quality of attention she gave to everything around her.

"엄마, I know her."

Silence on the line. Then: "What do you mean, you know her?"

"She's one of my patients. Constance Addleton — that's her married name now. She's been at Vaucluse since May. I was assigned to her when she arrived." The words came out steady, but something was shifting in my chest, tectonic plates of assumption grinding against each other. "She's seventy-nine years old. She uses a wheelchair. She has early-stage vascular dementia on her chart."

"아들아—"

"I see her every shift, 엄마. I help with her meals, her medication, her transfers. I've been caring for her for almost three months." I heard the defensiveness in my voice and couldn't stop it. "Whatever stories were going around thirty years ago, whatever rumours 진영 언니 heard — this is an old woman we're talking about. She's frail. She needs help getting dressed in the morning."

"What is she like?" My mother's voice had gone very quiet. "This woman you've been caring for. Tell me about her."

I thought about how to answer. How to describe Constance Addleton to someone who'd never met her, never sat with her in the amber afternoon light of Room 3C while she talked about the things she'd seen, the places she'd been, the long strange journey of her life.

"She's... intelligent. Sharp, even with the dementia — you wouldn't know there was anything wrong if you just talked to her. She notices things. Remembers things." I paused, searching for the right words. "She's interested in people. She asks questions — real questions, not just small talk. About my training, my family, my—" I stopped myself before saying meditation practice, suddenly reluctant to share how much I'd told her. "She's kind, 엄마. Thoughtful. Not like some of them."

"What kind of questions about your family?"

The sharpness in my mother's voice caught me off guard. "What?"

"You said she asks about your family. What does she ask?"

I tried to remember. The conversations with Constance had accumulated over weeks, layering on top of each other until individual moments blurred together. She'd asked about my parents — their work, their backgrounds, how they'd met. She'd asked about Eleanor and Nathaniel. She'd expressed particular interest in my grandmother's condition, asking detailed questions about the progression of her Alzheimer's, the facility she was in, the challenges of watching someone you loved disappear by degrees.

At the time, it had felt like compassion. Like the interest of someone who understood aged care, who'd spent her own career navigating the complicated territories of illness and decline. Now, with my mother's warning echoing in my ears, I wasn't sure what it felt like.

"Normal things," I said. "Getting-to-know-you things. She was a nurse herself, she understands the work. We have things in common."

"What things?"

"엄마, why are you—"

"What things, 아들아?"

I exhaled slowly, watching my breath cloud in the cold air. The garden remained empty around me, but I had the sudden uncomfortable sense of being observed. Not by anyone present — by the conversation itself, by the weight of what my mother was trying to tell me.

"She said I remind her of herself when she was younger. That I have good instincts for this work. That I understand things most people don't — about patience, about observation, about the value of being quiet instead of filling every silence with noise." I paused. "She said I was wasted on general care. That I should be doing something more specialised."

"And how did that make you feel? When she said these things?"

The question cut closer than I expected. How had it made me feel? Seen. Recognised. Valued in a way that my colleagues at Vaucluse never seemed to manage. Most of the staff treated me as competent but slightly odd — too quiet, too intense, too willing to spend extra time with patients who couldn't remember his name five minutes after he left. Constance treated me as something else. An equal, almost. Someone worth paying attention to.

"It felt good," I admitted. "It felt like someone finally understood."

My mother made a sound I couldn't interpret — somewhere between a sigh and something sharper. I heard her set something down, heard the particular silence that meant she was giving this conversation her complete attention.

"아들아, listen to me carefully. I'm not saying this woman is dangerous. I'm not saying the stories are true — they were rumours, old gossip, the kind of thing that circulates when institutions close and people need someone to blame for the things that happened there." She paused. "But I am saying that certain people... certain people learn to recognise vulnerability. They learn what people need to hear. They create trust very quickly, very skilfully, and by the time you realise what's happening—"

"엄마, she's seventy-nine years old. She can barely get out of her chair without help. Whatever she might have been fifty years ago—"

"It's not about physical threat, 아들아." My mother's voice had dropped lower, taking on the particular intensity she reserved for things that truly mattered. "It's about patterns. About the kind of person who collects information, who studies the people around them, who builds... 관계." The Korean word for relationship, but carrying connotations that didn't translate directly — obligation, connection, the invisible threads that bound people together. "You said she asks about your family. About 할머니. About your training, your interests, the things that matter to you. Has she shared equivalent things about herself?"

I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped.

What did I actually know about Constance Addleton? She'd mentioned New Norfolk once or twice — obliquely, nostalgically, as though referring to a beloved school rather than an institution whose name still carried weight in Tasmanian memory. She'd spoken about her husband, dead now for over twenty years, in terms so vague I couldn't have described him to anyone. She'd referenced her childhood in the Meander Valley, but only in fragments, disconnected images that never quite assembled into a coherent picture.

I knew she liked the garden at Vaucluse, particularly the corner near the pepper tree where the light fell a certain way in late afternoon. I knew she had opinions about the staff — who was competent, who was careless, who would last and who wouldn't. I knew she carried a set of brass keys on a faded leather fob, keys that fit no locks in the building, and that she touched them sometimes while she talked, a gesture that seemed more like communion than habit.

But I didn't know her. Not really. Not the way she seemed to know me.

"She's private," I said finally. "She doesn't talk about herself much. But that's not unusual — a lot of patients are like that. Especially the ones who've had difficult lives."

"Or the ones who have things to hide."

"엄마—"

"I'm not asking you to do anything, 아들아. I'm not asking you to stop caring for her or to treat her differently. I'm just asking you to... to pay attention. To notice if she's asking for things she shouldn't know. To be careful about what you tell her."

"You're asking me to distrust my own patient."

"I'm asking you to protect yourself." Her voice softened. "You have a good heart, 아들아. You always have. It's why you're good at this work — you see the person inside the patient, you treat everyone with dignity, you give them the benefit of the doubt. These are virtues. But they can also be vulnerabilities, if someone knows how to use them."

I said nothing. The cold had seeped through my trousers entirely now, numbing my thighs, but I couldn't bring myself to move. My mother's words had opened something I didn't want to examine — a small crack in the foundation of the past three months, letting in light that changed the shape of everything above it.

"What exactly did they say about her?" I asked finally. "At New Norfolk. What was she supposed to have done?"

My mother was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was careful, choosing each word with the precision of someone handling fragile objects.

"진영 didn't have specifics. It was all secondhand — things she'd heard from nurses who'd worked there, who'd known people who'd worked there. But the shape of it..." She paused. "They said she was methodical. Unusually so, even by nursing standards. They said patients under her care were often reclassified — from responsive to non-responsive, from manageable to requiring increased intervention. They said she had a gift for reading people, for knowing what they needed, for becoming indispensable to them before they realised what was happening."

"That could describe any good nurse."

"Yes. It could." Another pause. "They also said that people who crossed her had a way of... encountering difficulties. Not directly traceable to her — nothing you could prove, nothing you could report. But a pattern, if you knew to look for it. Medication errors that affected the wrong patients. Information that reached the wrong ears. Small things that accumulated into large consequences."

"That sounds like paranoia, 엄마. Like people looking for someone to blame when things went wrong."

"Maybe. Probably." My mother sighed. "But 진영 was specific about one thing. She said the nurses who'd worked with this woman — the ones who got close to her, who trusted her — they all said the same thing afterward. That she made them feel special. That she made them feel seen. That she gave them exactly what they needed, exactly when they needed it, and that by the time they realised what they'd given her in return..."

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.

I sat on the cold bench, in the grey garden, with my phone pressed to my ear and my understanding of the past three months quietly rearranging itself.

She made them feel special. She made them feel seen.

I thought about Constance asking about my meditation practice, listening with that focused attention as I described the retreat I'd attended, the teacher who'd helped me understand the value of stillness. I'd told her things I hadn't told anyone — about the loneliness of being the quiet one in a family of talkers, about the particular isolation of moving through the world as neither fully Korean nor fully Australian, about the way aged care had given me a place where my intensity was an asset rather than a liability.

She'd understood. She'd said exactly the right things.

She gave them exactly what they needed, exactly when they needed it.

"아들아?" My mother's voice, soft with concern. "Are you still there?"

"I'm here." My voice sounded strange to my own ears — flattened, careful. "I should get back to work."

"Of course. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" She stopped herself. "Just be careful. That's all I'm asking. 조심해."

"I will."

"And come Sunday. Let me feed you. Whatever is happening at that place, it'll look different after 잡채 and a good night's sleep."

I managed something like a laugh. "That's your solution to everything."

"Because it works." I could hear her smiling. "사랑해, 아들아."

"사랑해요, 엄마."

I ended the call and sat for a moment longer, watching the clouds shift over the Derwent. The grey had deepened while I'd been talking, taking on the particular weight that preceded rain. The afternoon was sliding toward evening, and I had rounds to finish, patients who needed care, a job to do.

Somewhere inside Vaucluse, in Room 3C of the west wing, Constance Addleton sat in her wheelchair with her brass keys and her careful questions and her gift for making people feel seen.

I didn't know what to believe. My mother's warnings felt both excessive and insufficient — too dramatic for the frail old woman I'd been caring for, too plausible given everything she'd described. The shape of Constance that emerged from her story didn't match the shape I knew, but shapes were deceptive. You could look at the same object from different angles and see entirely different things.

She asks questions. She remembers things. She's interested in people.

Was that kindness? Or was it something else — something more calculated, more purposeful, dressed in kindness's clothes?

The garden door groaned as I pushed it open. The warmth of the corridor hit my face like a gentle slap, reminding me how cold I'd let myself get. I walked back toward the east wing, past the staff notice board with its layers of memos and rosters, past the supply closet where someone had finally fixed the lock, past the window that looked out on the car park where my second-hand Corolla sat waiting to take me home.

I had work to do. Whatever questions my mother had planted, whatever doubts were now circling like gulls over trawler-wake, they could wait until I had time to examine them properly. Constance wasn't going anywhere. Neither were my uncertainties.