Summary

In the final section of Flashlight, Louisa arrives in Seoul to manage her father’s care at the National Medical Center. She learns the bus lines, keeps track of where the hired caretaker has gone, and builds a routine that protects small pockets of quiet. The work is practical and constant. She wheels the chair, lifts the foot back onto the rest, and times her visits to escape the shift changes that turn the corridors into a chorus. Midway through one of these rounds the narration records the atmosphere she must fight against to reach him: “the room is loud enough that he cannot hear me” (289). The sentence fixes the conflict of the ward in sound and makes attention feel like labor measured in inches and minutes.

Forms and orders accumulate. Louisa reads instruction sheets, signs consents, and refuses the options that would...