by Yangsze Choo
“Swing by the hospital first,” says William. “I have to drop some paperwork off.”
The hospital. Ren squeezes the basket handle.
As they motor closer to town, the trim lawns and gravel drives of other bungalows come into view. Ren knows a few of the houses now, but they are so far apart, so secluded by the lush jungle, that he never hears the neighbors. Ren can tell which houses have European wives: they’re planted with neat beds of cannas and ginger flowers and surrounded by hibiscus and oleander shrubs. There are oleanders behind William’s house, too, but Ah Long always tells the gardener to cut them back. The soft twigs ooze a milky sap that will blind you, he says darkly, and a decoction of leaves will poison stray dogs.
Rounding a bend, the breeze through the open windows whips a sheet of crumpled newspaper out of Ren’s basket, into the backseat where William catches it deftly in one hand.
“Sorry, Tuan!” Ren glances back, but his master, staring at the paper, lets out a sharp exclamation.
“Is this last week’s paper?”
Guiltily, Ren nods. Are they not allowed to use it? There’s an odd expression on William’s face. The sheet of newspaper that’s transfixed him is the obituary section, with rows of black-and-white photographs. Ren says, “Did someone you know die?”
William bites his lip. “A patient of mine.”
“Was he an old man?”
“No, quite a young one. Poor fellow.”
After a long moment, William passes the crumpled paper back to Ren who stuffs it back in the basket, but not before glancing curiously at the page. The only listing for a young man is a Mr. Chan Yew Cheung, salesman. Twenty-eight years old.
William closes his eyes, fingers loosely knotted in his lap. Long, white fingers capable of stitching up a wound or amputating a limb. He hums lightly. Ren wonders why his master looks relieved, even happy.
As the car turns in at the hospital, Ren feels an electric thrill as though a faint, far-off radio signal is connecting. It shivers through his body the same way that he and Yi used to connect. The finger is here. He’s suddenly sure of it. William picks up a leather briefcase and gets out. Quickly, Ren jumps out, too.
“May I carry your bag, Tuan?”
William stops to look at him. “Do you want to see the hospital?”
There are two sections, explains William. This part is the district hospital for locals, while the European wing exclusively for foreigners lies across the street. William nods at the receptionist. Doors open, people smile. Trailing in William’s wake, Ren wonders whether all Europeans are treated like this or perhaps it’s the combination of being a surgeon as well.
There’s a strict medical hierarchy, Dr. MacFarlane used to joke, with general practitioners like himself at the bottom of the heap. But Dr. MacFarlane was very skilled, Ren thinks. He treated patients that everyone else had given up as hopeless, like the orang asli hunter who came in with an infected arm and the Chinese storekeeper’s baby with convulsions. He doctored them all, often with surprising results.
“I’m going to stop by the wards, since I’m here,” William says. The long corridors, tiled in a checkerboard of brown and cream, smell like disinfectant. “Do you want to see your patient?”
Ren is confused. What patient?
“The woman whose leg you treated. It just so happens that she came in again.”
Of course Ren wants to see her, though he feels suddenly shy. The ward is empty except for an old man asleep with his mouth open, and the young woman who’s sitting up in the next bed. Ren is surprised at her appearance. She looks nothing like she did lying in a wheelbarrow with her leg dripping blood all over the driveway. Now, her honey-colored skin is fresh and her hair neatly braided. She has a dimpled face that’s exactly heart-shaped, and when William asks to see her leg, she colors.
“This is Ren,” he says. “The person who treated you at my house.”
Ren notices that he doesn’t say “my houseboy” or “my servant” and feels obscurely proud.
“So young!” she says. Her name, according to the patient manifest, is Nandani Wijedasa, and she’s eighteen years old, unmarried. Her father is a clerk at the rubber estate near their house, and she was readmitted this morning for fever and pain in the leg.
William gently pulls up the loose hospital-issue pajamas with a reassuring smile. The wound is smaller than Ren remembered, though still a shocking gash on the back of her smooth calf. Sutured with black thread, it looks tender and puffy.
“We’ll need to open it up again and irrigate it, maybe debride the tissue and then reclose it. When you go home, keep a gauze pad soaked in carbolic on it to prevent infection. You must keep the wound clean, otherwise you might get blood poisoning. Do you understand?”
He looks directly at her and a spark jumps between them. Ren’s cat sense hasn’t been this strong since Yi’s death. What’s the meaning of this? But he knows, without even raising his head, that something is happening between William and the young woman Nandani. Some kind of attraction that makes the doctor linger as Nandani bats her long curling eyelashes.
Ren isn’t the only person to think so. A foreign lady has come in, pushing a trolley with novels and back issues of Punch and The Lady for patients to read. Her eyes, an astonishing electric blue, fix on William’s back.
“William—what brings you in today?”
Turning, William says, “Hello, Lydia.”
Sunlight streaming into the ward picks out the gold in her pretty curls, and Ren wonders whether her hair is fluffy all the time or if it has to be steamed and pressed, like a sponge cake.
“One of your patients?” Lydia gives the Sinhalese girl on the bed a quick stare.
“Not mine.” He glances at Ren, who gazes shyly at the crack in the floorboards next to Nandani’s bed.
Drawing William aside, Lydia threads her arm through his. “Leslie said you’re hosting the next get-together for the younger doctors.”
“It’s just a group of bachelors talking shop. Not very interesting, I’m afraid.” He turns up the charm.
Lydia looks both hopeful and plaintive. “Can I come?”
“Only if you don’t mind hearing about tropical diseases.”
“Not at all! I want to help as much as possible—sometimes people don’t know what’s best for them.”
While they talk, Nandani touches Ren’s sleeve. “Thank you.” Her smile is warm and Ren is very glad that she’s alive and not lying dead in a wheelbarrow full of blood. “Are you studying to be a doctor?”
“I’d like to.”
“You will be a good doctor.” Her eyes drift to William. “Is your master kind to you?”
Ren realizes, with a feeling of surprise, that yes, William has been good to him.
“He’s nice,” she says. There it is again, that invisible spark between her and William. It flies out with a tiny sizzle, so that Ren half expects to see it flare in the air.
William turns round to Nandani again. “Where do you live?” he asks.
Shyly, she tells him her address.
He writes it down in the little notebook he carries in his breast pocket. “You’re quite close to my place. If you stop by, I’ll look at your leg again next week. No need to come to the hospital.”
Behind William, Lydia sorts her book trolley industriously.
Ren can’t sense anything from her at all. Perhaps because she’s an unknown quantity—a foreigner and a lady—and he has almost no experience with this combination. She and William make a well-matched pair. They’re both so tall, with light eyes and skin mottled from the fierce sun, not smooth and evenly colored like Nandani’s. Ren feels sorry for the foreign lady; she’s trying so hard. Why doesn’t William like her?
* * *
Done with the wards, Ren trots along next to William. He’s giddy with his cat sense, that long-lost sensation of feeling the invisible, as though he’s regained a limb or an extra set of eyes and ears. What is it about the hospital that’s so special?
William says he’ll stop by pathology to see his colleague Dr. Rawlings. He has a question for him about an autopsy report. Ren knows that pathology means organs and bits of dead people and animals, a good sign that it’s where the finger is. Buzzing with excitement, he’s confident that even with his eyes closed, he’ll finally be able to locate it.
As they navigate the covered walkways, lined with beds of day lilies on one side, Ren discovers he can read William now in a way he never could before. William’s interest is like a taut string. It snaps around, but mostly it’s drawn to women. Nurses passing, a lady visitor bending over a bed. Certainly, William doesn’t pay attention to the things that Ren notices, like the spider behind the door, or the perfectly round pebble under the lilies that Ren would like to put in his pocket but doesn’t dare to because it’s probably hospital property.
As they draw nearer the pathology department, the twitch of invisible filaments grows so strong that Ren is tense with excitement. It’s never been like this before, not even with Yi. They turn a corner. William pats his breast pocket, then rummages in his trousers with annoyance. “Ren, go back and fetch my fountain pen. The ward sister will have it.”
With a wrench, Ren watches as William crosses to another building, opens the door, and goes in. Something in that room is calling Ren, drawing him, even at fifty feet, like a magnet. He must enter that room.
But retrieving William’s fountain pen is an order he can’t disobey. The name of the pen, William has explained, is that of the highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc. The white, rounded star on the pen represents the snow-covered peak, and it has an engraved nib made out of real gold. It’s the pen he uses to write letters every day. If he doesn’t find it, William will be very unhappy.
Rushing back, Ren gets confused and takes a wrong turn. It’s hard to filter out the flood of signals that assail him. Like a mirror full of fish, he recalls the blind fisherman Pak Idris saying. You must know their song. Though what he senses right now is more like fireflies darting in the darkness. They move in odd and random patterns of people’s interests and emotions, and Ren thinks that if only he can find a still, quiet place, he’ll able to sort them out. But first, he must retrieve the pen. The ward sister on duty tells him that she’s given it to Matron.
Matron, like most of the senior staff, is a foreigner. A sharp-faced Australian woman, she’s all elbows and briskness and looks doubtfully at him when he finally arrives at her office. “This is an expensive pen. You’d best not drop it.” Her white, starched headdress stands out like stiff wings. Clutching the pen, Ren hastens anxiously back to the pathology storeroom. At one point he breaks into a run, only to meet angry glares from adults. No need to ask for directions. The wires are humming in his head, singing. As he races around the last corner, he cannons into William.
“Did you find it?” he asks.
Dazed, Ren stares at him. The pen. He produces it triumphantly.
“Splendid!” William looks pleased, but whether it’s because he’s regained his fountain pen or something good has happened in that room, Ren can’t tell. In fact, William is in a far better mood than he’s been all week. Ren peers past him. The door is now ajar, but the dazzling sunlight makes it hard to see the dim interior. There’s a lean shadow in the doorway. A man perhaps—it looks too tall for a woman. Is this the Dr. Rawlings that William spoke of?
Electricity runs through him. Ren’s thoughts become jumbled, incoherent. His cat whiskers sizzle. He must go back, to the room that William has just exited, but instead he sways on his feet.
“Steady,” says William, marching Ren over to a bench. “Did you not eat lunch?”
Ren shakes his head. Neither he nor Ah Long planned for him to go on this surprise excursion into town.
“Let’s get you something then. There’s a café in town with decent coffee.”
Tears of frustration prick Ren’s eyes as he’s led all the way back to the front of the hospital where Harun is waiting for them, squatting next to the parked car in the shade. As the car pulls away, he looks back at the hospital. It isn’t that far from the Kinta Club where William is planning to go later. Perhaps Ren can return quietly by himself. In fact, he must.
16
Batu Gajah District Hospital
Saturday, June 13th
The foreigner, William Acton, stood in the open doorway of the pathology storeroom. “I haven’t seen you before. You’re not a nurse are you?”
“No, I’m just helping out.” I recognized the flicker of acquisitive interest in his eyes. It made me nervous. Where was Shin?
“I see,” but he didn’t move from the door.
I stood there awkwardly, holding a jar with part of an intestine in it. He took his glasses off and rubbed his face, a gesture that made him look oddly naked and unwell. His skin was grey under its tan and there were rings under his eyes. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five though his movements seemed quick enough.
“Do you work for Rawlings then?”
I nodded. He smiled then. It was completely unexpected and lent his face a haggard charm.
“I suppose you won’t tell me your name?”
“Louise.” That at least I knew how to answer.
“Well, Louise, you don’t seem very squeamish about these specimens.”
“I’m not,” I said coolly.
“Some of them were actually contributed by me.”
Despite myself, I was curious. “You’ve donated your own organs to science?” I thought people only did that after they were dead.
The foreign doctor smiled again. “I meant patients of mine. Let’s see—I think I did an unusually large gallstone and a couple of fingers.”
“Fingers?” I was instantly alert.
“One was a vestigial sixth finger removed from an Indian patient. Another actually belonged to a friend of mine. We’ve got quite a collection of digits here, at least a dozen if I recall.”
He crossed the room, pointing out a large jar of murky fluid. “This should be dumped. A lot of the older specimens are fixed in alcohol, which really ought to be changed once a year. We only keep them if they’re medically interesting. And of course, some people take their own parts back to be buried with them.”
He leaned in, and I took a step sideways. I was wary of standing close to men. Working at the May Flower had taught me their long reach, their surprising strength, and how difficult it was to twist away if you were seized by the waist. But there were no glowering bouncers right now, nor the Mama with her eagle eye. It was just the two of us alone in this room. If I screamed, would anyone come?
But perhaps I was being overly suspicious, as he kept talking about various specimens. He seemed to know quite a lot about them.
“How long do you keep them for?”
“No idea. They’re mostly curiosities—the orderlies like to bring the trainee nurses in after dark to give them a thrill.”
I couldn’t resist asking, “Is it hard to become a nurse in this hospital?”
“Have you gone to school? You sound like it.”
Briefly, I told him about having finished my School Certificate and how I wanted to do something else.
“I see.” He rubbed his chin, appraising me again. “It’s not a very standardized system, nothing like what we have in Britain. Here it depends on the hospital. Batu Gajah District Hospital trains local girls to fill positions. Lectures on nursing are given by senior nursing staff and some of the doctors, and there’s a state examination.”
“Are there still vacancies for trainees?” The hopeful note in my voice embarrassed me, but he looked pleased at my interest.
“You’d have to find out from the hospital. If not this year, there’s always the next intake.”
“What about school fees?” I’d no money of my own after making my mother’s debt payments, and as long as my stepfather refused to fund me, the door was closed.
“I believe there are scholarships. You’d need a personal recommendation,
of course.”
There was something in his eye, a sort of greedy loneliness that I recognized from all those long afternoons dancing with strangers.
“Here’s my card.” He handed me a sharp-edged rectangle of paper. “Give it to the medical director and say you’re interested in nursing. Or you can fill out an application and I’ll pass it on to Matron.”
It read: William Acton, General Surgeon, followed by a row of letters that meant nothing to me but were apparently enough to carry weight with hospital officials.
Perhaps I’d misjudged him. I shouldn’t be so distrustful; it closed doors and pushed people away. My last year in school my form mistress, distressed that I wasn’t going on for my Higher Secondary Certificate, had offered to come home with me to persuade my parents. There were only a handful of girls sitting that examination, perhaps four or five in the entire country, and she was sure I could be one of them. I’d refused. I couldn’t bear to bring her to my stepfather’s house to witness his refusal and my humiliation. But maybe I should have fought harder.
So this time, I said “thank you” and really meant it. Tucking the card into my pocket, I felt the engraved name slide under my fingertips.
Perhaps my luck had changed. I’d heard people say that luck—good and bad—came in phases, like the story of Joseph in the Bible. My mother had sent me to a school founded by Methodist preachers, and the quiet chanting, the standing and sitting, and opening of hymnals had been a solace to me, even while I’d thought about dreadful, evil things, like poisoning my stepfather.
But the salesman, Chan Yew Cheung, had also talked about luck. In fact, he’d said that he was about to be very fortunate though he’d ended up dead in a ditch.
* * *
There was a rattle in the corridor, and Shin, carrying yet another box of files, barged in. He stopped short, surprised.
“Well, I’ll be on my way,” said the surgeon, suddenly brisk.
Shin circled warily into the room. He looked at William Acton, then at my flushed, excited face.
