by Anna Ferrara
I was chewing on my lip and just about to press enter when—
—my StarTAC, which I had left in one of my work boxes, began beeping! My finger jumped to the ‘Delete’ key at the top of the keyboard at once and held it down, firmly, until all the words I had just typed vanished from sight. My breathing quickened; I felt as if I had nearly been caught watching porn. Neither my phone nor computer had a camera attached to it but that didn’t seem to matter; I just didn’t feel safe having those words out in the open, not while interacting with another person.
Especially not when that person was my mother!
I brought the black clamshell device out of the box, rolled my eyes, then pulled its tiny antenna upwards and pressed the button with the green ‘OK’ on it to answer. My cheeks felt hot, as if I had just been doing something dreadfully wrong.
“What, Mummy?” I said in Cantonese. “I’m busy right now.”
“You’re always busy! And you never call! Have you asked for a promotion yet?”
“Yes. They said they’ll think about it.”
“What is there to think about? You’ve been there for six years!”
“Mummy, I’m in the middle of something.”
“It can wait. Did you meet anyone in the past two weeks?”
Yes, but she’s a woman, I thought. “No,” I said.
“Did you even go out?”
I sighed and stretched the ends of my eyes with my fingers. “Of course not.”
“Daughter, you need to understand that every woman needs a partner. You will suffer in old age if you remain single for the rest of your life.”
“I know, Mummy. I got it. Can I go now? I’m really in the middle of something. I really need to go. I’ve lots to do today.”
“Alright, alright! Do you want to come back for dinner this weekend? I’ll cook tomato sauce pork chops if you do.”
My favourite. Unfortunately, in that moment, food was the last thing I cared about. “I can’t. I have work to do.”
“Again? On both evenings? That’s ridiculous. Your company is awful. Change it!”
“Okay, I’ll think about it. Bye, Mummy!”
“Call me when you’re free!”
“Okay, bye!”
“I mean it!”
“Bye!”
When I hung up, I felt as if I had just evaded danger.
I went back to my search right away. ‘What is a gay woman?’ I rammed my index finger down, hard, on the enter button this time.
Alta Vista couldn’t find many results on gay women. Most of the web pages it found were about gay men and… none of them were saying anything good.
In one page, a senator in the United States likened being gay to a condition ‘just like alcohol, or sex addiction, or kleptomania.’ ‘A pathology in need of treatment,’ he added. In another page, another U.S. senator said being gay was an ‘inhibiting factor’ that would prevent ambassadors from doing an ‘effective job’. I read about how being married to a member of the same sex was ‘illegitimate’ and ‘immoral’. It seemed terribly dangerous too. Some gay dude named Matthew Shepard had been beaten to death just a few months earlier; some gay actress—at last, a gay woman!—named Ellen Degeneres had her show cancelled and stopped getting work after she publicly announced she was a lesbian.
By the time I was done reading, I was convinced that being gay was just about the worst thing in the world to be. I knew I needed to get my inappropriate sentiments straightened out so I searched—
—‘What to do if you’re lesbian?’
Most of the results came from the websites of Christian organisations. I learned that homosexuality was a sin, possibly the result of being possessed by a demonic spirit, and that if you were gay you were most certainly going to hell. I learned that some churches in the U.S. provided support groups and therapy for people trying to recover from gayness and that a cure had already been found; apparently in the U.S., you could ‘pray away the gay’!
That was a relief to know, except the churches in Hong Kong didn’t offer any similar treatment. When I searched for ‘lesbian cures in HK’, all I found was another Hong Kong movie in which a lesbian cures herself of lesbianism by sleeping with her lover’s husband.
By 2pm that day, I was convinced I was going to have to travel to the U.S. to get help or sleep with a man where I was; I wasn’t even a Christian but those Christians really seemed to know what they were talking about. Before I could decide which to do though, my Nokia rang.
I closed my web browser right away.
When I got to the phone, which I had thrown into another one of my work boxes, and saw the words ‘Unknown Number’ on it’s flashing screen, I found myself in a heightened state of panic.
Alpha? Or… her?
I didn’t want to pick up—just thinking about picking up made me uncomfortable enough—but I knew I had no choice; my boss said I was to ‘pick up every call’ so I had to do just that. With my face in a grimace and my stomach in a squirm, I went back to my computer, loaded the ‘Office Chaos.mp3’ track from my ‘Sounds’ folder and, after a long, deep, difficult breath, pressed the answer button.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sandra? It’s Milla.”
Shit! “Oh. Hey. What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to cancel this weekend. If you don’t mind.”
I shouldn’t have minded, in fact, I should have been relieved and thankful but somehow, my heart didn’t get the memo; it skipped a beat and plunged, and suddenly I was feeling very uncomfortable in a whole new way. As always, though, I did my best to keep myself together. “No, I don’t mind at all. I can always do it whenever you’re free. That’s no problem.”
“Great. Great. I’ll let you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Uh, one more thing, Sandra?”
“Yes?”
“Could you just… pretend we never… you know…”
How?! It’s all I’ve been thinking about! Even when I don’t want to be thinking about it! “Yeah. Of course. No problem.”
“Great. Bye Sandra.”
“B—” The line went dead before I could even say the word; Milla had hung up without even bothering to hear me say goodbye. My chest began to hurt a little; my stomach began to churn again.
I dashed to the window to check on Milla’s apartment with my binoculars.
Nothing had changed on the other side, as far as I could see. Milla’s living room was still empty, her bedroom door was still closed and her bedroom curtains were still shut; it didn’t look like she had emerged or maybe she had gone right back into her bedroom after making the call.
I sat with my eyes behind my binoculars for the next hour while a hollow sensation began eating away at the pits of my chest. At times, I felt my heart plunge, and other times, it beat violently against my ribcage like it were demanding to be let out; I was tense, jumpy, petrified and uncomfortable and had no way of not being so. What was it? I didn’t know; I hadn’t felt anything quite like it before. Love? I truly doubted so; firstly, because I never felt anything like it with the one and only boyfriend I had; secondly, because it was making me feel awful. When I first started dating Jackson all those years ago, it didn’t feel awful—I was calm and relaxed the whole time and it just felt so… right.
In contrast, whatever I was feeling each time the thought of Milla appeared in my brain felt utterly wrong. I wasn’t feeling calm or relaxed at all.
Chapter 12
2 Jul 1999, Friday
The next day, I found myself stuck in some sort of fugue.
I went through the motions of observing Milla’s apartment in the morning but gave up after three hours because doing so had become quite physically torturous. Had I curtains, I would have closed them but since I didn’t, I could only turn my back to the window and distract myself by working on my second report.
On my floor-top computer, I typed out everything that had taken place in
the past week: I wrote that Milla had instigated breaking into the hospital’s security office and concealed the fact that she had been taking photographs of the hospital’s report on C39; I wrote that she was hunting down C39’s other visitor—Carmen, a.k.a. me—for reasons I had yet to figure out—and that she had invited me to dinner and kissed me—also for reasons I had yet to figure out. I made sure I ended the paragraph on the kiss by emphasising, in clear language, that I was not in any way attracted to her at all. I didn’t want my office thinking I was incapable of doing ‘an effective job’ nor did I want to screw up my own chances for a promotion or, worse, lose my job; at that point, I suspected my predicament was a temporary malaise that would heal with time or some effort on my part—e.g. sleeping with a man or avoiding Milla completely—so I didn’t see the point in making them aware of it.
What I did want to tell them, however, I couldn’t. I couldn’t say if Milla had anything to do with C39’s disappearance—she had shown an interest in the fact that he had disappeared but it wasn’t clear whether her interest was due to the desire to cover up the truth or to uncover it. She wasn’t telling me about her relationship with him and I hadn’t found any clues that might explain why. Worst of it all, I had gotten no closer to knowing where C39 actually was.
I emailed my flimsy report to my boss anyway; Benny always said constant, possibly inaccurate updates were better than flawless, delayed updates always.
When that was done, I decided to busy myself with going back to the very beginning and analysing the assignment from scratch. I took out a notebook and pen from one of the cardboard boxes next to my computer and sat down on the floor with my legs crossed and my back hunched. On the notebook in front of me, I drew a horizontal timeline on a blank page. Next to the timeline, I wrote down what I learned from the governmental databases I hacked.
‘6 Jun 1999 - C39GF arrives in Hong Kong, stated residence in Hong Kong: The Regent Hong Kong (a five-star hotel)
6 Jun 1999 - C39 arrives in Hong Kong, stated residence in Hong Kong: also The Regent Hong Kong
16 Jun 1999 - C39 gets into a car accident near the hotel and is admitted to the nearest hospital, King George Hospital
16-22 Jun 1999 - C39 remains in a coma at King George Hospital, only C39GF visits him
22 Jun 1999 - C39 disappears from King George Hospital and nobody knows why. C39GF doesn’t seem to know either. Tape of corridor doesn’t show him leaving. Tampered with?
22 Jun 1999 onwards - C39GF staying at an apartment on Hong Kong Island and lying about it. Why?’
I chewed on the rubbery back end of my Paper Mate erasable pen and thought hard.
Someone could have manipulated the tape in the security office, I decided. During training, Benny taught me that VHS tapes could easily be recorded over if you brought along another tape, two VCR players with the record function, a portable television set and an adapter that would allow you to connect more than one VCR player to the television set. Once you connected the two VCR players to the television set, all you had to do was press play on one and record on the other, at the same time. The footage would be captured on the tape you brought over. Then, if you pressed play on the VCR with your tape and record on the VCR that carried the original tape, viola! You would have written over the tape. Easy as pie. In the instance the tab on the back spine on the tape had been removed, by someone who didn’t want you recording over the tape perhaps, all you had to do was stick a strip of cellophane tape where the tab should have been and you would be able to record over the tape anyhow.
I slid to my floor-top computer and ran the video I had captured when in the security office with Milla once again.
On the security office’s tiny television, you could see an almost continuous flurry of activity on the ninth floor between the time C39 was last seen in his ward and the time he went missing—nurses walking about the corridor, entering and leaving wards, standing around. But there were a couple of quiet moments during which the corridor was completely empty and still too.
Could that have been when C39 was removed from his ward? Could someone or someones have gone onto the ninth floor when no nurses were around, gotten him out, gotten the tape out of the security camera on the ceiling, tampered with the footage and replaced it without anyone knowing? It wasn’t impossible but it was tedious and required a ton of heavy equipment like ladders and VCR players and the like. Question was, who would go through all that effort and risk to do such a thing? And why? Who was C39 other than just some rich girl’s poor boyfriend?
I slid myself back to my notebook and started a to-do list on the next page by writing down all the questions I needed answers to:
‘1. If C39GF and C39 stayed at The Regent Hong Kong between 6-16 Jun, did they stay together?
2. Was C39GF present when C39’s accident occurred? Was C39’s accident even an ‘accident’?
3. When did C39GF move into the apartment on Hong Kong Island?
4. Why is 81M helping C39GF? Why are they always with her? When did they start helping her?’
I felt much better physically once I got those questions down on paper. Having that much to find out meant a busy week ahead and a busy week meant I wouldn’t have time to think about Milla or any of those weird feelings I had been having. Whaddayaknow? Those weird feelings might even be gone by the time I was done sleuthing and I wouldn’t even have to sleep with a man or travel all the way to the U.S. to get cured.
A chime on my computer sounded and made me look over. A new email had arrived.
It was from my office, from an unidentified sender; ‘Scans of Hospital’s Report’ its subject header read. I opened the images attached right away because emails from my office always deleted themselves twenty-four hours after the time they got sent; I didn’t want to forget and miss it. The images were of the photographs I had taken at King George hospital, all right. I zoomed in and read the Chinese words on them properly this time.
‘Ambulance A377 picked up Patient (Danny Diaz) and girlfriend (Cindy) from the scene of the hit and run at Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui on 16 June 1999. Patient suffered penetrating neck injuries, brain injuries and also major injuries to lower extremities. After six hours of surgery, Patient was put into a stable condition and sustained on life support while in a coma. Our Doctors concluded he was in a vegetative state with a forty percent chance of waking up in the next year. The bill for his surgery was HKD$86,021.77 and the price for him to stay at our ICU unit was HKD$46,920.96 per day.
On 18 June 1999, Patient’s girlfriend, a Canadian citizen, informed us she did not have the means of paying for his medical expenses and would not be paying his outstanding bill or any of the subsequent bills. As a result, we sought the assistance of the United States Consulate General but they informed us the Patient had no other surviving kin and no insurance policy to cover his medical expenses. Once we realised the situation our hospital was in, we gave Patient’s girlfriend three options: 1) If she could find a way to take a loan to pay for his medical expenses, we would keep him in our care, otherwise 2) She was going to have to transfer him to another facility who might care for him for free or at cheaper rates, or 3) Allow us to withdraw life support because our hospital is in no position to sustain the financial burden of keeping him alive on our own. We gave Patient’s girlfriend the weekend to work through her options.
Patient’s girlfriend agreed to end life support the Monday after our discussion (21 June 1999) and we scheduled the removal of his life support systems a day later, on 22 June 1999. At some point between 1am on 21 June 1999 and 5am on 22 June 1999, Patient went missing from his ward.’
The next page was what I read at the security office; the page that mentioned Carmen and C39’s girlfriend’s refusal to talk to the police.
I remained silent for a good hour after I was done reading. I didn’t know what to think. Why had Milla lied to the hospital about her name and country of origin? Why had she said she didn’t have the money to
foot his bills when, from what I had seen, she didn’t appear to be struggling financially in any way? Why wasn’t she willing to find a way to keep him alive when he did have a forty percent chance—a pretty good chance, if you ask me—of waking up? Even if she didn’t have cash on hand she could have sold her apartment to save his life, couldn’t she?
If she really was his girlfriend, why on earth had she kissed me? If she wasn’t his girlfriend, why on earth was she saying she was? Why were they living in the same hotel if they weren’t together? I could see why a girl would want to be C39’s girlfriend though; he looked like one of those guys who would fit right in any boy band, like one of those faces Carla had all over her bedroom walls as a teenager. I didn’t. I wasn’t even a boy. Why kiss me? Nothing added up or made any sense.
I knew what I had to do next. After a long sigh, I shut my computer down and went to get dressed for the outside world.
I was going to go to The Regent to find out if C39 and Milla had even been living there at all, and I was going to drop off the MultiMediaCards I had removed from the cameras in Milla Milone’s apartment at the post office, just as I had been told to do.
I crossed The Regent’s spectacular piazza an hour later, walked past its larger-than-life fountain, and went up to the youngest, greenest-looking receptionist I could see inside.
“Excuse me,” I said in Cantonese, from behind the exquisite marble and wood reception counter that separated me and the sweet young thing who still had baby fat all around her wrinkle-free face. “I’m looking for two of my friends from America who live here. I was supposed to take them sight-seeing but I can’t seem to get hold of them. Could you help?”
“I sincerely apologise, miss,” she said with a big, kind smile—the sort of smile only a person who didn’t fully understand the world would give a perfect stranger. “We can’t give out information on our guests.” The gold-coloured name tag pinned above her bosom read, ‘Kelly Wan, Receptionist’.
“I’m worried they might have gotten into trouble. I can’t reach them at all. All I need to know is if they’re still here. I don’t need to know which room they’re at or anything. Just whether or not they are here and safe. I won’t be infringing on their privacy.”
