Chapter 49
49
Sunday 9 October
The four of us, sans Kamarul for obvious reasons, arrived at the hospital just before noon, when visiting hours would start. I was surprised to see Eric already at the reception desk having an animated conversation with Dr. Ng and a distinguished-looking man in his fifties.
“Eric!” I said happily, giving him a bear hug.
“Nice reception!” He kissed the top of my head and nodded to Linda, who returned the nod. “And who are these lovely folks?”
“I’m Melissa, Andrea’s younger sister,” Melissa said. I could tell from the way she approached him with her hand half-extended that she was unsure of whether she should give him a handshake or a hug, to which Eric responded by gathering her in a warm hug. I smiled.
“And this is Suresh, my—” I turned toward Suresh, and suddenly my mind went blank.
“Colleague,” Suresh said, giving Eric a handshake so firm I could feel it, standing beside Eric. And Eric was giving it right back: they were Power Moving each other. “It’s nice to meet you. Andrea talks about you all the time.”
“Likewise,” Eric said, giving Suresh a thoughtful once-over. He was unsmiling. Then he turned toward me very pointedly, and said, “Is today the day I get to meet the future mother-in-law I’ve been hearing so much about?”
“Sorry, I’m just going to excuse myself to make a call,” Suresh said, before leaving.
I shook my head, perplexed by Suresh’s reaction and very aware of how Melissa and Linda were communicating behind Eric’s back with a combination of unsubtle gestures and facial expressions. “Maybe we should wait to see if she’s up to even receiving me.”
And Melissa,
I didn’t say.
Eric let me off the hook. “I suppose we shouldn’t overwhelm her with news. Anyway, let me introduce you to a good friend, Dr. Caleb Foo. He’s the chief of surgery at Pantai and a renowned cardiothoracic surgeon internationally.” Pantai was a private hospital in Kuala Lumpur.
“Oh, uh, hi there,” I said, confused. Dr. Foo nodded at me.
“This gentleman here wants me to discharge your mother and transfer her to Pantai for Dr. Foo to follow up, and I told him it was my professional opinion that she was too weak to be moved, not for another two to three days,” Dr. Ng told me, her voice strained. “And in any case, it is the family’s decision. Is that what you want?”
I looked at Eric. “What?”
“Yes.” He beamed, misreading my response as being positive. He tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear. “I wanted the best for your mother and you. Dr. Foo is the best.” He said it in front of Dr. Ng, without a care for her feelings.
I exhaled sharply. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Eric, but Dr. Ng has been more than fine so far.”
Dr. Ng threw me this little look of gratitude that somehow made her real to me for the first time.
“But Dr. Foo is the best,” Eric insisted.
“Private hospitals are just so much better,” Linda chimed in from behind Eric, where she’d been eavesdropping.
“I prefer that my mother stay here, thank you all,” I said through gritted teeth.
Linda shrugged. “Told you she’s stubborn. I’m going to see if they have a Starbucks here.” Her talent for leaving when the shit got stirred was legendary.
Eric and I were now locked in a silent stare-down. Dr. Foo looked uncomfortable and made his excuses to leave.
“You’re not happy with my offer?”
“You’re being presumptuous,” I said slowly. “When have I ever said that I wanted my mother moved to a private facility?”
He frowned. “I was
being helpful.
Do you know how hard it is to get Dr. Foo to consult? He is the best and he came here on such short notice because he owes me a huge personal favor!”
“Nobody asked you for a new doctor. I prefer the current one we already have, my cranky, stone-faced doctor that you were rude to, thank you very much!”
Dr. Ng cleared her throat. “I’m going to, ah, check on Mrs. Tang.”
“Yes, please,” both of us said simultaneously. She hurried away.
“What gave you the impression that I would want you to do something like this without asking me?”
“Well, excuse me for trying to do something good for you.” He threw up his arms. “I don’t get you, Andrea. When you work, you constantly talk about rankings and reputation and how you’re the best at what you do, but when I try to get your mother, your
mother
, the greatest in health care that money can buy, you refuse me and dismiss my friend. Is that logical?”
I bit my lip. He made a lot of sense when he put it that way. “We can’t afford private hospitals,” I said, although that was only part of the reason I was miffed, and not even the most important one at that.
The frown on his face dissolved. “Is that why you were annoyed?” Eric folded me into his arms. “Oh sweetheart, I would have paid for everything. I wouldn’t have minded.”
I thawed a little, but something inside me rebelled. It wasn’t so much what he wanted.
It was what I wanted, or didn’t want.
But what was it that I wanted?
“Excuse me,” a voice piped up.
We looked up. It was Dr. Ng again.
“Your mother is asking for you.”
—
Seeing my mother on the bed brought home the gravity of the situation again. I sucked in my breath when I saw her. Her face was pale and her skin translucent as rice milk, stark against her dyed black hair, a bruise purpling across her face. She had hit her face against something in the taxi when the attack happened. An IV dripped.
Dr. Ng briefed the both of us on the root causes that had led to this heart attack. Aside from genetic predisposition, my mother’s bad diet over the years had caused build up in her arteries and she’d need to change to a heart-healthy diet.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Andrea,” my mother wheezed, clutching my hand, once Dr. Ng had left. “Is . . . is your sister around?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“She wants to see you.”
My mother exhaled sharply. “I . . . I suppose I should thank her. You can send her in afterward. Alone. There are some things I need to say to her.”
That was a start. I was elated. “Thank you.”
She smiled wanly in response.
“Ma, you heard what Dr. Ng said. Your diet is literally killing you. Why did you eat so much junk food and instant noodles, when you never let us do the same? It’s a bit double standard, right?”
She avoided my eyes. “Well, how did you think your father
and I managed to save up enough money so you and your sister can go to university?” she said lightly.
I pictured the many times I saw my stay-at-home mother heating a bowl of instant noodles, throwing a couple handfuls of leftover green vegetables and cracking an egg into the MSG-ed broth while my sister and I ate rice with stir-fried beef or chicken and fried dumplings. She always made us take second, third helpings, and when we were done, she’d scoop our leftover meat and rice into her noodle bowl and chastise us for wasting food. I felt a rush of guilt. Even when it came to food, they’d always made sure we had the best they could afford.
“Of course, it wasn’t just
savings,
” she acknowledged, “we carefully invested the money we saved as best as we could, otherwise inflation—”
“—
will take everything
,” I finished, trying to crack a joke by using an ominous voice.
“You young people these days, you don’t even know how to save; once you get the money you spend spend spend. Why, when I was your age, I used to bring my own lunch to work, it was just white rice and
ikan bilis,
now everything is just avocado this and that and costs so much . . .” She rattled on and on in this manner, pausing only to draw breath, but instead of cutting her off or tuning her out, I kept quiet and listened. Maybe it was because she’d just had a close brush with death, but I took the sermonizing in stride. Glad to see her so verbose; glad to see her alive.
“Thank you for your sacrifices, Ma,” I said quietly.
“It was never a sacrifice,” she said quietly. “Sshhh, don’t cry, Andrea. I’m tough. I’m not leaving you until I get grandchildren.”
That again. I took a deep breath.
“Mom, there’s someone I want to introduce you to.”
“Oh?” she said.
I cracked a smile. “It’s my fiancé, Eric.”