In Sickness and in Health

By Pak Bui

 

“Once I was working overnight, as a junior doctor,” a friend told me, “when I was called to see a man in his 70s. He was at death’s door. He had a bleeding aneurysm in his abdomen.”

“What’s a bloody aneurysm?” I asked, patiently.

“It’s a swelling in the biggest blood vessel in the body. It’s usually caused by high blood pressure. The vessel had started to leak. The old man was already unconscious. I was asked to break the bad news to his wife,” the doctor explained.

The doctor and I were sitting in a cement car park outside a coffee shop, at dusk. The traders were laying out their plastic furniture. Smoke from barbecue stalls rose in the air. It was a peaceful time of day, in between the hectic daytime bustle and the alcohol-fuelled nocturnal clatter.

“We sat down in a little quiet room, the Sister’s office,” the doctor said. “I brought the patients’ wife some tea in a styrofoam cup. She was a demure lady with glasses.

“I began by telling her that her husband’s blood pressure was dropping and he was dying. She replied, ‘I know. The surgeon told us last year, that this aneurysm had been growing for years. He said it could burst at any time. He advised against any operation, because he didn’t think my husband would survive it. We agreed, and so we put our affairs in order, as they say. My husband’s prepared for this, and so am I.’

“She fell silent for a minute. Then she caught my gaze and said, ‘We love each other very much, you know. Of course, you wouldn’t know, but he’s a good husband. He’s caring. And he has the most wonderful sense of humour,’ she smiled.

“The old lady thanked me for listening to her, and for the tea. She said I’d helped her. Then she asked for a moment alone. I left her to her memories. But until today, I’ve never forgotten the old couple. They’re part of the reason I’ve kept on working as a doctor.”

In good times and bad

The doctor went on, “As I got older, I found that talking to patients’ relatives wasn’t always so enriching. Sometimes, the family members were petty and mean. They’d order the nurses around as if the nurses were Indonesian maids.

“Once, I caught the daughter of a delirious, dying old lady, trying to make the patient put a thumbprint on some kind of document, maybe a will. A man, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and a tie, stood nearby. The patient’s daughter introduced the man as a lawyer. I didn’t catch this lawyer’s name – he made his way off the ward. I was fuming. I told the patient’s daughter I wouldn’t allow any thumbprint.”

The doctor took a sip of tea and frowned. It was growing dark, and the doctor’s face had fallen into shadow.

“There was another elderly man I remember. He’d become paralysed from the neck down. I found his family trying to make him sign a deed by sticking a pen in his mouth.

“We used to have a kind of in-joke in the wards. We’d say: ‘where there’s a will, there’s a relative,” my friend shrugged.

 

Wedding oaths

“Once, I looked after Sharifah, a Malay lady, in her 40s. She had an awful cancer growing in the side of her neck. It grew to the size of a football. She used to come in to hospital, with a cheap ‘Good Morning’ towel draped over it, to try to hide it. You can imagine the shame she felt.

“She’d been treated for the cancer the year before, and the lump had shrunk. But then she’d disappeared. We couldn’t contact her. When the cancer returned, Sharifah returned too.

“The doctors scolded Sharifah for ‘defaulting’, as we call it – almost as if we’re moneylenders, and she owes us cash!” I could see a faint smile on the doctor’s face.

“Sharifah explained that her husband had told her to stop her treatment, because she’d got better. We found out that the husband had always ordered her around. She’d been given some social welfare payments to help her to travel to and from the hospital for treatment, but he’d taken all the money from her. She came back to hospital when the cancer had grown back to an enormous size.

“We tried to help her, but nothing worked the second time round. A month later, we found out that her husband had divorced her, just after she’d returned to get treatment. The rumour was, he’d married again. We just watched the life drain out of her. She lived only a few weeks after that.”

A love supreme

The doctor, sitting now in the shadows, went on, “I was walking through the ward around midnight, and stopped to talk to a Malay man. He was standing by his wife’s bed. His wife was dying of an infection, caused by diabetes. He was a frail old man himself. His face was lined, his mouth was tense with worry, but his eyes were clear.

“I offered him a chair, because I’d seen him standing there for hours, beside his wife’s bed. He thanked me, but said no. We struck up a conversation.

“He asked me, ‘Is there any hope, Doctor?’ I told him gently that his wife was comatose and slipping away, despite our treatment. I explained that he’d tried his best to save her, and so had we, but she wasn’t going to make it. We sat there for a few moments, listening to the heart monitor beeping.

“An hour later, I was walking past the bed again, in the darkened ward, and the beeping had slowed down. I stopped to talk to the old man again. He was still standing there, holding his wife’s hand.

“He gazed at his wife with love in his eyes, as he watched her go. The beeping of her heart slowed down further, and then the alarm went off. I explained there was nothing more we could do, and switched the alarm off. He held on to his wife’s hand and looked at me: I confirmed she had died.

“He turned back to his wife, then faced me again, and said quietly and with dignity, ‘Thank you Doctor.’ I offered my condolences, and walked off crying, promising myself that one day I would share the story of his love with others.”

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