TaNkGiRly 的網路日誌

Endymion



Chapter 5





I arrived at the hospital with only a few hours of sleep and countless of curses the next day.

Finally managed to borrow the lecture notes from Gareth, I spent nearly the entire night digesting the whole semesters’ work. Let me assured you, my dear, never ever tried to squeeze a whole lot of study load in one go. It was not very pleasant and I guaranteed you would not remember a thing at the exam day.

Carl did offer his help for me to do the revision. He had done that a few times in the past and he was actually pretty good at it. But for goodness sake! He was with Daphne now and if I kept asking him for assistance every time I got myself into trouble. I believed after a while it would definitely get on to her nerves and asked Carl what was going on. After all, we were no longer together. I couldn’t depend on him that much anymore.

I seriously thought there should be a leave called the Break Up leave. What? We had sick leave, materiality leave, annual leave, funeral leave, why couldn’t we have break up leave? It was as painful as being sick (in some cases) and obviously we couldn’t focus for a while. If there were one, I would be the first in line.

Then I didn’t have to pull my hair out, trying to swallow all these work in one evening.

I’ve never been the smart one.

As the matter of fact, if there was a scale marked genius at one end and seriously dumb at the other, mine would probably somewhere closer to the dumb end. The average amount of time for my brain to process the incoming information was twice….no! three times longer than an average human being. Everytime I saw or heard someone had a ‘photographic memory’; my mind would explode with envy. ‘What a lucky bastard/bitch!’ I often found myself thought: ‘spent only a few minutes flipping through pages and vola! Everything is entered. Now he/she can spend the remaining time party their heads off!’.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, my grades sometimes were so bad the school had to ask my parents to come. There were a handful of nights I nearly burst into tears or beat my chest until it hurts because of some very hard to understand studies that seemed very easy to others (well, this happened not very often since I spent most of my glorious student days skip classes, daydreaming, weekend partying and hangovering). Fortunately, almost miraclely, I managed to complete all studies in one go (without failing a single one, that is. However, you wouldn’t expect the marks to be pretty).

But this time I seriously believed my luck had run out.

How on earth I could find time to study for my exam with a patient who need constant monitor?

Also, how did Zoë’s brain actually functioned that led her seriously believed me and Dr. Owen would become something after spending a holiday (this was the confusing part) with one of his patients?

I had to emphasis once again, that I had nothing against Dr. Owen. He was actually a pretty genuine chap. But since I did not fancy him, Zoë’s master plan only pushed me to the exact opposite direction. These days, unless it was work related, I avoided him as much as possible.

Maybe that was why Zoë set me up on this stupid holiday mission.

Dr. Owen and Joanna gave me a crash course about personal care while I was packing the medical kit. I packed as much as I could. Looking after a patient in a standard house wasn’t going to be easy. Without all the medical equipment, it was just like travelling back in time and living with people in early 19th century.

Like one of those reality show Colonial House, if you know what I mean.

Zoë the nosy attempted to stick her nose in.

“Do you want me to look after your cat and dog?”

“…I’ve got someone taking care of that.”

“What about house sitting? Do you need me to do that for you?”

“You should have thought about this when you nominated me.”

“Isabella! This could only do you good, believe me!” Zoë looked at me all seriously.

“I fail to see why.”

“Believe me…” She patted my shoulders and was ready to give me a thisisdonewithallmygoodintentions speech.

I interrupted her before she had a chance to finish: “Zoë, I understand you are my best friend and I love you dearly and everything. But your goddamn good intention had put me into a very bad mood today. If you don’t leave me alone now, I swear to god our friendship is going outside of the fucking window and I will slide your throat open at this point and time, alright?!?!?”

Zoë quickly covered her mouth with her hand and nodded.

“Good.” I turned around and kept packing.

Then I went to see Alex after the gears were pretty much sorted.

Alex seemed a bit nervous. Well, I wasn’t blamed him, really. This was the first time he’s ever been home and I would be nervous as well if I were he. I heard that all his friends and relatives were going to be there. Despite all the positive progress he had made here so far, he was, after all, different than he used to be now. How were they going to see him? Were they going to look at him with sympathy? Were they going to look at him, as he was one of the animals in the zoo? Were they going to look at him with tease? Or most important of all, could Alex handled all these?

With all these doubt stirring around his stomach, he sure would get nervous. I actually reckoned he probably would faint if we put any more pressure on him now.

“Are you alright?” I asked, knowing what sort of answer I would get. Well, I needed to take his mind off this homecoming drama for temporarily.

He gave me a weak smile: “Do you think I bloody look alright? Man! This is worst than my first job interview.”

“What happened to your first job interview?” I asked politely.

“I was so nervous, I actually put salt into my coffee and drank it right in front of my interviewer.”

“Far out!” I laughed.

“Tell me about it! You can easily imagine what my face looks like when I found out what I just did. I got this interviewer right in front of me and I had to pretend I was drinking perfectly normal coffee.”

“What was the job you interviewed for?”

“Architect assistant. Well...I didn’t get that job at the end. You can probably figure out why. I actually thought myself looked more like a debt collector.”

I laughed, slightly in hysterics. Alex smiled. Even he found this unpleasant memory was actually quite amusing.

At least he was more relaxed now.

“Well,” when I finally managed to hold my laughter and rubbed my slightly sore tummy. I told Alex: “in my first job interview, I actually so nervous, I puked!”

“Are you serious?” Alex raised his eyebrow.

“Absolutely.” I looked into his eyes: “They actually thought I was pregnant and decided not to hire me. Talked about wrongfully accuse!”

“Get out of here!” He was nearly hospitalised. Opps! Sorry! I mean he was nearly cancelled his home visit.

“Well, they are all your friends and family, aren’t they? Relax! What could possibly happen? They are not going to chuck you out or anything.” Immediately I wished I had just bitten my tongue off. Christ! Did I just intend to ease this poor chappie a little bit? What had I just done?

“Exactly! They are all my friends and family.” Great! I had just wiped the smile out of his face.

They were all his friends and family, so their critics would be extra harsh to him. Or shall we say, because they are all his friends and family, it was more dignity destructive than some total strangers.

“Ready to leave, son?” Alex’s father arrived to pick him up. He entered right in the middle of this awkward moment, looked all exciting and anxious.

Alex gave him a nod.

Off we went.

Alex’s parents lived on Waihiki Island, so it actually was a bit of the journey to get there. On the way, his father tried his very best cracking up some jokes to stir what seemed to be a very dull atmosphere. However, Alex was really not in the mood and I was a bit embarrassed to talk to Alex again. Therefore his attempt didn’t exactly work very well. After a while, he gave up.

We arrived Waihiki Island around lunchtime. Alex’s mother, Helen, was waiting for us at the wharf.

“Welcome home, Alex!” She seemed very emotional, all sniffs and tears.

“Hi, mum!” Alex gave her a hug.

Then we did a bit of thisisblahblahblah, howdoyoudo, and nicetomeetyou kind of thingy for about 5 minutes or so. After that we headed off to their house.

There were a few people in the house waiting for us. To be honest with you, I was actually quite impressed about that. As soon as the car turned into the street where the house was, we could all see lots of cars parked along the road. This was actually a cul-de-sac; you normally wouldn’t expect that many vehicles parked there.

“HERE THEY ARE!!” A boy paced around the letterbox in front of what seemed to be the Simpson household jumped, rushed back to the house and screamed as soon as he saw our car approached.

“Nigel’s?” Alex asked his father.

“Nop, David’s.” Sounded like Alex got more than one siblings.

“Is he?” Alex raised his eyebrow: “The last time I saw him, he was only entering preschool.”

“The last time you saw them was three years ago.”

All of the sudden there were a cluster of people emerged from the house and standing around the driveway. At some stage Alex’s father had to get out of the car and asked them to move because we couldn’t even drove into the garage. I gave Alex an astonished look. In my life I had never seen a western family had this many family relatives.

Seriously, most western family were pretty nuclear.

Well, Asian family would be very different.

Let’s put it this way, the definition of ‘nuclear family’ to the west and to the east were very different.

I remembered a couple of occasions when I accompanied my mother back to Japan to visit her family and friends. That gave me a bloody good fright. Far out! That was the size of Invercargil we were talking about. There were just so many aunties and uncles, cousins and nephews, grand parents and grand uncles (and they were all black hair, yellow skin Asian); you would need a very good brain to remember all these names and faces. For a good couple of years, I actually refused to acknowledge my Asian identity because of it. Christ! Me? Being in the whole grand army of those yellow looking people? I would rather hang around with Ethiopian.

Well, I supposed compare to then, today wasn’t actually too bad. The size was whole lot smaller and it was easier to remember them since their hair colour are different.

Alex shrugged and smiled.

We all got out of the car, repeated thisisyadayadayada, ohhowdoyoudo, youlookgreat, nicetomeetyou, hugs and hands shaking thingy for a good 30 minutes before we actually managed to get into the house. More greeting and introduction ritual followed. It turned out Alex had two brothers (Nigel and David, all drop dead gorgeous, goodness me! Talk about nice genes!), one sister (Monica), one uncle, one auntie, two nieces, and one nephew. Added in the nosy neighbours (you wouldn’t think they were all there purely because Alex was home, do you?) and his friends, there were nearly (if I counted them correctly) 30 people there. The house suddenly become slightly tiny.

Quite frankly, I started feeling a bit dizzy.

Far out.

While they all busy surrounded Alex, chatting and making all sorts of enquiries, I quietly retreated into Alex’s room to set up all necessary equipment. The room was located at upstairs of the house. It was whole lot quieter compared to downstairs. This is heaps better! I signed with relieve.

After a couple of seconds, I put all luggages next to bedside table, preparing to set up the gears and stuff.

Then I realised there was someone else in the room.

I thought no one should be in the room.

That person was a female. Short hair that was so blond you would thought it was white, slim, 5 ft. 8, porcelain skin, long lashes, green eyes that was so dark it was like greenstones from the South Island West Coast. She was only wearing a faded jeans and a blue shirt, but I immediately felt myself was very ugly indeed. My skin colour was too dark, my hair was too messy (and not shiny, huh!!), my clothes were too untrendy (although I also happened to wear jeans and shirt), and my body was way too chubby.

She stood next to the window. Noticed my presence, she gave me a slight nod.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t know there was someone here.” I apologised.

“No, it’s alright. But you know this room has already taken, eh? ” She smiled: “ This is Alex’s room.”

Good Lord! I hoped she wasn’t one of Alex’s cousin or sister. So far all of them seemed to be very gorgeously looking. If she turned out to be one of them, I would start considering god must be in the terribly good mood (perhaps it was on drug?) when it dealt with the Simpsons.

“I know. I am the nurse who is going to look after him this holiday,” I politely smiled back: “ I thought this might be a good time to set up all the monitor stuff while everyone is downstairs.”

“You reckon!” She threw her eyes heavenwards: “I don’t even know Alex has so many friends and family members. I actually felt short of breath being downstairs. So I decided to hide up here for a while.”

“Oh! I see.”

“What’s your name?”

“Isabella.”

“Isabella, pleasure to meet you.” She smiled and reached her hand towards me: “Kate is my name. I’m Alex’s girlfriend.”

Oh! So this was Alex’s girlfriend. I was slightly excited about finally meeting her in person. The entire hospital had been gossiping about Alex’s girlfriend since the day he came out of coma. A fine looking fello like Alex off course would have a girlfriend! Needless to say we heard that she was the one who found out Alex was lying in bed unconscious in the first place. It just that we never saw any visitor expect Alex’s parents through the whole time and we started wondering if there was one and what did she actually looked like. Now there she was! Standing right in front of me. And she looked amazing!

Talked about golden couple.

Talked about natural born beauty (well, she looked pretty natural to me).

Then I started wondering how come she never shown her face in the hospital.

What was stopping her? If she was Alex’s girlfriend, shouldn’t she been informed about his awaken, like, within 24 hours? How come we never seen her (don’t tell me the bollix like maybe I happened to missed her when she came, a nice looking girl like that would caused a stir in the hospital, even if I wasn’t there, I should be able to know from others such as Zoë afterwards)? What was their relationship like before the accident? Did she still love him? Or Alex’s family didn’t like her at all so they banned her from coming to the hospital to visit him. No, that didn’t make any sense, if that was the case she wouldn’t be here at all.

As I reached my hand out to shake her hand, I found out my mind had suddenly spined with all kinds of imagination and question. I felt rather ashamed about this, really. As the matter of fact, I felt I was very “Zoë”.

Come on, only Zoë would think, or do this kind of thing.

The charming, funny, sometimes bighead, and unpleasantly nosy cow.

No, No, No! Isabella would never do, or think like that.

Not in a million years.

My mind immediately rejected the idea.

“But you are doing it now!” The little Zoë jumped out of nowhere, folded her tiny arms and looked slightly bemused: “ See! You are actually not much different then I!!”

“ No! I am not! I am just.. tired” My voice weakly defended.

“ Oh yeah? People often said a person is at his/her true self when they are the weakest. Is that means this is actually the true you? Hmm….what do you normally describe me? A very nosy cow? Like me?” Mini Zoë raised her little eyebrow.

“NO!” I exclaimed: “Go away!!”

“You know what? You and I actually have a lot in common.” Mini Zoë winked: “We wouldn’t be friends for all these years for no reason.” Then she dissappeared.

“Oh, there you are!” One of the guests (Monica’s boyfriend?) stuck his head in at the door: “Come on! Alex would be glad to see you!”

Kate nodded and walked towards the door, preparing to leave the room: “Here goes nothing!” She took a deep breath and looked at me: “let my parents know I love them if I am being squashed downstairs.”

She was actually quite funny.

“ Oh! Silly me!” Kate patted her forehead: “Sorry for being rude. Are you coming down as well?”

“ I think I better set this up first.” I pointed at the small hills of gears.

“ Oh, ok. Well” Kate turned her heads around and smiled at the guest: “Shall we?”

They left.

The room suddenly become quiet again.

I returned to the bedside, preparing to set up the gear.

Now…where was I?

Oh yeah! The heart beat monitor…

I rummaged through the bags, found the monitor, pulled everything out, took out my notes and preparing a long ohthisactuallygoestheir process.

The monitor was setting up alright, the dripper was set up alright, the blood pressure was also set….

But I stopped.

I realised I couldn’t help myself to think about Kate and Alex.

The encountered of Kate deeply disturbed me.

What annoyed me even more was I didn’t know why.

What was going on? Weren’t they a nice couple? Wasn’t she seemed like a nice chick? Now he was slowly recovered, shouldn’t their life slowly back to normal as well?

What was disturbing me?

“Now you are weird.” Mini Zoë stood next to me again: “ What’s your problem?”

“I don’t know”

“You are not fancy Alex, are you? You know,”

“I don’t think so.”

“I don’t know you anymore.” Mini Zoë shrugged.

“Neither do I,” I mumbled: “Neither do I.”