By Phan Ming Yen

The Girl

The things which filled the body and which could be seen: kidney, heart, liver, spleen, faith.

The parts which made up the body and misled the eye: hair, skin, fingernails, flesh.

The different stirrings of the body which signalled the beginning of desire: touch, scent, taste, a whisper.

The awareness of different types of desire: the desire to know, the desire to love, the desire for the body, the desire for God, the desire for another human being that echoed the desire for the spiritual, the different desires that arose on the same path.

It had been almost half a year now since the girl came as a clinic assistant, and she had always kept her hair in the same manner as on the first day he saw her: neck-length, straight and parted in the centre. While on duty, she would comb her hair back and tie it, leaving a short ponytail.

Excepting the first time she came asking for work, the only other times he saw her with her hair untied was when she was rostered to come in earlier to prepare for the opening of the clinic, or when she was working late to close the accounts for the day.

One evening, the last glimpse he had of her just before she closed the door of the consultation room, the sight of her ponytail slipping into the blur of light outside, suddenly and inexplicably, took him back to a moment he thought he had forgotten – a moment in his childhood where a certain desire was awakened, a moment that now brought about a yearning that gave temporary reprieve to fear.

Once again he was a child, sitting in the cathedral back in his hometown of Chester in England, enchanted by the colours of the stained glass that glowed in the evening sun and yet frightened by a prelude played by the church organist before service began. It was when he felt a certain warmth swell up as the music played on that he realised that the human body had to be empty, to become a hollow vessel, so that the sound could fill the body.

And he wondered: If he was so hollow that sound could fill him, where did the tears that flooded his eyes come from whenever he felt pain? Where did the sweat which oozed from his body come from whenever he felt warmth? What was it that made him shiver and burn when he had a fever?

He wanted to know how the body could be empty and full at the same time.

That was what he would sometimes say when asked why he chose to study medicine. He wanted to know parts of the body that could so unexpectedly wake up to the call of God and yet heed the call of physical senses and of desire.

He wanted to understand this body. Later, when he volunteered at a hospice reading to the dying, he was curious about the way words could assuage the pain of those in suffering. It was a desire to know that he felt was pure.

And now that meeting the girl had taken him back to his childhood and reawakened this desire in a way that his own wife could not, he realises that perhaps, just perhaps, there was still something good within him.

The following day, as the girl stood by his desk, waiting even after he had given the instructions for the prescription of a patient, he suddenly found himself wondering how she would look if she had kept her hair long.

And it was then, unknown to him, when delusion set in.

The Call

The moment when desires of the body clouded the guilt of the heart: That second when someone slipped into the present and opened a door to the past; that moment when you realised the other person's pattern of speech, the pauses between the words, the rhythm in which the thoughts and emotions that flowed out as language and the inflexion of the end of phrases suddenly carried your heartbeat, and then unknowingly you both had suddenly become one.

The memory of her reluctance to leave the consultation room after he had issued the prescription returned with the same X-ray clarity of the time he answered the phone call. He had returned home alone from vacation while his wife and son remained in Chester for a few more weeks.

He had just come out from the bathroom and put on his trousers and singlet when the ringing of the telephone came like a shot from the hall.

The only people who knew that he had already returned from England were his wife, his practice partner and his amah. As for the clinic assistants, he had only told them of a later date. He called his wife soon after he reached home. He asked about his son and his wife told him not to worry about both of them. She said they had scrambled eggs and cheese on toast for breakfast, and now his son was playing with the Brimtoy train set which he had finished assembling for him a few days ago.

He could hear his son in the background while his wife spoke. He could visualise the tin-plated diesel locomotive model, with the two first-class coaches in tow, circling around his son.

That was an hour ago.

"Hello?"

"Doctor…"  

Her voice caught him by surprise. He had never heard her over the telephone, and they never had to call each other, and they had agreed not to. The accent, the way a local would pronounce a foreign word, that same inflection each time she called him, and she always called him "doctor" and never by name, was unmistakable.

The voice came as a surprise because it was not even a question. It was as if the caller had known that he would answer the call and not anyone else.

It was only when he heard the voice repeat, "Doctor?", this time, being a question and a little unsure of itself that he realised how silent the house had become with his family absent. The voice on the end of the line echoed as if it was coming from within the house itself; that if he just put down the phone and searched the corridors and rooms, he would find her.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, this is he."

"Doctor, this is…" Although she need not have mentioned her name he nevertheless felt relief and comfort to hear it.

"I know," he replied. And he was not even aware of what he said next. "Where are you? Do you…"

Afterwards, as he drove her home, she gave him directions since he was unsure of his way around the villages in the northern part of Singapore. He suddenly realised that they would all eventually fall away. Beneath the scent of each other's body was the odour of decay. Teeth. Finger nails. Skin. Flesh. Bone. Bone marrow.

The voice that cried out in ecstasy would one day fade out in a whimper.

The Doctor

"What will others say about us one day?" he wondered, not long after he lost control of the wheel and the car hit the road divider.

She was quiet beside him. He tried to reach out to wipe away the streak making its way slowly down her cheeks. She did not move. "What will they understand?"

He tried to turn his head but felt instead a rush from within his body choking him. He knew what it was: blood, bile, sputum. He was standing at the door once more, looking back at his son who called out to him just before he stepped out on to the driveway.  

"Daddy, when are we going back?" asked his son, running towards him. He lifted the five-year-old even though he knew the taxi was waiting. His wife stood in the middle of the hall, looking at them.

"Did she know?" he wondered now as the thickness filled his nostrils.  

"Daddy, Daddy, will you come back?" he remembered his son asking. "Will you come back? Mummy is making a pie."

He looked up. But the world had turned upside down. The stars which just a moment ago had been above them were now all beside him, each white dot gradually being engulfed by washes of red. A roar shoots across his head and his sight was momentarily blinded by the sudden blast of sunlight that flooded before him.

A gush of warm and cool air flushed through his body and then there was only light blue stretching out above him.  Suddenly he was alone in the cathedral and the church organist was still preluding.

He looked for the organist and tried to tell him to stop playing, but the sky outside turned dark and then he felt her fingers touching his. He hears a voice: Her voice. "Doctor…" The taste of bile and blood in his throat the moment he tried to call out her name. But "Doctor…" was all he heard again and again.

He heard another sound. Someone was shouting from a distance. And he heard footsteps.

Then he heard her voice, this time she was speaking in her own language. He did not understand what she was saying. He never understood the language she spoke with her own people. He heard her call his name again. He felt her fingers, damp against his cheeks.

And he heard her sobbing. He heard her voice until it grew faint. He turned towards her, just in time to see her slip away into the darkness.

He cried out her name.

And the sound of water, thicker than blood, overcame him.

_____