Back home

I have never packed my bag so quickly and just headed to the airport hoping there would be a flight.

And yet, some 17hrs later, I am half way across the globe, back in the home I grew up. I even took out the garbage just now, blending into the locals as if I have always been here. But truth is, I had just landed mere hours ago, and am still trying to get used to the climate, the noise and the busy-ness of life in Taiwan. It is hard to get used to the buzz and liveliness, the decorations and occasional blast of fireworks, for tomorrow is the local New Year's Eve.

Immediately after arriving, I headed straight to the hospital. Rain and a damp, damp cold that made my breath vapour greeted me in Taipei. What seemed like an endless bus and metro journey to the hospital due to cogestion finally ended as I hauled my drenched lugguage and soaked clothes into the gigantic Taipei Veteran's General Hospital. My stomach tensed as I walked through the doors of Room 12 in Ward 121, an intensive care unit intended for liver disease patients.

The sound of a whizzing first caught my attention. Machines, with colourful graphs measured heartbeat, breathing and blood level. My dad lay under a thick blanket on the hospital bed, his face covered with a respirator that had been plugged into his nostrils and masked his mouth. An incessant sound of breathing in the room otherwise glum and still. But strangely I did not shed a tear then and there, as I had dreaded I would on the long flight home... at least not yet. Dad lay there, almost in a feoutal position, like a baby needing care. I saw mum standing there, smiling weakly at me as I entered the door. I hugged her tightly and said: "I'm home".

I stayed at the hospital for anumber of hours. Knelt down beside my dad's bed, I watched him as his chest heaved up and down. His eyes were crusty at the corners, because he had not opened them for almost two straight days. The nurse said that if you speak to him, he can hear you, but he just cannot respond. His thick brows would at times twitch, and he would at times clench his eyes together, but they did not open. It was as if he was in a deep sleep, and could not awaken, no matter how many times you called his name.

On the plane over here, I was exhausted, drained from lack of sleep and from the images in my vidid head of how dad may be suffering. So for most of the flight I actually slept... but it was not a deep sound sleep, but sleep that would have me awaken to be panicked and disorientated, wondering where I was, and whether everything is but a bad nightmare. Perhaps dad is in such a state of mind, lost between consciousness and unconsciousness, but unable to return and speak, even though sometimes his arms and legs and facial muscles would twitch if you touched it.

I knelt beside dad's bed, and placed one hand on his hand, on the hand that was most free from tubings and wires and artificial vessels implanted into his skin. With my other hand, I gently caressed my dad's high forehead. He used to do this to me when I was a child.. Softly, I said, "I am here dad, right here next to you. You have nothing to fear, nothing to be afraid of. I am here dad, just let go of the pain, just let everything go." His eyes would twitch as if in response, but his lips merely heaved as he gasped for breath through the respirator.

The doctor updated me on his condition. Indeed, as my mum had said, dad had fainted and had a terrible seizure Sunday in the early hours. After he was rushed to the hospital, the doctors put him under intensive care. Blood sugar levels were many times the norm, and his body was becoming poisoned because his liver was not functioning properly due to his cancer... He has been under surveillance since, at times his life signs seemed to fade and grow faint, but now it appears he is stable. But the doctor showed me X-rays of his lungs. There were grey blobs, on both sides, as big as a coin, dotted here and there. The spread, the doctor said. Which explains he has some difficulty breathing, and why every two hours or so they must suck out the phloem collected in his lungs to prevent flooding.

I held his hand tightly, and whispered again those words so softly, "I am here dad, please do not be afraid. I am here with you."