At the chemo ward

I pressed my palms against mum's back. In the background the intrusive beeping of a machine, the muffled chatter of others, and the sound of a nurse repeatedly calling out a patient's name.

"Your hands are so warm," she said. "Really?" I asked. I never knew my touch could be warm, or that the warmth would be able to penetrate her woolly sweater and undergarment and reach her skin. I could feel her breathing, and the vibrations of her voice seep through my fingers.

For a few moments, I closed my eyes and imagined... Imagined that I had the ability to heal, that through my palms I could absorb those deadly cancer cells and slowly suck them out of mum's colon, lymph and lungs... Imagined that the warmth of my hands could charge mum with the comfort and the support that she needs and wants, but that she can only sporadically receive when I am back home... Imagined that that warmth mum felt and was talking about was the warmth of love and affection from a small child to his beloved mother...

I opened my eyes, and stared down the top of mum's scalp, which with each passing day is increasingly more visible. I looked at the thin strands of her hair, some still healthy and pitch black, some already gray and clinging onto her head but could easily fall off with a slight stroke or blow of the wind. I pressed against her back even harder, till my arms were trembling.

And I looked around me, at the sad eyes, lonesome faces, heavy gazes and it was as if I could hear the silent, almost inaudible moan of frustration and fear. Later, in the hallway of the great, big hospital, I would come across many, many more men, women and children. Some able bodied, others being carted around in a wheelchairs. Some alone, other surrounded by friends and family or in the company of a foreign caretaker. Some Hakka and Taiwanese, others Chinese veterans who had fled to Taiwan with the Nationalist government so many decades ago. There were the young and the old, some aged with bitterness and pain, with wrinkles of time and freckles of passing years, other still radiant with youth and childhood innocence, in spite of the long knots and transfusion tubes plugged into their smooth skins... Everyone so different, everyone hailing a different place, and from different times, yet all united in suffering, pain, and by the fragility of life.

A pair of eyes caught mine, and for a few fleeting moments we read one another. I did the only thing I, a complete and random stranger who perchance was passing by in the corridor, thought I could offer as a show of support, and as a sign that I care and tried to share his burden.

I smiled.