In Continuum.

The Warrior of Ward 21 Bed 4

I dig my toes into the sand
The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds
Strewn across a blue blanket
I lean against the wind
Pretend that I am weightless
And in this moment I am happy, happy...

In the hours before the hospital visit, I was genuinely afraid and petrified. There were pictures of my dear friend Stanley, wrapped up in white blanket and with dried blood all over. Of course, after being admitted to the hospital nearly two weeks ago, I'm sure the nurses already cleaned that up. But still, it's just the image of him lying at the side of the road in a drain that has been haunting me in the hours before the actual visitation. Like I said before, I had no idea what to feel or react when we see Stanley at the hospital. Because as new an experience as it was for have a friend in comatose state, I was new to the hospital as well. I might sound like a mountain mushroom here, but it was my first time at a hospital, and it wasn't a lovable experience I can tell you that.

In the cab as it sped down the expressway, I was messaging and contacting my friends, all the time looking out of the window at the passing cars and the westing sun. It was so strange just looking at those cars, with their occupants busying themselves with the journey home, or a date somewhere after work to meet with their boyfriends and girlfriends, their husbands and wives, children and grandchildren. Despite the afternoon rain, the sun still hung low under the gray clouds, exposing the bottom half of the golden sphere as it slowly progressed behind the jagged horizon like the crooked teeth of a giant. Everything went on as usual, nothing stopped for Stanley's critical condition. Nobody bothered, because nobody knew. Does it make it any less an emergency, because his accident was never published in the papers? Time does not stop for anybody, and as brutal as it is life goes on. We take the next breath, until we cannot take them any longer.

I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here

I hate to admit it, but like I said, it was my first trip to the hospital. But then again, it's not like it is a bad thing, because my friends have been very healthy people, and intact. None of them ever suffered from any illnesses or ailments, which is great. As for my relatives, they are all in Taiwan, with a dozen cities and seas in between. When some of them passed away in the last decade or two, I've always been here in Singapore, and never had the time to visit them at the hospitals whatsoever. Whenever I do, it'd always be too late. We met at the funerals most of the time, or in the cemetery mostly. Goodbyes were seldom said between myself and the dying family members, but it's not like anybody could help it. That is just the way it was, so many people vanishing in our lives, so many tragedies and so little words of farewell.

After paying the cab driver, there was a momentary hesitation to open the door. At the arrival bay in front of the main lobby, there were people coming in and out of those glass sliding doors, with beds at one end of the walkway and tired looking visitors on the other, all arranged in a messy but orderly fashion, if that made any sense to you. It certainly was a contrasting sight, as I braved myself against the smell of the hospital air and got out of the vehicle. There it was, the entrance of the hospital like the mouth of a giant concrete and glass monster, inviting in the living souls and spitting out ghosts of the distant past. There it was, opening and closing to us humans, and I was swallowed into the wave of fellow ghosts soon after.

I lay my head onto the sand
The sky resembles a back-lit canopy
With holes punched in it
I'm counting UFOs
I signal them with my lighter
And in this moment I am happy, happy...

I met up with Hanwei and See Hwee, and the former had a circular band-aid stuck to his wrist. He was at the blood bank donating blood, and when asked if I could help out with it, he told me that the blood bank was closed, and that underweight people cannot be a donor of blood in the first place. Just outside of the 7-11, we waited for others to arrival, all the while trying to talk about our lives and Stanley's optimistic condition to cover up our awkward and nervousness to the visit. Personally at least, there was an overhanging shadow on top of my head, as I pictured the wards just one floor above ours, and the patients lining up on their beds in a neat row in clean bedsheets and nurses busying themselves around them. I pictured Stanley in the ranks, and for some reason his face was blurred in my image. It was hard to concentrate on the image at that moment, but it's not like I wanted to anyway. Now that I was there, I had this urge to dash out of the entrance and away, never to return. Like Jonathan, I probably wasn't ready to witness a friend in such a beaten state. But as the plan of escape slowly conjured itself, WeiJie, Martin and Zen arrived swiftly after, and we proceeded upstairs via the biggest elevator I have ever seen to the wards.

They say that the colors of the walls in hospitals are painted in a certain color code because they are supposed to be soothing. The same case goes for fast food restaurants, with most of the walls painted in the shades of orange, red and yellow to supposedly increase the appetite of the customers. Well, 'supposedly' is the keyword here, because to me, the color of choice in the corridors of the ICU was just plain morbid. Taupe wasn't the best color of choice I'd say, and along the corridor were other anxious visitors standing in groups, surrounded in an atmosphere of their own. The nurses found their way through the crowd in their green and blue scrubs, and all the time looking anxious to go somewhere. These beautiful warriors that battle against death, those beautiful white hands of theirs probably saved so many lives and lost so many others too. I tried to imagine the white fabric covered in blood, but being just outside the door to the ward, it was too pessimistic a thought.

I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
Wish you were here

We took our turns to go into the ward itself, and I did it with my arms around Simon's shoulders. The door opened, and the smell of medication attacked our nostrils. The smell was strong inside the room, and on both sides of the room there were rows of rooms with giant glass windows and doors. Like Kenneth said earlier, I did sort of look like a zoo somehow, with animals being caged and us being the spectators. But of course, none of us were there because we paid for the tickets, or because we wanted to see a friend in a comatose state. We just wanted to pay our visit, and as strange as it was to view a friend through the glasses, I think it was the least that we could do.

We approached the room where Stanley was slowly, and all the time we could hear the steady beeping of the machinery all around. A heartbeat of a patient somewhere, or perhaps it might have been Stanley's, pulsating through the heavy air around our heads and hearts. There he was, the brave Stanley, the warrior, laying on the bed with his eyes half closed and in a coma. His eyes were watery, as if he was tearing to the fact that so many people were visiting him. But at the same time, it was unclear if he noticed us or not, it was hard to tell. His chest heaved to the steady pumping of the breathing machine to his side, pumping air into his lungs at an almost too rapid rate. He was dressed in one of those flowery gowns that hospitals issue, and the blanket was pulled just to just below his belly. The bruising on his left eye was still there, but was obviously in the healing process when we reached there. Tubes stuck out from his arms and throat, and the hole that was dug in the latter was covered in layers of white tape and bandages. His aunt came, and asked if we'd like to go into the room itself. We thought about it, and both Simon and I agreed that it was better if we stayed outside. I'm not sure about him, but personally I thought the smell of Stanley's struggle might be too much to handle.

The world's a roller coaster
And I am not strapped in
Maybe I should hold with care
But my hands are busy in the air saying:

We came out, and it was somebody else's turn to enter. So with that system going on throughout the night, we took our turns to visit him because only two or three visitors were allowed each time into the ward, in the fear of bringing unwanted germs and diseases to the patients inside. According to Hanwei who was there throughout the day, Stanley's situation has improved. With his liver and kidneys back in function, all we have to worry about now are the lungs and the coma. Apparently the McDonald's delivery bag that he was carrying saved his life, because of the fact that it cushioned much of his fall.

After meeting with the family members, we found out exactly what happened during the accident. At 4am that night, Stanley was coming to an end for his 15 hours working shift everyday, and was supposed to have a delivery at that time. But when the delivery never arrived, the customers weren't too happy about it and there was a sort of investigation. At 5am, a cab driver who passed by the area saw a wrecked motorcycle by the side of the road, and no rider to be seen anyway. He got out of his car and inspected the area only to find Stanley's body by the side of the road, in a drain and left for dead. It was an hour before anybody found his body, and by that time his innards were already badly infected by germs and in a deep sleep. For the past twelve days or so, everybody has been hoping for the best and expecting the worst, and as much as we wanted to do something for Stanley, all we could do was to stare at him through a thick glass window and pray for his future.

As we sat at the hawker centre downstairs, we had a quick dinner and snacks, following by some catching up between old friends. We avoided the topic upstairs, fearing that we might bring back haunting images or unwanted tears. The scene downstairs was drastically different, with people having their late dinners and everybody minding their own businesses. People lined up at ATMs, wheelchairs were being pushed around, and it just looked so much like the insides of a giant monster, with the cells running around ceaselessly in the organs and the life never stopping for anything or anybody. I looked around in awe, at how ignorant the people were at the tragedies that occurred upstairs every single day. But of course, we couldn't blame them because they didn't know. They couldn't possibly mourn for the loss of a great friend because they never known the guy.

We met in the army, Stanley and I. And through the course of our meeting, our superiors have been telling us how to be aggressive against our formidable enemies, and how to fight a battle against them with our rifles and tanks. But of course, the real battle was always inside our hearts, to conquer our fears to kill the enemies and to fight on, no matter how steep the slopes might be. However, we never had real enemies in the army, no opposing forces with real bullets firing at us through bushes and trees. Just wooden boards tied to a stick and stuck out in the mud, or fellow battalion mates with a yellow band tied to their arm acting as an enemy, and firing blanks at us from a safe distance away. The truth is, we never fought a real enemy no matter how much the superiors tried to instill in us. Outfields sucked, and most of the time we couldn't be bothered with 'killing' the enemies and overcoming the 'objectives'. We were just there, hoping that time would go by faster, and it only went by slower and slower every single time.

Now that we are both out of the army, Stanley is fighting a war of his own in his head. No rifles this time, or tanks, or bayonets, or anything that could deal critical damage to the opponent. Because the opponent is invisible, the opponent is THE Death we are talking about. Even with his organs slowly coming back to life, it is still hard to tell if he is ever going to make a full recovery from his coma. Or even if he recovers from the coma, it is hard to say if he is going to remain as Stanley Yeo, as we all know him by. This battle in the ward is being fought twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and has been going on ever since the moment his body flew out of the bike and landed in the roadside drain.

We all tried to do our best, we all tried to be the best soldier out in the fields. Some for recognition while others for pride. But this true warrior - Stanley - is fighting for neither of those, but the most basic of a human: Life. The most intense war is going on in that small room of his, with tubes hanging out from his body and his stomach still left opened for the blood to be drained. And outside the body, he just looked like he was having a troubled sleep. To be honest, Stanley wasn't nearly as bad as I thought he would be, but it was still a hard sight to look at. I could - or we all could - feel the silent war waging deep within, the truly warrior putting his chest up against Death.

Knowing how to fire a SAR 21, knowing how to kill an enemy with a bayonet, learning close combat training, knowing how to drive a tank doesn't make you a warrior. The war with the heart, the war with death, the war for life, is what truly makes you a warrior. Even if your effort doesn't amount to anything Stanley, fighting for the past two weeks already made you the bravest and most courageous fighter our company has ever seen. But hang in there still, because we don't want to see you fight a losing battle. Just keep breathing, we will be there when you decide to come back to life again.

I wish you were here
I wish you were

I wish you were here
I wish you were here
I wish you were here
Wish you were here