In Continuum.

Premonition

I sat in the dark tonight, stared at a blank channel in my parents' empty room for the longest time. They say that it is the best way to cure insomnia, the way the sound of static on blank channels resembles that of the rain hitting your window panes. It reminded me of the way I was rudely awoken this morning to the curtains lifted by the winds and the books on the table drenched by the invading rain. Only, sitting there in the dark, there was an immense feeling of loneliness and sadness for some reason. It didn't even make sense then, considering the fact that I was brushing my teeth as I watched those black and white particles bounce around within the plastic frames of the television. The room has been vacant for a few days now, simply because my mother went back to Taiwan to take care of my aunt, the aunt with the dog. There has been an accident this week, and things are not looking good at all.

I have early classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. On such days, my mother would fetch me to the MRT station to catch the earlier trains to school. It is a short drive from my home to the station, anywhere in the vicinity of five to seven minutes at the most. Not a lot can be said during the trip, but this is usually when the two of us would talk about the happenings in each others' lives, despite living under the same roof most of the time. We would talk about the dreams we had last night, when my father is finally coming back from his overseas trip, or about my sister's exchange program to England at the end of November. By the time we reach the station, I would've had my bag prepared and my iPod plugged into my ears, ready to travel to school all on my own. But the last Thursday was a little different from all the rest, when a phone call came just as we were about to reach the station. My mother reached for the phone under the hand brake, with the other hand trying to bring the vehicle to a halt at the curb. We both thought that it must have been my sister, calling because there was yet another tremor that must have shook her awake. We laughed about it, and that was when the car came to a stop and I jumped out of the side door. That is when it struck me, that is when it happened.

No, when I speak of Premonition, I am not speaking of the horrendous Sandra Bullocks movie in the theaters right now. I am talking about this vision of something bad happening, a gut feeling that something bad must have happened. Something about the way the phone rang that just sounded wrong and out of place that fateful Thursday morning, something that I couldn't put my finger on. It sounded like any other phone call, with the same ringtone that my mother has been using for the longest time. However, as I took the escalator down to the basement level of the station, the feeling grew stronger in my throat, like a ball of fur trapped in the windpipe of a cat. I tried to cough the feeling away, like a patient with pneumonia in the middle of the platform. When I finally managed to sweep the feeling under the rug, the train arrived at the station and that was the beginning of the day for me, squeezing in between completely strangers as the train traveled down the long dark tunnels. The feeling never returned for the rest of the day, and I realized that I have swept it away as a paranoia of mine, the way I would worry about the building collapsing whenever there is a tremor felt in Singapore. I am usually wrong about such things of course, because you don't hear about buildings collapsing in Singapore - at least not yet. But that day at the train station, the feeling that came to my throat, it was real. For once, it sucked to be right.

Sticking her head through the gap in the door, my mother's head popped into the room. She told me that the call in the morning wasn't from my sister, but from my uncle in Taiwan. Apparently, there has been an accident in the night while my aunt was bathing, an accident that involved her slipping in the bathtub and slamming her face into the side. It was a frantic call from my uncle all the way from Taiwan, telling my mother about the accident. She told me to take care of the house over the weekend, because she already booked a ticket at that time to fly back on Friday morning just to check up on her. Things are uncertain now, and she is in the good hands of my uncle. But still, my mother wanted to go back as soon as possible, though my aunt is refusing every visitor at the moment.

In the bathroom that day, my aunt was overcome by a wave of nausea all of a sudden, and she lost her balance in the middle of the bathtub. My mother said that women have that problem when they are experiencing their menopause, and it seems to have struck my aunt at the wrongest of times. She slipped and her face slammed right into the side of the bathtub, breaking her lips, her nose and her forehead. You know how it is when you get into an accident, the brain pumps adrenaline to the rest of your body and you fail to feel the pain for a few short moments. She tried to wash the wound at that time, because there wasn't a mirror in the bathroom for her to see. But the more she tried, more blood came flooding down her face. The pain became excruciating, and she passed out in the bathroom soon afterwards.

I've been in that bathroom before, used the same shower head and stood at the very same spot where she fell. I am picturing the naked body of my aunt in the tub, with blood all over her body and her face, draining away as the shower head continued to spurt out water. My uncle came into the bathroom and found her body there in the night, and sent her to the closest hospital as soon as possible. It seems like she was lucky enough to have escaped broken teeth and a raptured eyeball, but the nose may need plastic surgery to be restored. The trauma in the forehead is causing her to feel like vomiting every now and then, and she is already at home resting as I type this entry. She refused to have anybody visit her at home, telling people that she looks like a rotten pig. She can't speak or eat now, but she did manage to stop relatives from visiting by speaking in vowels through her swollen lips. Whatever it is, she seems to be doing OK right now, and my mother is back more as a mental support than anything else. They've been through so much together, the sisters. I love that woman.

Once again, like any other accidents that have been happening around me, it has been hard to stomach just how vulnerable and fragile humans are. A nausea in the bathroom could cause such a thing to happen, not to mention something far worse than this. It is hard to picture the same aunt that has been like a second mother to me, lying there in the hospital bed with bandages all over her face. It must be some kind of courage on the part of my mother's, to have the courage to go back at this time to take care of her. Personally, like my father, the fear of death runs in our blood. Neither of us can handle that idea very well, not even when a person took a U-turn at the gates of death like my aunt. I guess the vulnerability of humans scare us sometimes, and it makes us wonder what it would be like for us to be involved in such accidents ourselves. I guess for me, the more important question would be, who would care if I do slip in the bathtub one day and break my face as a result. Who would visit me at home, send a 'Get Well' card, or call me even if I cannot speak? I guess those answers can only be realized when it does happen - though I am not saying that I'd like it to happen. Still, what my mother did touched me even if it wasn't me who had my nose smashed. My mother is the greatest woman alive without realizing it.

My parents will be coming back home together tomorrow afternoon, and I dearly hope that I will hear good news from them about my aunt. I hope that by the time I return to Taiwan at the end of this year, I will be able to see my aunt recovered completely from this ordeal. I'd treat it as if nothing has happened, though I had to be pretentious like that. But that is how I deal with human vulnerabilities, very much like my own vulnerabilities in the field of love and relationships. I pretend that nothing happened and nothing occurred. I guess it just becomes easier to deal with the problems at hand by avoiding sometimes, and I am the kind of person to run away too. I am not as strong as I'd like to be, not as strong as people may assume myself to be. I pretend, and I do it well. I sit in front of a blank channel in a dark room and hope for the sound to drown out all other emotions and thoughts. Amidst the prayers and the hopes, there is that fear that lingers about in my thoughts, that loneliness that cannot be explained. If only I had premonitions of what to come in the past, to know how my vulnerabilities would haunt me in the future. But I guess, like the blood that drained out of her body and into the sewage, it is a drop of blood lost that we are never going to get back.