Behind William, Lydia sorts her book trolley industriously.
Ren can’t sense anything from her at all. Perhaps because she’s an unknown quantity—a foreigner and a lady—and he has almost no experience with this combination. She and William make a well-matched pair. They’re both so tall, with light eyes and skin mottled from the fierce sun, not smooth and evenly colored like Nandani’s. Ren feels sorry for the foreign lady; she’s trying so hard. Why doesn’t William like her?
* * *
Done with the wards, Ren trots along next to William. He’s giddy with his cat sense, that long-lost sensation of feeling the invisible, as though he’s regained a limb or an extra set of eyes and ears. What is it about the hospital that’s so special? William says he’ll stop by pathology to see his colleague Dr. Rawlings. He has a question for him about an autopsy report. Ren knows that pathology means organs and bits of dead people and animals, a good sign that it’s where the finger is. Buzzing with excitement, he’s confident that even with his eyes closed, he’ll finally be able to locate it.
As they navigate the covered walkways, lined with beds of day lilies on one side, Ren discovers he can read William now in a way he never could before. William’s interest is like a taut string. It snaps around, but mostly it’s drawn to women. Nurses passing, a lady visitor bending over a bed. Certainly, William doesn’t pay attention to the things that Ren notices, like the spider behind the door, or the perfectly round pebble under the lilies that Ren would like to put in his pocket but doesn’t dare to because it’s probably hospital property.
As they draw nearer the pathology department, the twitch of invisible filaments grows so strong that Ren is tense with excitement. It’s never been like this before, not even with Yi. They turn a corner. William pats his breast pocket, then rummages in his trousers with annoyance. “Ren, go back and fetch my fountain pen. The ward sister will have it.”
With a wrench, Ren watches as William crosses to another building, opens the door, and goes in. Something in that room is calling Ren, drawing him, even at fifty feet, like a magnet. He must enter that room.
But retrieving William’s fountain pen is an order he can’t disobey. The name of the pen, William has explained, is that of the highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc. The white, rounded star on the pen represents the snow-covered peak, and it has an engraved nib made out of real gold. It’s the pen he uses to write letters every day. If he doesn’t find it, William will be very unhappy.
Rushing back, Ren gets confused and takes a wrong turn. It’s hard to filter out the flood of signals that assail him. Like a mirror full of fish, he recalls the blind fisherman Pak Idris saying. You must know their song. Though what he senses right now is more like fireflies darting in the darkness. They move in odd and random patterns of people’s interests and emotions, and Ren thinks that if only he can find a still, quiet place, he’ll able to sort them out. But first, he must retrieve the pen. The ward sister on duty tells him that she’s given it to Matron.
Matron, like most of the senior staff, is a foreigner. A sharp-faced Australian woman, she’s all elbows and briskness and looks doubtfully at him when he finally arrives at her office. “This is an expensive pen. You’d best not drop it.” Her white, starched headdress stands out like stiff wings. Clutching the pen, Ren hastens anxiously back to the pathology storeroom. At one point he breaks into a run, only to meet angry glares from adults. No need to ask for directions. The wires are humming in his head, singing. As he races around the last corner, he cannons into William.
“Did you find it?” he asks.
Dazed, Ren stares at him. The pen. He produces it triumphantly.
“Splendid!” William looks pleased, but whether it’s because he’s regained his fountain pen or something good has happened in that room, Ren can’t tell. In fact, William is in a far better mood than he’s been all week. Ren peers past him. The door is now ajar, but the dazzling sunlight makes it hard to see the dim interior. There’s a lean shadow in the doorway. A man perhaps—it looks too tall for a woman. Is this the Dr. Rawlings that William spoke of?
Electricity runs through him. Ren’s thoughts become jumbled, incoherent. His cat whiskers sizzle. He must go back, to the room that William has just exited, but instead he sways on his feet.
“Steady,” says William, marching Ren over to a bench. “Did you not eat lunch?”
Ren shakes his head. Neither he nor Ah Long planned for him to go on this surprise excursion into town.
“Let’s get you something then. There’s a café in town with decent coffee.”
Tears of frustration prick Ren’s eyes as he’s led all the way back to the front of the hospital where Harun is waiting for them, squatting next to the parked car in the shade. As the car pulls away, he looks back at the hospital. It isn’t that far from the Kinta Club where William is planning to go later. Perhaps Ren can return quietly by himself. In fact, he must.
16
Batu Gajah District Hospital
Saturday, June 13th
The foreigner, William Acton, stood in the open doorway of the pathology storeroom. “I haven’t seen you before. You’re not a nurse are you?”
“No, I’m just helping out.” I recognized the flicker of acquisitive interest in his eyes. It made me nervous. Where was Shin?
“I see,” but he didn’t move from the door.
I stood there awkwardly, holding a jar with part of an intestine in it. He took his glasses off and rubbed his face, a gesture that made him look oddly naked and unwell. His skin was grey under its tan and there were rings under his eyes. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five though his movements seemed quick enough.
“Do you work for Rawlings then?”
I nodded. He smiled then. It was completely unexpected and lent his face a haggard charm.
“I suppose you won’t tell me your name?”
“Louise.” That at least I knew how to answer.
“Well, Louise, you don’t seem very squeamish about these specimens.”
“I’m not,” I said coolly.
“Some of them were actually contributed by me.”
Despite myself, I was curious. “You’ve donated your own organs to science?” I thought people only did that after they were dead.
The foreign doctor smiled again. “I meant patients of mine. Let’s see—I think I did an unusually large gallstone and a couple of fingers.”
“Fingers?” I was instantly alert.
“One was a vestigial sixth finger removed from an Indian patient. Another actually belonged to a friend of mine. We’ve got quite a collection of digits here, at least a dozen if I recall.”
He crossed the room, pointing out a large jar of murky fluid. “This should be dumped. A lot of the older specimens are fixed in alcohol, which really ought to be changed once a year. We only keep them if they’re medically interesting. And of course, some people take their own parts back to be buried with them.”
He leaned in, and I took a step sideways. I was wary of standing close to men. Working at the May Flower had taught me their long reach, their surprising strength, and how difficult it was to twist away if you were seized by the waist. But there were no glowering bouncers right now, nor the Mama with her eagle eye. It was just the two of us alone in this room. If I screamed, would anyone come?
But perhaps I was being overly suspicious, as he kept talking about various specimens. He seemed to know quite a lot about them.
“How long do you keep them for?”
“No idea. They’re mostly curiosities—the orderlies like to bring the trainee nurses in after dark to give them a thrill.”
I couldn’t resist asking, “Is it hard to become a nurse in this hospital?”
“Have you gone to school? You sound like it.”
Briefly, I told him about having finished my School Certificate and how I wanted to do something else.
“I see.” He rubbed his chin, appraising me again. “It’s not a very standardized system, nothing like what we have in Britain. Here it depends on the hospital. Batu Gajah District Hospital trains local girls to fill positions. Lectures on nursing are given by senior nursing staff and some of the doctors, and there’s a state examination.”
“Are there still vacancies for trainees?” The hopeful note in my voice embarrassed me, but he looked pleased at my interest.
“You’d have to find out from the hospital. If not this year, there’s always the next intake.”
“What about school fees?” I’d no money of my own after making my mother’s debt payments, and as long as my stepfather refused to fund me, the door was closed.
“I believe there are scholarships. You’d need a personal recommendation, of course.”