“Oh, when will the good apples fall on my side of the fence?
When will I taste the sweet fruits of life?
When will the sun smile for me, through great cloudy skies above?
When will I find my true, true love?”
“Aiyyoh, Ah Phine!” Karim moaned. “You in depression or what? Why keep singing that song only?”
Even Robert objected. As if he sensed the sadness in my voice, he would purse his lips together to sulk if I sang it whilst feeding him his Nestum cereal. Even at 14, he could eat only softened food.
“Stop it, Ah Phine!” Mak scolded. “You’re making Robert cry. Got no other song to sing or what? “
I was not a happy bunny. Even my colleagues at work noticed it.
“I think you need to get out of the hospital environment,” Sister A said to me.
She was in charge of all the nurses at the Dental Clinic in ORGH. I had been ushered into her office. Nurse Z, who was the head nurse at the Oral Surgery Department, had filed a complaint about me. I was stricken. Was I going to be sacked? I had been assigned to look after a patient in the Recovery Room after his surgery. It was my duty to check his pulse regularly and monitor him till he came out of the effect of the anesthesia that had been administered during his operation on an enlarged cyst in his oral cavity. In my nervous and emotionally upset state, I could not trace the patient’s pulse on his wrist. The more I perspired, the more my fingers became useless. The trouble was that a person’s index finger had its own pulse, so if an inexperienced nurse was not careful, she would be taking her own pulse rather than the patient’s! In a panic, I tried to find the pulse on his ankle. Still, I couldn’t feel any. I thought I’d make doubly sure before I raised the alarm that the patient had died whilst in my care. I would be sacked for sure. I desperately felt under his gown, groping up along his leg towards his thigh, when Nurse Z’s voice boomed in my ear, “I think you’ve gone high enough, Nurse Chia!”
Sister A was an affable type. She was rather large for a Chinese and had a tofu-white, round moon-face with coal black hair. Except when she was trying to be stern, she was nearly always smiling. I was more terrified of Nurse Z than I was of Sister A, who was more senior in the nursing hierarchy.
“The nurse that goes with the dental surgeon in our mobile clinic is retiring soon,” Sister A said. “I need someone to replace her. You seem like the right kind of person if you can cope with change, as the roving dental surgeon goes to different places each week.”
“What kind of places?” I asked Sister.
“Changi Prison for one,” Sister A said. “Also Woodbridge Hospital. You have to deal with mental patients. The same nurse also goes out to St John’s Island every other Saturday for the dental surgeon to treat the drug addicts and people who are quarantined there.”
“Wow!” I said excitedly. “You mean I get to go on a boat to work?”
“Unless you plan to swim there,” Sister A said with a smile.
“Yes please, Sister!” I said.
“Oh, I have to warn you though,” Sister said gravely. “One of the places the roving dental surgeon and his assistant have to visit is Trafalgar Home, also called the Lepers’ Village next to Woodbridge.”
“What? Lepers, as in the biblical lepers? I didn’t know there was such a thing in Singapore.”
“People don’t talk much about that kind of thing,” Sister said. “But there are still a few of them around. They have been kept in a kind of commune so that they won’t infect others. Many of them still have open lesions on their skin. They are not pleasant to look at. You will have to be very thorough in disinfecting the instruments used, plus your uniform and yourself after each visit. You will also have to learn not to exhibit any reaction when you face some of them who have lost noses, fingers or other body parts to the disease. Will you be able to do that?”
I had to think, as I had not been asked such a question before. I did not want to simply give a glib answer. How tragic that in this modern day and age, we still have such a disease, one that led to sufferers being shunned and ostracised by society. No wonder they needed to live in an enclosed village. Here I was, so indulgent in my own sorrow over a small matter, and yet there were people living who had real challenges in life.
“Yes, Sister, I will do it.”
Before I left for my new assignment, I received an offer from the orthodontist I had been assisting since my graduation. Next to the Extraction Department at the Dental Clinic was a small room that was used for Orthodontia. Dr S treated mostly children, putting braces on their teeth to coerce them into proper shape. He was not a tall man but had a big heart.
“I can straighten your teeth for you to help adjust your overbite,” Dr S said. “I know you have difficulty eating noodles with that condition. It can’t be done after you pass 21. But it won’t be an easy process. It’s easier when you are a
