Seat Belt
Last June, my sister tumbled off a rock wall, the ulna and radial bones in her arm breaking cleanly in two places.
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A year on, it’s time to take the metal plates in her arm out. Early one weekday morning, I drive her to the X-ray appointment. Waiting at the hospital is impossible, so I map my way to a building opposite, which almost always has available space because of how nightmarish the parking is. It’s one of those mixed-development malls with a terribly confusing layout. Make one wrong turn and you might end up in a medical center instead of the toilet, take the wrong elevator and you’ll find yourself bumped into the adjacent building. There’s a famous pancake house in that mall, hidden behind two walls of what looks like temporary scaffolding, but which has been there for years. The car park starts on the eighth floor.
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The situation comes in many forms. In Thai horror film, “Shutter”, the protagonist stumbles up the same stairwell over and over, never proceeding past that one floor. In Gogol’s short story, “Portrait”, the protagonist wakes, twice, to realise he is yet dreaming. Infinitap Games’s “Neverending Nightmares” sees the user waking perpetually, with each attempt at breaking the cycle triggering yet another hypnogogic jerk into a progressively worse nightmare. Anecdotally, we dream, too, of scenarios where the end is always slightly out of reach: swimming up towards the surface, lungs bursting, racing towards the end of a yawning tunnel, being stuck on a fire escape ladder which stretches to infinity either way. I’m not even past level two of the steep spiral incline of the car park ramp when I feel the beginnings of nausea stir in me. My hands grip the steering wheel, I try to keep close to the wall. Six floors to go.
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The week before my sister’s follow-up, I get my second vaccine jab. I’ve always reacted badly to new medication, I expect this to be the same. But what follows is nine days of a lucid nightmare, a high fever for three days, which then melts into a clammy, low-grade fever for over a week. Each touch — a comforting pat, a friendly hug, an accidental brush — hurts. I scream and scream. How can it be so bad? my partner wants to know. I reply, miserably: how?
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There are signposts, painted with a wide blue brush, along the spiral car park ramp. 220m to 8th floor car park. 160m to 8th floor car park. Each marker a buoy, promising: you are making progress, this is ending, soon. I hate this car park so much. I’m only on the fourth level, but it feels as if I’ve been going round and round for ten. 120m to the 8th floor, it says. 100m.
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Hope, it makes a fool of us all. For a long while, things seemed good in Singapore. Bloomberg named us the best place to live, in the pandemic. I went to the theater, watched actors emote, live, standing close to one another. I checked dinner places off my list. I paid an old woman on Club Street fifty dollars to insult my posture while kneading the pain out from between my shoulder blades. Then cases erupted and we cracked back into lockdown. Again. They’re not calling it that; they don’t want morale to take a hit. But you don’t always have to name something to know what it is.
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The last lockdown, barely a month ago, was okay. I don’t know what it is about this one. Perhaps the promise of freedom, too close.
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My girlfriend says: I’ve been compliant for so long. I’m so tired.
Another one has given up, booked a flight back to her home country. Once upon a time, she called her move here a realisation of her happily-ever-after. Finally, she’d said, beaming. Her return hurts her more than anyone else; I know she sees it as a kind of failure. It’s not. But it’s pointless for me to say so. It won’t change how she feels, except to isolate her in her self-immolation. I didn’t ask what she’d do when she returns home, I’ve seen the news. Our entire region is hit bad. The cages, they unfold like Russian dolls.
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I want to throw up. This carpark was surely designed by someone who does not drive.
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Eight days after my second dose, a friend offers to send me to the hospital. Your symptoms have persisted for too long, he says. He studied, but does not practice, medicine. It’s not safe.
I feel fine.
I don’t know why you keep saying that. I don’t know if you’re trying to convince me, or yourself.
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By day ten I’m fine.
See? I said.
See, he replied.
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The fact that I’ve lost a week to the fever won’t change. I’m not getting back the week, the year. I reach the gantry, brake hard, and wait for the car park sensor to recognise my IU. It beeps expensively, and lets me through. When I pull into an empty lot, I text my sister my location.
Waiting for you here.
I’m here waiting, too.
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The removal operation is scheduled for that very weekend. Things are moving quite fast now; they’ve found a hospital bed for her, synced up the doctor’s schedule. I see her tiny frame hefting a giant envelope containing her X-ray printout, crossing the car park towards me.
My bone grew back fat, she says, without preamble. Look. It’s even harder to break now.
I shake my head and start the car. Seat belt.
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The spiral down eight floors is dizzying. Beside me, she closes her eyes and waits for it to be over. How do you feel about the op? I ask. She knows it’s a step towards a better body, being able to move freely again, but she isn’t looking forward to slicing her arm open. Round and round the car goes, my foot tensed on the brake. Sometimes, being able to see the end, being able to measure progress, doesn’t change the dread of the moment. Sometimes, what doesn’t kill you just makes you tired. I know the car park will spit me out at some point, I know it’s coming. Oh god, I can’t wait.
