Khai Minh woke to a
sound so familiar he thought he must have died and somehow still been able to
hear it.
The steady, slow beep of a
heart monitor.
He had once lain listening
to this exact sound six years ago, when he’d opened his eyes and known that all
that lay before him was a horror of darkness. This time was no different. The
darkness was still there, as thick as ever. But his chest ached, his throat
burned raw, and a single spot on his right thigh throbbed, the very place
where, that night, someone had driven a needle in.
Memory came flooding back
in pieces. He jolted, meaning to rip out the IV and bolt from the bed to go find
An Nhien, but the housekeeper caught him in time.
His lips moved. It was a
long while before any sound came out.
“Where’s An Nhien?”
The housekeeper laid a hand
on his shoulder.
“You’re awake. Thank
heaven.”
“Where’s An Nhien?”
The housekeeper didn’t answer.
“I asked where she is.”
A second set of footsteps
drew near, and a middle-aged man’s voice spoke up, calm but careful.
“Mr. Lam, I’m the
doctor treating you. You’ve been unconscious for almost two days. There’s still
toxin your body hasn’t cleared, so lie still for now, don’t push yourself.”
“How is the girl who was
with me?”
The doctor paused a beat.
“How much do you remember?”
“All of it. She injected me
with the only vial of serum. There was just one dose. That dose was supposed to
be hers.”
“That dose is what kept you
alive.”
The doctor pulled up a
chair and sat, his voice slowing.
“The gas released in that
room was an extremely toxic biological sample. Anyone who breathes it in
suffers respiratory failure, then falls into a coma; in severe cases, they
don’t survive. The vial you were given can’t cure it outright. It only holds
the reaction off for a short while. But by good fortune, they got you upstairs
in time. And now, in your blood, an antibody has formed against that toxin.”
Khai Minh listened, his
head still ringing.
“What do you mean?”
“That night, it wasn’t only
the two of you who were exposed. When the door was forced open, the gas flooded
into the corridor. The people who went down to help were exposed. The night
guard was exposed…”
The doctor lowered his
voice.
“We had no choice but to
draw your blood, separate out the plasma carrying the antibody, and make it
into emergency doses to inject into the most severely affected. That night, you
were the only person who already had the thing inside them.”
The room went quiet. Only
the steady beep, beep of the monitor remained.
Khai Minh sat still. For
six years he had been used to being the one people pitied, a blind man who
couldn’t help a soul, not even his own mother. And yet that night, the very
medicine his mother had left behind, injected into him by An Nhien, had pulled
several people back from death’s hands. He should have felt relief. But a heavy
premonition sat in his chest, telling him that something worse still lay
behind, exactly the way people fall silent for a long moment before delivering
terrible news.
“How many did you save?”
“Some. Not all.”
“Say it plainly.”
The doctor let out a
breath.
“A few have come around.
Three didn’t make it through the first night. The rest are still comatose. Your
plasma was only enough to hold the line, not enough to bring everyone back at
once.”
“Where is An Nhien? Has she
woken?”
The housekeeper beside him
shifted slightly, as if to stop the doctor, but the man went on anyway.
“She’s still unconscious.
Her vitals have ticked up, but she hasn’t woken. We’re watching her hour by
hour.”
Khai Minh’s fist tightened
around the thin blanket. He was about to ask more when the housekeeper suddenly
spoke.
“Young master… there’s one
more thing.”
“What is it?”
“The person who broke down
the door and pulled you and Miss An Nhien out… was her father. Mr. Tran
Huu Loc, the head of security.”
Khai Minh turned his head
toward the voice.
“How is he?”
The housekeeper was silent
for a long moment. Then he managed only a single line.
“He didn’t make it, young
master. He breathed in the most gas of anyone, because he kept bending to pull
his daughter out first and wouldn’t fall back. By the time they carried him out
last, it was too late.”
The hand gripping the
blanket went limp.
In his mind, the scene from
that day in the hospital corridor came back, clear down to every sound. The
sound of a man’s knees hitting the tile floor. The man’s voice breaking as he
begged him not to transfer his sick son. And him, back then, coldly tossing off
a line of suspension, of dismissal, as easily as flicking a speck of dust from
his sleeve.
The man who had once knelt
before him to beg for his son’s life had, tonight, broken through a steel door
to save his daughter, and the very man lying inside, him, and had fallen right
at that threshold.
Some debts in life, a
person doesn’t even get the chance to think about repaying before the creditor
is already gone.
“Take me to her.”
“You’ve only just woken,
you’re still very weak….”
“I said take me to An
Nhien.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but
the housekeeper knew there was no point arguing. He helped Khai Minh down, one
hand supporting him, the other placing the cane in his grip. He walked
unsteadily down the corridor, his throat still raw, every breath still trailing
a stab of pain, but he refused to stop.
At one door, the
housekeeper spoke softly.
“She’s in here.”
Khai Minh felt his way
along the bed rail until he reached An Nhien’s hand. It was cold, still marked
with the needle from the IV. He took it, careful, afraid of hurting her.
At her throat, the necklace
engraved with the letters M and N was still there. He couldn’t see it, but he
knew it was there, because it was he who had had it made, he who had rehearsed
over and over one line to give it to her, and in the end couldn’t get out half
a word.
“I’m here now.”
He bent down and spoke
softly by the ear of the girl lying still.
“Can you hear me? Wake up
soon. Dong is waiting for you. And I… I’m waiting too.”
An Nhien didn’t answer. The
heart monitor went on beeping its steady, broken notes.
Khai Minh suddenly
remembered something more bitter still. Dong, An Nhien’s little brother, was
still lying in the psychiatric ward across the way, with no idea his sister had
nearly died, let alone that his father was gone. An Nhien’s whole life,
working, bowing her head, letting others order her around, had all been for
that boy. Now it fell to him to work out who would sit down at the child’s
bedside and tell him.
“The boy still doesn’t
know?”
“Not yet, young master.”
Khai Minh nodded, saying
nothing more, but the grief pressed down on his chest. He sat quietly by the
bed for a long while, then finally lifted his head toward the housekeeper
standing silent in the corner of the room.
“What are they saying about
this, out there?”
The housekeeper hesitated.
“The internal bulletin
lists it as a gas leak in an old wing awaiting demolition. The online papers
ran the same thing. Word is the corporation has already sent people down to
arrange compensation for the families of the victims.”
Khai Minh gave a bitter
laugh.
Once again. Six years ago,
a car with cut brakes became an accident on a rain-slicked road. Now, a whole
row of people cut down by a mass-killing gas became a technical fault in an
abandoned building. The way they erased a truth was exactly as it had always
been, fast, tidy, and always with a harmless little reason ready to paste over
the top.
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