Chapter 2: The Red Raincoat
The black sedan pulled
away from the villa into a curtain of white rain.
The driver that night was a
fill-in, brought on for the shift, introduced as the hospital’s backup driver
after their usual man had suddenly called in sick with a stomachache. Gia Huy
asked his name; the man in the front gave a clipped answer and kept driving,
both hands locked tight around the wheel.
Khai Minh sat wedged
between his parents, lifting his wrist now and then to admire the new watch.
Thanh Ha glanced at her son, about to say something, when the car abruptly
picked up speed on the descent toward the south side of the city.
“Slow down a little,
please.”
She said it gently. The
driver didn’t answer. He pressed down on the pedal, and the car lurched, then
fishtailed across the water-slicked road.
“Sir, ma’am, the brakes
aren’t responding.”
Gia Huy’s head snapped up.
“What did you say?”
“The brakes are gone. I
can’t hold the speed.”
“Downshift. Ease the
handbrake up slowly. Avoid the bend ahead.”
“I’m trying, sir.”
Thanh Ha pulled her son
hard against her body. Khai Minh could hear his mother’s heart hammering right
against his ear, and his father barking at the driver to steer into the earthen
bank rather than plunge over the edge.
Rain lashed the windshield
in sheets. The wipers ran flat out and still couldn’t cut through the thick
white wall in front of them.
“Minh, put your head down.”
“Mom…”
“Hold on to me. Tight.”
The car slammed into the
guardrail, spun sideways, and rolled onto its side.
Crumpling metal, shattering
glass, and screaming voices fused into one enormous roar. Khai Minh’s body was
hurled out of his mother’s arms; his head struck the seat frame, and everything
in front of him dissolved into streaks of red and white, reeling.
When he came to, he was
lying among shards of glass, blood trickling from his forehead down into his
eyelashes.
The car had rolled onto its
side against the shoulder, its front end caved in, the reek of gasoline
flooding the cabin. His father wasn’t speaking anymore. Thanh Ha was pinned in
the back seat, one leg trapped beneath a bar of twisted metal, her breath
coming in broken gasps.
“Mom…”
“Minh… Minh, baby… can you
hear me?”
“I’m here. I’ll pull you
out.”
“No. Crawl out first.
Get away from the car, then go find someone to help.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“My leg is stuck. Even if
you stay, you can’t lift it. Listen to me. Get out. Now.”
Khai Minh clung to the
seat, sobbing, straining to heave the steel bar off his mother’s leg with both
hands. Thanh Ha went white with pain, but she still pushed her son toward the
shattered window.
“Minh. Look at me.”
He raised his head, eyes
full of blood and rain.
“You have to live. Crawl
out, get help, come back for me. Go, now…”
Gritting his teeth, Khai
Minh dragged himself through the mangled window frame.
Glass sliced open his palms
and his knees. Every movement sent a burning stab through his chest, sharp as a
blade. He had just tumbled onto the asphalt when he saw someone standing not
far from the car.
The figure wore a red
raincoat.
On that empty, silent
slope, amid the gray, murky rain and the flickering of the car’s lights, that
red stood out with a clarity that turned the blood cold. The figure didn’t run
over. Didn’t call for help. Didn’t show the panic of someone who’d merely
stumbled onto an accident.
They only stood there, face
hidden beneath the hood, watching the leaking car with perfect calm.
“Please, help my mom!”
Khai Minh pushed himself up
on his hands, only for his legs to buckle beneath him.
“Please, save my mother.
Call an ambulance!”
The figure in red didn’t
stir.
Thanh Ha saw the shape too.
She strained to lift her head, her pale lips trembling, her cry barely making
it through the crushed window frame.
“Ngoc…”
She forced the name out.
Khai Minh whipped his head toward the figure in red. He couldn’t make out the
face. He caught only the way the hand withdrew into the sleeve as a spark flared
beneath the car’s chassis.
“Mom!”
The blast tore the slope
apart.
Flames erupted; the heat
slammed straight into his face and threw him flat. And in the last instant
before his mind went under, he still saw that red raincoat receding into the
rain, never once looking back.
Two days later, Khai Minh
woke to the smell of antiseptic and the steady beep of a heart monitor.
He opened his eyes, but
there was no light in front of them, only a thick, packed darkness. No matter
how hard he blinked, or how he lifted a hand to touch his aching lids, that
blackness would not change.
“Where are my parents?”
The hand holding his
suddenly clenched tight. Mai Ngoc’s voice rose beside the bed, hoarse and
choked.
“Minh, you just came out of
surgery. You have to lie still.”
“Where are my parents?”
“Auntie’s here with you.”
“I asked where my parents
are.”
Mai Ngoc broke into tears.
Her crying stretched on, ragged and broken, but it couldn’t cover the beat of
hesitation that came just before her answer.
“Your parents… they’re
gone.”
Khai Minh lay motionless.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t
tear his hand from his aunt’s. He didn’t cry. The grief crashed in too fast;
his throat locked up, and his whole body went cold, as if his very soul had
been drained out of him.
A long while later, he
finally turned his face toward the sound of Mai Ngoc’s voice.
“Where were you when the
car burned?”
Mai Ngoc went silent.
“What kind of question is
that?”
“Mom called your name.”
“Your mother was badly
injured. She may have called it without knowing what she was saying.”
“I saw someone in a red
raincoat. They stood right at the roadside, watching the car burn, and did
nothing. Mom looked at that person, and called your name.”
Mai Ngoc let go of his
hand, then hurriedly seized it again, her voice climbing with fear.
“You suffered a head
injury. The doctors said you might experience hallucinations before losing your
sight. I’m your mother’s blood, her little sister. I grew up beside her. How
could you even think that person was me?”
“I didn’t say it was you. I
only asked where you were.”
“I was at the hospital. The
moment I heard about the crash, I came straight here.”
“Did anyone see you at the
hospital before the car caught fire?”
Mai Ngoc didn’t answer.
Outside the room, footsteps
paused, then moved on; a medication cart rattled down the corridor. Khai Minh
lay in the dark, but he understood, in that moment, that a person’s silence
could be every bit as full of words.
In the days that followed,
every conclusion nudged the story in the same direction.
The doctors confirmed that
Khai Minh’s brain trauma could well be the cause of visual hallucinations. The
police said the cameras along that stretch of road had recorded no one in a red
raincoat. The technical report concluded that the brakes had failed due to poor
maintenance, that the slick road had sent the car out of control, and that a
short in the wiring had ignited the fuel. The driver, who died at the scene,
was recorded as a victim of the accident too.
That same night, Lab Seven
at Vinh An Hospital burned to the ground. The server holding the D-17 trial
data, the patient monitoring files, the entire original report, all of it
reduced to ash. The guard on duty testified that the electrical system had
malfunctioned, and the cameras in the area had gone dark nearly twenty minutes
before the blaze.
One family lost two of its
own. A laboratory turned to cinders. And a drug program that could have cost
the Truong Sinh Group hundreds of millions of dollars in an investigation
escaped it entirely.
And the only person who had
seen the figure in the red raincoat was a child who’d just lost his parents and
his sight, his testimony brushed aside with two easy words: hallucinations.
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