The Night Tiger(54)
* * *
The reception area was empty. Everyone who’d been out on Saturday night was probably still sleeping it off. I wondered where Shin was and what he’d done last night, as I headed over to the cafeteria for breakfast. A faint, foggy mist clung to the wet grass as I crossed, looking for a shortcut. Approaching a corner, I heard the low hiss of angry voices.
“Don’t deny it! You’ve been crying your eyes out over him—a married man!”
“—none of your business anyway.”
I hesitated. The next instant, someone rushed around the corner and cannoned into me. It was a young nurse, her face puffy, her eyes watering suspiciously.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She burst into tears. There was nothing to do but offer her my handkerchief; I couldn’t very well leave her crying on the grass. From what I’d overheard, it sounded like the same sad story I’d observed at the May Flower. Married men were trouble.
“Did you hear everything?” My face must have given me away, for she said, “It’s not like I was having an affair with him. They’re just picking on me. Can you please not tell anyone? I might get suspended if Matron finds out.”
“Don’t worry, I’m just a visitor.”
She looked relieved. “It’s just that, of course, you’d be sad if somebody died, right?” Tears welled up again in her eyes.
People crying always made me feel guilty, especially my mother, the few times I’d found her silently weeping in her darkened bedroom, her eyes wide open and the tears running down her face as though she was sleepwalking. This nurse looked so utterly miserable, with her crooked knees and crumpled uniform, that I patted her back while she blew her nose loudly.
“I couldn’t even go to his funeral last weekend in Papan, because I had to work.”
My ears pricked. How many funerals could there have been in that town last weekend?
“What did he do?”
“He was a salesman, one of my patients. We were friends,” she said too quickly.
So I’d found her—the nurse who’d given the salesman the finger. Was it fate, or some dark link, like a cold strand of riverweed entangling us? Too many peculiar events were connected to this hospital. I couldn’t help thinking that if you believed the souls of the dead lingered for forty-nine days after death, then this hospital must be full of them.
“Were you going somewhere?” she asked, with a guilty start.
“To the cafeteria, but I got lost.”
“I’ll take you. I was on my way there myself.” She pursed her lips. “Let me wash my face first.”
The little nurse—she was almost a head shorter than me, though I was considered tall for a girl—hurried off. I waited, wondering whether she’d change her mind and abandon me. But my experience at the May Flower had taught me that people confided all sorts of things to strangers, and she’d been practically bursting to tell someone.
Presently, she returned looking better. She still had a rabbity air about her, but it suited her pale complexion and small front teeth. “I’m Pei Ling, by the way.”
“My name’s Ji Lin. I stayed at the hostel last night, to visit my brother—I mean, my fiancé.” I stumbled over the words.
She gave me a complicit look. “You mean your boyfriend? They’re awfully strict at the hostel. Don’t worry, I won’t tell. What’s his name?”
“Lee Shin. He’s an orderly.”
“I don’t think I know him.” She frowned intensely, as though she was calculating something, then stopped, twisting her hands. “You’ve been kind to me,” she said, cutting short my protests. “No, you have. Lots of people don’t notice me—I’m that kind of person. But will you do me a favor?”
“What is it?”
“You said your boyfriend was an orderly at the men’s hostel. I don’t know anyone there. At least, not anyone I trust. Do you think you could ask him to fetch a parcel for me? I’m not asking you to steal. It was mine in the first place.” Face red, voice shaking, she must have been desperate to ask a stranger. Or perhaps a stranger was the best method if she didn’t want to involve anyone she knew. “Yew Cheung had a friend in the men’s hostel who used to keep things for him. He said he’d give it back to me, but he died so suddenly.”
“Why don’t you ask his friend for it?” That must be Y. K. Wong, I thought. He’d said at the May Flower that he was the salesman’s friend.
“Because I don’t like him. And he’d probably use it against me.” Eyes averted, lips trembling.
This sounded suspicious but I might learn something more about Y. K. Wong, if I had to deal with him again. “All right, I’ll ask Shin.”
Relieved, she said, “It’s in the common room of the men’s hostel. Yew Cheung said he hid it in a vase the last time he came because his friend was out. It was only supposed to be a temporary hiding place, and I’m worried that someone will eventually find it.”
* * *
At this early hour on a Sunday morning, there were hardly any people in the cafeteria. Those spooning food into their mouths looked bleary-eyed. They’d probably worked the night shift like Pei Ling.