The Weight of Our Sky(42)

“Shut up, Rahman.” The first one is clearly the one in charge here, and Rahman subsides with a scowl.

The soldier looks at me. “There’s a car we can use here,” he says, gesturing to the black sedan behind them. “Can your friend walk? Or does she need help with that?”

Relief floods through me. “I think she could use some help,” I say. “She’s just over there, inside that shophouse—that one, just there.”

He nods. “All right. Arif, start the car and bring it around. You two, stay here and keep watch. I expect a full report of any incidents when we get back.”

The others nod, and the soldier and I—“You can call me Mat,” he tells me—make our way toward the shophouse. Vincent is nowhere to be seen. In the middle of the room, right where I left her, Jee is panting harder now, her face completely pale, her jaw set, her eyes closed. I kneel down beside her. “Time to go, Jee,” I say gently. “We have to get to the hospital now.”

I might as well be talking to stone.

“Jee?” I say again, touching her shoulder. “Jee?”

Great. I just risked my life for a woman who appears to be set on giving birth in the middle of an abandoned shophouse.

Then, the strangest thing happens. Mat, who has thus far been hanging back, just watching us, decides to come forward and kneel on Jee’s other side.

This is going to be great.

“Hello, Jee,” he says.

No answer. The only sound that fills the room is Jee’s shallow panting. I can’t help myself; I start counting them, finding a small comfort in the familiar rhythm: one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three . . .

“Jee, we have to get you to the hospital now, okay?” Mat says, keeping his voice low, gentle.

Still no response.

“I know what you must be feeling,” he continues. “Well, not know, obviously, because how can I? But when my wife was having our son, she was just like you. She wanted to concentrate, and I just kept bugging her—asking her all sorts of stupid questions, making all sorts of stupid comments. ‘Are you okay? Does it hurt? Is he coming now?’ She told me afterward that she never wanted to punch me in the face so much.”

Jee has her eyes open now and is looking at him with a slightly dazed expression. The pants have given way to periodic grunts and groans.

“I know you’ve got this covered,” Mat says gently. “I know you’re worried about setting foot out there, with everything that’s going on.”

“What if someone tries to hurt the baby?” Her voice is barely a croak.

“They’d have to get through me first,” he says. He means it, I think. He really means it.

I guess she thinks so too. “Okay,” she breathes. “Okay.”

Five minutes later, we’re all sitting in the car, and Arif is driving toward the hospital as though he’s being chased by monsters. In the back seat, Jee grips my hand so hard it goes numb; the upside is that it keeps me from tapping.

I know we’re in the middle of an intense situation here, but part of my mind—the part that’s still sane—is busy doing victory laps and turning cartwheels. I did it! I went up to strangers—armed strangers!—because someone else needed help, and I succeeded. I didn’t let my stupid broken brain get in the way. I didn’t rely on someone else to save me. And I didn’t give in to the numbers, not even once! For the first time in a long, long time, I’m beginning to feel like normal is within reach after all. I can do anything. I can save others. I can save myself. And I can find Mama.

“We’re here.” Arif’s voice puts a screeching halt to my euphoria. I look up and realize we’re at the main entrance of the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital. Mama’s hospital.

Mama is here! My brain is screaming for me to run as fast as I can, dash inside, look for Mama, make sure she’s safe. But I stop myself. Jee first. Mat wrenches open the car door, and between us we haul Jee into the emergency room, where she’s immediately swallowed up by a frenzied group of nurses and attendants, leaving us standing uncertainly in the lobby, side by side under the bright red letters spelling out EMERGENCY. There are nine letters; three times three. It’s a good sign, I decide.

“Thank you,” I say, looking up at Mat. He rubs his nose, suddenly bashful. “Just part of the job,” he mutters. Then he pulls himself together. “Will you be all right?”

I nod. “My mother is here,” I say. I can feel the relief unfurl inside me, blooming like fresh flowers.

“Okay, then. Take care, young lady,” he says, striding off, presumably to find Arif and get back to work.

It’s only when they’re both gone that I really stop to take stock of my surroundings.

The hospital is chaos. Nurses and doctors run to and fro, wheeling complicated machines, carrying stacks of charts. At the registration counter, an attendant wearing a harassed expression is patiently trying to help an increasingly hysterical older woman. “But where is she?” she keeps asking. “Why can’t you tell me where she is? How will I know if she’s hurt?” “We’re doing everything we can to find out, madam,” the attendant says, straining to keep her voice even, polite. On the benches and chairs, dozens wait their turn in silence. One boy, no older than ten, whimpers in the corner; his mother murmurs soothingly in his ear. There’s no way to tell the original color of the blood-soaked towel she’s pressing to his face. “Ricochet,” I hear one nurse mutter to another as they flip through a chart. “The bullet pinged off a wall and ripped through his cheek.” Along one corridor, bags are piled high on gurneys. “You can’t leave these here!” I hear one doctor yell at the beleaguered attendant, who shrugs. “There’s no room left in the morgue,” he says. “I’ve got nowhere else to put them.”