The Angry Typist

CONTENT WARNING: This blog post contains graphic descriptions about suspected suicide. This may be disturbing or triggering for some individuals. Proceed with caution or refrain from reading if there is sensitivity to this type of content.

For about a year after my initial inpatient stay in the hospital Māmā and I would travel to the hospital for physical therapy to regain some finger dexterity and hand, arm & wrist mobility. I could not straighten out my arm anywhere near 180 degrees and my wrist was permanently affixed in the upright position. So, I had to get a second operation and skin graph to alleviate the movement restrictions. PT became increasingly difficult and a chore.

We lived in Hong Kong and the hospital was in Kowloon. We had to make the trek twice a week for almost a year. Māmā and I first took a taxi to the bus stop. Then we took a double-decker bus to the ferry port. Then we took the ferry across the bay to Kowloon. Then we took another taxi to the hospital.

On one of these many burdensome treks, we were sitting on the lower level of the bus, towards the back, near the window. It was quite an ordinary day as I could not recall anything else specific. Hong Kong’s flow of traffic followed the UK (having previously been a British colony) and the bus rode on the left side.

I watched the traffic going in the opposite direction on the other side of the grey cement medium. They were going so fast that they were mere blurs – a red blur here, a yellow blur there, almost like a trick of the eye the vehicles of all shapes & sizes whizzes by.

In one of the longer gaps in between vehicles I spotted an old woman. I am not quite sure what drew my eyes to her, but as she stood there on the edge of the sidewalk waiting for a gap in traffic to cross the busy street, I subconsciously recorded all the little details about her.

Unlike many older women, her snow-white hair was not pulled tightly into a low bun, rather she cheekily wore a chin length bob parted to the left, with a beret securing her thinning hair out of her face. She wore black from head to toe. Her long-sleeved Cheongsam with the distinct mandarin collar and frog fasteners to the right, framed her delicate features. She was petite with a slight hunch holding a cloth shopping bag in her left hand – which was rare since virtually all naturally left-handed people were heavily persuaded in grade school to convert to using the right hand in the form of thick ruler cracking down on knuckles. Perhaps it was this oddity which drew my eyes to her.

The moment seemed to have been suspended in time, I watched the old woman turned her head in both directions, checking the onslaught of cars for her glimpse of opportunity to cross the 3-lane street. As her right foot left the safety of the sidewalk, a white cabbed truck with a tarp covering the back zoomed passed and ran the old woman over.

But it wasn’t like in the movies or the tele where the body just bounced off the front end or the side, no. Her body was more like a water balloon full of red Jello and it simply disintegrated on impact with the truck.

Māmā burst into tears. “She meant to do it, she meant to kill herself,” Māmā blurted out under snot and tears. I sat quite still and silent. Perhaps in shock. Perhaps the concept of death or suicide was simply out of my five-year old’s brain to process. Or perhaps it happened so quickly that it didn’t seem real. Regardless I will have that moment of impact singed into my memory forever. I mindlessly watched Māmā busied herself blowing her nose and wiping away tears. We rode in silence for the rest of the trip to the hospital.

***

Half up the mountain side to the hospital I lobbied for some ice cream money. “No, you will just lose it before we get to the hospital lobby,” Māmā rebuffed. But like any five-year-old, I was persistent and wore her down. With an exasperated sigh, she asked the cabdriver what the fare were and simultaneously handed me a Hong Kong dollar (the size of an American half dollar). Māmā carelessly put the coin in my left hand but I couldn’t close my hand tight enough or quickly enough and the coin rolled out right into the crack of the taxi seats. I cried that I had lost the coin as Māmā had predicted and she scolded me with such frustration, “I told you that you would lose it!” Tears welled up as I wanted to defend myself against the harsh words. I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t looking when she clumsily handed the coin to my bad arm, my broken arm, my ugly arm, the arm connected to the hand I cannot yet make a fist with. It was an unfair criticism, and I didn’t bother asking for a second coin.

We walked towards the pediatric physical therapy room for burn victims. The walls were a gentle powder blue filled with round children size tables and chairs. Cubicles lined the walls with plastic containers with children’s names on them. There was one rectangular window near the top of the wall providing dim lighting which gave the room a very depressing vibe. Māmā poured out the clear box of Lego bricks with my name onto the table.

I hated Lego bricks. They were difficult to pick up, difficult to hold, difficult to take apart, difficult for someone who only had only one good hand to leverage the tiny pieces. I had so many pairs of combinations of 2×3, 2×4, 1×2 and 2×2 bricks to disassemble that I loathe PT. I often would dissemble the larger bricks and push the smaller towards for Māmā to disassemble the rest. She would reluctantly pull the rest a part for me as this was my ‘homework.’ “I am not supposed to be doing this for you,” Māmā would say. “They are not going to let me sit here with you if you don’t do this yourself,” she continued to lecture. I let out a small sigh and held the bigger piece with my left hand leveraging it against the table and tried to pull apart the bricks with my good hand. “That’s not how you are supposed to that,” Māmā critiqued looking overly large sitting in the toddler chair. I ignored her and finished my container of Legos.

To this day I still do not like Legos.