Stepping Stones

2 BANGKOK HOSPITAL-1

2 BANGKOK HOSPITALWhen the taxi pulled up outside the hospital’s rear entrance, Lek jumped out and ran inside leaving Craig to pay the fare. It wasn’t a problem – he had expected as much and knew that she would be easy to find. Updates from the distraught Mike had been regular to the point of streaming. Craig felt sorry for him because he guessed that Lek was going to make his life Hell and he had been through that in phases himself. He also sympathized about the drinking and driving. He had gotten away with it for a decade many years ago, but could not condone it. He did, however have sympathy for a stupid boy, as he had been, who was learning by his mistakes, as he had done.

He was glad he wasn’t Mike though all the same, even if the reports were correct that she was out of danger.

Craig went in, looked around for reception and headed over there. Lek was nowhere to be seen. The receptionist he spoke to understood his Thai and spoke a little English too, but when one of her colleagues heard the name of the person he had come to visit, a porter took him to the lift and accompanied him to Soom’s floor and room. Mike was sitting on a bench outside looking more wretched than any stray dog he had ever seen.

He looked at him, held a hand up in a way which could be interpreted as both ‘hello’ and ‘I don’t want to hear it’. Mike didn’t even try. Craig looked through the window in the door. “Khao dai mai – May I go in?”

The porter pushed the door smiling, ”Dai, dai – yes, you may.”

She was in her own room, hooked up to a bank of monitors. Lek’s forehead was on the back of Soom’s right hand – the one that didn’t have the drip in it. Craig walked up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder, then patted it, but didn’t dare speak lest she was praying, which seemed likely. He sat down next to Lek, put his hand back on Lek’s shoulder and started to pray too. It had been a long time, but he still remembered how.

A few minutes later, a doctor entered the room and called Lek outside, he had undoubtedly been alerted to Lek’s arrival by the nurse who had shown her to the room. Craig stayed put, but put his hand on Soom’s.

The surgeon who had treated Soom explained that she was concussed and that there was a hairline fracture to the right, rear side of her head, but that there was no undue swelling inside the cranium. “Khun Soomsomai, will live, Mrs. Williams and I am confident that she will make a full recovery, but how long that takes will depend on the events of the next twelve hours.

”We are monitoring your daughter on all the latest equipment available. The next time you pass the nurses’ station just down the corridor – right there,” he pointed to it, “just ask and the duty nurse in charge will show you the displays and explain what they all mean, if she has time. When your daughter comes around, I am sure that we will know as soon as you do, and someone will come immediately. However, if you are concerned at any time, you will find a phone on the table, which is linked directly to that desk. All you have to do is pick it up. There is also a panic alarm.”

“Thank you, er, Dr?” He nodded. “May I go back in now?”

“One second. The room was paid for by your daughter’s employers’ insurance scheme. I assure you that she has absolutely the best care that money can buy, and until she leaves, the room is hers. You and your husband may sleep there free of charge and there is room service the equivalent of any Four Star Hotel. There is also an en suite bathroom.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Williams?” he asked, holding the door open for her.

“Only take care of this,” she said looking into Mike’s eyes as he looked up at her from his chair next to the doorway, then she punched him as hard as she could in the centre of the forehead, which sent his head crashing backwards into the concrete-rendered wall, “but there’s no hurry,” and she went back inside leaving Mike to the tender mercies of the horrified surgeon.

Lek retook her seat and attitude, but asked Craig to go outside and tell Mike to go home, get some sleep, a shower and some food and come back when he was ready. Craig had to trot to catch up with him as he was being led away by a nurse clutching a blood-soaked cotton-wool swab to the back of his head. Craig assumed that an injury from the car crash had re-opened and was never told any different.

∞

Soom started to show signs of returning to consciousness some six hours later. The nurse that arrived at the behest of the monitor said that was a good sign, because the drugs used in the operation and those given to help her rest were probably wearing off. Lek and Craig were ecstatic and Lek asked Craig to phone Mike with the good news. She also said to tell him that there was no immediate necessity for him to hurry back, although she hoped that he would anyway.

Soom first started muttering, she didn’t know where she was, then she remembered the collision and called out her husband’s name. The nurse talked to her as she gave her a sedative injection and Lek cried silently. So did Craig.

Soom and Mike had become friends at university in their third year, but it hadn’t developed into love until when they were both job-hunting after their finals. She had been studying ‘computers’ and he had been ‘doing banking’. They had both applied to the same bank on the same day and had both got a job. They had celebrated their success together that evening, and had started seeing each other regularly from then on. Love had been inevitable.

He was a Bangkokian, but he had been ‘up country’ to meet Soom’s parents many times before they had gotten married two years before, and Lek and Craig had visited his parents several times too. They on the other hand had only been to Uttaradit Province to visit them once, and had made it very clear that they didn’t like ‘the countryside’. Still, they had gotten on, and it was obvious that their children were besotted with one another.

Mike was a ‘nice boy’ with good manners, although more than a little spoilt by his parents who were quite well off. He had been to one of the best private schools and spoke English at least as well as Soom. His father, Ananada, worked ‘in business’ and his mother, Dok Phi Sua, or Carnation, was a society lady involved in charities. Mike was intelligent, but far from street-wise, having spent no more time on the street at any one time than it took to leave a building and get in a vehicle, or vice versa. Despite being spoilt, he had a helpful nature and meant well. This incident of drinking and driving was in a way typical of his thoughtless reliance on his intelligence and class position because of his upbringing.

It was a facet of his character that he had been unaware of, but which he would spend a lot of time in the future trying to eliminate. He was deeply in love with Soom and he just could not believe that he had been so stupid that he had nearly killed her for the pittance it would have cost to hire a taxi and the slight bruising that that would have caused his ego.

When he received Craig’s phone call, he was not at home. He had gone home, eaten, showered, changed and returned within two hours and was dozing in a chair in the huge waiting room on the ground floor of the hospital.

“Hello, Khun Paw, how is Soom?”

“She’s coming around, son, and has started to ask for you. The nurse has sedated her again, but she should return to consciousness more quickly next time. Where are you and how are you?”

“I am well, Sir, and waiting in the foyer downstairs.”

“I see, scared to come up, eh? I can’t say that I blame you. I think I would have joined the Foreign Legion by now, if I had done what you did.”

“Pardon?”

“The falangset army… look don’t worry about that now. You can’t sit down there, come on up and come inside. I’ll try and keep Soom’s mother from strangling you.”

“Thank you, father, I will be up immediately.”

On entering the room, he approached the bed with bowed head and waaied Lek and Craig, who indicated a chair by Soom’s head on the other side of the bed – the side where her hand had the intravenous drip. He started to sob silently, his shoulders heaving and shaking, tears flowing down his cheeks, his nose running, causing him to sniffle. He had forgotten a handkerchief and was beginning to annoy Lek, just as she was starting to forgive him, or perhaps that was too strong a word, but at least soften towards him

She doubted whether she would ever forgive him. She tossed him her packet of tissues and he accepted them with an extreme display of gratitude as if they had been hand-crafted from twenty-two carat gold leaf.

“So, tell us what happened.”

Mike gave them the potted version of the events of the previous day, but he could feel from the way that Lek was looking at him, that less was better and least was best. He took all the blame for driving while drunk, and didn’t try to blame the other driver for causing the accident, because, in all honesty, he couldn’t remember why it had occurred, it had all happened so fast. Soom was the most seriously injured, and the police had taken a statement the night before, but said that they would need to speak to him again very soon.

“Speak to her, Mike, perhaps she will hear you.” he was obviously embarrassed to say anything affectionate to his wife with her mother there, but it would probably have been hard for him whoever was present, because it was neither the Thai way, nor the way he would have been brought up.

He stroked the back of her hand gently with his index finger. “Soom, my dear, can you hear me? It’s me, Mike… I am so sorry, my dearest… Please be all right soon, we all miss you so much…” Craig could feel the embarrassment given off by Mike and Lek. It was excruciating and palpable. He wasn’t sure that he could take any more of it himself. He felt like an intruder, despite knowing that he had an absolute right to be there.

“Lek, why don’t we go and stretch our legs for ten minutes, have a coffee downstairs and then come back. I’m sure that Mike will phone me if anything at all happens… won’t you, son?”

“Yes, even if she blinks.”

Craig saw the signs, Lek wanted to refuse and get angry at the very suggestion that she should abandon her injured daughter to the care of the moron who had put in hospital, but he watched her control herself too. She could see the sense, it was what she would want if she were in Soom’s place.

“All right,” she capitulated, “ten minutes only, and you will phone if there is any development.”

“Yes, Mae, I promise.”

“Very well.” She made a point of looking at her watch and tapping the bezel at the point where ten minutes would be up as if imprinting the time in her mind like an alarm. She pushed Craig before her, walked to the door and then out, without acknowledging Mike as he waaied.

“I could kill him.”

“I’m sure, but I don’t think Soom would thank you for it. You can see that the boy is really ashamed of himself too. I would be very surprised if he ever took a risk like that again, and, to be honest, it wouldn’t shock me if he never wanted to drive again either.”

“If I had my way, they’d take his license off him and tear it up. He’s not fit to drive.”

Craig tried to change the subject, but didn’t pick a very good topic, “You know what surprises me? Where are his parents? Their son has just been through an horrific accident, his wife’s in hospital, he’s in shock and they are…? Nowhere to be seen? Don’t you think that that’s a bit weird?”

“Let’s face it, they are weird, aren’t they? They’re as cold as… as fish… they’re as bad as that guy Tatsanai from the next village, you know, the one who…”

“Yes, darling, I remember… it may seem like ages ago but it was only yesterday afternoon.”