Diamond Head (26 page)

I don’t know how to finish this sentence. I don’t even know if he hears me. I pause for a moment and tilt my head back. I feel the weight of what this man means to me—of all that he has done for me and all the ways he has made me better, and I feel every tiny hair on my body tingle.

“Because I don’t know who I am without you.”

The door opens as my throat begins to swell. Dr. Harris walks in with a clipboard.

“Mrs. Leong,” he says, lowering the clipboard to his side, “I have news that I think will bring some relief.”

I release Frank’s hand and stand.

“What is it? Do you know what’s wrong with him?” I move closer to the doctor.

“Your husband has been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Are you familiar with this condition?”

I shake my head.

“Guillain-Barré is an acute disease of the nerves in which they lose their outer protective coating—or myelin. It prevents the nerves from relaying messages smoothly or operating properly. Normally, it emerges from a common cold or virus. Did your husband suffer from flu-like symptoms before his nerve pain began?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding my head impatiently. “Yes, just earlier this week. A day ago.”

“Precisely,” Dr. Harris continues. “Although his condition may seem quite serious—and it can be if left untreated—the vast majority of Guillain-Barré patients make a full recovery within a week. We’ll put him on a regimen of antibodies and within a few days he should have his full body function back.”

“So he’ll be okay?” I exclaim, my toes curling beneath my feet.

“Yes, he should be just fine.” Dr. Harris smiles and so I smile too. He takes his clipboard and removes two sheets of paper.

“These are for you.” He hands me the papers. “Information on Guillain-Barré. I would suggest becoming familiar with the symptoms and the treatment. Perhaps now would be a good time to see your family and share the news.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I say, electricity running through my veins. “You don’t know how relieved they’ll be.”

Dr. Harris tells me that while I’m gone, he’ll check Frank’s
breathing to make sure it’s regular. Before they begin treatment, they’ll have to be sure that his diaphragm is not going into paralysis. With his breathing stabilized, they’ll give him his first injection of antibodies, which should do wonders, he says.

In the hallway I begin to read the list of symptoms.
Weakness of the lower limbs, numbness or tingling, respiratory difficulties, loss of tendon reflexes, difficulty with eye movement, unsteady or inability to walk, severe back pain.
The list goes on for half a page, each symptom eating away at my newfound confidence. I can’t finish it. I put the paper to the side and look for the waiting area outside the emergency wing.

My legs move faster as I spot it. I start to jog, the papers flapping as I quicken my step.

“He’s going to be okay!” I announce. “The doctor says he’ll be fine!” I’m caught in an embrace of Hong and my sons. Amy is there too but she stands to the side, hands clasped together, relief in her smile.

A nurse tells us to go home and rest, that we can come back in the morning—but I don’t want to. I’ll sleep in the metal chair. I ask her for a pair of shoes.

That evening, I read to Frank from the newspaper. I find the business section in the waiting room and bring it to him. Every morning he reads the newspaper, so until he gets better, I will read it to him.

“Look, Frank,” I say, “Wong’s Meat Shop reopened yesterday. When you get better, you can have
char siu
.”

Frank grunts and it makes me happy. I skip an article about the rising cost of fuel and instead read to him about the new Plymouth cars for the army. “You’ll like this,” I say.

The next day Dr. Harris comes to give Frank his dose of antibodies. He hasn’t improved, I say to the doctor. He seems the same. Dr. Harris assures me that by tomorrow, I will certainly notice an improvement. And so I wait in my metal chair. I read to Frank until I fall asleep.

I wake up the next morning full of hope; I open the window blinds and let the early light into the room.

When I turn, I see something strange.

Thick, horrible clumps of grey hair have fallen from Frank’s head overnight. They’re on his pillowcase, lying limply in small piles. I pinch a few hairs between my fingers and hold them up to the light. I can’t breathe.

The follicles are jet-black. His face is pale and there’s something slightly pink on his cheek; a rash that spreads like a starfish. His limbs don’t move. I run to the heart monitor and grab the screen with both hands. It beeps and I shake it, rattle it for its answers. It beeps again and I run for a doctor.

On the other side of the door, I yell. A nurse pushing a metal cart stops when she hears me. I grab her arm and pull her into the room. I show her my husband. She’s out the door before I can say anything.

I pace the room watching the clock, watching the heart monitor, wondering where the hell Dr. Harris is.

“He’s coming, Frank,” I say. “He’s almost here.”

Finally Dr. Harris walks through the door and begins to say something but stops when he sees Frank. His cheeks collapse. He rushes to Frank’s side and sees the hair, sees the rash. He looks startled in a way a doctor never should.

“What the hell is going on?” I yell at him. “Why is his hair falling out?”

“Prussian blue,” he stammers, turning to the nurse from the hallway. “Prussian blue, I need it immediately!” He’s yelling now. He’s putting on gloves. I can see his arms shaking beneath his white coat.

“What’s Prussian blue?” I shriek, my hands reaching for the wall behind me as I begin to feel faint.

“Mrs. Leong,” he says, “I need you to leave the room.”

Frank gasps for air. His mouth opens and his neck convulses. He takes quick, sharp intakes of breath, each one making a high-pitched sound as he wheezes and coughs.

“Mrs. Leong, leave the room right now!”

“For God’s sake, do something!” I scream, pushing him toward my husband.

He places his fingers on my husband’s throat and massages his neck. He pushes his fingers upward and Frank begins to gag.

Dr. Harris reaches his arm to open a drawer. His fingers fumble within it; I register the sound of metal instruments clanging together as he searches for his tool.

“Look away!” he yells but I can’t. I watch him find it; I watch him pull a thin, silver shape from the drawer. He raises the instrument to Frank’s neck and I realize it’s a scalpel.
It’s a knife he’s holding to Frank’s throat.

“Wh—what the hell are you doing?”

“Look away!” he yells again.

He draws the knife across Frank’s neck and cuts a slit into his throat. Blood spills from the incision and a scream escapes from the deepest, most fragile part of my soul. My back is pressed against the wall and I’m sliding down it. I want to look away but I can’t. He separates the skin with his fingers and punctures something below it. My hands seize my face, they tear at my hair. More blood, more blood than the gauze can carry. The beeping from the machines is pounding in my ears, so I scream over it. It’s the fastest it’s ever been.

I hear Frank take a deep, difficult breath. He’s breathing, I realize. He’s breathing from that hole.

The doctor holds the opening apart with his fingers; blood reaches to his elbow.

“Where the hell is the Prussian blue?” he screams over me. My eyes are drowning in tears and I can barely see. The doctor and my husband are dripping blurs.

A third blur enters the room. It’s the nurse with the medicine—a bottle of dark blue capsules. She yells to the doctor; he grabs the bottle and shakes the pills from its mouth. His fingers fumble to grasp a pill as the beeping of the heart monitor stutters and flattens. The sound is crushed into an even, penetrating hum that stops the motion of the room, of the world.

I close my eyes and hear the smashing of glass against a wall.
Fuck
, someone screams.

I don’t know how long I stay in that room. I don’t know what happens after that. I wake up in a hospital bed of my own. No Frank.

There’s a nurse. She asks if she can get me anything.

“Frank,” I say, “Where’s Frank?”

“Let me get your son,” she says. “He’s here.”

Bohai enters the room but his face is different.

“Where’s your father?” I say, sitting up in my bed.

“Mom,” he says, putting a hand on my arm. “Dad’s gone. We lost him this morning.”

And then I remember the blood. The screaming. The knife.

“He killed him,” I stammer, “the doctor, he killed him, didn’t he? He slit his throat! I saw it!”

Bohai takes a deep breath. He puts his hands on the side of my bed.

“Not exactly,” he says, pausing for a moment. “Dr. Harris misdiagnosed him. Dad didn’t have Guillain-Barré. He was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” I echo, startled by the word. “But that’s absurd! Who would
poison
your father?” I’m holding on to both his wrists.

“We don’t know.” Bohai’s face is colorless, almost ghostlike. His eyes shift downward. “But it was thallium. The tests came back a few hours ago.”

I become aware of my breathing. I fill my lungs and push it through my nose. I let the oxygen rise to my head and fizzle in the heat.

“Where’s Kaipo?”

“He went home. He’s looking through the phone records. He wanted me to ask you.”

“Ask me what?” I repeat, barely registering the words that came before.

“The file Dad said he kept, of threats against him, was it real? Do you know where he kept it?”

It’s too much. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t care. I can’t handle more, can’t think beyond the blood-soaked gauze, Frank gasping for air as the knife drags across his throat, the drone of the heart monitor still crawling beneath my skin.

“Get me Dr. Harris right now,” I command, rising from my bed, standing on my own feet. “
Now
, Bohai.”

He nods once and leaves the room. Right away, Dr. Harris opens the door and I can’t stop myself. I remember it all.

I scream at him in Cantonese. I call him every vulgar name I can think of, every name my father called me.
My husband is dead; his body is in a room somewhere; his heart is no longer beating.
I begin to cry violent tears, pulling at my hair and knocking over boxes of bandages, throwing metal cups of instruments, yanking at the roll of medical paper and ripping it apart. I open drawers and destroy everything I can: syringes and gloves and wooden sticks fly against the wall. Dr. Harris stands there quietly and lets me do it. I grab the stethoscope from his neck and throw it to the floor. He flinches but does nothing.

“I will have you fired,” I gasp, my arms pulsing at my sides, my accent suddenly enormous. “I will have your medical license revoked and I will make damn well sure that you never practice medicine ever again.” I slap my hand against the table.

“You killed my husband. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

The next morning, the story hits the papers.
Millionaire Industrialist Dies from Poison.
I send Hong around the island. I tell her to purchase every copy she can find. I need to control the damage. I call my husband’s lawyer, Mr. Lee, and schedule an appointment for the next day to discuss funeral decisions, and most important, to begin the investigation and my lawsuit against Dr. Harris.

At home, I lock myself in our bedroom. I want to see no one. Not Hong, not my sons. I curl up inside our blanket and sleep until I hear a knock. Mr. Lee is here, Hong says. It’s already tomorrow.

I pull my hair together in a tangled clump and stay in Frank’s
black T-shirt and pants. I drag my feet across the bedroom and unlock the door.

Hong embraces me. We stay there for a moment without speaking, so much sadness passing between our bodies. Frank saved us and now he is gone, leaving something dead within us both. There’s a warmth I’ve been saving in the folds of his T-shirt and Hong’s embrace wraps me within it. I want to crawl inside and sleep again.

She walks me down the hallway and into the sitting room, her hand on my back, guiding me forward. It seems a lifetime ago that she arrived at our door. Suddenly, I know how she feels. I know what it’s like to have your red string cut from your ankle. To watch your husband die before your eyes.

“Lin,” someone says as I emerge from the hallway. It’s Mr. Lee. Bohai and Kaipo sit on the couch across from him. They look exhausted.

“I don’t know what to say,” he says, standing. “I’m so sorry for your loss. For all of our loss. Frank was a very special man.”

I nod and sit on the couch between my two sons.

“I want to file a suit immediately against Dr. Harris. Whatever it costs, spend it. I want him ruined,” I say without emotion. “Then we will begin our investigation of the poisoning.”

Mr. Lee looks uneasy. His face is twisted in a way that I cannot interpret.

“Before we start with the lawsuit, there’s something pressing I need to speak with you about. And perhaps it would be better if we did it in private.” His eyes avoid Bohai and Kaipo. He wants them to leave but I don’t care what he wants.

“Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of my sons. From this point on, they will run the business and the estate.”

Mr. Lee’s face grows more tense. He has something to say and I assume it’s bad. But what could he possibly tell me that could make me feel worse? Frank is dead.

“Lin, I just think that—”

“Sam.” I cut him off. “We’ve been through enough. Say what you have to say. If there’s not as much money as we expected, it’s fine. Money is the least of my concerns. I just need enough to support myself and my children. Everything else is—”

“Lin, there is no money,” he says abruptly. It startles me at first until I realize the absurdity—the impossibility. I try to laugh but it sounds hollow and cruel.

“That’s ridiculous,” I say. “You know as well as I do that there’s plenty of money.”

Mr. Lee pauses and takes a deep breath.

“Lin.” He looks at me and his eyes are glossy and small. Like pebbles under water. “Did you know that Frank had other wives?”

I don’t understand; I remain perfectly still.