today i looked humanity in the face-- figuratively-- and saw love in our eyes.
and i am so, so, so grateful for the world about us.
thank you eisen and aidil and sue faye and sam for responding to the platelets donation plea. i'm incredibly grateful that you all took the time to respond and to say words of encouragement and to offer yourself as candidates for donation (except suef, who is a little light, yesh. :)) thank you honyi for the well wishes; thank you joey for listening to me and for asking your friends and their families to see if they can help. thank you huiwen and simyee for discussing it with me and then helping to take my mind off things for a very wonderful wednesday night.
perhaps i'd better begin at the beginning, before i confuse even myself any further.
my bifurcation started on wednesday. blast was extremely fun and a huge relief to be at after fretting about exchange terms and courses, not understanding even an iota of what art 12(1) is supposed to be about (rational nexus test et al) and the complete letdown of vanity fair. poor mich. sorry! :(
pat said the choreo was going to be hard; too true. EVERY step that he said we'd forget, i did. GAHHH. but practising afterwards with yuko-- and occasionally weina or alvan, when they joined in-- was good; we tried to remember steps from practices from after emcc but got stuck. i was saddest about universal mind control-- i liked that one a lot. in between weina came up to me and told me that i hadn't got into comm-- she was awfully awfully nice about it, and i felt sorrier for the fact that she had to do it than for the fact that i didn't get in (although i'm not going to deny that my heart sank a little). krystal talked to me afterwards abt it though, and i really was surprised at who didn't get in. everyone who's part of the 9th has eveyry right to be there, but still--!
so my heart sank, yes, but it plummetted right after. as weina chivvied us out of the room i picked up my phone and read chu jie's message. even now typing this it seems so impossible and surreal. peiwen'd sent out an email telling us all about melvin's diagnosis, and i was just-- in a word-- stunned.
it was like a triple whammy-- seemed like just days ago that we'd received the appeal for the dhs student who was suffering from bone cancer and needed donations, and it was definitely the same week that yingying had asked us all for help regarding the nus student xiaoou's leukemia. now, again-- but this time it was melvin, and it was striking closer and closer each time.
i don't think words alone can express exactly how i feel, or felt, with every strand of the narrative that unravelled. chujie, becks and the freak (heh heh heh) met up with me and we went to visit melvin today-- thursday. we ran into gordon, lilin, px, wei heng etc at the lift-- pin xuan told us that there were a lot of people visiting. we didn't have time to say much before the lift doors closed on us, but i was glad to see them-- i guess i really haven't seen my jc clsmates in waaaay too long, man.
up at the ward we met charlotte coming out as we hovered about, uncertain whether to go in. she talked to us while waiting and arranging the rest of melvin's groups of friends who were waiting about to see him, and i swear, she is amazing. it's not merely that she's still so strong and undaunted, although that was a large part of it-- the girl's got fyp to juggle as well, mind you. she related to us how she'd gone home last night and settled on her bed to start typing her part of the report, but collapsed and practically dropped her laptop before she gave up and set the alarm for four. hurhur. never works. but i guess it's all a question of priorities as well, and as always the heart trumps all as it rightly should. but--
ARGH i don't even know how to phrase it. i think it can only be felt. standing there in the corridors of ward 77 on the 7th floor of the 7th block (hur hur shld bring in lucky 7 jackpot machine) and looking at charlotte's slender frame i could only marvel at how much she was holding up, and-- oh my gosh, i don't know. it was like in her tired eyes i saw a glimmer of something i've never truly seen in its entirety before-- something i'd sworn couldn't be envisioned in roses or candy hearts or chocolate, that perhaps we grow immune to when (and if) we see it in our parents' eyes. and a part of me marvelled, and blossomed, and took heart in the beauty of it.
charlotte told us also about the humongous wave of people who'd gone to apharesis (?) to try and donate platelets; about the random people who called either her or peiwen (haha peiwen's been INUNDATED) to ask about donations; about our class guys who'd gone down to donate. i felt so inordinately proud of them-- this support and outpouring of-- kindness, goodwill, brotherhood-- from people who knew him and people who didn't know him, except maybe they might have been in the same school as him once before or just got an email or read a blog entry-- somehow the sudden resurrection of my faith in humanity just took place there and then, and emotion just swamped me. oh love, this world of mine-- of ours. love, love, love, love, love.
we crept in-- all four of us, despite the 2-visitor rule-- and got to see mel after a while. he seemed quite upbeat-- and we all kept to our resolution not to ask him all the questions that he'd had to answer over and over and over again nonstop for all the visitors who came to visit. ah ha we failed only at the beginning when we asked him why there was a picture of a swaying coconut tree on his bed-- apparently it's "fall precaution", i.e. you know falling coconuts or something, to remind the nurses that he cannot fall cos he has trouble clotting blood. we told him he should just record a video of FAQs and screen it in the waiting room. he was quite cheerful; he had his spongebob on a chair (given to him by his 27-yr-old commander!!) and the "fruit basket"-- yu ci tang that felicia mistook for bao yu!!-- from his badminton junior. he showed us the bruises on his inner arms from all the blood tests they did everyday-- and told us about the STAFF nurse who'd come to draw his blood at 4 or 5am while he was asleep. he'd blearily lifted his arm and lapsed back into drowsiness before suddenly waking with an OW-OW-OW jolt-- the nurse couldn't find his vein and had poked the needle in anyhow. she switched arms and couldn't find it again and ended up switching NURSES. haha. but he's got like this permanent iv drip that they have to switch every 3 days; and apparently tomorrow he'll be getting one in the chest-- which they told him would hurt for a while. that led to a remark-- COMPLETELY INNOCENT, mind you-- about nipple piercings and i would just like to say EXCUSE ME i do not have a fetish for nipple rings! but it was so good to see him laugh frankly you could have said i had a fetish for ANYTHING and i wouldn't have cared.
i can't tell you how easy it was to talk with him despite the long radio silence-- army, uni, life getting in the way notwithstanding. we kept our visit as short as possible-- charlotte'd hardly gotten time with him the whole two days, and she'd said earlier that he was quite tired and coughing.
melvin's chemo starts on friday. we can't go visit him anymore, but we can email him-- or webcam if we want to haha.
i am going to keep him in my thoughts, inadequate as that seems. it is at times like these that i almost wish i were actively and devoutly religious, if only for the comfort that prayer would bring. but i know there is divinity out there, and i know the love and warmth and goodwill that exists in this world, and my heart and soul are glad, glad, glad.
meow-win, gambatte!!
what a beautiful smile