The Two Sisters of Borneo Read Online Free PDF Page A

serviced, so they had to climb four flights of stairs to get to the apartment. Sonny had offered to carry Uncle, at which point Uncle angrily told him to go about his own business. But Sonny didn’t leave; he followed him, a couple of steps behind, all the way up the stairs and saw him safely inside the apartment.
    Lourdes had phoned Sonny just after eleven o’clock that night. Uncle had gone to the bathroom a bit earlier to throw up — not an uncommon thing for him to do. But she thought he looked particularly pale when he came out, and his eyes weren’t focused. In fact it seemed to her that he didn’t know where he was, or maybe even who he was. She followed him into the bedroom and tucked him in. A few minutes later she heard him vomiting and ran back into the room. There was a pool of blood on the sheets. He made a motion as if he wanted to go the bathroom, but when she tried to help him up, he collapsed. She called for an ambulance and then called Sonny. He had managed to get to the apartment before the ambulance arrived. Uncle was unconscious, breathing in whispers, his skin devoid of any colour.
    Sonny had followed the ambulance to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in southern Kowloon. After Uncle had been admitted he drove to the Grand Hyatt.
    “Is he in R Block?” Ava asked. R Block was the tower where she’d visited him before and where he’d been undergoing brachytherapy.
    “No, Emergency.”
    “Did you call Doctor Parker?”
    “He should be there by now.”
    At the Mandarin, Ava had dithered about what to wear to the hospital. She was in shock, she realized, and not thinking clearly. It was one thing to understand what was happening to Uncle, but it was another to accept the inevitable. As long as he’d kept meeting her for their morning congee, she’d been able to shunt the horrible reality from her mind. Now she knew there would be no congee tomorrow morning. Maybe no congee ever again.
    Part of her knew it made no real difference what she wore, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it was important to look good for him. She took out a black pencil skirt and a pink Brooks Brothers shirt with a modified Italian collar and French cuffs. She buttoned the shirt just short of the neck and joined the cuffs with green jade cufflinks. For the wedding she’d worn a pair of black stilettos; she slipped them on again and then stood and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was hanging loose around her face. She saw that her mascara was smeared and realized she had been crying. She brushed her hair, pulled it tightly back, and clasped it with her ivory chignon pin. She washed her face with cold water and then put on a light touch of red lipstick. She didn’t trust herself enough to attempt mascara.
    She had met Dr. Parker twice before, both times at the hospital when Uncle had gone in for treatment. On those occasions Ava was in her more usual dress of Adidas track pants and black Giordano T-shirt. As she walked through the entrance to the emergency department at the Queen Elizabeth, she saw him standing by the admissions desk.
    “Doctor Parker,” she said.
    He turned and stared as if he wasn’t sure he knew who she was. Then he saw Sonny and made the connection.
    “Ms. Lee. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you,” Dr. Parker said.
    Parker was a gweilo , an Englishman in his late thirties or early forties, and Ava had initially been surprised that Uncle had chosen him as his doctor. Uncle had explained that he wanted his condition kept secret and that he doubted there was a Chinese doctor in Hong Kong he could trust. Besides, Parker was young, progressive, and almost brutally honest. Uncle had come to admire that candour, since it removed any doubt about his situation and helped him prepare for what had to be.
    “How is he?” she asked.
    “Not well.”
    “Where is he?”
    “I had them take him upstairs to a ward. There isn’t anything they can do for him here.”
    “How about in R