I was on my way to school today, walking across the overhead bridge, when 2 men crouching over a woman sitting on the steps caught my eye. Her hand was clutching her chest, and her face was twisted into a picture on agony, as if she were writhing inside. She was clearly in distress, unable to get up, and saying over and over, “I want my injection, I WANT TO GO HOME.”
I spoke in Mandarin to her. “Xiao Jie, ni shen me shi? Shen me wen ti?” (Miss, are you all right? What’s the matter?”
One of the men, a Caucasian, said to me, “She needs an insulin jab!” He rushed back to the MRT control station to get security- but whatever for, I still can’t figure out.
The other man was with me, a young Chinese lad, trying to convince the lady to go to the hospital. In frustration, and with a lot of effort, she finally heaved herself off the steps and started to amble very clumsily across the overhead bridge. She was agitated, defensive even. Stubbornly, she said over and over, “I WANT TO GO HOME. I NEED MY INJECTION. I WANT TO TAKE BUS 74. TAKE ME TO THE BUS STOP!!”
I walked with her, pleading to take her to the hospital. “I don’t think you’ll make it home on a bus like this,” I said, “ Its dangerous. I’ll take you to NUH. It won’t be very expensive.” She was clad in very simple, slightly dirty clothes. People were watching us as I pleaded with her. People were passing us by. The Chinese lad followed closely behind us.
She refused us defiantly. As I walked with her, pleading with her in mandarin, I was anxious, frustrated, at a loss. “I’ll get you a cab, all right?” I said. Xiao Jie, ke yi ma? (Is that okay, Miss?)
It was the morning rush hour and all the cabs that passed us were hired. As she held onto her chest more tightly, she was finding it harder to talk, harder to stand, and harder to carry on a conversation. She was getting increasingly hostile. “NO CAB! I WANT TO TAKE BUS 74! BUS 74 TO HOUGANG!!”
When we finally hailed down a cab, I said to the driver, “Hougang please, as fast as you can.” I was about to get into the cab with the lady to send her home, when he shouted back, “No, not Hougang! Too far! I’m in a rush!”
“Please Uncle! She’s about to faint, she needs to get her medication!” I was distraught myself. The two men there, hovering, and the lady in distress, looking like she could faint any moment, pleading with me to let her take the bus, made me anxious, worried, flustered.
“No, no time! Not Hougang!! I’m rushing!” He yelled back to me.
I was mortified. And mad. But more than anger, a profound disappointment and peculiar acceptance swept over me. I wonder if the driver saw my face. If he did, I wonder what he would have felt. I told him the lady was about to faint. Needed to get home to take her medicine. No time, he said. No time.
When the next cab came, we finally convinced her to get into it and the two men and myself paid for the fare in advance. “Can I come with you?” I asked the lady.
“NO PLEASE DON’T! LET ME BE, I’LL BE OKAY! I CAN STAND IT TILL I GET HOME!!”
I told the taxi driver to step on it, to take her straight back and to walk her to her home. I was about to get into the cab myself, when the lady yelled for me not to. I asked for her number, told her to pick up my call when I called her later.
The Caucasian man left shortly after, and the Chinese lad and myself watched the taxi drive away.
I was distraught. Had we done the right thing? Perhaps we should have sent her directly to NUH, which was just ten minutes away? Perhaps we should not have listened to her and should have accompanied her straight home? Why didn’t I do that? I got her into a cab against her wishes, but because of better judgement, so why didn’t I send her to the hospital?
As I watched the taxi leave, I felt a great crushing burden bear down upon me. Had we done enough. Had we done the right thing.
“Did we do the right thing? Do you think she’ll be okay?” I asked the Chinese lad. “What do you do?”
“Yes, I think you did the right thing, putting her into a cab. Actually I think she needs to be warded. Not sure if she’ll make it home in time looking at her condition-she needs a drip actually. I’m a medical officer.”
“You’re a what?” I was bewildered, enraged almost. “You’re a medical officer, you knew all this, and you didn’t even insist?! WHY!!!! Why didn’t you insist, why didn’t you do anything? You KNEW all this!” I was mad, I was almost in tears, and I didn’t care if people at the bus-stand were all staring at us. It was very crowded.
“Well, “he said matter-of-factly, “She refused right? And besides, we did our best.”
“We did our best? You had knowledge of what had to be done and kept it to yourself- you think that’s doing our best? Hello. What we just did was the most basic, human, decent thing to do- and I’m not even sure right now if it even hit that mark, not even sure if we did the right thing. How can you say we did our best?” I was trying not to be hysterical. But I had lost my mind, I was mad.
He looked at me. I could tell he was a decent man. He knew I was a second year medical student, knew I was naïve and idealistic but he never scoffed at me. He only kept saying we tried our best, that there is nothing doctors can do if patients are non-compliant.
I argued. There is something we can do. Our knowledge helps us to know when to exercise our insistence. She could have passed out. What if she doesn’t make it later? How would you feel? Too many thoughts were running through my head for the tears to stream down.
Our bus came. As I sat on the seat with him, traumatized and very very still, I thought of the story of the Good Samaritan written in the Bible. It was about how a man had been mugged by some bandits, and left injured by the roadside. A priest and temple assistant passed him by. It was a Samaritan, a man of low social class, who stopped. He Stopped for the injured man, took him to an inn, and paid the innkeeper, even telling the innkeeper that he would bear whatever extra cost the injured man may incur. That was love, that was doing his best.
Did we not show enough love, give enough help? I thought of the silent medical officer, the Caucasian who just stuffed ten dollars into my hands for the taxi fare before rushing off, the taxi driver who had no time, my lack of better judgement perhaps, and the tears welled up behind my eyes. Had all my time at church learning and reading been a waste? God had told us to love one another, strangers even, as deeply as we can. Did we do the right thing? Did we do enough?
Tears started to well up behind my eyes.
“I think you did the right thing,” he said.
I called the lady with the number she had given me. No answer. I wanted to cry. At once, she called me back, sounding distraught herself but a little relieved.
“Harlow? I’m at Queensway Polyclinic. Taxi Uncle drive me here ya. I’m taking a number now, seeing doctor. Ya ya, buh bye.”
So I didn’t cry.
“This I must tell you, all right,” I said, trying to sound gentle. “ As a doctor, if you have knowledge, you have to use it and exercise it. It’s not right to have knowledge and not align your actions with it. Okay?”
He looked at me and smiled. “Okay.”
Silence.
“You’re very passionate,” he said.
I told him the story of the Good Samaritan. We left each other.
When I got to school, my mind was in a mess. The fact that she was all right didn’t change the fact that I had to think about the principle behind what we did. Was it right. Was it done out of love. Most importantly, did we go all out to help? Most people help, but God tells us to go all the way, as far as we can. What does it mean to go all the way? Did we? Did I? Did I try hard enough.
I thought of the things we said, things we did, and thoughts behind what we said and did and wonderied if we had altogether lost our bearings.
I wanted a room to myself to bangbangbang the walls, vent it all out. I reached school, and I figured I had been too traumatized by that early morning’s events to carry on with the day. I was early, so I changed into my running gear and ran round the whole campus before class started, thinking, thinking, thinking. Came back in time for bible study with my friends- the topic was, Loving Others Fervently.
How we have all fallen short.
"The Parable of the Good Samaritan"
- Luke 10: 25-37"
' If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love in word or in tongue but with actions and in truth. "
- 1 John 3:17-18
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'
-Matthew 22
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