Trafalgar Sunrise Read online

  Danielle has written a riveting story of human resilience and the gift of human kindness. She has captured with great tenderness and sensitivity the interwoven lives of two teenage survivors of Trafalgar Home. This is a wonderful book which I really enjoyed.

  Prof Lee Seng Teik,

  Emeritus Consultant and surgeon

  A very moving story that gives a human touch to the struggle against infectious diseases. I could imagine scenes from Trafalgar Home, from hospitals and from old times in Singapore. A very good book!

  A/Prof Maciej Piotr Chlebicki,

  Senior Consultant in infectious diseases

  A touching and heartfelt book, well written and illuminating about both the SARS epidemic and long ago leprosy. The characters come alive and stay with the reader when the book is finished.

  Meira Chand,

  author of Sacred Waters

  Full praise to Danielle for writing such a moving book. This is an amazing story with remarkable descriptions of the people affected by devastating viruses and bacteria in the course of history.

  Pansy Yew Seok Pang,

  recipient of the 2002 President’s Award for Nurses

  Gripping … tense … excellent! Trafalgar Sunrise evokes the atmosphere of palpable fear during the deadly reign of SARS. I was moved by Danielle’s portrayal of the courage to persevere in the face of personal peril.

  Dr Delvin Ng,

  family physician

  Set during a tumultuous time in Singapore’s history, Trafalgar Sunrise opens a window to the dark days of the SARS crisis, as well as historical leprosy. By contextualising the narrative in actual historical events, this work is a tribute to these healthcare heroes.

  Dr Clement Liew,

  historian

  Danielle captures so wonderfully the stories of love, duty and resilience during the SARS period. She has depicted with great accuracy the atmosphere at medical facilities and the thoughts of healthcare professionals as they fought this hitherto unknown virus. Now their sacrifices will not be forgotten.

  Jessie Lim,

  former nurse

  A very interesting and touching story which I couldn’t stop reading. My heart broke towards the end.

  Jonavon Yeo,

  student

  © 2018 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited

  Text © Danielle Lim

  Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

  An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300.

  E-mail: [email protected].

  Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref

  The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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  Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

  Marshall Cavendish is a registered trademark of Times Publishing Limited.

  National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Name(s): Lim, Danielle.

  Title: Trafalgar Sunrise / Danielle Lim.

  Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, [2018]

  Identifier(s): OCN 1036979555 | eISBN: 978 981 4828 44 4

  Subject(s): LCSH: SARS (Disease)--Singapore--Fiction. | Leprosy--Singapore--Fiction.

  Classification: DDC S823--dc23

  Printed in Singapore

  Cover image of Trafalgar Home courtesy of National Archives of Singapore

  To those whose paths met in Trafalgar Home

  Who were again given life

  At an incredible moment in human history

  When leprosy became curable

  To those who came before

  Imprisoned by the world’s fear of leprosy

  Since time as far back

  As history can remember

  To those who lost their lives

  Or lost loved ones

  When the world had to fight

  An unknown virus called SARS

  To the doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals

  Who had to put on their masks each day

  Walking into the frontline

  Not knowing if they would walk out

  To my mum, dad and sis

  My husband and children

  And all who are searching for hope

  This book is for you

  Stumbling forward

  History and I

  Listen backwards

  For sunrise

  Flowing in the breath

  of the human heart and mind

  Rhythms

  of redemption

  1

  My father used to say that the most powerful stirrings are the rhythms we cannot see.

  When, decades ago, I stood looking at him, the only family I had ever known and whom I would soon no longer see, he raised his eyes from behind the small wooden table, the one his patients would place their hands on for pulse-taking. There was a terrible sadness in his eyes—such moments we do not easily forget—as he nodded to me. The only powerful stirring I had felt then, if it could even be called a stirring, was the urge to run away; somewhere, anywhere, except where I was going.

  It would become my home for the next seven years, the first days of which I spent fighting the urge to run away. This yearning peaked, then eased, the morning I walked to school with Alice for the first time. She had a wound on her foot like many around us, so that morning we queued up in the female infirmary, just below our dormitory, for a change of dressing. The sight of the older women with their wounds and deformities, and the smell of antiseptic masking the reek of diseased flesh, made me want to retch. After that, we headed towards our school in our blue and white school uniforms, she holding on to my hand as she limped forward, tightening her grip when her weight was on the wounded foot, as we walked the half kilometre. There was something reassuring in the way my footsteps had to echo hers, to step in rhythm. Or perhaps what soothed the knotted distress inside me was simply that someone was holding my hand. It had been a long time since anyone has done this.

  Why these memories from such a long time ago come back to me now, as I walk up the slope to the hospital at the break of dawn, I do not know. On this morning decades later, I am the one limping forward, not from a wound on my foot, but a joint stiffness in my knee.

  An urgent meeting has been called this morning. Hospitals here have just been alerted to an outbreak of atypical pneumonia. A new microbe could be headed our way, an animalcule as yet unknown, and as always, invisible to the human eye.

  The birds have begun their revelry in a new day, gifting the still air with their lucid flow of song. I hear the splash of the puddles as I walk on. This early March morning has brought with it rain that has lingered on in the patches of grass surrounding the buildings, in the angsana trees, in the rain trees with branches stretching out into the air which, even after the rain, is thick with humidity. The scent of the morning dew touches my breath with its crispness.

  I stop for a moment, breathing deeply.

  The clouds tumble over one another as they try to catch the darting waves of illumination reaching this side of life.

  On those occasional quiet night shifts when I was a staff nurse years ago, I would glance out the window from the corner of my eye in the middle of a task—replacing an empty IV bag with a new one, monitoring blood pressure, or helping a patient with a bedpan—and wait for those first drifts of light, thankful for an uneventful night, and most of all, just happy that I would soon be able to crawl into bed.

  Walking on, I see an ambulance turning out onto Medical Avenue. The ambulance driver sticks his hand out of the window and waves at me. After thirty years as a nurse, I suppose one cannot help but become a familiar face around the hospital. I squint in his direction and raise my hand in response. Turning on the siren, he picks up speed.

  The hospital is quiet at this time of day. As I walk towards the lift lobby, the telelifts—those rectangular little boxes that travel along in their own inverted universe above us—hum along overhead, oblivious to the possibility of a new virus that would soon scourge the landscape.

  2

  Save for the sounds of our breathing—rhythmic, embracing in its undulating passage, yet elusive, unseen, like a poem that can never be read—the room is silent as Ms Gan, our Assistant Director of Nursing, walks in.

  She glances briefly at us, her ten nurse managers seated around the meeting table, and places a box of curry puffs on the table, a breakfast routine we have grown accustomed to. Her eyes squeezed by the dark eye bags around them, he
r long hair tied up in a hurry—we know this because her hair is usually neat; the only times we have seen loose strands have been times of crises or emergencies—she utters a “Good Morning” before taking her seat. She takes out a printed email and places it in front of her.

  I am finding it difficult to focus at a time when clarity of mind is of utmost importance. My mind is full of those swimming animalcules, the viruses and bacteria just as elusive and unseen as our breaths, with the capacity to put an end to life’s rhythms. There you go, we’re striking out the poem that could never be read anyway, they might say. Unseen against unseen.

  Centuries ago, the Dutch lens grinder—what was his name? Antoni something, I think?—looked through his microscope into the depths of a drop of water and became the first human to see a completely different world, a world of tiny animalcules squirming, tumbling, darting, invisible to the human eye. Humans have spent the next three hundred years trying to understand this microscopic world.

  Now I hear Ms Gan’s voice telling us about a new respiratory pathogen which has caused the World Health Organization to issue a global alert: an outbreak of atypical pneumonia with 150 cases worldwide. A new disease most likely caused by a virus, according to WHO. One which does not respond to antibiotics, where a fever seems to be the only clue, and against which our only ammunition is to isolate the patient.

  All eyes are on Ms Gan as she brings her elbows to rest on the table, wraps her fingers around one another, and presses her chin against her clasped hands, like she is saying a prayer. She continues that this virus seems to strike even the young and healthy, that the first suspected case in Singapore is a young woman who fell ill after returning from Hong Kong, and who is now isolated, in critical condition.

  “Is there anything we know about the mode of transmission? Or the mortality rate?” Shamini, a senior nurse manager from Accident and Emergency and a close colleague of mine, asks.

  Ms Gan sighs. “It looks like we’re up against a mysterious, unknown virus. Health authorities and hospitals around the world are scrambling to find out more. Vietnam, Hong Kong, Canada. Taiwan just reported its first case. This microbe seems to be on a travelling spree.”

  “How do we identify cases to be isolated?”

  “Travel history. Contact history, in addition to physiological symptoms. Our Medical Board is meeting later today. After that, detailed infection control guidelines will be issued.”

  Shamini suddenly sneezes into her handkerchief; everyone is jolted and looks at her.

  “Why are you all looking at me? Sorry lah, cannot sneeze, is it?”

  “Haiyo, Shamini, why must you choose such a time to sneeze?”

  “Eh, Sister, let me ask you, do you ever choose when you want to sneeze?”

  There is laughter around the table and tensed muscles ease a little.

  “Ms Gan, does this new disease have an official name?”

  Ms Gan looks at the email on the table in front of her.

  “WHO has named it ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome’. In short, SARS.”

  Infection-control guidelines are issued the next day. The Ministry of Health wants all hospitals to screen patients at the Accident and Emergency Department for any fever, as well as for travel history to SARS-hit countries. Any suspected case must be isolated. N95 masks should be worn by all hospital staff, who must also monitor and record their temperatures daily. There is to be strict adherence to hand-washing procedures.

  The guidelines, printed on a bright yellow sheet of paper with our ward number, 82, at the top, arrive in an envelope addressed to me, stamped with a big, red “urgent” above the hand-written words “Attention: Sister Grace Hwang Wai Leng”.

  After gathering all my morning shift staff nurses, assistant and student nurses, and health attendants, or amahs, at the nurses’ station, I explain the new guidelines to them, telling them that they have to record their temperature every day, that they have to record the names of all the people, including patients, with whom they come into contact, and that they have to wear the N95 mask at all times.

  “But, Sister Hwang, ours is oncology ward. Also must wear mask?” Ah Pek, one of our amahs, asks.

  “Yes. This bug can spread, it’s infectious, so we must take precautions.”

  “Amahs also must wear?”

  “Yes, Ah Pek.”

  I walk over to the counter and pick up the box of N95 masks, which arrived this morning.

  “You must wear a new mask every day,” I tell them as I open the box. “They come in different sizes, so make sure you wear the size that fits your face. Staff nurses, you should be more familiar. Help the others.”

  I turn towards the amahs. “Too loose, no use. Too tight, you go home with zebra crossings on your face. This afternoon there will be a spray test, to check whether you are wearing your mask properly. Too loose, fail. Too tight, also fail.”

  “What? Aiyo, Sister!”

  “What to do? This is very serious, okay? Now, everyone try on your masks.”

  Amirah and Kim, my staff nurses, help distribute the masks. We guide the student nurses and amahs in putting the mask over the nose and mouth, bringing the straps over the head, adjusting the metal strip across the nose, then checking for tightness and fit.

  After a few minutes, everyone has the masks on.

  “How is it?” I ask, the moisture from my breath already starting to dampen the inside of my mask.

  “Alamak, Sister, we all look like orang utans!”

  “Yah lah, Sister. Then you can be Ah Meng!”

  Some of them start to chuckle at the thought of my being Singapore’s most famous primate matriarch, long furry hair and all, having breakfast with visitors at our zoo.

  “Okay, enough joking. These guidelines must be followed strictly, understand? Wear your masks at all times.”

  “Sister, must it really be on all the time? So hard to breathe, so wet inside, how do we work properly?” Joey, one of the assistant nurses, asks.

  Ah Pek promptly pulls the mask downwards so that it covers her mouth but not her nose.

  “We don’t have a choice, understand? Pek, put it on properly!”

  “What do we do at meal times?” Amirah asks.

  In all my years at the hospital, we have never had to wear the N95 mask at all times, in all wards. I consult the circular.

  “At meal times, put the mask in a clean plastic bag. Pin the plastic bag to your uniform. After meals, put the mask back on. If it is wet, discard and use a new one. If you’ve attended to a patient before your meal, also discard and use a new one.”

  We are pinning the plastic bags to our uniforms when a patient in his fifties hobbles out of his room towards us. He is ambulatory and is usually walking about with no problems at all, but now is hobbling slowly, thighs pressed together.

  “Missy! Missy ah!” he calls out.

  “My patient…” says Kim, as she walks quickly towards him.

  “Missy! Urgent! Somebody in toilet! Got another toilet?”

  Kim supports him by the elbow and points down the corridor to where the toilet is.

  “I can. I can. Thank you ah!” He makes a no-need-to-hold-me gesture to Kim as he hobbles towards the toilet, trying to hold it in. We are about to resume our briefing when Kim suddenly runs towards him, saying loudly, “No, no! Not that door! The next one!”

  The student nurses start to giggle, because that was the door to my room.

  We discuss other matters while waiting for Kim. She walks back with her patient, who has the smile of one who’s just had the most satisfying resolution to nature’s call.

  “Ahh, much better now. Aiyah missy, next time use caterpillar, better lah!”

  “Huh? Caterpillar?” Kim asks.

  “No, not caterpillar,” Ah Pek says, pointing to our masks. “Orang utan lah!”

  The patient scratches his head, then, seeing a tube at the nurses’ station, picks it up and jabs one end of it towards his lower abdomen.

  “This one. Caterpillar. Then urine can go straight into the bag, and no need to go to toilet!”

  Now we are all grinning beneath our masks. He is referring to a catheter.

  At lunchtime Kim comes into my room with several plastic bags, each holding two or three boxes of rice. She has bought lunch for everyone, something my nurses frequently take turns to do. Her full name is Lee Kim Eng, so we call her Kim.