Chapter 2: Rui (part 2 of 4)

  I still had a few work days to get through before I embarked on my adventure, including an afternoon shift on the same day I had my first introduction to Silver Crane. I currently sat in the reception area of the Operating Theatre, having just finished providing imaging support to a Nephrology operation. While the surgeons finished up inside the operating room, I took the opportunity to grab the patient's files and write my part of the report.

  The operation itself had been a fairly standard radiographic urolithotomy, in this case the image-guided removal of several large kidney stones. I helped to construct a visual model of the patient's urinary tract while the Nephrologists broke the stones into smaller pieces and fished them out. It was a short procedure but I always felt starved and slightly achy in my joints after assisting any operation. The main difference from my usual job in the imaging room was the constant shaping and re-shaping of the model as the surgeons shifted their focus within the body, and this usually took a lot out of me. But ever since we had worked out the image-guided method of urolithotomy, we no longer had to cut patients open to get their stones out. For me, that seemed like good returns for the price of having to forage for fuel from the break room as soon as I left an operation.

  So here I was, furiously stuffing an apple into my mouth while scribbling into the patient's files. I had a couple of reasons for wanting to get this done as quickly as possible. For one thing, I was cold. I was dressed in a thin, grey theatre smock that all non-surgical staff were required to change into when entering the OT. While I certainly admired this hygienic practice as a major contributor to the reduction of post-operative infection rates, I wished they had designed something warmer for us to wear. Most hospitals these days employed Thermoregulators, Ignis-sensitized support staff who took shifts cooling the air inside the OT. So despite today being a warm, sunny day, inside the theatres felt colder than the chilliest winter night.

  The second reason was that there was one person I wished to avoid at all costs. It was now late afternoon, around the time when some of the surgeons had finished their last cases of the day and would start returning to the wards. My hope was that they would head straight for the break room and my refuge here in the reception area would keep me out of sight.

  Alas, it was not to be. I heard a commotion from down the corridor and looked up to find a group of surgeons dressed in their trademark green smocks, chatting and strolling in my direction. Sure enough, the gangliest among them was Ruiming Tao, called Michael by most that knew him. He was an Angiologist and my older brother.

  I quickly looked down and hoped to blend into the scenery, just one of the scribes keeping some books. I managed to finish my report in record time, closed the file, and was ready to stand up when I heard, "Rui!"

  Michael had peeled off from his group and now stood over me. I had to crane my neck to make eye contact from my sitting position. Michael, a rising star among the younger surgeons at Central Temasek Hospital and the apple of my father's eye, had always managed to make me feel shorter than I was.

  "Hello, doctor," I said, needlessly formal and devoid of emotion. "I hope you're well."

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  "Don't be an idiot," Michael shot back impatiently. "What's this I hear about you taking leave next week?"

  I immediately felt a stab of annoyance. It was an innocent enough question, but I could tell he was in one of his responsible older brother moods and I was never in my deferential younger brother mood.

  Whatever might be whispered behind our backs, my resentment wasn't borne of some kind of sibling rivalry. I truly did not begrudge Michael his early success, his good looks, his better relationship with our father, or even his better eyesight—okay, maybe I begrudged the eyesight a little bit. I knew more than anyone that he worked hard for everything he'd earned, and I had great respect for him... as a colleague. But ever since I enrolled in medical school four years after him, he'd suddenly intensified his attempts to be a third parent. He started routinely hounding me about my studies, my networking efforts, and even the girls I dated.

  This incessant mothering continued even after I started working. I won't admit this to anyone, but a big reason I chose Radiology over the other Aurum-attuned specialties was the hope that it would minimize my interactions with Michael. Avoiding assignment to the Central would have been even more ideal, but that was largely beyond my control. Having become co-workers, his efforts to constantly check in on me, criticize my choices, and offer unsolicited advice became even more unbearable, mainly because of its more public nature.

  The present interaction was case in point. I sighed, not bothering to hide it. What happened to you, Michael? You used to be more... Thermoregulated. That's what I wanted to say, but I instead groused, "Yes. I'm taking a week off. What about it?"

  "But what for? Are you going to mum and dad's? Are they alright?"

  The Tao clan had split up around the city. Our father, also an Angiologist like Michael and the Chief Medical Officer at Sembawang General, along with our mother, a Psychiatrist with her own private practice, lived in the northern district of Sembawang. Michael had bought his own house in Jurong and there was an open invite for me to live with his family. I had opted for the less spacious, more expensive, but also more Michael-free option of staying in the hospital dormitories. As for Lucy, I imagined she slept under a different sky almost every night.

  "No, I'm not going to mum and dad's and yes, I'm sure they're alright. I just... needed a study break, okay? To work on some stuff."

  "Are you serious? Look, we all have our projects outside the hospital but trust me, taking a whole week off just to catch up on personal work isn't a good look. I'm in my sixth year and even I don't do that. You're just a baby and—"

  "Yeah, well, you're not my dad!"

  Before I knew it, I was on my feet. I became acutely aware of the sideway glances from the nurses and scribes within earshot, as well as the hurt and embarrassed look on Michael's face, and immediately felt my own ears grow hot. The worst part was that I knew I was being unreasonably petulant. At least in this, Michael was absolutely in the right. I had told one lie to my training supervisor to secure my leave and had now told a different lie to my brother to cover it up. But still, there was no way in the ten realms I dared tell Michael that I was going Malady-hunting with an adventure party and that I had roped Lucy into helping me set it up.

  "We'll talk about this later," Michael said curtly and walked off at speed. Clearly, he didn't want to cause a bigger scene, and I couldn't blame him. I sighed again, then looked around at the other staff in the vicinity. Many of them looked away hurriedly. I thought about making a joke or two but found that I myself wasn't in any mood to find the humour in the situation. Instead, I picked up the patient files I had been working on and trudged off.

  I knew Michael would sooner or later find out about the true reason for my leave. But let that be another fight on another day.