i hate beeping machines.

so i was standing there in a stark white room, holding on to a pair of stinky slippers and watching Daddy who looked like a fish out of water, there on that trolley bed. surrounded by the insistent beeping of machines. heartbeat, check. blood pressure, check.

the nurses bustle around, sprouting various medical terms that are gibberish to me. how strange to see a strong, fit man, reduced to a now bony frame with grey hair and tired eyes. he’s aged so much, i think. but so many things about him are still the same. still stubborn, still stoic. still a hard, relentless man.

there’s a morsel of fear i see, masked in his expression. he’s worried too, and so are all of us.

but none of us are able to break through the barrier of silence.

this is how he’s brought us up. to show no signs of weakness, even when all you can do is to lie there weakly on a hospital bed, and just barely tolerate the pain wrecking your body. i’m not fooled. if someone as stubborn as you can admit yourself into hospital, this is no trivial pain.

we left him at 2am, after he’d been shifted to a High Dependency Unit.

i suspect if Daddy’s english were better, he’d hate the sound of that. because he hates to be weak, to be dependent. the doctor says we’d only know if he’s fit to be discharged once the tests have been done and results are out. he tells the doctor he wants to be discharged tomorrow, because he has a huge fish exhibition coming up the following weekend. the doctor shakes his head and says, look at the state of you. how do you intend to work like that? we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

please channel your healing thoughts and prayers to this stubborn old dad of mine, that he’ll be fine and safe. thank you 🙂

ps. i’m fine, thank you for the concern. just worried cos i’m flying off tonight already 🙁 and my phone is screwed and i can’t do refunds and i havent had time to clear all the emails nor prepare launches… stuff like that. kinda bad situation to be in now. so don’t kill me cos you haven’t gotten refunded. i’m so sorry my phone is really not allowing me to even open the message inbox to check the OTP number 🙁