A Tale of Two Fathers

A few weeks ago.

Late on a Wednesday evening.

I found myself, still in my office attire, watching over my son in the pre-surgical ward in a hospital in Shah Alam.

It had all started innocuously - I had suspected that the very vocal Mirza (seven) was just trying to skive from school in the morning.

But thankfully there was enough sense in me to take him to the doctor just to be on the safe side.

By the day's end he was being prepped for an appendectomy - and I was fretting on a hard plastic chair beside the bed.

It's always difficult trying to reassure a child when you are obviously a bundle of nerves yourself.

Yeah, yeah - I know an appendectomy is a simple procedure and that since we caught it at an early stage it should be a cinch but that's what fathers do, innit?

Reassuring everyone that everything's going to be all right while dying a slow death inside with worry over your child.

Then again there's that awful image that sticks out in my memory.

- a young grief-stricken lady weeping and moaning softly as she walked in her husband's arms. An attendant beside them slowly wheeling a hospital gurney bearing the lifeless body of their young son.

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It was also late in the evening fifteen years ago, when that scene played out at the KL Pediatric Hospital.

We were out on a stroll along the hospital corridors when we ran into the bereaved party.

It really hit home on me then, of the possible future that lurked - unseen in the wings.

My first-born asked me why the lady was crying.

He was two years old - then perched on a mobile IV-drip stand that I pushed around on slow walks when we both got restless.

On that mobile stand hung a bag of poison called Cisplatin, from which flowed a steady drip, through a needle that entered into my son's bloodstream.

It was the third of a series of week-long stays in the Pediatric Hospital - we were put up in a ward designated as KK3.

It's also known as the Cancer Ward.

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The nurse bustled along to our bed and told us the surgical team was ready for Mirza.

I stood up, picked up my sleeping child and we proceeded into the Operating Room.

Mirza woke up just as we arrived at the operating table and clutched at me.

"Nak buat apa ni, bah?" he asked, his fright plain for all to see.

I soothed him and the anaesthetist joined in, making a fun game with the mask and together we persuaded him to lie still and put the mask over his face.

Barely a minute later, he was under.

I gave one look back at his sleeping form as I walked out the room.

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I was asked to leave the Operating Room as we waited for the anaesthesia to kick in.

The petite female surgeon had told me that the operation would take about 3 hours - they'll have to scrape away, delicately, the tumour that had wrapped itself around a major artery.

There was a large glass panel looking into the OR and they placed him beside it - so he could look out and see me waiting there for him.

I gave him a little wave, barely seeing him through glassy eyes.



Shaking my head slightly, I blinked them clear - and from under the blue surgical cap, his wide trusting eyes pinned my soul with a gaze full of unquestioning belief.


I watched as they slowly closed shut as he went under and then they wheeled him away.

Another waiting father down the corridor nodded his assurance at me - a kindred soul, we were brothers-in-agony.

I gave a sickly smile and turned away, unable to speak.

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Lady C arrived around 9pm, with the bag of clothes - both mine and Mirza's.

He's still in the OR and we went into the waiting room, the TV screening a football match from the Euro 2008.

I nodded some people who were already in there and settled down on a sofa.

To again wait.

God knows I have enough practice by this time.

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"Abah! Sakit ...!" his first words as he came to.

His little hands clutched my shoulders frantically in pain as I turned my head and called the nurse, trying not to dislodge any of the five port-a-caths (IV ports) embedded around his tiny body.

The nurse told me there's no anaesthesia prescribed for post-surgical care.

A short sharp conversation ensued as I politely informed her that the surgeon had personally told me otherwise.

She went off in a huff and returned in a little while to roughly jab a hypodermic into my son.

He collapsed in blissful oblivion.

For five whole seconds, I seriously considered throttling the nurse to death right there beside my son's cot.

The madness passed and I recited a prayer of thanks instead.

Half an hour later she came over with a smile and tried to get back into my good graces.

Divine intervention, I guessed.

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"Abah, abah!" his little voice jerked me from my slumber.

It was just after dawn - eight hours after the appendectomy after which I had carried him up two floors to our room.

Feelings of dread roiled within me as I sprang to his side to find out what was wrong.



"Mintak remote TV," he beamed innocently.




It was an early but sweet Father's Day gift.

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Dinner at my mum's.

My father in his white Pagoda T-shirt, looking tired but somehow jovial as he showed that his appetite was intact.

He asked about my first-born and we spoke together about the next appointment and how well he was doing.

He had come over regularly to see us during the chemotherapy sessions and to chat.

The doctors had told us it was a total remission - my son will see adulthood, God willing.

My son's hair, felled by the chemotherapy courses, had fully restored over the past year and he had regained his weight.

We had won, despite the odds.

Yet the tinge of sadness refused to move away from the dinner table.

"I've closed all my accounts," he said in that quiet yet jovial manner he had.

I raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"Everything. I've taken all my money out and given them to your mother," he gave a snort of laughter.

"So now your mother can kick me out if she wants to," he smiled widely at his own joke.

I gave him one of my sickly smiles and kept my eyes on the food.

Six months later I was tossing clumps of earth into his final resting place, silently weeping behind dark glasses.

The doctors had given him two months but the tenacity that was his hallmark (centreback for Selangor, HMS Malaya Cup squad) came to the fore for one last final battle.

But there was no denying that tumour in his brain.

He passed on two weeks after my third son was born - in the third week of June.

A good man. A great father.


God bless you, Pak.


And a Happy Father's Day, too.


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