Morning duty today. At 0945 hours, we received a new admission from the Emergency Unit an elderly woman, diagnosed with a drug allergy. I’d never seen anything like it since being posted to Toa Payoh Hospital.
They wheeled her in on a long trolley, swaddled under a thick blanket as if she were fragile porcelain. But the moment we pulled the blanket back, the air changed. The smell hit us first.It pierced straight through the mask sharp, sour, heavy lodging at the back of the throat. Old, stale urine. Skin left too long without soap. And something deeper, darker… the unmistakable stench of rot. Her skin peeled in thin, curling flakes, clinging to the blanket.
Across her limbs and back, blackened patches mottled the flesh. At her sacrum, a massive sore gangrenous, raw, and littered with sand and scraps of dried tissue paper. Sand. How did sand get there?I was assisting EN Yeo with the admission. The moment she saw the woman’s condition, her face hardened. She turned to the patient’s daughter, who stood silently by, eyes fixed on the floor.
“How can you treat your mother like this?” EN Yeo demanded.“You never bathe her? When was the last time you bathed her?”
The daughter’s voice was barely above a whisper. “She refused to bathe.”
“How many days?” EN Yeo pressed.
“…Three days.”
EN Yeo’s eyes narrowed. Her tone sharpened.“Three days? Just three? Look at your mother does this look like someone who hasn’t bathed for three days? She looks like she hasn’t been bathed in years.”
No more questions. She told the daughter to leave the ward. We worked quickly. Sponging her body. Washing away what we could. Changing the sheets — twice. Even with our masks on, the smell crept through, burrowing into the head until it became a dull, throbbing ache behind the eyes.An IV line was set up. A naso-gastric tube inserted.
The feeding regime began immediately. She was skeletal. Dehydrated. Undernourished. Barely responsive. I knew then she would be with us for a long time.
At SGH, I’d seen elderly patients admitted for hypertension, diabetes, heart conditions. But never like this. Never neglect so deep it had become part of the body. Never sorrow that had a smell.
Then there's another case an elderly lady, bedridden, who refused to eat. At first, she wouldn’t even look at me when I came near her bed. Her lips stayed pressed shut whenever the spoon came close. But I kept trying.Little by little, I learned to read her moods when to coax gently, when to tease. I’d sing softly as I fed her, silly tunes in a mix of Hokkien and broken Malay, just to make her laugh.
And when her eyes lit up, I knew she was enjoying herself. Feeding time became our time.One morning, I was sponging her down. She kept looking at me her eyes fixed, as if she wanted to remember my face. I kept talking to her in Hokkien, making silly comments to draw out that shy smile.
Then she turned to the other nurse who was assisting me. In a voice that was soft but sure, she said: “I like this girl." And she pointed right at me. For a moment, I froze. It was such a simple thing just three words. But it felt like the first time anyone had said something so openly kind to me. Like she was saying, I trust you. I see you. I’m glad you’re here. It was almost like hearing “I love you.”
And then it happened one afternoon, just after lunch. I was walking back to the ward, still half-thinking about the tasks waiting for me, when I saw her. She was in a wheelchair, her thin frame almost swallowed by the blanket draped over her knees.
A nurse and a hospital attendant were on either side, guiding her slowly down the corridor. At first, I thought they were taking her for a test or treatment. But then I noticed the small plastic bag hooked onto the back of the chair. Her belongings. And the way the attendant’s eyes stayed fixed straight ahead. They were sending her home.
When she saw me, her face lit up for a split second then crumpled. She reached out her hand towards me, her arm trembling with the effort. Her eyes filled, and her voice broke as she pleaded, in a whisper that still carried across the corridor: “Don’t… send me home.”
There were tears on her cheeks. And I… I just stood there. I wanted to run to her, to hold her, to promise her she could stay. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. All I could do was watch as they wheeled her away the distance between us growing with every turn of the wheels.
For the first time in my life, I felt truly helpless. Like my whole world had crumpled in on itself. That night, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her again the blanket slipping from her knees, her arm stretched towards me, her fingers trembling. Her voice still in my ears: don’t send me home.I kept replaying the moment, searching for something I could have done.
Some way to stop them from taking her. But there was nothing. And that’s when it hit me.I felt helpless not because I didn’t care but because I didn’t have the power. No authority to intervene. No resources to offer. No way to change the decision that had already been made for her.
That realisation hurt more than the memory.I lay there for hours, staring at the hostel ceiling, listening to the muffled voices from the other rooms fade into the night. And in that stillness, I made a promise to myself:I would do whatever it took to make sure I never felt that helpless again. I would learn. I would prepare.
I would find the means, the connections, the voice so that next time, I could act. I didn’t have a name for it. All I knew was that something in me had shifted.It was like a switch had been flipped from standing still to needing to move. From keeping quiet to needing to speak.
From watching to having to act. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t have the means yet. But I knew I couldn’t stay in this place this hollow, helpless place ever again. Something had been set in motion. And it wasn’t going to stop.I used to think cases like this didn’t exist in Singapore. We’re supposed to be an affluent society. Educated. Developed. Modern.
And yet, this is how some of our elderly are treated by their own families. Not strangers. Not the state. Their own flesh and blood.Many are simply… abandoned.When a patient is first admitted, the family will come all polite concern and gentle fussing. They’ll ask questions, take notes, nod at the doctor’s words.
They’ll promise to come back tomorrow. But the moment the doctor says, “Your father is well enough to be discharged”… they disappear. No phone calls. No transport arranged. No one shows up. On more than one occasion, I’ve had to accompany the hospital attendant sometimes even the police to send patients home in the back of an ambulance, simply because no one from the family would come.
And once they’re back home? I try not to imagine. Sometimes I think the truth is simple, and ugly: Leaving an elderly parent in a hospital bed is cheaper than paying for a place in an old folks’ home. A matter of cost. Nothing more. It’s a depressing thought. And worse it’s not even rare.
And then there was Catherine. The young girl whose adopted parents abandoned her when they found out she had SLE. By the time I met her, she was already frail. Her skin was pale, her hands cold even on warm afternoons. But she had a smile that could still light up her whole face as if she hadn’t learned yet that she was dying.
I became attached to her, more than I meant to. After my shifts, I’d often sit by her bedside, reading aloud from library books, singing to her when her vision began to fade. She laughed when I sang off-key. I laughed when she corrected my pronunciation in English. It became a routine neither of us questioned. One evening, after my afternoon duty, I stayed as usual reading, chatting, singing softly.
When it was time to go, I said, “Good night, Catherine. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon” She nodded, eyes half-closed, and I thought I saw the faintest smile.The next day, I walked into the ward for my afternoon shift and stopped. Her bed was empty. A nurse told me she had died late the night before, just before midnight.
Her heart had stopped.I stood there for a long time, staring at the bare sheets and the empty bed. I hadn’t been there to say goodbye.
And somehow, that made it worse. Her death settled deep in me. I hadn’t realised how much I had needed her presence until it was gone. And now, with my mother’s cancer diagnosis hanging over everything, it felt as if the ground beneath my feet had shifted.It wasn’t just grief.
It was the sharp awareness that life could slip away quietly, without warning — and you might not get the chance to say what you need to say. To hold the hand one last time. To make sure someone knows they mattered. Catherine’s absence and my mother’s illness became threads woven into the same knot in my chest. A knot I still carry.
A nurse told me she had died just before midnight. Her heart had stopped. It was the first time I had ever lost a patient, but Catherine wasn’t just a patient. She was… a friend. Someone I’d sat with after hours, reading and singing to, laughing with, sharing quiet moments that had nothing to do with charts or medications.
She had no one else her adopted parents had left her the moment they found out she had SLE. She never said it out loud, but I think she knew she’d been abandoned. And maybe that’s why she let me in because, for both of us, those evenings by her bedside were more than routine. They were a kind of refuge.
So when I walked into the ward and saw her bed empty, it wasn’t just the shock of a patient’s death. It was the sudden loss of someone I’d come to care for deeply someone who had already been taken from so much. And knowing she died alone, without her family there, made it feel almost unbearable. The first time I had ever stood in front of an empty bed, knowing that the person who had been there yesterday would never be there again. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Just yesterday she was smiling, breathing, listening to my voice. And now… gone. It felt like walking into a room where the air had been stolen.It made me think about death really think about it in a way I never had before. Like most young people, I’d always kept the idea of death at arm’s length. It was something far away, something for other people, something to whisper about at wakes and then forget once the funeral flowers wilted.But now it was here.
In the ward. In my home. Inside the faces I cared about. I realised I wasn’t afraid of death itself. What unsettled me was the silence around it the way no one wanted to talk about it, even when it was standing in the same room. The way families avoided the subject until it was too late, leaving too many things unsaid.
Something in me decided that if death was inevitable, then we needed to face it, prepare for it, talk about it. To give it the same openness we gave to birth, to love, to every other part of life.I didn’t have the words for it then. I didn’t know people called it death literacy, or the positive death movement. All I knew was that I wanted to understand it and to help others understand it too.
I received another letter from Shah Alam today. At least it brought a moment of relief a pleasant break from the daily monotony of ward routine of Bed sores, diabetic urine and Infected wounds. And the growing list of elderly patients wheeled in, one after another, in states that still shock me even now.
Sharil’s letter, though, pulled me out of all that just for a while. He wrote that he’ll be coming back during the term break and hopes to see me in Johor. His mother has decided to move to Johor, Kampung Melayu permanently now, especially since his younger brother and sister are both in college and staying in the hostel.
She says Johor is nearer to Singapore. Easier for her to visit. More familiar. She came down the other day when my mother was admitted. Also, she wanted to go to the cemetery, and I accompanied her.We walked quietly between the rows of tombstones. She brought flowers. She took her time.
On the way back, she asked me about my work. About nursing. About my duties and shift hours. She asked questions like someone who was curious but also evaluating.Then she said it. “I think I would prefer my elder son to marry a Singapore girl.”
She said it simply. Casually. But her eyes stayed on me when she said it. I smiled, nodded politely. But inside, I was asking myself: Was she trying to tell me something? And if she was… what did she really mean?
“Of course she’s hinting something,” my roommate said, waving her spoon dramatically in the air like a fortune teller confirming a prophecy.“ You’re the chosen one, remember? The Bread and Milk connection! It’s obvious, Nithya. How can you not see it?”
She smirked, clearly enjoying herself. I rolled my eyes.
“She was probably just making conversation.”
“Oh please. She practically spelled it out for you she wants a daughter-in-law who speaks English, wears white shoes, and can make sotong stuffed with glutinous rice. That’s you, woman!” I laughed despite myself.
She was joking, but also not. Still, I shook my head. “Marriage is totally out of the question for me right now.” She raised an eyebrow.
“Is that so?”
“Yes.” I leaned back and looked at the ceiling, thoughts drifting.“I’m aiming for student nurse training after this. And if I can, I want to branch out maybe physiotherapy, or rehabilitation nursing or Palliative / Hospice Nursing.”
“Wah... big plans,” she said, now genuinely curious.“Australia’s on my mind,” I said softly.
“For post-basic training. Either in physio or rehab or Hospice. It’s cheaper than the UK, and the training is just as good.” She nodded, this time without a joke. For a moment, there was silence between us.
Just two girls in a hostel room, plotting futures that didn’t involve anyone else but themselves.
Suddenly, the hostel had come alive with whispers and wide eyes. Excitement buzzed in the corridors not the good kind, but the spooked and scandalised kind. Rumours were flying: there had been a break-in. One of the girls claimed she saw a man coming out of one of the rooms late last night.
The moment he saw her, he panicked and bolted straight into the toilet. They checked the area, and sure enough, there was a ladder propped against the outer wall, just below one of the windows. That was all the proof they needed. Someone had been smuggling in their boyfriend probably not the first time, either.
Everyone started whispering about which girl it might be, whose room it was, who’d been walking around with a suspicious smile lately.
Then came the ghost story. Another girl swore she saw a white figure drifting along the 4th-floor corridor.
“It was nearly midnight,” the girl said breathlessly and continued with her story of the encounter with this ghostly figure “I was coming back from supper with some friends. I reached the stair landing… and there it was. Just walking… slowly… white and glowing. I froze. Then I ran.” She said she locked herself in her room and didn’t come out till morning.
Now everyone was on edge. The 4th floor especially the west wing had always been the stuff of hushed whispers. That wing, with its four rooms separated by a swinging door, had been left empty for years. Why? Because a long time ago, they said, a junior nurse hanged herself there from a ceiling fan. Since then, no one had been assigned that section.
Even when more students came in, the 4th floor west wing remained untouched. Empty. Silent. I told my roommate about all this during our post-duty supper. She laughed. A real laugh. Amused, almost delighted.
“Please,” she said, waving her hand. “These ghost stories? Always the same. Every hostel has one. Never changes.”
“But the ladder? The man running into the toilet?” I prompted.That made her smirk. “I do know whose boyfriend it is,” she said, with that glint in her eye. “They’ve been smuggling him in for weeks. Told her it would blow up one day.” My eyes widened.
“Seriously?” She nodded, casually.“The Home Supervisor’s already sent out a warning. Accused us of ‘human trafficking.’” She made air quotes. “Like we’re running some underground operation.” We both laughed.
Then I brought up the white figure to get her eaction. She paused.“That one… I haven’t heard before,” she said, her tone shifting slightly. “It’s new.” I watched her face. No jokes now.“That section on the 4th floor has always been sealed off,” she continued. “Even when I was in Alex, we never heard stories like this here.”
A notice had gone up on the hostel board: report any suspicious activity to the security guard at the Emergency Department, especially after 2200 hours. There would always be a Nursing Officer on duty, stationed nearby. Still, the warning didn’t help much. The whispers grew louder. Some girls began refusing to go to the toilet alone at night. Even I began to glance twice at the stairs when climbing up. Ladders and boys are one thing, but silent, white figures walking empty corridors? That’s something else.
We received an invitation to attend an officers’ function at one of the military camps. The notice was pinned to the board outside the hostel office, right above the lost-and-found clipboard. I’d never been to any military event before the idea intrigued me. Formal uniforms, a structured setting, maybe a live band? Naturally, I asked my roommate if she’d come along.
“No,” she said without looking up from her book.
“Why not?”
“I don’t like military officers,” she replied flatly. “They’re self-absorbed people.” Then she paused, looked up with the faintest smile, and added, “But if it’s a recruit passing-out parade any time.”
Recruit passing-out parade?Just saying the word “recruit” made her face light up. I laughed. “So it’s not the army you dislike. It’s just rank.”
“Exactly,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “The higher the rank, the bigger the ego. And most of them don’t even do the real work. You know who does? The sergeants. The corporals. The grunts on the ground.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice like she was about to tell me a state secret.
“You ever watch Combat!? Vic Morrow plays Sergeant Saunders? Best thing on TV. The sergeant and his men do all the fighting, all the thinking, all the running. The officers? They show up once in a blue moon, say something grand, then disappear before the bullets start flying.”
She gave a dismissive wave. “Typical.” I was still laughing. “So in other words… you like the ones who actually get their hands dirty.”
“Of course,” she grinned. “The rest are just there for the medals and the photo ops.” She leaned back in her chair, smirking.
“You know why I like recruits? Because they’re real. They haven’t been turned into walking egos yet.” I raised an eyebrow. “Real?”
“Yeah. You see them when they come in here with heat stroke flushed, sweaty, half-conscious and still polite. Still grateful when you sponge them down. They say ‘thank you, nurse’ like they mean it. Officers? They’d be complaining about the temperature of the water and asking for a fan.” I laughed.
“So it’s the gratitude you like.”
“And the honesty. Recruits don’t pretend. You can see the exhaustion in their faces. They haven’t learnt to hide behind rank. They’re just… human.” She paused, then grinned. “And, let’s be honest, most of them look better than their officers. All that training they’re like walking anatomy charts.” I shook my head, still laughing.
“So basically, you like them because they’re fit, polite, and half-dead when they get here.” She raised her cup in a mock toast. “Exactly. My favourite kind of patient.”
I dropped the topic until Jamilah brought it up again. Jamilah was our senior. Same batch as Geok Choo, the straits-born Chinese girl and her twin, my roommate often hung around with.
“I think it’d be fun,” Jamilah said. “Bit of a break, you know?” I agreed in theory. But in truth, I felt insecure about going without my roommate. We’ve been together nearly three months now, and somewhere along the way, she became my anchor. Around her, I felt… grounded. Protected.
Once, a group of us went to the movies all sitting in a neat row. The cinema was half empty, but a pack of boys came in and deliberately sat right behind us. Halfway through the film, they started kicking the seats, whispering loudly, poking the backs with their knees.
Before I could even turn around, my roommate shot up from her seat.
“Stop it, you goons or I’ll beat you all up!” she snapped.
The boys froze, then shuffled out of the row like schoolchildren caught by the principal. They moved to the other side of the theatre and didn’t so much as glance our way again. Even after the show, they stayed well out of our path.
That’s the thing about her she doesn’t just say she’ll stand up for you. She does it. And somehow, that makes you feel like nothing bad can touch you when she’s around.
I never brought up those old stories. About the two girls. The Alexandra Hospital incident. The things I’d heard whispered warnings about how difficult she was, how she’d driven her roommates away. Maybe it was time I asked her what really happened back then? Why did she chase them out? But for now, there was the more pressing matter of the function and the fact that no one wanted to go without someone else. Here was the situation: Jamilah would only go if someone she knew well came along. Maria wanted to go too, but only if I joined.
And me? I wouldn’t go unless my roommate came. Ridiculous, I know. Like a chain of emotional hostage-taking. Eventually, we figured out a plan.“Let you talk to her,” I told Jamilah. “You’re from the same batch as Geok Choo and more senior, She’ll listen.”
“But what do I say?”
“The truth,” I replied. “But use reverse psychology.” We rehearsed it like a script. “You tell her you really want to go, but not alone. Maria’s only going if I go. But I won’t go without her. So if she says no, then none of us get to go. And it’s all because of her.” I grinned. “She won’t be able to take the guilt. Trust me. She’d never want to be the reason someone misses out especially not me.”
