1981

It wasn’t regret, not exactly. But sometimes the weight of it all pressed too heavy, and I needed to let it out. She didn’t answer straightaway. Instead, she tilted her head and asked, “No you tell me. Why are you in nursing?”

I sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know. By chance, I think. I was supposed to go to Teacher’s Training Institute. Then one day, I saw the advertisement in the papers: ‘Don’t you want to be a nurse?’ It struck something in me. So I veered off course, and here I am.”

“Any regrets?”

“Sometimes… yes. But I have too much pride to admit I made a mistake. I still want to be in nursing, but it’s the people who make it hard. Their indifference, their coldness. Why should we subject ourselves to that?”

She leaned back on her pillow, looking at me steadily. “So you come to work for them or for the patients?”

That stopped me. “I love what I do,” I said quietly. “But… I wish things could be better. What about you? Why are you here?”

Her voice was calm, steady. “Because I’ve always wanted to be a nurse. For as long as I can remember. I cannot imagine myself being anything else. Whatever we do, there should be no regrets. We made a conscious choice, and we have to face it to the very end. That’s how I see it. I come to work because I want to. Who I work with, or what nonsense they say that doesn’t matter. I’m here because of the patient.”

Her words settled into me like a stone dropped into water, rippling long after the room fell quiet. “Yeah, but all those horrible lazy nurses…” I started again, unable to let it go.

“Why care about them!” my roommate cut me off. “If they’re lazy, they’re lazy. That’s their nature. Are you lazy? No. So why depend on them? Just do what you feel is right.”

Her words stayed with me the next day in the ward. I found myself sitting with a Malay patient I’d been chatting with for several days. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and acute depression. Most of the time, I saw her strapped into a straitjacket, the staff saying it was the only way to keep her from hurting herself or others.

It was painful to watch, the way her arms strained against the cloth. Yet when she was calmer, she would sit in an armchair, humming to herself. Sometimes it was a nursery rhyme, sometimes a Malay folk song, her voice floating oddly sweet in the ward’s air.

I had been present in the ECT room when they treated her. Watching her body stiffen, twitch, then fall limp under the drugs left me unsettled for days. It was one thing to read about “Electroshock Therapy” in a textbook, and quite another to see it carried out on a woman I had spoken to, laughed with.

“So,” I asked her gently one afternoon, “why do you think you’re here?” She stopped singing and looked at me, her eyes strangely clear. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she would answer. Looking at her reminded me of my cousin, who was also diagnosed with schizophrenia.

One day she was the person I had always known since young, a jovial, loving girl who lit up every family gathering with her laughter. Then tragedy struck. My uncle, her father, died suddenly in a road traffic accident. She was never the same after that. We all knew how close she was to him. The eldest daughter, almost like his shadow.

His death shattered her in a way the rest of us couldn’t reach. That evening, as soon as they carried his body out for burial, she began to change. She looked around wildly, pointing to the trees outside the house. “There are little men,” she whispered, then shouted, “little men standing under the tree!” No one knew what to do.

Confusion, grief, disbelief it all mixed together until the whole house felt unmoored. I volunteered to stay with her one evening, before I joined nursing, before anyone even spoke of doctors or hospitals. I thought maybe she just needed someone beside her, someone to remind her she wasn’t alone.

But I remember the fear in her eyes, the way her words tumbled out, disconnected and urgent, and I realised I had no idea how to help. Eventually, her brother admitted her to Adam Road Hospital, a private institution that specialised in psychological and psychiatric care. But by then, the sister I had grown up with, the cousin who had once been full of laughter, already felt like someone we had lost.


“I am here because they say I am mad. I need help,” she told me, her voice matter-of-fact. Then, without warning, she began singing again.

“I have a secret to tell you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you know D.J. Dave, the Malaysian singer?”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“He is my lover.” She smiled knowingly and broke into one of his songs, swaying gently in her chair.

Later, I learned she was from Malaysia. She had come to Singapore with the promise of a job, only to end up on Geylang Road. Her singing slowed, and her tone shifted.

“I have a child. A boy. But I don’t know what happened to him. They took him away when they sent me in here.”

Her voice cracked. “I miss my son.” I could hear the tears hiding just beneath her words.

“So… what did you do in Geylang?” I asked gently. She looked at me with disbelief.

“Don’t you know?”

“Well, I know Geylang. I go to the market there sometimes. But which Geylang are you talking about?”

She burst out laughing. “No, darling. I mean the other Geylang. Don’t you know?”

I frowned, puzzled. “The other Geylang?”

“Geylang where they go for konkek.”

“Huh?” I stared at her blankly.She leaned forward, eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Konkek! Don’t you know?”

“No,” I admitted, still lost. With a chuckle, she lifted her hands, left thumb and index finger forming a circle, right index finger sliding in and out. My eyes widened. She laughed even louder.

“Oh! You still don’t get it. My, my, such a naïve and innocent girl you are! Never mind… one day, you will know"

Later that evening, I met Suresh at Queensway Shopping Centre. We were walking through the maze of shops, looking for a pair of jeans he wanted, when I suddenly remembered.

“Have you heard of the word konkek?” I blurted out. He froze mid-step.

“Sorry?”

“Konkek. You’ve heard of it?” He looked stunned, his lips twitching as if he wanted to laugh but was trying to hold it back.

“Where on earth did you hear that word?” I told him about the Malay patient in Woodbridge.

“Ah… that explains it.”

“So tell me — what does the word mean?” I pressed.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes!” I crossed my arms.

“Tell me. What does konkek mean?”

“Shhh!” He glanced around the crowded mall.

“My god, we’re in public — can’t you see?” Then he leaned close, so close I could feel the warmth of his breath against my ear, and whispered: “Sex.”

“Huh?”
“That’s what it means. Sex.” For a moment I froze, cheeks burning, wishing the tiled floor of Queensway would swallow me whole. He, on the other hand, looked positively delighted, eyes glinting with amusement.

“Don’t believe me?” He grinned. “Go ask that Malay security guard over there. See what happens.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I hissed, swatting at him.

“Okay, okay! I believe you.” He laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh too, though part of me wanted to strangle him for enjoying my embarrassment so much.