The sight of the home earlier, the faded paint, the quiet yard, the old signboard hanging crooked had pulled something from deep within her. A memory she had not visited in years. Without meaning to, she found herself drifting back to the day it all began.

She saw her self again, sitting in the back of another taxi, fingers wrapped around a small torn piece of newspaper. “VOLUNTEERS NEEDED…” The words were printed in bold, but the address beneath them was faint, as though hesitant to be found.

She had cut the advertisement out carefully, almost reverently, and kept it with her for days before finally deciding to go. She remembered how many times she had tried calling the number, how the phone kept ringing, unanswered. Maybe they’re busy, she had thought. Homes like these usually are. Saying it made her feel braver.

She remembered tracing the address onto a second sheet of paper, drawing her own map because she didn’t trust herself not to get lost. This part of Kuala Lumpur was unfamiliar, foreign even, but something in her insisted she needed to go. If the place was real, good. If it wasn’tn well, she could always go home. It would simply be another adventure, another story to add to the long list she had collected traveling across the Peninsula with her friends.

The taxi had stopped at a quiet lane, and she had stepped out with her heart in her throat. She could still feel the weight of that moment: the fear, the bravado, the uncertainty wrapped tightly around her like a second skin. And now, as the taxi she sat in made its slow turn toward the home once more, the memory pressed itself fully into her chest. Back then, she had come not knowing what she was searching for.

Today, she knew exactly what she had found. She had many adventures, especially during her younger days, traveling with her friends to different parts of Peninsula Malaysia. Back then, Kuala Lumpur was never the destination. It was merely a familiar stopover, a brief pause before the real journey continued. KL, to them, was a transit point. Nothing more. They would tumble off the old express bus and head straight to Pudu Raya, where they would deposit their backpacks at the left-baggage counter. The moment their hands were free, they would automatically make their way to Bukit Bintang, their place, their unspoken ritual, their favourite patch of city life.

“Are you going to transit in KL?”

“Yes!”

“Okay… we meet at the usual place.”

There was never a need to explain. The usual place was a code word among them, understood without thought. They never had time, or reason, to wander anywhere beyond the familiar heart of the city. Subang Jaya, Petaling Jaya, those names sounded foreign, irrelevant, almost mysterious. Places that belonged to someone else’s life, not hers. Once the shopping, eating, and laughing were done, they would collect their bags and catch the last bus back to Singapore. There was always a last bus. A guaranteed way home.

But now… now it was different. KL was no longer a brief stop or a convenient break in the journey. It was the journey. It was where she would stay, not for hours, but for years, as long as her husband was needed here. He had said maybe three years. Maybe longer. Maybe somewhere else after. Wherever he goes, she will follow. That was their promise, made simply, confidently, at the start of everything: to stay together, to remain together, till death do they part.

And so here she was… in a taxi heading not to Bukit Bintang, not to the usual place, but toward a quiet home tucked away in a part of Kuala Lumpur she had never once stepped foot in. A place that would change her life in ways she could not yet imagine. She knew she would not have any real problem adjusting. She was a nurse, after all trained to adapt, to improvise, to steady herself in unfamiliar terrain. Flexibility came with the profession, woven into her like muscle memory. Wherever she was placed, she learned to accommodate herself. Wherever she stood, she found something meaningful to do.

So in the four months since she first arrived in Kuala Lumpur, she had learned to occupy her days. She wandered, sometimes aimlessly, sometimes with purpose, letting the city unfold itself street by street. She memorized shortcuts and landmarks the way she once memorized anatomy terms, through repetition, through observation, through sheer curiosity. She explored wet markets and quiet lanes. She traced bus routes and discovered hidden eateries. She watched people, how they spoke, how they moved, how they lived. Little by little, the city that once felt like a foreign transit point began to soften around her.

Familiar roads formed in her mind like a slowly emerging map. Certain faces became recognizable, certain sounds comforting. She was building a life here, even if she hadn’t meant to. Even if she still didn’t know what that life would eventually become. And yet, despite all the wandering and all the small discoveries, something inside her remained restless, searching, though she didn't yet know for what.

That restlessness was what led her to notice the advertisement that morning. And now, sitting in the taxi with Anjali’s face still fresh in her memory, she understood that perhaps this wandering had been leading her somewhere all along.

There were things she rarely spoke about, lessons from a kind of training not found in any nursing school. It was a different world, a different chapter, and she carried it quietly like a shadow behind her. She remembered one moment vividly.

“What is your first action as you enter a building?” The trainer’s voice had echoed sharply, leaving no room for hesitation. “Or the first thing you should do when you start work in any place?”

She had answered without thinking. “Scan the place first… look for the exit points.” The trainer narrowed his eyes. “What kind of exit points?” “All of them,” she replied. “Especially the ones people rarely notice. The exits no one uses. Because those are usually the safest and the fastest way out. If you know how to get in, you must also know how to get out. You plan your escape route before you even take the first step in.”

He didn’t smile often, but that day he had paused, just long enough for her to know he was impressed.

“Ah! Finally… I found the place.” She exhaled the words softly, more to herself than to anyone else, relief spreading through her chest as she walked toward the two-storey corner bungalow in Taman Kanagapuram. The house stood quietly, shaded by an old tree, its walls worn yet welcoming like a place that had seen much, endured much, and still chose to remain standing.

She wasn’t used to this kind of idleness. Not at all. She had been working for as long as she could remember, helping her mother tend the shop, rushing between school and chores, always moving, always doing. Work was the rhythm of her life, the measure of her days.

And now, suddenly, she didn’t have to work. Her husband had assured her of that. “You don’t need to, not if you don’t want to,” he had said gently. But the truth was sharper: with a dependent pass, she couldn’t work not legally anyway. Not unless it was nursing. Nursing was different. There was a global shortage of qualified nurses, and Malaysia was no exception.

A Graduate Nurse like her would have no trouble securing a job. First, though, came the process, the slow, bureaucratic climb. Approval from the Malaysia Nursing Board. Transcripts from her School of Nursing and the University of Sydney. Letters. Stamps. Waiting. She had already applied to Subang Jaya Medical Centre, Assunta Hospital, and Gleneagles.

She could almost hear her old colleagues telling her she’d be snapped up quickly. But the real question, the one she kept turning over in her mind was simple and stubborn: Did she want to go back to the hospital? Why return to the same wards, the same routines, the same walls she had once longed to escape? Why step back into an environment that demanded so much of her body and heart? She had told herself she wanted to move on.

She had made that decision long ago. And now, standing at the gate of this quiet bungalow home, she felt the truth deepen in her chest: She couldn’t turn back. Not now. Not after everything. Somewhere within these walls, within the laughter, the cries, the stories of the children living here was something that called to her more strongly than the sterile brightness of any hospital. Something she needed, even if she didn’t yet know why.

She straightened herself, folded the newspaper clipping once more, and stepped toward the gate.

“The time will come when you’ll have to choose between your family and me,” he once told her. “You will have to make that choice.”

She remembered smiling, unafraid of the weight behind his words. “No, darling… I will definitely have to make choices in life. And yes, one day I may have to choose, between you and my career. My hope is that when that time comes, I’ll make a wise decision.”

He had stared at her then, puzzled, almost startled. It was as if she had answered a question he had not expected her to understand so clearly.

“Why are you giving me that puzzled look?” she asked.

“I just… never thought career would be one of the main choices,” he said slowly. She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. Some truths revealed themselves only in silence.

Over the years, many people would call her choice foolish. They would shake their heads, whispering that she had thrown away her future, sacrificed her own ambitions simply to follow her family. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. But deep inside, she believed it was meant to be, another phase of her life she needed to walk through.

Another lesson her future self would understand only much later. Why this path? Why this sacrifice? Why this detour from everything she once dreamed of? For now, she didn’t have the answers. But she trusted that time would reveal them… the way time always had. The gate was locked from the inside. She leaned forward, peering through the narrow gaps between the metal bars. Several small faces stared back at her, curious, cautious, blinking at the stranger standing outside.

“Hello…” she called softly.

“Hello, aunty!” The chorus rose shyly at first, then grew as more children came closer, their smiles blooming like sudden sunlight.

“Can aunty see the administrator? Is she in?”

“Yes! Aunty Nancy is in… please come in. One of the older children stepped forward, unlocking the gate with practiced ease. Inside, the home felt alive. They were gathered around a long table, books spread open in front of them, some reading, some writing, some pretending to.

But the moment she stepped in, they rose in unison as if they had rehearsed it a thousand times.

“Good morning, aunty!” Their voices, bright, warm, eager filled the small room. Tiny hands reached for her fingers. Two, then three, then more, gently pulling her forward, guiding her toward a small office at the back of the hall. They’re all so young, she thought, her heart tightening.

So very young. And just like that, without fanfare or warning, her new life began. This place and moment, beyond this locked gate, now opened. House of Hope. The very point where everything changed, where the journey she never planned for quietly unfolded before her.

Where it all began.