Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

‘Careless, Durga. Always making – some – fuss.’

If she had more breath she’d elaborate: other granddaughters would manage the whole thing better. They’d have fixed their cars, for a start, so we don’t waste a few minutes waiting for the engine to catch. Their palms wouldn’t sweat as they babbled on and on about whether the road to Lipis was even open or whether it was flooded shut. They wouldn’t swear as they stamp on the accelerator, as they wrench the steering wheel to avoid a raw mudslide near the palm-oil plantations. They’d have come back earlier, they’d never have left in the first place, they’d have thought things through. She conveys all this in the hump of her shoulders, in a huff that uses up the air she doesn’t have. All things considered, she gets her points across pretty well.

There aren’t many cars on the road, not at this time of night. A few motorcycles swarm up from a side track, skinny men with tired eyes and jackets draped back-to-front on their chests. The Gua Musang road must still be blocked. Nothing’s going to get through tonight and whatever our problems – hypoxic grandmothers, inattentive granddaughters, ghostly mothers – we’ll have to deal with them ourselves.

Ammuma starts coughing again just outside Lipis. There’s more blood this time, and foamy spit. She dribbles, sucks her cheeks in and then begins to choke.

‘Ammuma, hold on. Hold on.’

Her fists are clenched tight and her legs stuck out straight. I grabbed mismatched shoes from the pile, and one of Karthika’s cracked plastic sandals drops from her toes. She spasms, chokes again and then gets her breath.

‘Holding already, lah. You drive only, get us there … safe – instead of – playing tomfoolery.’

The engine starts to whine as we go round the huge roundabout just outside Lipis. Ahead I can see the curve that’ll take us to the hospital and the fish-shaped fountain by the railway bridge. It’s garish in my headlights.

‘Come on, come on. It’s OK, Ammuma. You breathe, it’s going to be OK …’

I change down a gear. We’re passing rows and rows of motorcycles now. The roads around the hospital are jammed like a termite nest: ambulances and medi-vans and blood wagons that don’t know anything about the darkening hours. Delivery motorcycles slew together, parked in a tangle of wheels that stretches all the way up to the narrow Pahang Club road. A few men stand protectively over them and turn to watch us pass. One of them laughs.

The car park’s almost empty, with only a few cleaning staff squatting by the phone booths. Their cigarettes are tiny swerving dabs of light. A match flickers to show the gold outline of a chin, the rim of an eye, a flaring nostril.

‘Ammuma, stay here. I’m getting them to come, OK? Just stay here.’

She coughs again, waving one bony hand at me. I push the car door, letting it swing and bounce with a protesting creak, and then I’m running across the car park. My shoes squelch at every step, and my heart slams into my ribs.

‘I’ve brought … please come –’ I jerk the double doors open. It’s busy and bright inside, full of patients on stretchers and wide-awake children running through the lobby. The curved reception desk’s covered with stacks of admission papers and plastic-wrapped syringes. A nurse sits there, licking her finger and paging through forms.

‘Yes, can I help?’ She looks up with a professional smile.

‘My grandmother’s outside. She’s Dr Rao’s patient, she can’t breathe. She was in here before, just a few days ago. But the oxygen tank isn’t working and –’

She cuts me off, holding up one hand and reaching for the beige phone that sits on her desk. She gabbles instructions down the line – porterage needed and triage free. I find myself staring at her hair. It’s dry and frizzled, spreading like a broken umbrella around her head. A tiny fleck of dust clings to one strand.

‘The porters will be here directly.’ She makes a note in one corner of a form. ‘They’ll bring your grandmother in.’

‘She can’t breathe,’ I say again. Everything’s slowed down, like the air’s too thick to be pushed aside. The nurse is glass-clear against a blur of sound and light. There’s a line of pimples just at the neckline of her dress, and every time she raises her head the fabric scrapes slowly across them. She’s all raw skin and bleached-dry hair and she doesn’t have time for this.

‘Don’t worry. They’re on their way.’

Her fingertips stray up to that scatter of acne. She dabs at it gently, experimentally, and rubs her fingers together. A minute stretches out like sugar-syrup and then two men come jostling out of a side door. They’re carrying a stretcher, and bursting with greasy, side-swiped laughter.

‘Haziq, Ibrahim, we need porterage for an incoming hypoxia.’

The men stop laughing. Her neck flushes red under their stare and she puts her pen down. Spins round in her chair, with her knees neatly pressed together and waves them over to me. Haziq smiles at me, a burly middle-aged man with a belly held in check by exercise and will.

‘Come on, come on,’ I tell him. ‘It’s this way. Come on, quickly. Please.’

He folds the stretcher down on its wheels, turning to give the nurse a wink. She looks down – blushing, like a teenager – and scribbles something on her notes.

‘Calm, slowly now,’ he says to me. ‘We take her to the doctors.’

They wheel the stretcher close behind as I hurry to the car. Ammuma’s got herself out of her seat and stands peering across the darkened car park. Her hands are on her hips and her chest heaves like porridge on the boil.

‘Ammuma, they’ve come, they’ll help you.’

‘Plenty time … I’ve been waiting,’ she snaps. ‘Enough only – to mend – this tank.’

The words come out in between breaths. Whispery, tinged blue by effort. When Haziq takes her arm to help her onto the stretcher she nearly collapses. Haziq