Only the Heart (18 page)

The car swerved again, viciously, and this time there was no room to manoeuvre. I could see Miro's knuckles tighten on the wheel, and I tensed. The impact was like a hammer-blow. The window next to me exploded like a bomb, hurling pellets of safety glass into my face.

The car swerved across the road as Miro fought to keep control, and all I could see was the huge concrete support rushing towards me. Then the car began to roll in a strange kind of slow-motion, at odds with the speed at which everything had been happening.

They say that most people forget the moment of impact — or even the whole incident. But I can't. I wish I could, but I can't erase it.

I can still hear myself screaming, and the sound of the tortured metal.

It was the last thing I heard before the impact and the instant of excruciating pain. In that moment, my consciousness collapsed around me, and the darkness exploded to silence.

*

TOAN'S STORY

It took them almost an hour to cut her out of the wreck.

Linh's door had taken the full impact, and it collapsed like a rotten fruit. But she was lucky.

No joke. That's the exact word the policeman used.

Lucky …

Because she was upside down at the point of impact, her seat belt wasn't holding her rigidly in her seat, and the movement of the car had shifted her across towards the driver's side. Just slightly, but enough to save her life.

They were both unconscious, but the rescue unit was able to free Miro almost straightaway. They took him away in an intensive care ambulance, and went to work freeing Linh, who was trapped from the waist down in what was left of her seat. It took a whole team of doctors and nurses to keep her alive for the forty minutes it took them to carefully cut the wreck into pieces and ease her out.

And it took another eight hours of emergency surgery to mend the internal damage and save what they could of her future.

I remember standing in the waiting room when the doctor finally came out. She was young for a surgeon. At least, she looked young. But she was efficient and trying desperately to sound encouraging.

“The next twelve hours will be critical,” she said, addressing my father. “If she can pull through until then, she has an excellent chance, but …”

The crunch. I watched my father's face, as he watched hers. He was waiting for the worst.

“But?” I prompted.

She glanced at me for a moment, before continuing.

“There is a severe compression of two of the lumbar vertebrae, and both intervetebral discs are badly damaged —”

“In English, doctor.” I interrupted her, and nodded towards my mother, who was struggling to make any sense of the doctor's words.

“I'm sorry … Her back is very badly injured. We won't know how badly, for … Well, maybe for months. We've done all we can to ease the pressure on the nerves that service her legs, but to be frank” — she looked directly at me as she continued — “it is likely that she will never walk again.”

For a long time no one spoke. My aunt shoved her fist into her mouth and bit hard on the knuckles, and my uncle just stood there staring at the doctor. I don't recall what I did. My mind was racing. All I could see was the two of them kissing in the car, just a few short hours before.

I had to ask. “And Miro?”

“The young man? He is still unconscious, but his vital signs are good. The brain-scan shows some bruising but no major damage. His broken arm has been set, and he's stable. No guarantees, but he should be alright.”

My mother muttered something in Vietnamese, but I couldn't catch it. At the sound of Miro's name, I saw anger replace the fear, and when she looked at me there was an accusation in her eyes, as if somehow this whole mess was my fault. Or mine and Miro's.

Which, in a way, at least from her point of view, was probably true.

The doctor moved off towards the recovery room, and I sat down to continue the vigil. It was after midnight, but I couldn't feel tired. In a few hours the whole world had come crashing down, and I was partly to blame.

While Linh was fighting for her life, I was fighting to understand.

And losing the fight …

19

AFTERMATH

TOAN'S STORY

It took a few days for them to finally admit she was out of danger. Almost a week of waiting in corridors and visitors lounges, with only short visits to intensive care. Two at a time. The doctors were being positive, of course, but you weren't sure just how far to trust their … optimism. After all, it's their job to be positive. Until the moment they draw the sheet over the patient's face, there's always a hope. So you live with that hope. But there is always that deeper fear; the instinct that knows about death and dying. And how easy it is to just … slip away.

I stood beside the bed in that room full of machine-noises and clinical efficiency, watching her breathe. With the bandages around her head, and her face relaxed and peaceful, she looked eight years old again, and all I could think of was the girl I grew up with. The one who leapt from the old wooden bridge into the river to prove it could be done, while I stood there scared and watching. The one who held me at night in the small room at the top of our uncle's house in Saigon, when our cousins' ghost stories had frightened sleep away.

I touched her face as she slept and felt the wet warmth on my cheeks. I was alone with her and it was safe to cry.

Even if Linh never did.

They let Miro out a couple of weeks after the accident, but by that time the real story was out. At least within the family. They still weren't happy, but they did talk to him. And they let him visit the invalid.

The hospital had moved her downstairs as soon as she was conscious and out of danger, and Miro spent half of every day in Linh's hospital room. But something was different. I watched them together and he seemed lost. There was a distance there that I'd never seen between them, and it wasn't coming from his side. He looked at me at times with a question in his eyes, but I was at a loss too. This was a Linh I didn't know; or one I hadn't seen since the first weeks after her mother's death, ten years before.

It was like she was cutting herself off again. Retreating into the safety of her protective isolation. I should have seen what was coming, but I guess I didn't want any of it to be happening, and I managed to convince myself that I was imagining it. That she'd get over the shock and come around.

So when it finally happened, it was too late to do anything.

She told Miro it was over. That she didn't want to see him any more.

No fight. No build-up. Just the kiss-off.

The poor guy was shattered. He tried arguing with her, but I could have told him it was useless. She had a look in her eye that reminded me of Aunt Mai. Stubborn. Strong. Resigned.

I saw it in her that afternoon and it scared me.

I'd tried to argue with her about it and she'd cut me dead. But for once I pushed through.

“You can't just … switch off everything you two had, like it never happened. It's not your decision to make. Not alone …” I stood in front of her, looking down, but she just stared back at me, unblinking. “He's hurting —”

“Don't you think I
know
that? But I won't have him waking up one day realising he's handcuffed to a cripple. Better for him to hate me now. It
has
to be my decision. I'm the only one who can make it.”

She turned the wheelchair around and stared out of the window.

The discussion was over.

I left the room and didn't speak to her about it again. I was out of my depth.

*

LINH'S STORY

I lay there with my legs in a cage, propped up by the pillows and the back support. My eyes were closed but I was wide awake. And I wasn't alone.

The intruder had been motionless just inside the door for over a minute. Just standing. Silently.

I waited.

Slowly a figure materialised from the shadows near the door.

Kieu moved into my line of sight and stopped. She was scared, her eyes darting nervously.

“I didn't know if I should come, but …” The words trailed off. “If they knew I was here, they'd …”

My gaze was too much for her. She turned away, staring at the picture on the wall at the foot of the bed. She was close to tears, and her hands were twisting a small white handkerchief into knots.

I watched her in silence, waiting, but she was beyond speaking.

I hit the button on the handset beside the bed, and the back support emitted an electronic whine as it raised me into a sitting position.

Kieu dropped her head. Then, in a tiny voice, “I couldn't stop them, Linh. I tried, but I couldn't … Tang listens to no one. Not when he is angry.”

I waited. After a few seconds she continued: “It wasn't easy for me to come here. I just needed to see … To tell you …”

Finally she looked up. There were tears in her eyes and on her face.

I indicated the chair beside the bed with a movement of my head.

She sat down, brushing the hair away from her scarred cheek. But it fell back like a silk curtain. A shield that she could hide behind.

Suddenly I realised that she was talking again.

“Tang is …” she hesitated. “I met him at school. Two years ago. I was fourteen. I was new … and I was scared. He was sixteen, and
he
was't scared of anything. He was already involved with the Triple K, but I didn't know it then. Not until it was too late. Not until we were … involved.”

I waited and she went on.

“He isn't always like … that. At least, he didn't used to be … It was hard enough in Melbourne, but I'd been there since I was six. I'd started school there, and the kids I went through with had known me so long that my … appearance didn't mean all that much.” She stared down at the handkerchief in her hands. “Here, I was new. I had no friends. My brother and Quyen were working all the time … Tang accepted me. He looked at me and he didn't see the scar. Or he saw it and he didn't
care
. Maybe he knew what it was like to be on the outside. I don't know. But to me he was … kind. Like a big brother. And with his reputation, no one was about to say anything to me …”

She was leaning forward in the chair. I reached out and brushed the hair away from her face, the way my mother used to do. Then I touched her cheek gently with the tips of my fingers …

When Toan arrived two hours later we were still talking.

He came through the door, and stopped like he'd just walked into a glass wall.

Kieu turned, and for a moment the look on her face reminded me of how jealous I used to feel when we were kids in the camp and I saw them together.

He wasn't sure how to react to her being there, and she didn't know what to say, so it was up to me.

“Kieu was just telling me how much she hates basketball.”

It was the most irrelevant thing I could think of to say on the spur of the moment, and it had the desired effect. They both looked at me as if I was totally mad, then I smiled. A real smile, for the first time in … well, it seemed like forever.

Kieu caught on and relaxed a touch.

Toan just looked confused. After everything that had happened, the last thing he would have expected was to arrive and find the two of us so cosy. I guess it was bizarre, but so is life.

I pointed to the spare seat.

“Sit down, will you? I get jealous watching people standing around.”

A joke! Not a very good one, but a joke all the same.

Toan sat down next to Kieu, and I caught the look he gave her. But I couldn't read it.

20

THE MAN

TOAN'S STORY

The next time I saw Kieu was a few days later. She was just leaving the hospital.

She'd been to see Linh of course; I guess she went most days. I passed her in the foyer and called out to her.

Five minutes later we were sitting in the coffee-shop talking.

“You'll only get yourself in deeper, Toan,” she said. “Don't you understand?”

No, I didn't understand. The place was crawling with people, but all I could see was a beautiful girl who was throwing away everything that she could be because she wasn't willing to fight.

“Tang isn't rational, and he's … I don't know him any more. Even when he was at school he was bitter, but at least there was … something. Now it's different. He's violent. And unpredictable. I don't even know if Hai can control him.”

“Hai …?”

“Hai Nguyen …? The leader of the Triple K? He was one of Cang's boys when we were on Pulau Bisa. He's totally ruthless. Even so … I don't know if he scares Tang any more. I don't know if anything does.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Sit by and do nothing? Let him get away with what he's done?”

“He
has
got away with it, Toan. Face the fact.” There was a desperate edge to her voice that was matched by something in her eyes. “Even if you had the evidence to hang him with, the gang looks out for its own. Tang may be trouble, but he's
their
trouble. And he will be protected. They don't care what happened with your cousin and her boyfriend. That wasn't gang business. But mess with him, or talk to the police, and it becomes gang business.”

“And what about you? Are
you
gang business too?”

As I spoke I reached across the table and took hold of her hand. She tensed, but she didn't pull away. And I realised it was the first time in over ten years that I'd actually touched her. She looked into my eyes, brushing the hair from her face.

“I never forgot you,” she said. “In all those years …”

Then, before I knew what was happening, she leaned over and kissed me. As softly as a memory.

I would have said something, but by the time I'd recovered from the shock, she'd turned and I was watching her walk out of the shop.

I didn't call out to her. I knew better.

I got the call from Linh early on Saturday morning.

“Busy?”

“No …” I was lying in bed, half-reading next week's script, so it wasn't exactly a lie.

“Good. We need to talk. Phuong will pick you up in fifteen minutes. Be ready.”

I would have asked her what we needed to talk
about
, but she'd already hung up.

Half an hour later we were walking in through the door of her room.

“About time! What did you do, walk here?”

Her wheelchair was next to the window, but she was looking towards the door as we came in.

Phuong moved across and planted a kiss on the top of her sister's head, then began stroking her hair gently.

“Good morning to you too, baby sister. Sleep well?”

Linh smiled and covered her sister's hand with her own.

“Not really. I was thinking.”

“That was what I was afraid of.” I dropped into one of the seats beside the bed, and put my feet up on the white bedspread. Linh looked across and saw me.

“I'd get my feet down if I were you. Sister catches you, she'll cut them off with a contaminated scalpel.”

I let them slide to the floor. “Okay, I'll play. What were you thinking
about
?”

Phuong moved across to occupy the other seat and Linh manoeuvred the chair so that she faced both of us.

“Kieu, mostly. And the Triple K.” She paused, but neither of us spoke. So she continued. “You don't just walk away from the K. Not if you know as much as she does. And even if she could, there's still Tang …”

She looked down at her useless legs to emphasise her point.

“There's no way we can fight them. And we can't go to the cops. Not without hard evidence, and anyway there's the family to think about. No one would be safe. AuntHoa, Uncle Minh. The shop … None of us. But there is one person we can go to.”

“Who? Rambo?” I was only half joking. Linh wasn't the only one who'd been thinking about all this. Only my fantasies revolved around meeting Tang in a dark alley with a loaded gun.

She looked up for a moment. Straight into her sister's eyes.

“Hai Nguyen …”

I saw a look of recognition — and pain — dawning in Phuong's eyes.

She was remembering.

*

LINH'S STORY

When I outlined my plan to them. Phuong told me I was mad. No surprise there. Toan, on the other hand, didn't say a word, which I took as a positive sign. He was thinking about it.

I really didn't want to ask Phuong, but I needed her.

I needed a way to get to Hai Nguyen, “the man”. To get under his guard. Someone who'd known him, however briefly, in another life.

I knew she'd object, but there wasn't much she would ever refuse me, so I figured I could talk her around. Toan I
knew
would support me.

I'd seen the way he looked at Kieu.

Toan and my sister weren't my concern. It was Kieu herself. I didn't know which way she would jump. After living so long without hope, I wasn't sure if she could act to save herself.

But she surprised me. Later that afternoon, when I sounded her out, I watched her. For a moment a frown ghosted her features, then she straightened.

“Okay,” she said. “When?”

And we were ready to go.