Emergency

"Uncle, take me to Singapore General Hospital fast!" I yelled at the taxi driver the second I slided onto the backseat of the blue NTUC income taxi. The taxi driver replied with a silent nod, and sped off.

In the backseat, I could hear my heart thumping hard against my chest. I was breathing at the rate as though I had just taken my 2.4 kilometres NAPFA rest and has broken a record of 12minutes. From the rear mirror, I noticed that my face had lost the lively complexion and had turned ashen. Then, the scenes replayed in my mind.

It was in the afternoon, when I returned home from school. i dragged my feet and my heavy school bag to my room. I had a horrendous day at school-flunked my Mathematics test which everyone has aced, served detention for being late for school and lost my favourite ear stud on the way home. It must have been the work of Karma, for it was he who decided to give me my retributions that day.

My mother was beautiful for a 40 year old, she had thick lucious black hair which had been permed to enhance her perfect facial features. She was my only kin, as my dad died in a plane crashto France four years ago. And it was that particularly day that my mother decided to reprimand me because of my bad grades. She reminded me that I was sitting for the Oridinary Level Examinations in October and that really got onto my nerves. Without careful consideration, I yelled, "Why don't you just leave me alone, to rot and die?" She was flabbergasted at my words, and she left the house, slamming the front day behind her.

In the night, I was still struggling to get my corrections done when the phone rang. It was from the hospital saying that my mother had met with an accident and the chances of her surviving were close to zero. I was aghast and speechless. I grabbed my sweater and raced out of the house; which was how I ended up in that taxi.

Upon arrival, I thanked the doctor and pushed 30 dollars onto his palms and sprinted to the lift lobby. I could not think straight and the scene in the hospital felt so chaotic and unsure. If I were a motorbike on the roads of Jurong East, I would have been arrested by the traffic police and fined for speeding.

My feet was freezing in the lift. I looked at my feet and realised that I had forgotten to put on proper shoes as all I was wearing was a pair of cheap hotel slippers from Tai Wan.

The lift took me to the seventh floor where all the other patients who had met with accidents were. The corridor was dimmed and dead-silent. According to the wall clock just in front of the lift, it was already eleven-thirty.

I could feel my heart thumping in rhythm as though it was a metronome at the speed of 200 beats per minute. I stopped my tear ducts from releasing salty tears into my eyes. I told myself to calm down but, obviously, to no avail.

Finally, I was at the front of room 724. My right hand was trembling so violently that I had to use both hands to turn the knob. There were huge machines placed around the bed, Tubes carrying fluids were connected from the machines to the body. But I was wrong. The machines had already stopped functioning and the body was covered with a thin white blanket from head to toe.

I threw myself forward and grbbbed my mother's hand. I cried, tears of sorrow, regret and guilt. I screamed for my mother to wake up and tell me it was all a dream, a terrible, terrible nightmare.

I shook her real hard, hoping she would come round and comfrt me. I poured my deepest feelings to my mother, about how greatful I was to her and how bad a daughter I had been. I continued to cry with my head lying on the hospital bed.

Out of the blue, I heard an unmistakably familiar voice from behind me.

"Lee Ann? Is that you? What are you doing here?"

The voice sounded a whole lot like my...

"Mum?" I spoke as I tunred my back to meet her eyes.

There she stood, perfectly in one piece. I raced to my mother and gave her a huge bear hug. I begin to sob again, this time, with tears of joy and relief. She stroked me and asked me why I was there.

Just then, a nurse came with my mother's handphone and we understood. It turned out that my mother left house to get me my favourite ice cream from "Ben's & Jerry's" when she dropped her phone. Coincidentally, an accident had occurred and the paramedia had mistaken my mother's handphone as that of the victim, and ended up informing me.

On my way home, I clung tightly to my mother's arm and said, "I love you, Mum. I didn't mean what I said just now..."

She hushed me with, "I know, sweetied. I love you too."

Estelle

An occasion when you went all out to help a stranger

It was an evening on a normal school day, the skies began to darken as i walked the journey back home. As i walk, street lights began to flicker and then turned themselves on. My shadow started to grow longer as i drew closer to the street lights. The hill where i would end my journey and where my home awaits grew larger as i headed towards it. When i finally reached the hill, I began to climb it, but i did not expect a disaster waiting for me at the top of the hill...

As i climb, a woman, around the age of 40, pushing a wheelchair came into my view. Seated on the wheelchair was an elderly lady. She had a pool of white hair and was skeletal like. She seemed very fragile and sickly. The middle age lady was pushing the wheelchair with all her might up the hill. She was painting as she pushed. Just as she was reaching the top, all of a sudden, the woman lost grip on the wheelchair. The wheelchair started accelerating down the hill with the speed of a bullet heading towards me, with it, carrying a screaming elderly lady.

There was a cacophony of sounds as the screams of the woman, the elderly lady, and me, together with the uproar of the screeching sounds coming from the wheelchair flooded the entire area. The woman started running after the wheelchair, shouting at it to stop. But to no avail, the wheelchair continued accelerating downhill. There was no time to procrastinate. In a matter of seconds, I quickly chucked my overweight bag one side and without contemplating, rushed forward to stop the wheelchair from it's descend. Unfortunately, the momentum was too great. I was thrown down on to the rough terrain of the concrete floor. Luckily I was only a few metres from the foot of the hill and my strength was not wasted as the wheelchair decided to stop in the nick of time just in front of a road filled with speeding cars. Everyone blew a sigh of relief.

Although everything turend out alright for the elderly lady, it did not turned out alright for me. I suffered cuts and bruises from the push to the floor and also got disciplined by my mum as my uniform got torn in the incident. But i did not regret what i did as i amnaged to saved a life. This time, i really went all out to help a stranger.

-Joel ^^

Friends

As I opened Hannah’s bedroom door, I realised that it was redecorated in a dazzling tribute to the cartoon “Danny Phantom”. Danny’s pictures were stuck everywhere, from the ceiling, right up to her closet door, her mirror was in the shape of Danny’s schoolbag and her bedsheets had Danny on them. “Wow,” I said out loud, “and to think you’re turning 16 next week. Talk about irony.”

“Oh come on, Lee-Ann, speak for yourself” Hannah ended her statement with a playful roll of her eyes. Even though I had been friends with Hannah ever since Primary 5, I still did not know what kept that girl always sparkly and bright. Hannah was tall for her age, ever since in Primary school, she has always been standing at the class row with the boys during photo-taking sessions. Being in the school’s track team ever since Primary school really helped her with her tan and toning up her body. With long glossy dark brown hair, brown radiant eyes, fun personality. What’s not to like?

On the other hand, I, Lee-Ann, was pretty well-known for being non-existent at school and I was a member of more clubs than anyone else in school had: Debate team, Welfare Organisation, Science Club, Photography Crew, Swimming Team and the list goes on. I was considered a tad short for my age, long hair at the darkest shade of black, and thank goodness I traded my heavy 1000 degree glasses to contact lenses or I would have been crowned “Nerd of the year”.

It was a hot Tuesday afternoon of the June holidays and I was helping Hannah pick out clothes for her big date with her boyfriend, Ivan.

“Now, blue or silver?” She raised two long identical shimmering dresses, one on each hand.

“Definitely, blue.” I replied, as I flipped open a photo album with a cover page flooded with pictures of, you’ve guessed it, Danny Phantom.

“Oh my god!” I exclaimed, as my right hand flew dramatically towards my mouth, “isn’t this the camp we went to when we were 11, when we first became friends?! Remember?”

“How could I not forget? You still had those mega-huge glasses resting on your head and dumb braces then.” She answered with a playful nudge on my elbow.

As I flipped through the album, scenes from the leadership camp flooded my mind. The first picture showed Hannah and I, having our attendance marked and being paired up. I vividly remember the entire scene whereby I was so sad I could not pair up with my friend then, that I cried for an hour straight.

The next picture showed Hannah and I, participating in a three - legged race. We did not have an idea how to go about in completing the race. We were still in the midst of our “silent-thinking” when we noticed the other pairs fumbling on the last free metres away from the finishing line. We looked at each other silently, as if we had the power of telepathy, we eyed the finishing line and hopped all the way there at our optimum speed. Other teams must have been too amazed that they actually stopped to observe us, and that was how we won the race.

The third picture showed us on a mountain. Even though I had only been 11 then, I had already the brain of a thinking scentist, and having to stop every few metres eventually made Hannah annoyed. Eventually Hannah marched on, lost her footing and fell into a huge hole. I threw the flower aside and tried ways and means to get her out. As silly as it seems, I sat by the hole to accompany her instead of looking for help. She started crying, not because the hole was deep, but because of the amount of insects she had attracted. I comforted her by showing her pictures of the flora I had taken. The camp facilitators found us three hours later and brought us back to the campsite.

The next picture showed us declining from a rock-climbing wall, hand-in-hand. We both wore happy yet goofy smiles on our faces. I remember I had a bad case of height-phobia and I was on the brink of wetting my pants as I wore the harness and helmetMy heart was beating like the speed of the bullet trains in Japan. Just when I was about to swat down and cry, Hannah grabbed my hand and passed me her good-luck bracket her grandma made for her. I put it on and we held hands as we arrived the top and hit the buzzer.

Hannah smacked me on the back and I fell right back into reality.

“Ding Dong, anyone home? Now come on, should I do a last-minute perm to my hair? Now have you seen…” Hannah smiled playfully as she searched frantically for her curler.

“Nope, come on you’re pretty enough already! You can probably clinch Miss Universe right now, with your eyes closed!” I shook my head as I put the album back in place. “Now get going! Don’t want Ivan to wait too long for you!” I teased as I clung onto her arm and exited her house. We spotted Ivan at the lift lobby, dressed as adorable as Hannah was.

“Go have fun!” I smiled as I waved.

“Thanks, Lee-Ann, for the afternoon. I really didn’t know what I’d do without you.” Hannah came up to me with a friendly hug.

“Hey, what are friends for?”

-Estelle