Aperture on the East (26 page)

When they got off the taxi, Erik had
to help Ana upstairs and open the door to her fourth-floor
apartment. Ana pointed toward her bedroom; she wanted to sleep off
her headache. Erik almost had to carry Ana to bed because she was
so weak. Ana moaned when her head hit the pillow. She saw Erik
remove his shirt and wipe his sweat off with it. It was a warm
summer night, the air damp with moisture from the impending storm.
Erik was looking at her amorously. Ana thought that perhaps she
should ask him to leave, but she didn’t have any strength left.
Erik lay down next to her, and Ana closed her
eyes. 

It was an unusual rainy day and Ivan
decided to stay home and read. Before summer camp ended everyone
received a book about the marine species in the waters surrounding
Vietnam. It was a book intended for pre-teens with colorful
photographs and fun facts, but it was written in Vietnamese. Ivan
had to read it with the help of a dictionary, but he was glad to
have something to pass the time while waiting for Sofia to
return.

Ivan heard the knock on the door and
went to answer it. He opened the door when he saw through the peep
hole that the visitor was Vo. Ivan gave Vo a big smile as Vo patted
him on the back.

“
Mr. Nguyen, I thought you
didn’t want to see us again,” said Ivan.

“
What made you think
that?” said Vo. He looked around.

“
My ma is still sleeping,
I think,” said Vo.

Ivan asked Vo to sit down, and offered
some water.

“
I want to see you, too,”
said Vo. “How have you been? I checked on the little boy that you
ran into, and he had no signs of injury whatsoever. I know that you
were probably pretty scared yourself, right?”

“
I was,” said Ivan. “I’m
glad the boy is okay. I’ll be more careful in the future. I lost
control of my skateboard and ran into the street after I hit the
kid. A car could’ve run over me. I still get goose bumps when I
think of it. I could’ve been killed. And I was afraid that I would
be in jail for the rest of my life because that kid was bleeding so
much that I thought I had killed him.”

“
We all learn from our
mistakes,” said Vo.

“
Do you make mistakes?”
said Ivan.

Vo chuckled and said, “Too many to
count.”

Vo paused, and then said, “I am
leaving for Singapore this afternoon, but I want to say goodbye
before I go.”

“
You didn’t go and say
goodbye to all of your camp students, did you?” said
Ivan.

Vo gave him a grin.

“
Well,” said Ivan, “I’m
glad that you still like my ma enough to want to say goodbye to her
before you go on a trip. She’s really not that awful. I was only
complaining about her when I felt bad. All kids blame their parents
for everything, right? I mean, I learn to do a lot of things for
myself because she gave me a lot of freedom and autonomy. She’s not
a controlling kind of parent.”

“
Oh yeah?”

“
My ma makes the best tea
and she’s a really good cook. She keeps her house clean and
beautiful all the time,” said Ivan. He looked around at the mess in
the house, and then said, “Well, usually, anyway.”

“
It’s okay, Ivan,” said
Vo, “I know.”

“
She’s had a lot of bad
luck, so she gets a little sad sometimes. She gets drunk only once
in a while. It’s not like she’s an alcoholic,” said Ivan. He bit
his lower lip. He knew he just told a lie. He couldn’t tell if Vo
believed it; Vo just kept on smiling.

Ivan and Vo were talking about the
book that Ivan was reading when they heard the sound of a door
opening. Ana came out of her bedroom with her hair un-brushed and
shirt wrinkled. She was rubbing her forehead when Ivan called out,
“Look who’s here.”

Ana dropped her jaw. She was still
trying to find her words when someone else came out of her bedroom.
It was Erik, shirtless and with equally messy hair.

“
Last night was wild,”
said Erik. He rubbed Ana’s shoulder and went toward the
bathroom.

Vo stood up, and Ana could see his
hands clenching into tight fists. Stunned by the whole scene
herself, she could not think of a single word to say.

“
Who was that?” said
Ivan.

Before Ana could snap out of her
stupor and answer, Vo had left the apartment, slamming the door
shut behind him.

“
He came to make up with
you, but it’s hopeless now,” said Ivan. “I hate you. I hate you.”
He turned and ran out of the apartment, too.

 
Ana’s legs gave out
all of a sudden and she fell to the floor. Her heart was racing and
her body trembled. Her mind was blank as she tried to process what
just happened. Vo was here. It was a chance for atonement. But it
happened too fast, and before Ana could seize it, it was
gone.

“
Ana, are you okay?” said
Erik.

Ana lifted her chin and stared at Erik
for a moment. She stood up and went to her bed to get Erik’s shirt,
and then she came out and threw it at him. She pushed him toward
the door.

“
Wait, what’s going on?”
said Erik.

Ana didn’t stop until she shoved Erik
out of her apartment. Ana was exerting all the strength that she
could muster and Erik nearly fell down the stairs. Ana shut the
door, and then she sat down against it to cry.

She didn’t have long to bury herself
in sorrow before her cell phone rang. She ignored it. The ringing
stopped, but then it started again. Ana didn’t want to talk to
anyone. She was going to sit and drown in her tears. Her heart had
already died.

The caller was persistent and the
intermittent ringing went on for another five minutes before she
went to get it, trying to turn it off. Before she pressed the power
button, she recognized the phone number to be that of the Nha Trang
Police Department. She had gotten a call from them recently when
Ivan was arrested.

Ana dried her tears with her hand and
dialed the number back. When someone answered, she identified
herself as Anastasia Romanova. Had someone from the police station
been trying to reach her?

“
Yes,” said the woman on
the other side of the phone. “Are you the mother of Zoe
Romanova?”

Ana’s heart sank when she heard Zoe’s
name.

“
Yes, I am. Is she okay?”
Her hand squeezed her phone tightly as panic began to set
in.

“
I’m afraid not, Ms.
Romanova. Zoe is in the hospital, in the intensive care unit. We
need you to come to the police station first with her passport, and
then we will take you to the hospital. She is being guarded by the
police.”

Ana hung up the phone and hurried out
of her apartment. She was asking a million whys as she urged the
taxi driver to speed up. She had no doubt about the answer,
however. She alone was the reason why the whole world had crumbled
into pieces. 

The night would’ve been silent if it
weren’t for the frequent, intermittent chimes of different pitches
and tempos coming from the vital signs monitor. There was also the
whooshing sound with each breath the ventilator delivered to Zoe
via an endotracheal tube, about ten times a minute. Ana dozed off
several times, and each time she awoke thinking hours had passed,
only a few minutes had gone by according to the clock on the
wall.

At dawn the nurse came in to check the
two infusion pumps fixed to a steel pole next to Zoe’s bed. They
were running four different medications and fluids into Zoe’s
central line, threaded into the jugular vein on the right side of
her neck. These pumps were noisy throughout the night as well,
sounding off alarms for various reasons. Very quickly, Ana figured
out which button she could push to silence each alarm without
jeopardizing the flow of the medications.

The nurse listened to Zoe’s chest,
checked all the lines and tubes, and then she turned Zoe from one
side to the other. “We don’t want her to get bed sores,” she said
to Ana.

An aide came in and helped the nurse
change the pad underneath Zoe. Ana stood up and offered to assist,
but the nurse told her to relax. “We’ve got her,” the nurse said.
Ana watched the nurse and the aide give Zoe a towel bath, and
reminisced the first few years of Zoe’s life when she would put Zoe
in the bath tub for a rinse and some play time before bed. The
bell-like giggles of Zoe when she was a toddler came back to Ana
vividly. Ana did take care of Zoe, and they used to have fun. When
Ana played on her guitar, Zoe would sit and listen, even hum along.
Zoe loved the guitar more than any of her toys. After Leo died, Ana
was too heartbroken to touch the guitar again, and it became Zoe’s
property. The guitar was a link to the spirit of her father and a
reminder of how her mother used to be, Zoe wrote in her diary,
which Ana had found while packing to leave Russia.

Ana’s thoughts were interrupted when
the attending physician and the neurosurgeon came to round on Zoe.
Zoe had a craniotomy and her head was still wrapped in bandages
with a line coming out of it. The other end of that line was buried
under the skull to monitor the intracranial pressure. Ana had been
told that if the pressure was too high, it could lead to death or
permanent brain damages. The doctors examined Zoe, and exchanged
information with the nurse in jargons beyond Ana’s comprehension.
Ana listened intently anyway, her hands shaking nervously again. It
was almost like she was the defendant on a sentencing trial, and
any minute now she could be awarded the death penalty.

 “
The pressure inside
Zoe’s head seems to be stabilized. We’ll leave the monitor in for a
few more hours,” said the neurosurgeon. He exited of the
room.

Ana was somewhat relieved to hear the
news, but she wished that the neurosurgeon could have told her
more, even if it wouldn’t have made a difference in Zoe’s care. She
looked to the attending physician, who, as if sensing Ana’s
worries, turned to speak to her.

“
We have kept her sedated
and paralyzed so she won’t fight the ventilator, but later this
morning we will try to wake her up and see if she can breathe on
her own. If she can, then sometime today we should be able to take
that tube out of her throat,” said the attending physician, who had
the kindest eyes.

“
Oh, thank you, doctor.
Thank you,” said Ana. That was about all that she could think of to
say. She felt like she should be asking some questions, but she was
too happy to hear of Zoe’s good progress to think of
any.

Ana was alone again when daylight
came. It was another rainy day and the wind was howling. Someone
had brought her a breakfast tray but she didn’t have any appetite.
She stood by Zoe’s bed to take another look. Zoe’s eyes were purple
and blue, and her face was swollen. There were minor cuts around
the nose and the lips. Ana held Zoe’s arm in her hands, and
inspected the bruises on it. Ana wanted to kiss Zoe’s wounds, and
blow on them like she used to do when Zoe would fall and scratch
her knee in her toddler years; little Zoe would then stop crying
and throw herself in Ana’s arms for a hug and a squeeze. Ana tried
to remember what it felt like to hold Zoe. It had been a long time
since they even held hands. Ana felt a world of regrets, and wanted
to plunge forward to embrace Zoe, but she was barricaded from Zoe
by a wall of wires and tubes.

Someone knocked on the door. Ana
turned around, and was surprised to see McKenzie. He was
accompanied by a Vietnamese police officer in uniform.

“
Ana, I hope we are not
intruding,” said McKenzie.

“
No. Come in,” said
Ana.

McKenzie and the police officer came
toward Zoe’s bed.

“
This is Tuan Le. He’s a
friend of Zoe’s,” said McKenzie, pointing toward the police
officer.

“
Are you the officer who
found her?” said Ana.

“
Yes. I wish I had found
her sooner. I am so sorry,” said Tuan. His voice trembled, and his
eyes were downcast. Ana thought that he could burst into tears at
any second.

“
If it weren’t for you,”
said Ana, ”she might’ve been dead. So thank you. You shouldn’t
blame yourself.”

“
No, it was my fault. I
led her down this path. I used her,” said Tuan. He buried his face
in his hands, and started weeping.

McKenzie threw his arm around Tuan’s
shoulder, and told him to sit in a chair in the corner. Tuan
obeyed.

Ana didn’t know what Tuan meant, but
she was more curious about why McKenzie had come to visit Zoe in
the first place.

“
Ana, I have a lot of
explaining to do,” said McKenzie. “You should sit down,
too.”

Ana complied, and McKenzie started
pacing the room.

“
You see, Ana, I’m not
really from Sydney. I’m from Moscow,” said McKenzie in perfect
Russian. Ana was shocked.

“
Why did you pretend to be
from Sydney?” said Ana.

McKenzie switched back to English and
said, “I work for the Investigative Committee of Russia. We got a
lead on a Russian syndicate that was operating in Vietnam. They
were active in Hanoi, but moved their camp to Nha Trang after the
new international airport opened here. Their main business is human
trafficking all along this side of the Pacific Ocean. They bring
Russian women down here, and smuggle Southeast Asian women into
Russia. I was sent here to assist my Vietnamese counterparts in the
investigation.”