A thousand moments passed between us that morning. Yet even so, I could not summon the courage to speak to him. How should I even begin to tell a man that I am sorry that his wife was cheating on him? Especially if that man was my own boss.
I saw her often with the Assistant Accounting Manager. They meet every Wednesday and Thursday night at a small restaurant across my apartment. The first time I saw them, I thought that Thomas had found a new girlfriend, but when she looked up to kiss him as they were leaving the inn next to the eating place, I realized that it was Mr Song's wife. To say that I was shocked is an understatement. For the next three months, after dinner without fail, they would walk hand in hand, usually a little drunk, to the inn, only to emerge an hour or two later.
I bit my nail while I stared unseeing at my boss's door: Am I doing the right thing? The phone beeped. "Yes, Mr Song," I said.
"Angeline, could you cancel my meeting with the Production Team tonight please."
"Of course, sir." His labored breathing came through the line. Concerned, I asked, "Are you alright, boss?"
"Could you…Could you bring me a glass of water," followed by a sputter and a cough.
"Yes, sir." I quickly put down the phone and turned to a clerk whose desk was just across from mine. "Lucy, please bring Mr Song a glass of water," I said before rushing into his office without bothering to knock.
I found him leaning back on his leather chair and clutching his throat all the while wheezing in deep breaths. I called the in-house clinic on his phone and luckily the doctor had just arrived for his 9.00am morning shift.
After I put down the phone, Lucy appeared with a glass of water. I put the rim to his mouth, but instead of drinking he spewed the water out and choked on his own cough. The doctor and nurse rushed in. I stepped back, wide-eyed with terror. The doctor thrust a gloved hand into his mouth and placed a metal plate inside.
The phone rang: I picked it up and listened but could make no sense of what was being said, "What…?" I asked.
A calm voice repeated his request, "This is Dr Lim, Mr Song's personal physician. Could you pass me to Dr Raj please?"
"Yes, sir," I said before passing the receiver to Dr. Raj.
He listened for a moment then said, "Yes, he is having an attack right now." A pause. "Yes, I have a vial with me. How many milligrams?" Another pause. "Okay, thank you." He replaced the receiver. The nurse opened the black bag he brought in with him and tore out a new syringe from its wrappings, which the doctor punched into a small bottle filled with clear liquid.
The nurse then pulled up my boss's sleeve and Dr Raj inserted the needle into his arm. I turned my face away, for I couldn't bear to watch. As he began to calm, the tenseness in the room disappeared. The doctor stayed with him while Lucy and I left the room, and the nurse returned to the clinic.
A flustered HR Manager, Mr Rahim, rushed to my side. "What is going on? Security told me the clinic asked them to call an ambulance."
"Mr Song had a heart attack," Lucy said.
"I…I don’t think so. It seems different," I said.
"It is," she insisted with vehemence.
I decided to keep my peace. Ten minutes later the paramedics arrived and Dr Raj told them everything he did and instructed them to take my boss to the Medical Specialist Hospital where Dr Lim was on duty.
Once Mr Song was rolled out, Mr Rahim asked, "What happened, Dr Raj?"
"He had an allergy attack. Maybe it was triggered by something he ate."
"That cannot be, Song is a very careful man."
"Maybe he received some bad news. This can also trigger an attack in extreme cases, especially since he also has asthma."
Maybe's, could be's, possibly's sprung up around me like useless weeds. It didn't matter because Dr Raj's prognosis had vindicated me. Mr Song did not have a heart attack. I should know, I was the one who added the teaspoon of crushed peanuts into his milk tea.
I left the office early that day and made my way straight to the hospital. I was relieved to see Mrs Song with him. Five minutes later Mr Rahim popped in. "How are you feeling, Song?"
"A lot better, thank you. I am sorry to have caused such an uproar at the office."
"Well, a little excitement now and then is not a bad thing as long as everything ends well. I was also very pleased with the response from both the clinic and the security guards. Now we know for sure that we can rely on them in a real emergency."
Mr Song laughed. "Human Resource to the core."
Mrs Song looked at her watch and said, "Well dear, since you are feeling alright, you don't mind if I go back for a while."
Her husband's exuberant smile visibly shrunk as he said, "I'm alright now, dear. You don't have to stay with me." After she left, he explained, "Mary has a book club meeting every Wednesday and Thursday night."
I stayed for another ten minutes, taking down instructions for what he needed me to bring down for him from the office the following day. His physician insisted that his blood pressure was too high and asked that he remains in the hospital until it stabilizes. On the way home, I stopped by a small specialty shop and bought a bottle of red wine packed in a shiny box, and on reaching home, I put on a pair of cotton gloves and emptied half of the contents into a glass bottle. Then I poured in almost a quarter of that same amount of concentrated weed killer. I unstrung the price tag on the box and hung it around the neck of the bottle, deciding that any man willing to steal a fellow colleague's wife would have no qualms about drinking someone else's expensive wine.
I knew the inn, for I had worked there some years back as a night shift supervisor. I knew the room they stayed in because the cleaning ladies who worked there usually had lunch in a coffee shop I frequented, and I often heard them complain about the loud rude couple who come every Wednesday and Thursday night. Since the two always insisted on getting the same room, the cleaners referred to them as Room 516. Most importantly, I knew that the floor was cleaned at 9.00am and 5.00pm every day, and during that time unoccupied rooms would be left open for easy access for the cleaning crew. Getting in was easy enough because being a large inn that provided cheap rooms, new faces were very common. Sure enough when I reached the floor at 5.10pm, the door was opened. After checking to make sure that the cleaners were busy two doors away, I stepped into the room and placed the bottle inside the minibar fridge. I knew from experience that the fridge was only checked by the crew when the guests check-out, and would be refilled immediately, so there was no danger of someone else finding the bottle in there except for the next guest who checked in.
Nobody gave me the time of day when I left. Exactly at 8.00pm they checked in. Thomas was single and Mrs Song need not keep to a schedule that night so I expected them to take their time. I didn’t see them leave, and when I left for work the following day, both their cars were still parked in front of the restaurant.
At ten that morning we heard the news. Thomas was found dead with a woman, and by the afternoon, we all learned that the woman was Mrs Song. I dropped by the hospital that afternoon with some files and a bunch of lilies. While there I found out that the police had initially suspected Mr Song, but on learning that he had been in the hospital since Wednesday morning they took him off the suspect list. After all, the inn manager insisted that the last check of the room was at 9.15 am, and none of his people had seen the wine bottle. Since only Thomas’s and Mrs Song’s fingerprints were found on the bottle a week later, the case was closed as a lover’s murder suicide. A month later, I got a promotion and Mr Song reimbursed me for the wine I bought.
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