The World is a Bad Sale: of a troubled saturday

i walked frm paragon, crossed the rd to take mrt frm orchard. then i saw her outside taka, in a pale yellow shirt and a light blue drawstring pants with a huge brown stain on it. said i: scuse me you have a stain on your pants. said she: i don't have a change of clothes. she didn't seem to have much or know much. took her to the toilet, gave her a pad. thne i took my jacket and wrapped it round her waist to cover the stain. it was then tt i realised she looked pregnant (bout 5-6 mths). are you pregnant? i asked. she didn't know, she said. she didn't seem to know if she was feeling all right either; she obviously needed help.

- maybe you need to see doctor.
- can you come with me?

took her to mt.E hospital. on the way, got some info out of her (she muttered and she seemed to ignore my qns unless i repeated them at least twice; she also occasionally smiled to herself like she was tripped out). alena... toh tuck rd... duno where she's going... duno where she came frm.

i've never liked mt.E, and taking mentally-challenged strangers to hospitals isn't exactly my daily past-time so by the time i got to the A&E ward, i was so nervous and frustrated, tears were forming in my eyes. i sat her in front of the tv and explained the case to the nurses. they suggested taking her to a GP or something since she had no money to pay and mt.E is a private hospital (this i feel is fucking lame shit. so if i go to mt.E with a mangled hand dangling off my wrist but i have no money, maybe i should conveniently hail a cab and go to the nearest GP. such good sense this all makes...). they said the bill would be $100-200. i said i'd pay. ok, they said and set to work getting her particulars.

amid her pressure- and temperature-taking and the urine test, i managed to squeeze more out of her: her mother kicked her out of the hse and she need a place to stay.

- Can i stay with you?
- erm... no you can't. you have to let the doctors check to see if you're all right ok? er... so, erm no.

then she later turns to me, asking for dr kok frm gleneagles. she needs to get her psychiatric medicine she says. she's crazy, she adds. (shoot me if i hadn't noticed this last bit by then)

what hospital is this? i want to go to gleneagles now. i don't think i want to see for my pregnancy; i want to check for my legs. i cannot walk. [at this point, i would have liked to ask her if she could not walk, how does she think she ended up at the hospital? flew there? but i figured asking this would be a mockery of her state so i kept it shut]

then later, sitting there watching the tv, she grins crazily to herself, looks at me and says: i don't think i'm pregnant anymore

Anymore?! wat the fuck?! so, apparently, she gave birth yesterday and the baby is at NUH now. this just totally threw me off. like HUH? then a doctor finally comes to check her, while the nurses call her house.

in a while, she gets off the wheelchair and walks out of the hospital, while this paranoid emo-kid who is me chases after her all the way to outside of the hospital, trying to get her stay till her brother got there. but no, she'd have none of it. for her, it was gleneagles and dr kok, or nothing. i walked back alone to the hospital and told the staff wat was up. and they told me wat was up:

She isn't pregnant. she didn't give birth yesterday. it wasn't internal bleeding; just her damn period. crazy pple like tt can't be helped. we need to photocopy your IC for a record and we'll wait for her brother to come foot the bill.

the doctor chuckled as he took my particulars and wrote down GOOD SAMARITAN next to my name. i'd have liked to chuckle along but the whole 1 and half hrs had left me traumatised.

off i went, to church, in a cab. the driver was rude to me and this upset me further.

i wondered to myself if anyone would've done wat i did. i wouldn't let alena walk round with a stain on her pants and no real knowledge of where she was going, what she was doing. i didn't wnat to give cruel anybodys a chance to make fun of or take advantage of her. but then i began to think: maybe pple don't actually give a shit - they'd laugh and stare at her as they go past, tell it to their friends, then later forget it all happened. see, no harm done. if this presumption is true, then this just makes me the dramatic idiot who upsets the natural balance of good/bad incidents tt occur around us. well, tough shit, amelia.