A woman loses her young sister

Part II:

A WOMAN

LOSES HER

YOUNG SISTER

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“When they took her away, no one thought she would die… We couldn’t even say a word to each other”.

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Hau was a migrant worker hailing from An Giang, a locality situated in the Mekong Delta.

She resided in a small alley with her two sisters. It was almost a decade since her extended family left the countryside to Ho Chi Minh City.

They rented a house to live, and everyone had their own family.

On July 22, 2021, Mrs. Tien, who was Mrs. Hau’s younger sister, became the first member of the family to test positive for SARS-CoV-2. The remaining seven people in the family received the same result shortly afterwards. No one knew the original source of the infection.

They were the first COVID-19 cases in the alley, and none of them had been vaccinated against the virus.

In the middle of July, 2021, Ho Chi Minh City deployed a programme to treat F0 cases with mild symptoms at home under certain conditions.

However, Mrs. Hau’s extended family did not meet such conditions.

Her three-member family was living in a small room of less than 20m2, while Mrs. Tien’s family had five people living in a room of a similar size.

Their accommodation was in rows of temporary corrugated iron inns dubbed ‘the row of pig houses’ by local people in the alley.

Apart from Mrs. Hau’s family, many other families residing in the alley also faced crowded and cramped conditions. An extended family of up to five or six members typically lived in a single room of between just 15m2 to 20m2.

At bedtime, the footrest of one person became the other’s headrest. Houses were separated by just a sheet of corrugated iron with holes on it.

With the outbreak spreading near and far, the practice of keeping a distance of 2 metres under COVID-19 protocols introduced by the health sector was impossible for these people.

When a 40-seater car carrying Mrs. Hau’s family stopped in front of a kindergarten.

The car was fully packed with COVID-19 patients.

With the number of infections skyrocketing every day at almost 400,000 as of September, 2021, all local hospitals were overwhelmed. Such an overload therefore forced Ho Chi Minh City to convert many schools, factory workshops, and abandoned resettlement areas into isolation areas, concentrated treatment facilities, or field hospitals specialising in treating patients with COVID-19.

This preschool was one of such concentrated treatment and isolation facility.

All eight relatives of Mrs. Hau’s extended family had arranged to stay on the second floor of a three-storey building where they stayed along with nearly 30 others in the same room. The state of the room was a mess, with folding beds scattered everywhere and oxygen tanks and oxygen masks lining the aisles. The smell of alcohol and medicine was prominent in the air, whilst the sound of coughing patients and the sound of ventilators drowned out any human voices.

Mrs. Hau was in the bed next to her younger sister, whose full name was Nguyen Thi Kim Tien.

Born in 1974. Mrs. Tien was the youngest daughter in the family. Around the early 2010s, she followed in her sister’s footsteps and went to Ho Chi Minh City to earn a living. They both did all kinds of jobs, from being masons to salespeople, in order to make ends meet.

In late May, 2021, Ho Chi Minh City started to impose social distancing measures which were kept in place for four months. At the time all people in the two sisters’ families were unemployed and were unable to continue to work or return to their homes.

On those initial days at the hospital, no one in the family needed to be put on mechanical ventilation.

Only Mrs. Hau felt exhausted, while Mrs. Tien’s husband and her pregnant daughter remained healthy.

Four days later, six people were transferred to a milder treatment ward and were preparing to be discharged.

Only Mrs. Hau and Mrs. Tien remained in the room as Mrs. Tien had suffered from heart disease since childhood. Although Mrs. Hau still believed that the entire family would be reunited soon.

For four days, the room welcomed a range of newcomers, while others were discharged, but none of them died.

Mrs. Tien lay down on the bed, gasping for breath.

Mrs. Hau looked at her younger sister and hurriedly went to seek the assistance of a doctor. She climbed the stairs, breathing heavily as she walked.

A nurse went up to measure her oxygen levels and hurriedly moved Mrs. Tien to the first floor. A healthcare worker hastily gave her an oxygen mask and patted Mrs. Tien on the back.

Each time Mrs. Tien became weaker, her limbs turned purple. Mrs. Hau gently held her sister’s hand.

Her voice was barely audible.

Mrs. Hau put the vitamin C effervescent tablet into a glass of water and carefully gave it to her sister to slowly take sips.

That night, Mrs. Tien was taken to a COVID-19 treatment hospital. But unlike her husband and children, Mrs. Tien was swiftly transferred to the intensive care unit specifically for critically ill patients.

When the ambulance eventually arrived, she was placed on a stretcher.

Mrs. Hau looked at her sister preparing to leave.

A mask was then put on Mrs. Tien’s face. The two sisters glanced at each other, with neither of them uttering a single word.

Mrs. Hau maintained the thought that she would see her young sister once again.

The next morning, Mrs. Hau began to feel better. She picked up the phone to call her sister but there was no answer. She called a few more times, but the phone kept on ringing. In addition, Mrs. Tien’s husband and daughter were also unable to contact her.

She was filled with an invisible fear.

On July 29, 2021, Mrs. Hau received the news that her young sister had passed away.

“She was the kindest person”.

“During the outbreak, the whole neighbourhood was locked down. After receiving donated rice, she gave it back to the lottery ticket sellers”.

Two days later, Mrs. Hau’s whole family tested negative and they were all granted permission to return home where they travelled through the small alley back to the room of just over 20m2.

Originally eight people had departed together, although only seven eventually made it back.

Mrs. Tien was the first person to die from the virus in this alley, with some others eventually following.

In Vietnamese culture, the Ghost Festival is observed in the seventh lunar month, the month of amnesty for the dead. This is the moment when the King of Hell opens the Demon Gate to let hungry ghosts return to earth. On the first night of the seventh lunar month, it rained hailstones. The COVID-19 outbreak reached its peak in Ho Chi Minh City with hundreds of deaths reported every day.

That morning, Mrs. Hau bought some rambutan and dragon fruit as offerings to her sister.

Rambutan and dragon fruit are typical fruits in the south of Vietnam.

On August 6, Mrs. Tien’s husband and son went out to receive a small jar of ashes.

Unlike Mr. Hai’s story, Mrs. Hau’s case is the story of families going into isolation at facilities to receive COVID-19 treatment.

Many patients were unable to contact their relatives because COVID-19 treatment hospitals were overwhelmed, plus the special isolation requirements for infected patients.

In intensive care units, many COVID-19 patients were hospitalised alone and eventually died alone.

These sad partings are events that no one can predict, with losses hurting even more as no one has time to say goodbye.