Chapter 2 — The Chorus of Those Out of Rhythm

The neurology clinic was on the fourth floor of the hospital, and Ms. Nguyet had been sitting on a blue plastic chair in the hallway waiting for nearly an hour. She was wearing an ivory silk ao dai, the dress she often wore when she had important matters, although she herself could not explain why she chose to dress so neatly to go to the doctor. Maybe, she thought, that was her way of reassuring herself that no matter the outcome, she was still the same woman standing tall and conducting a choir.

"Miss Nguyet, please come in."

Doctor Lam Gia Phuc is a middle-aged man with a calm face and a slow voice, the kind of voice that makes listeners feel secure even when he hasn't said anything. He reviewed the test results, brain scans, and notes that Ms. Nguyet had recounted about her symptoms during the preliminary examination last week.

"I'll tell you straight so you don't have to wait any longer," Dr. Phuc said, placing the file on the table. "Her symptoms — resting tremors, mild shoulder stiffness, diminished handwriting, and the slowing of reflexes I observed when she entered the room — were consistent with a diagnosis of early-stage Parkinson's."

Ms. Nguyet sat still, her hands clasped together on her thighs. She had prepared herself for this, having told herself a hundred times during the two weeks waiting for the results that no matter what the doctor said, she would accept it with the calmness of someone who had lived through many losses. But when the word "Parkinson" actually rang out in this small room, a cold feeling ran down her spine, as if her body had just received a sentence that her mind had not yet prepared for.

"How will this disease... progress, doctor?"

"This is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that progresses slowly over time. There is no complete cure, but it can be well controlled with medication and exercise." Doctor Phuc said, his voice still calm. "In the early stages like you are now, many patients still maintain most of their daily activities for many years. But I need to be honest with you: hand tremors will be unpredictable, some days are mild, some days are severe, especially when stressed or tired. And in the long term, some patients also have short-term memory problems, although the severity varies from person to person."

"Memory." Ms. Nguyet repeated those two words, her voice trembling slightly. "Doctor, what do you mean... I could forget?"

"It's possible, but not certain, and not everyone will experience it to the severity. I don't want you to worry too much at this stage." Doctor Phuc looked at her, his eyes softened a bit when he saw her expression change slightly. "What do you do, if I may ask?"

"I conduct a choir. For twenty years."

"Then I understand why shaking hands makes you so worried." He nodded and wrote something on the prescription. "The good news is that music, specifically rhythm, actually has a positive effect on Parkinson's patients. Many studies show that musical rhythm helps improve mobility, even helping patients walk more firmly. Don't rush to think you have to give up the job you love. Just adjust the way you work, and don't let your body be too stressed."

Ms. Nguyet held the prescription in her hand, the words blurred before her eyes not because of shaking hands, but because of the tears she was trying to hold back. She thanked the doctor, stood up, and walked out of the clinic with her straight gait as always, only her right hand in her long coat pocket was squeezing the prescription so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

***

Thu An arrived on Saturday afternoon, just as promised on the phone. She got out of a taxi in front of the old apartment gate, dragging a small suitcase. Her eyes scanned the gray building with peeling walls and tangled electrical wires across the balconies - where she grew up but hadn't been back for two years.

The third floor apartment is still the same, not much has changed since the last time she visited. The wooden shelf holding the parents' photo frame is still in the corner of the living room, only the chrysanthemum vase next to it has been replaced. Thu An put her suitcase on the floor, looked around, and a feeling of familiarity mixed with strangeness rushed into her heart - the feeling she always had every time she returned to this house, as if she were both the owner and a stranger in the space that once raised her.

"You're back."

Mrs. Nguyet walked out of the kitchen, holding a dish towel, looking a bit more flustered than usual. Mother and daughter stood facing each other for a while, neither of them knew whether to hug each other or just nod. The two years of not seeing each other had turned a simple hug into something awkward.

"Have you gone to the doctor yet?" Thu An asked in a straightforward voice, the kind of question of someone accustomed to getting straight to the point in audit meetings.

"Already." Ms. Nguyet nodded, trying to keep her voice gentle. "The doctor said mom has early stage Parkinson's. It's not too serious. You'll be fine if you take the medicine."

"Parkinson's is not a 'not very serious' disease, Mom." Thu An frowned, stepped closer, her eyes scanned her mother's right hand, which was shaking slightly while holding a dish towel. "It's a degenerative neurological disease. I read about it on the way here. It gets worse over time, and there's no cure."

"I know." Ba Nguyet's voice dropped slightly. "The doctor has already explained."

"So why do you still plan to continue conducting the choir?" Thu An asked, and in that question there was something a little harsher than she intended to express. "Mom, you should rest and stay healthy. I will find a better doctor and find better treatment methods, but you can't continue to stand on the command podium for two or three hours every night like before."

"That's my whole life, Thu An." Mrs. Nguyet looked at her daughter, her eyes were both determined and a little pleading. "For twenty years, that choir has been more than just my job. It's my second family, where I..."

She stopped, not finishing her sentence, but both mother and daughter understood where that sentence would lead - it would touch the night fifteen years ago, the night that Mrs. Nguyet stood on stage while her husband was dying in the hospital, the night that Thu An, fifteen years old, stood alone at the hospital bed waiting for a mother who arrived forty minutes late.

"I know that's my second family," Thu An said, her voice noticeably colder. "I've known that since I was fifteen."

The air in the room sagged, heavy like an invisible block of stone had just fallen between two people. Mrs. Nguyet opened her mouth to say something, but then she stopped, turned and walked into the kitchen, leaving Thu An standing alone in the middle of the living room with an unopened suitcase and unresolved memories.

***

That night, Thu An couldn't sleep. She lay on the old bed in the room that used to be her room as a teenager — now turned into a storage room with a few cardboard boxes stacked in the corner — and looked up at the ceiling, hearing her mother bustling about in the room next door, probably preparing things for tomorrow's practice session.

She thought about the phone call Tuesday night, about her mother's unusually weak voice, about the feeling of anxiety that made her immediately arrange work to fly home even though her heart was still full of resentment. She thought about the release notice her mother had mentioned on the phone but hadn't had time to explain clearly, about the choir that her mother loved more than the whole family.

Her phone vibrated on the bedside table. A text message from a colleague at the auditing company, asking when she would return to work. Thu An looked at the screen for a long time, then turned off the phone and placed the phone face down.

She had planned to return for just a few days, deal with her mother's health, then return to the city to continue her familiar busy life — where every number was clear, every report had logic, unlike her messy relationship with her mother, whom she had never really understood.

But lying here, in the old room, listening to her mother cough softly through the thin wall, hearing the sound of trembling fingers dropping something on the floor and then sighing patiently picking it up again, Thu An suddenly felt something in her heart shake - not quite forgiveness, not quite love, but a vague awareness that perhaps, this time, she wouldn't be able to leave as quickly as before.

She closed her eyes, trying to sleep, but the last image that lingered in her mind before falling asleep was not audit numbers or work deadlines, but her mother's trembling hand trying to hold tightly to a conducting wand, as if trying to hold on tightly to what was left of a life she had devoted entirely to music.