Fauzia was a devout Muslim and a senior nurse at Singapore General Hospital (SGH). For her, superstitions and taboos seemed distant and almost foreign. She had grown up with a strong belief in faith, prayer, and the will of Allah, and as a medical professional, she relied on science, logic, and reason. Working in a place like SGH, however, meant encountering a mix of cultures and beliefs. Some of her colleagues had peculiar rituals that she didn’t fully understand. While Fauzia respected their customs, she didn’t share their beliefs.
One night, Fauzia was preparing for a long and demanding shift in the medical ward. Many of the patients were critically ill and elderly, including two who were in comas, suffering from severe cardiovascular incidents. Both had Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders, which meant no efforts would be made to revive them if their conditions worsened.
Before heading to the hospital, Fauzia stopped by the kopitiam below her block to pick up a quick meal. She bought two large chicken pau, thinking they would make a hearty snack to sustain her through the long night ahead. However, when she unpacked her supper in the staff pantry at the hospital, her colleagues’ startled reactions caught her off guard.
“Why would you bring pau during your night shift?” one of them, Faridah, asked, her expression a mix of concern and disbelief.
“What’s wrong with that?” Fauzia asked, puzzled.
“You don’t know?” said another nurse, Jia Lin, lowering her voice. “Bringing pau at night, especially during a shift, is considered bad luck. It’s like inviting death—people say it’s like packing bodies, and in a hospital, that’s not something to take lightly.”
Fauzia was taken aback. She had heard about various superstitions from her colleagues over the years, but this one was new to her. She couldn’t help but smile. “It’s just food,” she said. “There’s no harm in that.”
Jia Lin explained further, “It’s not just about the food. The word ‘pau’ sounds like the Chinese word for ‘to wrap’ or ‘to pack.’ It’s like packing something up, like you would wrap a body in a shroud. In a hospital, especially on a night shift, it can be seen as inviting bad luck or even death.”
Faridah, who was also Muslim, looked uneasy. “Fauzia, I know we don’t usually believe in these things, but sometimes it’s best to respect the culture around us. Maybe just be careful.”
Fauzia wasn’t easily swayed. She was a nurse, trained to deal with life and death, and she wasn’t about to let an old superstition dictate her actions. She sat down and ate her pau, ready to face whatever the night had in store.
The first few hours of her shift were uneventful. Fauzia and her colleagues went about their usual duties—checking on patients, administering medications, and responding to occasional alarms. But around 3 a.m., the atmosphere in the ward changed. The air felt colder and heavier, and the lights flickered briefly, as if there was a power surge. Fauzia heard a faint, unsettling sound, like a low hum or murmur, but she brushed it off, attributing it to fatigue. She had been on her feet for over twelve hours, after all.
Then, an alarm rang out. It was from bed 32, where one of the comatose patients, Mr. Abdullah, lay. His vitals were dropping rapidly, and Fauzia’s heart sank. She checked his file—DNR. There was nothing she could do but watch as his heart rate continued to fall until the monitor showed a flat line.
She called the on-duty doctor to confirm the time of death and began preparing the body. As she worked, she couldn’t help but recall the warning from earlier in the night about "packing bodies." A chill ran down her spine, but she pushed the thought away, focusing on her duties.
Less than an hour later, another alarm went off. This time it was bed 27, where another comatose patient, Madam Fatimah, lay. Just hours before, her condition had been stable, but now she too was slipping away. Her breathing became shallow, and her pulse weakened until it, too, flatlined. Fauzia was stunned. Two DNR patients, gone within an hour. She couldn’t shake a sense of unease.
As the night wore on, the ward grew quiet, but the tension lingered. News of the two deaths spread quickly, and it wasn’t long before her colleagues were whispering about the "incident." Some teased her playfully, but others looked at her with concern, as if she had unknowingly invited something dark into the ward.
Over the following weeks, Fauzia couldn’t shake the events of that night. There were more deaths, even on shifts when she hadn’t brought pau, but something had changed. It was as if a shadow had been cast over her time at the hospital. Whenever she passed the staff pantry, she remembered that night and the strange, cold feeling that had filled the air.
One evening, after another long shift, she approached Faridah. “Do you really think it was the pau?” Fauzia asked, hoping to make sense of everything.
Faridah hesitated before answering. “I don’t know, Fauzia. Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe there’s something to these beliefs, even if we don’t understand them. We’ve both seen things in this hospital that don’t always have a logical explanation. Maybe it’s just better to be cautious.”
Reflecting on Faridah’s words, Fauzia realised that working in a place like SGH was not just about science and medicine. It was about life, death, and everything in between—the things that couldn’t be explained by logic alone. Whether it was fate or something else, there were forces at play she didn’t fully understand.
To this day, Fauzia remains uncertain about the events of that fateful night. But one thing is for sure: she never brought pau to work again. Sometimes, during those quiet, late-night hours, when the ward was silent and still, she could almost feel that same cold, heavy air settling over the hospital. And she would wonder, just for a moment, if there was something unseen, watching, waiting for someone else to make the same mistake.