PART 6: THE SINGLE FATHER AND THE 24-HOUR BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL
People often say that "raising one child strips you of your skin"; I was raising three all at once. The period from ages 1 to 5 for Ava, Claire, and June was a blur of nightmarish, exhausting days. Even now, looking back, I still don't fully understand how I survived.
My day began at 4:00 AM and ended at 1:00 AM. To afford formula, diapers, and medicine for the three of them, I took on every imaginable odd job. During the day, I worked as an on-call plumber and electrician at construction sites. When night fell, after managing to leave the girls with a kind elderly neighbor for two hours, I squeezed in shifts as a tech-ride driver or carried heavy sacks as a porter at the long-distance bus terminal. There were days when I was so utterly depleted that I would nod off while driving, forcing myself to slap my own face hard just to wake up, driven by the thought of three little faces waiting for me at home.
My absolute greatest terror was when the girls fell ill. Triplets often have fragile immune systems. If one started coughing, without fail, the other two would be sniffling by the next morning.
I will never forget the winter when the girls turned 3. A severe flu epidemic swept through our town. That night, all three of them simultaneously spiked high fevers over $39^\circ\text{C}$ ($102.2^\circ\text{F}$), their tiny bodies convulsing. In the middle of a freezing, drizzling midnight storm, I didn't have money for a taxi. Alone, I strapped Claire to my chest, cradled Ava and June in my arms, and walked nearly three kilometers to the district hospital. My thin jacket was soaked through with rainwater and cold sweat.
Arriving at the emergency room, I collapsed directly at the feet of the on-duty doctor, my voice completely hoarse:
"Doctor, please save my children! I beg of you, please save them!"
Looking at my disheveled, ragged appearance, everyone thought I was a madman. That night, the three children were put on IV drips, huddled together on a single, cramped hospital bed. I sat flat on the dirty floor, holding their three tiny hands pierced with IV needles, feeling a profound mix of heartache and absolute helplessness. I didn't even have 50,000 VND left in my pocket to buy a single bowl of porridge. The hunger, the cold, and the sheer humiliation suffocated my mind. I wept in that dark corner—a rare vulnerability I never dared let my daughters see.
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Yet, life was not entirely devoid of light. It was during those incredibly desperate years that I experienced miraculous sparks of warmth. It was when Claire took her very first steps; she didn't toddle toward anyone else but ran straight into my arms, giggling. It was when Ava, a mere 4 years old, learned to wring a wet towel to wipe my forehead when I fell asleep from exhaustion on our hard wooden bench. And it was their first day at kindergarten when the teacher asked, "Where is your father?"—and all three pointed their tiny fingers in unison toward the gate where I stood waving: "There is our Dad Nam!"
My name had become permanently tethered to the word "Dad" before I even realized it. I was no longer Uncle Nam; I was Dad Nam—their sole anchor, and their entire world.
