The Middle Kingdom (9 page)

Why did you do that?
someone said. Zillah? Maybe not. When I opened my eyes I was out of the cab and Walter was leading me down Dongdan Street in search of the clinic. Whoever had spoken wouldn't acknowledge it. I peered into the faces I passed, looking for my interrogator, but the people cut their eyes away and then slid them back and looked furtively at my sweat-drenched clothes and the hair knotted down my back in a ratty tangle.
Why do you live this way?
I heard. I spun around, wrenching myself from Walter's grasp, but behind us was only a mass of black-haired people, eyes cast down.

I'd given Walter the scrap of paper Dr Zhang had given me, on which he'd written the clinic address in both English and Chinese characters. Walter kept stopping people and waving this paper under their eyes, and those who had any English told us to go down the road and then take a right. We walked to the intersection and turned right: no clinic. Walter showed the address to another man, who told us to go back where we'd come from and turn left. We found nothing but a bookstore, a small restaurant with a window full of roasted ducks, and a shop selling radios. By then Walter was half carrying and half dragging me. Each face I passed seemed to speak to me and I wanted to stop, to ask what they meant. Why were they looking at me? They got up in the morning, dressed, ate, worked, shopped, talked, came home to their families or to bare walls, narrow beds, nights that stretched on forever and a world full of things they couldn't have, that we were all reaching for: light, beauty, connection, hope. And still they got up, dressed, ate, worked. As if they knew why.

I could tell you
, I heard; Zillah. It had to be. I coughed so hard my ribs ached. More people, more directions: turn right, turn left, turn right. The bells of the bicycles rang and rang, chiming off-key. At last we ran into an old man who sent us back down the road to the
hutong
we'd disregarded. The
hutong
: the alley. Beijing alleys run like veins, piercing the blocks of tall new buildings lining the avenues and leading to the blocks' secret cores, the remains of the old city. This alley was dark and narrow and cobblestoned, lined with crumbling old houses and littered with paper and broken boxes and leaves and bones. But at its end was a courtyard surrounded by stately brick buildings – the hospital, at last. One wing bore a small sign in English, announcing the foreigners' clinic.

The door to the clinic was open, but we saw no one inside at first. A high white ceiling, glossy yellow walls, a splintered wooden floor. The rooms off the corridor were empty, inhabited only by metal cots and wooden desks and chairs, everything scrubbed and worn. At the end of the hall, at the reception desk, two women sat cackling and sipping tea from a battered metal thermos. Their broad faces shone beneath white paper caps.

Walter was trembling with the anxiety that always overcame him in strange places. ‘Doctor,' he said, his voice cracking. ‘My wife needs a doctor.'

The two women looked at each other. ‘
Meiguo ren
,' said the shorter one. She reached behind her and brought up a tattered, paperbound book, which she held in front of me. I looked at it dully, not knowing how often I was to see it.
A
Dialogue in the Hospitals
, I read, beneath a set of Chinese characters.
English-Chinese.
The woman opened the book to the third page and pointed out an English phrase.
Do you want to see a doctor?

‘Yes,' I said, and looked at her closely. She had a mole below her mouth and three creases on her neck.

She blinked at me. ‘Hello?' I said.

She smiled but didn't say anything. I pointed to the next line in the dialogue, the line assigned to ‘Patient.'
Yes, where shall I register?

She nodded approvingly and pointed to the next line, marked ‘Nurse.'
Have you been here before?

I shook my head no and she pulled out a stack of forms. My ears were ringing and several conversations seemed to be going on inside my head at once. ‘I can't do this,' I told Walter. ‘Can you?'

‘I'll try,' he said. I collapsed in one of the slipcovered armchairs stretched down the hall in neat rows, each one dotted dead center with a crisp white doily. Behind me, I heard the two women and Walter struggling to make sense of each other and the forms. The women spoke no English and Walter didn't know a word of Mandarin. The women flipped through the book, pointing out sentences for each other and speaking louder and louder. Walter raised his voice, enunciated more and more clearly, separated his syllables more distinctly. ‘They don't understand loud English either,' I told him. Walter shot me a dirty look and struggled on, repeating my name, my birthdate, our hotel address, the reason we were here – why were we here? – and our host organization. The women nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled, understanding nothing. Walter stopped talking and filled in the forms. One of the women took them with her into another room, while I sat and sniffed at the sweet, warm smell in the hall. Soap and herbs and starch and fabric dried in the sun; nothing like an American hospital. Walter threw himself into the armchair beside me, mumbling something I didn't catch, and then the two women reappeared and led us into the doctor's office.

The doctor was young and spoke very little English, relying on a bilingual dictionary and the same book the women at the front desk had used. Her office was almost bare: a desk, three wooden chairs, a glass jar full of warped tongue depressors, an ancient stethoscope and an even older blood-pressure cuff. I could feel Walter shuddering at the germs, at the microscopic cracks in the wood. The doctor waved us into the chairs.

‘
Wo jiang de hua ni ting de dong ting bu dong?
' she said, slowly and precisely. All I could catch from that was
de dong –
understand. I suspected she was asking me if I could understand her.

‘
Wo bu dong
,' I said faintly, the first phrase I'd learned. ‘
Bu dong
.' I don't understand.

She smiled and bent over her books. Walter, waving me silent, took my phrasebook from my purse and began flipping through it. ‘Let me deal with this,' he said. ‘How do I tell her I'm a scientist?'

‘Look up “occupations,”' I whispered.

‘Doctor, lawyer, teacher, farmer,' he muttered. ‘Closest is doctor, I guess. What is “American”?'

‘
Meiguo ren
,' I told him.

The doctor, puzzled, was turning her head between us as if we were playing table tennis. Walter straightened himself and mangled the words he thought meant ‘American scientist.' ‘
Wo shi Meiguo ren yisheng
,' he said.

The doctor's face crinkled in a smile. ‘Dr Amurr-ika?' she said.

I closed my eyes. Dr America – not far from Walter's vision of who he was.

‘Bronchitis,' Walter said loudly. ‘Bronchitis.
Bronchitis!
'

The doctor shook her head and thumbed through her book, opening it to the entry for ‘Cold.' She held the book so I could see it, and she read the English version of the first line haltingly. ‘What seems to be the problem?'

I read the second line back to her, pointing at the Chinese version as I did.
I think I have a cold
,
I read, but I shook my head at the same time. ‘No. No cold.'

She took my temperature and laid her stethoscope over my chest and back, tapping me lightly with her fingers while indicating that I should breathe. Then she flipped to the next entry in her book and showed it to me.

‘Pneumonia,' I read. I shook my head again.

‘Pneu
-monia
,' she said loudly. ‘Yes.' She pointed out the appropriate lines.
Do you cough up any phlegm?

I nodded reluctantly.

She pointed to the next line.
What color is it?

‘Yellow,' I said.

‘Yen-no?'

I pointed at the word in the book; she nodded and pointed again.
Do you have fever?

I nodded again. She knew that; she had taken my temperature. Maybe she wanted to know how long I'd had it.

‘Bronchitis!' Walter said. ‘Tell her you have bronchitis!'

I heaved myself over and grabbed her dictionary and her handbook. Her handbook had entries for ‘Cold' and ‘Pneumonia' but nothing for ‘Bronchitis.' I found the word ‘bronchus' in her dictionary and showed her the Chinese definition, tapping frantically at my chest and coughing, coughing. ‘Bronchitis,' I repeated.

‘No,' she said, and tapped her own chest in return. ‘Lungs full.' She took back her handbook and pointed out a section to me. ‘Need draw blood. Chest X-films.'

From a drawer she pulled a needle and a syringe that looked as old as her stethoscope; I didn't want to imagine the age of her X-ray machine. Likely it dated, as did everything here, from the early 1950s. One shot from that and I'd glow for years.

‘No,' I told her. ‘No blood. No films.' She frowned and I tugged at Walter's sleeve.

‘What do you want me to do?' he whispered. ‘Should we leave?'

‘The paper I gave you,' I said. ‘There's a phone number on it. Dr Yu's husband works here in the hospital somewhere, and he promised he'd help if we had problems. Call him – his name is Dr Zhang Meng.'

‘What good will that do? Maybe we can get this woman to give you some pills.' He turned to the doctor. ‘Medicine?' he said. ‘Erythromycin?'

‘Bed,' she said firmly, studying her book. ‘Here, hospital.' She checked something in her dictionary. ‘Ox-y-gen,' she said. ‘Penicillin, by needle. Not go home.'

Walter rolled his eyes at me. ‘I'll call,' he said, and he stepped into the hall. I drew my knees to my chest, trying to splint my racking cough. Trying to figure out what was happening to me. The doctor came over, syringe in hand. ‘Blood?' she wheedled.

I pressed my arms to my chest and covered my elbows with my hands, promising myself I'd run before I'd let her stick me.

‘No,' I said firmly, and then I faded away again, caught up in a vision of the children at the model nursery school we'd visited earlier in the week. Row after row of obedient faces, singing a welcome in unison. On the playground they'd moved in neat groups like flocks of birds. ‘Chinese children very well-behaved,' our guide, Lou, had told us, as our group of Western wives and mothers gaped in astonishment. ‘We give discipline early,' one of the teachers said. ‘Discourage bad behavior.' There were no children crying, beating up on each other, tearing the wings off of flies; no solitary ones hiding in bushes or dreaming alone at the top of a ladder. The scene had charmed us all but left us all uneasy, as uneasy as I was making this doctor now. I knew she was wondering how I'd been brought up, why I was so resistant to her well-meaning help. I retreated into unconsciousness, the melody the children had sung repeating in my ears, and when I came to myself Dr Zhang was there, arguing furiously with Walter in front of the silent young doctor.

‘She is correct,' Dr Zhang said. ‘Wife has pneumonia, absolutely. We will admit her here. This is the best hospital in our country.'

‘No way,' Walter said, so angry he was shaking. ‘No way. We have to leave tomorrow for my lecture tour.'

‘Yes?' Dr Zhang said. ‘You wish her sick in Xian, where there is no good hospital? You wish to cause extraordinary incident?'

Walter glared at him coldly. ‘Bronchitis,' he said. ‘She's had it before. All she needs is some erythromycin.' He was eight inches taller than Dr Zhang, but Dr Zhang stood firm.

‘It started as viral bronchitis,' Dr Zhang said patiently. ‘But it's pneumonia now, most probably pneumococcal. Bronchitis interferes with the clearing of bacteria from the lungs. She has consolidation now in right and left lower lobes – she should not be moved.'

‘Walter,' I said feebly, ‘I think he's right. I've never felt this way before.'

His face fell and he stared at me miserably. ‘Really?' he said. ‘Really? Jesus, Grace, I don't know what to do. All the lectures are set up and they're expecting me, and Katherine and I have been working on this joint presentation …'

‘Katherine?' I said.

‘Katherine Olmand,' Walter said. His cheeks reddened. ‘The ichthyologist? You sat next to her at the banquet? We've been working on this thing, a comparison of British and American lakes …' His voice trailed off. ‘But if you're sick,' he said. ‘If you're really this sick – I thought this morning maybe you were just giving me a hard time.'

I thought for a minute and then looked over at Dr Zhang. ‘You go,' I told Walter. ‘I'll stay here. Come back and get me when you're done.'

Dr Zhang, kind man, picked up his cue. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘Absolutely. You stay. My wife and I will look after you here, and make sure all medical care goes well.'

Walter's relief was written on his face. ‘She'll be fine here,' Dr Zhang said, as if reading Walter's mind. ‘Tell the people at your hotel what has happened, and have them send her papers here. I'll speak to the hospital director and to the CAST liaison. You give your lectures, and return here when you are done. How long will you be?'

‘Eight days,' Walter said slowly. He turned and touched my face, and I watched him struggling not to smile. I couldn't blame him – hell for Walter would be eight days in a Chinese hospital nursing a sick wife. Eight days watching me when he could have been listening to applause. I wondered what he was working on with Katherine Olmand, and why he'd spoken of her. He'd dropped her name several times; he'd been dropping it all week. But Katherine was dry and wry and at least as smart as Walter, and I'd never known him to find that attractive in a woman.

‘You'll be all right here?' Walter said.

‘Fine,' I told him. I had never felt worse in my life, but I knew having Walter around wasn't going to fix me.