When a nurse came into the room, she looked at me, looked at the machines around me, and started talking like an adult in a Peanuts cartoon. That was peculiar. It was only then that I noticed the tubes piercing my body. There were tubes everywhere, even in places I would normally insist on months of dating first. I recognized the IV in my arm and pulse oximeter on my finger, and could guess where the Foley catheter was going, but everything else was foreign to me. My first instinct was to jump up, pull all of the invaders out of me and run away. Something told me that I should probably sit still and wait to see what happened next.
Instead of the unfashionable Uniqlo clothes I brought to Beijing, I was wearing cheap white pajamas. You wear cheap robes with wide open backs in hospitals. These were pajamas. Not something you want to wear in public, but a full covering nonetheless. I briefly wondered who took off my clothes and dressed me like a kung fu padawan, but then I remembered that 99.99% of nurses in China are women. The nurse who did the sponge bath saw everything anyway.
A doctor came in and looked at me and the machines. When he spoke, I could tell that he was actually talking, but it was like he was whispering. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I immediately realized that I was in a car accident. I remembered everything, or at least everything I was going to remember; hitting the scooter, running over the scooter driver, getting hit by the truck, the car rolling over, Amy screaming.
“Where's Amy?” I asked the doctor in English. I knew in that moment that he was Chinese and that I was in a Chinese hospital, but it never occurred to me to speak to him in Chinese.
He whispered something back, but I could not tell what he was saying, or even what language he was speaking. Why was he whispering? Was I deaf? Do car accidents make people go deaf? But I could hear myself and I heard the nurse. She sounded like a muted trombone, but I heard her. I could hear some of the machines around me. Then I heard other people walking and random noises across the room or out in the hall. Obviously, I was not deaf.
The Great Wall of China part 1
Why were they whispering? Are Chinese hospitals like libraries and you're not allowed to make noise? What is unfashionable Uniqlo clothes?
ReplyDeleteYou'll know why they were whispering if you read the rest of it.
ReplyDeleteUniqlo is a Japanese clothes store that's very popular in China. It's more Target than Bloomingdale's