Chapter 2
Chapter 2
July 5 – Overcast
My tonsils are inflamed. My cold has gotten worse too: runny nose, headache, the lot.
Why isn’t the medicine helping at all? I feel awful…
I miss my husband.
I remember another time when I had a cold and tonsillitis together. I couldn’t eat a thing. Even swallowing my own saliva hurt like hell, so I survived those few days on glucose and nutrient infusions.
My husband’s family has money and power, but neither can solve everything. When I couldn’t eat, there was nothing he could do except stay beside me every minute of every day.
I remember how he followed me everywhere. If I hadn’t chased him out of the bathroom, he would have followed me in there too.
Whenever I didn’t need both hands, he would hold my free hand tight. I couldn’t pull away, so I let him keep it.
During those days, he was always gazing at me in silence, his eyes full of heartache and guilt. His expression plainly said two things: “Wifey feels sick. Wifey’s hurting,” and “It’s all my fault. I didn’t take good enough care of him.”
My throat hurt too much to speak, so I often gave his cheek a gentle pinch to comfort that enormous, guilt-ridden puppy.
After I left the hospital, my husband rarely let me eat anything that might irritate my throat. From then on, my work bag was stocked with boxes of watermelon-frost lozenges and malva nuts. No matter how much I hated the taste, he insisted I take one after teaching each day.
And now my cold is back, my tonsils are inflamed again, and I’m lying on a damp bed in a gay conversion center, propped against a filthy headboard as I struggle to write in my diary…
My husband, where are you…?
All of a sudden, I miss the watermelon-frost lozenges and malva nuts you used to press into my hand.
If none of this had happened, I would never throw another tantrum over not wanting to take them.
July 6 – Rain
After several overcast days, it finally started raining.
The floor is even damper now. The bedding is so wet it feels as though I could wring water from it.
Lying on a bed like this leaves the entire lower half of my body icy cold. A dull ache has crept into my bones, but I’ve ignored it.
Ever since I was little, my arms and legs have been easier to injure than other people’s. When my dad dressed me, he would often get only halfway through before we had to go to the hospital.
My husband once asked me why. Without changing my expression, I told him:
“If you had a careless father who never learned from experience, you’d know what it feels like to finish getting dressed with a dislocated joint.”
Of course, it wasn’t entirely my dad’s fault. My limbs simply were more vulnerable than most. Dislocations and fractures were practically routine.
They stopped getting injured so easily as I grew older, but the condition I was born with means I have to be especially careful to keep them warm.
After two days in this bed, all my past efforts have gone down the drain.
I wish the sun would come out. At least then I could take the bedding outside to dry.
My head still aches. My cold still hasn’t gone away. My throat still hurts terribly… God, this is killing me.
July 7 – Overcast
After I’d spent three days in bed, some people decided they couldn’t stand it anymore.
One of them complained to the staff that I was putting on an act. Why should a tiny cold excuse me from work for three whole days?
Oh, I forgot to mention: they show us films in the morning, and in the afternoon we have to work.
There are no chairs. We work on our feet the entire afternoon, doing odd little jobs.
Assembling parts, oiling components, that sort of thing.
I’m good with my hands, so the staff praised me on my very first day.
The staff insisted, so I had no choice but to work despite being ill.
I stood at the workbench trying to keep busy. My legs buckled several times, and if the person next to me hadn’t grabbed me in time, I would have fallen.
The air in the workshop was terrible. A lot of people were smoking, and the stink of cheap tobacco kept pouring into my nose, making me cough and cough without end.
With my tonsils inflamed, swallowing already felt like dragging a knife down my throat. The nonstop coughing made it feel as if my throat were being torn open. The pain was unbearable.
When those people saw how badly I was coughing, they smoked even harder.
I don’t know what I ever did to offend them. I don’t know why they were targeting me like this.
Another tearing pain ripped through my throat. It became too much. I dropped to my knees, clutching my neck as I coughed and retched.
They watched coldly. Only the person beside me helped me up in a panic and kept shouting for a doctor.
I coughed up blood.
Now I’m back on that damp bed, leaning against the wall as I write.
The gay conversion center refused to spend money over “something so minor,” so they called in Miss Song, the young nurse I mentioned, and told her to treat me.
Before I could say anything, Miss Song lost her temper.
She told them furiously that she was still only a medical student, barely half a doctor. How could she compare to a physician at a proper hospital? If they left me in her care, weren’t they afraid she might get me killed?
For all that, Miss Song still promised to do everything she could to treat my throat. When Old Wang heard I couldn’t eat, he brought me some plain rice porridge from home.
July 10 – Clear
The sun has finally deigned to show itself, and my cold is gone too.
According to Miss Song, my throat is recovering well from the damage caused when I coughed up blood. She told me to keep it that way: no spicy food, no fried food, and a light diet.
As for why I haven’t written in several days, I have Miss Song to thank. She confiscated my diary.
“You actually dared to write in light this dim? Were you planning to cure your throat and then try going blind for the experience?”
Without waiting for excuses or protests, she took the diary away. Then she declared, with perfect self-righteousness, that she was temporarily confiscating it for the sake of my eyesight.
Fine. You win. I’ll listen to you.
Old Wang felt the sodden bed and gave me a merciless scolding. “You young people don’t take care of yourselves at all. Will you only be satisfied once you’re old and riddled with arthritis?”
Even as he said, “Why should I care what happens when you’re old? I won’t be around to see it,” he quietly brought in clean bedding from his own home, then took the old set away to wash and dry.
Honestly. Old people: sharp tongues, soft hearts.
Then Miss Song, she who confiscated my diary, and Old Wang, he of the sharp tongue and soft heart, brought me gifts. One gave me a desk lamp; the other, a thermos and a pile of warming patches.
Miss Song muttered, “If you weren’t so good-looking, I wouldn’t care whether you went blind,” while testing the lamp for me of her own accord. Then she forced me through a full set of eye exercises.
Old Wang had scolded me that morning and sworn he would never bother with me again. That evening, he appeared with a new thermos and personally stuck warming patches over my knees.
I pointed out, as tactfully as possible, that it was July and I had no need for warming patches. Old Wang insisted that the damp was bad for my joints. I might not need them on sunny days, but whenever it rained, I absolutely had to use them.
There was no arguing with him. I could only do as I was told.