He turned his face to the wall when he saw us walk in.
Wang Gan relieved the awkwardness with his brand of comic chiding: How did this happen, eminent knight? Tilting at windmills again? Or duelling with a romantic rival?
You should have told me you were tired of living, Li Shou said. You didn’t have to go looking for a police car.
He’s faking it, Little Lion said, that’s why he’s not talking to us. It’s all your fault, Li Shou, for turning him into a deranged individual.
He’s not deranged, Li defended himself. He’s a master at pretending.
Suddenly Chen burst into tears and lowered his head as far as it would go. His shoulders heaved; he scraped the wall with his good hand.
A nurse rushed into the room and gave us an icy stare. Stop that, Number 9, she demanded as she smacked the steel headboard.
He abruptly stopped crying and turned his head so we could see his face. He looked at us with a murky gaze.
The nurse pointed to a bouquet of flowers we’d laid on the nightstand and made a face as she sniffed the air. No flowers in the wards, she said sternly. Hospital policy.
Policy? Little Lion said. Not even Beijing hospitals have such a policy.
The nurse showed no interest in debating the issue. She turned to Chen Bi. Get your family over here to settle up, she said. Today’s your last day.
What kind of attitude is that? I asked unhappily.
With pinched lips, she said, A workday attitude.
Is a humanistic spirit alien to you people? Wang Gan said.
I only work here. If you people are flush with humanistic spirit, then pay his medical bills. I think our director would reward each of you with a plaque that says: Model Humanist.
There was more Wang Gan wanted to say, but Li Shou stopped him.
The nurse stormed out of the ward.
We exchanged glances, wondering what we should do. The treatment costs for injuries as serious as Chen Bi’s were sure to be astronomical.
Why did you have them bring me here? Chen Bi asked accusingly. What the hell business is it of yours if I want to die? I’d have done so if you hadn’t interfered, and I wouldn’t be lying here suffering.
It wasn’t us, Wang Gan said. The cop who hit you called for an ambulance.
If it wasn’t you, he said with a total lack of warmth, then what are you doing here? Come to pity me? Give me sympathy? I don’t need it. You can all leave, and take those toxic flowers with you — they give me a headache. Were you thinking of paying my hospital expenses? I don’t need that either. I’m a formidable knight. The King is my good friend, so is the Queen. The paltry expenses for this hospital stay will come out of the national treasury. But even if the royal couple prefers not to settle up, I don’t need your charity. Both my daughters are more beautiful than goddesses, their good fortune as vast as the Eastern Sea. If they do not sit on the Queen’s throne, they will serve as the King’s consort. They could buy this hospital with money that falls through their fingers.
Sensei, of course we understood what this crazy talk from Chen Bi was all about. He definitely was faking. In his mind he was clear as the surface of a mirror. Faking things can become a habit, and if you do it long enough, you can start sliding over the edge. We were on tenterhooks when we came to the hospital with Li Shou. We had no problem with taking along some flowers, some encouraging words, and a few hundred yuan, but to be responsible for a huge hospital bill, that would be… after all, we weren’t blood relatives, and the way he was… now if he’d been a normal person… In the end, Sensei, though we were all principled, sympathetic individuals, we were just ordinary men, and nowhere near noble enough to bail a misfit out of a jam. So Chen Bi’s crazy talk was intended to give us a face-saving way out. We all looked at Li Shou. He scratched his head and said, You just worry about getting better, Don. Since you were hit by a police car, they should be responsible for your hospital bill. If not, we’ll think of something.
Get out, Chen Bi said. If I could use my arms, your stupid heads would taste my spear.
There was no better time to leave. We scooped up the flowers, which were spewing a low-grade fragrance, and were on our way out when the nurse walked in with a man in a white smock. She introduced him to us as the assistant director for finances, and us to him as Bed 9’s visitors. He presented us with a bill totalling more than twenty thousand yuan, including emergency room treatment. He stressed the fact that this was their base cost; the normal computation would be much, much higher. Chen Bi was in full foul throat while this was going on: Get out of here, you profiteer, you and your exorbitant fees, you bunch of corpse-eating maggots. You mean nothing to me. He swung his good arm, banging it into the wall, and then felt around on the nightstand for a bottle, which he picked up and flung over to the bed opposite, hitting a critically old man who was getting an IV. Get out. This hospital is my daughter’s and you’re her hired help. One word from me and your rice bowl will be shattered.
Just as things were getting out of hand, Sensei, a woman in a black dress and veil walked into the ward. You’d know who it was without my telling you. That’s right, it was Chen Bi’s second daughter, the one who’d survived the fire at the toy factory, but was horribly disfigured.
Chen Mei drifted in like a spectre, the black dress and veil introducing mystery and a hellish gloom into the ward. The uproar came to an abrupt stop, like pulling the plug on a noisy machine. Even the stuffy heat turned to chill. A bird on the lily magnolia tree called out softly.
We couldn’t see her face, or an inch of skin anywhere. Only her figure was visible, the long limbs of a fashion model. But we knew it was Chen Mei. Little Lion and I instinctively thought back to the infant in swaddling clothes of more than twenty years before. She nodded to us, then said to the assistant director: I am his daughter. I will pay what he owes you.
Sensei, I have a friend in Beijing, a burn specialist at the Number 304 Hospital, a man with the stature of an academician, who told me that the mental anguish burn victims experience may be worse than the physical pain. The intense shock and unspeakable agony of seeing their ruined faces in the mirror for the first time is nearly impossible to endure. Such people need incomparable courage to go on living.
Sensei, people are products of their environment. Under certain circumstances, a coward can be transformed into a warrior, a bandit can perform kind deeds, and someone too stingy to spend the smallest coin might part with a large sum. Her appearance on the scene and the courage it took shamed us, and that shame manifested itself in a willingness to spend our money on a good cause. Li Shou was first, and then us. We all said, Good niece Chen Mei, we’ll take care of your father’s expenses.
Thank you for your generous offer, she said unemotionally, but we have been in so many people’s debt we’ll never be able to clear the accounts.
Get out! Chen Bi bellowed. You black-veiled devil. How dare you palm yourself off as my daughter! One of my daughters is a student in Spain, romantically involved with a Prince, and will soon be married. The other is in Italy, where she has bought Europe’s oldest winery, from where a ten-thousand-ton ship with the finest wine is sailing to China.