Shenzhen Zen

Sincere thanks to all of you for your kind words and to Spike for spreading the word. Here's a short version of life in a Cantonese cardio care unit. Currently on the mend with C in Shenzhen...
Stand By Me
Time passes a drop at a time when you're the only gweilo pinned to an IV drip in a Cantonese cardiac care ward.

My five geriatric wardmates in Hong Kong's United Christian Hospital, ward 5-B - an aging structure that according an elevator plaque, came courtesy of Hong Kong film pioneer and philanthropist Sir Run Run Shaw (who, with brother Run Me Shaw was the first to bring talkies to South Asia, not to mention '70s classics such as Monkey Kung Fu and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold) - are stoic.

Though we can only communicate through smiles, grimaces and occasional farts and belches, I assume that like me, questionable lifestyles and dietary choices -- a steady diet of cigarettes, booze, oily foods, stress and perhaps genetics -- have thrown us together as roomates for a few days and nights.

It takes about 12 hours to figure out the rhythms and customs of ward 5-B, including the distressing news that, unlike hospitals I've been unfortunate enough to be in in the United States, the visiting hours (5:30-8 p.m.) are strictly enforced.

It's also helpful if you packed your own toilet paper and some other sundries such as soap, shampoo, shaving gear and snacks. Fortunately, my first visitor, a coworker and angel of mercy named Olivia has shown up and cunningly talked her way into the ward outside of visiting hours with some of what I need, including TP.

Authorized visitors armed with books arrive a few hours later. The books are especially welcome as a steady diet of Hong Kong TV squawking from the ceiling rack is unintelligible and unendurable, though I am briefly rejuvenated when a bottled water ad featuring a Cantopop singer who goes by the name "Justin" is broadcast. "JUSTIN! JUSTIN! JUSTIN!" fans scream. "I hear you," I mutter. "I'll be better. I promise."

After the pain began shooting through my left arm and shoulder, coupled with heavy sweats and a chest that felt like the late John Candy was sitting on it and daring me to join him, I had presence of mind to pack a few things before hailing a cab. While I was sweating and cursing while fumbling for my fare, it was clear that the cabbie was also stressed and couldn't wait to eject me at the emergency ward entrance. Cantonese are notoriously superstitious and the thought of a foreign ghost haunting his taxi for eternity was obviously distressing.

Inside I went through a battery of questions, forms and tests before being wheeled up to bed 11 and my home away from home for three days. I am introduced to my doctor, a third year resident who looks all of 13-years old. The meals arrive on schedule at 9 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. and while my wardmates slurp theirs down with chopsticks from bowls, I am pointedly served a tray with a fork and fare piled on a plate.

Breakfast marks the biggest difference, though. While the others consume congee, a nutritious, kinda-sorta low fat mix of rice gruel and eggs along with a slice of toast, I am given a traditional American cardio care morning repast of a lunch meat and Velveeta white bread sandwich with a room temperature box of irradiated milk: expiration date December 13, 2017. The "milk" will survive longer than I, I fear. I also wonder what constitutes a heart healthy diet in Hong Kong medical lore? And why do all the medical workers and most of the visitors wear surgical masks? What disease can one contract from a heart attack patient?

(There are other cross-cultural medical puzzlements. At one point following an angiogram for which a very small incision was made in my right groin, I am told that I absolutely must lie still and flat on my back for 15 or so hours so as not to open "the wound." Nature, boredom and my digestive system take their course after 8 hours when I tell a male nurse that I must leave the bed to use the toilet.

("It is not permitted!" Hong Kong's male version of Miss Ratchett informs me sternly. "Do your business in the bed." He hands me a bed pan. Hostility ensues on my part and I insist that there are certain bodily functions I am not comfortable performing with a bed pan. A remedial English speaking doctor is summoned who nearly shouts in his insistence that straining my bowels on a toilet rather than in a bed pan could "open wide wound, break artery and kill you so fast." I reply that Lenny Bruce and Elvis both died on the toilet and that I am willing to take a chance. He is clearly not impressed nor knowledgable regarding Lenny and Elvis's last hours, but finally relents. I am happy to report that I have risked death by toilet and lived to write about it.)

Diagnosis: no damage to the heart muscles, though an angiogram to explore my arteries for clogs, wreckage and the fabled ruins of the Temple of Ancient Cheeseburgers is strongly advised. I agree to it and afterward, find myself recuperating for an hour along with a masked nurse named Maggie in what appears to be a combination storage room and MASH unit. She asks me if I want to listen to some music.

"English songs?" I ask.
"I will see," she says in that robotic English delivery by people not normally accustomed to speaking it. She sorts through some discs and shows me one labeled "TV Music" which contains an, uh...,er, eclectic mix that ranges from drek to almost delightful. "Disc 2, please," I say largely because Ben E King, The Temptations and even Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera are less likely to give me another heart attack than Air Supply, Lobo and Toto.

As King croons Stand By Me my eyes begin unaccountably welling up. I miss C who is away in Shanghai at the moment, but I am also suddenly unbearably homesick and overwhelmed with self-pity.

The past is calling. I want my dead mother. I want my second ex-wife. I want my son, my father, my sister and Stateside friends. I think of a picture in a New Yorker I had seen a few hours ago of a new adddition to Denver Art Museum and want at that moment more than anything to be walking outside it by the Red Grooms cowboy and Indian sculpture on a hard, clear, crisp sunny autumn afternoon to meet them all. I want to kick my way through crackling leaves.

"You are sad?" Maggie asks through her mask.
"I am homesick," I say. "Sorry."

Ben E. King is still singing. Maggie walks closer to the gurney, hands me a folded tissue, stands almost at attention and looks down at me, eyes wide and sincere above the mask.

"I will stand by you," she says.