Exhibit 1. The swelling was still visible a week after I sprained my left ankle.
The accident
When I was thirty years old, I went on crutches for the first time. The accident happened on a Thursday night, when I severely sprained my left ankle as I ran to catch a departing bus. That night, Bosco and I were heading to Chinatown to get some authentic Cantonese noodles with beef tripes. Bosco, a chronic procrastinator, took his time in the men’s room. By the time we came to the bus stop, the bus was already leaving. I ran toward it, waving my hand. As the bus was stopping for us, the accident happened. My left foot twisted, the ankle bent sharply inward, and I started to fall. Yet my obstinate body resisted it, exerting a strong torque on my ill-positioned left ankle. The pain shot up my left leg and tore my brain. I wanted to lie down and wait for help. But I knew that the passengers on the bus must have seen my amusing accident, and I fear of being laughed at. Driven by that fear, I limped forward onto the waiting bus.
“Are you okay?” Bosco followed behind me, taking a seat.
In the next hour, we had our authentic Cantonese food. I ate the entire meal with my left hand pressing a bag of ice against my left ankle. Yet the ice was not enough to suppress the swelling. By the end of the meal, my left ankle doubled in size and looked like an orange wrapped in a sock. Clearly I needed to go to an emergency room.
“You want to come with me?” I asked Bosco as I stepped into a taxicab.
“No, I think I will just take the Muni home.” Bosco thought it inappropriate to share a cab with someone needing emergency care.
Emergency room
I had seen quite a few advertising posters for some hospital’s ER service. The posters generally showed some hapless yet jolly souls getting into an accident, such as falling over a banana skin, and a big “Whoops”. The text at the right corner said emergency care under 30 minutes in Blah-Blah hospital.
After a full hour of waiting in the corridor of the emergency room of UCSF Medical Center, I tried to remember the name of the hospital advertised in those posters. With an ice pack wrapped around my left ankle, I waited patiently for a nurse’s attendance. There was only one more waiting patient, a man sitting in a wheelchair next to me. “I have been here since six o’clock”, he said, “and I am still waiting.” I was dismayed. It was past ten.
Finally a nurse took me into a room, measured my blood pressure, put me onto a wheeled bed, and pushed me into a ward. Ward 20, as marked on the ceiling. The wards were separated by plastic curtains. There was a small bedside table, and a phone.
I called two friends. I hoped to have someone drive me home after treatment; if I could not have that, I wanted to have someone at least carry my laptop home for me. I called Wendy first. Not only because she had a car, but also because the companionship of a woman is preferable.
I got Wendy’s voicemail. “Hello, Wendy. This is Huafeng. I sprained my ankle and I am in ER. I wonder if you can drive me home tonight.”
Next I called Yu Chen. He did not have a car; but he lived nearby and he could at least take my laptop home for me.
Again, I got the voicemail. “Hello, Yu Chen. This is Huafeng. I sprained my ankle and I am in ER of UCSF Medical Center. If you can stop by on your way home and take my laptop home, it will be great. I am in Ward 20.”
For the next twenty minutes I stared at the ceiling. The ward was surrounded by curtains on three sides and a wall in the back, so I could not see anything outside. Everything in my view was white, including the phone. I imagined myself to be in a modern art exhibition, where the pieces had been variations of the white color on canvases. I imagined myself to be a wounded soldier in a World War, surrounded by dying fellowmen, neglected by the nurses and my government. I let my thoughts drift through the whiteness.
The curtain was pulled open, and a nurse came in. I thought my wait was over. She handed me a walkie-talkie-phone. “You have a phone call from your friend.” Surprised, I took the phone. It was Wendy. She just received my message and wanted to know my condition.
“Since the doctor has not attended to my case, I guess I am not dying.” I attempted humor.
Wendy wanted to know when I would get out of ER, so that she could pick me up and drive me home. I had no idea, and told her that I would call her again if I got out before some reasonable hour. I narrated my embarrassing accident. We chatted for some time. It was wonderful not to be alone in the ward.
After some time, Yu Chen called. He came in after another ten minutes. As usual, Yu Chen spoke of his trouble in finding the ER, and in finding my ward. Then we talked about this and that. Yu Chen stayed until a nurse came to take X-ray of my ankle. He left his Time magazine to me. “Just remember to return it to me when you are done. I want to keep this issue.” He carried my laptop away.
The nurse who X-rayed me was a chubby young Asian girl by the name Jacquelyn. She was either easily amused or professionally polite, laughing at every one of my jokes. As a result, I have forgotten all the jokes that I made to her. Having a nurse who laughed at my jokes at least made me temporarily forget my physical pain. The white, gigantic X-ray machine sat in a spacious room. Jacquelyn pulled the X-ray barrel over my left ankle, put a heavy apron over my chest, and walked into the adjacent operator’s room to push the button. She shuffled between my bed and the operator’s room several times, twisting my left ankle into different positions for panoramic effects. All the time, I tried to keep the jokes flowing.
A few X-ray bombardments later, I was wheeled back into my ward, and was greeted by an unexpected visitor, Wendy. Sitting in a chair, she smiled with genuine amusement when she saw me pushed in lying in the bed. I was very pleased when I saw her: female companionship, the best medicine for a man in pain.
With Wendy’s company, waiting for doctor was far more endurable. The meetings between Wendy and me were always far between, so we had a lot to update each other. I told her about my upcoming marriage proposal. She laughed at the formality of “popping the question”.
Soon came the doctor, a slim, kind-looking lady appearing to be in her late thirties. She introduced herself as Doctor Her-last-name, and informed me that my bones were fine, and the ligaments were badly stretched but not torn off, so I would be fine after sometime on crutches.
Somehow I mentioned I had a Ph.D. in chemistry.
“You should have let us known that earlier. I would have come to you much sooner had I known you were a chemist.” Doctor Her-last-name said.
I gathered that chemists had more vulnerable ankles.
After Doctor Her-last-name, a young, strapping ER technician brought me a pair of brand-new aluminum crutches. He smiled broadly, his dental braces flashing with a metallic sheen above his thick goatee. He sympathized with my sprained ankle. “But at least you have your wife here with you.” He tried to comfort me.
“Wendy is a friend of mine.” I corrected him.
“So you are dating this guy?” The technician said to Wendy. Apparently he did not believe in pure friendship between sexes.
Ten minutes later, I moved out of ER on the new crutches. Wendy drove me home.
Wendy
Wendy was one of my fiancé’s best friends. I met Wendy in Columbia University a few months after I came to the United States, even before I met my fiancé. Later, through my fiancé, Wendy and I became better acquainted, although we rarely met. She moved to San Francisco after college. Two years later, I came to San Francisco for postdoctoral study in the University of California. We had met a few times since then.
Wendy was a rarity among my friends. She had more academic concerns for the world than pragmatic concerns for her own life. Three years after Columbia, two years after Berkeley, Wendy was still only half way descending the Ivory Tower. She worked as an engineer in P.G. & E., but aspired to a career in writing and journalism. Not completely a wild dream, since she had already published a few political essays in newspapers.
Like all Columbia graduates, Wendy was an ardent feminist. Although in heart I am a women’s rights activist, I sometimes speak to the contrary with Wendy just to instigate a more interesting debate.
But the ride to my home was too short for any debate of the political sort. Wendy helped me upstairs to my room, left Shere Hite’s book on female sexuality and a movie set in the Chinese Civil War, and drove back home.
Life on the crutches
The next morning I woke up with my left leg raised by four pillow cushions. The pain was still on my ankle. I clasped my crutches, sat up slowly, stood up on my right leg, and balanced myself on the crutches. I needed to go to the bathroom. Going to the bathroom, so easy before, now seemed a tremendous undertaking. Opening and closing each door, lifting up and setting down the toilet seat, getting down and getting up, between each action, I had to pause and rebalance. As I moved back step by step to my bedroom, I had an inkling of the difficult days ahead.
Going to work was out of the question. I lay in bed and read Shere Hite’s book. But the pulsating pain in my ankle made sexuality uninteresting. I flipped through the pages, nonchalantly reading women describing their sexual fantasies and orgasms. Later in the morning, Yu Chen stopped by and dropped off my laptop and two more movies. I ended up watching three movies on that day.
At noon I tried to fix myself some lunch. It was Mission Almost Impossible. I carried a pitcher of water while walking on my crutches, and I spilled water all over my pants and the floor. I managed to boil some dumplings in my rice cooker. But as I stood on one leg and scooped the dumplings into a bowl, I knew that was the last meal I would cook for myself for days to come. I left the rice cooker open and unwashed. In ten days, when I finally had the strength to clean it, I found a dead black spider in it.
In the evening, Yu Chen brought me dinner, a juicy cheeseburger from Sliders. He continued to bring me food for the next two days. He was a true friend.
For two days, I remained in my little room, venturing out no further than the bathroom. Immobilized, I began to realize how much of our lives depended on mobility. With a sprained ankle, my life was reduced to no more than a hundred square feet. I had no internet access. I had no desire to read. I was bored. On Saturday morning, I stared out of the window and looked at a beautiful Californian day. I normally would run six miles on such mornings, but not on that morning, not on the Saturday mornings of many ensuing months. I felt like an impotent man lying in bed with a beautiful woman, tormented by lust and shame. I was shrinking, body and mind.
On Sunday, the confinement became unbearable. With Yu Chen’s help, I walked outside on my crutches. Getting down the stairs was a challenge, but by the last few steps I had mastered a technique for descent. We went to the closest restaurant. I rested a couple of times along the way. When we finally reached the restaurant, my back was damp with sweat, my armpits sore. But I was as happy as a drowning man who surfaces above the water and takes a breath.
I stayed on the crutches for the next three weeks. When I crossed the streets, cars waited patiently. When I hopped on a bus, other passengers yielded the front seats to me. When I flew to New York, I enjoyed priority boarding. I was granted the convenience given to the handicapped, but I was not an object of pity. Because struggling as I was, I would soon rid of the crutches, and walk again.
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