Daniel Rose - Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China

Hey, how’s it going?

Not bad, you?

Can’t complain.

So where do you want to go?

Anywhere I can get some groceries and housewares.

Hmmm, not sure what you mean.

How about you just pedal around a bit and I bet we come across it.

Okay, but aren’t you worried about getting wet? It’s starting to drizzle.

Nah, I’ll be fine. Ho, those folks are coming out of that building with grocery bags. Can you pull over?

The preceding was conducted entirely in party language, not a word exchanged. And that Foreign Service guy at the Beijing temple thought I needed to speak Chinese…

TOP TEN SIGNS YOU’RE IN A CHINESE SUPERMARKET

10. Chicken bones on the broken-tile floor.

9. Where the broken-tile floor is still underwater because of last week’s rainstorm, you’re walking on wooden pallets.

8. Parents hold their baby daughter over a wastebasket so she can pee.

7. The rolls of toilet paper on sale are so insubstantial they could handle two toilet incidents, tops.

6. In the bathroom someone blows his nose directly into the toilet while someone else, ow my God, did he just spit in his palms to rinse his face?

5. You take an elevator to the housewares department, but others push in before you can exit, and:

4. At least two of the others are smoking, and:

3. The other six are coughing with open mouths.

2. Since people keep cutting into the checkout line, it takes longer to pay than to shop.

1. But it’s worth it, because the soup you carry out in a plastic bag has an entire chicken foot in it-a hairy, liquid-bleached claw of your very own!

Larry’s horrified by the soup but pleased with the junk food, when I get back.

“Umm, Pringles, good,” he grunts-a caveman sound-and proceeds to leave a crunch zone of chips on the floor in a circle around him. But what’s this? The Mao playing cards I bought at the market with Jade, along with some of my toiletries, are all over the room. What’s going on? Where’s the suitcase I left in the corner?

“Oh, I couldn’t figure out who that belonged to,” Larry says, devouring the Ring Dings. “I put out everything with my stuff.”

Sure enough, all of our grooming products are mixed together on various surfaces around the room. His Fixodent with my sunscreen. His shoe spray with my Rogaine. His Bengay-isn’t Bengay for really, really old folks?

I go into housekeeping mode, filling up his larder. A Larry-type word, I realize. I lay out the provisions I’ve gathered, each one a distinct and hard-won victory. Pink polyester blanket. Two green plastic plates, bowls, cups. Vegetable peeler to skin questionable foodstuffs. It was easy to pick out foods he’d like: the worse, the better. Snickers. Twinkies. He’s on a restricted diet, can’t eat fruit or veggies, and studiously avoids the fried tofu and potato dumplings I got myself. Soon we’re both eating our supper and watching a TV movie on a Chinese station. A young Mao and his pals are on the march-the equivalent of our cowboy shows, with flat Mao caps instead of ten-gallon hats. You know it’s Mao because of the telltale wart; if they ever airbrush it out, China will have lost its soul. Before long the news comes on, showing the occasional U.S. government official looking like a windup doll: cotton-white hair and seashell-pink skin.

“So how was your first day in the hands of the Chinese medical establishment?” I ask.

“Astonishingly good,” Larry says, firing a shot of eyedrops into each eye. “They put me on a handful of traditional Chinese medicines derived from the root of the rhubarb plant, which has been used for thousands of years because of its ability to suppress inflammation.”

“Since when did you go to medical school?” I ask, impressed.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve had a crash course the last couple years. I’ll put it in layman’s terms. Apparently, because of poor economic conditions these past decades, China had limited ability to do transplants or even dialysis until relatively recently. In its place, herbal therapies were used to treat patients like me with renal failure, with the common ingredient being the rhubarb root, given either orally, by injection, or by enema. To the latter, I say thanks but no thanks.”

It’s nice to see glimpses of the old Larry on top of his game. But I thought he wanted to stick with straight pharmaceuticals?

“I’m arcing,” he says with a shrug. “What can I tell you? You take the boy out of his condo and things change. At least I haven’t developed a hankering for bear bile, which is used by ninety-five percent of Chinese hospitals. But I can tell you that all the nurses on this floor know my medical history backwards and forwards. Plus, not once this whole afternoon has anyone missed my vein. All in all, I feel in much more capable hands than I do at home. If you were to ask my verdict after one day, I’d say American medicine has a lot to learn from these people.”

He takes time out from his little speech to sip his Fanta through a miniature straw. “By the way, not to complain, but next time could you pick me up some Raisinets, please? It’s how I get my fiber.”

“Wow,” I say. I sit back and look at him in wonderment. Go the soft speakers, Twinkle, twinkle, little star…

“Oh, say, and if you pass some Barbasol, can you pick me up a little-unscented, for extra-sensitive skin?”

“Sure, but you’re sort of on vacation here, Larry. You don’t need to be so scrupulous about shaving every day.”

“It’s one of my cardinal rules-to project a professional image, no matter where I am,” he says. “One last thing and we’re done: You’re getting your camera back tomorrow.”

“My camera? Did I lose it? Ow my God, did I leave it in the cab?”

“Relax,” Larry says, lifting one cheek to release a purring noise from his posterior and flicking back the Mao movie all in one move, a pretty athletic maneuver, given the variables. “While you were out, Cherry said he called the hospital to say he found it behind the backseat.”

“Who did? The kidnap cabbie?”

“If that’s what you insist on calling him. I’m not convinced that’s what he was. On reflection, he may have been sharing the route with his friends in that other cab, but they decided against it when we made a fuss. Maybe that’s what all the ‘friend’ talk was about. What do we know?”

“But he has my camera?” I ask. “It must have fallen out when I was stashing my passport.”

“Said he’s sorry, but he can’t drop it off till tomorrow. Has to go back to Beijing to get another round of passengers. So much for him being a kidnapper.”

He’s right: I was foolish to think we were being kidnapped. But here’s the thing: I give myself full permission to play the fool when I travel. The way I see it, if you can’t be willing to do that, why venture out of bed? Besides, I want to seize this clearheaded mood of Larry’s to ascertain some basics about his condition.

“So just to fill me in on some fundamentals,” I say, “do you have one working kidney or none?”

“None.”

“And when they get you a transplant, presumably you’ll be all right with only one?”

He’s plainly bored by my questions, making no effort to suppress a yawn. “As long as I avoid tackle football,” he says, lifting the other cheek.

“Do they take out the old ones or what?”

The blankness of his Mona Lisa smile makes it clear he’d like to watch TV in peace. “They don’t bother. They just push everything aside and plug in the new one.”

“There’s room?”

“If not, they’ll take out the gallbladder or something.”

“Is nothing nonnegotiable in this world of ours?”

Larry does little to help me expand the discourse or make me feel at home in his strange, pastry-smelling proximity. Instead he anticipates my next question to cut me off at the pass.