Mingmei Yip - Petals from the Sky

“What did he do?”

She didn’t really answer my question. “Just tell him to show some respect for the second largest hospital in Chengdu.”

Michael was asleep despite the noise around him. His neighbors, a fortyish man and an old woman, were engaged in a loud conversation. I went up to his bed, put down a plastic bag of fruit I’d bought at a stall in front of the hospital, then quietly pulled out a chair and sat down beside him.

While my eyes were caressing Michael’s face, I was conscious of the curious glances cast in our direction.

Michael’s head was bandaged and his face and chest, exposed above the white bed sheet, looked as gaunt as a chiseled bust. I watched the slight quivering of his lashes and the soft rise and fall of his chest. Seeing his masculine body now weakened almost like a child’s, tears stung my eyes and rolled down my cheeks.

I’d been hearing all my life how the Buddha taught that life is uncertain. But it was different to see Michael, whom I’d blamed for always being in control of everything, now looking so fragile. Had it been just a little different, Michael would be as dead as Professor Fulton. Just as he lost his professor, I could lose him. As I was thinking, Master Detached Dust’s husky voice suddenly rang loud and clear in my ear.

Eat while it’s still hot.

Don’t wait till it gets cool!

Had the old, wrinkled sage’s words been intended as a Zen lesson for me?

Then a poem emerged in my mind:

Enjoy life to the full while you still can, never let the empty wine glass face the solitary moon.

But how to enjoy it to the full? It seems so clear in poems, but not in my life. Then I remembered Michael’s poem, “All these thirty-eight years, all empty now, can the rest be full?”

I wiped my tears, then took off my Guan Yin pendant to hold it in my hand and, just when I was about to recite the Heart Sutra to protect Michael, the middle-aged man, who’d been watching me as had the old woman, threw me a question. “Miss, this laowai your friend?”

I nodded.

He grinned insinuatingly. “Your boyfriend?”

I nodded again, feeling annoyed.

Now the old woman chimed in: “Miss, you’re lucky to have a laowai boyfriend. Soon emigrate to America, huh?”

I really didn’t know how to reply, so I returned a wry smile.

She went on. “Lucky you, miss, your boyfriend’s handsome, too.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. Please leave me alone!

Now it was the man’s turn. “But he’s not well-behaved. He refused to take medicine last night.”

“Oh, did he?”

“Yes. They were going to give him an injection, but he wouldn’t let them.”

I perked up my ears. “Then what happened?”

The old woman said, her cloudy eyes animated, “Your boyfriend had a big argument with the doctors and the hospital staff.”

“What did they argue about?”

“I don’t know.” Old Woman cast a glance at her comrade. “We only understand the doctors; don’t understand English.”

The man’s eyes brightened. “Finally the head doctor himself came, and tried to persuade your friend, but he screamed at the doctor.” He looked at me to see my reaction, then went on. “Head Doctor Zhou was very mad. Just stalked out. Assistant doctor upset, too. Said, ‘Hai, laowai always means headache.’”

Now Old Woman looked at me and asked eagerly, “My daughter always wants to go to America -can your boyfriend give her English lessons?”

In order not to be rude, I said, “I don’t know; you better ask him yourself.”

“Good. Then you ask him for me when he wakes up.”

Now the man cast his comrade a chiding glance. “Old Mother, I think we should stop bothering this young miss.”

“All right, all right, I’ll shut up.” Pouting, she lay back on the bed, pulled up her blanket, and closed her eyes. Feigning sleep, I supposed.

The man unfolded his newspaper and began to read.

I took out the small book with the Heart Sutra that Yi Kong had given me and began to read it softly.

I’d been reciting and asking Guan Yin to grant Michael a quick recovery for I didn’t know how long, when I heard a weak, “Meng Ning.”

“Michael?” I put down my Guan Yin and the sutra on the bed.

Forehead wet with perspiration, Michael tried to sit up.

I grasped his arm. “Michael, let me help you.”

He looked at me. “Meng Ning?”

“Yes, Michael.” I touched his face and felt the bone. His cheeks were so sunken that it seemed to me his eyes were the only feature left on his face.

“How do you feel? How’s your head?” My heart sank when I suddenly noticed his bandaged leg. “What about your leg?”

“I had a terrible headache last night, but it’s not as bad now. My ankle is twisted.” Then he pulled me close, wincing as he moved his arm.

“I was told you had a fight with the doctors.”

“Not exactly a fight. I was just so frustrated that they wanted to give me an injection I didn’t need. So maybe I raised my voice a little.”

A silence, then I touched his cheek.

“When I woke up this morning, they served me some kind of meat porridge, so I refused to eat. Then when I asked for something vegetarian, no one understood me; they thought I was just being difficult. I felt completely helpless and scared. I’m a total stranger here and no one seems to care about me.”

“But I’m here with you now, Michael, so you’ll be all right.”

He went on as if talking to himself. “I remembered how my parents died when I was young, leaving me all by myself. Meng Ning”-he put my hand to his lips-“the thought that I might lose you was so unbearable…”

“But, Michael, I’m here and I’m all right!” I squeezed his large hand, which now seemed so vulnerable in mine. Then I felt something shift in my mind, something that perhaps I’d sensed but pushed out. I was no more the little girl protected and pampered in Golden Lotus Temple, but had to be a strong woman to help Michael recover in a place where he could not even speak to anyone but me. Overnight, our roles seemed reversed-now I was his guardian goddess, and he the child thrust under my protection.

One tear fell from the corner of Michael’s eye and spilled onto the sutra.

“Damn,” he groaned, picking up the book.

“It’s all right, Michael.” I took the book from him and examined it. The tear smeared right at the phrase “reflecting that all the five elements are but emptiness, transcending all sufferings.” I showed it to him. “See, Guan Yin says we’ll transcend all sufferings.”

“I hope so,” Michael said, looking lost in thought.

“I’m sure we will.”

For the first time that day he smiled and the dingy hospital room seemed brighter.

At that moment, I felt overwhelmed with love for him. Suddenly I was almost glad about the car accident. I finally saw a place in his life-for Michael was not totally self-sufficient as I’d thought. Maybe nobody is. Even Yi Kong needed Sunny Au, the fat, vulgar protector of the Dharma. While I looked down at his now almost boyish face, the fortune-teller’s words popped into my mind:

Inside you there’s a spring of young yin energy that you should put to good use by helping your friend… He not only needs you, he needs the woman in you, not the little girl.

Just then Old Mother poked her head toward us and asked, “Miss, can you now ask your boyfriend if he can teach my daughter English?”

Her comrade pulled her back and chided her. “Old Mother, stop your nonsense and let this miss talk with her boyfriend.”

“My fiancé.” This time I corrected him.

Although Michael didn’t understand Chinese and had been in a rotten mood, he nevertheless smiled warmly at the two and said, “It’s all right.”