Mark Gilleo - Sweat

Wei Ling wasn’t trying to kill herself, just the baby.

Chapter 19

The three feet of freedom that Wei Ling had were now gone. She was tied to the bed, shackled at both the wrist and ankles. Her left arm was in a makeshift splint, bones sandwiched so tightly between two small boards that the skin was pinched flat against the grain of the wood. The intravenous drip in her immobilized arm was pumping the good stuff, a mixture of medication and vitamins. Something to take the edge off and keep her healthy. The tube running down her nose provided fifteen hundred calories a day.

The doctor from Beijing who replaced the dead American doctor had the bedside manner of Joseph Mengele. The dead doctor, while a part-time puppet for Lee Chang, had a glimmer of humanity when you looked in his eyes. He did what he was paid to do, even when it was wrong, but he did it with compassion.

The new doctor was expressionless. He was fit, in his early sixties, and in Lee Chang’s infirmary he was all business. His patients were nothing more than objects he tried to keep alive. It was hard to experiment on the dead.

The doctor had become interested in medicine when he learned his father was killed in a WWII Japanese torture camp known as Unit 731. Over the course of WWII, Unit 731 was a medical team that ran a concentration camp in Pingfan, China. The unit, with approval from the Japanese government, took great pleasure in torturing Chinese citizens through a dreadful mix of concoctions devised to incapacitate and humiliate. Chinese citizens with no military connection were placed in closed quarters while rodents infected with un-pleasantries ranging from the plague to measles ran roughshod over their naked bodies. Live dissections were performed on prisoners who were fed healthy diets before their death in order to measure more accurately the affect on a normal body. Limbs were frozen and then amputated, the victims still alive. Prisoners, known as “logs,” were drained of their blood, one pint at a time, day after day, until there was nothing left. All in the name of science and medicine.

Unit 731 was not a war-era secret medical facility, but those responsible did escape prosecution. Unlike many Nazis who were hunted down for killing Jews, the members of the Japanese torture squad Unit 731 were granted clemency. Some of the “doctors” involved went on to distinguished careers in post-war Japan. Not a single person was prosecuted for crimes against humanity. In return for leniency, the U.S. merely requested translations of the nature of the tests conducted and the results of the experiments.

The doctor now standing in front of Wei Ling had become a monster through hatred. He learned how his father had been tortured and killed, and soon thereafter the doctor’s train to a righteous life jumped the track. In his mind, he saw medicine as a way to seek revenge. The doctor studied medicine with an equal passion of learning how to heal and learning how to hurt. Learning how to heal made him rich. Learning how to hurt was a life-long hobby.

The doctor found as much pleasure in the study of medicine as he did in the control of people. With the right dosage of the right medicine, he could have the final say in who lived and who died. It was a decision he made with as much thought as he put into his lunch menu. He specialized in internal medicine and was a Beijing legend in the circles of herbal medicine, acupuncture, and acupressure. When the great C.F. Chang slipped in the bath and injured his shoulder, the old doctor became C.F. Chang’s personal physician. Three weeks of acupuncture and firm pressure applied to very specific points on the bottom of the feet brought relief and eternal gratitude. C.F. Chang paid well and the doctor took to the life of serving semi-royalty like a pig to mud.

Wei Ling looked at the new doctor and saw darkness in his dead-fish eyes. There would be no talking with this one. They were both Chinese, but that was where their similarities began and ended. Rural Guangzhou and downtown Beijing were worlds apart.

Wei Ling’s hunger strike had lasted exactly two days. When she refused to eat her fifth consecutive meal, the middle-aged servant brought in Lee Chang. The conversation was short and ended with: “You will have this baby.”

Wei Ling didn’t cry. She had moved beyond self-pity. She would not have the baby. It was a battle of wills and it was a fight Wei Ling believed she could win.

The intravenous line in Wei Ling’s arm caused a dull ache, just short of real pain. She had been kicked, punched, slapped, and pushed into walls since her arrival in paradise. The needle was far less punishing. The psychological affect was the worst. Being tied down and having someone stick a tube up your nose and needles in your arm was just a rude reminder that they were in control of her body. The only control she had was her mind, and she had turned the corner toward mastering her will. The IV and feeding tube pumped a solution with enough vitamins and calories for a healthy person to live, and a little extra for the valuable bundle of joy being treated as a scientific experiment. The doctor warned her that if she didn’t cooperate, an additional dose of sedation would be added to the mixture. Wei Ling needed her senses. Being doped-up wasn’t in her best interest. So she played along. For now.

Chapter 20

The tears were flowing at the reception desk when Jake stepped out of the elevator. Mascara streaks painted the receptionist’s cheeks, her blonde hair ruffled. Jake avoided eye contact, said “good morning,” and didn’t break pace as he blew past the emotionally charged Winthrop Enterprises employee. The receptionist was prone to outbursts, and it didn’t take much to send her fragile psyche over the edge. A bad hair day. A run in her pantyhose. Jake had quickly learned not to ask.

The somber ambiance and solemn faces of the other Winthrop Enterprises employees told him the receptionist’s tears weren’t a simple case of running out of hair gel.

Jason McDonald, financial wizard with a receding hairline, broke the news to Jake. “Did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Marilyn passed away this weekend.”

Jake’s posture slumped, the invisible punch to the stomach taking his breath away. “How?”

“She had an accident on the elevator stairs at the Metro. Broken neck,” Jason said, shaking his head.

Jake’s legs almost buckled and he put one hand on the corner of the desk for support. Jason McDonald quickly pulled over a chair.

“When did this happen?” Jake asked in a hushed voice.

“Friday night.”

“Good God.”

The timeframe of Marilyn’s death made Jake nauseous. His head filled with images of his mother on the sofa, each breath more shallow than the last until the one that never came. She went quietly, with a smile, her hand in Jake’s. Being the last person to see someone alive was not a prize to be cherished.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. You two seemed to have gotten close in your short time here,” Jason said, running his hand across his expanding scalp, as if plowing his fingers through an imaginary mane.

“Yeah, I guess. We had a few things in common, as it turns out.”

“Well, don’t let it get you down. The office will be closing early tomorrow. There will be a service at a funeral home in Alexandria. Then her body is going to be flown back to Milwaukee on Wednesday for burial in a family plot. Her brother is stopping by the office later to pick up some personal items. Maybe you could say a few words, offer your condolences.”

“Yeah, sure. I will.” Jake agreed, still in a daze. “Is my father in?”

“Not yet. He has been running around trying to help with arrangements. She was his secretary for twenty-five years.”