“Dr. Mohr!” Timperly calls up the stairwell. The black bag feels like a dead weight as Mohr turns and waits on the second-floor landing. “You’re here early,” Timperly says. Mohr is about to offer an explanation, but Timperly cuts him off. “We’re closing the pediatric ward.”
“Closing?”
“We’ve taken in forty diphtheria cases since yesterday. There are no more beds and we’re out of antitoxin.”
“I saw one this morning. Mother and child.”
Timperly takes this in. “It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any more antitoxin until tomorrow.” He looks at his watch. “If you don’t mind a little change, I’d like you downstairs in the emergency room. Nurse Simson will assist you for the day.”
“If that’s where I’m needed.”
“That’s where you’re needed,” Timperly quips back. His manner has always been distant, professional, which is either a general antipathy toward Germans or latent anti-Semitism. Or, maybe, both. Timperly’s manner hasn’t changed since the day he had walked into Mohr’s practice and announced he wanted to hire him.
“What brings you here, to me?”
“We’re always on the lookout,” Timperly had explained. “Anyone willing to treat poor Chinese. I’ve heard your clinic spoken of. You treat for free.”
“That’s not exactly correct.”
“Excuse me. According to ability, of course.”
“According to willingness would be more accurate.”
“I can offer you a small salary. Not much, you understand. But at least it’s something.”
“I will do it,” Mohr said straight out.
“If you need some time to consider.”
“Not necessary. I will do it.”
Timperly didn’t hide his surprise. “I appreciate a man who can decide things quickly,” he said. “I don’t think you will regret it.”
Mohr lit a cigarette and smiled from behind the curtain of smoke. “Purple plums, yellow melons, the village roads smell sweet,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“From Su Tung Po.” He gestured to the window, still smiling. “I am always surprised by all this city offers, the sights and the smells.”
“Ah, I see. You are a student of Chinese poetry.”
“Not really,” Mohr said, enjoying the difficulty the Englishman was having in taking his measure.
In eighteen months the measure-taking has not ceased. Mohr follows Timperly to the emergency ward. His scruffy red hair is uncombed, and in his wake Mohr detects a faint odor of unmetabolized gin and tonic, that drink the British here are so fond of. In the emergency ward, Timperly introduces Mohr to nurse Agnes Simson, then excuses himself and hurries off.
Mohr stands aside as the nurse finishes removing the bandage from a man with a deep gash in his leg. “He was run over by a truck unloading cargo,” she says over her shoulder, then steps aside, invites him to examine the wound.
“His son was hit, too,” she explains. “They were carrying a large crate and didn’t see the truck coming.” She is in her midthirties, with black hair and dark eyes that seem on the verge of cheer, but somehow only on the verge. She talks as Mohr examines the leg. “Disgraceful conditions. Landing piers, godowns. Nothing but death traps.”
Mohr nods agreement. She is Anglo-Chinese, and he immediately feels they have something in common. He can’t say exactly what it is, beyond the assumption that she must also feel herself to be something of an outsider.
“How long ago was he injured?”
“He came in this morning.”
“The leg is already becoming infected. It must have happened some time ago.”
He stands aside as she prepares a new bandage. When it is ready, they work together, cleansing the wound with carbolic acid. The man lets out strangled gasps and sucks air between rotting teeth. Although he can’t be more than forty, his face is dark and leathery, deeply lined. When he tries to sit up, Nurse Simson pushes him gently back down onto the cot.
As Mohr finishes cleaning out the wound, another nurse appears. Her name is Chen Siu-fang and he has noticed that she comes and goes from the hospital by car and driver. She is young and pretty. Her bearing suggests a class element that Mohr can only guess at.
“Excuse me,” she says politely, then whispers something quietly to Nurse Simson, who winces and shakes her head.
“Is something wrong?”
“His son has just died.”
Chen Siu-fang excuses herself and hurries off. Mohr glances up the row of cots as Nurse Simson pats the man’s brow with a damp cloth, carefully refolds and places it on his forehead, then resumes bandaging. He notices the finely articulated bones of her hands, how she concentrates on her work as if attending to some inherited custom. By her hands he can see that she is older than she looks. She finishes wrapping the leg, then turns and asks, “Will you tell him, Doctor?”
“Me? But I don’t speak Chinese.”
“Tell him in English. Or German, if you like. I’ll translate.” She begins clearing away the blood-soaked cotton.
“May I ask why?”
She stuffs a bundle of dirty bandages into the metal pail underneath the rickety instrument cart and turns to Mohr with a careworn look. “A few minutes ago I said his son would be fine. It was the only way I could get him to calm down and let me look at his leg.”
The man senses something as Mohr steps up to his side, touches his forearm lightly. “Es tut mir sehr, sehr leid,” he begins, then switches to English. “I’m very sorry, but your son has passed away.”
The man stares, uncomprehending, then looks to Nurse Simson, who speaks to him softly in Chinese. He regards her for a moment, then turns away. Tears well up; he shakes his head from side to side. Mohr touches the man’s forearm again, lingers for a moment, and steps away from the cot. Nurse Simson remains with the man while Mohr moves to the next patient, trying to collect himself.
“Thank you, Doctor,” she says, catching up some moments later. Mohr glances at the man, who has covered his eyes and is weeping into the crook of his arm. It isn’t the first time he has had to break such news, but every time feels like the first time. He is about to say this to the nurse, then realizes by her look that he has just done so.
“How old was he?”
“Eleven or twelve.”
“My daughter is twelve,” Mohr says all at once, then stops short. Nurse Simson acknowledges his sudden embarrassment with a smile, and sets straight to work on the next patient.
For the rest of the morning he follows her ward to ward, cot to cot, patient to patient. A thirty-minute rest at midday, then they resume work in the afternoon. Very little passes between them, but he observes her closely. The way she tilts back the head of a semiconscious man by pressing the heel of one hand against his forehead, then pinching open an eyelid with her thumb; the way she unwinds a bandage with rapid circular twists of the wrist. By late afternoon the air on every floor of the old building is stifling. He pats his forehead and neck with his handkerchief, pauses here and there, embarrassed to be slowing down. In spite of open windows and ceiling fans slowly turning