A Breath of Fresh Air

By the time I met Fang and Pan, they had already spent enough time in the hospital to know its rhythm.

They came down from the oncology ward together, leaving behind the enclosed air of the hospital room. Fang had suggested that Pan come downstairs for some fresh air. Another patient in their ward had tested positive for COVID-19, and staying in the room had become increasingly uncomfortable. For patients already dealing with serious illness, even something as ordinary as a change in the air around them had begun to matter.

Fang was the more talkative of the two. He was sixty-two by his usual way of counting age, a native of Dexing in Shangrao. He told us that he was still undergoing examinations and had not yet begun his treatment. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy would likely follow once the doctors determined the appropriate plan. Pan, sitting beside him, was sixty-seven and had noticeably more white hair. He spoke much less. At times he simply listened while Fang carried the conversation forward, occasionally adding a sentence of his own.

The three of us began talking almost casually, with the conversation first turning to medicine. Patients were also becoming increasingly anxious, Fang observed. If treatment did not produce results quickly, people could become impatient and question their doctors. For Fang, however, medicine remained a worthwhile profession. A person needed to learn a solid skill, he said, something that could support him throughout his life.

The conversation then became more personal. Fang’s two sons were both settled in Yiwu. They had their own families and their own responsibilities. They called him every day through video chat and would immediately ask whether he had enough money. If he said he needed anything, they would transfer money to him. But Fang did not want them to come to the hospital. “Young people had their own lives,” he said, “There was no reason to make them travel all the way to the hospital just because their father was sick. My medical insurance already covers 90% of the cost.”

Pan's situation was somewhat different. His daughter worked in Shenzhen. She had a ten-month-old child at home, needed to pay for childcare, and Pan's wife was also in poor health. There was simply no one who could leave everything behind and stay at the hospital with him. Pan had to hire a caregiver. He was physically weaker than Fang. Pan had an indwelling needle on his hand, an indicator of ongoing chemotherapy. “It makes things more convenient. I have injections everyday,” he explained. 

Just when Pan was talking, he received a phone call and hurried back to the ward. Fang seemed especially concerned about him. Fang told us that a few days earlier, Pan had suddenly become too weak while sitting and had collapsed back onto his bed. The caregiver was there partly to make sure that something like that did not happen again. The two men had only met because they were sharing a hospital room, but Fang had already begun looking after Pan in his own way. Fang said that they were both Jiangxi people in the broad sense, even though Pan was originally from Yunnan. There was also another patient from Ganzhou in a neighboring room. With respiratory infections circulating through the hospital, everyone had become more careful about wearing masks. And Fang had developed a small routine. Whenever he felt that Pan had been sitting in the ward for too long, he would ask him to come downstairs. So they came down for some air.

Perhaps that was why Fang eventually began talking about his own family and the people he knew. He had a nephew with a doctorate who worked for a large company and had spent years working overseas. More importantly, the nephew knew people in several major hospitals. Fang told me that if I ever needed help navigating the medical system, he could make a few phone calls and put me in touch with doctors or hospital administrators. He spoke about this very matter-of-factly. For him, knowing someone who could help was simply another part of taking care of one's family.

He even told me about a previous emergency involving his grandson. The situation had been extremely serious, and transferring the child to Shanghai would have taken too long. His nephew instead contacted hospitals in Jiangxi through his own connections, helping the family arrange emergency treatment and cover the initial medical expenses. The boy survived. “人保住了比什么都重要,” Fang said. Saving the person mattered more than anything else. 

He then offered to make a similar call for me, saying that he would contact his nephew later that evening. I thanked him. What struck me was how naturally the offer came. We had only been talking for a short while. We were not family, and we had not known each other before that day. Yet in the hospital garden, where everyone was temporarily bound together by illness, Fang was willing to share his contacts simply because he thought they might be useful. The hospital garden had suddenly become a place where medical knowledge and social relationships overlapped. A doctor's expertise could matter, so could a phone number.

Fang gave me more of his own story. He had not spent his whole life as a successful businessman or professional. He had worked in the village committee and township government when he was younger. Later, he left the system and began doing business. He had tried whatever could make money. Now he had returned to something closer to the countryside. He kept Chinese honeybees and raised sheep. His family produced hundreds, sometimes more than a thousand jin(about 1102.3 pounds) of honey a year. He had even brought twelve jin(about 13.2 pounds) of what he considered genuine local honey to the hospital for his attending physician, Dr. Liu. The doctor had been impressed and offered to pay for it, but Fang refused. He explained that it was simply something he had brought from home. The doctor could not accept cash or expensive gifts, but a little homemade food felt different.

Fang laughed when he talked about it. He seemed proud not only of the honey, but of knowing how to navigate the invisible rules surrounding hospitals. There were things you could give and things you could not. There were favors that could be accepted and favors that could not. He knew how these things worked.

Fang looked toward the hospital building behind us. Perhaps after spending enough time inside a hospital, the hospital itself became a neighborhood. Inside the building, doctors were trying to decide what treatment would come next. Patients were waiting for examination results. Caregivers were watching over people who could no longer safely be left alone. And outside, two men from different places sat together because one of them thought the other needed some fresh air. They had not known each other before being admitted. One had grown up in Dexing, and the other had come from Shangrao. They met in a hospital room and gradually became fellow travelers through illness. Fang talked. Pan listened. And every so often, Fang would remind him to come downstairs again.

For a little while, they were not patients waiting for their next scan or IV drip. They were simply two older men sitting in the garden, talking about children, work, money, hospitals, and the strange networks that hold people together when they are far from home.