The Water Tastes Sweet

It was a usual July-ish afternoon. When the sunshine grew tender and the hospital building cast shade on benches, patients came out. I met Professor Zhong again, who happened to be sharing the bench with a woman and a bag of X-ray films. The two on the same bench seemed to be from two worlds. Professor Zhong was still dressed in the same outfit as yesterday, with an unchangeable pair of white embroidered shoes. The woman next to her, however, sat barefoot, her feet tucked casually beneath her, bare-headed and relaxed despite the heat. Her daughter stood beside her, looking down at her phone. 

“Are you here to look after your mother?” I had initially tried to speak to the daughter, but she never looked up from the screen, so I turned to Professor Zhong. She and the woman had not known each other before that afternoon, but Professor Zhong had the habit of talking to almost anyone who sat nearby. I chatted with her briefly. Watching us talking like we knew each other, the other woman also jumped into the conversation. She told me she was from Gao'an, Jiangxi, about an hour and a half from Nanchang by highway. She had been coming to the hospital for chemotherapy. Each cycle lasted around fourteen days, followed by a fifteen-day break before the next one. 

Then she began describing what those fourteen days felt like. “The first time wasn't too bad,” she said. “My feet hurt so much I couldn't walk.” By the fourth or fifth round, however, chemotherapy had become something else entirely. “Every bone in my body hurts. Sometimes I couldn't even get myself out of bed.” At the time we spoke, she was doing somewhat better. Only one foot still hurt badly. But the side effects had not stopped there. She had almost no appetite after treatment. For four or five days, she often wanted to eat nothing at all. Even drinking water became strange. “After chemotherapy, the water tastes sweet.” The sensation lasted for several days. She said it almost casually, as though describing an inconvenience she had already become accustomed to. But then she added, “It hurts so badly you really can't stand it.” She told me that she could lose seven or eight jin (seven to eight pounds) during a single round. At her worst, she had lost more than ten (eleven pounds). “People would look at me and not recognize me anymore.” Despite that, she was still sitting upright in front of me, speaking with surprising energy.

She had been diagnosed with a lymphatic problem years earlier. She remembered that doctors had already found something wrong when she was much younger, but she had not taken it seriously. It was only later, when her hometown offered free medical examinations, that she went in for another checkup. This time, the doctors told her something was wrong and advised her to go to a larger hospital. The fact that the disease had been discovered through a free rural health screening seemed particularly important to her. “If I had waited any longer, it would have been much worse,” she paused, “Now I still have a ninety percent chance of recovery.” That number had become an anchor of hope, and she held on to it tightly.

Her daughter was with her throughout the treatment. She did not need to take fixed shifts at work, so when her mother came to the hospital, she stayed day and night. The daughter was the only child who accompanied her continuously, even though she had two other children in the family. The woman spoke of her children with quiet pride. They were all filial. Her family had even built two houses. Her eldest grandson would turn eighteen later that year. He had already gone out to work in a clothing store, earning a base salary of around five thousand yuan (741 dollars) a month, with more depending on how much he sold. She smiled when she described him. “Businesses aren't stable these days,” she explained. “If the shop does well, you can stay. If it doesn't, it might close in a few months and you have to find somewhere else.” Her younger grandson was fourteen. Family life continued alongside chemotherapy. The world did not stop because she had become sick.

The family had chosen to rent accommodation outside the hospital during treatment. Hospital meals were not always enough. “We eat outside,” she said. “When you're being treated, you have to eat well.” She believed nutrition mattered enormously. After losing so much weight during chemotherapy, she was determined to eat whatever she could tolerate. At home, however, her diet was surprisingly simple. She rarely ate pork. Her family grew vegetables themselves. Meat was usually reserved for the children, and the family bought it only about twice a week. Perhaps she had never thought of food as something especially complicated. Fresh vegetables from the garden were enough.

Money came up naturally. Cancer treatment required large amounts of it. She mentioned that many patients from the countryside still preferred to go to the bank and withdraw cash when they needed to pay large medical bills. They were accustomed to seeing money in their hands rather than moving it through a phone. When I explained that hospital payments could often be made directly through a bank transfer, she looked genuinely curious. “So the money can stay in the bank?” I explained that she could transfer it directly to the hospital's payment account without withdrawing it first. She shook her head, “I don't really know how to do that.” It was a small reminder of the divide between the systems people use and the systems they understand. A modern hospital could offer digital payments, online services, and electronic records. But for someone who rarely used mobile banking, the old habit of withdrawing cash still felt more tangible.

Yet she did not seem worried about the cost itself. When she needed money for treatment, she would simply go to the bank. Her family's financial situation was stable enough. She had children who could help, a house, and grandchildren. She had nothing else to worry about other than treating the disease. 

She had been in the hospital for fourteen days and had not met a single fellow patient from Gao'an. She had met one patient from Nantong instead. Professor Zhong, sitting beside her, occasionally joined the conversation, but otherwise the woman did not seem to have a large social circle inside the hospital. When I asked whether she talked much with other patients, she simply shook her head. Her life during treatment seemed to revolve around three places: her bed, the treatment room, and the place where her daughter was sitting. She rarely came downstairs because the weather was too hot. Doctors had told patients recovering from surgery to avoid excessive heat because high temperatures could increase the risk of inflammation around the wound. And with chemotherapy lines inserted into both hands, moving around was difficult anyway. She simply did not have much reason to go outside.

I asked her about the doctors at the hospital. Her answer was immediate. “They're better here.” Better than the doctors she had encountered elsewhere. She liked that they spoke plainly. They did not dress up bad news in unnecessary language. They told patients what was happening. “They're straightforward.” For her, that honesty was reassuring. She did not need false optimism from her doctors. She wanted to know what was happening so that she could decide what to do next. The strange thing was that she had just spent the previous months enduring one of the most punishing treatments modern medicine could offer. Yet the thing she remembered most positively about the hospital was not the medication. It was being told the truth.

What surprised me most was how little bitterness she expressed. She was nearly sixty. She had spent years ignoring a disease that had once seemed easy to ignore. She was now returning to the hospital every few weeks for chemotherapy that made her bones ache, destroyed her appetite, changed the taste of water, and sometimes left her unable to walk. Yet when I asked about psychological pressure, her answer was simple, “It’s okay. I don't put things in my heart.” She believed that a good mindset helped the body recover. “If something was wrong, I would just endure it.” She herself had almost never gone to hospitals when she was younger. Then the free health screening had changed everything. Fortunately, she found out in time, and now the doctors were telling her that recovery was still highly possible. So she had the privilege to believe in fate.

There was something almost cheerful about the way she spoke about the future. It was not because she was certain everything would be easy, but because she had decided to believe that it would work out. She could eat. She could talk. Even when her body hurt, she said, she could lie down and fall asleep within a minute. Her children had jobs. Her grandsons were still growing up. There was still a great deal of ordinary life waiting for her.

When I told her I was eighteen, she immediately compared me with her eldest grandson. “He's eighteen too,” she said. “Just a little younger than you.” Then she smiled and gave me advice. I had told her that I was still preparing for university. She nodded, “Study hard. Aim for top universities.” I laughed and told her that was probably too ambitious, but she did not seem convinced that I should lower my expectations.

As I said goodbye, she remained sitting on the bench, still barefoot, her daughter standing beside her. She sat there casually, almost comfortably, as though chemotherapy were simply another difficult part of life that had to be passed through. Perhaps that was the point. She was still thinking about what came next.