Upon arrival at the airport Gabe and I quickly learned the perks of being “laowai” (foreigners) in a country predominantly one race. What initially struck him as terrifying, he soon learned brought about many benefits. The bus ride from the airport to the hotel gave me a chance to meet several of the students from across the United States that are also participating in the program. I think I’m very fortunate thus far, everyone in the group is extremely friendly and we seem to all be getting along well. It is the first week of course.
Well, Beijing University has its perks. With more than 40,000 of China’s brightest students, it certainly can be a bit overwhelming. When I first arrived on campus it was empty, class wouldn’t start for another week. Yesterday, students flooded the campus with parents, luggage, and enough bicycles to make the start of the Tour de France look like child’s play. All is well at school.
Dorms—well let’s just say they aren’t five-star but they are suitable and have all amenities needed, except a refrigerator, which would be fantastic. My milk is hanging out the window by a string which leads me to the point of this place is way too damn cold. After learning my lesson in 2008, I cautiously approached my bed rather than jumping on it and breaking my arm. It’s hard. Really hard. Fortunately for me, I’ll be able to sleep anywhere after these four months are up. Gabe was able to check in to the dorm/hotel with us and is living two doors down from me for the time being. It’s quite convenient. My roommate, Daniel, is a great guy; we have a lot in common—the most important being he’s Catholic. He attends Notre Dame, I’m trying not to hold that against him, and he’s from New Jersey.
Of course the day after I got here, as many of you should know, was my birthday. It was one heck of a birthday. We had about 15 people come out to dinner which was a pleasant surprise considering I just met them all. I brought them to one of my favorite restaurants in Hou Hai (后海). It’s a beautiful place with a lake in the middle now more like a huge ice rink. After getting the party started with 白酒 (bai jiu = Chinese sake), we went to a bar where I know the manager and she gave us a few free bottles of vodka and other stuff. Of course, I had a few drinks but I was fine. There was however, one friend who couldn’t handle the 白酒 quite as well as the rest of us. After leaving the bar and exploring the frozen lake, which was probably not the safest thing to be doing, we began to realize that one of us was missing. This person will go unnamed, but let’s just say he was nowhere to be found. Hou Hai has bars surrounding the entire lake; initially our idea was to leave the bar and go to a club to dance and hang out. Well the bar and the club were on opposite sides of the lake, walking around would have taken close to 30 minutes, crossing the ice, 5 minutes. No, this person didn’t fall through, but once we got to the other side of the lake, we had to retrace our steps where we found said unnamed person hunched over in a dark alley spewing wildly in all directions. Most of us were terrified, mostly because we couldn’t believe any single human being could have so much matter in a stomach that could be projectile vomited. After realizing unnamed jackass couldn’t walk more than two feet without face planting in his own vomit, it was over my shoulder they went vomiting down my back as we ran to a taxi.
Now this is where it gets really good. I should remind my audience it is my birthday and I am the one caring for said individual. Once this person couldn’t stand or mutter more than “uhhhhh,” I realized that my first experience in a Chinese hospital was imminent. How were we going to get him there? We stopped about five taxis and as soon as they saw what was left of this human being that was wasting away and they realized the chances of him soiling their car in any form was extremely high, they would speed away. That is until I offered a cab driver 300 kuai to save this persons life and drive us 10 minutes away. Friendly reminder, it’s still my birthday at this point.
Arriving at the nearest emergency room was an experience in itself. With three new friends helping me carry drunken rag doll, our bonds were formed for life. After the doctor greeted us with a chuckle, I explained to him, in Chinese, that our friend drank what seemed to be more than required for a slight buzz. The doctor had us toss him on a rolling bed as he continued to spew in all directions soiling his and everyone else’s clothes.
Of course, when entering a Chinese hospital, you must pay a fee before the doctor will look at the patient. The fee is 6 kuai, that’s about $1. They have their priorities straight. After paying the required pence, the doctor then asked me what was wrong with my friend if it wasn’t clear enough. I explained in my best Chinese that my friend drank too much and we were definitely worried that he had alcohol poisoning. He sent me with a prescription to another line around the corner where I paid 20 kuai to get the prescription and another 600 kuai for the actual medicine. It’s still my birthday. Meanwhile, unnamed friend’s face is now completely covered in vomit and moaning as if he is experiencing childbirth.
I finally get back to the bedside and ask the doctor to please put the IV in as fast as he can. Now this tells you how much I fear the coming three months, I actually asked the doctor if he would show me how to put an IV in so if this happened in the future I could act as a corpsman until we reached friendly territory. After he said I could watch but shouldn’t try it on my own, the IV was in and the four of us who were sober felt a huge weight lifted off our soldier. Soon after, the three guys that I hadn’t really met until that night decided it would the right time to leave since the hospital was pretty cold and it was 1 am. I sincerely appreciated their help. For the next three hours, I didn’t have a chair and my jacket was pretty much used to keep the victim from experiencing hypothermia. You’re probably wondering if I have pictures of this wonderful event—the answer is a huge YES. However, without proper editing, some of them may be inappropriate for my average reader and may give the identity of this individual away. With time, they will come.
After about an hour of chatting with the 24 YEAR-OLD DOCTOR! (who, by the way, is far too young to be responsible for anyone’s life) I decided I should probably ask the doctor if he could get me a chair. Not without one more incident that I can honestly say has scarred me for life. Unnamed victim, lying on the hospital bed in the middle of the hall which is filled with upwards of 30 other groups of people, begins screaming/moaning; I don’t even know what to call it. So I responded, “Are you ok? What’s wrong?” He replied, “I have to pee, really really bad!!!! Help!” He continued, “It hurts so bad! I have to pee!”
Interjection: What on earth does one do at this point? I’m about a 5-minute sober walk from the bathroom. He clearly still is nowhere near coherency. He’s screaming in pain because his bladder has filled far beyond capacity to what I imagine looks something like a yellow balloon that is about to explode with the slightest pressure added. And guess who comes to the rescue? 24 year-old doctor with what looks to me like a blue milk carton with an oversized mouth. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked in Chinese. You know when you ask a question and right after it comes out of your mouth every part of you wishes you could take it back and just erase the last 10 seconds? That’s what happened. Before I knew it, I was performing a procedure I truly believed I would never, and I mean NEVER, have to perform. Between my utter disgust, unnamed belligerent’s moaning satisfaction, the doctor’s smirk, and the nurse’s near fainting at the unintentional sighting of what was happening I was truly overwhelmed by the situation and began to laugh at the complete ridiculousness of what was ensuing.
It wasn’t long after this seemingly long process that I realized I started to feel uneasy in the stomach. Was it the fact that I had just crossed a line that might be considered illegal in Saudi Arabia or the fact that the entire situation had just emotionally drained me? I don’t know, but I quickly found myself outside the hospital up-chucking in the nearest bush as I regained my senses. Many of you might think it was the result of drinking. You would be wrong. I hadn’t had a drink for more than 3 hours at this point and throughout the entire night I had about 4 drinks, total. Presumably about 10 percent of what my drunken colleague must have had to reach this point.
After returning to the bedside and being unable to look anyone in the eye, especially the tormented nurse, I quickly began to seek means of getting out of this predicament as quickly as possible. I begged the doctor to make the IV move faster. As we were speaking, the body on the bed moved and laid on top of the IV. Assuming it was ok, we continued our conversation. As I’m speaking, I caught a glimpse of something red. When I looked down to investigate, I realized that blood was quickly leaking from this individual and coalescing on the floor and the bed completely soaking unnamed individual’s clothing and bed lining. Not realizing it was just a matter of the needle being displaced, I jumped in to panic mode. Would my friend die like this? Lying in a bottom of the barrel hospital after surviving alcohol poisoning? It couldn’t be. The doctor didn’t look so worried, he just called for the nurse who couldn’t believe she actually had to approach us, and she saved the day by replacing something on the contraption. My friend had been saved—yet again.
I continued the prodding and the doctor said he would try to make it faster. After he squeezed the bag several times, which may or may not be medically accepted, I realized it was futile. I was going to be sitting there for a while. Picture the situation at hand and it will quickly make you realize the ridiculousness of the entire night. Two somewhat Anglo-Saxon Americans sitting in the halls of a Beijing University hospital with a birthday boy using his limited Chinese to save the life of a friend in need. I felt an urge to tell the doctor we were Canadian as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
After falling asleep for about ten minutes, the doctor woke me up with a jolt; I think I was in combat sleep mode by this point. I jumped up expecting anything. Luckily this particular instance, it was just to inform me that the IV was empty, finally. While ripping off the tape holding down the IV, the nurse proceeded with extreme caution as if she was worried about pulling the hair from his hand and causing him pain. I laughed at the irony. A part of me wished she would make it as painful as possible. Apparently, drunken idiot was sober at this point; considering he had just been filled with close to 2000 milliliters I wasn’t entirely surprised. He woke with a jolt because the tape hurt. “Owwwwww!” Ten second pause. “Why am I in a hospital?” I didn’t know where to begin. Instead, I just told him to get up and let’s get the heck out of here. After thanking the doctor profusely, we strolled out the front door, both somewhat covered in vomit, looking like two battle-hardened vets. As we waited for thirty minutes in the 10 degree weather outside, he explained how he woke up and saw a white coat and he had just been dreaming he was laying in bed at home having the best sleep of his life and having not remembered the misery of the past 5 hours. For a second I kind of wished the tables had been turned.
As luck would have it, said friend woke up with absolutely nothing resembling a hangover. I, on the other hand, felt terrible because I was only able to sleep for about 4 hours. As I write this story, I’m sitting in a coffee shop laughing. While this story may make for a great blog post, I fully resolve to not relive it. Needless to say, my birthday prior to my first trip to the hospital was a great one. I’ve met a lot of really great people that I can see myself becoming really close to over the coming months. Many of them are from Notre Dame, which means as fans we are rivals but as Catholics we get along well.
I hope everyone enjoyed this blog. I can’t promise to make them this entertaining every time I write and to a degree I hope they aren’t this entertaining. If anyone has any questions about what’s going on just leave one in the comments section. Also, I’ll be posting another blog about school in the next couple days.
I’ll leave you with two words of advice today. First, when taking care of belligerent friends, always be well prepared for issues concerning digestive system so as not to blindside you and leave you scarred for life. Second, avoid hospitals at all cost if you yourself are the patient to be. If you’re not, make them readily accessible as we left the hospital having spent close to 1,000 kuai for 5 hours in the hospital. That’s about the equivalent of $175. I couldn’t purchase a Playstation for that price!!!!!
Cheers.
