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Authors: Chang-rae Lee
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(when she queried him via a weak left-handed scribble of “$$?”) would cost an astronomical sum to purchase or else lease for an indefinite period.
No doubt you can imagine what happened next. Harvey made the necessary arrangements to transport Ruby home, machine and all, despite the absurdity of the finances; it would be like some counties peddler buying a Charter condo with only her pedi-bike rickshaw and its junky contents as collateral. There is no leaping of worlds in this world. Except for the rare case, the distance is too great. But of course, Harvey was only thinking about how much he loved his wife. He was only thinking about the details of her care. He set up their tiny bedroom to be hers alone, even rewiring (he was a facilities electrician before retirement) the bedside outlet to be on a circuit that would instantly feed off a generator if the main power cycled down in the middle of the night, as it often does. He requested a change of his children’s work shifts at the grow facility and water plant, so that they would stagger instead of align. He was even putting up for sale his and Ruby’s fancier shoes and clothes on a B-Mor weblist, even if few of us could ever afford them, when he got word from the clinic that Ruby had died during the night of multiple major organ failure. He was going to bring her home that day and instead had to view her sheeted body already rolled out to the corridor, the tented, plumped mound truly the saddest sight of his life. What had happened? They figured out that she herself shut down the dialysis machine for most of each day’s session, only switching it back on just before the nurse returned, ensuring her own doom.
And while self-sacrifice is a hallmark of life here in B-Mor, one of our original and most cherished mores, is there anyone who does not flinch whenever he or she hears of yet another act such as Ruby’s, which seem to grow more numerous each quarter, each year? In the old days, with our first generations, people would relieve their households all the time, but those were mostly the very old, ultrastubborn, salty pioneers who were too proud to become any kind of burden, their gestures as much prods to the community as discharges of their respective families.
Yet one looks around, and not just at the more flagrant cases. Visits to the health clinics were once unlimited, a yearly exam for every citizen an option as well, and in this way Charter people had very little on us, save that most of them go to private offices and see the same physicians each time. Our clinics are staffed by Charter doctors (if the youngest ones, often fresh out of residency), who rotate through monthly, but the nurses and physician’s assistants are constant and are B-Mor residents, and it’s these people who tender the real care. You could stop in and get your thumb stitched up (a regular occurrence for our indomitable fish filleters); you could pick up a bottle of pills for impotence or anxiety; you could get a quick session of chiropractic or acupunctural therapy, and for the most part people availed themselves of these things without abusing the privilege. In fact, we often reminded ourselves of our fortunate circumstance with the saying “Save some noodles for tomorrow’s lunch.”
Now there are so many new rules that make it all very complicated. The doors are still open twenty-four/seven but for life-threatening emergencies only; the rest of us with broken fingers or kidney stones have to wait it out until the next morning, an emergency-care doctor making the final determination. And when you do check in at the clinic, everything that has happened to you and that you’ve ever been prescribed or treated with pops up on the screen like always, but now some lines flash when a certain frequency is exceeded, and if you want that particular prescription or treatment, you’ll have to pay a fee beyond the usual token fee to receive it, an additional cost that is sometimes not so
No doubt you can imagine what happened next. Harvey made the necessary arrangements to transport Ruby home, machine and all, despite the absurdity of the finances; it would be like some counties peddler buying a Charter condo with only her pedi-bike rickshaw and its junky contents as collateral. There is no leaping of worlds in this world. Except for the rare case, the distance is too great. But of course, Harvey was only thinking about how much he loved his wife. He was only thinking about the details of her care. He set up their tiny bedroom to be hers alone, even rewiring (he was a facilities electrician before retirement) the bedside outlet to be on a circuit that would instantly feed off a generator if the main power cycled down in the middle of the night, as it often does. He requested a change of his children’s work shifts at the grow facility and water plant, so that they would stagger instead of align. He was even putting up for sale his and Ruby’s fancier shoes and clothes on a B-Mor weblist, even if few of us could ever afford them, when he got word from the clinic that Ruby had died during the night of multiple major organ failure. He was going to bring her home that day and instead had to view her sheeted body already rolled out to the corridor, the tented, plumped mound truly the saddest sight of his life. What had happened? They figured out that she herself shut down the dialysis machine for most of each day’s session, only switching it back on just before the nurse returned, ensuring her own doom.
And while self-sacrifice is a hallmark of life here in B-Mor, one of our original and most cherished mores, is there anyone who does not flinch whenever he or she hears of yet another act such as Ruby’s, which seem to grow more numerous each quarter, each year? In the old days, with our first generations, people would relieve their households all the time, but those were mostly the very old, ultrastubborn, salty pioneers who were too proud to become any kind of burden, their gestures as much prods to the community as discharges of their respective families.
Yet one looks around, and not just at the more flagrant cases. Visits to the health clinics were once unlimited, a yearly exam for every citizen an option as well, and in this way Charter people had very little on us, save that most of them go to private offices and see the same physicians each time. Our clinics are staffed by Charter doctors (if the youngest ones, often fresh out of residency), who rotate through monthly, but the nurses and physician’s assistants are constant and are B-Mor residents, and it’s these people who tender the real care. You could stop in and get your thumb stitched up (a regular occurrence for our indomitable fish filleters); you could pick up a bottle of pills for impotence or anxiety; you could get a quick session of chiropractic or acupunctural therapy, and for the most part people availed themselves of these things without abusing the privilege. In fact, we often reminded ourselves of our fortunate circumstance with the saying “Save some noodles for tomorrow’s lunch.”
Now there are so many new rules that make it all very complicated. The doors are still open twenty-four/seven but for life-threatening emergencies only; the rest of us with broken fingers or kidney stones have to wait it out until the next morning, an emergency-care doctor making the final determination. And when you do check in at the clinic, everything that has happened to you and that you’ve ever been prescribed or treated with pops up on the screen like always, but now some lines flash when a certain frequency is exceeded, and if you want that particular prescription or treatment, you’ll have to pay a fee beyond the usual token fee to receive it, an additional cost that is sometimes not so
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