Chapter 41
Buy ReWire now on Amazon for only $3.99
Jack nearly shouted in frustration, as another back spasm hit. The good old boy from Georgia two people in front of him in line was letting his frustrations out on the customs people. This was inherently stupid. The customs folks in Hong Kong did a better job than most. They were just doing their job, as wasteful as it was. The large man raised his voice and asked for a supervisor.
Patience is a virtue Jack tried to tell himself, but “Fuck this!” was what he said as he walked up on the cracker’s left. Jack grabbed just above the man’s right elbow and drove his thumb deep into the meat of the man’s elbow joint. He felt the big nerve grate against bone. The man turned toward him, pain washing the color from his face.
He whispered, the two men’s eyes only inches apart, “I’m tired, my back hurts, and you are making me wait. Be quiet. Go along nice or I’ll rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.”
The man tried to pull away. Jack applied more pressure and then let it off. The man whimpered, quieted, and broke into a hearty laugh as beads of sweat popped on his scalp.
“My mistake,” he said. “Sorry. Sorry. Don’t understand it, must be the jet lag.”
The man laughed again and smiled down at the clerk. The young man smiled subserviently up at the good old boy and said, in a dialect Jack could barely make out. “I understood they raised very large swine in your country. I did not know they issued them passports.”
It wasn’t original, but it was funny. Jack couldn’t hide his smile. A few of the Chinese in the crowd laughed out loud. Jack moved back to his place as the line moved smartly forward. The clerk made a show of looking very carefully at his bags, while not checking anything. For once, everything was put very carefully back in its proper place.
The clerk asked, “What did you do to make the large swine act human?”
Jack said, “I don’t understand,” in Mandarin, shrugged, and walked through the door out into the arrivals area. Lee stood before him in a severely tailored, gray, chalk-stripe suit. She had done something different to her hair and he tried to figure out what it was and if he liked it.
Lee held his hands, looked up at him and asked, “How can I miss you this much so soon?”
She smelled good and felt even better. Her lips were cool, even as a warm cloud of wonderful scent swirled around her. She hugged him fiercely, pushing away as she felt him stiffen.
“It’s your back again, isn’t it?” she asked.
He nodded as her words hammered a boy to get his bags. Her voice had a nice drill sergeant snap to it when needed. She turned his wrist over to check the time.
“We have time to make a little detour.”
Lee snapped more quick orders to the limousine driver. She talked too fast for him to get all of it, but when she got through to the doctor’s office on her mobile, he caught on.
“Wait a minute. I’m not going to see a doctor. I’ve seen twenty doctors about my back. I don’t need another one to tell me I need risky surgery and that it might not work.”
Lee turned to face him, marshaling her considerable powers of persuasion. “I don’t know what twenty western doctors told you. We are going to a Chinese doctor. You do agree, don’t you, that five thousand years of Chinese medicine might have answers that your western doctors have yet to find?”
If he said “No” he would insult Chinese culture. He pictured some wizened, old man feeding him a noxious porridge of eye of newt and toe of frog, with a little ginseng kicker. The limo stopped in front of a modern high-rise. The elevator let them out on the sixteenth floor into a waiting room that could have been transplanted from any doctor’s office in San Francisco. The reception area had the same neutral carpet and meaningless modern art on the walls. He began to relax, thinking it would be a bland waste of time instead of the ordeal he’d pictured.
He stood with his knees bent, one leg in front of the other, much more comfortable than trying to sit, looking at the Chinese edition of Architectural Digest, when the assistant walked out. Lee accompanied them to the exam room. Dr. Mai Lee Phoon was no more than five feet tall and probably not much more than ten years older than he was. As the years passed he became worse at guessing women’s ages. The doctor had beautiful jet-black hair with a sharp streak of gray on the left. Her eyes were gray, not brown.
Lee acted as interpreter. The doctor had no English at all and his weak Cantonese didn’t cover Chinese medical terms. Dr. Phoon would ask a question and Lee would interpret as the doctor asked it.
“Tell me what you are eating?” Lee translated.
“And, how much sleep are you getting?”
“Take off your shirt and your shoes and socks.”
She and Lee discussed him as if he were a side of beef. The doctor snapped off a question he didn’t catch. Lee responded, saying she was personally taking care of that and things were definitely good in that area. Jack guessed the meaning and blushed, which made both women laugh.
The doctor took seven pulses with different fingers in multiple places on his left and right wrist. She listened to his breathing and took pulses in his feet, then asked him, through Lee, to take off the rest of his clothes.
Lee, “The doctor wants you to lie on the exam table on your back.”
The doctor handed him a hand-towel to cover his privates. The doctor pushed on his stomach and ribs. She put her hand on his diaphragm. She asked him to turn onto his stomach. She placed the little towel across his butt and ran her fingers gently down his back to the scar tissue near the base of his spine. She probed gently until she came to the worst of the scar tissue where she pressed her thumb into his back.
He let out a lungful of air as he stifled a scream. The doctor hissed and asked more questions through Lee.
“The doctor asks if you were shot in the back.”
“I was hit with shrapnel, hot small pieces of metal from an exploding mortar shell. Some of them were taken out immediately, and they have tried to take out others two different times. Some are still in there.”
Dr. Phoon called on the intercom. Another assistant came in, carrying a mortar and pestle and acupuncture needles. Years ago, Jack scoffed at acupuncture. Then, two years ago, he had watched Sir Ian go into major surgery with no anesthesia except hair-thin needles running up his chest. When he tried acupuncture, it helped his shoulder, but hadn’t touched the pain in his back.
The assistant set the needle case aside and helped the doctor prepare a potion. Jack recognized some of the herbs and roots. He smiled as he saw that the first ingredient was ginseng, scraped off a fresh looking root. Then skullcap, St. John’s wort and what looked like rose petals. He watched the preparations until he saw what he thought might have been spiders being added to the mix.
When he turned his head to the left, he saw Lee’s face a few inches from his. She had pulled a chair up next to the exam table, while his attention was distracted by the potion preparation.
“Hey you!” she said and ran the back of her hand along his cheek.
It felt good to have his woman touch him. She brushed her palm along his other cheek and then ran her hand through his hair.
“I can’t decide if your eyes are blue or gray. What color are they?”
She stroked him, building him up. The doctor heated the potion and vapor floated up from it, refracting the light from the sun coming through the window of the exam room. The doctor started talking and the room dimmed. Lee translated.
“The doctor made an elixir. It will relax you, and leave you feeling refreshed. She understands you have an important meeting tomorrow. Do not worry about feeling lightheaded. She says you will sleep better tonight than you have in many years. She will place the needles soon after you drink this.”
He drank. The elixir tasted warm and cold at the same time. He could taste the bite of the ginseng and there was a peppermint aftertaste. After a few minutes his sinuses opened and his ears popped. He lay for about twenty minutes feeling more tired and a little sleepy, like after a big meal in the middle of the day. He watched in the mirror the doctor had set up in front of him as she inserted the first needle.
She placed the first needle near the scars at the base of his spine and gently rolled it between thumb and forefinger until the needle had gone in about half an inch. He watched in the mirror as she did the same with needle after needle. He had been sleepy, but as Mai Li Phoon stepped away it felt as if a small lightning bolt ran from his toes up to the base of his neck. A cold shiver raised goose bumps on his skin and then, almost immediately, he felt warm again. One of the assistants moved the mirror away.
The doctor chattered to Lee, too fast for him to understand, but he understood Lee’s answers. She kept saying no to the doctor’s questions until finally she said “yes.” She bent down beside him again, her face close enough so that he could smell garlic on her breath and see the shine of unshed tears in her eyes.
Lee said, “I have to leave for a few minutes. The doctor says to relax. When she gives you the signal, you are to visualize the little pieces of metal leaving your back. I will stand just outside the room.
She turned and walked out the door.
LEE’S SHOULDERS SLUMPED after she walked out the door. She let herself be weak for just a few seconds. That man, that silly, sweet wonderful man had endured so much pain in his life and he was such a fierce tiger. And, he was humble. She melted when he touched her, became moist at the very thought of him. She had not planned on helping him with his back until later, but why not now? “…best it were done quickly…”
Lee wished that she had the skill along with her talent to do this thing herself, but she did know enough of the human anatomy and would be too long in learning. Jack needed help now. She did not pray, she did not believe in it. If it would have been any other thing she would have added her strength to the doctor’s, but this was so important. Imagine what he would be like without the constant pain!
She sat in one of the too-modern chairs, cleared her mind and picked up a travel magazine. When she and Jack were done with this mission to find and kill the fools who had tried to kill his sister, she would take him away. Somewhere far from worries and phones and meetings and have that lovely, lovely man all to herself. Hong Lee, scion to one of the wealthiest trading families in Hong Kong, educated, sophisticated and brilliant, held her hand above the page and, using a talent humans had for eons, lost and some had found again, willed the page to turn. The page did as it was instructed.
THE DOCTOR smiled down at Jack. Two more young females in lab coats walked quickly in and stood, one at his head and one to his left, near his waist. The doctor placed a metal pan near the exam table on a dolly. She nodded to the assistants. They stepped closer, both gently laying hands on him.
“Now,” the doctor said, and then Mai Lee Phoon placed her warm hands on his spine, flat out fingers spread and then slowly brought her fingers together almost like gently kneading dough. Jack did as Lee asked, visualizing pieces of shrapnel, just like the ones the surgeons gave him every time they went in, moving through his tough muscles and scar tissue and leaving his body.
Jack’s lower back throbbed, not so much with pain, but as if there were something moving around under the skin trying to get out. He could feel the warmth of the doctor’s hands gently pressing against his skin. A tingling started deep inside. The tingling turned to an itch and then a burn. Again, it felt is if something was gently stirring under his skin trying to get out. The doctor’s fingers felt like warm caterpillars on his skin, somehow feeling as if they were moving through his flesh.
He heard a clink and another and another, the clinking sounds accompanying the movement of the doctor’s hands away from his skin. He heard the clinking sound seven times until finally, there was silence. The assistant standing near his waist patted his back with towels. His back felt wet. He turned his head to look. The assistant standing by his shoulders gently held his head straight ahead.
The doctor gently twirled the acupuncture needles up and out, throwing them in a slotted, black box with the symbol of interlocking pincers: The universal symbol for biological waste.
The assistant who had been standing near his waist walked out the door carrying a plastic bag. The other assistant followed, leaving the doctor standing by him as Lee walked back into the room. Lee looked as if she were trying very hard not to look scared.
Lee asked the doctor a question. The doctor said, “Yes,” and the look of fear left Lee’s face. She laughed.
Lee watched as the doctor placed butterfly bandages on his back.
When the doctor finished Lee said, “Time to get up, lazy man.”
Lee and the doctor helped Jack dress. He felt relaxed, but so weary he felt as if he could sleep standing up. He didn’t remember much of the journey to the hotel. He did remember being helped into bed. He thought someone had climbed into bed with him and then he was asleep.
Buy ReWire now on Amazon for only $3.99