(Originally I was just going to write about my stupid knee injury. But as I wrote it, it turned into a reflection on my stay in China so far (seven months). I had so much to say, so I broke this post into four separate ones. Enjoy!)
At first this post was going to be an all sad and “happiness is fleeting” type of thing. I woke up this morning and thought, “Everything is going my way. I’m so incredibly lucky. Life is fantastic.” Then I slipped during my evening shower and landed on the divider, cutting my knee open. Every time I bent my knee, a world of pain shot directly to the primal area of my brain.
I was alone for an hour. I cried and comforted myself. “It’s fine, Stacy. Stop crying.” I called the emergency phone. No answer. I called again. No answer. I looked at my leg, tried to bend it, and cried some more. The knee was swelling up. I googled “fractured knee” but had to stop reading the article because it freaked me out so much. “That doesn’t help, Stacy.” I was talking to myself. I didn’t care.
I finally got ahold of Andrea, my program’s Chinese student life assistant, and she took me to the hospital. Her fiancée tagged along because he was worried about our safety. I was ruining their Friday night after I had already ruined mine.
When I got into the cab with them, I burst out crying. I had bent my leg to get in which was a huge mistake. I sat in the front seat and Andrea reached around the headrest to rub my back. “It’s okay,” she said, as I sobbed into my Chinese Kleenex. I’m not even sure what the cab driver thought of me at that moment, but there was too much pain to care.
Andrea made conversation with me on the way over, and I realized she was asking a lot of questions as a way to take my mind off the pain. And it was working brilliantly. Five minutes before we arrived, she stopped asking questions and I started tearing up, remembering the pain. “The questions were good. Why can’t I have more of those?” I thought. We had talked about my brothers and how she thought it was so strange that my parents weren’t paying for them to also come visit me when they arrive in May. “Chinese culture is so different from American culture,” she said.
We arrived at the hospital and Andrea directed the cab driver to pull up right to the building. Andrea and her man got out while I paid, but the cab driver drove a little further with me still in the front seat. I was confused, but kept silent. Then he pulled into a side space, and I reached for the door. He told me to wait a moment, and turned the car around and pulled it with the passenger side this time facing the hospital. He had turned off the meter, and it was so rare for cab drivers to continue to drive you after the meter was off. He did this so I had even less of a distance to walk.
The unexpected kindness from a stranger, especially a cab driver, threatened to reignite the waterworks. I was moved.
Continue reading…Post Two
