Stealing Time

hun

—intuition. The liver is in the yin location of the abdomen. It stores blood and belongs to the yang element of wood; thus it is called the

shaoyang

of yin.'

Sai nodded as if she understood every word. It was just that she didn't agree. She didn't think April's problem was yin. Yin was yielding, and April was not that.

'The trouble is in your daughter's heart. But the wood element of spring corresponds to the liver. So the problem arises from her liver.'

Aieeyee! Sai's head swam. How did he know that? He looked so young. His hair stuck up like Elvis Presley's, or a movie star's. Sai could see there was hair spray in it. She wondered if a young master of classical medicine should be using hair spray.

The young master interrupted her thoughts. 'There are five elemental phases, five parts of the year: spring, summer, late summer, autumn, and winter. Each has its excesses and deficiencies.'

Yes, yes, but what did that have to do with April's spending her nights with a Spanish man?

'In order to properly utilize the knowledge of the five elemental phases, one must calculate the arrival time of the season and observe normal and abnormal patterns. Since your daughter is ill in spring, we must calculate from the first day of spring on the Chinese calendar. If the first day of spring this year had not yet arrived but the weather was already warm—as it was this year—we must consider this an excess of fire. In your daughter's case the fire excess would humiliate the water element and damage the normalcy of the season. It would overcontrol the normal

qi

of metal. This is called

qi

yin or reckless

qi.'

Ah, now they were getting somewhere. But then the young doctor of the Yellow Emperor's classic medicine started talking about the variability of heaven and earth, and Sai was confused again.

He said she must bring April to him so he could take her pulse. If she was in a truly advanced state of reckless

qi,

the radial pulse could be as much as five times as large as normal. At that point her yin will have collapsed.

'And if both the carotid and radial pulses are five times larger than normal, this condition is called

guan le

or obstructed. That means yin and yang have become extreme and stagnant. The prenatal and postnatal

ging

essence

qi

have become exhausted; the eventual consequence is death.'

Sai swooned and nearly fell off her chair. Was April's heart beating five times as fast as normal? Sai had no idea. But then the young master reassured her again. For another hundred dollars she could obtain a powder that would slow down April's heart and save her life. This seemed an unavoidable expense. Sai figured if she could save April's life she could get the money back from her when she was well.

Neither Sai nor Ja Fa was entirely satisfied with this diagnosis, however. They felt they needed a second opinion and took the PATH train to New Jersey, where they spent Tuesday night with the Dong family and consulted another well-known Chinese doctor. This one inspired greater confidence in spite of charging a much lower fee. Me Nan was a bargain at only twenty-five dollars. She was one of the so-called barefoot doctors, also just recently arrived in this country, but she worked in a cleaning service during the week and had a boyfriend with only one hand. His other hand was made of wood and covered with a black glove that made him look very official when he opened the door of their apartment.

Me Nan gave Sai a cup of tea and asked many questions about April. She wanted to know the quality of her hair, its thickness and vibrancy. The color of her face and the tone of her flesh. She also wanted to know what else was going on in April's life, in addition to the Mexican police boyfriend, that might also be contributing to the impairment of her judgment.

'Uh, uh, uh,' she commented as she listened to Sai's discourse on the matter.

'Good healthy hair. Pale face. Suspicious eyes, been that way from birth. Ugly, but not so ugly that she could not have a good man if she had a better disposition.'

'Uh, uh, uh!' the doctor exclaimed. She gave Sai another cup of very black tea (the cheap kind) and asked if twenty-five dollars was too much.

Sai showed Me Nan the money and told of her sorrow that her daughter was a policeman and her pride that the girl was a good policeman. NYPD could not solve any important cases without her.

The doctor from China listened to the cases with interest and found in one of them the cause of April's complaint. 'Liver. Yes, yes. It is the liver.'

All this time Ja Fa Woo waited in the other room with the one-handed man. He did not want to hear any more theories. He wanted to spank his daughter. When she heard 'liver' Sai thought of the hair-sprayed Chinatown doctor and nodded. 'Yes, it had been warm and dry before the first day of spring.'

'No, that is not it.' Me Nan, the barefoot doctor, did not seem to care about the temperature before the first day of spring, but she made a great deal of the fact that April had been twice chilled and thrown out of a window back in January and had been given a large box of chocolates for Valentine's Day in February.

'When the evil wind invades the body it generally turns to heat and consumes the body's

qi, jing

essence, and blood,' she said.

Sai frowned. That sounded bad.

'When the blood becomes depleted, the liver is not normal and malfunctions.'

'But if it was not the warm air before spring, what could be the cause, a devil, a ghost?' Sai wanted to know.

'No, no, nothing as malignant as that. Cold invading the body in winter will incubate and manifest as febrile disease in spring because everything rises at that time of year.'

Sai sighed with relief. April had caught a cold.

The barefoot doctor held up her hand. '

And

improper use of the five flavors. The chocolates in February made too much sweet taste and disturbed the heart

qi,

causing it to become restless and congested.'

Sai thought back on the chocolates and marveled at her own robust state of health. She herself had eaten most of them, but then again she hadn't gotten her feet wet and chased criminals in the snow. 'What is the cure?' she asked, thinking another twenty-five dollars was not too much to pay if April could throw off the Spanish love disease.

For only two dollars more Sai received a plastic bag of sour herbs that Sai must make into tea. The tea would both counteract the liver disease and make her daughter smell forever distasteful to the foreign devil.

'Ah, ah, ah.' Sai listened with satisfaction. On the two trains going back to Astoria, Queens, she thought about the other additions she had to make to April's diet. Plums, chives, small beans like mung or adzuki. Dragon bones and dog meat. With a shiver, she wondered how far she would go to save April from this bad relationship. She hoped it would not be necessary to sacrifice her beloved French poodle puppy. Dim Sum, that had only just become reliable about holding her pee pee through the night. For this reason she was glad April wasn't there when they got home.