They would be cooking right through supper, but the mess tents outside couldn’t seat everyone at once anyway. Dinner would be two hours long, and they would be cooking right through.
Another thing water and sewer allowed were showers, the first real showers many of them had had since leaving home a week or more before. Most of those working in the hospital were women, and there were six long, narrow shower rooms with a dozen shower heads in doorless stalls down either side. They marked five of the six shower rooms for women and left one to the men working at the hospital. With a hundred and twenty shower heads available for women and twenty-four for men, everyone working in the hospital building cycled through the showers and got into clean coveralls that afternoon.
The hospital laundry also started up when the power came on. Laundry detergent had come in with the kitchen supplies the day before, and the big washing machines were started up. There were plenty of dirty coveralls from people taking showers. Everyone was asked to write their colonist number on the inside of the collar with laundry marking pens. As the coveralls came out of the dryers, they were hung on racks by colonist number for easy pickup.
All these little things added up, and it was an entirely different environment the field workers returned to than they had left that morning.
Betsy Reynolds and PingLi were taking a break to eat their lunch, a quick MRE between washing dishes.
“PingLi, can I ask you a question?” Betsy Reynolds asked.
“Of course, Betsy.”
“I don’t understand your family. There are all these people, but I don’t know who is who.”
“I explain. Chen LiQiang is Chen Zufu. Grandfather. In English, you would say, the Chen. He is head of household. Head of the group, yes? And Chen JuHua is his wife.”
“Yes, I understood that,” Betsy said.
“GangHai is eldest son of grandfather. I am second child. FangLi is my sister. Third child. And MingTao is my brother. Fourth child.”
“All right. Then you are perhaps forty years old? Same as me?”
“Yes,” PingLi said. “Grandfather has four children. Forty-two, forty, thirty-seven, thirty-five.”
“And then there are the grandchildren.”
“Yes. MingWei is son of GangHai. Eldest grandson. He is twenty-three, I think? Grandfather has ten grandchildren in all. The youngest are the great grandchildren. They are still children.”
“Four of them, right?” Betsy asked.
“So far, with many more on the way. The grandchildren waited for colony time. Five months ago, no more waiting.”
PingLi laughed.
“And the rest?”
“They are the wives and husbands,” PingLi said. “They all come to colony. Normally women stay with husband. If he goes, they go. If he stays, they stay.”
“But not this time?”
“No. It was very hard. The separations from family. Much crying. But the big extra was crowding. All hope for better life without so much fear of hunger. How do you say it? Everybody hungry?”
“Famine,” Betsy said with a shudder.
“Yes, famine. So everyone comes, even husbands follow wives, instead of opposite.”
“And everyone learned English?”
“Yes. No one speaks English before we win colony lottery. Then grandfather say to everyone, ‘Xue yingyu.’ Learn English. So we all learn. Some learn better than others.”
PingLi shrugged and laughed.
“Well, you do very well for just having learned.”
“Thank you.”
“One more question, PingLi. GangHai has no wife?” Betsy asked.
“No. Very sad. She died seven years ago. I do not remember the word. In Chinese, it is aizheng. The thing that grows too fast.”
“Cancer.”
“Yes, that is the word. Cancer. Here. In the woman part.”
PingLi pointed to her abdomen. So ovarian cancer. That was still a tough one for medicine if not caught early enough.
“GangHai has been lonely without YanJing. Not laugh as much as before. My brother was very happy. We sometimes called him XiaoXiao. Xiao means smiling, or laughing.”
Betsy nodded. Losing one’s wife at thirty-five to ovarian cancer was a tragedy. Western medicine might have done better than whatever they had in their farming village in China, but it would have been a tough fight even so.
“Well, we have more dishes,” Betsy said. “Thanks, PingLi. Now it’s back to work, I guess.”
Matt got off the bus at the portico of the hospital and looked around with wonder. The entire hospital was lit up. The portico blazed with lights. In front of the hospital, the four huge mess tents were also lighted, and people stood in line for dinner. Servers stood behind steaming serving trays. It smelled wonderful, and his stomach growled.
“All right, guys. Tough choice here,” their bus driver said. “Dinner first or shower first. There are fresh coveralls on the dock.”
Matt looked at those eating in the mess tents. Not a lot of clean coveralls. Most looked like they had opted for chow first.
“Showers for me,” he said to his father. “That line’s probably shorter right now. Then we can eat a leisurely dinner.”
“Sounds like a good idea, Matt.”
Matt was right, and the line for showers wasn’t long. They had changed over to five shower rooms for men and one for women in preparation for the field workers coming in, and it moved quickly.
It was only half an hour later they were in line for dinner.
Betsy Reynolds was a very caring person, with a great capacity to love. She had loved Harold Munson, despite his serious flaws as a human being, which got even worse as he aged.
And now she found herself alone. But she wasn’t the only one.
Reynolds saw GangHai sitting in the mess tent with the other men of the Chen-Jasic group. They had all come
