And so Yang Lien-Hua looked around the factory floor, feeling her muscles announce what was to come, and all she could hope was that it would stop, or delay itself. Another five hours, and she could pedal her bicycle home and deliver the baby there, and maybe that wasn’t as good as on a weekend, but it was better than having an emergency here. “Lotus Flower” told herself that she had to be strong and resolute. She closed her eyes, and bit her lip, and tried to concentrate on her job, but the twinges soon grew into discomfort. Then would come mild pain, followed by the real contractions that would deny her the ability to stand, and then.., what? It was her inability to see just a few hours beyond where she stood that contorted her face worse than pain ever could. She feared death, and while that fear is known to all humans, hers was for a life still part of herself, but not really her own. She feared seeing it die, feeling it die, feeling an unborn soul depart, and while it would surely go back to God, that was not God’s intention. She needed her spiritual counselor now. She needed her husband, Quon. She needed Reverend Yu even more. But how would she make that happen?
The camera setup went quickly. Both of the churchmen watched with interest, since neither had seen this happen before. Ten minutes later, both were disappointed with the questions. Both had seen Wise on television, and both had expected better of him. They didn’t realize that the story he really wanted was a few miles and an hour or so away.
“Good,” Wise said, when the vanilla questions were asked and answered. “Can we follow you over to your friend’s place?”
“Certainly,” His Eminence replied, standing. He excused himself, because even Cardinals have to visit the bathroom before motoring off—at least they did at DiMilo’s age. But he reappeared and joined Franz for the walk to the car, which the Monsignor would drive, to the continuing disappointment of their own servant/driver who was, as they suspected, a stringer for the Ministry of State Security. The CNN van followed, twisting through the streets until they arrived at the modest house of the Reverend Yu Fa An. Parking was easy enough. The two Catholic churchmen walked to Yu’s door, carrying a large package, Wise noted.
“Ah!” Yu observed with a surprised smile, on opening the door. “What brings you over?”
“My friend, we have a gift for you,” His Eminence replied, holding up the package. It was clearly a large Bible, but no less pleasing for the obvious nature of the gift. Yu waved them in, then saw the Americans.
“They asked if they could join us,” Monsignor Schepke explained.
“Certainly,” Yu said at once, wondering if maybe Gerry Patterson might see the story, and even his distant friend Hosiah Jackson. But they didn’t get the cameras set up before he unwrapped the package.
Yu did this at his desk, and on seeing it, he looked up in considerable surprise. He’d expected a Bible, but this one must have cost hundreds of American dollars… It was an edition of the King James version in beautifully literate Mandarin.. and magnificently illustrated. Yu stood and walked around the desk to embrace his Italian colleague.
“May the Lord Jesus bless you for this, Renato,” Yu said, with no small emotion.
“We both serve Him as best we can. I thought of it, and it seemed something you might wish to have,” DiMilo replied, as he might to a good parish priest in Rome, for that was what Yu was, wasn’t it? Close enough, certainly.
For his part, Barry Wise cursed that he hadn’t quite gotten his camera running for that moment. “We don’t often see Catholics and Baptists this friendly,” the reporter observed.
Yu handled the answer, and this time the camera was rolling. “We are allowed to be friends. We work for the same boss, as you say in America.” He took DiMilo’s hand again and shook it warmly. He rarely received so sincere a gift, and it was so strange to get it here in Beijing from what some of his American colleagues called papists, and, an Italian one at that. Life really did have purpose after all. Reverend Yu had sufficient faith that he rarely doubted that, but to have it confirmed from time to time was a blessing.
The contractions came too fast, and too hard. Lien-Hua withstood it as long as she could, but after an hour, it felt as though someone had fired a rifle into her belly. Her knees buckled. She did her best to control it, to remain standing, but it was just too much. Her face turned pasty-white, and she collapsed to the cement floor. A co-worker was there at once. A mother herself, she knew what she beheld.
“It is your time?” she asked.
“Yes.” Delivered with a gasp and a painful nod.
“Let me run and get Quon.” And she was off at once. That bit of help was when things went bad for Lotus Flower.
Her supervisor noted one running employee, and then turned his head to see another prostrate one. He walked over, as one might to see what had happened after an automobile accident, more with curiosity than any particular desire to intervene. He’d rarely taken note of Yang Lien-Hua. She performed her function reliably, with little need for chiding or shouting, and was popular with her co-workers, and that was all he knew about her, really, and all that he figured he needed to know. There was no blood about. She hadn’t fallen from some sort of accident or mechanical malfunction. How strange. He stood over her for a few seconds, seeing that she was in some discomfort and wondering what the problem was, but he wasn’t a doctor or a medic, and didn’t want to interfere. Oh, if she’d been bleeding he might have tried to slap a bandage over the wound or something, but this wasn’t such a situation and so he just stood there, as he figured a manager should, showing that he was there, but not making things worse. There was a medical orderly in the first-aid room two hundred meters away. The other girl had probably run that way to fetch her, he thought.
Lien-Hua’s face contorted after a few minutes’ relative peace, as another contraction began. He saw her eyes screw closed and her face go pale, and her breathing change to a rapid pant. Oh, he realized, that’s it. How odd. He was supposed to know about such things, so that he could schedule substitutions on the line. Then he realized something else. This was not an authorized pregnancy. Lien-Hua had broken the rules, and that wasn’t supposed to happen, and it could reflect badly on his department, and on him as a supervisor.., and he wanted to own an. automobile someday.
“What is happening here?” he asked her.
But Yang Lien-Hua was in no shape to reply at the moment. The contractions were accelerating much faster than they’d done with Ju-Long. Why couldn’t this have waited until Saturday? she demanded of Destiny. Why does God wish my child to die aborting? She did her best to pray through the pain, doing her utmost to concentrate, to entreat God for mercy and help in this time of pain and trial and terror, but all she saw around her was more cause for fear.
There was no help in the face of her shop supervisor. Then she heard running feet again and looked to see Quon approaching, but before he got to her, the supervisor intercepted him.
“What goes on here?” the man demanded, with all the harshness of petty authority. “Your woman makes a baby here? An unauthorized baby?” the most minor of officials asked and accused in the same breath. “Ju hai he added: Bitch!
For his part, Quon wanted this baby as well. He hadn’t told his wife of the fears that he’d shared with her, because he felt that it would have been unmanly, but that last statement from the shop supervisor was a little much for a man under two kinds of simultaneous stress. Recalling his army training, Quon struck out with his fist, following his hand with an imprecation of his own:
“Pok gai,” literally, fall down in the street, but in context, Get the fuck out of my way! The shop supervisor gashed his head when he went down, giving Quon the satisfaction of seeing an injury to avenge the insult to his wife. But he had other things to do.
With the words said, and the blow struck, he lifted LienHua to her feet and supported her as best he could on the way to where their bicycles were parked. But, now what to do? Like his wife, Quon had wanted this all to happen at home, where at the worst she could call in sick. But he had no more power to stop this process than he did to stop the world from turning on its axis. He didn’t even have time or energy to curse fate. He had to deal with reality as it came, one shaky second at a time, and help his beloved wife as best he could.