What’s wrong? Madeline asked, sensing that I had been turned away from my monitor for too long.
I asked if one of them could cover my weekend shift. I apologized for the short notice, but I had to leave.
Both were happy to do it and even commended my request, since like my father I was a workaholic and known to never take time off. They asked where I was going and I said China, but just for the weekend. Then I turned from them and started packing up my things.
Fine, don’t tell us, said Reese.
I know what it is, Madeline said with a mischievous glint. You’re off to get married. You’re going to elope.
Elope is a funny word and, in hospital-speak for patients, meant “to leave the building at the risk of yourself and without a doctor’s consent.”
After I mentioned my father’s passing, Madeline gasped, covering her mouth and, for a second, shutting her eyes. Through her fingers, she asked if that had been my last conversation with him, and the sound I made, was it, then, a sound of grief?
I said, No, not really, and left it at that.
Reese and Madeline asked me a few more questions, like when I last saw him, and how long has it been since I left China?
You were born there, no? Reese asked, and I said I was born in the Bay Area.
California, Madeline said. A great place to be born.
But Oakland, I said, to not seem like I was giving my birthplace too much credit.
Right, Reese said.
Still, Madeline said.
I told them that the last time I saw my father was in spring. He had been in New York for business, a possible opportunity here, a new client, and, on his way back to JFK, drove past the hospital and met me in its first-floor atrium that had fake greenery and a small café. He bought me a cup of coffee and I was almost done with it when he had to leave and catch his flight. But to China, I rarely went, nor did I consider myself too Chinese.
The moment those words left my mouth, I wondered why I had said them. What was wrong with being too Chinese? Yet it’d always seemed that something was.
I felt a draft but that was impossible. Our shared office was a windowless room with a dozen desks lined up against the walls and a refreshments station in the back. The door opened to a hall that had no open windows and was used only to transport equipment. A folded-up wheelchair, an empty bed, pushed by hunched-over techs.
Madeline asked if I wanted some gum and it seemed we all did, so we passed the gum packet around and discussed the fresh minty flavor. She asked if I wanted the rest of the pack, international flights were long. How long exactly?
I said sixteen hours, to which Reese replied shit.
I was surprised that neither asked where in China I was going. The country was huge and much of it rural. Google Maps didn’t work there. But there were only two cities most people knew about, and I was going not to the capital but the other one by the sea.
* * *
—
I MET MY ONLY brother at JFK later that night. Eight years older, he was in what he called the new and fit middle age. It didn’t matter to him what age I was （thirty-six）—I was younger, would always be, and he liked to tell me what to do.
Fang was rich now, his Connecticut house massive. Since he had arranged the travel, we boarded first class, where I had a small room by myself, my seat the size of a one-person L-shaped sectional, with a divider to my left that pulled open and closed. For the hour before takeoff, my brother visited me in my room to talk about how great first-class amenities were: the meals and service, different options of heated blankets, ability to recline and lie down, the L’Occitane bathroom kit, blue pajamas with red piping—things our father never had nor could appreciate.
Because he grew up in a village, I said.
It wasn’t a village, Fang said. A small town in the countryside, yes, but not a village. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.
Then Fang explained the L’Occitane kit. He opened his bag and held each item out between his two index fingers. This was a mini tube of toothpaste. This was a retractable comb, earplugs, moisturizer, and cologne. Tiny, powerful mints. He promised that once I flew first class, I would never be the same, there was no other way to travel.
When the meals came, we ate them in our respective rooms with silverware and drank our glass flutes of Veuve Clicquot. From across the aisle, Fang asked when I would be getting promoted at work, and I said I was already an attending/the most senior person in the room.
Sure, he said. But it can’t hurt to ask, there’s got to be one position higher. I said probably. He replied most definitely. Then we finished the champagne and gave back our meal trays and prepared for sleep.