Excerpt from Lake with No Name by Diane Wei Liang, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Wei, go back to your room and don't come out here again," Baba yelled at me loudly. "Do you want to catch the disease too? Go back right now!"

I went back to the room that I shared with Xiao Jie but left the door open slightly so that I could hear and watch what was happening in my parents' room.

Mama came back some time later, soaked from the rain.

"What did the doctor say?" Baba asked.

Mama cuddled Xiao Jie tightly in her arms. My sister had started to lose her voice from constant crying. Tears streamed down my mother's face.

"The only doctor is on duty at the sick camp. He does not have time to come to see Xiao Jie, nor does his assistant. They are swamped by the number of patients in the camp."

"What about medicine? Is there anything we can give to Xiao Jie to get the fever down?"

"They have penicillin, but only for patients at the camp. The disease has spread out into the whole region and medicine is running out. The camp can take Xiao Jie tomorrow morning but not tonight. The barefoot doctors from nearby villages have gone home to rest."

The barefoot doctors were peasants who had been given some basic medical training so that they could take care of health problems in remote regions and villages.

I don't think that any of us slept much that night. My parents could do nothing but put hot towels on Xiao Jie's forehead in the hope that the fever would ease through sweat. As the night went on, Xiao Jie became silent. She had completely lost her voice and her face was burning red. Mama and Baba spent the whole night holding her in turn. In the morning, when my mother took Xiao Jie to the sick camp, her eyes were bloodshot from her own tears.

For the next couple of days, Mama did not sleep much. Because Xiao Jie was seriously ill, the doctor put her in the isolation unit and would not allow anyone to visit. Mama stayed up almost every night, walking the floor in the apartment, wondering about the condition of my sister, hoping and praying. She was also prepared to go to the sick camp at a moment's notice if the worst should happen to my sister, and be at her bedside as soon as possible. My father stayed up with her during those nights, comforting her whenever she burst into tears. On those nights, I lay on my bed listening to the endless rain beating on the window; staring into the dark I hoped that I would see my sister soon.

On the third day of my sister's admission to the sick camp, my parents were given the good news that Xiao Jie had come out of the critical period of the illness and my parents could now visit her at the camp. After they came back, they were deliriously happy and could not stop talking about how well she looked.

"When can I see her?" I asked them as soon as they came in from the rain.

"We don't know. It could be a while. The doctor said that she had to stay in the isolation unit for some time before she could be allowed to mix with others."

"Can I go with you to visit her?"

"No," Mother said sternly, "we don't want you to get sick."

That evening, despite my parents' attempts to keep it from me, I also came down with hepatitis. Maybe because I was older than Xiao Jie, or maybe because living in the mountains had made me stronger, I was not nearly as sick as she was. Though I had to be admitted into the sick camp, I did not need to go to the isolation unit. When I arrived at the children's unit with Mama, I found all my friends from the kindergarten were there. Many of them looked yellow and swollen.

By the end of the month, most people at the labor camp had the disease and had to move to the sick camp. Lack of doctors, nurses and medicine had seriously delayed the recovery of many patients. Most of the time, the doctors could only focus on reducing casualties. It was said that the epidemic had swept through the entire province that year and that the central government had organized the delivery of emergency medicines to aid the fight of hepatitis. Unfortunately, since Nanchuan was very remote from the major cities in the province, medicines took time to reach us.

Copyright © 2003 by Wei Liang