JULY 22 — “She must have surgery immediately.” That was what the emergency room doctor said to me, shaking his head solemnly. Chinese New Year was not the time of year to need critical heart surgery.
After making phone calls and arrangements, I came back and told him that the surgeon had agreed to admit her and do surgery in a few days.
“Did you give him a hong bao?”
My heart turned cold in the already subzero weather and I looked at him strangely. Somehow the fact that I had arranged surgery so quickly meant I must have paid the surgeon a bribe. My eyes filled with tears. Not that he assumed I would, but that a little baby would die without surgery and it was expected that I give a bribe.
I laughed, a bit sarcastically, and said I hadn’t and that he shouldn’t be expecting one either. With that I turned and left, angry that a little girl’s life may hang on whether I pay a bribe or not.
Our relationship with the surgeon meant no red packet needed to be given to get her into surgery. I was confident that she would be fine, but my heart broke for the parents, all sitting in the hospital waiting for surgery for their kids, who don’t have the relationship I did with the surgeon.
A week later and I was still confident that it was just the system that was holding up surgery. It didn’t even occur to me that it could be about the red packet I didn’t give. After all, the surgeon is a friend, this baby is an orphan, we are fighting for her, we are praying for her.
Two weeks later and I was getting angry.
And then finally surgery was scheduled. Once, twice, three times, a fourth time.
Every time she was bumped. Not because she was less urgent, her situation was deteriorating daily.
Not because they didn’t have blood, we had given blood for her. Not because it was too complicated and they didn’t know what to do, the surgery itself was simple.
She was bumped because of her status as an orphan. Not because her surgeon didn’t care, he did, but his hands were tied. Parents who felt their child deserved it more than our precious one. Parents who were willing to give a red packet, they were able to move up the line faster.
Finally the day came for surgery, yet again. This time they promised. Surgery went without incident, and a week later she was discharged.
They discharged her but once again ridiculous bureaucracy came above the needs of a child and they would not release her medication, or even tell me what they were, until her bill was paid. I could pay the bill, but a local organisation had wanted to help with the cost and they had not shown up, and we didn’t bring enough money. The hospital wouldn’t budge. They held her well-being and health captive, as collateral against the unpaid balance.
I hadn’t seen her in a month, they wouldn’t let me. Because there were no beds on the ward, and she had been so critical before surgery, she had been in the ICU the whole time, and in the ICU there are no caregivers or family allowed.
When I picked her up, my stomach rolled with nausea. Hot tears fell onto my cheeks that were flushed with anger.
It was all about money. And she paid the price.
A measly four kilos at nearly seven months old. Two kilos less than when she was admitted to the hospital.
She barely had the strength to hold her arms up, couldn’t lift her legs, and she was in so much pain. If they had been feeding her, it wasn’t much. Where the milk I had sent for her went, I don’t know.
She resembled pictures of starving children usually seen in fundraising campaigns or National Geographic. Her cry so weak she didn’t even sound like a baby.
This was not the case of a difficult surgery, or an unexpected outcome. This was a case of sheer neglect, of starvation while in the one place she should have been safe, should have been able to receive healing.
The one place I trusted she would be safe, the one place I arranged for her to go.
The place where I refused to pay a bribe, never thinking that this would be the consequence.
Just days from death, I held her but she refused to look at me. She arched her neck away so she didn’t have to look in my eyes.
How can you be seven months old and have experienced so much pain that you will not look in the eyes of the one person who loves you?
Her heart more broken than it ever was before surgery.
And I am angry. I am angry about a system like this, where money matters more than life. I am angry that the harsh realities like this are hidden from much of the world, and we complain that our life is hard.
I’m angry that taking the moral “high-road” and refusing to pay meant harsh consequences for a precious little girl who did not deserve to be caught in the middle of such ugliness.
I’m angry that a little girl has lost her smile.
I am angry that she is not the only one, that there are and will be many others.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
