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The day I went looking for the ring, large, tumescent clouds of rose above Beijing. They rolled into town the day before, and although most referred to them as sandstorms, in truth they were dust storms, comprised of loess dust that carpeted the vast interior of China. This afternoon the slanting sun turned the loess clouds into pale shades of yellow, orange, red, and grey. It was March, but it had been a dry winter in northern China, the lack of winter’s precipitation breeding a handful of dust storms, this being the first of many that spring. As I drove in the taxi to Wangfujing, where I was going to buy the ring, the wind tore at the Chinese flags that rippled on their masts at the foot of the federal buildings. People scurried the sidewalks holding their umbrellas to the side to deflect the northwesterly wind. Only a fool would be out in these conditions; but, I had an impulse that demanded my urgent attention – I needed an engagement ring, and I needed it quickly. It was Wednesday afternoon, and I knew that I couldn’t take any time off before the clock trickled down to five in the afternoon on Friday when I’d be off work at the American Embassy. Then, at dinner, I’d propose to Wen Wen.
For three years I’d been working in Beijing at the American Embassy. There I applied my knowledge of the Middle Kingdom in the commerce department greasing the wheels of American companies to work with their Chinese counterparts. Taking care of all the arcane and exigent laws of international commerce with China was truly exacting and frequently left me exhausted at the end of the day. But it was in the chambers of the commerce department that providence allowed me to meet Wen Wen. Working as one of the commercial department’s assistants, I was immediately drawn to her. Though not originally from Beijing, she had lived there most of her life. Wen Wen was originally from Fujian, and that was where her hukao, or citizenship card, listed as her hometown. That might cause problems when we were married. There, I had seen her for over year, but it was only over the last six months that we became serious.
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On rounds, during that first month on the ward while Barry was my resident, he always seemed to see trouble coming before I did, and the minute he saw smoke on the horizon, he’d subtly stand out of the way. Once I didn’t know the blood count of a patient who had a bleeding ulcer after we transfused him. Barry took a step away from me as Mark Armstrong, our attending physician, asked me that very question. Things had been so fast and crazy, I hadn’t the time to obtain in the lab. Barry burst in. “It was 30.5%,” he replied, making me look both stupid and inept. I hated him for it, nursing my feelings close to my heart, adding that much more contempt that I had for the man. That hatred for the man is tattooed to my soul.
During that long first year, my feeling toward Krakauer I found were shared by many of the other residents. Krakauer’s sense of self-entitlement that grated most on his fellow house staff members. Neither did his narcissism nor his manipulative ways endear Krakauer to his fellow house staff members. There was more than a trace laxness and fecklessness in the way that Krakauer conducted his professional life. If Barry could slough an admission off upon another resident, he never hesitated to do it. None this was lost on the rest of the residents of the internal medicine department. None of it was lost on the residents in other specialists when Barry dumped a patient on them. He was not liked.
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