My friend had been living in Beijing for many years, caring for his elderly father. A few weeks ago, he learned that he was ill and decided to return to the United States for treatment. The Friday before last, he flew back and went straight from the airport to the ICU at our university hospital.
It wasn't until the following Wednesday that I learned from his family where his room was. As it turned out, he was only a three-minute walk from the building where I work. But because the hospital is in a different building, I would never have known, had no one told me, that he was so close by.
Now that I knew, of course I had to go see him.
After wrapping up my work, I walked through the connecting corridors into the hospital. Instead of heading straight to his room, I turned in the opposite direction, toward the hospital gift shop.
Next to the gift shop was a coffee shop, with tables and chairs by the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street. There were always people sitting there, taking a break, and the air was always filled with the aroma of coffee. That afternoon, though, I paid no attention to the coffee shop or the people sitting there. I walked straight into the gift shop and chose a card.
Afternoon sunlight fell across the windows. Some people sat talking over coffee. Some stared quietly outside. Others hurried through the corridor. And there I was, sitting by the window, carefully writing my wishes into a card, one word at a time.
As I wrote, a thought suddenly came to me: So the day has arrived when we are writing cards like this for friends our own age.
The doors to the ICU were open. I walked to the reception desk and told a nurse that I was there to see a friend.
"Sure," she said. "Go ahead."
His room was directly across from the desk. A curtain stretching all the way to the ceiling concealed most of the bed. I peeked around it and saw my friend lying there. He was curled up almost like a baby, his knees drawn toward him, resting partly on his side.
I softly called his name.
He opened his eyes.
His mind was clear. He didn't complain. He simply talked about his life in Beijing and recalled things that had happened many years ago. But I noticed that some of his memories were completely wrong.
There was a stitched scar on the right side of his head, left by the biopsy he had undergone after arriving at the hospital.
He told me he had been lying in bed for days and wanted to walk, but the doctors wouldn't let him.
"Even if they did," he said, "I probably couldn't make it twenty meters."
He said he had been eating oatmeal every day in the hospital and asked if I could bring him some baozi—Chinese steamed buns.
"I haven't made baozi in years," I told him.
"The kind made without yeast would be fine too," he said.
Clearly, he had made up his mind. He wanted baozi.
On the shuttle home that evening, I searched Xiaohongshu for instructions on how to make yeast dough and vegetarian baozi. Once home, I started the dough, then mixed a filling of eggs, radish, glass noodles, and mushrooms.
I ended up steaming fourteen big, plump baozi.
Apparently, my northern Chinese genes were still doing their job.
The next day was Thursday. I got up early and cooked a pot of millet porridge. I poured it into a thermos, packed ten baozi into a food bag, and added a packet of pickled mustard greens, a lunch container, and a set of disposable utensils and napkins. I put everything into a backpack and took it to the hospital.
But I didn't go straight to the ICU. First, I stopped at the hospital cafeteria and warmed three baozi in the microwave, put them into the lunch container, and only then went upstairs to see my friend.
There were two people in the room. My friend was lying in bed, and a nurse was standing beside him.
"He got some activity this morning," she told me.
"Really? He's been wanting to move around. Thank you."
"I helped him to the bathroom," she said.
"That counts as activity?" I asked.
"Yes."
All right, I thought. If you say so.
He wanted some porridge. I opened the thermos, but it was still a little too hot. Then he started eating a baozi.
"Slow down," I reminded him. "You'll choke if you eat too fast."
A little while later, he started urging me to go to work, so I left.
Later that morning, another friend from our group said she wanted to visit him. Naturally, I gave her detailed instructions on the best way to get there. She arrived around noon. I went downstairs to meet her and took her to his room.
This time, he said to me, "Go get me a cup of coffee."
"The doctor said you're not supposed to drink coffee," I told him.
"Just don't put sugar in it."
All right.
By then, I knew the place well. I went and bought him a coffee—no sugar, and fat-free creamer.
He wanted to drink it, so he called the nurse and asked her to raise the head of his bed. That still wasn't enough. He wanted to sit on the edge of the bed, but he couldn't hold himself upright. The nurse had to grip the back of his hospital gown and support him so he could sit steadily.
He reached for the coffee. The cup trembled in his hand, and I quickly put my hand under the bottom to steady it.
He took a sip and set it down.
Then another sip.
And another.
Little by little, he drank more than half the cup.
It was obvious that he truly loved coffee.
As a young man, he had dreamed of becoming a diplomat. After living in America for decades, coffee had become part of his life. That cup of coffee without sugar seemed to remind him that beyond the hospital room, the life he had always known was still there.
When he finished, he lay back down. He seemed much more alert, and his sense of humor returned. Before long, there was laughter in the room.
The nurse came in and told us she needed to clean him up and prepare him to move to another room. We thanked her and said goodbye.
On my way back, it was still only a three-minute walk.
When I came, my backpack had been filled with baozi and millet porridge.
When I left, it was empty.
And suddenly I thought: as we grow older, perhaps the things we can do for our friends become simpler and simpler—a card, a few baozi, a cup of coffee without sugar.
And, when they need us, walking those three minutes.
