Smart and Strong

Elisa wakes up in the middle of the night and fusses enough to wake up Yang. Says in something in Chinese Yang can’t quite understand. Then Yang can start to understand her “hē shuǐ 喝水” she says. 喝水. “Drink Water”, “Drink Water”. Yang grabs the water glass and brings it to Elisa’s mouth. Elisa shakes her off. Points at Yang. Yang needs to drink water. Yang needs to drink water because Yang always drinks water when she breast feeds Elisa.

Last Friday, Yang was boarding a plane to Qingdao when her cell phone rang. Elisa was in the hospital. Yang kept walking, got on the plane, and when she learned Elisa needed stitches and not only needed stitches but needed to be knocked unconscious, Yang decided to leave the plane. The problem with leaving a plane once you board, even in China, means the entire plane must get off.  Some type of security thing I imagine. Yang decided to stay on her flight.

What happened, best we can tell is this. Our Ayi was in the restroom and left Elisa in the living room alone. The ayi does this a fair amount – not the restroom part mind you which is within normal thresholds – but leaving Elisa alone in the living room. After all the ayi needs to clean and do laundry and what not. And while the ayi was in the restroom, Elisa got into our large living room cabinet as Elisa is want to do. Elisa fell, whacked her forehead on a corner or something and opened up a pretty deep gash. The ayi heard her cry and knew enough to call someone else, namely Yang’s father’s wife. She also called Yang’s mom and the two ladies converged (for the first time ever) at Beijing United Hospital’s emergency room. Beijing United has a good emergency room, with good English speaking doctors for these Chinese women to deal with. The news was Elisa definitely needed stitches and since the wound was fairly deep, they would need to knock her out. The could do it in the emergency room or an operating room, the operating room coming with a cosmetic doctor (think smaller scar), so they opted for the operation room. I was, by the way, in Bellevue completely unaware.

The stitches went well, out baby went home once she woke up and was alert. Yang got home the next day and Elisa was back to normal shortly afterword.