I am at a massive goodbye team members and welcome team member's lunch that occurs at the end of every release. There is about to be a toast of plum juice when my cell phone rings. It is Yang. She sounds weak as she tells me she can't move her arm. I imagine she is on the slope at Chongli, a three hour drive away, where she went for one last snow boarding run. I wonder how in the country where I am illiterate I can get help to her. Then she tells me she's on the way to the hospital with the snowboard instructor driving her car. I go into Doctor on TV mode and ask her questions about the injury. Is there blood? Bruising? What part of the arm? Any other part of her body hurt? What did she hit when she fell? From her description it sounds like a separated shoulder. I go back to the lunch and the toasting and the spicy intestines which I do not eat.

Yang calls me less than an hour later and says it's a clean break of the upper arm and she will need surgery. She still sounds weak and in pain. I confirm that the bone did not break the skin. She says the hospital in Chongli cannot do the surgery so she's having the instructor drive her back to Beijing. It's 1:30pm. The three hour drive turns into five hours and I know Yang is somewhat conscious because she is posting updates on her Weixin. From one photo, I can see that it is her left arm that is broken. I meet her at the hospital which conveniently is a five minute walk from our house. One of the emergency room doctors recognizes her because she was in the hospital for an infection two weeks prior. An infection on the same arm I believe, caused by a cut on a previous snowboarding trip. An infection severe enough they wanted to hospitalize her but she talked them out of it and recovered fine. I am reminded of the TV series LOST where a character's life kept getting saved until fate could no longer be put off.

The hospital we go to is well-funded because it is expensive. It is western style with western doctors to make the foreigners feel comfortable. If not for my work insurance, we would not be able to afford it and feel lucky that we are covered. Yang is seen by three doctors and the one who specializes in bones wants to take another x-ray. The theory he has is that she likely fell on her elbow which caused her upper arm bone to snap and if that's the cause then her elbow might also be damaged. The nurses come in and take her to radiology and I'm told to sit on a nearby coach. I see two orderlies coming in a hurry to radiology a few minutes later. As it turned out they asked Yang to stand so they could get the x-ray of her elbow but with the upper arm bone severed there was nothing to support the rest of the arm. As her arm shifted Yang went into a fair amount of pain. Fair being an understatement for a tremendous amount of pain which caused her to pass out. They got Yang back to the room without ever getting the x-ray and then one of the doctors put a cast on her arm to keep it stable. Positioning her arm to put the cast on caused a fair amount of pain as well.

The surgery was originally scheduled for 9pm that night but was rescheduled to 2pm the next day so Yang was transferred from emergency to an inpatient suite. The inpatient suite was nicer than most hotel rooms with wifi as bad as most hotel rooms. Yang rested comfortably with her morphine drip friends as dripped in to give their support.

The next day as she was in surgery I stayed in her room and contemplated….the presentation I needed to give on Monday. Eventually I found the surgeon who told me everything went fine and that he inserted a rod inside the bone connecting both sides and two screws to keep the rod in place. The surgeon is Chinese which is a good thing. You want someone who is operating on bones every day to fix your bones and not someone who does it once every couple of months. A few minutes later, four hours after she was wheeled out, Yang was wheeled back into her room. She rested until more friends came by.

Her third day in the hospital found her gifted with enough fruit to stock a small farmers market. I almost broke my arm carrying it home. Yang was a bit nauseous most of the day and didn't eat much of the meals the hospital provided. So I at them. At least the parts I liked. More friends came by and seemingly all had advice for her or for me or for anyone who would listen after I stopped. It's nice they care. To a degree.

Her fourth day in the hospital was her checkout day and she was getting stronger through the day but it will be a while before she is back at full strength. We travel to Korea in four days for what was originally a snowboarding trip for Aidan's birthday, now reprised as sightseeing.