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led me to our apartment. She ran to summon my mother from work. I crawled into my bed, pulled the mosquito net closed and waited for the pain to stop.
    By the time Mama came home, the headache was accompanied by a high fever. Mama felt my forehead and asked me several questions. She bathed me with a damp cloth to bring down my temperature. I felt too sick to eat. During the night the pain decreased but the fever lingered. Early the next morning Mama dressed me and took me to the university clinic.
    After a long wait a doctor examined me and told Mama, “It’s just aminor viral infection. You have nothing to worry about.” He prescribed an herbal medicine and sent us home. The medicine didn’t work. The headaches and pain persisted and my temperature fluctuated. I told Mama I didn’t feel well enough to get the milk in the morning. My brother went in my place.
    When she touched my face to see if I still had a fever, I murmured, “I feel bad.”
    “Let’s go to the clinic,” she said with growing concern.
    I had difficulty walking. When I got to the bottom of the stairs I began to cry. I sat on the bottom step and rested my head in my hands. “I can’t go on, Mama,” I said.
    She retrieved a small stool from our apartment. I walked beside her for a few steps, and we stopped and Mama put the stool down and I sat on it. I walked another few steps and sat again. In this plodding fashion, we made our way to the clinic.
    The doctor was unhappy to see us again and, after a cursory examination, prescribed more herbal medicine. I took the medicine to no effect, and we returned to the clinic the next day and every day after that for a week. The doctor insisted it was nothing serious. He was more annoyed with my repeated appearances than with my illness. My physical condition declined and I lost weight until I was little more than skin and bones.
    One afternoon we went to the clinic and I rested on my stool in the lobby while Mama registered me. We waited until a nurse called us into an examination room where the same doctor was waiting. He frowned. “Not you again!”
    Mama told him I still had difficulty eating and that my bowel movements had become white. She added that she’d heard at work that a teacher’s child had contracted hepatitis B. She said she suspected I’d contracted it, too.
    The doctor glared at her. “What do you know?” he huffed, his voice edged with cold indignation. “Are you a physician?”
    Mama reddened.
    “I’m the only one who can tell you what this little girl has,” he said. “
I
am the doctor!”
    Mama was quiet. I was frightened by his outburst. I wanted to leave.
    The doctor dropped to his stool and proceeded to examine my body, my eyes, my ears and the inside of my mouth and my throat, and listened to my heart and my breathing.
    “Look at me,” he said, and I raised my face to him. “Her skin and the whites of her eyes are turning yellow. She has hepatitis B. I’m referring her to the Dashushan Contagious Disease Hospital. Take her there immediately.”
    “Yes,” Mama said.
    The doctor filled out a referral document, handed it to Mama and left.
    The journey home was slow and painful. People passed us and gawked and asked, “Did you see how thin she is?” But they continued on without another word. Several times I felt I might faint and had to hold on tight to Mama’s hand.
    I waited at the bottom of the stairs as Mama ran to our apartment and packed clean clothes and my doll in a bag. She was required to report to work, so Papa took me to the hospital.
    “Let’s leave the stool here,” he said. He helped me stand.
    “Papa,” I whispered, “I can’t walk anymore.”
    “It’s all right,” he said. “I will carry you.”
    He knelt and told me to wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. He slung my bag over his shoulder and locked his hands together behind him to support me. He rose and leaned over so I lay at a comfortable angle on his back and I