My first few years under the Texas sun, there were days so hot I thought I might die.
Appropriately, it was on one such day that I had my first accident.  Having finished sketching an
outline onto the canvas, I stood to stretch my legs. In an instant, I collapsed again. My chest
began to constrict and I could no longer support myself. Sensation withdrew from my body and
I was afraid that my arms might float away. I remained in my seat, slumped, unable to do
anything except take in the room. 
      It was a day that even the lizards took shelter indoors. I spotted one, a small smudge on
the wall, and watched as it made its way slowly across the unfamiliar terrain. It must be strange,
to be usually immersed in a world of dirt and grass and then to suddenly find oneself adrift. To
the lizard the walls must have stretched on forever. 
      I sat there drenched in sweat. Suspended on their string of beads, the wire rim of my
glasses felt cool on my chest. From this angle it looked like the edge of a knife. 
      Eventually, the fist that had been squeezing my body began to loosen. My lungs steadily
began to reclaim territory within my chest. Feeling returned to my fingertips and I could think
clearly again. 
      I stood gingerly and made my way to the kitchen to telephone Wang. 
      “What’s going on?” He asked. 
      “Nothing,” I said, which was not the case, “I think I just had some kind of heart attack.” I
could hear the hum of the office going on around him. I imagined his desk, his cubicle which
would soon be gone, and him sitting there in his only suit. 
      “My god,” He said softly “I’m coming home right now.” 
      “Don’t bother,” I said and an edge of annoyance slipped into my voice. “I’m here talking
to you, aren’t I?” I felt insulted by his willingness to drop everything and come to my rescue. I
had been scared in the studio but there was no need for the frantic way he spoke to me. “I’m
fine,” I said in a softer tone, “I just wanted to let you know is all.” 

2
      “Okay,” He said “but make an appointment with the doctor, okay?” I nodded, then
realized he couldn't see me. 
      “Of course,” I said, “sorry for scaring you.” 
      Wang was in the office all the time. He would receive a buzz in the middle of the night
and roll out of bed in a fluster. His suit was always in the same place but he made sure to check
it every night before falling asleep. The company was gearing up to sell and they needed all
hands on deck to make sure everything was set for the transition. It was fatalistic work, many of
them knew that they would not be keeping their jobs. 
      Secretly, I was excited to have Wang around the house more. I was tired of doing all the
cleaning and the afternoons got lonely. It struck me as unfair that because I worked from home,
I was by default tasked with the domestic labor. I once smashed a lizard with a house slipper and
its tail fell on to the floor. It wriggled there like a thing in pain. I thought I would be sick. The
rest of the day I spent on the computer. When Wang returned home, he found the splattered
lizard and the tail where I had left them. He cleaned the mess up without saying much, but I felt
the rebuke in his silence. 
      Putting down the phone, I felt like I had failed again. In calling him, I had shown
weakness and disturbed some equilibrium between us. I doubt he’d be able to concentrate for
the rest of the day, his mind fixed on some aspect of my fragility. 
      I called the doctor’s office and the man at reception asked me three times to spell out my
name.
      “We don’t have a lot of patients like you Mrs. Lau,” he had said. Something about the soft
curiosity in his voice made me wonder what aspect of me he meant.

      To find the doctor’s office, I had to navigate a labyrinth of hallways that reeked of antiseptic.
She was a pale and doughy woman. Instead of shaking my hand she adjusted her glasses and
gave me an appraising look. Her instruments were icy and I would shiver as they came in
contact with my skin. I focused on breathing and tried to clearly enunciate answers to all her

questions.  At the end of the ordeal I asked her if there was anything to worry about. She
suggested changing my diet somewhat, reducing sodium intake but otherwise there was little to
do. I gathered my things, thanked her, and left. In the parking lot I felt trapped between the
intense sunlight and the heat that radiated off of the concrete.
      In my hometown, the doctor had been a kind man. He had also been my uncle.  Tall and
wastingly thin, he would often be at our door bringing this tincture or that. Father would send
me from his bed to the door to greet him. I still do not know why he was not allowed inside. I
would marvel at his height, his face so similar to my father, and the solemn suit I imagined to be
grafted to his skin. He would often ask after my father’s health, which was what doctors were
supposed to do, but his reactions never made sense. On my father’s better days he would be
short with me. He would ask if I or the family caretaker had been giving him the right dosages. It
made me feel like I had failed. On other days he would deliver the medicine with a joke or an
anecdote about some other patient he had visited that day. I could stand on the doorstep and
listen to him for hours. I think he appreciated having a captive audience. He would complain
jokingly that I made him late to his other calls. It made me feel important, that I could connect
this person to me just by providing my attention. Eventually though, he would indicate he really
did have to leave or I would hear my father begin to groan from his room and have to leave.
      I had no memory of my father outside of his bed. It struck me as natural that I was his
courier and connection to the outside world. On days that there was no school, I would sit in a
bedside chair and read the news to him. I did not understand most of what I was reading but
would listen carefully when he would scoff or hum his approval. I began to imitate him, and
soon words like “compromise” or “negotiation” became suffused with a mythical sense of
disapproval. In Texas, when scanning the newspaper, I would occasionally be struck by the
thought that I had read a story already. The names were wrong and they would be displaced by
decades, but the players felt all too familiar. Now, however, I understood something of the want

within these people. How the ripples of their actions could find me, even here. I wondered how
far I had been carried already.
      The second episode occurred while Wang and I were in the car. We were driving south to
visit an airshow he had been talking about for weeks. The physics degree he had earned in
Taiwan had counted for little when he had moved here, but he had maintained a passion for
aviation and aerodynamics. Reveling in the spaciousness of our house, he would sail paper
airplanes from one end of the living room to the other. He would talk through the process, to
me, to himself if I was in another room, noting the significance of every dip and turn. I would
sometimes spot one of his test subjects marooned under a couch or a dresser. Those I left for
him to clean if he ever found them. 
      One such crash landing had inspired a recent painting. On a six-by-six canvass, three
castaways sit around a makeshift fire. To their right, a forest stretches off and beyond the
canvas. Although they are on the beach, the only sight of the ocean is a solitary bar of surf
languishing on the sand. I tried as best I could to show on their faces an understanding of the
shift that had occured. The revelation that rescue was no longer the dominant reality, and how a
new magnitude of  imagination will be required for them to survive. When I showed it to Wang
he told me it was breathtaking, but when he visited I saw his eyes avoided the wall where it
hung. I knew the gallery would display the painting despite its size. However, I decided it
belonged with me in the house. 
      In the car seat, the same feeling of constriction came over me. I placed my hand on the
window and my breath became rapid and shallow. I tried to call Wang's name but it came out
only as a wheeze. He must have noticed the change in my breathing, because soon we were
pulling off of the highway. We parked in the lot of a Dollar Tree and he began to bombard me
with questions. 
      “Are you alright? What’s happening? Can you breathe? What can I do to help?” It was a
nuisance. I was in a crisis and all he thought to do was ask me to explain myself. I could only
grab at his arm and pant. When my vision cleared I saw Wang holding his phone. He hadn’t
made any calls but it was clear he wanted to.
      “I’m okay,” I said and gave him a weak smile.
      We did not end up going to the aviation show. Instead, on the way home we stopped by
McDonalds and got ice cream. It was cold and soft and sweeter than anything I had ever tasted.
Neither of us mentioned how close both of us had been to dying. Before leaving we had haggled
jokingly over who would drive. I watched the countryside pass by and wondered what was wrong
with me. 
      It was my father and the doctor I thought about the third time it happened, as I was
being rolled down the hallway in a wobbly gurney. Both of them together, one so small he was
like one of the lizards I would find roasting on the lawn, the other impossibly large. I could see
the doctor swelling like a balloon, eclipsing and crushing my father. I couldn’t separate the two
of them in my mind and it caused me great anguish. The nurses mistook my moans for physical
pain and pressed all over my body to ask me where I was hurting. I had no idea what to tell
them. 
      This third time had been the worst. I had collapsed walking from the car to our front
door. A neighbor had seen me and called an ambulance. I wonder if he had been spying on me.
By the time Wang made it to the hospital, surgeons had already placed my body on ice, removed
and altered my heart, then stitched everything back into place. 
      When I could feel again, I felt raw. The scar on my chest throbbed and chafed against its
wrapping. My chin was swollen from the fall. Bed bound, there was nothing I could do for
myself. An attendant would bring me meals three times a day. A small button on the bed
controller let me call them whenever I needed to use the bathroom. They gave me a remote with
which I could watch TV in the corner. I didn’t touch it. My hands itched for something to paint. 
      Wang would visit as often as he could, often bringing home cooked meals. He would have
it stuffed under his jacket in case the doctor didn’t approve of these unsanctioned modifications
to my recovery diet. We would talk for a long time about his now abandoned office, and the
plans he had for our kitchen and our apparently outdated sink. Although he always kept his
voice soft and level, I watched his leg tap out frantic rhythms. I was touched by the concern his
body showed. 
      One night, before leaving, he noticed the remote on the bedside counter. 
      “You know if you click all the way to the end of the channel list you can still get some
news from home,” He said. I was shocked. Not only was I baffled to hear that the hospital had
any channels that were not thinly veiled bible stories or American news, it was also the first time
I had heard Wang refer to Taiwan as home. He left soon after, and I eagerly clicked on the
television. 
      As Wang had promised, somewhere near the one-ninety channel mark, fuzzy but familiar
words dribbled through. A weather forecaster was describing unprecedented snowfall in
Taichung. It made me laugh.
      It had snowed once before I left. White powder smothered the walkways and collected on
the roofs. The tree in the courtyard, usually full of birds and insects, was visited by an almost
impossible stillness. I had hidden my father’s inkwell there and had hoped that day to retrieve it.
When the time came, I could not bring myself to cross that restful plane. I instead decided to
leave it be. The trunk had no doubt closed around it by now, drawing the small clay object deep
into itself. I imagined streaks of paint coloring pedals in the summer. 
      The woman on the network had moved on to other topics and I had become sleepy. Out
of the window I watched the moon rise over the flattened cityscape. The light reflected off the
concrete made it glow. I smiled, and that night I dreamt that tomorrow I might go home.