Dragon lady

I was assured that laid deep within that gaudy gold building along Nanjingxilu Shanghai are the very best Chinese doctors. Climbed up a long flight of stairs (I wonder how the sick and frail do this), was greeted by a few middle aged ladies with out-of-fashion curly hair styles and dressed in white coats that have seen better days. Paid RMB20, was given a number and told to sit in a long dim corridor to wait. I surveyed the surroundings with a sense of trepidation. The walls were plaster boards that looked like it was put up overnight by fly-by-night type of operations. The oldish-looking doctor in the room was spotting Brad Pitt’s type of few day old stubbles (except he was not Brad Pitt by any measure of imagination) and had the same crinkly looking white (once white?) coat on. “This is the best?” I questioned silently and fidgetted in my seat.

My turn soon came. The doctor looked at me kindly and put three fingers across my wrist to listen to the pulse. “Hmmm..” he scratched his three day old beard dreamily. The other wrist, he gestured with his index finger. More “hmmm”. I waited for the prognosis. The doctor shifted slowly in his chair and said to me. “You have…hmmm...what do you call it? Hmmm…inner fire”. I looked back at him and said, “Like a dragon?” A smile, a twinkle and the reply, “Quite so”. “Hmmm” I said, keeping my mouth shut tightly so as not to burn him with my breath.