CHAPTER 29 - CHINA
The languid stream seemed to gurgle a little louder as Brother Francis made his way back to Mei Li’s home. The beauty of the surroundings called to him and he stopped after he crossed over the rickety old foot bridge to do a little of his Chinese medical practice known as “qigong” by the edge of the water. He was moving his outstretched arms up toward the heavens palms up, and then turning his palms down toward the earth on the downward motion as he prayed a prayer that went along with his favorite movement called “Connecting Heaven and Earth.” As he raised his arms to the sky once again his palms turned up toward the fleecy white clouds above him—and a gunshot crackled through the air. Brother Francis crumpled and fell, bleeding profusely, to the mossy ground.
Theresa and Mei Li looked at one another over the wooden table and said nothing. Their worst fears had possibly come true. They told the children that it was probably just a hunter and hurried out the door to check on things. Everyone was keenly aware that it was a hunter who had killed the beloved father and spouse of this household not many months before. They ran toward Mei Li’s father-in-law’s home. Within minutes they saw the Salesian monk lying in a pool of blood, and blood was still spurting. He weakly raised a hand to motion them close to him, barely able to speak. "In my backpack you'll find a brown bottle containing Yun Nan Bai Yao powder. Please get it and sprinkle the entire bottle on my wound. Then take a clean cloth and press it over the wound and please take me to a surgeon so that the bullet may be removed properly."
Mei Li ran back to the house to get the ancient Chinese medicine which was a hemostatic, something that would stop the profuse bleeding. Theresa held the dying monk’s hand and prayed for healing while pressing her other hand against his wound to staunch the blood flow. Brother Francis whispered to her, "If it is my time to go to God, I embrace it; if not, I embrace that also. Please pray that God's holy will be done because we can never go wrong in doing God's will."
"Brother Francis, I believe it is always God's will that we be whole and healthy, if not in this life than in the next."
The monk appeared to be growing paler by the second, but he simply smiled.
Mei Li returned with a little brown bottle in one hand and several white towels in her other hand. Francis had on casual clothing, not his monastic habit. Mei Li materialized a pair of scissors and cut the monk doctor’s blue shirt near his heart. She sopped up blood with one of the towels and then sprinkled the mildly bitter powder directly onto the neat round wound, all the while hoping that the bullet would not mean this man’s death. She then took a smaller towel and folded it in quarters and applied it to the wound, taping it on.
"You would make a good doctor, Mei Li," the monk whispered with an effort.
"It's the result of raising children alone, Brother."
Mei Li's father-in-law appeared out of nowhere. "What has happened to that good man?"
Brother Francis was now just about unconscious, but the two women looked up at the little man who had been visiting with Brother Francis shortly before. It was difficult for them not to think uncharitable thoughts or harbor suspicions.
"We have got to get him to the hospital, father-in-law; can you help us?" Mei Li asked with thinly controlled fury.
"All I have is my old truck so it will be a bumpy ride, but I will gladly take Brother Francis to the hospital. Unfortunately the hospital is not very close and I'm not certain our friend will survive the trip. Wouldn't it be better to take him to our local Chinese medicine doctor?"
The women struggled to make a decision. Time was clearly of the essence. The old Chinese doctor had the wisdom of the ages but he was not a Western trained doctor. "Brother Francis’ life is led by the Spirit and his ministry has Chinese medicine at the heart of it. Perhaps we need to follow our spiritual promptings on this matter and go to the Chinese medicine doctor," Theresa said, thinking out loud.
The two women were decisive. "Please drive your truck over here, father-in-law, and I will get a few blankets to make Brother Francis as comfortable as possible."
Within minutes Mei Li’s children were being attended to by her neighbor and a quartet rattled down the muddy road in search of desperately needed help.