Over the past ten years or so, Wu made it a point to visit the Stevens family just about every year, seeing them in the summers wherever they lived. Chad and Marion Stevens retired to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, so Wu and the adult Stevens kids have all vacationed as a family on the beach island.
While Ford did his joint tour with the Navy flying F-18 Hornets, Wu was busy as a Class 1 Test Pilot student with the Test Flying Academy of South Africa. Wu was able to either fly or fly profiles in simulators for the Rafale, Mirage 2000 D/N, Typhoon, PAK FA T-50, Socata TB 30 Epsilon, Puma, Airbus A340, Tiger, Mi-24, DHC-6 Twin Otter, Denel Rooivalk, and the AS532 Cougar helicopter. He was also able to do a three-month fellowship upon graduation with the Civil Aviation Authority of China, then three-months with the Chinese Flight Test Establishment, finishing up his training at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Chen stacked the deck for Wu with education, assigning him and another two Chinese pilots at Nanjing to perform high risk flight test activities, such as spin and stall tests for fixed wing aircraft, and engine-off autorotation and hover-diagram testing for helicopters. These fellowships led him to be an expert for Devil Dragon, focusing on his extensive flight test experience in loads, flutter, stability and control, certification, and systems development test programs. Two other pilots were qualified for Devil Dragon stealth flight test, but Chen had selected Wu over the others.
Working with the Devil Dragon engineers before flight test, Wu weighed in with his research to develop efficient computational methods for large-scale, fluid-structure interaction optimization problems. His Class 1 academic load also gave him enough experience in functional analysis, aeroelasticity, finite element and structural analysis, optimization, and computational fluid dynamics, all to ensure Devil Dragon was the best. Ford used to laugh at Wu’s smarts because all Ford used to say he did as a pilot was point the aircraft nose in the proper direction, and it went kind of where he wanted. Wu never told Ford about Devil Dragon, though.
He let out a long breath, and glanced out the back window facing the prairie, and further on the horizon, the mountains. Ford then went to his Google News app and checked out if the B-1 fire story of the fire at Ellsworth was on there, and it was. The Air Force had already, via their Public Affairs machine, released some of the details, but no aircrew names were released. That was good, he thought, because Ford had not called anyone to let them know he was okay. It would not be long before the story did release names of people involved, though.
Ford quickly considered the order of phone calls to make. First, he’d call his parents, then his girlfriend, and then his brother and sister. He scrolled through the recent calls on his smart phone, and found his girlfriend first, so he changed his mind. With his thumb, he hit her name and the phone dialed her work number.
Part 3 — Diseased
“Thank you for coming in today,” the medical doctor told the patient. “I see you have been having these symptoms for a while. And you have already sought medical care?” The doctor flipped the paperwork around, reading the reports while talking. “You are young, and seem to be in good physical shape. Hmm… a few months you say?”
“Yes, doctor, thank you for seeing me. I have a job that allows me travel around China. I don’t always get the opportunity to see a doctor, but I feel strange. I don’t look myself… my stomach hurts. My lower back hurts,” replied the patient. “Saw a TCM doctor recently, too.”
The patient took out his phone, looked at the incoming text, and put it away. He smiled slightly at what he read, but did not answer.
The medical team at Xi’an Jiakang Hospital was more westernized and less TCM, and saw all sorts of patients, from the elderly to newborns. Citizens sometimes traveled for hours from the villages in the countryside to see the doctors, while others in the city stopped in from just down the street. Some of the best western trained and educated doctors were employed at Xi’an Hospital.
“You are not from around here in Xi’an. Why not see your doctor at home?” asked the nurse, standing in back of the doctor.
“Travel. I travel with my job, and it is tough to see him,” replied the patient, which was not entirely true.
The doctor placed his hands on the patient’s neck, just like the last one did. He felt around, pressing on his neck from below is jaw, and moving his hands down to his collarbone. The doctor went back up, feeling every inch of his neck. He then stopped at a specific area, and felt around some more.
“Hmm. You have enlarged lymph nodes. Quite large actually,” the doctor said out loud, telling both the patient and the nurse. She took a note on her clipboard, and looked up with her eyes, without moving her head. Her facial expression changed, as if she knew what all the signs were leading to. The doctor went on the check his lungs.
“Let me go check on your scans and your blood work. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” as the doctor and the nurse left the room.
“I am very private person, Doctor. I’ve already put in a yuan deposit with the Hospital, and would like the scans and reports to only to be shared with me. Do not keep them in your database… I will take them with me when I head home. That’s if I should take them with me, for some reason,” the patient replied.
“Yes, yes. I understand, I see your payment on the charts. Back soon. Please wait here,” the doctor answered.
In China, a patient had to pay the finance department before treatment began. Scans, blood work, or physical, the requirement was to have a positive balance in your account first. Money first, treatment second.
The doctor and nurse met in the hallway before going to the nurse’s station to verify some of the results on the computer screen. The doctor wanted to see the results of the blood work and CAT scan to see what they had. His gut was telling him the diagnosis, nearly screaming what it was, but he needed to verify and line up the facts first.
“Let me see his blood work,” the doctor told the nurse. She handed him the report, and he read the complete blood count, CBC, for the patient. A CBC measures the amount of three types of cells in the blood: white blood cell count, red blood cell count, and white blood cell differential. “I know you’re new from nursing school, so let me explain what’s going on with this patient. His white blood cell count, the leukocyte count, gives us a measure the total number of white blood cells in his sample. You know these cells protect us from infection by attacking invading bacteria, and viruses, right? So, some white cells also attack cancer cells. And this guy’s… this patient… white count is off the chart.”
“I remember, doctor, yes…” the nurse answered.
“Yeah, and… you remember the white blood cell differential? Measures the five major types of white blood cells. You remember them from school?”
“Yes. They are neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, and basophils.”
“You are good. Very good. All right… tell me about the red blood cell count.”
“Red blood cells carry oxygen. The count, called a… erythrocyte count? Gives us an indication of the amount in his sample. We measure platelet count and hematocrit. That’s the percentage of blood that is made up of red blood cells, and I think I remember… hemoglobin. That’s the amount… ah, the amount of the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen.”