The doctor looked, clucked, asked a dozen unrelated questions, and strolled home to collect his stitching kit. He returned with two vials of Novocain and the syringe still bobbing in its dirty yellow water. I insisted he boil the needle before using it. He informed me stiffly that he had worked five years at the Ho Chi Minh hospital and two years in Hanoi, and clinched his credentials with a worn card that said "Orthopedic and Traumatology Symposium - America-Vietnam".

"Nevertheless," I said, "the needle must be sterilized." I whipped it out of his hand. The nearest source of boiling water was a soup shop down the street. I appropriated their flaking tea kettle and dropped the syringe inside. When I returned Jay was pale as parchment and the doctor was using filthy forceps and a heavy hand to swab out the wound without anesthetic.

He snatched the syringe, filled it with difficulty and poked around for an injection site.

"The bubbles!" I snapped. "Knock out the bubbles first!"

He ignored me to jam in the needle and vigorously depress the plunger. The Novocain squirted through the leaky connection between the needle and the glass bulb. "No matter," he said and began to stitch. Jay groaned.

The room had darkened considerably. I looked up to see the doorway and the window completely blocked with faces. A dozen people sat on the other bed, watching two children eviscerate my backpack. The doctor ordered me to hold a flashlight to the wound and, playing to his attentive audience, became the star of his own soap opera. He scrubbed vigorously and ordered me to swab his hands dry with an old rag while he held them high out of harm's way. He picked up several bloody swabs with the tip of his forceps and flung them to the floor. He plunged in the sewing needle with a flourish, ignored Jay's low-pitched moan, and pulled the stitches so tight that his hands shook with the effort.

I protested, watching the skin pucker and turn white. I raised my voice when he snipped the threads a scant millimeter above the knots. We glared at each other over the top of Jay's quivering leg. I hated this man. By now he hated me.

He added two more ugly stitches, issued strict instructions to exercise the leg and eat nothing but three bowls of rice a day, and took his leave. I emptied the pockets of a score of uninvited guests and saw them to the door and shuttered the window over the objections of a dozen street hawkers. Jay and I sat in darkness, miraculously alone.

"At least that's over," he muttered softly. He had been extraordinarily courageous. Even now his injured leg jerked and shivered with remembered pain. I filled him up with Valium and took stock of our scattered possessions as he drifted off to sleep.

At dinnertime I crept out to find him a bowl of soup. To my surprise an older English couple were sitting near the soup shop door, picking daintily at a plate of soggy vegetables. The husband's shirt was starched and wrinkle-free and his wife's shapely hairdo miraculously in place. I ducked back out onto the street and spotted the reason - a luxury jeep with smoky windows and lovely fat tires. The perfect ambulance for Jay. I hurried back inside and introduced myself.

They had been in Vietnam for two weeks and were bubbling over with their traveler's tales. Their hotel room had been broken into on the very first day of their tour. The thief had gotten no more than a pack of cigarettes but the couple had, for insurance purposes, notified the police. A dozen local agents had immediately invaded their room, moving furniture, snapping photos and spreading black fingerprinting powder over all of their belongings. They were then made to wait for several hours at the station for the paperwork to be processed. A horrific nightmare, they declared.

I sympathized, and when the time was right I offered them an abbreviated version of our day's disastrous events. They listened with half an ear. It was imperative to get Jay to Lao Cai immediately, I concluded. Blood poisoning would be fatal this far from help and hospitals. The bus ride would be awful - crowded, cold and jarring... I faltered under their indifferent stares, then forged on. If they could accommodate him in their jeep then I would take both packs on the early bus with me and be in Lao Cai in time to take him off their hands when they arrived. He could sit up front between the drivers...

An awkward silence filled the air.

The woman exhaled a cloud of smoke over her manicured fingernails. "No," she said at last, "The drivers' wouldn't like it, they're so worried about our things."

I had met the drivers while ordering my soup. They had already heard of Jay's accident and immediately offered him a ride, contingent upon their employers' approval.

The Englishman dabbed his lips with a handkerchief. "We couldn't possibly, we simply don't have room."

They left me to attend a party less than a block away, and insisted that their drivers leave their evening meal half-eaten to chauffeur them in the car. I collected my two bowls of luke-warm soup and returned to Jay.

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