“Mr Huang?” said the receptionist. “You can go through.”
I looked up at her, the ringing in my ears masking any sound. She touched me softly on the shoulder.
“You can go through now,” she repeated, drawing me gently from the chair.
I stood up, eyeing the door at which she pointed.
The small silver nameplate on the door said Professor Chen Jinliang, Otolaryngologist. The word rolled meaninglessly in my head. I knocked softly.
“Just go in,” said the receptionist, leaning in from behind me to open the door. “He’s waiting for you.”
Professor Chen looked up from his laptop. “Come in, come in,” he said, standing up to greet me. The receptionist closed the door.
“So,” said Professor Chen after I was seated. “Dr Liu tell me that you have one of the most severe cases of tinnitus he’s ever come across.”
I didn’t respond. The professor consulted his notes.
“Dr Liu said he fitted my little device, the Chenaudio II.”
I nodded.
“And he says it made no difference at all. Is that right?”
Another nod.
“Well let’s have a look, shall we?” Professor Chen slid his chair across the tiled floor.
He inserted a small metallic rod into my ear, briefly scanning the numbers that scrolled across a computer screen.
“And the other ear.”
I didn’t like to be away from his wife, having never spent a night away from her. Farm life was like that. There was no call for long trips.
“Mr Huang? I asked have you had this boil for long.”
“I … I don’t know. Two years? Maybe longer.”
Professor Chen slipped on a pair of rubber gloves, leaning in closer to prod it.
“It looks very nasty,” he said.
“It’s been there for as long as the ringing.”
“What?”
“The ringing started at the same time.”
“Did you ever tell Dr Liu this?”
“No,” I said.
“For goodness sake, why not?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “He never asked.”
Professor Chen looked like he was about to say something. He didn't. Instead he squeezed at the base of the festering sore.
“Coral,” he said into his desk phone. “Are you there?”
“Yes, Prof Chen. What’s up?”
“Can you come in here? And bring a new scalpel with you. Oh, and a kidney dish as well.”
Professor Chen squeezed at the boil again. The skin was tight. It hurt.
Coral, a young girl, knocked and entered.
“Come and have a look at this.”
Together they examined and prodded my boil.
“Can you feel something moving?” asked Coral. “Or is it my imagination?”
I clenched his fists. The boil hurt, it hurt more than most things I’d had in his life, but I wasn’t one for complaining. My wife sometimes wanted to deal with it, saying we should pop it, squeeze the pus out. I always said it will go away by itself.
“Mr Huang,” the professor said. “I’m going to use the scalpel to make a little nick in the top of this protrusion on the back of your neck. I want to drain it.”
I nodded. If it was as easy as this, then my wife and I could have done it at home.
“Hold it just there,” the professor said to Coral, moving her hand to where he wanted the dish.
He sliced the blade lightly across the top of the boil. It didn't hurt any more or less than the prodding and squeezing.
“Hand me those tweezers,” he said, pointing with a nod of his head towards the desk.
I could feel him pulling the skin back, tugging at something.
“What the hell…?”
“What is it,” I said.
Professor Chen pulled at it. Hard. Coral screamed. I heard something clatter into the kidney dish. Warm blood ran down my neck. I dabbed at it with my hand.
Coral put the kidney dish on the desk so I could see it. There was something shiny, metallic, lying in a smear of blood. The size of a grape. Attached to it was a thin silver tube, about three inches long.
“How’s the ringing now, Mr Huang?”
I shook my head and listened. For the first time in years I heard silence. A tear slid down my cheek. The thing in the kidney dish twitched.