On that day, the convalescent home rang me. Something had happened to Father. Director Wang and I immediately went to ‘resolve the situation’, but when we got there and stood just outside the building where my father was living, I could hear him shouting himself hoarse. I raced up the stairs, but when I got to his room I saw an iron chain securing the door. He looked like a confused and distraught old man, like a man who has been wrongly accused of some crime. I asked him what had happened, but he told me he did not know; all he could tell me was that they had locked him in like this for the last several hours; it was nearly four in the afternoon now and they hadn’t even given him his lunch. Director Wang took me to see the hospital administrator. Both of us wanted to register a complaint against them, but once we heard the administrator’s explanation of the situation, we didn’t know what to say.

It seemed it was to do with one of the hospital’s nurses, a woman by the name of Shi. She was very young – everyone called her Little Shi. You know that my family also used to call me Little Si; perhaps that was the reason for what happened, that brought on one of Father’s episodes. He thought she was me, and in the morning when she came to tidy his room, he became a little over-affectionate with her, which made her quite angry. Finally freeing herself from his hands, she went to leave. Father, however, chased after her, repeatedly calling out to her. The whole situation frightened Little Shi terribly. As a result, the hospital staff believed Father was some sort of potential rapist and locked him in his room. We asked for some explanation of their treatment of him, but they retorted forcefully, with the conviction of someone who has been unfairly accused, that it wasn’t they who were at fault but us, since we knew but had not told them that father suffered from such moments. In short, we shouldn’t have brought him here in the first place; this was a convalescent home, not a psychiatric hospital. Neither Director Wang nor I could say that they were wrong because, in truth, we were the ones who had made a mistake. What made me angry was that one of the hospital staff suddenly said that we should apologize to Little Shi and compensate her for emotional damage. The gall of some people! My father had already suffered such massive emotional damage. Who should we look to for compensation?