(12-96) Jane is a technician I work with. She is in her early 50's, but she looks much older. She suffers from frequent migraine headaches and a repaired broken jaw. The corner of her eyes pointed downward even when she is not sick. She has four kids, two boys and two girls. One of the girls joined cult religion, she rarely talks about her. She will tell you the other three whenever she has a chance. She is soft spoken, even when she is excited talking about her kids. It seems there is not an ounce of energy left other than what's required by her job. She is not a bad worker by any means, that is, when she is healthy.

We work in a small hospital that consists of one hundred and twenty beds. One of our daily routines is to fill the cassette drawers with medications needed for a 24 hour supply. Our patient population are the sick and the elderly. On average, each patient takes about a dozen different medications. On an average day, we will have to pick and place over a thousand medications from the right bin to the proper patient drawer. We have 4 hours to finish this task, and our manager is pushing for 2. For the rest of the day, there are other functions to do, none of the functions will give them a chance to sit down and rest their legs.

You can imagine if she is absent, the kind of pressure that placed onto others. She calls in sick a lot. Each year she'll use up the max. sick hours allowed and more. Others complain vehemently about her. I think she feels guilty too, that's why she always seems apologetic. One other technician repeatedly suggested that she should try to get on the long term disability program. I decided to probe a little.

I asked if she is in such constant pain, wouldn't it be better to try to get on a long term disability plan. Slowly and in fragments she began to tell me why she couldn't. Her husband works in a restaurant, and he doesn't value education. Her youngest daughter is in college, she needs that extra two hundred dollars to help her through. Plus her husband has recently come down with liver cancer. She is not sure about the future at all. I was silent while she told me how she pays her bills each month. Each paycheck was counted for certain things, and one hundred dollars was moved from here to there to buy time for credit card bills. I was lost in the maze of complicated schemes. One hundred dollars to me is just a trip to the supermarket for a week supply of food at home.

What connects me with her is her value of education. That is so Chinese. I remember how my mother placed my education over all other priorities and she had my father's support. I was amazed at Jane's sense of value. She didn't have any theories. It just seems naturally so. I see a woman gradually unfolding in front of my eyes, the color of her skin fades away, I feel close and connected. She never complained about her husband, or her not so successful daughter, or her meager salary of a demanding job. The word "sacrifice" is not in her vocabulary. She never talked about any expectation of any returns from her children. She is the only technician who will bring me hot water from the cafeteria in the morning. One day she brought a cake for the office, she gave me a piece first thing in the morning and said: "I know you never eat breakfast, so you can have it now. I'll keep the rest for others after lunch." That is Jane, my coworker.