Almighty Coach

In the afternoon, Alan came to pick up Dai Li to take him to his training ground as usual. Without Alan, Dai Li wouldn’t dare enter that black neighborhood alone.

However, Alan was a little bit depressed today.

"Alan, what’s wrong? Are you sick? You look quite depressed," Dai Li asked.

"Li, I have to leave Los Angeles in a few days," Alan said.

"Are you going back to Virginia?" Dai Li continued to ask, "Is something wrong with your university application?"

Alan nodded, "My mom went to some really good universities in Los Angeles, but none of those universities were interested in me. They even refused to give me a chance to tryout."

"Then what are you going to do?" Dai Li continued to ask.

"I will go back to the east coast, and try my luck in Massachusetts by checking whether a second-rate university would offer me a scholarship." Alan sighed and continued to say, "Let’s change the topic. Come with me, let’s go shopping in a mall now, for it will be closed if we get there too late."

"What do you want to buy? Are there discounts or special sales happening?" Dai Li asked.

Dai Li had stayed in the United States for several days, so he had more or less known something about the American culture. A lot of the Americans’ consumption was quite rational.

For most Americans, they preferred to go shopping during the discount season. A shopping mall with a sales promotion was always attractive for many consumers. During the Christmas promotions, like the "Black Friday" sales, many Americans would buy commodities for the next few months, or even a year in advance, taking advantage of those times when the prices were pretty low.

"No discounts." Alan continued to say, "I want to buy a Barbie doll set."

"Barbie doll? Isn’t that for girls?" Dai Li didn’t expect Alan had taste like this.

"Don’t jump to conclusions! I’m going to buy it for my younger sister. I have promised to bring a gift to her," Alan said.

"You have a younger sister? I have never heard you mention that," Dai Li asked in surprise.

Alan nodded, then he took out his cellphone and found a picture. In the picture, a girl, about 15 or 16, was standing on the left of Alan, holding a little girl aged 3 or 4 years old in her arms.

"This is my younger sister Brandy, she has just started her high school years, and beside her is my youngest sister Lisa, who is only 4 this year. I’ll buy the Barbie doll for her," Alan explained.

"She is very cute," Dai Li praised.

"She is also very miserable, for she is suffering from congenital heart disease," Alan shared, melancholy showing in his eyes.

Dai Li pondered this news for a while, before figuring out the meaning of the term "congenital heart disease".

Then Dai Li asked, "It’s very difficult to treat this disease, right?"

"Yes. The doctor told me Lisa could only live less than 20 years, unless she undergoes a surgery." Alan clenched his fists in agony.

Alan let out a long sigh, and continued, "When my mother conceived me, she was only 15. Shortly after my birth, my biological father left us. Later, my mother got married to my foster father, then she gave birth to my two younger sisters."

Dai Li nodded, for this was quite common in the United States, especially in the black population.

"My foster father is a good man. He really wanted to support the family. However, he failed to get a stable job because of his criminal record of drug trafficking and frequent imprisonment. My mother had to do all kinds of part-time jobs. The place we lived was really terrible. We couldn’t afford to pay the electric bill, so our power was cut off quite frequently. We couldn’t afford to buy enough food either, so we were always hungry. We couldn’t afford to pay the water bill, so so sometimes we even didn’t have drinking water. We even used to get thrown out by the landlords, having to spend the night in the streets because we couldn’t afford to pay the rent."

Dai Li nodded. He had read some reports about the ghetto. It was conceivable that Alan really had experienced so many hardships in his childhood.

"My youngest sister Lisa grew up in poor health. She was diagnosed with congenital heart disease not long ago. Lisa doesn’t have medical insurance. We can’t afford the medical insurance, as well as Lisa’s surgical fee," Alan said in a very low voice, then continued, "Moreover, Lisa is very young, the surgery success rate will be higher if her surgery is performed by an expert from a high-end medical center, which is very expensive."

In the United States, without medical insurance, the treatment of a minor illness could also be a heavy burden; but many poor families in the United States couldn’t afford the medical insurance.

The prescription drugs, examination fees, and surgery fee in the United States were strikingly expensive. A routine blood test would cost over 100 American dollars. An ambulance call would cost over 1,000. An appendectomy in the hospital would be followed by a bill of 40,000 or 50,000. It was quite normal to spend over RMB 100,000 for a caesarean section. Therefore, ordinary wage-earners really couldn’t afford the medical costs without the medical insurance.

What makes things worse, was that some Americans didn’t have the habit of saving money. They had gotten used to using credit cards to buy commodities, expensive or inexpensive. They always spent the money for tomorrow today. Therefore, a sudden illness might cause bankruptcy directly.

In the United State, if you wanted to see a doctor in a public hospital, the only thing you could do was to wait. The medical costs in the public hospitals were low, but you had to make appointments for a most common examination 2 or 3 months in advance. As time went by, the patients’ illnesses might worsen, or the patients might even have recovered by themselves.

It was also very normal for a patient who needed emergency treatment to be ignored for a night, the doctors only having the resources or manpower at that moment to deal with the patients who were critically ill. Back to China, if a registration is made in the morning, the patient could receive treatment in the same day, and if an examination was performed that day, the patient could get the result the very following day.

Sometimes, the patients who suffered from some chronic diseases could get treatment in the emergency center of a hospital. All these things were totally impossible in the public hospitals of the United States.

Furthermore, all high-level doctors of the United States were working in the private hospitals. Many medical centers, which could perform medical research, would always be flooded with ace doctors.

Therefore, the doctors in the private hospitals were more competent than the doctors in the public hospitals, but the medical cost in the private hospitals was much higher. In a private hospital, as long as you could pay, you could receive the treatment in the same day.

The medical cost in the United States’ private hospitals could also be reimbursed, all of which depended on the insurances the patient had. The insurance companies had signed contracts with the hospitals. Patients who had expensive insurances might even enjoy VIP treatment in the top-level private hospitals.

Alan continued to say, "Lisa doesn’t have medical insurance. If she has to receive a surgery, the surgery will cost us around 1 million American dollars. Normally we could never make so much money, so the only route to take is that I could be a professional player, either in the NFL or NBA. As long as I could be a star player, I could earn enough money to pay Lisa’s surgery fee. Otherwise, Lisa will die..."

"I was really stupid then. If I hadn’t gotten in that fight, maybe I would still have had the chance to be a player in the NFL, and could have continued to play football. Then maybe the university coaches wouldn’t have refused me like they are now, and I would have found a good university that could offer me a scholarship...What I have done was really stupid!" Alan shook his head and said, "So, I swear, I will never get into a fight in the future!"