Firecrackers on Dream StreetTHE MATERNITY HOSPITAL WHERE HUONG had delivered her baby had been rudimentary and rather run-down, but it came to seem positively high-tech in comparison to the pediatric hospital where I visited the baby the next morning. Tung brought me with him on his motorbike, which we parked in a lot at one side of an empty courtyard covered in weeds and rubble. Simply negotiating the cracked and broken sidewalk that led into the building felt like crossing a rocky river. The building was small and unadorned, the kind of ugly, no-nonsense structure that went up quickly and cheaply in the Socialist bloc. Inside, the floors were covered with dust, the windows cracked or missing panes. In the empty hallways, the sounds of coughing, machinery, and crying babies swept along the corridors, bouncing back and forth against the hard, bare walls.We didn’t see anybody until we’d walked down one corridor, through a set of doors, around a corner, up another hall, and then into a large room filled with ten wooden mat-covered beds, none of which was wider than a narrow cot.
What do You think about The House On Dream Street?
