Giving Until It Hurts

"I took my medicine just like everyone else, but I was the only one who didn't get well," she tells Linton almost apologetically, her eyes darting nervously from one corner of the room to the other.

Linton addresses her in his light South Korean drawl. "You're my model today," he says soothingly, and she manages a weak smile.

The quiet is perforated by the sound of patients in the corridors hawking up expectorant for sputum samples. The woman has already given hers, which is stored along with the others in a cooler that Linton will take with him to South Korea for testing. With luck, he'll bring a treatment kit to her in the spring.

THE TWO-WEEK TOUR ENDS WITH A VISIT TO A TUBERCULOSIS FACILITY NEAR SADONG, a district in a distant part of the Pyongyang municipality. Like other care centers on the capital's periphery, this one is near an army base and a cemetery. Linton and his team are welcomed warmly by the director, a tall man with facial fluoroscopy burns that give him a perpetual blush.

While inspecting the wards, Linton enters a cell crowded with five men of varying ages. They have three cots among them and give in to fits of deep, gravelly coughs. Most wear ragged army fatigues. The sun is setting, and the atmosphere is sepulchral. Linton manages to get a few wan laughs but shakes his head as he steps back into the receding daylight.

"It's the end of the line in there," he says. "I doubt if any of 'em will make it, save one or two." Nevertheless, the men's sputum samples are collected and deposited with the others.

It is getting late. The delegates will have to hurry back to Pyongyang to beat curfew. They hastily say goodbye to the staff and board their SUVs.

On the road back, no lamps illuminate the highway, and many of the vehicles on the road have no working headlights. The Bell convoy sweeps past the relentless procession of workers, students and soldiers, going from daylight into night, stopping only for the occasional military checkpoint.

That evening, from a room now eerily vacant of MDR kits and spare car parts, Linton will begin preparations for the spring tour.

Stephen Glain is a contributing editor for Newsweek International based in Washington. He can be reached at s.glain@verizon.net.