The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 15 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Selection Exam

The pounding sun was growing the slightest bit less intense; in this season, they could at least bear to work without rolling up their sleeves.

"Work's been getting a little easier lately, huh?" Maomao said.

"Yes, so it has," replied Dr. Li.

They were cleaning the break room together. It was normally not the kind of job someone of Dr. Li's status would have bothered with, but in his newly muscled state, he would do anything for some exercise. He even went out of his way to move the beds and clean under them. He probably didn't even care about cleaning-he was just here to work his muscles.

Work was "getting easier" because there were fewer fights among the soldiers. Maybe they had once again begun to recognize that the freak strategist was their common foe, or maybe their superiors had given them the evil eye.

Or maybe something that was causing the problem has been cleared up? Maomao thought. Whatever it was, she was grateful. Was Jinshi or someone like him responsible for taking care of it?

Boy, but the break room sure did get dirty fast. In addition to sometimes having injured or sick people rest there, the physicians used it to take naps. That was all well and good, but not so much the sticks left over from late-night snacks of meat skewers, or-she couldn't believe she was finding this-a naughty book that had clearly been passed around.

I remember using these as textbooks in the rear palace, she thought, thumbing through the pages and then leaving it on the table. If the book had an owner, he would presumably take it home with him; and if it didn't, well, someone might still take it home; and if no one claimed it, they would dispose of it.

"Whatcha got there? A little personal reading, Niangniang?"

Maomao involuntarily backed away from the voice. There was only one person who called her Niangniang.

"Yes, Dr. Tianyu? Can I help you?" she said.

"I never took you for the kind to read stuff like that, Niangniang." He was thrilled to have found something to tease her about, but unfortunately for him, he didn't realize that Dr. Li was standing right behind him.

"One of the physicians forgot it here," Dr. Li said.

"Eeyikes!"

"Eeyikes,' indeed! What kind of greeting is that?"

Tianyu's face tensed when he saw Dr. Li, who was already preparing to bring down his knuckle.

"What're you doing here, anyway? What happened to doing your work?" the doctor said.

"I did my work! Really, I swear I have a good reason to be here, so maybe we could skip the knuckle for today?" Tianyu clasped his head and tried to make himself as small as possible. He took most things in stride (The wind is no enemy of the willow tree, as the proverb went), but Maomao was tickled to find out that even he had a natural predator.

"So. What is this good reason?" As she spoke, Maomao flung herself into a chair, folded her legs indolently, and, just for good measure, scratched at her ear with a finger.

"You sound polite, but I don't think you're being polite," Tianyu groused.

"It's your imagination," Maomao said, blowing on whatever had ended up on her finger.

"Maomao, it's fine to ignore most of what Tianyu says, but he may come with orders from above. We should hear him out, just to be sure," Dr. Li said.

"Yes, sir." If Dr. Li insisted, it wasn't her place to refuse. She resigned herself to listening to Tianyu.

"There's really a bright line between people you'll listen to and people you won't, isn't there, Maomao?"

"It's your imagination ... sir."

They moved from the break room to the physicians' administrative office, where they found the elderly doctor checking over the daily reports.

"Dr. Liu is asking for Niangniang. May I borrow her?" Tianyu asked the older man; even he knew enough to mind his p's and q's around this physician.

"Tianyu and Maomao? Do you think this is about -? " The old doctor seemed to have some inkling as to why Maomao would have been summoned. "Sure, you can have her. Is she the only one?"

"If I brought Dr. Li, too, things would be all kinds of tough, wouldn't they?" Tianyu replied lightly.

"True enough. Li here is very versatile. I'd be much obliged if you'd leave him with me."

That sounded very portentous, but Dr. Li seemed as mystified as Maomao as to where she was going to go. "Are you sure I shouldn't go along?" he asked not Tianyu, but the old physician.

"Yep." It wasn't the old physician who answered, but Tianyu.

"If you're leaving Dr. Li with me, then fine. Go ahead and take Maomao." The old doctor handed Dr. Li the reports.

Whatever the reason for this summons, Maomao was not much more eager than anyone else to spend time with Tianyu. "I think it should be Dr. Li who goes instead of Dr. Tianyu," she said. "I humbly request he change with Dr. Li. We can leave Dr. Tianyu here instead."

This was both her considered professional opinion and her knee- jerk personal one.

"Absolutely not. I have no use for Tianyu either," the old doctor said firmly.

"Ha ha ha! Boy, Dr. Li, you sure are popular," Tianyu said.

"And you don't seem to be much liked anywhere you go, Tianyu," said Dr. Li, as merciless as his colleague.

"What are we going to be doing?" Maomao asked.

"You know, no one told me much. They just said to be sure to bring you along, Niangniang."

Maomao and Tianyu both crossed their arms.

"Oh, it's nothing big. Just a simple test. If you don't pass, no harm done," the old doctor said, gazing out the window. "Now, I think you'd better get going."

"Yes, sir," Maomao said, and then she and Tianyu took their leave of Dr. Li and the elderly physician.

Dr. Liu's medical office was in the center of the palace grounds-it was located in the outer court, but close to His Majesty's bedchamber. Dr. Liu, however, was not there.

"You're looking for Dr. Liu? He's this way," said another physician, showing Maomao and Tianyu to another room.

It turned out they were not the only ones who had been summoned; quite a few other physicians were there. Everyone milled about, clearly uncertain why they had all been called.

Interestingly, there were even several women. Not Maomao's colleagues Yao and En'en-these women were older; one could call them middle-aged, but they didn't appear to be palace women as such.

Outsiders? That seems unlikely.

Whoever they were, their presence helped prevent Maomao from standing out like a sore thumb.

Her jaw dropped, however, when she saw who else was there- someone she never would have expected. A very elderly-looking physician with a bowed posture.

"Pops ... "

Maomao's adoptive father, Luomen, was there. He was supposed to be the rear palace physician. Maomao trotted over to him.

"Pops,' nothing!" he said. "Around here, you can call me ... hmm, let's see. Call me Dr. Kan."

"Yeah, but what are you doing here?"

"Again: Watch your tone. And be patient. You'll learn the answer soon enough."

I take it Pops knows perfectly well what we're all doing here.

Given the elderly physician's knowing comments, Maomao suspected the upper physicians had all talked this over to some degree or another.

"So what's goin' on?" Tianyu asked Luomen, trotting up behind Maomao.

"You'll find out any minute now. You can't expect me to explain it individually to every single one of you." Luomen worked his way to the far end of the room, his cane clicking against the ground as he went. There was a desk there, and behind it was Dr. Liu. Another of the upper physicians was with him, and they were talking about something.

Dr. Liu clapped his hands, cutting through the murmur of voices that filled the room. Everyone immediately fell silent. "It looks like you're all here. You must excuse the abrupt summons," he said. "Without further ado, we're going to divide you into three groups." He held up a paper so they could see it. Luomen and the other physician did the same. "I want each of you to go with the physician whose paper has your name on it."

Maomao hopped up and down, trying to get high enough to spot her name.

Yes!

It looked like she was in Luomen's group, the last name on the list. About ten other people also clustered around her father.

"I believe that's all of you. Come this way, please," he said, setting off with his cane clacking. Maomao skipped a little as she followed behind him. It crossed her mind to walk alongside him, but she thought better of doing that with all the doctors around, and attached herself to the back of the group instead. Another physician was helping Luomen, with his bad leg, along.

Luomen took them to another room, where there were desks with papers on them, enough for everyone.

It really is a test.

Maybe the unexpected summons had been a way of trying to catch them off guard. Everyone looked around, confused.

"Uh, sir?" said one of the physicians, raising his hand. "Why are we taking a test now?"

"You don't have to take it if you don't want to. If you'd rather leave, feel free-you won't be punished, and no one will hold it against you."

Luomen went and sat on a chair at the farthest end of the room, his cane clicking along with him.

The only kind of person I can think of who would go home when he said that would be a kid going to a rebellious phase.

The doctors looked at each other, then took their seats. Maomao sat at the last available desk.

"You have one hour. Let's go ahead and get started," Luomen said, lighting a stick of incense.

The test paper lay face down on the desk; Maomao turned it over and took a look. It consisted of about fifty questions regarding basic medical knowledge, and another fifty about pharmaceuticals specifically. Given the one-hour time limit, she got the sense that they were expected to answer all the questions easily-these should be things they already knew.

Maomao began filling in answers, writing away without a break. A few of the doctors were sweating; occasionally someone would drop his brush or let out an audible groan-maybe they had written a word incorrectly.

"All right, time's up," Luomen said. The hour had passed in the blink of an eye. Maomao hadn't even had time to double-check her answers, but at least she had filled everything in. That was a good start. Some of the physicians' shoulders slumped. It was rough when you knew you could have answered more of the questions if you'd had more time.

Once Luomen was sure that the incense stick was out completely, he stood up. "All right, on to the next location."

He started walking, and where should he lead them but toward the medicine storage room.

The storage room was packed with medicine cabinets. Maomao came all the time on official duties, but no matter how often she was here, it never failed to excite her.

Okay, got to take a deep breath.

She breathed in, savoring the room's distinctive smell.

Now that I think about it ...

She began to register the faces of the assembled physicians. She didn't recognize all of them, but several were often assigned to manage the medicines in this room just like she was. Given the content of the written examination they had just taken, she was starting to think that this group was full of people who were very experienced with medicinal herbs.

So would that mean Tianyu's group is surgery?

Tianyu was a gifted surgeon, if nothing else (including a decent human being).

"What should we do next, sir?" one of the physicians asked.

"Well, let's see. Perhaps I could ask each of you to make a few medicines?"

"Yes, sir."

The doctors were trying to reset themselves.

"The patient is a twenty-year-old woman. Her husband has come to you saying that she hasn't been able to sleep, possibly because of gastritis. What kind of medicine would you use to treat her?"

Several of the physicians sprang into action. Some went scrambling for ingredients; others, perhaps depressed by their performance on the written test, only seemed to be going through the motions of making medicine.

But Maomao and three of the doctors didn't move.

We'd only trip over each other by crowding the cabinets at the same time.

There are plenty of ingredients; we won't run out.

The three doctors, like Maomao, were people who had been assigned to manage the medicine cabinets. They wouldn't have to rush; they knew exactly what was in each drawer and could afford to take their time.

Tall Senior, Short Senior, and Mid-Height Peer, Maomao thought, assigning each of them an arbitrary name. Well, not completely arbitrary: One of her seniors was tall, the other was short, and the physician who had joined the staff at the same time she had was of average stature. Each of them more or less did their own thing, so they had never really gone out of their way to introduce themselves to each other, but they knew each other by sight.

The doctors who had gone into action first had begun to assemble their ingredients from the panoply of cabinets. Maomao looked over the drugs that had been gathered on the table.

Longan and tohki, licorice, gardenia ... Are we dealing with something to combat anemia and poor sleep?

A few of the physicians had chosen slightly different ingredients, but they were all making roughly the same thing.

"You're not going to do anything?" Luomen asked Maomao and the others who had stood still.

"If we all rushed the cabinets at once we'd only trip over each other, sir," said her tall senior colleague.

Her shorter senior narrowed his eyes and asked, "Does the patient have any other symptoms?"

Are we allowed to ask that?

"Symptoms," Luomen echoed. "What kind of symptoms did you have in mind?"

"Does this person have morning sickness?" Maomao asked pointedly. A twenty-year-old woman, with her husband making the inquiry? One had to consider the possibility of pregnancy. There were plenty of drugs that could help with insomnia, but many of them could have negative effects on the pregnancy.

The other physicians who had stayed behind seemed to have had the same intuition as Maomao.

That doesn't mean that the other doctors are incompetent or anything.

The vast majority of the patients they would see in the court were men. Even when a palace lady got sick, she often preferred to hide that fact rather than present herself at the medical office, and if she was pregnant, she would probably just leave court service altogether. Luomen had presented them with a trick question, one that required them to take a step beyond their experience as court physicians.

"Well, let's see ... The husband reported nausea, so I think it would be wise to consider the possibility."

Only then did Maomao and the other three finally move. The doctors who had gone first were starting to show Luomen the results of their efforts-and he was telling them they had failed. One of them did pass, but he didn't seem very happy about it; maybe his results on the written test hadn't been so good.

The remaining four including Maomao gathered roughly the same kinds of herbs and made similar drugs. They each had their own particular way of going about it, but they came up with more or less the same thing.

Time was short, however, and Mid-Height Peer looked a bit rushed. Or maybe he was all too aware of the other doctors, the ones who had failed, watching them as they worked.

"Good, you three have the right answer. This one ... Perhaps prepare it with a little more care," Luomen said.

Only Mid-Height Peer was rejected-he hadn't had time to mix the ingredients properly.

"Yes, sir. I'll work faster," he said, disappointed but willing to acknowledge where he had gone wrong.

"Now, let's move on to the next problem," Luomen said.

He had them make several more medicines in much the same way. It was very characteristic of him to see what they could make on their own, rather than simply handing them a recipe and asking them to mix it.

And he does love to set little traps.

It was somewhat mischievous, yes, but then, patients often had trouble explaining their own symptoms clearly. Luomen was conveying that it was good to be prepared to question what the patient told them.

If only he was this careful about money, Maomao thought. He'd been officially hired as a physician, so she assumed no one was taking a cut of his rear-palace salary, but maybe she would ask when she got a chance, just to be sure.

I can, however, totally imagine him giving everything he owns to some random person in trouble that he passed by.

Which meant that if he never took a step outside of court, everything should be fine ... Right?

Maomao let these thoughts parade through her head as she made the medicine for the next problem. Luomen went around observing not only their herbal knowledge, but the way in which they made their medicines. It was about more than what components one chose; it was how you handled them, how you mixed them together.

He told us no one was required to take this test ...

But Maomao was very curious what task they would be put to if they passed.

"Next, hmm ... Perhaps you could see how much you can make within the given time. Use the ingredients listed here."

Luomen was upping the difficulty.

Maomao looked at the formula and raised her hand. "Sir?"

"Yes?"

"What would be the point of making so much of this medicine? We would never be able to use all of it."

If they were going to ask her to waste precious medicinal herbs, Maomao was going to say something about it.

"I agree with her," Short Senior said. The medicine they were being asked to make was a concoction for stomachaches, but considering how much of that they went through in a day, this was far too much. The herbs that served as the basis for this medicine could also be used in other drugs, so it was no good to burn through them making a bunch of the same medicine.

"Couldn't we make something for wounds? Something we could use with the soldiers?" Maomao asked. The other physicians agreed with her.

"The medicine won't go to waste," Luomen assured her. "It will be distributed to patients in town."

"Sir ... What does that mean?" asked Mid-Height Peer. The other doctors likewise began to murmur among themselves.

"It's in order to investigate the effects of a new medicine we'll be making. We've gathered a group of patients with similar symptoms to make it easy to compare."

It was like a more precise version of the experiments Maomao had been performing on her left arm.

Silently, she looked over the formula they'd been given once more. Winter melon seed, rhubarb root, mu dan pi ...

Something for circulation?

Just what kind of patients had they gathered? And what kind of medicine were they trying to develop?

"Today's tests are about deciding who will be involved in administering the medicine. The tests, incidentally, are now over. You may all go home. You'll be notified soon whether you passed or not."

Carrying their answer sheets, Luomen left the room.

The test takers all looked at each other, mystified, and then began to filter out.

Guess I'll go too.

Maomao was about to do just that when someone caught her shoulder.

"Hey, you."

It was one of the other test takers-the one doctor out of the early birds who had passed the first medicine-making test. Maomao had never been in the same office as him, but she'd seen his face somewhere.

"Do you know about Suirei?" he demanded.

"Suirei ... Oh!"

Years ago, there had been a physician who was in love with Suirei. She'd used him like a pawn when she'd made her "resurrection drug" and fled the palace.

He was entrusted with looking after the medicine supply before.

Now he was assigned somewhere else, presumably demoted after what had happened with Suirei. Was it just luck that he and Maomao had never run into each other so far, or was somebody politely keeping them apart?

"When you say Suirei, do you mean what she's doing now?"

"That's right."

"I have no idea."

"Is that the truth?"

Hell no, it's not.

But she had to lie to him.

For outward purposes, Suirei was someone who could not exist. She was a member of the Shi clan and a granddaughter of the former emperor. She'd been involved with "accidents" and murders of several VIPs, and had even abducted Maomao. The moment anyone learned she was alive, she might be headed to the gallows.

Thus, no matter how cold it seemed, Maomao had to be firm. "If I ever find out where she is, I'll be obligated to tell someone. I'd probably even collect a nice reward for it."

Suirei was a suspect in a whole range of cases. Even this doctor had to know that she would never be safe if she were found.

After a long moment, he said, "All right." Then he left the room, shoulders slumped.

Do yourself a favor and forget about her, Maomao thought, putting a hand to her chest in relief.