“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 have 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 through 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 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?”