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 didn’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 also the ways 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 on 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 them.”
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 had been 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.