After that, the surgery ended uneventfully. It wrapped up so quickly, it was almost as if all the excitement had never happened.
To Maomao’s intense irritation, Tianyu’s work was beautiful. She put salve and a bandage on the Emperor’s impeccably sutured stomach.
All right, now we’ve got to clean up...
The operating room was a mess of bloody instruments, along with a pile of blood- and filth-soaked gauze. The moment the assistants, dripping sweat, got out of the room, they slumped into chairs.
Maomao did the same.
It hadn’t actually taken that long. It had been hardly two hours from the time they had made the incision, including the interruption. And yet she felt many times, maybe many dozens of times, more exhausted than from her usual work.
“Okay, yes, fine work,” said Auntie Liu, hustling the nearly immobile Maomao from where she had collapsed in the hallway. While Auntie Liu hadn’t been directly involved in the surgery, there was the distinct sense that without her, things would not have gone nearly so well. She was just that talented a helper.
Maomao remembered Auntie Liu wrapping her arms around her and dragging her away.
After that, nothing.
No matter how tired she was, after some sleep, work began.
“Ah, finally up?” said Auntie Liu, who was making the bed next to Maomao’s. Maomao struggled to grasp what was going on through the brain fog.
“Where am I?” she asked.
It wasn’t her room in the dormitory, she knew that much. It was a cramped chamber with a row of three cots.
“We’re in the postsurgical team’s room. They made us a place all to ourselves, knowing we would have to sleep here.”
“I see...”
The blood started making its way to Maomao’s head. Yes, she did vaguely remember that they had set up such a room.
“But why are there three beds?”
The postsurgical team had only two women, Maomao and Auntie Liu.
“I think they called in some redoubtable helper, just to be safe,” Auntie Liu said.
“A helper?”
“Yes, yes. I can see you’re still waking up. Go get something to eat, and maybe take a bath. You are a sight to see! You haven’t changed since the surgery yesterday.”
“Ugh!” Maomao said when she looked at her outfit. She was still wearing the white apron smeared with blood and filth.
“Now, now, don’t do that. That came from the jade body.”
“Blood is blood,” Maomao said. No sooner had she gotten off the bed than she stripped off the disgusting surgical garment and threw it away.
Once she had changed every scrap of clothing, Maomao headed to work.
What to do about this?
They’d already decided everything in discussions prior to the surgery—she simply had to follow the plan.
“I’m afraid His Majesty can’t hold any audiences for a while.”
“He what?!”
The indignant cry came from some self-important person being denied a meeting with the Emperor. Gaoshun stood guard before the door. It seemed he was there because he could effectively decline even the more influential would-be visitors.
Maomao slipped inside, careful not to let those influential visitors notice her.
The other half of the postsurgical team was already hard at work.
“Ah, feeling better?”
“Yes, Dr. Wang Wang.”
Inside was Tall Senior—a.k.a. Wang Wang.
“You really started calling me by my name out of the blue.”
Well, it was an easy one to remember.
“You think so?” Maomao said. “Maybe you’re imagining it.”
“Well, whatever,” Dr. Wang Wang said. “His Majesty is asleep at the moment. The surgical team is going to join the aftercare efforts. Help make sure everyone is assigned to whatever task fits them best.”
“Certainly.”
Maomao kept walking, ready to get down to business.
It looked like there would be no rest for some time to come.
They observed no abnormalities in the several days after the surgery. A great many important people came seeking audiences with the Emperor, but all were rebuffed.
The enforced rest must have been having an effect, because none of the feared complications had arisen, at least so far. No doubt it helped that the assisting physician had cleaned the filth out of the abdomen so thoroughly during the surgery.
They changed the dressings twice a day, when Dr. Liu and his cohort came in to check on the progress of the surgical site. Quite frankly, the doctors believed that once a day would have been sufficient, but there were some obnoxious high bureaucrats who had insisted on ridiculous things like checking the site every hour or something like that. They evidently didn’t imagine that too many unnecessary checks could actually increase the chance of toxins getting into the wound. The two times a day were a compromise.
Much as it felt like a waste, Maomao got rid of the used bandages. Bandages for soldiers could be washed, disinfected, and recycled repeatedly—but dressings from the Emperor, if carelessly reused, could be considered a gift from him. Just another troublesome aspect of dealing with the Imperial family.
The Emperor would be on a liquid diet for a while—they’d spoken with the royal chefs to arrange it. Every time Maomao saw them at work, she remembered nursing consort Lihua. The Emperor grimaced each time he was presented with his thin gruel, but he never complained.
His belly hurt because it had been cut open, but the chronic pain and nausea were gone.
Meanwhile, the doctors handled changing the Emperor’s clothes and bathing him when they changed his dressings. Why couldn’t the ladies-in-waiting or palace women do it? They claimed it was so no coquettishly dressed women might approach His Majesty.
Not that even He of the Prodigious Facial Hair would probably be in a mood to lay a finger on them, Maomao thought.
The palace ladies might get some funny ideas, thinking this was a perfect opportunity. Every ambitious woman in the palace with her parents’ hopes lying heavy on her shoulders was looking for a chance to become an Imperial mistress.
Such dalliances couldn’t be permitted with a convalescent, of course, and even Empress Gyokuyou was asked to refrain from visiting His Majesty.
Maomao and Auntie Liu took care of cleaning the room, along with the special helper who had been called in: Suiren. That was who the third bed in the nap room had been for.
Cleaning with Suiren was, in fact, exactly what Maomao was doing at that moment. They were moving methodically but swiftly, taking extreme care to not send dust flying into the air as they worked. Maomao thought back on when she had been assigned directly to Jinshi and cowered a little. It brought back memories of—well, not torture, but some very stern scoldings.
She really does seem like she can do anything.
She was Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting, yes, but before that she had been nursemaid to the Emperor himself. That must make it easy for him to get along with her.
“There are no flowers in here,” came a voice from behind the curtain of the bed as Maomao cleaned. It belonged to none other than the Emperor himself.
“Oh, heavens, how can you say that? You know, in my time, people compared me to the lotus, just like my name. Whose fault is it that I’m a white-haired old lady now?” Suiren shot back, even as she hummed.
There was an audible silence from the doorway, where a guard was glaring at her. He appeared to be contemplating what to do with an old woman who took such a flippant tone with the Emperor. He was probably a member of the Ma clan, but now (as Maomao understood all too well) he was put between a rock and a hard place by this uniquely special old lady.
Normally they’d probably drag her off for insulting royalty, thought Maomao—but even the Emperor deferred to Suiren. I wonder whose idea this was.
The Emperor, who just had to lie there with nothing to entertain him, seemed to be enjoying Suiren’s banter. If anything, it seemed like anyone who tried to stop Suiren would be the one who got punished.