Chapter 13: The Bitter Potato Squad
THE soup with its crumbled bitter potato dumplings was fed to five of the maidservants with the highest fevers. Even the vegetables and the meat had turned to mush at this point, so it was more of a thick porridge than a soup, but the maids ate it as they coughed. Some of them struggled to get it down, while others nearly gulped down their entire serving.
“Just rest, now. I’ll be back to take your temperature every hour,” said Doctor Ulysse. The patients nodded weakly and lay back down.
Olivia joined him for the hourly checkups. When she looked at the sheet recording the change in their temperature, she saw everyone’s fevers had started to fall after three hours. After five, they only had a slight fever. After eight, they were back to a normal temperature.
“How?” she wondered. “I’ve never heard of bitter potatoes having that sort of effect. They’re a food that’s been eaten for a long time. I wish we at least had some old wives’ tales about them.”
“We’ll pick apart the reason later,” said Ulysse. “First things first, I want more bitter potatoes for the other patients. Could you draw a map showing their location?”
“I’ll take you there. It’s a hard place to find, and you won’t recognize the tree if you don’t know it already.”
“Hm. Well, the patients in the barracks are on the mend. They should be able to manage without you… All right. Please, if you don’t mind, show me where they are.”
“I’d be happy to.”
Soon, they’d formed a “bitter potato squad” consisting of soldiers not bedridden with the illness, a horticulturalist, and gardeners. Olivia was put astride a horse along with a young soldier.
“We’ll be going fairly quickly, ma’am. Please hold on tight,” he said.
The squad hurried to the forest Olivia was so familiar with as fast as they could.
Arthur came rushing out of Soup Forest when the bitter potato squad arrived, catching a fatigued Olivia in his arms as she climbed down from the horse.
“Olivia!” he said. “Are you all right? Who are these people?”
“All these people are going to dig up bitter potatoes, Arthur,” she said. “It helps with the illness going around. I’m going to show them the way.”
“You look terrible. Tell me where it is, I’ll show them.”
“No. I have to explain to them how to dig up the roots in a way that won’t damage the trees so much that they die. I’m sure we’ll need more bitter potatoes in the future. I don’t want things to get out of hand and let the trees die. I have to teach them how to harvest them and how to cut them up.”
“All right, but I’m going with you. We’ll ride together on Annie. Come on.”
They pulled out every spade and basket in the restaurant, then Arthur and Olivia led the bitter potato squad through the forest on Annie. They came to the river, then traveled upstream for a time.
“Everyone, listen,” said Olivia. “Every tree growing on that slope is a bitter potato tree. They’ll die if you dig up all their roots, so please only take up to two roots per tree.”
“Don’t worry, Ms. Olivia. We gardeners will take care of it. Plants are our expertise. We’ll be careful not to let them die.”
“And I’m a horticulturist. I came because I wanted to see what environment these plants naturally grow in. Once I have a solid grasp of that, I can try cultivating them in the capital.”
Until then, Olivia had been chatting with the others with a smile on her face, but now she gently lowered herself onto a nearby rock. Arthur immediately started to worry and asked, “Are you all right? You look beat.”
“Part of it is being tired from working and traveling, but the other part is I had to listen to all the voices while I was working…”
“The inner voices of the patients?”
“Yeah. I tried as hard as I could not to listen, but they were so weak that their hearts were completely unguarded. They kept saying, ‘I want to die,’ or, ‘It hurts so much, help,’ or even, ‘Mum, please, help me.’ I listened to their screaming nonstop, they sounded so desperate…”
Hearing that and being unable to do anything wore down Olivia while she was left unable to let on to anyone else that she could hear it at all. She’d worked that whole time hearing the internal screams of the severely ill patients. There were so many times she wanted to burst into tears and demand why God would give her this ability, but she had to keep working with a smile.
Despite her tiredness, Olivia got back to her feet and moved over to a bitter potato root now exposed from the dirt. She showed everyone how to cut it off, and they remained serious as they watched.
“All right. I got it. Thank you, Ms. Olivia. We’ll take care of the rest. You can go home and rest,” said one of the gardeners.
“I’ll write down instructions on how to prepare them. Mistakes would be bad since the skin’s poisonous.”
“Thank you!”
Olivia took pen and paper from the satchel she always had with her and wrote clear, thorough instructions that no one could get wrong.
There was no need to go to the effort of making dumplings, this time, so she wrote down how to peel them, soak them, rough chop them, and boil until soft. Arthur stood beside her and watched with a serious expression as she wrote the notes. It was very clearly written that the skin was poisonous.
“All right, that should be good enough,” Olivia said. “This should let them prepare them safely.”