Chapter 38 - Treating Patients

Ao Wen gathered the ingredients she needed and brought everything to the concoction room in the clinic. At the back of the room stood a hammered iron cauldron slightly larger than a person's head. A number of runes has been inscribed on its surface who's meaning Ao Wen couldn't fathom but the largest characters bore the cauldron's name "Iron Gut." Ao Wen shook her head, not knowing if it was her late master's sense of humor or if the cauldron had been named that way by its maker.

Putting aside the question of names, she quickly laid out her ingredients and got to work. Bloodleaf Willow Bark contained a sap that had to be extracted slowly at a temperature high enough to sear meat, but if the temperature was too high, the sap would boil away or worse, the bark would combust and the piece would be lost. Of the seven ingredients she had to purify, this was the easiest but also the one she had the least of. Slowly, she wrapped her azure flames around the first strip of bark, gently increasing the temperature until she began to see bubbles forming on the surface of the bark. One drop at a time, the bark dripped sap into the cauldron. "Seven, eight, nine!" Ao Wen cried out in joy when the last drop she needed dripped into the cauldron. The moment of exultation, however, cost her the remainder of the piece of bark as the heat surged with her emotions turning the bark into a smoldering cinder in an instant. "No," she cried, desperately moving the cinder away before any ash could fall in the nine precious drops of sap at the bottom of the cauldron.

"And I thought Teacher Xie had nerves of steel," Ao Wen said with a sigh of relief as she managed to preserve her work so far. "And that's just the first one," she said with a sigh. "Okay, next is Heart Seed Grass," she said, moving to the next ingredient on the list.

It took two tries to crack open the shells of the Heart Seed Grass's seeds without destroying the delicate seed within the husk. The next ingredient also took two tries and by the time she reached the last ingredient she consumed half of what she had available just to get a single refinement. If she failed so often next time there would only be one more batch of fever reducer that she could make.

Finally, after extracting and refining the ingredients, she began the slow process of heating the mixture until the individual components broke down and started to combine together. For elixirs, pills, and higher-level concoctions, each ingredient needed to be melted into the concoction at increasingly precise intervals and sequences. For mortal medicine, simply progressing from coolest to hottest at a gentle rate of increase was sufficient.

Finally, Ao Wen was rewarded with twelve doses of fever-reducing fluid. Holding a vial of her concoction up to a grading chart in the book she judged it to be Impure at best, but likely Unrefined, the lowest grade of medicine that was safe to consume. Unrefined meant that there were still elements of the raw ingredients left suspended in the medicine that diminished its potency. While she had technically prepared twelve doses, she would have to increase the dosage to compensate for the decreased potency. Thankfully, she would have to reduce the dosage since her patients were children but it still left her with the other problem. Unrefined medicines, like Impure medicines, still contained impurities from the refinement process. In a single dose, it was rarely an issue but repeated use of Impure medicine could result in a toxic buildup of impurities in the body that could cause unforeseen complications. The general standard for an independent alchemist was to produce medicines that were at least a step further refined called Ordinary because the medicines performed exactly as they should given the recipe and refinement methods.

For now, even Ordinary was out of reach. Simply succeeding in something that wouldn't bring more harm than benefit was an accomplishment and one that had drained her of every bit of energy she had.

"Fen," she called after opening the door to the concoction room. "Please give one of these to each of the kids with a fever. You can mix it with cool tea if it helps them drink it but they have to drink it all, understood?"

"Yeth big thither," Fen listed.

"Wait, did you bite your tongue?" Ao Wen asked, concerned at the way he was speaking, instantly forcing herself to be more alert. "Come here, let me see," she said, beckoning Fen to come closer. Once she got a good look at him, her heart froze. The thick purple veins had crawled up his throat and now ran along the length of his tongue which had swollen thickly in his mouth. "Oh Fen," she said softly. "I'll deliver the medicine. You go get sleep. I should be watching over you, not the other way around," she said, tousling his hair gently and taking him to bed. After giving the medicine to the children with a fever she checked that the bumps on Gong's skin hadn't gotten worse before returning to the library in search of a way to reduce a swollen tongue.

Another day passed and the children who had taken her medicine seemed to be resting more easily. Fen had gotten worse though. His breathing had become labored and one eye was starting to bulge. Five, maybe six days remained until the medical Saintess would arrive. At the rate he was getting worse… Ao Wen wasn't sure but she felt like he couldn't last two days if he even survived the night.

Numbly, Ao Wen returned to the study, turning pages in a book until she found a recipe she'd hoped she wouldn't need. Copying it down and double-checking her notes she gathered the herbs for the medicinal tea and very precisely brewed a cup, then waited for it to cool to a temperature that wouldn't hurt to drink.

"Fen," she called out, seeing him open one eye sluggishly. "I have some medicine for you," she said gently. "Can you drink? I have a funnel if your tongue is in the way." Seeing the young boy glance at the funnel she nodded before helping him sit up, slowly helping him drink the cup of tea. "Sleep now, it should stop the pain soon," she told him, staring into his eyes as he fell asleep, holding him close until his chest stilled, breathing his last.

'Perfect Sleep' exists for one reason and one reason only. To ease the passage of someone suffering who was already doomed to die. The medicine was supposed to be gentle, letting the person drift off to a painless sleep from which they'd never awaken. It was supposed to be kinder than forcing someone to fight a painful hopeless battle. Right now though, holding Fen's cooling body, Ao Wen didn't feel kind. She felt hollow.

She didn't know how long she sat there holding him. Eventually, when all the children had fallen asleep, she carried Fen to the courtyard and built her third pyre since she woke in this hell. She spent the night in the courtyard until Fen's pyre burned itself out. She buried his ashes next to Master Dongfang.

"Master," she said, kneeling to the grave. "I've sent you a medicine boy to help you in your next life. His name is Fen. He makes bad tea but he means well. Teach him well, Master." Kowtowing once towards the graves she returned inside to begin making breakfast. The other children were still counting on her.

Two days later, the eldest girl Euhang began to scream in pain. Ao Wen rushed from where she'd been preparing dinner to find that the green veins that had been crawling up her legs had pulled away from her skin and had sprouted leaves. For a moment, Ao Wen froze. Her first reaction was to cut the new appendage off, but would that make it worse? Then her mind caught up to the horror of what she was really seeing. Yin Fiend Transformation. Euhang was turning into some kind of plant-based Yin Fiend.

Moving quickly she wrapped Euhang up in a blanket and carried her out of the room the other children were in. Not knowing what else to do, Ao Wen held her until she wore herself out and fell asleep. "Why? Why is it this? It's all this isn't it?" She asked rhetorically, looking at the patch of strange skin on her left arm. It had ached so long she became numb to it but it hadn't advanced at all since she first woke in this life. Had she become immune? Could she find a way to pass it on? Impossible, she thought, shaking her head. She knew far too little about alchemy or medicine to figure out why her infection wasn't getting worse, much less passing it on to others.

"Senior sister Mai, you're very cruel you know that?" Ao Wen whispered as she stood to make another cup of tea. "Why did you tell me I could help them? Is this what you meant?" There were no answers, only the numb mechanical motions of a person who no longer knew what else to do.