The Apothecary Diaries Book 9

Practical Exercises

They started with chickens. Still warm, in fact, not yet stiff. Only the breast and abdomen had been plucked; the birds hadn't even been bled. When Maomao stuck the sharp, carefully polished knife into it, blood sprayed out.

"Take out the internal organs—carefully. I don't want to see a single scratch. Those are going to be dinner, so be gentle with them."

Have to be careful to drain all the blood or the meat will smell bad, Maomao thought. The task of bleeding had been left to them to force them to hone their skills.

There were five or six other people there besides Maomao. From the faces she recognized, she concluded everyone else was an apprentice physician.

She'd been told to come along on a medicine run, but she'd found herself on a chicken farm some distance from the capital. It started with catching one of the free-range birds, which would be nearly impossible in physician's clothes. Instead they were given farm clothes with grimy leather aprons and set to work. When they caught a bird, they had to wring its neck, then proceed into a nearby hut to start cutting.

Who would have imagined that these were doctors, the elite, the cream of the capital's crop?

"Just be grateful we aren't asking you to vivisect them," Dr. Liu said. He almost sounded like he was enjoying himself. Having delivered his instructions with all the pomp he could muster, he began haggling with the chicken farmer. They were working out the value of everything medicinal that might come from a chicken, from its liver to the dried lining of its stomach.

Maomao had the distinct impression that she was more used to jobs like catching and butchering chickens than the rest of the apprentice physicians—which made it sting when Tianyu was the first to grab a bird. The annoyance spurred her to ask, "Say, did you grow up on a farm?"

"No. This is my third time through this training, so I'm starting to get the hang of it. Never feels good, though."

She'd been right: the bloodstained outfits had shown that the apprentices had already started real-world practice.

"Now I've got a question for you, Niang-niang," Tianyu said. Maomao twitched an eyebrow at the name. She didn't like it very much, but he'd only started using it more since he'd seen it got a rise out of her, so the best thing she could do was not say anything. "How'd you get Dr. Liu to come around?"

Tianyu's eyes were gleaming. He was somewhere in his mid-twenties, but at that moment he looked like a ten-year-old boy with mischief in mind. To think, he normally showed no interest in Maomao, reserving all his energies for En'en.

But he loves some gossip...

He'd peppered En'en with rumors as well, so at first Maomao had taken him to be simply quick-eared, but it seemed he had innate curiosity as well. For all his loquaciousness, though, he had never let slip a word to Maomao about what the physicians' practical exercises entailed. It seemed he didn't share the quack's loose lips.

In any event, Maomao didn't feel like talking to him, and knew she wasn't likely to get much useful information out of him if she did.

"Instead of talking, how about concentrating on the task at hand? I'll thank you not to split that gallbladder."

Doing that would get bile everywhere and make the meat taste terrible. Moreover, an animal's gallbladder was a potential medicinal ingredient, and so ruining one would most likely earn them a taste of Dr. Liu's knuckle.

Tianyu was a chatterbox and overall seemed like something of a worthless excuse for a man, but he at least seemed to be good with his hands. He cut through the slippery bird flesh with ease.