The Apothecary Diaries: Volume 11 Part 1 by Natsu Hyuuga

Author:Natsu Hyuuga
Language: eng
Format: epub

The lady-in-waiting guided them to a house near the annex. When they were ushered into the patient’s room, they found a woman in her mid-twenties by the bed—Maomao took her to be the child’s mother. She quaked violently. The sharply delineated features of her face were the picture of a classic western beauty.

A young girl lay on the bed, her face bloodless. She resembled her mother, but something, maybe the way she was lying there, made her look thin and weak.

Maomao and Tianyu asked Lihaku to wait at the door, then they went into the room. Chue had wanted to come with them, but this time she’d had to stay home.

“M-My daughter! Please, help my daughter!” The mother looked like she hadn’t even had time to brush her hair; it was stuck to her cheeks in messy strands.

“Yes, ma’am,” Tianyu said. He moved to pull the covers back from the patient, but the woman exclaimed, “What are you doing?!”

“I can’t very well examine the patient if I can’t see her,” he said. He was right, as far as it went—but these highborn houses were much concerned about chastity. They resisted the idea of a man looking at a woman’s body, even if the woman was a child of eight.

It was clear from the expression on Tianyu’s face that he had no interest whatsoever in a kid like this, but it was lost on her mother. Some people seemed to think doctors were all-powerful, that they could divine the patient’s condition, whatever it was, just by taking a pulse.

Maomao glanced at Tianyu.

“All right,” he said. “Would there be any issue if my assistant touches the patient?”

“N-No, I suppose that would be all right...”

Maomao bowed, then rolled back the covers. She took a spoon from her bag of tools and checked the inside of the girl’s mouth. She opened the patient’s eyelids and looked at her eyes.

“I’d like to open the patient’s robe. Would that be all right?” Maomao asked. She was speaking to the mother, but she glared at Tianyu, who held up his hands and turned around.

Maomao undid the robe and felt the patient’s abdomen. It was noticeably swollen. She slid her fingers across the skin, and when she found something that felt hard and round, she pressed gently. The girl groaned.

“Wh-What was that?” the mother said.

“Gas is trapped in the stomach. There’s a foreign object in her intestines that’s preventing it from escaping.” Just like I thought. Maomao had guessed the moment the lady-in-waiting said the girl had eaten dried persimmons.

“A foreign object?” The mother’s eyes went wide. She seemed to be searching her memory for anything unusual that her daughter might have swallowed.

“I was told she’s eaten nothing but fruit for the last several days,” Maomao said. “And today she had dried fruit—dried persimmons, yes?”

“That’s right. Even when she didn’t seem to have an appetite, she would eat sweet things. Because of those awful grasshoppers, we haven’t been able to get honey or fresh fruit, so I gave her some dried persimmons that we got as a gift.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.