sinfectant water from the hospital in her memory.
The wormwood stalks in the earthenware pot at the bedside quivered in the night breeze, casting shadows on the mottled mud wall, like the blurred outlines of organs in a CT movie.
"Xiaoman girl is afraid that she is possessed by a siren! "Next door, Granny Wang's copper tobacco stick struck the wooden table, sparks splattered on her folded, coarse cloth pant legs, "Her mother died less than three days ago, how could this spirit...? "Before the words fell, the cigarette stick "dang clang" fell to the ground - the young girl suddenly supported the upper half of the body, pupils in the moonlight bright amazing, completely without the chaos of the coma for three days. Like a ball of water-soaked cotton wool stuffed in her throat, Lin Xiaoman wanted to open her mouth to retort, but realized that the tip of her tongue was against the edge of an unfamiliar coarse porcelain bowl.
Half a bowl of cold vegetable porridge splashed on her chest, seeping into the patched gerber shirt - this sixteen-year-old body clearly belongs to the fishing village girl who cried herself unconscious on the beach three days ago, but what surges in her mind is the pathological analysis of herpes zoster in Diagnostics. Those seawater-soaked fragments of memory were mixed with the smell of formalin from anatomy class and the scene of rescuing a patient with postherpetic neuralgia during the night shift in the emergency room.
"Granny, the red bumps on your wrists... "Lin Xiaoman grabbed Granny Wang's calloused hand, and under the moonlight to see the string of herpes distributed along the lymphatic vessels, the transparent blisters at the top of the herpes in the moonlight like adorned with crushed diamonds, "from the armpits to the waist and abdomen are there? Does it sting like it's been burned? Is there a burning sensation that runs down your ribs and into your lower back when it flares up?" she said, gently touching her thumb. "Her thumb gently traced over the ulnar nerve distribution area of the granny's wrist, and the touch reminded her of the standard maneuvers used in modern palpation.
Three or four women in the room exclaimed at the same time, each lifting up their sashes to check. The moonlight illuminated the red rash snaking around their waists, just like the typical textbook shingles lesions, and blood blisters had begun to appear in some areas. The cases I'd seen during my modern emergency department internship were suddenly clear: humid environments, overexertion leading to lowered immunity, and the varicella-zoster virus invading along the ganglia, which was now replicating frantically along the posterior root ganglia of the spinal cord.
"Go and pick amaranth and bluebell root, with roots! Wash the roots and whiskers of the Blue Root, and choose the leaves of the Amaranth that are fat and thick! " Lin Xiaoman lifted the bamboo box by the side of the kang, the scattered dried herbs inside made her frown - astragalus mixed with codonopsis, angelica mistaken for dong quai, "Then boil a pot of boiling water and roast the scissors through the fire, make sure to burn them until the blades of the scissors are red! Remember, never scratch the herpes with your hands, the bacteria in the cracks of your nails will make the wound pus and fester! "Granny Wang stared at her glowing eyes, suddenly remembering the look in this girl's eyes when she hugged her mother's corpse before she fell unconscious, clearly not the calmness that a young girl from a fishing village should have.
At that time, she was kneeling on the damp dirt floor, her hands pressed on her mother's cold chest, and her movements actually looked like she was doing chest compressions. When the first pot of herbal soup was gurgling on the earthen stove, Lin Xiaoman had already scraped off fresh amaranth leaves with broken porcelain tiles and mixed them with pounded dandelion roots to make a paste, and deliberately left half-inch fingernails on her fingertips - that was to make it easier to sterilize the larger blisters before picking them. "Before applying the medicine, rub your body with warm salt water; the water should be boiled and left to dry until lukewarm, and the salt should be sprinkled three times. "She demonstrated by dipping a clean kudzu cloth in the salve, "applying it in the direction of the herpes' growth, leaving a half-inch margin to give the rash room to subside. "
As she spoke, her fingertips crossed the silver bracelet on the young girl's wrist - the only token left behind by the original owner's father before he left for the sea, with the word "peace" engraved on the inside in a vague manner, and the edge of the bracelet was still covered with the patina worn out from a long period of time of wearing it. Memories came like a tidal wave: the white sail in which my father was buried in the storm, the red-stained cloth handkerchief when my mother coughed up blood, and the scene three days ago when I fainted by the stove, where the iron pot was still burning with the unfinished cough suppressant herbs. Three days later, when the first rays of sunlight climbed onto the fishing village's basking racks, the dried amaranth drying in the bamboo plaques gave off a faint grassy fragrance.
Granny Wang knocked on the wood door holding the freshly dried shrimp skin, and the silver bracelet clattered crisply on the door frame: "Dr. Xiao Man! The red bumps have all scabbed over, and I can finally close my eyes at night. "Outside the door is crowded with villagers carrying dried fish, the bow of the boat just unloaded scallops are still dripping with seawater, humid sea breeze, finally sounded a long-lost laughter. A man holding a new octopus, had to be stuffed into her hand: "My mother-in-law waist blisters, yesterday began to fade red. "