Funeral arrangements are quickly made. Because Spinster Aunt was an unmarried woman—a worthless branch on the family tree—the rites are simple and private, held just one day after the inquest. I can’t attend because I’m still doing the month. But even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to go because I’m much too ill. I should try to analyze my symptoms, looking for some type of infection, but after the added strain of the inquest, I’m too sick to think properly. Someone—Poppy?—must finally notice and inform Lady Kuo, because I’m vaguely aware that servants enter and set up a chair and screen in a far corner of my room, which tells me that she’s summoned Doctor Wong.
When they enter, I have my second glimpse of Doctor Wong. I’ve spent little time with men in my life, and again I’m struck by how different he looks from my scholarly father and grandfather or my father-in-law and husband. Doctor Wong is taller than any of them. His shoulders look as though they could bear a great weight. He quickly disappears behind the screen and sends questions to me through my mother-in-law. I answer as best as I can. Over the next two days, he tries different remedies, and I must take them. He first prescribes a drink made with wine and a boy’s urine. Then he has me inhale vinegar fumes. Neither treatment relieves my symptoms. On the third day, he writes a prescription, which Poppy brews for me to take. It doesn’t help. My condition declines. The room is dimmed. I’m ignorant of the passage of time, but my breasts turn hard, then soft because my milk dries up. The wet nurse I initially rejected is brought in. Then one day a beautiful face appears above me. It’s either a fox spirit or a ghost. I shiver, close my eyes, and turn away.
“Yunxian,” the specter calls to me. “Yunxian. Open your eyes. It is I. Meiling.”
I lift my lids. The creature is too flawless to be real—with cheeks like sunlit clouds, eyes as black as obsidian, and hair that reflects the light like moonbeams on a pond at midnight. It cannot possibly be my friend.
“You are more slender than the stem of a flower,” the creature proclaims, dropping by the side of my bed. She glances over her shoulder. I follow her gaze and see my mother-in-law standing at the entrance to my marriage bed. “She needs her grandmother. Lady Ru is the best doctor in all Wuxi at addressing below-the-girdle ailments that afflict women.”
Lady Kuo doesn’t stir. “That won’t be necessary,” she says. “I will ask Doctor Wong to return. He is our family doctor and the one I trust most in the women’s chambers.”
“I’ll fetch Lady Ru anyway,” the wraith says. As she walks toward the door, I look for the fox tail to peek out from under her gown. It doesn’t.
My room is once again prepared for Doctor Wong’s arrival. This time he brings Maoren. It’s my husband’s second visit to my room while I’m doing the month. He shouldn’t be here, and his presence fills me with distress until a new and even more disturbing thought enters my mind. Maybe I’ve completed the month and don’t realize it.
Doctor Wong and Maoren keep their voices just low enough that I can’t make out their words. Maoren steps across the first antechamber and sits in the vestibule next to my bed. His spine is rigidly proud. Becoming a father has turned him into a man, and yet all I see is worry in his eyes. When he says, “The doctor has questions he wants me to ask you,” I remember when I acted on my father’s behalf—and my mother’s wishes—as the go-between for her and her doctor. I didn’t understand what I was asking, so I had no embarrassment, but my husband goes red to the roots of his hair when he asks the first question. “Doctor Wong would like to know if the blood coming out of you looks like the white part of scallions, like water in which rice has been washed, or like meat that’s rotted in the summer sun?”
“Rice water,” I answer. This symptom would suggest excess Damp.
Maoren leaves to report this to the doctor and returns to probe further. “Does it flow like water, dribble like flaxseed oil, or come out in clots?”
“A little of all three.”
This answer confounds the doctor as it’s perplexed me.
My husband comes back to me with yet another inquiry. “Are the fluids that leave your body as dull in color as chrysanthemum petals that have dropped in fall or shiny like fish brains?”
“Fish brains.”
Again, this answer seems to baffle the doctor, who comments just loud enough for me to hear, “Some of her symptoms indicate Cold, but shininess suggests Heat. These things should not coexist.”
“Maybe we should have the midwife come again,” Maoren proposes tentatively.
“Only fools and idiots entrust their wives to the hands of grannies.” The doctor casually recites the aphorism.
I recall a saying from the Book of Rites. If a doctor does not have three generations of medicine, do not take his drugs. I could never say this aloud, but I do tell Maoren I would like to see my grandmother.
From across the room, the doctor says, “A woman doctor is not much better than a granny. She can see and touch during the Four Examinations, but what does she know really?”
“Neither my wife nor her grandmother is a granny,” my husband says.
The doctor laughs lightly, as though he’s been joking all along. The next thing I know a curtain is hung from the ceiling of my bed, my wrist is wrapped with a length of cloth, and I’m told to extend my arm through the curtain.
“Please rest assured,” Doctor Wong says, only his pledge is not for me. “I can feel your wife’s pulses without touching her flesh.”
Again, my mind spools back to when Respectful Lady was dying. Since the doctor couldn’t see my mother, he couldn’t examine her form or her qi, her luster or color. Nor could he truly feel her pulse through the linen handkerchief. The same must be true for Doctor Wong.
“Physicians like myself must consider a woman’s emotions, how they caused the affliction, and how they might affect treatment,” he tells Maoren. “Your wife is not thriving…”
But he doesn’t ask why. And he’s thinking backwards, but I have a fleeting moment of clarity. There’s a big difference between how emotions might cause a woman to fall sick and how they will affect treatment and looking at the organic symptoms first. Once the symptoms are understood, then we should consider how emotions may have aggravated the ailment and how they should be addressed when looking for a cure. In my case, the bleeding and fever have been exacerbated by my sadness at having failed to produce a son, my loneliness in a household that still doesn’t accept me, and the stress of Spinster Aunt’s death. Not the other way around.
“While I’m finding Cold, the root of your wife’s suffering is too much Heat,” the doctor says. “Have the two of you engaged in bedchamber affairs in the month before or since your wife gave birth?”
“Not once!” Maoren exclaims indignantly.
“Then she must have been eating things that produce Heat—chilies, peppers, fried foods. These often cause a difficult labor,” he adds pointedly. “You’re lucky the fetus did not die within her belly. Yes, too much Heat. I will give her cooling medicines to boost her yin,” he announces in his determined voice.
But I’m quite certain Doctor Wong is wrong in his diagnosis, which means his treatment plan won’t work. I’m so weak, though, and my mind so clouded that I can’t figure out what to do or even how to speak up for myself. As happens to many women after giving birth, I retreat into darkness.
* * *
I’m dozing when I feel fingers on my wrist. I open my eyes to see Grandmother Ru. My mother-in-law, Miss Zhao, Inky, and Poppy hover behind her. The person I thought was a fox spirit—Meiling—is also present. I ask the obvious question.
“Am I dying?”
Grandmother snorts. “Absolutely not! But you are not well either.” Her expression is stern when she asks, “How could you have let things go so far? You know better.”
“I’ve been very worried about her,” Lady Kuo says before I can answer. “I personally made sure she took all the formulas Doctor Wong prescribed.”