“You truly are the Compassionate One,” her husband acknowledges.
As the guards drag Meiling away, Empress Zhang calls after them. “Be careful. Use a whip instead of a heavy rod. She is a pretty one. She has lost a lot and is about to lose even more. Let her keep her face.”
Miss Zhao and I are returned to the lodge. Poppy brews tea for us, but the cups of liquid go untouched. Each minute feels like an hour. My body tenses each time I hear a footfall or a voice in the hallway. Finally, Lin Ta opens the door. A litter is brought in and set on the floor. Meiling is facedown, with her features hidden by long strands of hair that have come undone during her ordeal. Her right arm falls off the litter and lies lifeless on the carpet. The back of her gown, from her neck to her ankles, is saturated with blood in different shades and consistencies—from crimson to deep rust, from glassy wet where this precious life force continues to seep and ooze to lumps that are thick and clotted. Poppy, who knows the prohibitions about doctors touching blood, volunteers to remove Meiling’s clothes.
“You can wait outside while I wash her,” Poppy offers.
“I will do it,” I say.
Miss Zhao hisses air through her teeth. Then, “I will stay and help too.”
Meiling’s gown is not just soaked. The whip shredded the silk. In some areas, the fabric needs to be pulled out of her flayed skin. As carefully as possible, Miss Zhao and I cut away the fabric, exposing the terrible wounds. The flesh is torn, with some gashes revealing glimpses of white bone. She’s still bleeding badly from her miscarriage too.
“Poppy, we’re going to need Midwife Quon,” I say.
My maid disappears and returns with the midwife. She does not flinch or lose color. Blood is her business.
“Miss Zhao and I will see to Young Midwife’s back,” I tell her. “Can you—”
“Do you have more of those clean bindings?” Midwife Quon asks. “If we put her over a basin as we ordinarily would after birth, she’ll bleed to death. I will repack her insides.”
Poppy brings a bowl and fills it with boiled water. Miss Zhao’s face is a mask of determination as she dabs at Meiling’s back with a wet cloth. Each touch brings a whimper from Meiling. I open my chest of herbs, looking for ingredients to make teas, poultices… anything to help with her pain and prevent infection.
I return to the litter. All the silk has been removed. The damage to Meiling’s back is the worst, but some of the lashes strayed down across her buttocks and thighs. It’s too much for me to take in. I clench my jaw to fortify myself. I drop to my knees and use a finger to gently sweep the loose strands of hair covering the left side of Meiling’s face. Not one part of the whip touched this cheek, and I can only assume the right side as well, for which I will thank the empress. But what startles me is that my friend’s eyes are open, staring straight ahead. Respectful Lady lost the will to go on living when my two older brothers died. Now I see the same distance in Meiling’s eyes.
I lean down and whisper in her ear. “You have a heart as strong as iron. You will survive. I will make sure of it.”
* * *
When I was young, Grandmother told me stories of women who sliced pieces of flesh from their thighs to add nourishment to soups for ailing mothers-in-law or sickly sons. She spoke of wives so dedicated and loyal that they licked their husbands’ festering wounds or sucked poisons from snake or insect bites. She praised the wife who stood in a snowstorm, freezing herself so she could lie beside her husband to relieve his fever. Those women used their bodies to show their loyalty. Now I use mine to prove my love to Meiling. Each morning I pierce a vein at my wrist, let the blood drip into a cup, add tea brewed with healing herbs, and hold it to her lips. During the day I keep my wrist bound with gauze. Even so, blood seeps through—like red ink stains—until evening, when I fully open the wound again and make Meiling another cup of tea enhanced with my life force.
I’ve received help from an unlikely person. Lin Ta came to me that horrible day and asked if I’d like him to send for a doctor who treats war injuries. “Not a bonesetter,” he explained, “but a man familiar with wounds from spears, swords, and, yes, rods and whips.” When I hesitated, he inquired about my knowledge of blood, exposed bones, and tattered skin and muscles. “How far down did the whip break through the soft parts on Young Midwife’s back? Do you know how to reseal the skin? You need help.”
The Hongzhi emperor has governed for just four peaceful years, so it wasn’t difficult for Lin Ta to find an older man who’d treated men injured in battle. He cannot enter the Lodge of Ritual and Ceremony, but every night I meet him outside the back gate, where I share details of my patient’s condition, and he instructs me. Of primary importance is what to do about Meiling’s tattered flesh.
“You need to sew it back together,” the doctor advises. The idea is appalling, but he gives me thread made from the fine fibers of white mulberry tree bark and a special needle to use. “For those areas too mangled to stitch, I suggest you search the corners of your room for spiderwebs. Keep them as intact as possible and lay them across the wounds. They work well to close that which does not wish to be closed.”
The circumstances may be different between what happened to Meiling and what befalls a soldier, but I’m at war nevertheless. The fight I face is between healing and infection. I dab Meiling’s back four times a day with astringent. When her flesh reddens or pus begins to ooze, I search my mind, looking for those herbs Grandmother taught me will help women in the most dismal of circumstances, knowing that despite the similarity of the injuries, a woman is not a man on a battlefield. She has cares and responsibilities a man will never know. I must also try to heal Meiling’s emotions. Her mind is as scattered as grain dropped from a bucket. Some nights she’s coherent; other nights she moans and weeps, sometimes crying out to imagined phantoms. More than once, she’s grabbed my wrist and begged, “Let me die.”
Between dawn and sunset, I leave Meiling in the care of Miss Zhao and Poppy so I can attend to the empress as she does the month. Empress Zhang proved she truly could be the Compassionate One when she saved Meiling’s life, and I will be forever grateful for her actions, but she needs little from me and has shown less interest in her baby. He’s in the care of a wet nurse, which has allowed his mother to play games with the ladies who keep her company.
My emotions are stirred as if on a turbulent sea. I’m nearly wrenched apart by my longing for my daughters, my husband, and my grandparents. I worry nonstop about Meiling. What if she dies by her own hand or through my inadequacies? Assuming she lives, will she blame me for the loss of her baby? If all this weren’t enough, I doubt myself. How could I have missed that Meiling’s problems were so serious? It makes me question my worth as a doctor of women, as a doctor of anyone.
Life Without a Friend…
My labor begins seven weeks after the birth of the future emperor. Meiling is still too unwell to help me, but I’m in the lodge and have Midwife Quon to assist the delivery. This is my fourth child, and my labor is swift. That is not to say I am without pain, but it’s bearable. We follow all but two rules. First, I insist that Miss Zhao and Poppy remain in the room with me. Second, when the baby comes out and is snipped from my body, Miss Zhao quickly announces, “It is a boy.”
My tears of happiness begin. I’ve accomplished my main duty as a woman: to provide a son who will care for the Yang family ancestors through offerings and prayers. Poppy puts him in my arms, washed and swaddled. He has a fine head of black hair. His mouth is pink and perfectly formed. I pull away the blanket so I can count his fingers and toes. Ten and ten. I count his three precious things. All there.
“It is not my place to give him his official name,” I say, looking up at Miss Zhao and Poppy. “For now, we will call him Lian.”
And suddenly, I am less a refined woman than I am a peasant who gives birth and then goes back to the fields the next day, because even though Empress Zhang has completed doing the month, she still insists I come to the Great Within.
“Congratulations on the birth of a son,” Empress Zhang says when she sees me.
Widow Bao and Lady Liu echo these sentiments and present me with gifts large and small, some for the baby and some for me.
“I’m touched. Thank you,” I say, but I ache, and I can feel blood seeping into the cloth folded between my legs.