When the peonies bloom.

Late Autumn Part 1

"I don't know. That's something the doctor can work out." Tomo crossed her arms again, this time she looked down at Hyosaku's bewildered face like everything precious to her would vanish in that moment.

Unfortunately, she was not born a son like her brother, as a female offspring, Tomomi did not receive her father's traditional medicinal tuition on how to diagnose patients through their pulse. Instead her father tried every will and way to teach her brother, holding to the family tradition that the male descendant would be the heir to his medicinal knowledge, but her brother just wasn't destined. His readings were mostly off no matter how much he tried and practised, much to their father's dismay. He always flinched whenever he got it wrong in the face of their father, waiting to twack the bamboo ruler at the back of his head at his son's vague or incorrect diagnosis. It was common high stakes practise, embarrassing both father and son in front of the patient who had volunteered. When Tomo asked to try after countless rounds of spectatorship her father dismissed his daughter to be too dumb and unsuited as a individual of the female kind to learn at all.

Despite that, it wasn't the first time she had overheard of these symptoms, every so often flustered housewives and other prostitutes would turn up looking for help for this hellish recurrence. As she did hover around her fathers consult room retrieving the medicinal prescription list to pack. Her main duty was to pack herbal combinations into parcels pulling out roots, leaves, fruits and flowers out of her father's herbal drawers that lined the wall. But not limited to tending to the boiling medicinal teas out the back of the clinic for the ill and injured at her father's clinic. She knew the herbs her father would prescribe. And in most cases would predict her fathers prescription once he announced his diagnosis. Usually the mix of herbs and their quantity were tailored to the severity of the patient's condition and the patients had to come back weekly for acupuncture treatment.

The very idea of needles scared Tomomi to the core, let alone the idea of inserting needles into other people. She always left the room or flinched whenever someone gasped in pain as her father would insert his special needles and give a slight twist at a certain pressure point. Something she had to come to regret not being able to overcome.

Tomo reminded herself that she would have to go in blind, as if she was feeling along the wall of a pitch black cave. She would go with a medium potency herb mix and up the potency if Hyosaku did not respond well. The symptoms her mistress agreed to much resembled damp-heat in the lower bladder area.

"Did you not tell the doctors during your weekly health inspection?"

"I was feeling fine then. Not so much now..." Hyosaku said meekly.

"Well can I suggest I'll accompany you to the clinic?"

Hyosaku flinched. "That can't happen! No one can know about this!"

"Or you prefer rumours of the great courtesan who is unhiding unknown sickness..." Tomo knew her mistress was going to be hard to keep down. There was no easy way out of this.

Hyosaku looked through Tomo at the back wall.

"Will this go away on its own?" She asked again, hoping this was all a scare and the answer would be yes and you can carry on like nothing is wrong.

Tomo shrugged. "Would it be better to know that it is treatable." She assured.

"Wait. How do you know all this? Are you a doctor?"

Hyosaku's eyes shot up looking at her assistant with sharp suspicion.

Tomo flinched. For a split moment she wished she had kept her mouth shut and said nothing more than insisting that she go visit the doctor and have it checked out.