The Apothecary Diaries Book 9

Practical Exercises

"As you work, consider how the organs correspond to their human counterparts," Dr. Liu instructed.

Humans and chickens were built differently, of course, but this was still a sensible first step. If you couldn't catch a fleeing chicken, how were you ever going to treat a thrashing patient? If you didn't have it in you to wring the neck of a live bird, where would you find the audacity to cut into a human being? And if you weren't adroit enough to cut up the bird even after it was dead, then you stood no chance working on a human body.

This practice was as basic as it got, but there were apprentices who couldn't handle this first stage.

"What do we work on after chickens?" Maomao asked—on the assumption that she would, in fact, make it to the next stage.

"Pigs," replied Tianyu. "They're big enough that we work in groups of three. When we get to cows, it's groups of five. But there's a lot fewer people by that point. Once you start to get the hang of it, they make you wear your doctor's uniform and tell you not to get any blood on it. There's another step after that, but I don't know what it is."

"You haven't gotten there?"

"No, they made me start again. They claimed I wasn't serious enough."

"I can see why," Maomao said before she could stop herself. Another thing she hadn't been able to stop herself from doing, ultimately, was reaching out to Tianyu—he looked so much calmer than the other apprentices. For that matter, everyone else except Tianyu—who had been here before—had blanched at the sight of the chickens' blood.

"It could be worse. If they decide you're just not suited to this work, that's pretty much it for you."

Not suited, huh?

She wondered what happened to doctors who couldn't manage a bit of dissection—maybe they got transferred to other departments. They would be, as it were, severed from any potential career as physicians.

"I can't give my sweet En'en the life she deserves on an apprentice physician's salary!"

The guy still hadn't given up—didn't he know when to quit?

Hang in there, En'en!

As people cut into their chickens, the odor of blood began to pervade the room. One apprentice who couldn't stand it pressed a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, but the moment Dr. Liu got back the senior physician grabbed it away from him. "Wearing a mask is correct protocol when treating a patient. But not here," he said.

Under the handkerchief, the apprentice's face was as bloodless as his chicken. Soon he was too sick to stay in the shed and went running outside.

"Geez. How many times is that now? He's gonna run out of chances," Tianyu said as if it didn't affect him at all.

Maomao arranged the internal organs on a tray. The heart, the liver, the intestines, the stomach.

The intestines are easy to damage, but delicious. I could almost eat them right now. Chicken intestines were small and delicate, though, frustrating to wash. What I wouldn't give to put the gizzard on a skewer and grill it up. A dash of salt, that's all it needs. If they had gotten the blood out correctly, it would be delectable. And the gallbladder's in one piece. Perfect. Spilling bile everywhere would have ruined the entire bird.

She set the organs carefully on the tray. When she had finished, Dr. Liu came around to look. "All right. Put them back in and sew it up," he said.

"I'm sorry?" But she already had them arranged by cookability!

"I can tell you're eager to dig in—and I can't let you do all your work in that condition. You'll start to see patients as nothing but hunks of meat."