Chapter 2: A Snowbound Winter

The elderly teacher behind him hurried to intervene, forcing a conciliatory smile.
“Dr. Wang, you really have misunderstood. He didn’t add anything to your prescription. I was the one who asked for it. He meant well. He was worried about the side effects and said a little huang lian could make them milder—”
“If it needed adding, couldn’t I add it myself? Who asked him to interfere?”
People from the other departments had heard the argument and come out to watch. As the shouting continued, footsteps sounded in the corridor.
“What’s going on? What happened?” an elderly voice asked.
They recognized the hospital director’s voice. He was seeing patients in the specialist clinic that day and had come to investigate the commotion.
Director Wang raised his voice still further.
“Director, you’re just in time. Tell me what you make of this. I write a prescription, and the dispensary takes it upon itself to add herbs! If anything goes wrong, who’s going to answer for it?”
The hospital director turned a stern face toward Zuo Shaoyang.
“How could you tamper with a prescription? Who gave you that authority?”
Zuo Shaoyang held his anger in check and spoke slowly.
“Director Wang prescribed Wu Zhu Yu Tang for this lady. She told me that when she’d taken it before, she’d felt dizzy, tight in the chest, and nauseous. I suggested she ask him to add huang lian. Used together, huang lian counteracts the harmful effects of wu zhu yu and can reduce those reactions. I haven’t added anything myself. The prescribed herbs are already wrapped, here. The huang lian is separate, over there. Whether it goes in depends on Director Wang’s prescription. You can see for yourself.”
The hospital director took the prescription and glanced over it. His expression softened a little.
“Yes. Combining huang lian with wu zhu yu can indeed reduce the side effects…”
“But huang lian isn’t part of the Wu Zhu Yu Tang formula, Director! I haven’t done anything wrong by leaving it out, have I?”
“No,” Zuo Shaoyang said coldly. “The patient just feels ill after taking it.”
“What medicine makes you feel good? Good medicine tastes bitter!”
“If there’s good medicine that doesn’t make her feel ill, why not use it?”
“That’s not for you to tell me!”
Sensing the argument was about to flare up again, the hospital director hurriedly waved them down.
“Enough, enough. No more arguing. There’s nothing wrong with Director Wang’s prescription, and leaving out huang lian doesn’t violate any regulations. Zuo’s suggestion was well meant, and adding it would be acceptable too. Neither of you is in the wrong.”
Wang was still seething. The director frowned slightly, then turned back to Zuo Shaoyang.
“But in future, Zuo, it would be better to discuss these things directly with the doctor first, rather than telling the patient. Otherwise, the patient might misunderstand and think the doctor prescribed the wrong formula or the wrong medicine. That wouldn’t be good, would it?”
Zuo Shaoyang nodded. “All right, Director. I understand.”
The director turned to Wang.
“Don’t take it too much to heart, Wang. Young people don’t always think things through.”
“Don’t think things through?” Wang glared. “Just now he was complaining that the hospital management had neglected him! Said we’d wronged a great miracle doctor by keeping him in the dispensary. He’s had his license for ages, apparently, and ought to be seeing patients!”
The hospital director looked at Zuo Shaoyang and smiled.
“Zuo, the dispensary does important work. Outpatient care, dispensing, laboratory testing, inpatient care—we can’t do without any of them. There are only a handful of people in the dispensary, and you’re the only one with a proper degree from a university of Chinese medicine. People with your training are hard to come by. Settle into your work and concentrate on doing a good job here first. You’re still young, with a promising future ahead of you. The administration will find suitable work for everyone according to their abilities and performance. All right?”
What could Zuo Shaoyang say to that smooth official line? He nodded and kept silent.
The director patted Wang on the shoulder, offered a few more soothing words, and led him away. The onlookers dispersed.
The elderly teacher approached, looking guilty.
“I’m so sorry. You’ve had to put up with all this because of me.”
“It’s all right, ma’am. Here’s your medicine. I’m afraid I can’t give you the huang lian without a doctor’s prescription. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t worry. This isn’t the only place that sells Chinese herbs. I’ll buy some huang lian at another hospital and add it myself. You said three grams, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
Seeing how dejected he looked, she glanced toward the door, stepped closer, and lowered her voice.
“Don’t be so downhearted, young man. You know your medicine. Even the director said you were right about adding huang lian to Wu Zhu Yu Tang. That Dr. Wang probably didn’t even know. Don’t lose heart. Gold will shine sooner or later, and a sunflower will always turn toward the sun. Keep at it. You’ll make something of yourself.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Zuo Shaoyang managed a faint smile.
He watched her leave with the medicine, sighed softly, and sat back down on his stool. Picking up the Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Medicine Formulas from the desk, he began to read.
He loved books. Throughout university, he had buried himself in medical texts, devoting almost all his time to studying. He memorized prescription verses and passages from the classics, and read his textbooks until they fell apart. His grades had always been good. Asked how he did it, he could have summed it up in a single word: memorization.
Only when you needed knowledge did you regret not having enough of it. He believed that firmly, especially when it came to Chinese medicine. With a whole library in your head, the right prescription would come as if by inspiration. He wasn’t memorizing books to get into graduate school or become an academic. He was preparing to treat patients.
Outside the window, the sky was heavy with gloom. The dark clouds seemed almost close enough to touch. A snowstorm looked to be on its way.
When his shift ended, Zuo Shaoyang switched off the heater. As he closed the window, he heard the wind raging outside the outpatient building. Beneath it was another sound, frightening and impossible to place.
He locked the windows and door, turned up his collar against the bitter wind, and crossed the empty lobby with his head tucked between his shoulders. The frosted windows hid whatever was happening outside. All he knew was that the dreadful sound was growing louder.
Unease tightened in his chest. He hesitated, then lifted the thick entrance curtain and peered out.
Dark clouds filled the sky. Everything lay in shadow, and there was no one in sight. An icy wind poured down his collar. He ducked through the curtain and stepped outside, hunching against the cold.
Without warning, a tornado twisted down from the sky.
Like a ghostly hand reaching out of the clouds, it seized Zuo Shaoyang and swept him into the gloom as though he were a speck of dust.
Only his long, agonized scream remained.

A vortex of dazzling colors.
Zuo Shaoyang felt himself spinning helplessly inside it.
He had no idea how much time passed before he began to fall. The murk around him gradually thinned, revealing the dim outlines of mountains—snow-covered mountains, their cliffs so sheer they might have been cleaved with an axe. Silver-white snow lay in the hollows between them, broken by the green of pines and cypresses.
He was plunging straight toward them.
His hands clawed at the air. There was nothing to catch. The mountains sharpened into view as he fell faster and faster.
This is it. I’m dead. There’s no surviving that fall.
Suddenly, he spotted a dark speck on a ledge jutting from the cliff, no larger than a millstone. A moment later, he could make it out.
A man in a short, coarse-cloth tunic lay curled on the rock, motionless. Blood had pooled around his head.
Zuo Shaoyang was falling straight toward him.
“Aaah!”
He screamed.
There was a tremendous impact. Everything went black.

Some time later, he heard someone crying beside him, calling an unfamiliar name. He couldn’t make it out. The voice buzzed and echoed in his ears.
His thirst was unbearable, as though his mouth were on fire.
“Water,” he mumbled with difficulty. “I want… water…”
A moment later, something cool touched his lips. Ice-cold water flowed into his mouth, and he gulped it down. Tiny slivers of ice seemed to slide across his tongue.
The water cleared his head. He became aware of a faint, delicate fragrance, like the scent of fresh grass when you lay in a meadow in spring.
With an effort, he opened his eyes.
The sky was still dark and overcast. Two women were leaning over him.
One was middle-aged, with slender brows that slanted upward, thin lips, and rather rough skin. Crow’s-feet had already formed at the corners of her eyes. The other was a girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with dark skin and a few faint freckles beside her nose. A long braid hung over her full chest. Her large eyes watched him anxiously.
“He’s awake! He’s awake!”
Delight flooded the older woman’s voice. She slipped an arm behind his shoulders and helped him sit up.
“How do you feel, little brother? Does anything hurt?”
Little brother?
His thoughts were still muddled. He didn’t have a sister.
He turned to look at her—and started.
Her hair was wound into a bun, with a hairpin tucked through it. That alone wasn’t so strange. Her clothes were another matter. She wore a short padded jacket of coarse hemp cloth and a long skirt tied high, just beneath her breasts.
Why’s she dressed like that? Are they filming a historical drama?
He quickly turned toward the girl on his other side. Her hair wasn’t in a bun, but she too wore a short hemp-cloth jacket, opening down the front, with an embroidered border along the hem. Instead of a skirt, she had loose trousers, their legs bound with cloth wraps. A hemp rope was tied around her waist.
That wasn’t how anyone dressed nowadays, either.
Zuo Shaoyang looked around.
They were in a mountain hollow, hemmed in by steep cliffs. Snow covered the ground. Through it, he could just make out a muddy footpath winding toward them from the distance, passing beneath him, and continuing on.
Beside the path, a shoulder pole with its two loads of firewood lay toppled in the snow. Two carrying baskets held medicinal herbs. A pair of small hoes lay nearby.
What on earth is going on?
Questions crowded his mind.
A cold wind swept through the hollow, and he shivered.