As the morning sun climbed over the blinds of the emergency room, Lin Xiaoman was awakened by the heat of the pottery in her pocket. This thing has become like a spirit recently, heating up on time at six o'clock every day, more accurate than the "Li Chengqian engraving correction time" alarm set in her phone. She fumbled out her phone, and in her photo album was still the pottery fragment of "Seven Steps of Hand Washing" engraved by Li Chengqian last week - "Inside, outside, clamp, bow" was engraved into "Meat, outside, clamp, horse", which made her so angry that she almost pierced the space-time rift with a silver needle.
"Doctor Lin, your breakfast." Intern Xiao Chen pushed the door open with soy milk and fried dough sticks, his eyes fell on the silver bracelet on her wrist, "Did you talk to Tang Chao again last night? Director Zhang said you talked to yourself in front of the pottery jar at three in the morning, just like you were acting in "The Legend of White Snake"." Lin Xiaoman picked up the fried dough stick and hit him on the head: "Go away, would White Snake teach Xu Xian to carve 'wash hands after defecation'?" Although she said so, she knew in her heart that Li Chengqian had to demonstrate Tang Chao's "Huai Ye Leng Tao" method to her through the pottery fragments last night, and the result was projected onto the white wall of the duty room, which scared Xiao Chen and thought it was haunted.
The phone suddenly vibrated. It was an urgent message from the archaeological team: "Seven newly unearthed row pottery jars at the Daming Palace site, each with a different expression of a man covering his butt, suspected to be a toilet indicator system in the Tang Dynasty!" Lin Xiaoman almost sprayed soy milk on the medical record. She knew it was Li Chengqian's masterpiece without thinking. Last month, she taught him to draw emoticons, and this guy had to carve "painful face" into "constipation face". Now, a thousand years later, it has become an "important discovery in anal health research in the Tang Dynasty" in the archaeological community.
The heat of the pottery suddenly changed its tone. It was no longer scorching hot, but it felt like someone was tapping gently. Lin Xiaoman closed her eyes, and a scene from the Imperial Hospital of the Tang Dynasty emerged in her mind: Li Chengqian was holding a crooked pottery jar and chasing after Doctor Zhang. The mouth of the jar was engraved with "Old Man Zhang Drinking Herbal Tea", and the old man's goat beard was shaking like a dandelion. "He must have made a mess of the doctor's instructions again!" She muttered, and took out the carving knife she carried with her - this was modified by Li Chengqian using Persian silverware, and the handle was engraved with the crooked "Xiaoman Special".
During the shift change at noon, the pottery shard suddenly made a buzzing sound, and Li Chengqian's figure appeared semi-transparently in the duty room. He held half a blackened pancake in his hand, and a few dogwood leaves fell out of his wide sleeves. Each leaf was engraved with a mini version of Lin Xiaoman, some holding silver needles, some chewing instant noodles, and one actually engraved her lying on the duty desk drooling. "You are looking for death!" Lin Xiaoman picked up the pillow and smashed it, but found that his ankle was wrapped in cloth strips, oozing with blood.
"Promoting 'drinking warm water won't cause stomach upset' in Xishi," Li Chengqian sat down with a grin, "People said warm water doesn't quench their thirst, and they insisted on drinking plum wine soaked in well water. As a result, I demonstrated how drinking raw water causes diarrhea, and I fell on my butt." He lifted his trouser legs, and the bruises on his ankles were shocking, "Doctor Zhang said I was joking, but he didn't need to demonstrate it himself. How did they know that dysentery ghosts only bite people who drink raw water?"
Lin Xiaoman looked at his embarrassed appearance and suddenly remembered that when teaching elderly patients to measure blood sugar in modern times, there were always people who thought it was troublesome and had to wait for her to pretend to be angry before they would cooperate. "How stupid," she found an iodine cotton swab, "bring some sugar-coated hawthorns next time. The people will naturally be willing to listen to your nagging after tasting the sweetness."
Li Chengqian's eyes lit up: "Yes! I tasted cane sugar at the Persian caravan yesterday. It's sweeter than honey. I'll carve a 'eat sugar-coated to prevent dysentery'. I'm sure the children will rush to pass it around!" The call bell of the emergency room suddenly rang, and the nurse rushed in with a stretcher: "A patient with acute gastroenteritis said that he saw the little man on the pottery jar move!" Lin Xiaoman looked up and found that the patient was holding the pottery shard with the "constipation face" carved by Li Chengqian. Suddenly, she had an idea. She took out her phone and opened the album. She projected the emoticon package carved by Li Chengqian on the wall and smiled at the patient: "See? This is the result of drinking raw water. If you want to make your butt feel better, just do what I say."
When handing over the shift in the evening, Li Chengqian's figure had become blurred, but he was still reluctant to leave and stared at her instant noodles: "Tomorrow I will bring pickled plums from the Imperial Hospital. It will definitely taste good with your braised beef noodles." Lin Xiaoman rolled his eyes at him: "The pickled plums I brought last time made Xiao Chen so sour that he had to wash his stomach. You should learn to control the amount of salt first." Having said that, she still stuffed the remaining half of the ham sausage into him and watched his eyes light up like a child.
On duty late at night, Lin Xiaoman touched the newly added marks on the pottery shard - this time it was a little man holding a carving knife, and next to it was crookedly written "Everything Xiaoman taught me is engraved in my heart." There was a drizzle outside the window, and the lights in the emergency room looked particularly warm in the rain. She suddenly felt that such an imperfect life was actually quite good: there was a prince who always carved words crookedly in the Tang Dynasty, there were a pile of pottery pieces that were never carved correctly as alarm clocks, and there were countless small troubles waiting for them to slowly chisel away with chisels and silver needles.
The latest news of the archaeological team popped up on the phone, with a picture of a group of newly restored pottery jars. The one in the middle was engraved with two lines of words, one line was the Tang Dynasty's official script "Medical Dao in the World", and the other line was the modern simplified Chinese "Engrave a Cake by the Way". Lin Xiaoman looked at the crooked "Cake" in the picture and suddenly laughed out loud. That's right, medical science has never been a book hanging in the sky, but a fireworks atmosphere that fell on the earth, the crooked instructions under the chisel, the hot instant noodles next to the silver needle, and the little days with human touch that cannot be erased even after thousands of years.
She stuffed the pickled plums left by Li Chengqian into the pocket of her white coat. Although she knew that Xiao Chen would definitely complain about them being too sour tomorrow, she felt sweet at the moment when she smelled the fragrance of the plums. The pottery shards felt slightly hot in her palms, like an unspoken good night. Well, tomorrow I have to teach that stupid prince to carve the "Guide to Making Sugar Frosted Hawthorns". It gives me a headache just thinking about it, but I can't help but look forward to it.