Chapter 2 — The Medicine Bearer Through the Chaos

Child With High Fever In The Middle Of The Night

The sound of knocking on the door rang out while it was still dark, so urgent that it shook the wooden latch. Tinh Yen jumped up before Mrs. Khue, her heart was pounding, not sure whether from fear or from being suddenly awakened.

"Dear healer! Dear healer, please save my child!"

A man's voice echoed loudly, mixed with the sound of dogs barking throughout the neighborhood. Ms. Khue jumped up and grabbed the overcoat hanging by the bedside - a habit she kept throughout decades of practice, so that she would never have to waste time looking for a coat when someone called for help.

"Who's there? What's going on?"

"My name is Buong, Uncle Ca's son from Chai village! My child has a very bad fever and is in a coma and can't wake up!"

Mrs. Khue opened the door. The man stood there, his hair disheveled, his hand still holding a torch of half-burned dry coconut leaves, the firelight trembling with his panting breaths. "Go now. Let me get the medicine bag."

Tinh Yen is used to nights like this — not often, but not rare either — when someone knocks on her door in the middle of the night, when she has to get out of bed regardless of wind and rain. But this was the first time she allowed him to come along.

"If you wake up, go ahead and put on some clothes. Tonight I need someone to hold the lamp."

The girl was so happy that she forgot to sleep, frantically put on her shirt and sandals, and ran behind her and the man named Buong. The road to Fishing village is bumpy and gravelly, the flickering torchlight illuminates the shadows of coconut trees swaying in the night wind like long arms waving. Tinh Yen hugged the small oil lamp she gave her tightly, walking quickly so as not to fall behind. Her heart was both excited and filled with a vague worry that she could not yet name.

Uncle Eldest's house is located close to the water, the mud walls mixed with old straw are old, the oil lamp inside casts a yellow halo on the door frame. A woman's cry echoed out, choked with the soft moan of a child.

Inside, a boy about three years old lay curled up on a torn mat, his face was red, his lips were dry and cracked, and his breathing was rapid and shallow. The mother knelt beside her child, her hand on her child's forehead, tears streaming down her face.

"Dress, my child has had a fever since the afternoon. I applied cold towels but it didn't help. Now he's unconscious and can't wake up. Sometimes he even twitches his arms and legs..."

Mrs. Khue knelt down next to the child, did not say anything more, both hands quickly felt the pulse, opened the eyelids to see, put her ear to the chest to listen to the breathing. Tinh Yen stood quietly next to her, holding the lamp high to the exact place she pointed, trying to keep her hands from shaking even though her heart was churning with a panic that she had never experienced before. He had never seen a child nearly dead.

"Fast but weak pulse. High fever due to wind heat intrusion, perhaps from yesterday's rain and sudden cold." Mrs. Khue spoke, her voice unusually calm, in stark contrast to the franticness of the child's parents. "It's not an epidemic, don't be afraid. But the fever must be brought down immediately. If you leave it any longer, you might convulse into convulsions."

She turned to Tinh Yen, her voice still calm but somewhat stricter - the voice she only used when teaching her job. "I took out of my bag and gave her a bunch of fish mint leaves and pennywort, those bunches of green leaves tied with a red string."

Tinh Yen rummaged through the cloth bag, her hands shaking with excitement, but still found exactly what she needed in just a few breaths. He remembered - his grandmother taught him how to arrange medicine bags according to the color of the laces a few months ago. At that time, he thought it was just a sorting game, but he didn't expect to actually use it tonight.

"Good." Mrs. Khue took it, pounded it quickly in the small mortar she brought with her, mixed it with a little cooled boiling water that the baby's mother had just scooped out, then filtered the water for the baby to drink in small spoonfuls. At the same time, she told Tinh Yen to dip a towel in a basin of water, wring it out, and place it on the baby's forehead, armpits, and groin - places she said were "blood vessels close to the skin, wiping there reduces fever faster than wiping all over the body."

The whole small house was immersed in tense silence, with only the sound of the child's rapid breathing, the gurgling sound of water as Tinh Yen dipped the towel, and the sound of Mrs. Khue whispering to count her pulse. The mother sat huddled in a corner, her hands clasped as if praying, her eyes never leaving the healer's every move.

A moment passed. Then two moments.

The baby stirred and moaned more softly. Mrs. Khue placed her hand on his forehead, feeling the heat receding, and nodded softly as if talking to herself. "Okay. Fever is going down."

The mother burst into tears, bowed her head and prostrated herself. Uncle Elder, standing outside the door, also breathed a sigh of relief, his shoulders slumped as if he had just relieved a heavy burden that had been weighing him down for hours.

"Thank you ma'am, thank you ma'am so much..."

"It's not done yet." Ms. Khue waved her hand, her voice still serious. "The fever has gone down, but you still have to monitor it until morning. If it wakes up, give it thin porridge to drink, don't give it anything solid. If the fever comes back in the middle of the night, continue wiping the body like I just did, don't wait until morning to call me."

She stayed for another hour, sitting next to the bed to monitor the baby, occasionally checking the pulse. Tinh Yen sat next to her, no longer holding the lamp because the sky was dimly lit, but she still couldn't take her eyes off her hands - the way she felt the pulse with three fingers loosely placed on the baby's wrist, the way she closed her eyes as if listening to a sound that only she could hear.

When the baby fell asleep peacefully and her breathing returned to normal, Mrs. Khue stood up, packed her medicine bag, and prepared to leave. Outside, the sun had peeked out of the coconut trees, dyeing the whole water surface of Chai hamlet into a light orange strip.

On the way home, Tinh Yen walked next to her, was silent for a long time before speaking, her voice still a bit shocked.

"Grandma, I was so scared just now."

"Afraid of what?"

"I'm afraid that baby will die." Tinh Yen bowed her head, her voice gradually fading. "When she checked her pulse, her face was so serious, I thought... I thought she couldn't be saved."

Mrs. Khue stopped walking and turned to look at her grandchild. Her eyes at that time were no longer absolutely calm like in Uncle Eldest's house, but there was a hint of real fatigue appearing, the fatigue of a person who had just crossed the boundary between life and death with a child who was not her blood.

"You're right. She was also scared at that time." She spoke, her voice slow. "Anyone who does this job and is not afraid is either lying, or has never witnessed a truly critical case. But you must remember this, Tinh Yen - fear is fear, your hands must still be steady, your head must still be awake. If you let fear control your hands, it is that fear that will kill the person, not the disease."

Tinh Yen looked down at her small hands, thinking about the way they trembled while searching for the bunch of leaves in the medicine bag, and then thought about her hands - calloused, sinewy, but never once trembled all night long.

"Can I do it like you?"

"It can be done, if you are willing to learn, willing to look, willing to make mistakes." Mrs. Khue took her grandchild's hand and squeezed it gently. "You weren't born with a steady hand. When you were young, you also took a wrong dose of medicine, causing a person's fever to take two more days to recover. From then on, you learned that you have to be ten times more careful than you think is enough."

That story made Tinh Yen's eyes widen in surprise - she never thought that her grandmother, who was always so confident, could also be wrong at times. But instead of seeing her as inferior in his eyes, the opposite happened: he saw her closer, more real, like a mountain that turned out to still had small cracks but that's why it stood firm through many stormy seasons.

They arrived home when the sun was already high. Mrs. Khue did not go back to sleep, but put on a pot of water, brewed a pot of hot ginger tea, and sat on the porch looking out at the sea. Tinh Yen sat next to her, her mind still echoing the mother's cries, the child's rapid breathing, and her words about the unpaid debt of three generations.

"Grandma." He asked, after a moment of silence. "If I take the wrong medicine in the future, will anyone die because of me?"

Ms. Khue did not answer immediately. She took a sip of tea, letting the warmth spread in her chest before speaking, her voice gentle but not evasive.

"Maybe, my child. Every job has its price, this job costs people's lives. I won't lie to you about that, because by lying to you, one day you will harm others because you are too confident." She looked out to sea, where small sails were scattered across the water sparkling in the morning sunlight. "But if you don't dare to learn or cure because you're afraid of making mistakes, more people will die. The profession of medicine has no place for the cowardly, nor for the reckless. It only has room for those who are both brave and cautious - two things that sound like opposites, but both must be present to be successful."

Tinh Yen nodded, not understanding everything but remembering each word as if engraved in her heart. He looked down at his hands again, telling himself he would train them to be as strong as hers, no matter how long it took.

That afternoon, the child from the Fishing village was completely awake, sat up and wanted to eat porridge. Uncle Eldest personally carried his child to Mrs. Khue's house to give thanks, bringing with him a basket of newly dug sweet potatoes still covered with soil. Standing and looking at the child smiling widely, her rosy cheeks returning after a night of death, Tinh Yen felt a strange feeling rising in her heart - not exactly pride, because she didn't do much last night other than holding a lamp and dipping a towel, but a feeling similar to that, an immature belief that one day, her own hands would be able to save such a life.

He didn't know that, just a few years later, that same belief would be tested to the limit - when these nights of urgent knocking on doors were no longer one, but dozens, hundreds, so intense that there were no longer enough oil lamps, not enough medicine, not enough hands to save them all. But tonight, in the little house at the foot of the wormwood hill, he was just an eight-year-old child who had just learned his first lesson that fear and courage could coexist in a pair of shaking hands — and that those hands could still save lives.