At three o'clock in the morning, the emergency room seemed to have been drained of its strength. Lin Xiaoman lay on the duty desk, the smell of disinfectant mixed with instant noodles still lingering on her nose. The pottery fragment in the pocket of her white coat began to get hot again, burning her lower back - this broken thing has been like an alarm clock recently, getting angry at midnight, and even more stubborn than Li Chengqian when he made a mistake in carving a character in the Tang Dynasty.
"Doctor Lin, should you change your jade pendant?" Intern Xiao Chen came over with cold instant noodles, pointing at the silver bracelet on her wrist with chopsticks, "Yesterday, the emergency room surveillance camera captured it glowing again, Director Zhang said it looked like a ghost." Lin Xiaoman rolled her eyes at him and pulled the silver bracelet to her sleeve: "Go away, can a ghost help you write a rescue record?" Although she said so, she was also worried. Since the last time she put together the pottery jar in the Daming Palace, the carvings on the inside of the bracelet seemed to be alive, with new patterns appearing from time to time. Yesterday, half of the sentence "The chef of the Imperial Hospital stewed radishes today" was carved, which made her so angry that she wanted to kick Li Chengqian's butt across time and space.
The phone suddenly vibrated. It was a message from the archaeological team: "A newly unearthed pottery jar is engraved with the four characters 'madnessCHEN', in official script with simplified Chinese strokes. It is recommended to focus on research." Lin Xiaoman almost burst out laughing. She knew without thinking that it was Li Chengqian who did it. Last month, when he was teaching him to write simplified Chinese characters, this guy insisted that the "东" on the right side of the character "CHEN" looked like a carving knife, so he insisted on adding two more strokes, and ended up writing "madness". At this moment, in the Imperial Hospital of the Tang Dynasty, that guy might be arguing with Zhang Yizheng with a carving knife, saying something like "disinfecting pottery jars must be engraved with witty words so that the people can remember them."
The heat of the pottery suddenly doubled, and she shuddered. Looking up, there was a figure in a round-necked robe standing at the door of the emergency room, with a half-broken bamboo slip hanging from his waist jade pendant, which was exactly the one Li Chengqian often wore. "How did you..." Before he could finish his words, the man had stumbled into the duty room, and three carving knives fell out of his wide sleeves, one of which was still stained with fresh sawdust - it was the one she left in the Tang Dynasty last week.
"Don't mention it," Li Chengqian scooped up her instant noodles and drank them, his tongue sticking out from the burn, "Although Li Tai is dead, his broken pottery fragments keep floating out of the cracks in Jingyuan, and today he almost dyed the Huanglian soup in the Imperial Hospital blue." He opened his sleeves, and there were still red marks on his arms from the last time he was scratched by the fragments, "Doctor Zhang insisted that I should carve the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine on the pottery, but who among the common people can understand it? I carved 'Don't drink raw water if you have diarrhea', and he called me vulgar."
Lin Xiaoman looked at him wolfing down his food, and suddenly remembered the foolish look of this guy in the Tang Dynasty when he first ate modern instant noodles and mistook the seasoning packet for poison. "Vulgar?" She poked the bamboo slips on his waist. "You carved 'Dr. Zhang has a long beard, so he washes his hands three times'. Now all the children in Chang'an use this as a catchy saying. Even the Persian caravan has learned it." Li Chengqian's ears turned red. He suddenly took out a clay jar from his arms. The three words "Xiaomanshou" were carved crookedly on the mouth of the jar, like a dog crawling.
"For you." He coughed twice, "I wanted to carve 'Peace and Happiness', but my hands were shaking and I carved 'Peace and Happiness' instead. Forget it, you can understand it anyway." Lin Xiaoman touched the uneven carvings on the pottery jar, and suddenly found a line of very small words on the bottom of the jar: "In fact, I secretly practiced for three days, but I still can't carve it well." Her heart suddenly softened, but she said in disdain: "It's not as good-looking as the mug I bought in modern times." Before she finished speaking, the pottery shards became hot again, and this time they cast a blurry light and shadow on the duty desk - it was the young doctors of the Tang Dynasty holding the "thermometer" she taught them, chasing Li Chengqian to measure his temperature.
"Well, your Imperial Hospital is in turmoil again." Lin Xiaoman slapped the silver needle on the table, "What happened this time?" Li Chengqian ate instant noodles with a bitter face: "They insisted that the microscope was a magic mirror that could see the eyelashes of the river god. I showed them the specimen of Shigella dysenteriae, but Doctor Wang was so scared that he knocked over the culture dish. Now the whole hospi
tal is saying that I am possessed by a dysentery ghost."
The siren of an ambulance sounded outside the window. Lin Xiaoman stood up. The pottery fragments in the pocket of his white coat suddenly cooled down and returned to the touch of ordinary broken pottery. Li Chengqian also stood up, brushing her rescue record with his wide sleeves, and suddenly pointed at the three words "Lin Xiaoman" on it: "Your signature is really beautiful, much better than mine."
"Don't give me that." Lin Xiaoman put the silver bracelet on his wrist, "Go back and clean up your mess quickly. Next time you mess up the Imperial Hospital, I will put all your pottery jars with wrong characters in the Modern Museum and mark them as "The work of the Tang Dynasty prince's hand." Li Chengqian smiled and stepped back, his figure gradually transparent, still holding her instant noodle fork in her hand: "Then I'll carve 'Lin Xiaoman loves instant noodles' and hang it on Zhuque Street!"
The lights of the ambulance illuminated the duty room. Lin Xiaoman looked at the crooked pottery jar on the table and suddenly found that half a dogwood leaf had grown out of the gap at the mouth of the jar. It was the kind from the Tang Dynasty, with the smell of sunshine. The pottery began to get hot again, but this time it didn't hurt. Instead, it felt like someone was gently scratching my palm, itchy and warm.
"Doctor Lin! 120 sent a patient with diarrhea, saying that he would glow when he saw an ancient pottery jar!" Xiao Chen's shout broke the silence. Lin Xiaoman grabbed the stethoscope and suddenly felt that this life was pretty good - there was a stupid prince who made a mistake in carving, a broken pottery shard that was always hot, and an emergency room that was never busy. Who said that time and space medicine had to be perfect? Now, with a bit of a flustered atmosphere, it seemed like it was the right thing.
She touched the "Ping Xi Le" mark on the pottery jar, and the corners of her mouth rose. Anyway, whether it was the dysentery ghost of the Tang Dynasty or the modern bacteria, with the carving knife and silver needle, and the guy who always carved the words crookedly, no matter how difficult the hurdle was, she could always cross it with a smile. The moment the door of the emergency room was knocked open, she heard the pottery fragments in her pocket make a slight sound, like an unspoken "Don't be afraid".
Well, don't be afraid. After all, for someone who can drill through time and space, why would he be afraid of these little bumps in life?