Chapter 22: Fever
The stars filled the sky.
The day of the mid-summer heat was especially long.
The green red-crow berries on the trees were slowly dyed red by the night breeze.
Babies always get hungry very quickly.
She had to wake up several times at night to drink milk.
When Qin Luoxia fed her, she would also go check on the other two children.
Jiang Mianmian sometimes drank milk in a daze, and other times she was incredibly alert.
There was no helping it; babies sleep for long periods during the day, so it was normal for them to wake up at night.
It felt like it was almost midnight now; without a watch or a clock, she didn’t know what time it was, only that it was very quiet outside.
Aside from the chirping of insects, there were no other sounds.
Perhaps it was because he had drunk meat soup tonight, but Father seemed to be sleeping a bit better and wasn’t coughing from time to time.
Otherwise, he would always cough lightly once or twice.
Jiang Mianmian went with Mother to check on her sister while in her arms.
Her sister’s sleeping posture wasn’t very good; she was sprawled out with her head against the corner of the bed, as if she were about to crawl away if she wasn’t careful…
Mother held her with one hand while pushing her sister to the middle of the bed with the other, then covered her with a quilt.
The quilt at home was actually quite nice, a bit like a patchwork garment made from various pieces of old cloth.
Completely handmade.
She remembered that this kind of handmade stitched cloth, even just A4-sized, could sell for over a hundred, so a whole quilt would be invincible…
One reason was the pursuit of that rustic aesthetic.
Another was genuine poverty, trying every way to get by.
Her sister and brother were in the same room, separated by two door panels.
The eldest’s sleeping posture had always been good, so there was no need to worry; Qin Luoxia just took a look in passing.
But as it turned out, something was wrong.
Her eldest son was burning up, his body curled into a ball. When Qin Luoxia reached out and touched his face, it was scalding hot.
She was startled.
“Fenger, Fenger.”
Qin Luoxia pushed her son, but there was no response.
He seemed fine when they were cooling off in the evening, just coughing a few more times.
She hadn’t expected him to have developed a fever by now.
Qin Luoxia was so frightened she lost her composure.
Jiang Mianmian was also very worried. In modern times, you could just take something for a fever, but in ancient times, a fever could kill people. If a high fever didn’t break, one would either end up mentally disabled or just die.
Qin Luoxia hurried back to the room to wake her husband.
Her sister, who had a poor sleeping posture, was also nudged awake, and Jiang Mianmian was shoved into her sister’s arms.
It would have been fine to just put the little one with the big one to sleep, but Qin Luoxia was worried that if she put Mianmian on Sister Yu’s bed, she would be kicked away.
Jiang Yu, with sleepy eyes and not knowing what was going on, took her sister and held her in her arms, her embrace warm.
Jiang Mianmian felt a bit uncomfortable; her sister’s embrace wasn’t as broad as Mother’s.
However, she didn’t cause any trouble at this time and just tried her best to adjust to a comfortable position.
Jiang Yu wiped away the sleep from her eyes, became a little more alert, and held her sister, watching Father and Mother come over.
Jiang Changtian was woken up and was also startled.
He wasn’t a doctor; he just worked under a minor official at the county yamen.
He was just a helper, a helper of a helper at the county yamen.
He looked after the medicinal herbs collected from the surrounding areas, selecting the best among the good, and then sent them to the Prefecture City, from where they were sent to the capital, and finally into the imperial palace.
Legend had it that there was a noble person whose health was poor and needed medicine to maintain it.
Of course, all this was too far away.
Jiang Changtian was just at the very bottom of the entire supply chain.
He was just making a living here.
He was a very smart person; while others just drifted through life, he never gave up on learning.
Even when just receiving herbs and watching the door, he seriously studied the uses of various herbs. He could tell just by holding them whether the herbs were good and what their age was; he could weigh them up.
But this was still different from being a doctor; at most, he could be considered half an apothecary.
Seeing that Fenger had actually developed such a high fever that he was unconscious, his heart sank like a lead weight.
Jiang Changtian’s hands were shaking, and he forced himself not to cough, his face turning flushed.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. He drank the medicine tonight, that medicine is for his condition. He was fine last night, so he will definitely be fine today.” Jiang Changtian repeated.
“Luo Xia, go bring a basin of cool water.”
Jiang Changtian instructed as he helped undo his son’s clothes.
When he undid the clothes, he discovered that there were actually many injuries, big and small, on his son’s body.
Only the bleeding on his head was obvious.
He hadn’t made a sound about the other injuries.
Jiang Changtian opened his mouth wide, trying hard to keep his tears from falling.
This was not the time to cry; he couldn’t cry.
