Experiments at the Bedside

Pulling off one of the pots on the wall, Lee poured out a handful of the water that he needed, letting it dribble through the gaps of his fingers and pour into the hollowness. He then, with that same hand, pulled out half the amount of varied herbs, not particularly knowing which ones would be effective for this plague, relying instead on a general mix of all of them.

Lee paused and wondered whether that would even be enough to help the child if only one of the herbs was even helpful.

He then wondered whether it would be a good idea to separate them out and try and implement different herbs on different parts of the body to if whether one individual plant helped and to rank the effectiveness of them all, before dismissing the idea entirely.

There was a child dying in that bed.

There was no time or opportunity to truly see if there was one herb to try and cure the child.

It was a person, not an experiment to be conducted.

He was trying to save a life, not doom it to save others.

Lee mixed and crushed the herbs down in the water to make a mixture that could be spread on the child's chest, neck, face and arms.

It would truly be ideal for him to be fed some broth, but there was little chance of making one with the lack of ingredients, limited water, and the difficulty in even having him even swallow water down was enough evidence of him not being able to digest any kind of sustenance at the moment.

Lee had once overheard one of the herbalists speak of one kind of illness a person could have that made them sickly with a fever, accompanied by constant vomiting, but somehow managed to sustain the body enough to be able to survive not eating for a month or so, but still remain active without any negative consequences.

Lee hoped that the child was suffering a plague similar to it, if he ever wanted to possibly keep the child alive.

"Hey," he called out to the teenage mother, who was changing the cloths on his forehead, squeezing out the sweat, wetting it in the bucket of cold water, probably sourced from another source other than the lake, judging from her reaction.

The mother turned to him, her body still facing her child and bowed over him protectively.

Lee outstretched his hand that held the pot of poultice to her and she looked down at it, before taking it and pulling the pot towards herself, immediately pulling the covers off the child and pulling open his robes and lathering the mixture all over him, messily and without regard of where it was most needed, determined to cover as much as his tiny, frail body as she could.

The child's ribs were visible and were wide and open, his face flushed blood and fire red as he fought for each breath that he made.

His mother made sure that his chest, arms, and the areas of his face were coated, not quite enough to cover over the lengths of his arms, but enough to cover his shoulders and armpits.

The child's chest was left bare to the world, which would probably help cool him down, but would not aid in ridding the body of the infection, just aiding it to fight instead.

"Here," Lee called out again, passing one of the buns over to the mother, which she immediately placed in her mouth, holding it between her teeth and chewing it as she continued to try and have her child drink some water to keep him going.

Deciding what he needed to do next, Lee began searching around for some firewood to at least boil up some sort of liquid herb medicine that he could feed both the child and his exhausted mother who both looked as if they were on door's death.

He quickly spotted the small stack in the corner and picked up several logs, placing them in the fire pit dug out into the floor nearby.

There was a stand that would hold up the pot, made of metal and charred black, and Lee took back the scraped empty pot and rested it upon the stand. He then took one of the candles, furthest away from the boy and lit the wood with it, and when he was satisfied with watching the flames spread, he placed it back into its stand to continue lighting up the room.

Emptying out more of the water into the pot, just enough to cover the bottom with a depth of one third of his index finger, Lee then added fewer herbs to the water, adding only a handful and then mixing them in with his hands until the mixture was as smooth as the water.

When it got too hot, he pulled off one of the spoons that hung from the house's walls on a hook and scraped all the residue off his hands back into the slightly steaming liquid.

He stirred to infuse everything together and to prevent the heavier parts of the herb poultice from sinking to the bottom.

As soon as he was satisfied that all was mixed in properly, he pulled the pot off the fire onto some of the soil next to the pit, adding some more water to thin out the mixture and to keep it all infused.

He jumped away from the cloud of steam that erupted, but was comforted by the familiar, almost nostalgic smell that ballooned out for the pot.

He looked around the place and immediately spotted several plates and poured out two plates worth of the mixture out of the pot to the mother and child.

The teenager was immediate in her actions and shifted her child slightly upwards, waiting for the mixture to cool, and drank her own portion before supplying her own child some of the makeshift medicine.

Everybody in the building gave a sigh of relief when the child swallowed the drink down without a negative effect.