Liu was holding onto the ladder below, wiping away tears. "If your cruel father were still alive, my son would never have done such a dangerous thing..."
Wang Xiucai, who had spent years indoors studying and not fond of exercise, was already frail and had never done any work, climbed the ladder, his hands and feet trembling and his face pale.
This ladder was bought by his father, and it had been five or six years since then, so it was already wobbly. Add to that the cold night, the blindness was hard, and it was snowing, and he slipped off the ladder without noticing.
"Bang--"
"ah--"
"My son!"
"Husband!"
From Mr. Wang's yard, a shrill scream first resounded through the quiet street, and then the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law looked at their son/husband lying on the ground, at a loss, they could only wipe their tears and did not dare to touch him.
Wang Xiucai was sweating profusely, feeling as if his leg was broken. He yelled at Li Niang, "Hurry up and call the doctor!"
"Oh, yes, husband, I'll go right away!" Li Niang came to her senses from her panic and quickly ran to the clinic and knocked on the door.
There's a doctor sleeping in the back of the clinic, just in case someone gets sick at night. You can make house calls, but the fee will be doubled.
The doctor on duty today was Zheng Xiao. He put on his clothes, walked out, and saw that it was the scholar's wife.
It was a very cold day and even a grown man like him felt his hands and feet were frozen, but the scholar's wife was wearing thin clothes and her face was blue. It was obvious that she was very cold. He wanted her to drink some hot water first.
Li Niang couldn't drink any more. She ignored etiquette and pulled the doctor, tears streaming down her face. "Doctor, my husband slipped off the ladder! His legs hurt so much! Please help!"
Doctor Zheng was startled. Sweeping snow so late at night? Regardless, he took his medicine box and plank. His leg hurt. Maybe it was broken.
When he arrived in a mule cart, Mr. Wang was still lying in the cold snow. His mother did not dare to move. She only held an old oil-paper umbrella to shield him from the snow, and did not even mention putting a quilt underneath.
Doctor Zheng quickly asked his servants to help carry the man into the house and onto the bed. The man was shivering with cold.
He frowned, wondering how these two people could not take care of others. "Mother of the Scholar, go and boil a pot of hot water."
Liu, ignoring the presence of outsiders, shouted, "Go! Are you going to freeze my son to death?"
Before Li Niang could recover from the pain, she ran to boil water.
After examining him, Doctor Zheng Xiao said, "The bruises and swelling on his body are nothing serious; just apply some medicine. However, the scholar's leg is broken, so he needs to be immobilized with a board. He needs to be well cared for. He should be healed in four or five months."
Mrs. Liu exclaimed, her eyes swollen from crying, "My son has suffered so much! If it weren't for that evil neighbor cursing him, how could he have encountered such a thing?"
Doctor Zheng saw that they were only concerned about the patient, so he asked, "Will you treat this disease?"
"Cure it! Of course!"
"First, take the medicine. Take two doses a day. You need to apply ointment on your legs to help them heal quickly. This ointment needs to be changed every five days. Including the wooden board for the legs, the total cost of the visit is five taels of silver."
"What? So expensive?" The price was like a bolt from the blue, leaving Liu stunned.
Doctor Zheng frowned. It sounded like they were trying to extort money. What wasn't expensive in the city these days? Their clinic was already running low on herbs.
"If you want to heal his leg, you must use good medicine, otherwise he will become lame. If you don't want to be treated, that's fine. Just pay the two hundred coins for tonight's consultation."
"Treat her! I want to treat her!" Mr. Wang lay on the bed with a pale face, his voice hoarse, holding his mother's hand tightly.
This must be treated. A lame leg will affect his appearance. How can he take the imperial examination? Wouldn't this ruin his future?
Liu was also anxious and decided to treat the disease.
She stared at Li Niang.
Li Niang's heart tightened. What does this mean?
Mrs. Liu asked Doctor Zheng to wait for a while, then pulled Li Niang into her room and talked to her for a long time.
When Doctor Zheng became impatient, the two men came out. Li Niang bit her lips and her eyes were red.
Mrs. Liu, however, looked very happy and gave Doctor Zheng a piece of broken silver and two silver bracelets.
He accepted it, but he sighed inwardly, "What a sin! This bracelet should have been the young lady's dowry."
A man who uses his wife's dowry is the most despised. But when it comes to life and death, he can't say anything. Everyone has their own life.
The commotion at Mr. Wang's house was so loud that it added a lot of jokes to the quiet street. Unfortunately, his family rarely left home anymore, only treating patients at home, and the strong smell of medicine wafted out every day.
Half a month later, seven or eight people, young and old, men and women, showed up at the scholar's door. They knocked loudly and gruffly, calling everyone "wen'er" (literally "wen'er"), calling out to the neighbors to come out and watch.
Li Niang heard the sound first, and before Liu could stop her, she opened the door.
When Li Niang saw them for the first time, she was frightened by their aggressive appearance. She turned to look at her mother-in-law, but her face was even paler than hers.
When those people saw the door open, they pushed Li Niang to the side and squeezed in.
"Hey, who are you and why are you barging in?!"
The old lady who led the group sneered, "I am Wen'er's grandmother, he is Wen'er's grandfather, and these are his uncles and cousins. Who do you think we are?"
After saying that, she glanced at the eldest daughter-in-law and said, "We are going to stay here. Go and clean up the house."
Then he went into the main room by himself, while others were running around and touching things. "This big blue brick and tile house is great! It won't collapse under the snow like ours did!"
“I want to live in this room!”
Li Niang was still confused as to why a bunch of relatives she didn't know came. Then she saw someone entering her husband's study and rushed over to stop them.
Liu was still standing there, her hands and feet cold and her heart sinking, as if she had returned to the days in the countryside when she was being tortured by her mother-in-law...
While things were bustling next door, Jiang Yue's life was relatively peaceful. The crops in the space had already been harvested, dried, and another batch was planted.
Jiang Nian's task was to pound rice and grind it into flour, and use wheat bran to feed the mules. Because she had no tools to store grain, she also made a rice warehouse with wood.
Old Mrs. Wang looked at the porridge with only a few grains of rice in the bowl, her face darkening, "This porridge is even thinner than what we have in the countryside!"
Liu shuddered, touched her hands, which had frostbite from washing clothes for only five days, and lowered her head. "There's no food to buy in the city, and we've spent all our money on Wen'er's treatment. There's nothing left."
Before the old lady could get angry, she added, "We have more people and more food, unlike our neighbors next door, who only have two people but more rooms than they can fit in. Not only do we have food, we also have the meat of a whole pig."
Mrs. Wang’s grandson rushed to say, “I ran to the corner of their wall and listened, and there was the sound of sheep!”
"And there are chickens! There are chickens crowing every day!"
Old Mrs. Wang's saliva was almost flowing out. Her cloudy eyes rolled around and she had an idea.
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