Ice beauty

After my uncle retired from the city hospital, he opened a private practice in the town. I failed the college entrance examination, the farmer can not, learning is not, the mood is not bad. I was bored at home, playing chicken and running dogs with a few bad boys in the town all day. My father was so anxious that he put on an old face and begged my uncle to let me go to the clinic and study medicine with him.

The day my father dropped me off at the clinic, my uncle and aunt were quarrelling about something. On the floor lay a tin thermos bottle, its bladder broken, and a stream of water shimmered with mercury-coated glass. When we came in, Aunt wiped her eyes on her sleeve and went into the back room, the door touching loudly behind her in front of us. I was afraid that their quarrel had something to do with my coming as an apprentice. My father seized my shoulder and pushed it forward, coughing heavily. "Uncle," he said, "I brought the little thing... My uncle looked at me but said nothing. He rounded the puddle, sat down in a dusty chair, took a pack of bad cigarettes from his pocket, squeezed one out, held it between his fingers, lit it, and smoked. The fingers on the cigarette show a burnt yellow color like braised meat, indicating that he is a heavy smoker. At school, a group of us troubled kids smoked our fingers on purpose to burn them yellow.

Father from the lap ripple out of ten eggs, put on the table, said: "This is your sister-in-law Teng, you and his aunt taste."

"My family, why do this?" My uncle said disdainfully, his face seeming to soften. He squeezed out a cigarette and threw it to his father. Father hurriedly to pick it up, cigarette in his chest jumped, jumped in front of me, I reached out to the cigarette volley caught, handed to father. My uncle looked at me admiringly and said, "Quick thinking!" I wanted to tell my uncle that I played catch on the school baseball team, but the words were on the tip of my tongue, because my father had told me over and over again to talk less and work more when we got to the clinic. My father said apprenticeship was not easy, not even with my own uncle. Uncle is his own family, more or less a bit of blame, aunt is a stranger, there is no blood connection, so everything depends on her face. My father also told me repeatedly about the hardships of apprenticeship -- he had drawn a medicine cabinet in his early years in a traditional Chinese medicine store, and had personal experience -- in the first two years, you can't learn anything at all. You have to help the master pour the chamber pot, you have to help the master look after the children, you have to fetch water, sweeping the floor, burning the fire, ditching the rice... All the dirty work is yours. You can't be an apprentice without being sly! "Said the father roughly. Besides, you are not an ordinary apprentice. You are going to study medicine! Uncle pinched out a cigarette, skillfully put that will be burnt out of the cigarette end. He stared straight at the broken thermos bottle on the floor and said, "What's wrong with learning? Go to the army! Go do business! It's better to do something than this. I've had enough of it for half my life."

"Clean up that stuff on the floor!" My father suddenly started to fire at me, "Young, eyes have no business! Do you want your uncle and aunt to order you around?"

I picked up the broom and abbot and swept up the broken glass on the ground. When I went out to pour summaries, heard my father said to my uncle: "His uncle, your sister-in-law and I have boiled this thing in this life, since childhood spoiled. You and his aunt, you fight as you like, your own nephew, you fight as you like... "

"Well, well, go home," said the uncle. "He will learn, and let him stay here. anyway

If I had a son, I would never let him do it."

two

My uncle used to be a village doctor known as "all kinds of gold oil". He dared to treat all the diseases of life in Chinese medicine, Western medicine, internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, gynecology. After the reform and opening up, my uncle was admitted to the provincial medical college to study for two years. After he came back, he was admitted to the city hospital. Wearing a gown and gloves, he became a surgeon who cut open people's stomach. Uncle is still in the countryside when the barefoot doctor, on Kang head razor knife for others to do appendicitis operation, from the medical school to come back, is more like a tiger, bold, the world some people dare not give birth to the disease, no he dare not under the knife. My uncle said that when a doctor is actually the same as when a bandit, three points by technology, seven points by courage. With courage you can calm down, calm your mind is free, mind is free you can work. The real bandits looked like weaklings; Those really big doctors, they look like pig killers. Uncle art and courage, in the city hospital is a few cases of successful big operation is also because of his courage, on the operating table to make the Michulin type grafting experiment, several people who do not deserve to die. He became a man of mixed praise, called a miracle doctor by those who praised him, and a veterinarian by those who reviled him. He was also a very proud guy. He had a temper tantrum and dared to slap the table and scold the mayor's mother. When he was in a dilemma, he proposed to retire early.

There were only two rooms in my uncle's clinic, very small, but in front of the door there was a big sign with the words "Guan's Hospital" in big characters. It was his own writing. It was like an animal, and it was frightening to look at. By virtue of his past brilliant reputation, by virtue of the inconvenient transportation to the city, by virtue of the city hospital not to discuss the people, Guan's hospital has been prosperous since its opening, serious illness, minor illness also see. His uncle was a doctor, and his aunt, a rural woman with only three years of elementary school and a former veterinarian, became a nurse and a pharmacist. Not long ago, the two of them together, to the grocery store shopkeeper Wang Jiu did a gastrectomy. Very little money, very good results. My uncle's fame reached a new height in his hometown. It was at this time that I entered my uncle's clinic -- no, the hospital, Guan's Hospital -- and became an apprentice. Strictly speaking, it was not an apprenticeship to study medicine, but my father said so and I followed suit.

My uncle's operating room was the same room my aunt had just entered. There was an iron bed that could be raised and lowered, covered with a white sheet, on which my uncle sometimes took a nap. Off the bed there was a drawer table with enamel plates filled with knives, scissors, and silver covered with two layers of white gauze. Pressed against the wall stood a beige wooden cabinet with a glass door. Through the glass, you can see some bottles and jars. This is almost the entire contents of Guan's Hospital.

Our town is a very remote place, more than a hundred kilometres from the city. Behind the town was the famous White Horse Hill, from which the Marsan River flowed through the middle of the town. Although this place is remote, it has a nice view. Because of backward, there is no industry, there is no pollution, the air is fresh, the river is clear, a little Xanadu meaning. The fact that my uncle operated on people in such a rudimentary operating room and did not get infected probably rubbed off on the fact that this place was free of pollution.

In recent years, tourism has also begun to develop here, with flowers in spring, fishing in summer, red leaves in autumn and skiing in winter - in the mountains, the town has built a large ski resort in a joint venture with Hong Kong - and Xanadu is booming. Many people were happy about it, but my uncle frowned and cursed a lot, as if he had a grudge against money.

three

I've been apprenticed in my uncle's clinic for six months now. In this half year, my main work is to sweep the floor, boil water, go out at noon to buy three boxes of lunch, uncle and aunt eat one each, I eat one. My uncle and aunt went home to sleep at night, and I slept in the clinic as a doorman. The diagnostic bed where many patients had been laid was my bed. My dinner and dinner are mostly boiled instant noodles. Sometimes my uncle brings something different for me. It would be unconscionable to say that I had not learned any medical skills. In the past half a year, my uncle had taught me dozens of common medicines in case someone came to buy them at night. In addition, my aunt had taught me to disinfect medical instruments by cooking them. As winter rolled in, I added a new addition to my job: lighting the stove. Every morning, before my uncle and aunt arrived at the hospital, I kept the stove on in the outside room. Inside is the operating room can not smoke and burn, just a few sections of the pipe into the bend, so as to raise the temperature. There have been two heavy snowfalls since the beginning of winter, and the snow fields in the mountains are frozen well. These days, the town advertises on the city TV that Chhorse is as romantic as Sweden and as sentimental as Paris, with the words of the advertisement accompanied by the appearance of a few posing female goblins. The city will be here soon. When people from the city come, the town will soon be lively; When the town gets busy, my uncle's clinic gets busy. My aunt had gone to town to buy a great deal of medicine for those who had been injured in skiing.