Sister Merrow cleaned the washroom table with a stiff bristle brush and a mixture of coarse salt, boiling water, and lye soap, scrubbing the deal boards until the gray water ran clear through the drain gutter. When the wood was dry, she spread a clean, bleached linen cloth across the surface and laid out her cold and exact implements. A small brass balance scale, three baked-clay apothecary jars of lard, dried yarrow blossoms, and a horn spoon.
Korr Var sat at the smaller bench, his dip pen fresh, recording Merrow’s verbal report under the town health ledger. Pella stood near the wash trough, her sleeves rolled up, step by step grinding dried calendula petals into a fine yellow powder in a stone mortar. The rhythm of the pestle was steady. crush, grind, scrape. Her shoulders burned with fatigue, but she didn’t stop.
“The burn covers about twenty-two square inches of the left forearm,” Sister Merrow dictated. Her voice was calm and procedural. “From the styloid process of the radius extending proximal six inches toward the elbow crease. Blistering was extensive, with epidermal calm distance across sixty percent of the scalded zone. The underlying deep skin presents as pale pink with punctate tiny blood vessel bleeding—indicating intact blood-vessel perfusion in the deep reticular layer. That’s our only stroke of good fortune. The tissue is alive.”
