Eddie Lante recalled the moment he first heard the name “Hedelin” the instant he saw Ye Tang.
He had once asked an old friend to take him to one of Mrs. Clement’s salon gatherings. At that gathering, he had not had the slightest chance to squeeze his way to Mrs. Clement’s side at the center of the crowd. And now, the woman standing before him was always intimately by Mrs. Clement’s side, the two as inseparable as shadows.
Mrs. Hedelin, a peerless villainess as infamous as her close friend Mrs. Clement. The upstart known to everyone in Capital Vitril.
“Mr. Eddie Lante—”
“It’s ‘Dean’.”
Eddie Lante corrected Ye Tang’s address for him, feeling an inexplicable thrill.
No matter how noble or glamorous one was in social circles, an upstart was still an upstart. Apart from money, they had nothing. Her daughters had been expelled from Vitlil Medical College by him. Did she think that by coming to beg him, he would allow those two ignorant girls to return to Vitlil Medical College to continue their studies?
She dreamed even more beautifully than Mrs. Clement.
However, how much was she willing to pay to get her daughters back into school? Ten gold coins? Twenty gold coins? Or a hundred gold coins?
Haha, no matter how many gold coins this upstart offered, he would not budge! …If it was two hundred gold coins, he might consider letting the girl who was not a bastard return to Vitlil Medical College.
Of course, the prerequisite was that the girl could only work as a nurse.
Women wanting to be doctors? No way in hell! That was his unshakeable bottom line! It was the tradition he had to defend!
“Very well. Then, Dean Eddie Lante, could you please tell me the basis for your judgment that women cannot be doctors?”
Eddie Lante looked at the upstart before him with disdain, sneering inwardly: This upstart did not seem stupid, so how could she ask such a foolish question? It seemed that the reason she had made so much money was simply good luck.
“Madam, don’t you even understand this most basic thing?”
With a mocking sneer, Eddie Lante pretended not to see the medical students gathering outside the dean’s office and began to hold forth.
“To be frank, madam, women are inherently inferior to men. Women lack men’s strength and stamina. Women scream at the sight of blood and faint at the sight of entrails. Being a doctor is a physically demanding profession. Which woman could stand for seven or eight hours, slice open a patient’s belly, pull out the patient’s intestines, stuff the patient’s intestines back in, sew up the patient’s belly? And which woman could saw open a person’s skull and then put the person’s skull back on?”
Eddie Lante, trying to intimidate Ye Tang, described the surgical process as cruel, bloody, and disgusting as possible.
Ye Tang showed no expression, but the medical students outside the door, perhaps recalling the animals they had dissected in anatomy class or the dissection specimens they had seen—or maybe the things soaked in formalin—turned green in the face. Forgetting to watch the drama, many clutched their mouths and ran off to vomit.
“Oh? So the dean’s point is that men are naturally accustomed to slicing open bellies, impassively pulling out intestines, and sawing open skulls? I always thought the doctors in the dean’s description sounded more like butchers…”
Ye Tang let out an “oh,” as if struck by a good idea: “If the most important quality for a doctor is the ability to face gore and horror without flinching, then wouldn’t butchers make even better doctors?”
“Speaking of which, there are female butchers too… How strange. No one says women can’t slaughter pigs, butcher sheep, cut meat, or stew it, yet people like the dean say women can’t perform surgery on humans.”
“And from what I know, not every illness requires surgery, right? There are plenty of doctors who treat patients solely with medicine—”
“Butchers and doctors are not the same thing at all!”
Ye Tang’s words were interrupted by Eddie Lante once again. Realizing he would surely lose if he followed her line of reasoning, Eddie Lante’s face twisted, his smile turning ferocious and ugly.
“Madam, I have no intention of belittling women. I know it’s hard for you as a woman to accept reality, but I cannot lie to you because of that. Women are simply not as smart as men! Things like slaughtering that require no brains—women can indeed imitate men at that. But just as you can’t teach a monkey human speech, women can never achieve what men have in the field of science! Medicine is not slaughter; it’s science! This science is simply too difficult for women!”
“…”
This time, Ye Tang did not refute Eddie Lante.
Feeling that he had won—an overwhelming victory—Eddie Lante could not restrain the smug expression on his face. His mouth still spouted false sincerity: “I know you are a woman unlike others, madam, one who can stand shoulder to shoulder with men. It’s understandable that you would misunderstand other women as having the same potential as you and hold unrealistic hopes for those ignorant women—”
Ye Tang reacted then. She raised one hand to signal Eddie Lante to shut up. But this willfully blind man was still subjecting her to his endless lecturing.
Outside the dean’s office, not only did Gloria and Cinderella turn livid, but even Jane and Petty, the nursing instructors who had come to report to Eddie Lante, trembled with rage, veins bulging on the backs of their hands.
“Enough, Eddie Lante. I’ve heard your arguments loud and clear.”
Ye Tang laughed.
At her laugh, Gloria and Cinderella instantly looked like cats spotting a cucumber, nearly leaping eight feet into the air in fright.
If the other party was someone who could be reasoned with, Ye Tang did not mind spending time communicating. But someone like Eddie Lante was unnecessary.
Even playing the lute to a cow could boost its milk yield or improve its beef quality. Talking to Eddie Lante was purely a waste of time.
“Now I am certain. In a medical college where someone like you can be dean, my daughters would learn nothing useful.”
“Wha…!?”
Ye Tang no longer addressed him as “dean,” and then she tore into him. Eddie Lante flew into a rage from humiliation. His face flushed red as he prepared to shout for the guards to drag Ye Tang away, but Ye Tang raised her voice.
“So I announce here that I, Anna Rochel Hedelin, will establish Hedelin Medical Academy! Hedelin Medical Academy is willing to hire instructors who will teach girls at a rate of one gold coin per month. The most outstanding instructors can earn an extra gold coin as a bonus each month!”
One gold coin per month…!?
The medical students eavesdropping outside all choked.
Doctors with their own clinics earned at most forty or fifty silver coins a month, and that was after deducting losses from patients who skipped bills. Slightly famous doctors serving as family physicians, free from skipped bills, reliably made about sixty silver coins a month.
Doctors teaching at Vitlil Medical College received only twenty silver coins a month in lecturer fees. More than half lectured there because their medical practice income did not cover household expenses; others were saving up to open their own clinics in three to five years.
One gold coin a month… that was five times the income! Not to mention the extra gold coin bonus for the most outstanding instructors!
“—I am willing to go to this ‘Hedelin Medical Academy’.”
The fifty-something Jane ignored Eddie Lante and walked straight up to Ye Tang to ask: “Can nursing instructors get the same treatment?”
“That depends on what you teach the students. If it’s boring nonsense—like how to obey doctors or how to be a doctor’s dog—then you get not a single copper. If you can teach professional medical knowledge and nursing techniques, then this one gold coin is yours.”
As she spoke, Ye Tang took out a gold coin and placed it in Jane’s hand.
Dazzled by the refracted gleam of the gold coin, Jane stared blankly for a moment. She quickly bit the coin to test it, then marveled at Ye Tang’s generosity.
“…It’s real. This is a real gold coin.”
Jane’s murmur was like a drop of cold water into hot oil, sending the crowd outside the dean’s office into a frenzy. Some medical students were already discussing going to Hedelin Medical Academy as lecturers after graduation.
Jane could no longer hear the sounds outside.
In this era, nursing was an utterly lowly profession. Whether doctors or patients, they hit and cursed the nurses at will.
To keep their jobs, nurses had to endure all sorts of harassment from doctors and patients. They were not treated as people—not even afforded the status of personal maids. They handled the dirtiest, most foul nursing tasks, yet the patients they cared for took it for granted that they deserved to clean up the filth, bossing them around and venting the stress of illness on them.
Jane had once dreamed of becoming a doctor.
But like the two girls from Hedelin House, everyone around her told her: Women cannot become doctors; women can only be nurses.
So she naively thought: Perhaps she could start as a nurse, and once she mastered more medical knowledge and nursing skills, maybe she could be allowed to aim for doctor—and one day become a proud female doctor.
In the blink of an eye, thirty years passed.
Jane believed her medical knowledge and nursing skills were no less than those of any young doctor, but no one took her expertise seriously. Beaten numb by reality, she had come to accept without feeling: “Women cannot be doctors.”
Lecturing at Vitlil Medical College should have been the pinnacle of her nursing career. At least here, there were no patients who beat her at the slightest disagreement, no bereaved families who splashed her with filth or threatened to kill her after a patient died.
Ten silver coins a month—Eddie Lante thought that was all a nursing lecturer was worth. Jane herself had thought her profession, her very self, was worth no more.
Until someone told her: She could earn more with her professional skills.
Her expertise deserved greater reward. Nurses should not be mere dogs obeying doctors.
Carefully pocketing the gold coin, Jane removed her white nurse’s cap and placed it on Eddie Lante’s desk.
“Dean, please accept my resignation.”
“You dare!? Jane! Have you forgotten who gave you this nursing lecturer position!? If you dare go to this so-called Hedelin Medical Academy, you won’t get this month’s pay!”
The Jane who usually resembled a decrepit old zombie on its last legs suddenly burst into loud laughter. She guffawed with hands on hips for a good while before snarling viciously: “Screw you, you hypocrite!”
The other nursing lecturer, Petty, hurried up to Ye Tang and bowed to her: “My nursing experience is not as extensive as Ms. Jane’s, but my father was a doctor with his own clinic. I grew up helping him and learning his medical techniques. But my father passed the clinic to my younger brother. I came to Vitlil to prove I am no worse than him. I lecture here to save money, hoping one day to open my own clinic.”
“Petty!?”
Eddie Lante had designs on Petty, who was attractive, refined in demeanor, and highly obedient. He had never imagined that the usually desireless Petty harbored such great ambition.
“Dean, please allow me to resign together with Ms. Jane. There’s one more thing I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.”
Petty extended one hand and gave Eddie Lante a thumbs down. “Your pursuits really disgust me. Every time you touched my hand, I endured it by imagining cutting the flesh off your hand with a scalpel.”
A light laugh escaped from Ye Tang’s nostrils.
She took her cloak from the nearby coat rack, put it on, and walked out of the dean’s office.
“On the first day of establishment, we already have two instructors. Hedelin Medical Academy’s future is truly limitless.”
“You, you shameless upstart…!!”
Eddie Lante was so angry that he lost his head. He rushed forward to grab Ye Tang’s hair, but Ye Tang seemed to have eyes on the back of her head.
The moment Eddie Lante lunged, Ye Tang lowered her body slightly. She counter-grabbed his arm and flung him out the door with an over-the-shoulder throw, leaving him sprawled in the corridor with his eyes rolled back.
“Yes. I am an upstart. Upstarts solve problems in the way of upstarts.”
She pinched out a few more gold coins, stepped over Eddie Lante as she passed, and handed the gold coins to Jane and Petty.
“Go to Queen Road this afternoon to buy things needed for teaching. Ah, right. Before that, you need to sign the contract with me. I’ll send the contract to the notary office for notarization.”
With that, Ye Tang called Gloria and Cinderella over. The two girls hadn’t expected their mother to be even more radical than they were—they had only thought that if Vitlil Medical College wouldn’t do, they would find a medical college that allowed girls. Little did they know their mother founded one for them on the spot.
“…Mother, is this really okay? Founding a medical academy is very expensive, right?”
In just this short time, their mother had already spent several gold coins. This made Gloria very uneasy. “I can study by reading books at home…!”
Cinderella nodded frantically as well. She hadn’t expected her small idea to turn into such a big deal.
“I earn money precisely so I can spend it where I please. Are my lovely daughters now trying to deprive me of this small pleasure?”
Gloria, embraced by Ye Tang’s left arm, and Cinderella, embraced by her right, shook their heads like rattles. Ye Tang led the two out of Vitlil Medical College, with Jane and Petty following behind them.
It was precisely afternoon then. The winter sky was a clear, vast blue, and the brilliant sunlight seemed to celebrate the establishment of Hedelin Medical Academy.
Five hundred years later, tour guides would lead tourists from all over the world and say to them, “The legend of the famous ‘Hedelin Angels’ began right here—”