Shen Yan had worked thirty-six hours straight when his heart stopped.
When he opened his eyes again, he was the lowest-ranking son-in-law in Paris in 1348: sleeping in a stable, eating cold porridge, while a stable hand dared to piss outside his door.
The good news: the emergency room where he had worked before transmigrating had come with him. The bad news: the only thing he could open was a plastic crate in the corner. The worse news: the Black Death had arrived that year.
The University of Paris said it was divine punishment, brought on by the planetary conjunction of 1345. The Church said it was God's wrath, and people should repent. The guild physician said to drain three pounds of blood and all would be well.
Renaud clipped the thermometer under a patient's arm. "Forty point one. You're all wrong."
He had no antibiotics, and no vaccines. He would never be able to open those two doors in this lifetime. All he had was a modern emergency room and a set of rules unheard of in this age:
Boil drinking water. Isolate for forty days. Bury the dead deep. Map every chain of transmission.
Years later, on the square before Notre-Dame Cathedral, a cardinal bowed his head to him.
Someone asked, "My lord, what are you, really? A doctor, or a miracle?"
He said, "I'm a doctor. Miracles can't save a second person."
And one more thing: stop pissing outside my door.
