The Chronicles of Vallanie Sharp: Novice

by Morgan Feldman

The next few days I tried to be the perfect apprentice. I took Scia as my role model, styling my hair in the same gorgeous waves, setting it one shade darker every week until it was a gorgeous chestnut brown. I paid careful attention to each consultation, put to memory every word of criticism and advice, and assured I didn’t repeat any mistakes. I watched Scia confront patient after patient, healthy and sick alike, with the same determination and cleverness. She never fell behind or appeared even the least bit bored with this refined routine that was already starting to grate on me. I listened to her excitement about advancing research, and I listened to her complain when they re-examined and diagnosed a patient two days after we cleared her.

  I was just starting to understand the pattern of operation when we were assigned our first emergency case. We were in an examination with a teenager who was having trouble focusing in school, when Scia’s radix began a series of short sharp beeps, the screen flashing red. For a moment, I thought perhaps it was losing battery, but Scia’s immediate jump to her feet and swift departure from the room told me otherwise. I followed her out to the hall and up to the highest floor.

  I didn’t have to ask what was going on. By the time we reached the end of the hall, I had figured it out. We needed clearance to access the 12th floor. The only way to get there was by elevator. Even then, Scia had to scan her wrist to get the dark doors to open on the correct floor.

  I knew which room we were headed for without having to ask, for a guard was standing outside. He leaned against the wall, one hand on the weapon at his belt, the other cramming a half eaten candy bar into his mouth. He smiled in greeting, his lips coated in a dark smudge.

  “Scia Novem,” Scia announced, forgetting to—or intentionally deciding against—introducing me. “Status?”

  “Name’s Nick Prime,” the guard said of the patient, “Missed his annual check-up and two make up dates. Police went to pick him up this morning and he turned violent. He keeps going on about how he wants his son back.”

  “When was his son apprenticed?” Scia asked.

  “That’s the odd thing.” He rubbed his chubby hand, still holding the candy bar, over the sensor and stepped aside to allow us entrance. “He doesn’t have a son.”

  The room was much like the ones I was used too, only slightly bigger to allow room for an additional bed, in which our patient was lying. I noticed he wore a silver collar around his neck and matching ones around his wrists.

  Scia sat in the chair nearest the bed, spinning it so she faced the patient. They were attached to the ground so they couldn’t be used as weapons, but they could rotate up to a full 360 degrees with the click of a button.

  I walked slowly in one direction, and then back to the other, debating on where to stand. I settled with a few feet behind Scia.

  The man lifted his head, prying himself up on one elbow. “Morning,” he grunted.

  “Good morning.” Scia replied, taking a seat across from him. “I am Dr. Novem, and this is my apprentice.”

  “You here to give me medicine? To stick me with pins?” The man put on a funny accent in a failed attempt to imitate Scia’s clear pronunciation of every syllable.

  “No, that is what the treatment center is for,” Scia replied coolly. “We will only have a little chat.”

  “Oh, well, in that case, let me get up and introduce myself.” The man scrambled to the edge of the bed, crouching like he was going to jump, with a wild gleam in his eyes. “Oh wait, I can’t.” He leaned back, and I noticed the tiny blue lights on either side of the room, inches from the back of his bed, that I recognized as an invisible wall. I had no idea what would happen if he tried to cross it with armed bands, but I knew it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  “You’ve been missing a lot of work lately.” Scia looked as comfortable in her chair as if she were home, watching the news. I glanced over her shoulder and saw she had pulled up his information. “Do you want to go back?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll go back to work when they give me back my son.”

  “You don’t have a son, Mr. Prime.”

  “I do!” He leaned forward, his voice rising. “I had a boy for fifteen years. Fifteen years! And one day, he just disappeared. I went to the authorities, and they said they’d look for him. I didn’t hear from them again for weeks, and when I went back, they just kept me there for hours until a perceiver showed up and told me I never had a son.” He went off in a vulgar spew of cusses, punching a fist into his pillow. “I have a son!”

  “I hope you understand that your behavior is not getting you anywhere, Mr. Prime. I have your file right here and I know very well that you do not have a son.”

  “You’re wrong!” He grabbed a chunk of his hair and pulled. “You’re wrong, you’re wrong! I have pictures! Look at my radix, if those pictures aren’t of my boy, then who?”

  “I don’t believe you, Mr. Prime. Please, calm down, and try to be civilized.”

  “I’ll be civilized when I see my son again.” Mr. Prime scrambled to the corner of his bed, leaning against the wall with his knees up to his chest.

  “Regardless of whether or not you have a son, your behavior today has been irrational and reckless. You refused to be escorted by the police, and you assaulted an officer.”

  “He tried to cuff me! You think I’m going to sit by and let them take me like they took my boy?”

  Scia pursed her lips. A look crossed her face that I had never seen before, but I took for one of annoyance. “The police do not take people away, especially not imaginary people.”

  “Then who?” The man shouted, his fist pounding against the wall. “Tell me who took my son?”

  Scia stared at him, waiting for him to calm down. It was almost a full minute before she began again. “Are you sure this doesn’t have anything to do with your wife’s retirement?”

  His hand fell limp to his side and he turned to stare at Scia in disbelieving alarm, as if she had just levitated.

  “It’s been six years now, but you were married twelve so I can imagine you must miss her.”

  Mr. Prime blinked, looking around him in confusion as if he’d just woke from a long dream and couldn’t remember where he’d fallen asleep. “My wife,” he said slowly, licking his lips, “has nothing to do with this.” He snarled, his anger returning and his voice growing louder, “You leave her out of this!”

  “Very well.” Scia watched him carefully. “Do you feel remorse about your actions against the police?”

  He turned his head to the side and folded his arms across his chest.

  Scia continued to question him, but he refused to respond, refused to even acknowledge that he had heard her.

  When we exited to the hall a quarter of an hour later, the officer was still standing by the door, his arms folded across his chest and his mouth free of chocolate.

  “Diagnosis?” He asked.

  Scia pulled up his record on her radix. “The man is delusional.”

  The guard gave a deep guttural laugh. “That’s for sure.”

  “Yet there’s no sign of brain damage or deterioration,” Scia said, more to herself than anyone else, resting a finger against her lip as she studied the multilateral results intently.

  I turned to the guard and asked curiously, “Did you confiscate his radix?” When the guard nodded, I continued, hoping I wouldn’t get scolded for talking out of turn because we weren’t in an examination. “Were there pictures on it?”

  “Of his imaginary son, you mean?” The guard unfolded his arms and grabbed on to his belt. “Yeah, there were pictures all right, I don’t know who of though. Probably some poor kid he stalked.” He scratched his chin, stretching out his neck so high that he began to resemble a weasel. “The weird thing was that his bank account did show he paid one million dollars to Novagene sixteen years and ten months ago. There’s just no record that Novagene received it.”

  Scia’s eyes narrowed and she looked up at the man. “Yes, but was there ever a son
?”

  The man shook his head. “There’s no record of any child, no.”

  “My diagnosis remains the same,” Scia said. “The patient is clearly endangering himself and society. Unless a secondary scan pulls up any damage, this man needs a complete reinstallation of the frontal lobe.”

  The guard nodded as Scia typed her orders in the system. “A secondary team should be along shortly to confirm the diagnosis,” she informed, before stepping back into the elevator and returning to our previous patient.

  I was expecting to be asked about the examination, but surprisingly enough, Scia didn’t bring it up that day. It wasn’t until weeks later that she mentioned it, and then only as a reference point when discussing other examinations.

  We had twelve emergency examinations the entire time I was there, two of which were to confirm the original perceiver’s diagnosis, and three of which were patients under the age of eight. Eleven times the patient was found defective, in need of a reinstallation.

  Chapter 6: Altus