Stardoc

by S. L. Viehl

  I frowned slightly as I surveyed the treatment schedule myself, which called for a powerful digestive aid. “Severe gastroenteritis?” I read the diagnosis aloud.

  “Orgemichs are gluttons, suns only knows what she ate,” Dr. Rogan replied rudely as he administered the infusion. He shook the patient’s upper pectoral area, and addressed her in harsh tones. “Take care of it this will. No more than single rations for the next week you must consume. Understand do you?”

  While the patient grumbled out her acknowledgment, I shifted my gaze again to the medsysbank. Rogan hadn’t bothered to run a single organ scan. True, the pain was typical of simple gastric distress, but why accept the obvious?

  “Do you want to run an organs sequence?” I asked, and got a baleful glare in return.

  “What for? The medsysbank established the cause.”

  “Equipment can often be inaccurate.” I tried to be politic. “Another series of scans would rule out—”

  “No, Doctor,” he said, all offended dignity. “I’m finished here.” He signed off the chart and released the Orgemich.

  “Dr. Rogan—”

  “In here.” He gestured for me to accompany him to the adjoining room. Playing the cooperative consultant, I followed.

  From the clutter, I guessed it was an improvised lounge and break area. The untidy space was littered with old charts, supplies, and the remnants of at least three or four meals. Was there no regular sanitation crew? I noticed the outline of a multiple-limbed form huddled under a metallic thermal sheet. The Dr. Dloh mentioned by the charge nurse, no doubt. It was snoring.

  “You’re new, so I’ll overlook your interference,” Phorap Rogan said.

  I smiled. I could do this. “On Terra, we call it consultation.”

  “I’ve got some advice for you, Doctor. You’d better lose that attitude, if you want to stay here long enough to unpack.”

  A disagreeable odor now seemed to be coming from Rogan. Did his species possess noxious glandular sprays triggered by strong emotions? I wondered. I tried to step back discreetly.

  Naturally, Rogan stepped forward to compensate. “My father was Terran,” he said, his voice rich with scathing condescension. “He raved about all the endless resources, easy credits, and specialized treatment centers on your planet.”

  “Really?” I tried not to wonder what the father had ever seen in Rogan’s mother. Perhaps it had been a tragic case, involving blindness, or dementia. “How—flattering.”

  “You know what I think? Terran doctors can’t clean their anuses without a consult.”

  That was fairly direct. It was becoming harder by the moment to deal with this jerk. “I’ve managed to, so far.”

  “You aren’t on Terra anymore,” Rogan said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “This is frontier territory, Doctor. Do you have any idea of where you are? Don’t you think you’d better rely on those with experience?”

  Sure, I agreed silently. As soon as I meet someone who actually uses it.

  “I’m willing to help you, once you understand the way it is.” Rogan leaned forward in emphasis. I held my breath. “Don’t come in here, trying to change everything. FreeClinic duty is set up just the way we like it here.”

  I risked a gulp of air. “Thank you for your recommendations, Doctor. I’ll let you know if I need your assistance.” Specifying that this would occur only during a frosty day on the surface of the twin suns was unnecessary. My new colleague wasn’t that thick-headed.

  “You do that, Dr. Grey Veil.” With that, he stalked out of the lounge.

  Okay, I thought, I was not going to win a popularity contest with my boss or Rogan. I’d have to tread carefully where Dr. Mayer was concerned, but how much harm could one odious, rather smelly half-Terran colleague do?

  Enough, it turned out.

  After that confrontation, Phorap Rogan was as good as his word. I was on my own. Back inside the exam room, I spent a few moments familiarizing myself with the location of supplies and equipment. The medsysbank was gone. What instruments I did find were either outmoded or barely functional.

  I thought about what I had left behind. Back on Terra, my father had supervised every detail when I opened my private practice, and spared no expense. Only the best for Cherijo. His handpicked assistants welcomed patients into a tastefully decorated reception area. In my treatment rooms, I’d worked with the finest of instrumentation, while my patients reclined on luxurious cradles of antistress foam and listened to old-world masters like Count Basie and Harry Connick, Jr.

  As a crowning touch, Dad had personally directed the installation of a massive diagnostic database unit, which took up half of my office. That had provided precise information on every known aspect of the Terran medical field.

  Highly skilled assistants, plenty of cases, and top of the line equipment. It had been Physician Paradise. Just the thought of all that efficient, pristine gear I’d left behind made me grumble as I inventoried the equipment. If it could be called that.

  “This stuff belongs in a museum,” I muttered.

  There were scanners with components rewired so haphazardly that I was afraid to activate them. Old-fashioned compression injectors to supplement the meager stock of newer syrinpresses and infusers. An emergency kit with tubes and bottles of medicines, and curious metallic devices to measure vital stats.

  And yes, even several rolls of real fabric bandages. At best, it was a motley assortment. At worst, I might kill someone using this junk. I went to the room console and signaled Assessment.

  “Nurse?” I picked up the next chart in sequence. “Send back the cases from p’Kotma VII now.”

  The chart display reflected scant assessment data on two colonists, recent immigrants from a neighboring system. They were sisters, and complaints listed were pain, unremitting vertigo, and impairment of most of their nine senses. They’d been isolated away from Assessment for some unspecified reason.

  I quickly discovered why.

  Two hysterical beings burst through the doorway. They appeared exactly like huge, bright red sea anemones. On the pocked surface of their forms, hundreds of small slots were trying very hard to communicate.

  They were all screaming.

  “You must help us—”

  “We are suffering so—”

  “Please, Doctor, the pain—”

  “Unbearable—”

  I was deafened by the swarm of pleas, howls, and cries for help. None of the mouths spoke collectively, which made it impossible for my wristcom to continue to translate. The subsequent feedback from my translation device harmonized with the sisters as their wailing rose to painful octaves.

  “Calm down!” I had to yell to be heard, but the p’Kotmans ignored me, and squashed their pulpy bodies against each other as they writhed in agony.

  I separated them, and thrust each on either side of the exam pad. By now my ears were ringing. I had to wrench myself away from the clutch of their imploring tendrils to hit the display console with a clenched fist.

  “Get a nurse back here, stat!”

  Within moments, T’Nliqinara hovered just outside the door. I was busy adjusting my wristcom to follow what my patients were trying to tell me.

  “T-jher recher attech?” she shouted.

  “How can I get them to quiet down?” I demanded to know at the top of my lungs. The sponge-shaped sisters screamed even louder.

  The nurse shook her head, unable to understand me or communicate in return.

  “Medsysbank!” I pantomimed pushing a cart.

  The charge nurse glowered at me with censure. I stepped toward the door, and my wristcom began to work at last.

  “Not available!” T’Nliqinara bellowed, then snorted at the patients as their cacophony reached a shrill crescendo. She took a deep breath, and barely managed to relay the next words through the din. “Dr. Rogan said you wouldn’t need it!”

  Touché, Phorap, I thought furiously.

  The nurse leaned down and
put her mouth next to my wristcom in order to be heard. “I’ll get help!”

  I shook my head. T’Nliqinara made an impatient sweep of her elongated limbs, but waited for my next direction.

  Mentally blocking out the noise, I tried to connect the symptoms with a viable cause. I was good at this, after years of Dad’s lectures.

  Vertigo and sensory impairment, obviously related to the excruciating pain. Why? No injury or disease was apparent. It wasn’t possible to interview them, the symptoms only worsened when I—Hold on, I thought. They went crazy when I spoke, at the whine from my wristcom, when the nurse yelled. Sound. Was it an exposure reaction? Too much input could theoretically do as much damage as an injury. My own ears could attest to that.

  I flapped my hands at T’Nliqinara, gesturing for her to leave us. The nurse was only too happy to escape the commotion. I ignored my vociferous patients completely as I checked over their chart once more. That had to be it, I told myself.

  I activated the exam room’s quarantine seals, and set the room envirocontrols to discharge all sound waves. It was a tactic usually employed when performing neurorepairs in open cranial surgery. We were all going to be very, very quiet.

  Slowly the lack of sound penetrated the p’Kotmans’ hysteria. They in turn began to settle down. The voices died, one by one, until the three of us sat in a vacuum of silence.

  It worked.

  We handled most of the treatment in that manner. I used a chart screen to communicate with them, setting it to translate what I typed into their native written language. They did the same. Incredibly, I learned the sisters already knew they were having an allergic reaction to alien sonics. The problem had been that they couldn’t escape the unbearable exposure and become coherent long enough to tell anyone about it.

  I provided a solution by offering a temporary acoustic-dampening agent. I had to ask them to specify what chemical compounds would be most compatible with their physiology, but luck was with me again. They knew exactly what they needed. Permanent full-body shields, I was told, were required for long-term alleviation of symptoms.

  “We’ve sent for them,” one of the p’Kotmans whispered once the injection had taken effect. She explained these shields were readily obtainable on their homeworld, given the susceptible nature of their physiques. Unfortunately, the original ones they’d packed to bring with them had been somehow lost in transit. “Until they arrive, can you provide more medicine?”

  I scheduled them for follow-up visits at the Primary Care Clinic, then—my ears still buzzing—I requested the next patient. I assumed after handling the p’Kotmans, I was prepared for the worst.

  I was wrong.

  One patient, a humanoid male with multiple lacerations from a tangling with a malfunctioning cargo loader, jerked when I began to repair one of his wounds. I hadn’t anticipated the movement, and burned my wrist with the suture laser. I was appalled. I’d never fumbled instruments before, not even in my student days.

  “You’re hurting me!” he said.

  “Of course I’m not hurting you. Try to remain still,” I said through gritted teeth as I ignored my own minor burn and repositioned the laser.

  “I can’t help it. I can feel it! It’s searing hot!” the patient said.

  After a quick neuroscan, I was horrified to discover I had been burning him. The anesthetic agent I’d given him had not taken effect, as it was incompatible with his neural system. I had to test three other compounds before finding something that would actually work.

  Suffice to say, he didn’t thank me when we were done. He did, however, teach me what his species call incompetent Terrans. At length.

  Another case involved an adolescent who seemed to be suffering from an acute surface response to some unknown substance. Since the boy had immature vocal organs, and no written form of his language existed, he couldn’t tell me what was wrong.

  I didn’t need him to tell me. His hide was sloughing off in gigantic sheets, literally peeling a thick layer of flesh from his limbs. When I attempted to repair the damaged tissues, he fought me wildly, poor kid. We were wrestling with a dermal regenerator between us when his parents entered the exam room.

  “We were concerned because it was taking so long,” the mother said, then nervously stepped forward. “Excuse me, Doctor, but why are you trying to stop Sodro’s process?”

  “What process?” I asked, halting my frantic efforts to keep his outer hide in place.

  “He’s in seasonal transition,” the father informed me blandly. “He reported to get an emollient for the itching. The new derma is very sensitive.”

  My young patient was molting.

  After several hours I muddled through another half-dozen cases. I had not seen one Terran patient, I was almost thoroughly unnerved, and despite several requests, the two medsysbanks in the FreeClinic had yet to be made available for my use.

  That was when Dr. Dloh decided to stop by and introduce himself. I didn’t even flinch at his appearance, which was exactly like that of a gigantic, well-fed spider. One positive aspect of alien medical experience was that nothing shocked you after a couple of hours in FreeClinic Trauma.

  Dr. Dloh wore a modified physician’s tunic over his exoskeleton. His carapace appeared as shiny and hard as obsidian, and was mottled with irregular green markings. A lustrous cluster of bead-sized eyes gleamed at me over a U-shaped orifice that could have been an ear, nose, or mouth.

  “Dr. Grey Veil, delighted to meet you.” Dr. Dloh uncurled three of his appendages toward me in a sort of wave. I eliminated the U as a mouth—his voice came from the vicinity of his thorax. I was startled by the fact that my colleague spoke in my native language without the assistance of a wristcom. But then, he didn’t have wrists. “Zo zorry to have delayed making your acquaintanze.”

  “It’s good to meet you, too, Dr. Dloh,” I said, and decided to capitalize on the friendly reception. So far, it was the only one I’d gotten. “Perhaps you can help me. I need regular access to one of the clinic’s medsysbanks.”

  The appendages moved in harmonious agitation. “But Dr. Rogan told me—”

  “Dr. Rogan is”—oh, the words that came to mind—“mistaken.”

  Dr. Dloh apologized, and generously promised to provide any assistance I might need. I decided I preferred giant spiders to Terrans and half-Terrans, hands down.

  “I’m zurprized you choze K-2 for your tranzfer,” Dloh said. He rotated his eye cluster downward. “My natural appearanze requirez my azzignment to a, zhall we zay, highly diverzified, culturally zophizticated population.”

  I could understand that. On Terra, if he’d ever attempted to work as a medical practitioner, my species would have retaliated with conservative resistance. Which meant reviving public stonings and lynch mobs.

  Dr. Dloh continued. “But you are quite the ztandard humanoid, Dr. Grey Veil. You could have chozen more familiar zurroundingz clozer to your home.”

  He may have looked like a big bug, but he was obviously intelligent and perceptive.

  “I liked the idea of treating many different species, Doctor.”

  “And prove yourzelf to be more than zimply a Terran zpezializt? Or provide a meanz of ezcaping other limitationz?”

  Uncomfortably perceptive.

  “I’m satisfied that I can be of use here, Dr. Dloh. Hard as that may be to believe.”

  That seemed to placate his curiosity. “Good luck, Doctor. I will offer a word of caution, if I may. Rumor haz it that Dr. Mayer, our ezteemed chief of ztaff, waz, zhall we zay, dizturbed after meeting you.”

  “Disturbed?”

  “Affronted may be a more appropriate term.”

  “I see.” Well, I didn’t like him, either.

  “Dr. Rogan, our lezz ezteemed colleague, haz acquired an equally negative feeling toward you.”

  “Dr. Rogan needs to get a job,” I said flatly.

  “I agree. Unfortunately, hiz main preoccupation iz to avoid the one he haz at all cozt.” Dr. Dloh shuffl
ed to the door. “Dr. Grey Veil, az Terranz zay, watch your back.” After an elegant, shuffling sort of dip, the arachnid physician departed.

  Dloh was pretty nice. The nurses must have told him about my blunders, but he hadn’t said a word about them. Maybe I’d found an ally. And I needed one, badly. I was tempted to leave Trauma before I further embarrassed myself, but I forced myself to stay until shift change. I wasn’t a coward, and Mayer was wrong.

  For the rest of my voluntary shift, Dr. Dloh shared the medsysbank he used. That helped me get through the remaining cases without any more disasters, although I still had problems when the data didn’t seem to correlate with my personal diagnosis. A few times I had to rely on instinct and theory, and make an educated guess.

  The patients were at times shocking in appearance, but most were humanoid, or close to it. I began to see an anatomical standard among my fellow colonists—a superior cranial-sensory case, main torso, and regular appendages. They also had the usual complaints requiring emergency care. Infants and children generally had infections in every possible orifice (and a few I’d never dreamed of). Older siblings and young adults comprised most of the accidental injury cases. Minor lacerations, sprains, and broken bones were common among the construction workers, transport officers, or those assigned to agricultural projects.

  Since the elderly or diseased were uniformly barred from immigration, there weren’t any cases of chronic or degenerative disorders. No upwardly mobile colony wants aging dependents on their hands. I noted the universal reluctance to discuss family history, too. Who wanted to have their resident status revoked due to genetic handicaps?

  In turn, I seemed to fascinate my patients.

  “You have a pretty coat.” One furry child tentatively touched my coiled braid as I extracted a spiny burr from her flank. “Why have you removed the rest of it?” I explained the (to her) bizarre fact that Terrans grew most of their hair on their scalps. “Don’t you get cold?”

  “Terrans have smooth skin,” another patient said when I cautiously checked his damaged femoral muscles. His leg was covered in thick octagonal plates of thorny exocartilage. “Reminds me of some of the hides we use for garments on my world.” He eyed me as if sizing me up as a jacket.