by J. Naomi Ay
“Maybe it’s useless for you who already knows everything and is going to be a king. For me it means something. How do you know I’m bored teaching? How do you know I won't follow you around?”
He looked at me curiously. He didn’t understand I was teasing him.
“Right now, I am not king, I am Dr. Ron.” He pointed at the embroidered name on his lab coat with a sardonic smile. “Right now, I need an admin and I want you, yes?”
“Please?” I prompted.
“Very please,” he stated and as if it were already a given, he got up to leave.
“May I call you Your Majesty and kiss your hand?”
“No,” he said abruptly. “I am not Majesty.”
“Well what are you then?”
“Dr. Ron,” he smirked, heading to the door. “But you may call me Your Royal Highness and kiss my hand if you wish to get down on your knees.”
Working for Dr. Ron was nice. I admit it. There was no pressure, lots of people to chat with and the money was great. Ron's nurse was Janet, the nurse who first took care of him at the hospital, the same nurse who was in my vision of the future, the SdK Corporation’s buildings and eating lunch by the lake.
The three of us made a good team. Occasionally I caught Janet staring at Ron with puppy dog eyes, but then again, I probably made a few of those too. Janet and I would go out for drinks on Friday night after work and after a few she would get a bit morose and all she wanted to talk about was Ron.
“Gina Gibbons was following him all over the hospital this week even though she didn’t have rounds with him. Did you see Teresa standing by the lift at 5pm every day last week? I thought that was a little obvious.”
“Does he know you're interested in him like that?” I asked her.
“He knows everything, right?” she replied and swallowed her beer. “And we're professionals, right? He told me straight off, this is all business. I'm the best nurse there is.” She wobbled drunkenly on her bar stool.
“You are good,” I agreed and patted her hand. “If Ron says you're the best, then you are.”
“And he doesn't sleep with his employees,” she mumbled. “Just everyone else in a skirt.”
One day, after Dr. Ron had finished doing rounds and came back into the office, he stopped in front of my desk.
“Bring me Thad, yes?” he said and he pronounced Thad's name as something like Zad.
“Thad?” I repeated.
Our oldest son had just recently moved to Rozari with his two kids. I loved having my grandchildren living with us. It had been a very long time since I had an eight year old and a five year old underfoot, but Thad was very depressed and depressing and was my biggest source of anxiety right now. His wife, whom I had never liked anyway, had left him and the kids, saying she needed to find herself, but along the way, she also found another guy. Thad, in my humble mother's opinion, was smart, good looking, a wonderful husband and father, and his ex-wife was a fool. But right now, Thad was unemployed and depressing.
“You have a job for him?” I asked hopefully.
“I do,” Dr. Ron said.
“Here? In the office?” I prompted. Thad before his life fell apart had climbed the corporate ladder at breakneck speed to become a vice president of a pharmaceutical company.
“No.” Ron disappeared into his office.
Thad came in that afternoon and then left without telling me a thing. A month later, he bought a house in our neighborhood and a new speeder.
“What are you working on?” Tim and I kept asking.
Thad laughed. “Nothing illegal. Ron and I are building a new company and I've signed a confidentiality agreement. You'll see it soon enough.”
“SdK Corporation?” I asked.
“How did you know? Did Ron tell you?”
“Sort of. I think you'll be very successful.”
“I think so too,” Thad replied happily. “Do you have any idea how brilliant Ron is?”
“I do.” I nodded, glad that Thad was happy. He even started dating some of the bimbos that Ron had cast off.
Ron was still having some problems though. There was a lot of resentment among the senior staff at the hospital because he had basically skipped through internship and most of the residency requirements. He was commanding higher fees than any of them and for the most part ignored rules, regulations and hospital procedures. He was constantly getting reprimands from the head of neurology, head of surgery and hospital administration. He ignored all of them which caused even more resentment.
On top of that, as his notoriety spread, the Saintists came out in force. Janet and I were walking across campus to a little lunch place that we liked one day while a demonstration was being held right in the middle of Central Square.
“What's that all about?” Janet asked as we came into a crowd of a hundred or so Rozarians. “I've never seen any kind of protest here.”
“Me either.” I shrugged as someone handed us a flyer with none other than Dr. Ron's picture on it.
“The Infidel has returned!” The flyer screamed and showed a picture of Karukan de Kudisha right below Dr. Ron's.
“Whoa!” Janet cried. “Is he like his great, great, great, great…”
“Yep.” I pushed my way back out of the crowd. “I don’t know why these people have to drum up all this stuff about the Infidel. Even Kenak and Donak were worried about that at first until I told them to forget it. That war was over a thousand years ago.”
“Wow,” Janet said. “I wonder what it would feel like to be related to Genghis Khan or somebody like that.”
“Yeah, well, get this.” I pulled open the door to the restaurant. “He's also the great, great, great whatever of the Saint.”
Janet nearly fell over. “That's like being related to Jesus.”
“Mhm,” I laughed. “Imagine if Jesus's granddaughter married Genghis Khan's grandson.”
Janet and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t even eat our lunch. We spent the whole hour making jokes about what living in that house must have been like.
About a year after I switched jobs, Tim called me at work asking for a favor.
“I need you to get someone in to see your doc,” Tim ordered in his commanding Admiral voice.
“Well honey, the waitlist is really long,” I replied. “How does next year sound?”
“Shel, I've got a gal who was injured on a ship. The ship is being towed right now to Spacebase Rozari. We don’t have any brain surgeons on staff here and the ship’s doctor thinks she needs to see one. Your guy, Dr. Ron is supposed to be the best, so do your old man a favor and make room for her in Ron’s schedule tomorrow.”
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“The ship had an accident and she was pinned beneath an engineering console. Damn thing fell and hit her head and according to the ship's doc, she's got a brain swelling or something and she's been unconscious for several days.”
“Ok.” I opened up the schedule. “Dr. Markoff can see her tomorrow. He’s the head of the department.”
“No, I want your guy. This girl is special and I want her treated by the best.”
“So what makes her so special?” I squeezed her in between two other patients at 3:15. Ron would probably be okay with it. He spent a minimum of time with everyone anyway, no shooting the breeze with him.
“Well, if she wasn't under the console trying to hotwire the fire suppression system, the whole ship would have blown, so I guess that makes her some kind of hero.”
“Oh,” I gasped. “Ok. Poor thing. Well don’t worry, Ron will get her all fixed up.”
“I hope so, babe. I hate to lose a good officer like this one. She was on the fast track for a command.”
“I’m just booking her a room at the hospital tomorrow. I put her on Ron’s schedule for mid-afternoon. Will that work?”
“You're a gem, Shel. Love ya, baby.”
“Meatloaf for dinner. Thad's got a date and leaving us with the kids. Bye sweetie.”
&
nbsp; LCDR Katelina Anne Golden. I typed it into the schedule after Tim's yeoman emailed me the records. I didn't think anything of it beyond what a brave girl she must be, but then I wasn’t the clairvoyant one.
It was just after 5pm the next day and I was packing up my stuff to head home when Janet opened the office door and collapsed in the first chair. She was white as a sheet.
“What happened?” I cried.
“Ron's in big trouble,” she said and shook like a leaf. “He's going to get his privileges pulled. We're all dead meat.”
“Oh, it can't be that bad.” I got up and went to pat her on the shoulder. “He's always getting in trouble.”
“Not like this.” Janet shook her head. “This is worse than smoking in patient rooms.”
“So, what happened?” I took the chair next to her and slipping off my shoes, I put my tired feet up on the coffee table.
“You know that girl, the Spacegirl that came in this morning all concussed?”
“Yes,” I nodded. This was the special case that Tim had asked me to squeeze in.
“Well, she was on the 3pm rounds and when we got to her room, nobody was there. So I asked the duty nurse what happened to her and the duty said that Dr. Markoff came in and decided to treat her himself and diagnosed her with excessive fluid and spinal edema and took her stat to surgery.”
“Ok?” I prompted. “What's wrong with that?”
“I don’t know.” Janet shrugged. “That's a pretty basic treatment and not all that difficult but Ron went ballistic. He literally turned and ran down the hall to surgery so I ran after him and everybody was like calling 'what's the crisis?' and I had no idea. So we burst in to surgery, not even taking time to scrub and Markoff had the girl on the table and the patch was already shaved and he had the drill like an inch from her head and Ron was like 'what the fuck are you doing?' Markoff looked up and he said, 'Gosh Ron, this procedure is called a ventricular shunt. You might have known that if you bothered to go to med school.’ He put the drill to the girl's head but then the drill went flying out of his hand and across the room straight into Ron's hand.”
“Oh my,” I gasped.
“Yeah, well, everybody was totally shocked and that ditz Gina Gibbons, who was assisting, started screaming and Markoff looked like he was ready to kill someone, namely Ron. Ron told him that the girl was his patient she wasn’t going to get a shunt. He handed me the drill which I then dropped on the floor and so he yelled at me to get scrubbed and told ditz Gina to shut her trap and prep for .1mm laser sutures and that we were going to go in through the left Eustachian tube. Markoff started screaming that we couldn’t do that, we would make her deaf and Spaceforce was going to sue us up one side and down another but Ron was like, 'Markoff, shut the fuck up or I'm going to throw you out.’”
“Oh lord, we are so dead,” I muttered and wondered if Thad could get me a job or if Kenak would take me back. “So what happened next?”
“Well,” Janet shuddered and took a deep breath, “Ron had this idea that she had a couple of bleeders hidden underneath the temporal lobe, but nobody could see them on the scans because they were so tiny. He didn’t think that the concussion and infection were all that bad, that they didn't need to be drained anyway, but would clear by themselves when the bleeders were cauterized. And, he wanted to go in through her ear so she wouldn't have a hole in her head and be out of commission for three months or more. So, he did. Then, he resealed the ear drum after he came back out so she shouldn't have any hearing loss despite what Dr. Markoff said.”
“And, she's okay?” I prompted.
“Think so. She went into recovery when I left and her numbers looked good.”
“Was this a new technique or something? Is that what the problem was?”
“Oh, totally,” Janet replied. “Nobody ever goes in that way. So, I'm sure Ron didn't have permission to do it from Admin and he cussed out Markoff who left in a huff when she went into recovery. But, let me tell you, before Markoff left he announced to everyone that Ron was the Infidel returned and the Saintists were going to kill him before he destroyed what was left of Rozari.”
“My goodness,” I snorted. “All this because they were fighting over a patient?”
“Did you know that he could do stuff like that?” Janet narrowed her eyes at me.
“What? Go in through the ear drum?”
“No, the flying drill! Like…like magic kind of stuff. Telekinesis. Do you remember when he first came to the hospital and made that pitcher of water fly? I forgot all about that until now. Did you and Dr. Kenak know about that?”
I was about to answer but the door swung open and the doctor himself stormed in. Without acknowledging us, he went into his own office and slammed the door.
“Wish me luck,” I said to Janet and slipped my shoes back on. “I'm going in.”
“Luck,” Janet mumbled and frowned.
Ron was leaning back in his chair smoking a cigarette. He had his bare feet up on the desk.
“Didn't your mother ever tell you not to put your dirty feet on the furniture?” I said.
“Nope,” he replied, blowing smoke into the air.
“She left that to the servants?”
“She left everything to the servants.”
“Royal prerogative?”
“Shelly,” he said tiredly. “On my trip through her birth canal, I shredded her uterus with my …uh…toe nails, and she bled out.”
“Oh! Poor thing! I hope you don't blame yourself for that.”
He didn’t respond.
“Well,” I continued brightly. “As your adoptive mother, I'm telling you to take your dirty feet off of the furniture.”
He looked at me through his dark glasses as if he didn’t know who I was.
“Really?”
“Yes,” I said. “About time you got some manners. Don't mess up the furniture, don't cuss at your bosses, don't make things fly about the room, and don't do procedures if you haven't cleared them with Admin.”
He smiled. “Ok, Mum.” He didn't move his feet.
“So did your privileges get yanked?” I prompted.
“Temporarily,” he sighed. “But I was planning to take a few days off anyway.”
“Thanks for informing me,” I replied. “Shall I close the office?”
He shrugged. “Ask Janet if she wants to see patients. Otherwise, let Markoff have them all. I don’t give a damn.”
“When will you be back?”
He stared at the ceiling for a moment. “I won’t. I’m going to be permanently suspended tomorrow. We shall have to move over to my new hospital even though it's not quite ready yet.”
“What new hospital?”
He took a long drag on his cigarette. “The one that Thad has built over in Kalika-hahr.”
“SdK Corporation?” I asked.
He nodded. “Mhm.”
“Ok,” I said. “I’m going to go home now. The grandkids are coming over. Let me know when and where I need to come back to work.”
“Ok,” he shrugged.
I walked to the door.
“You take it easy these next few days. Don't worry about anything. Just stay home and rest.”
He laughed. “Oh, I intend to. I promise not to get out of bed for three days.”
“What does that mean?”
He smiled wickedly, showing all of his beautiful white teeth.
“I don't want to know,” I decided and walked out the door.
Chapter 2
Katie
My head was splitting. It hurt worse, a thousand times worse than my worst migraine. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t speak. I didn't know if I made any noise or not but I felt like all I could do was whimper. Then there was a cool hand on my head. It sucked the heat right out from my skull. It stroked my face and the pain poured out into it. I started to cry because the pain was leaving me and I could breathe again. I opened my eyes into the silver light.
“Senya!” I opened my arms to him an
d he climbed into bed with me. His skin was cool against mine and both familiar and new. He was no longer a teenager and his beard stubble scratched my cheek. He kissed me and touched me with his hands and his mouth. “Senya,” I cried over and over though the words never escaped my lips, never left the depths of my mind.
He was saying something to me, speaking to me but I didn’t understand him. The words were foreign. He pushed himself into me and it hurt. I was so confused. Senya never hurt me. Senya and I fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Senya was a figment of my imagination. I didn’t know who this man was and why he was doing this to me or how I came to be so weak that I could only lie here and let him.
I opened my eyes. It was morning and sunlight was streaming in from the windows. I had no idea where I was or how I got here. It looked like a hospital room but definitely was not the sickbay on the ship. My head hurt in a bruised way and my left ear felt like I had an ear infection. I held up my arms and examined the cuts and bruises on them.
“Well, there she is, back with the living!” It was Jerry coming through the door. “How are you feeling, Goldie?”
Caroline followed him. “Did breakfast come yet?”
I stared at them totally confused.
Jerry sat down and took my hand. He told me about the fire on board the ship and the console that fell on me. “So Command wanted you treated by Dr. de Kudisha and so you had surgery yesterday and now you're going to be fine.”
“What kind of surgery?” I wiggled my fingers and toes. Nothing felt too sore.
“You had brain surgery, honey,” Caroline said, taking my other hand.
“I had brain surgery yesterday?”
“Yes,” Caroline gave my hand a squeeze. “But the Rozarian doctor used this brand new procedure on you so you don't have any holes in your head and you're good to go. You may even get released today if you feel up to it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Great.” I had brain surgery and hallucinated Senya again.
The door opened and a young Human nurse came in with a breakfast tray.
“Here you go, Commander Golden,” she said and placed it in front of me. Doctor will be here shortly. He said he's going to release you this morning.”
