Analog SFF, April 2012 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines

* * *

Short Story: FOLLOW-UP

by Stephen L. Burns

Everything involves trade-offs. . . .

Dr. Sissy Alvarez knocked back the dregs of coffee-flavored energy drink, then crushed the disposable cup.

“Please admit the next patient,” she said as she tossed the cup into the waste bin and stepped up to the scrub station.

“Admitting next patient.” Aidmit, the system that controlled her unit, spoke in a crisp, only faintly artificial newsreader's voice. It was easy to hear over the almost criminally innocuous mashuclassical music playing quietly in the background. The music evoked pastoral vistas, but did nothing to soften the industrial sterility of her surroundings.

Sissy glanced back over her shoulder as the self-guided gurney glided in, rolled to the center of the unit, and transferred her next patient to the operating table. As she watched, the scrubber chimed, letting her know that she was now properly antiseptic for her next procedure.

As she stepped back the hut quivered at the sound of a distant explosion. She ignored it, just like she'd ignored all the others she'd heard that day. She was so used to them as the other background music for her work that it took debris pinging off the roof over the unit to make her look up.

“Let's see what we've got,” she said.

Aidmit had already collected the data from the gurney. “Patient is male, age twenty-two. Present status: stabilized by field medic; fluids and Schedule A analgesics administered, along with Unipress and TourniQuit to control bleeding. Pre-op has anesthetized patient, removed field dressings, and set up fluid and salvage tanks.” A pause. “Report on patient injuries?”

“I can see them, unless there are any surprises,” Sissy said, shaking her head as she looked over the figure atop the table, automatically categorizing the injuries presented in order of severity. They were all, of course, severe. The human body being punctured by chunks of metal and ceramic traveling at high velocity guaranteed brutal trauma. Any lesser wounds would have been treated at the front.

Already the order in which the patient's injuries would be addressed had taken shape in Sissy's mind. Not so much from conscious deliberation, but from having made such dire choices so many times before. Fifteen years in a downtown Detroit ER, and now the time she had spent here, had given her a terrible and bloody knowledge base to draw upon.

“Let's get to it. Scan and prep.”

“Working,” Aidmit replied.

The Experimental Field Surgical Unit filled the hut, and Sissy was as much inside it as her patient. Inside the hut you were inside the guts of the EFSU—everybody called it eff-sue—and the expectation was that one of the two people inside would emerge in far better shape than they'd been in when they entered.

There was a muted hum as the scanhead built into the operating table's top began to move, starting at the patient's bare feet and tracking up toward his head, sending the information it gathered to the Cellular Resolution Hybrid Tomograph. A crawling blue laser line projected from above indicated the progress of the scan.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.