Dream Called Time by S. L. Viehl

Author:S. L. Viehl [Viehl, S. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Medical, Women physicians
ISBN: 9780451463463
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2010-08-03T06:00:00+00:00

Shon returned to Medical with most of the staff, a dozen guards, and all of the Hsktskt on gurneys. Most of the lizards were semiconscious but still very sluggish from cold exposure. PyrsVar volunteered to tend to them in order to free up the staff, and I accepted immediately. We had five times as many injured crew members to assess and treat, and more would probably be arriving as search teams cleared corridors and checked other areas of the ship.

I asked Shon to supervise the treatment of the copilot with the burned, broken arm. Even if he couldn’t use his ability, he was an extremely capable physician and was particularly gifted in dealing with orthopedic cases. While he worked on him, I ended up back in surgery with a female maintenance technician who had been loading temporary-shelter materials onto a launch, and reported with a plasteel rod protruding from one side of her torso. She’d limped to Medical on her own while using another rod as a makeshift crutch.

“Others needed the gurneys more than I,” she said, glancing down at the rod in her side. “I would have removed it myself, Healer, but for what you taught us during our first aid training.”

“You probably would have lost a lot more blood if you had.” I couldn’t remember her or the training she had mentioned. “When did you take that first-aid course?”

“Last year. I asked about the proper treatment of botanical poisons, and you said . . .” She stopped and made a quick gesture. “Forgive me, Healer, but it was your other self who trained us. Jarn thought all of the crew should be ready to minister to themselves and each other in times of emergency. She said that was the way of her people.”

Jarn was dead and gone, but she was still managing to piss me off. “Her people were unwanted slaves left to die on a very nasty world. We’re a little more civilized and sophisticated than they were.”

She moved her shoulders. “Perhaps here we will be the same.”

By the end of the day we had admitted twelve patients and had ordered twenty more back to their quarters to rest and recover from stress fractures, contusions, and lacerations. In addition to the impact injuries, every patient I saw had suffered a mild to moderate case of hypothermia.

I scheduled two more shifts in addition to our standard rotation so that no one worked in Medical for longer than a few hours at a time. None of my weary staff protested. Then I left the bay in Shon’s hands as I went to find Xonea.

I found my ClanBrother coordinating repairs from the secondary command center in the heart of Engineering. The technicians and mechanical support crew were working feverishly to restore power and function to the rest of the ship while the engineers assessed the damage to the engines. Xonea listened without comment to my report on the condition of the pilot and the number of wounded we had treated.

“So

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