Star Healer by James White

Author:James White [White, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCience Fiction
ISBN: 9780708881873
Publisher: Futura
Published: 1987-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“You can refuse the cases,” O’Mara said quietly, “but you will have to give us a better reason than that they appear to be hopeless. As we have mentioned before, as a Diagnostician on probationary status you will be given what seems like an unfair share of such cases. This is to accustom you to the idea that the hospital must deal with partial successes and failures as well as nice, tidy, and complete cures. Up until now you have never had to concern yourself with problems of aftercare, have you, Conway?”

“I realize that,” he replied angrily, because it sounded as though he was being criticized for past successes, or being accused of grandstanding in some obscure fashion. And then he began to wonder if his anger was due to there being a certain amount of truth in the accusation. More quietly, he went on, “Perhaps

I’ve been lucky.. .“

“As well as surgically adept,” Thornnastor interjected.

..... In the past with cases which could only be complete successes or utter failures,” he went on.

“But these patients . . . Even with the life-

support systems in continuous operation it seems to me that they are only technically alive, and I would need Prilicla’s empathic faculty simply to verify that fact.”

“Prilicla sent these casualties to us,” one of the Kelgians said who had not previously spoken.

“Clearly, it did not consider them hopeless. Are you in difficulties deciding on procedure, Conway?”

“Certainly not!” Conway said sharply. He went on. “I know Prilicla and Cinrusskins tend to be incurable optimists. Unpleasant ideas like the thought of failure with a patient, or a case that is hopeless from the start, are utterly foreign to it. There have been times when it shamed me into feeling the same way. But now I am being realistic. It appears to me that two, perhaps three of these four cases are little more than not quite dead specimens for investigation by Pathology.”

“At last you are showing signs of accepting your situation, Conway,”

Thornnastor said in its slow, ponderous voice. “You may never again be able to concentrate your entire mind and capabilities on a single patient, and you must learn to accept failure and make your failures contribute to your future successes. It is possible that you will lose all four of your patients, or you may save all of them. But no matter what procedure and treatment you decide upon, and the good or bad results which ensue, you will use your multiply augmented mind to learn whether or not that same mind is stable enough to endure and maintain control over your procedures, whether personally performed or delegated.

“You will also bear constantly in mind,” the senior Diagnostician went on, “the fact that while treating your four cases from the Menelden emergency list, you have other concerns. The FROB

geriatric problem, our presently unsatisfactory organ replacement postoperative difficulties, the approaching parturition of your Protector, and even, if its presence suggests a new viewpoint or procedure on any of these problems, the data provided by the nonerasable mind of your Gogleskan friend.

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