The Chronicles of Vallanie Sharp: Novice

by Morgan Feldman

Scia lost some of her respect among her peers after Zack’s outburst and tried to make up for it by pushing me to take his place as the best in our class. I worked hard, but her expectations seemed to be rising faster than I could meet them. So I was caught completely off guard when she announced I was ready to direct an interview. She told me the news at breakfast, immediately after asking how I’d slept, and just before she began her usual updates on medical politics.

  I nearly dropped my fork. I was instantly excited, but the excitement was quickly extinguished by a flood of fear. I thought for sure I’d mess up. I couldn’t afford that, not when I needed to prove to Scia that I was worth something, and prove to everyone else that Scia was still the best mentor of all.

  I tried to look calm and collected while I finished my fruit, which was quite difficult since it felt like my neurons were playing a game of pinball across my brain. But I somehow managed and, before I could comprehend it, I was standing in front of room 218 with my radix in my palm, the patient’s file clear across the screen: male, unmarried, late forties, Mr. Ram. Visit due to multiple undermined diagnoses as a perceiver.

  It wasn’t at all reassuring to realize just before I made my first diagnosis that, if it was undermined, I could end up a patient myself.

  Brushing the thought aside by reminding myself they were just cracking down because of Zack, I looked up to light spilling between the doors as they slid open. I walked through them, the same as I had a thousand times before. Only this time, Scia wasn’t in front of me, so when the cold dark eyes of the patient looked up to the cause of his inconvenience, they found me.

  My breath caught and I nearly stumbled. I recognized those eyes. I recognized that face. It was Altus.

  He blinked, almost startled, but before I could decide for certain, the emotion had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Good Morning,” he said cheerfully, as if it was any other day.

  I turned to Scia, fumbling for a response. This must be a mistake. Surely Altus wasn’t in need of an examination. It must be a test, I realized suddenly, scolding myself for thinking Scia would actually let conduct a real examination. Well, I’d pass it with ease and show her just how much I was worth. I turned back to Altus with a practiced smile. “Good Morning, Mr, uh, Ram.” I tried to create the robotic tone I’d heard in my mentor’s voice, but it sounded more like I was narrating a bad horror film. I went back to my usual tone. “I’m Miss Sharp.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Sharp.” His face remained serious but his eyes gleamed with a sense of amusement at the hidden irony in his words.

  I sat down across from him, adjusting the arms of my chair. “Why is it that you’re here, today?”

  “Well, usually, I’m here because I work here.” He leaned back in his chair, lifting his right leg to rest his ankle on his left knee. “But today, it appears they don’t want me to work here anymore, so they asked me to come here. It’s ironic, when you think about it.”

  I bit my lip, looking down to keep from laughing. Couldn’t he at least try to take this seriously? “Why don’t they want you to work here anymore?”

  He shrugged. “Why do they want you to work here?”

  He was turning the questions around on me. I wasn’t going to fall for that trick. “That’s not relevant, as you should know. How long have you been a perceiver?”

  “I think about…” he pretended to count on his fingers, moving them back and forth through several waves before looking up and answering, “seven years.”

  “That’s a long time. What made you decide to stop?”

  “I never stopped.” He tilted his head to the side, peering at me with an expression I couldn’t account for, in a way that made me feel like I was being studied, classified, without any ill-intent: the way perceivers are supposed to make patients feel, not the other way around. “You never answered my question about why you wanted to work here,” he continued. His shoulders inched forward, his eyes locking onto mine. “I’ll answer it for you. You wanted to help people. You wanted to change the world, or make a difference in society, or do something meaningful in your life.”

  He paused, waiting for me to respond, but I followed proper protocol and remained silent.

  After a moment, his gaze slipped away from me, and he slowly leaned back once more. “At least, that’s what I imagined. They tell you that you will have the opportunity to help cure people from terrible diseases, but I’ve not seen one person be cured. Changed, sure, but not cured. No, to be cured, one has to return to their natural healthy mental state. These people are altered by what other people want. But how do we know what’s best for them? How can we look at someone and tell them, with certainty, what is best for them?”

  “The charts know best.” I realized I’d answered the question before I could stop myself. I’d become so wrapped up in his words that I’d forgotten why it was we were having this conversation in the first place. I had to regain the upper hand before Scia noticed. I asked the first thing that popped into my head. “Have you ever found them to be wrong?”

  “Oh, yes.” He nodded. “More than you can imagine. I would bet, if you got to know your patients, you would see the same. Have you ever thought about that? It may be easy to diagnose a stranger, but how about someone you know? It’s different to look at a patient as a mother or a brother than it is a stranger you will never see again.” The white of his robes surrounded him like a halo against the dark of the chair. Unlike the hundreds of patients I had seen before, they didn’t swallow him, but empowered him. “I started to realize they are not sick, not in the way we think, but just misunderstood. They can’t help their differences. Instead of trying to make them more like us, I think we should learn to accept them.”

  I needed to stop with the open-ended questions. “By differences, you mean illnesses?”

  “I mean-”

  “Yes, or no, please,” I said sharply.

  He looked disappointed, but his gaze didn’t falter. “No.”

  “What do you mean then?” I couldn’t help myself. I was curious.

  “I mean they have a different way of looking at their life. They have different values and priorities.”

  “If a person’s values are different from society’s, is that not harmful?”

  “Not necessarily-”

  “Yes or no?”

  “It depends.”

  “Are you saying you can not give me a concrete answer?”

  “I’m saying there are multiple answers, depending on numerous variables.”

  His inability to answer yes or no was indicative of an illness, but at the same time, it made sense. His words were definitely wrong, but it scared me that I wasn’t sure if they were crazy, or genius. It scared me more that I half believed he believed them himself. “So, you think patients who exhibit all signs of these so called “differences” should be allowed to roam free, with no medical intervention?”

  “Medical intervention is fine, just not to the extent the healers use. Do you know what it is they do?”

  “That is not relevant-“

  “I think it is.” He adjusted himself so both feet were anchored firmly on the ground and leaned slightly forward. “You sit here and diagnose patients, giving the order for how they should be treated, and you don’t even know what this treatment does to them. How do you know it isn’t harmful?”

  “I can assure you, I’ve seen the benefits it has on society.”

  “On society maybe, but at the cost of the individual?”

  I swallowed. “If you don’t agree with our current treatments, what would you propose we do?”

  “That’s for you to decide.” He ran a hand through his beard, looking at me thoughtfully before continuing, “Often, a patient’s symptoms come from something beyond their control. They are being mistreated, oppressed, even-“

  “Mistreated? Oppressed? In what way?”

  “Misunderstanding. Fear. Ignorance.”

  This would have been so much easi
er if it wasn’t Altus. I wanted to continue to hear what he had to say, but I knew Scia wouldn’t approve. I reminded myself that this was just a test. I could ask him about it later, if I really cared. I had to go back to a closed question. “You think people are in the wrong to demonstrate these feelings towards those who are defective?”

  “Very much so, yes.”

  I leaned back, fixing my posture so my shoulders were square and my spine was lengthened. “If you were to resume your duty as a perceiver, what would you do?”

  “I would continue to meet with my patients and discuss their problems with them.”

  “And if there was any danger involved, would you turn them over to the healers?”

  “That would depend-”

  “Yes or no?”

  He answered quietly but firmly, “No.”

  That was wrong, that was so very wrong, and perhaps the final confession I needed to get. I glanced to Scia, who gave one quick short nod that told me to wrap it up. “Well, that is all.” I tried to keep my voice steady, while my insides were summer salting in joy. Even if the case was fake, I knew I did a good job. “Someone will be with you shortly.”

  I remember every heavy stride that took me to the door, and the few long seconds that encompassed me as I waited for it to slide open, then shut behind me.

  “Well?” Scia asked, the corner of her lips nearing a smile.

  “Defective.” I said in a rush. “He is certainly not fit to be a perceiver.”

  She pulled out her radix with a small smile. “Correct. Were you able to make a specific diagnosis?”

  I had to bite the side of my lip to keep from smiling. I was almost certain I was right, but it would be devastating to think I was and be proved wrong. “Slither.”

  “Correct.” Her eyes glinted as she typed Ratus Retorta in on the screen. “And treatment?”

  I swallowed, the temptation to smile evaporated as I suddenly became uncertain. I knew the answer, but why was she typing it in? It had been a test, right? I felt my throat dry out as I realized it wasn’t. It was real, and I felt overwhelmed with guilt as I forced the words from my lips, “Complete Reinstallation.”

  Chapter 10: Upper Floors