by S. E. Sasaki
To Grace, it seemed like a very big ‘if’.
“Neither the lungs nor the heart are salvageable. The major problem is whether we have replacement lungs and heart large enough to adequately serve this patient. What kind of animal adaptation is it?” Grace asked.
“She,” Dr. Al-Fadi emphasized. “A she-bear adapt. A grizzly bear adaptation, actually, and she stands at almost three meters tall. We have no vat grown organs large enough to fit her. We can replace with biomechanical organs or keep her in cryostorage until we grow organs large enough for her. What would be your choice, Dr. Grace?”
“Are the biomechanical organs capable of handling the size of this patient?”
“Excellent question, Dr. Grace,” sighed Dr. Al-Fadi. “I knew you were not just a pretty face. You remind me of myself, when I was younger, except that you are tall, blonde, beautiful, and female, whereas I was short, bald, irresistible, and all male. But, other than that, we could have passed for twins.
“We must wait, Dr. Grace, and vat grow the correct, genetically-adapted heart and lungs to fit this ample, grizzly bear female, in order to successfully treat her. As you surmised. Bioprostheses would be totally inadequate, unless they were made for a grizzly bear to begin with, which unfortunately, they are not. We will have to keep Miss Grizzly in cryostasis until then.
“Luckily, I stopped the nurses from beginning the cryothaw this morning or we would have had a disaster on our hands. Instead, we will be operating on a wolf-adaptation—a she-wolf—with crushed lower limbs. How much wolf anatomy do you know, Dr. Grace?” Dr. Al-Fadi asked.
“About as much as I knew about tigers,” Grace admitted.
“Ah, less than nothing, then. What kind of doctors are they sending me these days? Well, you had better upload all the information you can into your cerebral augmentation unit, before we start the surgery. Otherwise, you will be of no help to me at all, Dr. Grace. Hurry now. You have less than five minutes before we scrub.”
“Yes, sir,” Grace said, and hurried off in search of the closest information terminal she could connect her cerebral augmentation unit to, in order to secure a huge data drop in milliseconds.
Rushing into the doctors’ library and reading room, which was fortunately right next door to the doctors’ lounge, she encountered a tall, dark-haired, drop-dead-gorgeous man, sitting before one of the terminals. All the terminals were in use, but Grace only had eyes for this stunning male. His dark brown eyes were surrounded by the thickest set of lashes Grace had ever seen.
‘Figures’, Grace’s little voice griped sourly. ‘Why is it always the guys who get the great eyelashes?’
The man glanced up at Grace and, when their eyes made contact, Grace felt a shock go through her. She stared into deep, luminous eyes, shaded by curly locks of mahogany brown hair. Those eyes took one look at Grace’s panic-stricken face, and smiled.
Did Grace’s heart actually skip a beat? She almost groaned out loud. This terribly attractive man gracefully got up out of his seat and stepped away from the terminal. He gestured gallantly for Grace to take the seat.
“I see that Dr. Al-Fadi is torturing his new surgical fellow already,” the man said, in a low, velvety voice that made Grace feel all warm inside. He looked sympathetically at her, through his tousled, brunette bangs. “May I offer my condolences to you? He can be a bit excitable, our Chief of Staff. I believe the good doctor suffers from a severe case of Megalomaniac Hyperactivity Disorder for which, unfortunately for you, there is no cure. But remember one thing, Doctor: ‘His bark is far worse than his bite’ and, of course, he is an extremely talented and gifted surgeon, even if his teaching methods and people skills leave much to be desired.”
Before Grace could stutter out a ‘thank you’ to this bewitching man, he disappeared from the library. Wasting no time, she quickly uncovered the cerebral augmentation plug behind her left ear, sprayed the contact with sterilizer, and then plugged the output cable from the terminal into her aug-unit. She then began frantically searching for the desired files. Hopefully, the system was not too slow, and she would get her upload with time to review the information before the surgery started. Wistfully, as she waited for the file to come up on wolf anatomy, physiology, and adaptation surgery, and for all the data to then upload to her cerebral augmentation unit, she speculated on who the handsome, dark-haired gentleman was.
Presumably, since he was in the doctors’ library, he was another physician. She’d hardly had any time to meet anyone other than Dr. Al-Fadi and Dr. Cech and a few nurses on the wards. She wondered if he were one of the other surgeons. Certainly he had been more than easy on the eyes, and in possession of normal teeth, normal fingernails, and no fur. These were all decidedly good things, as far as Grace was concerned, silently wincing as she thought about the tiger scores on her arms.
It had been quite some time since Grace had met anyone that had actually caught her eye, never mind shake her right down to her toes. The man possessed a glance as potent as a lightning strike. Work had always been too demanding and had always come first and, of course, Grace had always been so dedicated to her studies for her to bother with men. Plus, with all the traveling she did, it was pretty much impossible to have any sort of meaningful relationship with anyone. The pain and distress of separation had just never seemed worth it. But, surprisingly, she found herself looking forward to casting her tired eyes on that comely physician again.
“This poor wolf patient was working on a frozen planet that the Conglomerate is hoping to eventually terraform for human habitation, Dr. Grace. She fell into a deep crevice in the ice. As she was trying to climb out, the ice shifted and crushed both of her lower limbs. She fell unconscious before she could call for help. Her co-workers did not even know she was in trouble for a couple of hours. They were all working separately, at different tasks, in different locations, setting up geological monitoring equipment in various sites, out of visual range of each other.
“Unacceptable practice! Contravening all the safety rules, the fools!” Dr. Al-Fadi exclaimed, as he and Grace prepped the patient for her operation.
“She was in a spacesuit, not a battlesuit, so no emergency pressure bags, no emergency fluids, no antibiotics, no nanobots, no cryogenic stasis, and worst of all, no emergency beacon when she got injured. The ice that crushed her limbs was so cold, however, that it apparently cauterized her wounds even though the integrity of her suit was not broken, so she was still supplied with oxygen. Her wolf adaptation helped keep her barely warm enough, until they found her. She was popped into a cryopod as soon as they extricated her from the ice crevice and then she was sent here,” Dr. Al-Fadi said, as he began to work on the patient.
“There are major flaws in these damned ‘spacesuits’. They should be designed to immediately detect any damage to the integrity of the suit. They should detect any medical emergency in the wearer of the suit, so that an alarm goes off centrally and everyone is alerted to the problem. I am going to put this in my next report to the Conglomerate—those stupid bastards never read them!—with recommended upgrades to these spacesuits. It would not cost that much more to design and manufacture better suits. They would save on manpower. The cheap bastards are only ever interested in profits.” Dr. Al-Fadi was now frantically waving the laser knife around in his tirade.
“If manpower was cheap, and androids and robots could do everything, Dr. Grace, we would not have a job. The Conglomerate would be letting all these poor soldiers and workers die. But for now, they still need higher thinking beings, so at least they could spend the money protecting people properly. I tell you, it drives me crazy, Dr. Grace.”
“Crazier than he already is,” Dr. Cech commented quietly, looking seriously at Grace.
Grace savagely bit her lip, behind her surgical mask, to prevent a chuckle from escaping as Dr. Al-Fadi said, “I heard that, you ingrate.”
“And for what am I being ungrateful?” asked the anesthetist.
“All the work I give you,” Dr. Al-Fad
i replied.
“Ah, all the work which I could do without,” Dr. Cech sighed.
“And the stimulating conversation . . .”
“Ah, all the monotonous droning and nonstop ranting of which I most certainly could do without,” the anesthetist said, with a wink at Grace. “Shall I show you all the stuffed cotton I put in my ears, when I know I am working with you, Hiro?”
“You deliberately shun the pearls of wisdom I generously and kindly toss your way? This is unforgivable and precisely why I call you ‘ingrate’,” Dr. Al-Fadi exclaimed.
“And most deservedly so,” Dejan answered, ruefully. “Because, Hiro, you are the best ‘straight-man’ I have ever had—the best ‘short man’, as well—but, beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Insults, as well? You dare. Pay attention to your work, ingrate, and leave the talking to the Great One!”
“Oh? Is she coming in here?”
“Pah! Do not listen to a word this ‘ingrate’ utters, Dr. Grace. He sows disrespect every time he opens his mouth.”
“I always tell you I respect you, after I abuse you, Hiro. You know that,” Dr. Cech said earnestly.
Grace could not help it. A tiny snort escaped, which she tried to cover with a cough.
Dr. Al-Fadi looked up at her, through his magnifying loupes, perched precariously on the tip of his nose. His dark eyes loomed enormous.
“Oh, Dr. Grace, do not succumb to the impertinent inanities that erupt from the mouth of this reprobate, here,” Dr. Al-Fadi said. “His ridiculous, scurrilous nonsense does not warrant your slightest attention.”
“Yes, sir,” Grace said. “Sorry, sir.”
“Now, pay attention to what we are doing here. Are you here to assist me or hinder me?”
“Assist you, sir,” Grace said.
“He needs all the help he can get . . . and then some,” Dr. Cech whispered, very loudly. “But hinder his talking as much as you can, Dr. Lord. Please.”
“Shut up, ingrate!”
“Tyrant!”
“Villain!”
“Megalomaniac!”
Grace shook her head. She was amazed at how Dr. Al-Fadi could operate seamlessly, without a hitch, as he lectured and argued and bantered with Dr. Cech. His hands were continuously moving and so fast that she found it difficult to keep up with him. It required her fullest attention to just keep pace. And the only thing that outmatched his skill was his imagination. He was a fearless surgeon, not afraid to devise anything to put the patient back in working order. He truly left her breathless, as he quickly and skillfully attached two lower prosthetic limbs, covered in artificial wolf fur, to the patient’s repaired torso in an astonishingly short period of time.
The surgical android, SAMM-E 777, kept pace with Dr. Al-Fadi, every step of the way, almost as if the android could actually read the surgeon’s mind. Grace really felt superfluous to the entire operation, but she tried to keep up, as best she could, and remember as much as possible. After three hours of operating time that seemed to have gone by in a flash, they were closing the patient’s incisions up.
“Dr. Grace, we shall leave the ingrate to his task of seeing if he can revive the patient long enough to get her to the recovery room. Where, thank all of the heavens, she will pass on into the loving and more knowledgeable hands of the post-operative nurses and out of this incompetent’s hands.”
‘Sticks and stones, Dr. Al-Fadi. They do not become you,” Dr. Cech said. “But, if you must resort to such pitiful abuse, I must declare that you have conceded victory to me.”
“Never, you delusional fool. You could never outdo me on any grounds.”
“I’m taller than you,” Cech said, a smug expression on his uncovered face.
“Any grounds of significance.”
“I have more hair than you.”
“. . . Shut up!”
When Dr. Al-Fadi, Dr. Cech, and Grace entered the doctors’ lounge, there were three people, all dressed in green scrubs, already seated in there. One was a robust, dark-haired woman of medium height, with a warm smile and twinkly, blue eyes.
“Ah, Hiro. It is good to see you. Have you been staying out of trouble?” she asked, in a warm, mellifluous voice. She smiled at Dr. Cech and nodded to Grace.
“Octavia, what a pleasure. You make my eyes cry out with glee. Dr. Grace Lord, may I introduce to you the charming, brilliant, effervescent Dr. Octavia Weisman, our chief neurosurgeon, and the most beautiful woman I have ever met—next to my wife, of course,” Dr. Al-Fadi said. He bowed deeply towards the neurosurgeon.
Dr. Octavia Weisman laughed heartily and said, “Hiro, you are so full of crap . . . but thank you for the compliment, anyway. At my age, I will take whatever I can get.” The neurosurgeon turned her sparkling, inquisitive blue eyes on Grace.
“Dr. Lord, welcome to the Nelson Mandela. This is my research fellow, Dr. Morris Ivanovich, and one of our anesthetists, Dr. Natasha Bartlett.” Grace bowed to both the tall, pale, dark-haired neurosurgical fellow and the stocky, strawberry-blonde haired anesthetist.
“We are so pleased that you chose to come here to train with us, Dr. Lord. I got a chance to look at your resumé and it was very impressive. You have accomplished so much, at your young age. I hope Dr. Al-Fadi will allow you to come and work with me, for some of your stay here on the station. Perhaps we can entice you into switching to full-time neurosurgery.
“We are making so many exciting breakthroughs in our research into the recovery of the memories and personalities of brain-injured patients. We are working on successfully salvaging these personalities, which can then be uploaded into android bodies or cloned organic bodies. It really is the stuff of science fiction, finally coming true.”
“How do the patients adapt to finding themselves in a synthetic body?” asked Grace.
“Well,” Dr. Weisman said, with a big sigh, “believe me, it is a big shock to them at first. Imagine being in the midst of battle, being blown to bits, and waking up in a strange, mechanical body. A few seem to quickly realize the advantages to having a tougher, stronger, faster, super-body, that is for all intents and purposes, immortal. Those individuals come around pretty quickly. But most individuals are devastated, at least initially. The men, especially, seem to find the loss of sexual function upsetting . . . which, I suppose, is understandable.
“Some people, though, have difficulty accepting the fact that they are not human anymore. For those patients, we try to re-implant their memories back into their cloned organic bodies, but unfortunately we have had only mixed success.”
“Why is that?” asked Grace.
“In some cases, the implantation of the memory does not take and the body dies. We do not know why. In other cases, the implantation of the memory is a success but the patient does not feel like themselves anymore. Somehow, their new bodies just never seem right. Often those patients go on to develop serious depression or psychosis. Some do not recover from the battle trauma memories and cannot accept being alive, while all of their squad mates are dead. Others go on to full cure and are delighted in their new bodies. Why some work and others don’t, we are still trying to figure out. Perhaps you would be interested in helping us do research in that area?”
“No you don’t, Octavia. How dare you try and steal my surgical fellow right out from under me? And right before my very own eyes, no less. You vixen. I would not have believed it of you, if I did not actually see it happening. And to think I was foolish enough to actually introduce my surgical fellow to you. I have always considered you an ethical woman, Dr. Weisman, but now I am not so sure.”
Dr. Weisman gave her low, throaty laugh again and patted Dr. Al-Fadi on the arm.
“I just wanted to see your reaction, Hiro. You are always so fun to tease. But I do want Dr. Lord to understand that, if she wearies of your abuse, she has somewhere to go—someone caring to turn to—who will be warm and sympathetic. I am always looking for bright assistants to help in my research and I am well aware of your track record with
your surgical fellows, even if Dr. Lord is not.”
Octavia Weisman turned back to Grace with a warm, winning smile on her attractive face.
“You must come by our unit, Dr. Lord. Do not be afraid of Dr. Al-Fadi here. His bark is far worse than his bite. I would love to show you around our ward and discuss our work . . . As long as Dr. Al-Fadi approves, of course.”
“Only as long as you behave, my dear,” Dr. Al-Fadi said, crossing his arms and frowning.
“When do I not, Hiro?” Octavia Weisman asked.
“Almost never,” exclaimed the little surgeon. “I always have to keep an eye on you. Even with the excellent eyes in the back of my head, I can’t always keep up with whatever you are up to, you sneaky woman.”
“A woman’s prerogative, Hiro,” Dr. Weisman said, winking and laughing. “And when are you and Dejan going to come by for your memory recordings? I told you, I want a copy of all staff members’ memories uploaded, as soon as possible. Just in case anything happens to any one of you, I want your full personalities and memories stored on file.”
“So you can keep bringing me back and haunting me forever, woman? What do I look like to you? A crazy person?”
“That, and then some,” Dr. Cech offered.
“No one asked you,” Dr. Al-Fadi snapped at him.
Dr. Weisman smiled. “You can leave instructions with us on what you want to have done with your memory. You don’t have to be resurrected, if you do not wish this. It is totally up to you. Once we have you on memcrystal, if you die from whatever cause, your personality can be implanted into a vat-grown clone of your original DNA, an android, or a vat-grown body that is not of your original DNA. You can stipulate what you want done. Your wishes will be respected and followed. I really would like you two to cooperate. We need to keep both of your memories, with your vast knowledge and experience, on file. Please. If something happened to either of you and we did not have your memories stored, I would be heartbroken.”