Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  “That’s good medicine,” Althea corrected. “Or haven’t you read your studies of the effects of anesthetics on the conscious mind? Most species listen to and understand and are affected by what they hear when they’re under. In fact, you’ve got a pipeline straight to the raw psyche right then, bypassing all the usual protections we put on what we hear. Tell a patient something while he’s on the table and he’ll take it as from the mouth of the Deity-of-His-Choice. So I tell them they’re doing fine, make jokes about the mess they got themselves in, tell them that the staff on the Hawking is going to put in some improvements that’ll wow the extremities off their mates. Lots of times I get kids pulling through that had no right to.”

  The rest of the staff had recognized that she was having one of those conferences with a new doctor; the mess had mysteriously cleared of personnel. Good. Because I’m getting to her, and she won’t perform with an audience.

  “I—didn’t know—” Celia whispered, her eyes dark with some kind of emotion. “But—what if they don’t—pull through? You’ve made them into people for you, and what if—”

  “What if they aren’t faceless simulacra anymore?” Althea gentled her voice; there was an edge of hysteria in Celia’s words that she didn’t want to push just yet. “What if they die?”

  There was no doubt what the emotion was in Celia’s eyes now. It was pain. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t even nod. She just sat there in frozen silence. But her eyes begged for an answer.

  “Celia, that is the price that we pay for being mortal. People die—of stupid things. I lost my mother when a house fell on her.” She shook her head, her mouth twisting in remembered pain, but still able to see the absurdity. “Some idiot was moving a living-unit with an inadequate lifter; he dropped it. It went through the pedwalk and crushed my mother in a shoe store two levels below. Imagine how I felt the first time some poor innocent reacted to a bad mood I was in by asking sarcastically, ‘What’s the matter, did a house fall on your sister?’ Shit happens. You work through it, and live.”

  Celia shook her head, and to Althea’s joy, there were signs of tears in her eyes.

  “We pay doubly, because we are physicians as well as mortals,” she continued. “We have the skills to save lives—”

  “But sometimes we can’t—” Celia choked, and then shut her mouth tightly.

  “Sometimes we can’t,” Althea agreed. “That doesn’t mean we should cut ourselves off from feeling. Not even pain. Pain lets us know we’re alive; so does love. Maybe that’s why we’ve come running out here to get ourselves killed, trying to keep them from turning the rest of the universe into their private lunch counter. I don’t know. I do know that no matter how much feeling costs, I’m not going to stop—because when you stop feeling, you’re dead.”

  Okay, wrap it up, quick. Get out of here so she can recover from what you just shot at her. Althea glanced at her watch and swore. “Damn! I’m in surgery in an hour. I’d better grab a bagel and get out of here.” She reached over and patted Celia’s icy hand. “It was good meeting with you, Celia. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, now that I know who you are.”

  She made a quick exit, snatching a bagel for form’s sake, and headed for her cabin, restraining her feeling of triumph.

  Good work, there. Got some real emotion out of her. She palmed the lock on her door with anticipation. Now to see what Cyclops has for me, and see how close to the bone I came.

  She hit the Enter key on her terminal before she even sat down on her bunk, and to her immense satisfaction, Cyclops had found not one, but two possibilities.

  The first . . .

  Omigod. Med school roomie; best friend. Requested assignment to same ship. And, yes, Celia had been in the trauma room when her roommate came in. The hospital ship itself had taken a hit, and every skilled hand on board had been summoned to duty.

  Probably watched the poor thing die. Althea looked over the old records with a professional eye. God. Gamma rays just sheeted through that compartment. Those weren’t blast burns, not entirely . . . The girl was dead before they took her to the trauma room, just nobody knew it. Not even Jesus Christ himself could have done anything. But I’ll bet Celia never knew that.

  Then two years later—

  Her shrink. Shit, doesn’t it figure. And he would be a classical Freudian, too, which means he encouraged her to fall in love with him as part of the therapy and I’d be willing to pin my job on the fact that she didn’t know he was Freudian. She’d have been better off going to the chaplain, at least he had Gestalt training.

  She lay back on her bed and laced her hands under her head. Celia, Celia, what am I going to do with you? Are you bright enough to actually listen to what I’m telling you? I hope so. Because I can’t have you on my staff otherwise. You’ll wind up killing people and never know you were doing it. But you’re ready to rejoin the world. I can sense it.

  Or else you’ll crack, when we need you most.

  And if it comes to a choice between helping you out of your morass slowly, or getting you out of the way, I’ll commit you on a Psych charge, girl.

  Because while I have compassion for you, I have no pity. I have no time for pity. None of us does.

  Stunned, Celia watched Althea get her bagel and leave the cafeteria. They had spoken maybe four minutes, five tops, but it felt like she had just gone through one of those grueling hour-long sessions with Walt: like a glass of ice water had just been thrown in her face.

  Like she’d just been peeled bare, right down to the bone, then casually put back together.

  What is she? she wondered. How did a paper pusher in administration, a surgeon, get to be so good at getting inside people? During their brief discussion Althea neatly dissected her as if she were some kind of frog, or if she were psychic, or both. She’s in Personnel. She must know everything about me. Janet, my transfers. Walt, the transfers. Celia had never felt more exposed in her life, and it was not a feeling she was comfortable with.

  Her cold breakfast sat untouched in front of her as she wavered between anger and revelation. The ice Althea had just chipped away revealed wounds, not flesh, and she wasn’t certain what she should feel just then.

  Some of the things Althea said were just plain crazy—

  Or were they? She had heard some of them before, like the part about talking to the patients who were under. All the times when she might have done such a thing in surgery, she remembered being so busy with the technicalities of the operation to even consider it.

  Still, it sounded a little wacky, even with evidence to support it.

  Or did it sound wacky because she didn’t want to believe it? Didn’t want to think that some muttered remark, some unthought curse, might have pushed one of her own patients over the edge of survival?

  She sure knew the right buttons to push. Celia shuddered. Who does she think she is, anyway? She reached for the anger, and found that it wasn’t there. Damn it, where did it go? she thought. I have to be angry about this . . . don’t I? If I’m not angry, then what does that mean?

  That I believe what she’s trying to tell me. The exchange rolled over and over in her mind, and Celia tried to analyze it further, looking for the hidden meaning that must have been there. But wasn’t.

  “When you stop feeling, you’re dead,” she whispered. That’s what she said. And damned if that’s not how I’ve been feeling all along.

  Her soul seemed to decompress. A feeling of release filled the void that she had willed all these years; sense that a burden had gone, a feeling of light and weightlessness.

  I can be a doctor and be human, too, she thought. They’re people, not patients. Let them know it.

  Then, another thought; the recollection of Althea’s face, the graying hair. The lines of care and pain that not all the laugh and smile creases could erase.

  She’s lost people, too, and not just her mother. And she lived. She can laugh. She has friends, I know she does—

  Then, gre
atly daring, trying the thought to see if it hurt; I’d like to be her friend.

  She looked up, feeling silly that she was the only one left in the mess hall. She got up and consigned her breakfast to the disposal; she felt strange, as if she’d been hit with some kind of psychotropic drug, and had no idea what it was going to do to her. But even that was better than the emptiness that had been her constant companion all these years.

  Leaving the cafeteria, she entered a triangular hallway of bare steel girders; pretty Spartan for a medical ship, but she knew that the paneling had been stripped earlier for more important sections of the Blackwell. Only a few crew and medical staff wandered the halls. The day for most had begun. Celia glanced at her watch, and, seeing she was late for her shift, walked a little faster.

  From somewhere beneath her came a loud whump.

  It rocked the floor and walls so hard she stumbled and went to her knees. Simultaneously a red alert alarm began wailing in the hall, followed by the flashing red light near every intercom.

  What the hell? she thought madly. But her battlefield training took over and she kept her head low in case something else might explode or fly through the air, working her way over to the wall to clutch at an exposed girder.

  Is this finally it? she wondered, calculating the proximity of the Ichton fleet, which should still be quite far away. Must be something else, but what? The red alert sounded only if a life-threatening situation occurred on the ship, or if the ship itself was in danger.

  Considering the intensity of the explosion, and the fact that they were still docked with the Hawking, it was probably the former. She found a rude laugh somewhere inside her. Ironic, if I die now. At least, she thought whimsically, I’ll have some peace of mind if I do.

  A sharp pain in her right leg hindered her as she tried to get up. Blood had soaked the leg of her uniform, vivid against the white fabric. She swore softly and rolled the leg of her pants up; she found it was a long and shallow gash, bleeding messily, but not immediately threatening. A special patch in the ER would stop the bleeding. Fine and dandy. That’s where she was going anyway. She’d probably cut it when she fell; there was certainly enough crud lying around in the halls because of the repairs going on.

  “Shit happens,” she said to the ship as she hobbled toward the ER. Now, behind her, she heard shouts, and some other ominous, unidentifiable sound. One of the shouts became a scream; she quickened her pace.

  Here we go again, she thought, going into surgeon mode. This isn’t just a job. It’s a fucking adventure!

  When she got to the lifts, she discovered that whatever exploded had apparently taken them out as well. Great, she thought. It’s only two flights. Not bad, even with the artificial gravity. Here’s hoping that stays up.

  It took several more minutes than usual to get to ER. When she finally got there, all hell had broken loose.

  Most alarming was the group of doctors huddled around the medicomp CPU, as if it were a patient, not the marvelous tool the staff had come to depend on. The main screen was blank; one of the doctors slapped the monitor on its side, as if to urge it to life. Nothing happened.

  There were no patients there yet, but she had a sickening feeling there soon would be. “She’s here,” someone said. The room became silent, and one by one all heads turned to her.

  One of the doctors, an older surgeon just months away from retirement, hung up a phone. Dr. Powers’s expression was grave. He saw her, and slowly padded his way through the others. The crowd parted, letting him pass.

  “Dr. Stratford,” he said, glancing briefly at the leg wound. “We should get a patch on that.”

  “In a moment. What happened, Doctor?”

  “It appears,” he began, addressing all present, “that a water boiler in the crew section has exploded, due to residual damage from the last battle. It’s a nasty situation down there, and it’s taken out the airlock along with a few other goodies. We won’t be able to transfer patients to the Hawking until the dock crews get a temporary lock set up, and cut through the old one. Until then, we’re on our own. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for a long night.”

  Celia knew them was more; Dr. Powers didn’t disappoint her.

  “The explosion created a power surge—and repairs had taken the breakers and power cleaners off-line. The surge took the medicomp and a lot of our electronics out as well.” Powers took a deep breath. “Here’s what we’re faced with. We have some telltales, the ones built into the tables. EKG, EEG, body temperature. We have stand-alone equipment, like the oxygen, blood replacement, and suction devices. No laser scalpels; they were slaved to the medicomp, and until we get a tech up here to get them unhooked, they’re useless. No StediGloves.”

  “How’re we going to know where our hands are?” someone wailed.

  Powers gave him a look. “Eyeball. This is going to be metal scalpel and suture time, kids. Nurse Ki’ilee?”

  An odd-looking anthropoid with arms far too long for its uniform stepped to the front of the group. “Thir,” it lisped.

  “Find the autoclave and all the manual gear. I think it’s in one of the holds with the spare IV equipment. Requisition whoever you need to trot it up here and get it set up. On the double.”

  “Thir!” The nurse saluted sharply and ran off. Powers turned to Celia.

  “According to your records, you spec’d in field surgery.” He looked at her as if he expected her to deny it.

  “I did,” she replied.

  A tiny bit of relief crept into his expression. “Then you’re the best CoS we could have right now. What do we do?”

  She froze for a moment—then her mind went into high gear.

  “We’ll be getting patients in here in a moment—” She examined the room. “Triage in the hall; there won’t be room in here. God forbid it happens, but if there are any medical personnel hurt, they get priority. You, you, and you—” She pointed to three nurses. “You’re triage and hall prep. If you spot any paramedics out there, put them on triage and get back in here.”

  She turned her attention back to the huddle of doctors, as a secondary—explosion? Or the crew of the Hawking trying to get in to them?—shook the floor. “Each one of you pick three nurses to help you; you’ll need them. One holds clean instruments, one assists, and one operates the breathing equipment. Put a bucket or a pan under the table for dirty instruments.” She thought quickly as the nurses and doctors together started setting up what they could; even as she thought, the anthropoid nurse arrived with a bulky container on wheels and a line of ships’ personnel with boxes.

  “You sailors!” she snapped—and the men and women came as close to snapping to attention as they could. “You stay here. Nurse, these people are yours for the duration. You set up the autoclave and start sterilizing instruments You sailors, you take clean instruments to the doctors and take the used ones away, back to the nurse. Spray your hands every time you touch something that isn’t clean. Nurse, tell them what you want.”

  The nurse stood up taller with the new increase in status, and began issuing orders in its soft lisp. Celia surveyed the room, and noted the dismay and despair on some faces.

  “Stop thinking about this as an impossibility,” she said gently. “I’ve done this hands-on. Scalpels are the same, they just don’t cauterize, so there’ll be more blood. Nurses, if you’re assisting, keep the suction going and blot delicate areas with sponges. Doctors—how many of you have done real suturing?”

  Only two. “Nurses?” A couple more. “All right, has anyone ever done needle-and-thread sewing? Handwork or embroidery?” Three, including a paramedic who had just wandered in. “Fine. You six are the closure specialists. Doctors, you do internals, nurses, muscle tissue and major vessels, hand workers, final closure. We’ll run this like an assembly line.”

  She got them set up; patients would come in the door to the nearest empty table. Anyone not working on someone would prep them, then keep them going until the first available surgery-team could take t
hem. Then surgery, then closure, then out the door and the anthropoid nurse’s team would clean the table for the next.

  “Get them patched together and keep them alive,” she ordered, and did a quick mental reckoning. “I don’t think it’ll take the Hawking more than a few hours to get to us. Give them that much time, and we’re home free. It doesn’t have to be pretty or neat; it does have to be good.”

  “Doctor?” One of the nurses waved her hand in the air. “What are we doing about anesthetic and blood?”

  No blood analysis at all; that was the medicomp’s job. “Can we get by on locals and injectables?” It was a lot easier monitoring the dosages on those.

  Powers turned to the anthropoid, who nodded. “We haf jutht rethupplied,” it said.

  “Okay. Save the inhalants for major thoracic wounds; use your own judgment. Blood—shit.”

  She shook her head; the replicators were probably gone, too, or the nurse wouldn’t have asked the question. “Stored where we have it, hyperoxygenated universal, where we don’t, and species-specific plasma or Ringers if you don’t know what the reaction to universal will be. A few hours, people. That’s what we need to buy them. Okay? Don’t forget those clean samples; the Hawking will need them. Okay, on station—go—”

  That was when the first wave hit.

  Celia tried to be everywhere, looking over shoulders, advising, cajoling, coaxing. The first wave wasn’t so bad; not nearly as bad as she had thought. No decompression; lots of burns, some pretty horrible, but nothing that needed really major surgery. Her fledglings gained confidence as they sutured their first gashes, as they cut bits of shrapnel from arms and legs. Nurse Ki’ilee was everywhere, turning her little corps of recruits into a real team. She lost a few in the first couple of minutes, as weak stomachs couldn’t handle the gore of the OR—she gained more by sending the unsteady out to wake up the rest of the med personnel and haul them in.

  It was just as well that they had that first wave to practice on, because when the second wave came in—the victims who’d been pried out of their wrecked rooms—needed every bit of confidence that they’d gained.