Endurance (5 page)

“Here.” I handed the largest set of surgical gear to TssVar. “Put this on and scrub.” I nodded toward the sink, then turned to the attending nurse. “Help me.”

The nurse went pale. “But—but—”

He wasn’t contaminating my sterile field with all his Hsktskt germs. “Do it.”

I left the two of them at the biodecon unit and entered the main surgical suite, where Shropana lay shrouded and ready for the procedure.

“Status,” I said, and one of the surgical interns hesitantly rattled off Shropana’s vital signs. The tachycardia had leveled out. “Okay. Let’s get rolling.”

League medical equipment might be better than K-2’s, but it hardly compared to the Jorenian tech I had worked with on the
Sunlace
. The same main control console governed most of the surgery’s various apparatus. I muttered to myself as I accessed the panel and activated one of the table scanners. This junk seemed to take forever to scan the body and chest cavity before it extrapolated a diagnosis.

“Pneumothorax, right lung,” I said, reading the displayed results out loud. “Multiple fractures in both arm hocks and seven ribs. Looks like one of those pierced the gland cluster behind the cardiac organ.”

TssVar was indeed very efficient.

On top of that, Shropana’s heart displayed the unmistakable signs of severe coronary arterial disease. As if I didn’t have enough of a challenge to deal with. I checked the other scanner.

“Head wound is superficial. No sign of subdural hematoma.” I inspected the laser rig as I powered it up. “All right, people, we’re going to have our hands full. He’s a myocardial infarction waiting to happen.” I checked and saw the Hsktskt standing at the back of some nurses. “OverLord, you’ll want to come inside the field perimeter now.”

The Hsktskt quickly stepped forward. He must have remembered the last time he encountered the bioelectrical wall—also the last time he’d seen me at work, back on K-2, when I’d delivered his mate’s quintuplets. At gunpoint.

The glamorous life of an intergalactic surgeon. Maybe I should have listened to Dhreen and opened a restaurant on K-2. “Activate sterile field.”

The static buzz was followed by the whispered suction of the air replacement unit. I pulled down the rig and checked the settings. The beam regulator badly needed calibration, and I had to fool with the stream injector for a minute before it produced the proper bandwidth. My arm hurt, but not enough to make it difficult to handle the instruments.

“Tell me something,” I asked no one in particular. “How is it that the League will waste untold millions of credits tracking down a single Terran female, but won’t spend a tiny fraction of that upgrading and maintaining its own medical equipment?”

No one answered.

“Stats.” When I got no answer, I glared at the nurse handling the Colonel’s anesthesia. “Well? Are you taking a nap over there, or what?”

“He’s barely stable,” she said, muttering under her mask. “You should know.”

I powered down and pushed the rig to one side. The slave brand under my gown throbbed in time with the invisible hammers on each side of my head.

I didn’t really have the time to do this, I thought, as I surveyed the numerous insubordinate eyes watching me. However, that was one thing I learned in my first year of residency—if you wanted to be in charge, you’d damn well better
act
like it.

“Okay, children,” I said, insulting the group at large. “Here’s how it works.
I
am the surgeon.
You
are the surgical support team.
I
ask questions.
You
answer me.
I
cut.
You
mop up the blood. If you won’t do that, get out and send in someone who will.”

The League med pros exchanged glances. One of the male residents cleared his throat.

There’s always one brave one. “You have a comment you’d like to make, resident?”

“You turned the fleet over to the Hsktskt,” he said, glancing nervously at the OverLord. “Why should you wish to save the Colonel’s life now?”

TssVar made an ugly sound.

Brave, and possibly suicidal. “As I recall, you people were prepared to destroy an entire world to get me. The way I see it, we’re even. Got it?”

Everyone appeared to get it.

“Good. Now, can we do this, or watch him die?” I waited for the length of a heartbeat. “Stats.”

The nurse sounded furious, but she rattled off the appropriate readings. My instrument nurse positioned her setup tray. The interns moved in to assist.

Hey, it worked.

I silently released the breath I’d been holding, reactivated the rig and pulled down the lascalpel. The bright optic lights made Shropana’s hairy torso appear bloated and purplish.

“Here we go.” I made the initial incision and pulled the beam down the median line from his chest, through the brisket and around into his upper flank. “Clamp back that subcutaneous tissue. Like that. Modify the rib spreader to clamp on the left withers only. Suction.”

“Explain what you are doing, SsurreVa,” I heard TssVar say.

I’m cutting open this man to repair your mess.
“Standard traumatological procedure: get his lungs working, arrest the internal bleeding, then fix anything that threatens the cardiac organ. His heart is already diseased, so I have to proceed with caution. I’ll do a laparotomy—that’s abdominal exploratory surgery—if necessary, after that.”

I didn’t bother to elaborate, but continued cutting, and addressed my two resident assistants at the same time. “We’ll plug the plural cavity first, then deal with the gland cluster and the ribs.” To the nurse, I said, “Give me a series two chest tube. More suction. Yes. That’s it.”

I had to move fast. The pneumothorax compressed the Colonel’s diseased cardiac organ (not a good thing), so I evacuated the air from the space between his lung and sternal plating and sealed the rupture. Once that was done, I was wrist-deep in blood.

Shropana’s species possessed a network of glandular nodules—delicate-looking systemic clusters—that regulated every organ in his body. The high concentration of vessels in the clusters redefined the term “bleeder.” He was a
sieve
. By the time I located and sealed off the main culprits, fluid was spilling over the table onto the deck. The nurse spent as much time suctioning as I did cauterizing micro-tears in the arterial walls.

“Doctor, his pressures are starting to red range,” the vitals nurse suddenly said. “We’re running low on plasma, too.”

I didn’t need him having an MI on me now. Why was plasma a problem? “Get more whole blood in here.”

“There isn’t any more,” she said.

Unbelievable. “Does this flying waste station possess a whole-blood synthesizer?”

The nurse took a step back at my tone. “Of course, Doctor, but—”

I tossed a bloody instrument in her general direction. “Then have someone to whip me up a few gallons, will you?”

I rapidly completed my repairs while the residents clamped bonesetters around his arms. His shattered ribs would have to wait for another day. I closed his chest and watched his vitals monitor myself. I didn’t dare move him from the surgical suite until he’d been fully transfused, but the immediate danger was over.

“Deactivate sterile field.” I turned and found my nose about an inch from TssVar’s surgical gear. I kinked a neck muscle as I glanced up. “Well, Over-Lord? Enjoy the show?”

“It is interesting to watch you work, SsurreVa,” the Hsktskt said, stepping out of my way. Was that respect in those big yellow eyes? Surely not. I’d just ruined all his beautiful handiwork.

“Glad to hear it.” I stripped off my mask and gloves. He nodded curtly, and left the surgical suite in silence. Most of the team followed. No one said a word as they passed by me.

A simple thank-you would have been nice.

I stood by Shropana and watched his vitals as one nurse, who had stayed behind, cleaned up the bloody instrument tray. A resident wheeled in a new batch of synplasma and I set up the infuser feed lines myself. The Colonel’s vitals responded accordingly.

Patril might just live through this, after all.

I was still enjoying my success when the nurse jumped at me, and something slashed at my chest. “What the hell—?”

My half-turn was swift and reflexive. Fortunately. The dermal probe aimed at my heart buried itself in the flesh of my upper arm instead.

The good arm, too.

“Hey!” Through a mist of pain and fury I saw dark, glittering eyes blazing over the rim of her mask. Fury-spawned adrenaline allowed me to ignore the wound and grab her skinny throat with my hands. I took a moment to tear away her surgical mask, although I already knew who it was.

“Nurse Lucretia Borgia,” I said. “What’s the matter, couldn’t lay your paws on any benzodiazapene?”

I didn’t let her have enough air to speak. Not that I cared about what she had to say. I backed her into a plaspanel wall and held her there.

Time to use some Hsktskt tactics. To keep the lizards monitoring us from interfering, I pulled off my headgear, then hers.

“Now you
listen
.” I leaned in, felt something warm run down my sleeve. Blood from the new wound. As if I needed more problems. “I’ve
had enough of this.
Enough
. If I signal that big monster in charge, he’ll put you on a tray and pass you around. Want to end up an appetizer?”

Gasping, her tail thrashing frantically against the panel, the nurse shook her head.

“Then we’re going to make a deal. You don’t try to kill me, and I won’t feed you to them. Agreed?”

She gave a weak nod. I let go, and she dropped to the deck, choking and coughing as fresh air filled her cheek pouches.

I gave her a few moments, using the time to check out my brand. The tussle had cracked the burns open, and they were bleeding, too. I snatched a couple of sterile dressing packs, then nudged her with my foot. “Get up.”

Unsteadily she pushed herself off the deck, then staggered as I grabbed her by the arm.

“Come on.”

I hauled her over to the scrub unit, and stuck the dressing packs in her paws. I couldn’t help grumbling as I pulled the probe from the shallow wound in my good arm and tore the sleeve away. That hurt.

Her beady eyes bulged again. “That, why are you doing?”

“
I’m
not doing anything.” I held out my arm. “Clean it.”

“Did you say, what?”

“You heard me.
You
stabbed me.
You
clean it up.” When she started to back away, I caught her tunic with my good hand. “I can always ask TssVar to do it.”

That got me an intense look of dislike, but she retrieved what she needed and began treating the stab wound.

Maybe I should find out who wanted me dead. “What’s your name?”

She sprayed a generous amount of topical antiseptic over the small gash, which made me wince. “Zella Dchêm-os.”

While she worked on me, I kept an eye on Shropana’s vitals. There were a few fluctuations, but on the whole the levels kept improving. Zella followed my gaze and muttered something under her breath as she wound the sterile dressing over the brand.

“What are you mumbling about?” I asked her.

“Your time, you’re wasting,” the nurse said. Her face resumed its usual sullen caste. “On the Colonel, that Hsktskt butcher will finish the job. A chance, as soon as he gets.”

It took me a minute to figure out her backward syntax. “Oh, so
that’s
why the OverLord allowed me to perform surgery on Shropana,” I said, in a the-light-dawns tone. “To save his life so he could kill him later.” Zella jerked and secured the ends of the dressing a little too tightly around my arm. “Now, be nice—”

“SsurreVa?” TssVar had re-entered the surgical suite, and stood looking from me to the nurse. His lower eyelids dropped in an expression I’d guess to be in the highly upset range. “You harmed the Designate.”

I decided not even Zella deserved that wretched isolation cell—if she even made it that far in one piece. Surreptitiously I shoved her headgear into her hands and slipped mine over my head. “No harm done, OverLord. Just an accident. See?” I held up the arm for his inspection, and flexed it for good measure. “Works fine.”

The Hsktskt ignored me. “Centurons! Attend me!”

Two of TssVar’s guards burst into the room an instant later and trained their weapons on the League nurse. Time to do some fast talking, or Nurse Dchêm-os was going to end up in more pieces than even
I
could sew back together.

“I never even saw the dermal probe until it was sticking out of my arm,” I said, and patted my wounded limb. “My nurse kindly agreed to dress it for me.”

The OverLord released a slow, suspicious hiss, then cracked a limb at the guards. The centurons retreated.

I deliberately gave the terrified nurse’s narrow shoulder a shove toward the panel. “Thanks, Zel. You’ve done enough here.”

In a blink, Zella had dodged around TssVar and darted out into Medical. I returned TssVar’s suspicious gaze with my best virtuous expression.

The OverLord paced a circle around me. “SsurreVa, you lie.”

“About what?” This innocent, who me? act had better work. “You mean this?” I patted my arm. “Why lie about someone trying to hurt me?”

He regarded me with those observant, viewport-size, yellow eyes. “This will not change their hatred of you, SsurreVa.”

Too
damn observant. “So it’s my problem.”

“Until it becomes mine.” The OverLord’s huge head swiveled toward the Colonel. “This one will survive?”

“He needs more surgery to repair his ribs and treatment for the preexisting problems with his heart, but with luck, yes. He’ll live.”

“He owes his life to you.” TssVar surveyed the surgical equipment impassively. “And this is what you had chosen to devote your time and energy?”

Past tense.
Had.
Another reminder of my current predicament.

“This is it.” I got busy cleaning up the last of the contaminated instruments. “Everybody needs regular medical treatment, OverLord. It’s steady work.”

“I am putting you in charge of this vessel’s Medical Section,” the Hsktskt said.

About time. “That will make Dr. Malgat and the crew happy.” No, it wouldn’t.