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Star WarsStar Wars InsiderN 83Medstar : Intermezzoby Michael Reeves & Steve Perry###############################################################################Jos pried a shard of sharp and jagged durasteel half as wide as his hand from the belly of the wounded trooper and dropped it into the tray Tolk was holding out. It didn't clank when it hit-somebody had gotten tired of hearing that particular noise over and over again, and had lined the metal trays with old sheets of thick and rubbery transponder insulation. Novy, when a surgeon pulled shrapnel from a patient and dropped it in the dish, the sound was muffled, a soft thump of little consequence.Not a bad idea, Jos thought. Of course, the new sound irritated him just as much as the old one had. More, maybe. But then, a lot of things Irritated Jos these days. Having to stand there for hours on end and pull chunks of razored metal from charred and scrambled organs was high on that list. It made padding surgical trays to soften the clatter seem fairly pointless.You sure you want to go there, Jos? his inner voice asked. You sure you want to think about the pointlessness of things?No. He didn't.Like it made much of a difference what he wanted.The air coolers were offline again, due to spore-rot; nothing unusual there. The damp tropical heat seeped into the OT, turning the air sodden, raising sweat and not allowing it to evaporate. The smell of mold was omnipresent, easily overwhelming the ozone tang of the antiseptsis fields as well as the more unpleasant chemical scent of the herbicide they periodically coated on the walls. The spore infestation had been particularly bad since the move from the Jasserak lowlands to the highlands, Everyone was wearing microfilter masks and protective goggles, whether outside or inside, it wasn't paranoia; three humans, a Kubaz, and an Ugnaught were in the infirmary right now being treated for ascomycetous pneumocontosis. Jos had seen sentients of those species, and others as well, suffering from end-stage fester lung as it was commonly known. It wasn't pretty. Some spiked fevers high enough to literally cook in their own juices.And the highland area was considered one of the garden spots of the planet.Jos clamped off a couple of small bleeders and had Tolk sponge the wound. He looked at it with a critical eye. Good enough. The droid could gluestatthis one shut, and if the clone trooper didn't get fester lung, spleen-rot, or some other kind of infection from the blasted spotes in the next 24 hours, he'd probably survive to fight another day."Give him to the droid to close," Jos told Tolk. He sighed. "And tell our next guest his table's ready."The operating theater was makeshift, even more so than usual, since it had only just been set up. Rimsoos were designed to relocate in a hurry-hence the "mobile" in Republic Mobile Surgical Unit-but they'd only pulled up stakes and moved once since Jos had been on this overcooked world, and that had been less than a week ago. It had seemed the prudent thing to do, given that the Separatists were mounting a major offensive to push the Republic front lines back, tossing mortars, zapping them with lasers and particle beams, and generally blowing the mopek out of the place. The relocation had gone by the book, according to the official report, with a minimum loss of equipment, patients, and personnel.Of course, one of the casualties had happened to be Jos' closest friend,Jos blew out. another sigh. It had been almost fifteen minutes' since he'd thought about Zan. Must be a new record.Zan Yant, a Zabrak from the world of Talus, had been a surgeon and an accomplished musician as well as Jos' cube-mate, and a more sympatico soul one could not have asked for. Now Zan was dead-collateral damage in a war that he'd hated, with a passion that seemed reserved for those of artistic temperament. Zan Yant, scion of a wealthy mercantile family, a corn-' poser of classical Etudes, sonatas, consertistas, and other works of musical genius, was dead, and there was no sense to it. no purpose, and no excuse.He hadn't suffered; there was that consolation, at least. A sliver of shrapnel, thinner than a bantha hair, had lodged in the Zabrak's anterior ganglion node, at the base of his skull, shutting him down instantly. It had been-so everyone said-anal-gous to flicking off the master switch on the back of a protocol droid's neck. That quick and painless.The crucial difference being, of course, that one could always power up a droid again.A pair of clone troopers, pressed into service as orderlies, wheeled in the next patient. This kind of scut work should have been done by programmed droids but some kind of rust or smut had attacked the seals on many of the mechanicals, and as-a result, more than half of them were out of service.It was an insane situation. He was the Chief Surgeon, after all, and a Captain, the second in command after Colonel D'Arc Vaetes. He wasn't supposed to be elbow-deep in the purplish guts of clone troopers, pulling out scrap metal and staunching bleeders. But the conditions on this world had set the clock back a few millennia, and they now worked shorthanded, under primitive conditions that all too often meted out death instead of renewed life for whoever was under their laser scalpels.Tolk la Trene, his scrub nurse, looked at the flatscreen report on the next injured clone. "Particle burns, compression injuries, according to the field medic." She rattled off the blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate as Jos nodded absently. All he wanted to do was crawl into his kiosk and sleep-for a week, a month, however long it took for this blasted war to be over. It was too much effort to think, to remember, to even breathe, much less to do surgery. But there was no choice."Get him on fluids," he told the other nurse. He turned to Tolk. "How long can we keep him in the bacta tank?""Forty-five minutes, tops,"It wasn't enough, Jos knew. And partial treatment of the bullae and necrotic tissue could be worse than no immersion, since it would raise the risk of infection. "Prep him for maser deoriding." And wave a few charms over him and chant, white you're at itHe was so tired and depressed that even the presence of his beloved Tolk, normally more than enough to raise his spirits under the most adverse conditions, failed to cheer him now/They'd only recently reconciled their differences in the wake of Zan's death, and he felt he should be the happiest lifeform in the gaiaxy. instead, he felt a welter of conflicting emotions, not the least of which was guilt for being alive and in love.He knew he had to go through this. Grief was a process that couldn't be rushed or refused. And Tolk understood. In addition to being a nurse, she was also a Lorrdian; her ability to read the body language of others bordered on telepathy. She knew he needed space-more than anything else right now.Behind him, shrouded inside a hooded and concealing robe, stood one of The Silent, that mysterious siblinghood whose very presence somehow seemed to help patients recuperate. No one understood if the effect was panacea or placebo, but no one could deny it was real.Whatever you're using on them, Jos thought, save a little forme.They'd finally gotten,some semblance of a cantina up again, and Den Dhur, ace HoloNet reporter, had been second in line when the doors had opened. He wouid have been first, but, being a Suliustan, his short height and weight had kept him from bulling past the larger Bothan ahead of him.Fortunately, Bothans tended to drink the simple stuff, bottled ales and the tike, so Baloob, the Ortolan tender, would get to him fast enough. That first drink was the important one; you needed to get that one down fast.Den saw Doc Vondar a few places behind him, which wasn't exactly a surprise. The cantina had been Jos' second home of late; if he wasn't in the OT pumping fluids into some patient, he was at a table in the dimly lit pub pumping fluids into himself. And who could blame him? His best buddy, the ZabraK surgeon Zan Yant, was only a few days gone. Den wasn't human, but emotions such as grief and loss were pretty much universal. You couldn't be sentient and not feel them."Bantha Blaster, right?" the Ortolan asked. He wiped his sweating biue forehead with a bar towel gripped in his stubby trunk."Absolutely. And soon as you can see my face through the glass, set up another one.""No problem. Don't want to have to look at your face any more than necessary," Baloob said. He started building the drink as Den headed for a small and still empty table. He beckoned to Jos on the way."Hey, Doc. Over here."Jos looked at Den as if he had never seen him before but he turned and started toward him. He moved like an undead creature in a horror holo.Poor human. This was his first war, and Zan Yant had been the first real friend he'd lost to it. Den realized with something of a shock that he couldn't even remember back to his first war and the first friend he'd seen killed-they all just blurred together into one long sense-memory of blood and chaos.A droid server walked past. Den waved at it, got its attention. "Tell Big Nose to make another Blaster for my friend." He nodded at the approaching Jos."Certainly, sir," the droid said, and headed for the bar.Den settled back and sipped his drink. He wasn't a doctor, but he knew what to prescribe in this particular case.Barriss Offee walked into the cantina. She didn't realty want a ' drink, and, as a Jedi Padawan, she wasn't supposed to imbibe anyway, it wasn't an interdiction, but the Council did frown on the younger members of the order getting soused. Barriss had ignored that guideline a few times; the... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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