“Or close up the wall with our Martian dead,” he said as he pushed himself out of his chair.
“Let’s skip that part.”
“After those two charges into the worst game of chicken I’ve ever played? Yeah. We’re not losing this patient.” He gestured at Jackson. “I’m not having all these heart attacks for nothing.”
* * *
“His vitals are surprisingly good.”
“Trigeneris is a hell of a drug,” I said, and waited for the shoe to drop. Or the vitals, in this case.
“Uh-huh. The package didn’t list ‘risk of heart attack in the administering physician’. I’m going to leave a nasty social media review.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jackson’s vitals wobbled. Almost an anomaly, really, a dip, followed by a wait and then a slow climb back to normal. Jackson’s skin no longer had that unhealthy pallor to it. He looked pale, yes, but a healthier shade of it. The sweat he’d practically bled had dried and not returned. His oxygen saturation had flirted with normal and then decided to ask it on a date.
No shoe dropped. Neither did his vitals. We did tests on his blood to decide on one last round of neutralization and blood filtration before we proceeded with the last dose. Even then, we debated leaving it alone, because we could. It would probably not hurt him.
“So, err on the side of caution, for once,” Doctor Flannigan teased me.
I chuckled. This time, the humor warmed me. “Yeah. Just this once. For you. And your new heart condition.”
“Doctor Flannigan? Mister Sadler?”asked the medical liaison from the tablet.
Doctor Flannigan leaned towards it. I could now see that he did this on purpose, totally shoved his face into the camera at the worst angle he could think of. “Yes?”
“The family is concerned you aren’t taking the same measures you did last time with the same haste you did before.”
“No need to. The Trigeneris, and Sebastian’s iron nerves, have done their job. We’re going to run another purge of the waste build-up just to be safe, but…” Doctor Flannigan looked at the vitals display, then back. “I’m going to stick my neck out here and say Sergeant Sadler is out of the woods.”
A whoop bleated out of the tablet’s small speaker. Cheering followed, sounding like applause at a vigorous flea circus. The liaison’s face split into a grin.“Would you say, then, that he’s going to live?”
“I’d say that, yeah.” Doctor Flannigan leaned back from the tablet. “And you owe that entirely to Sebastian Sadler. I was just along for the ride.”
32VISIONS OF TOMORROW
We movedJackson into one of the three private rooms Mars Base Bravo’s medical bay possessed, because the main room had other patients who needed the space. Mars Base Charlie had another exchange of ammunition with opposition forces, and some soldiers had decided to add to their flechette collection before a battle armor brigade rolled over the other side.
The wounded were in serious condition, bad enough for the military to evac them back to Mars Bravo. I’d been sitting next to Jackson’s bed, trying to both stay near him and stay out of the way, when Doctor Flannigan stuck his head into the room.
“Tighten your belt and snap your gloves, son. We have work to do.”
I blinked. “But I’m not a-”
“No one gives a shit if you have a damn piece of paper. Your residency starts now. Grab a suture and join the fray.”
So I did. I washed my hands, threw on some latex gloves, and I marched off to war against projectile wounds, toxic soil, and exsanguination.
At the end of the day, I felt exhausted in the best of ways. No good doctorreallywants a booming business. We’d rather you all ate well, exercised, and did not throw yourselves in front of weapons. We want you to be healthy, is what I’m saying, whatever that means for you, and we would prefer we never had to see another patient.
That’s not how life works. There arealwayspatients. At the close of a shift, there is also an exhausted doctor, saddened by any losses, exhilarated by the victories over physical trauma, and contented that their hard work has changed lives for the better.
This was the life I’d always wanted to have. For the first time, I actually got toliveit. That day, and the one that came after it, validated the choice I’d made as a small boy who asked for a play stethoscope one Christmas.
The next day, Jackson stirred awake for a couple minutes.Awakeis a profound overstatement. He mumbled and shifted in the bed, and when I touched his hand, his eyes opened. A sweet smile that squeezed my heart and left it crumpled like an aluminum can spread over his face when he saw me. Then he was out again, and I waded around like an awkward stork in a marsh of very complicated emotions.
He’d seen me. He’d smiled at me as though he had never stopped loving me. And when he woke up for real, he would remember that he didn’t love me anymore. That memory of seeing Joan kissing me in a picture would storm back into his mind, and he would recall that he wanted to end our marriage.
I still held that smile close to my aluminum-can heart. Schrödinger’s husband was still alive in the box, and I wasn’t ready to let go of that potential yet.