Chapter Text
Memory transcription subject: Doctor Liric, Head of Sapient Coalition Outpost 337, Rotating Hospital Station "Apsáalooké"
Date [standardized human time]: September 5, 2149
The one universal constant for any hospital administrator was paperwork. I was swamped in it. In fact, I'd been swamped ever since the last director had a nervous breakdown and I was sent from Colia to take his place.
My days since had been nothing but a blur of paperwork and overtime, occasionally punctuated with crises.
I strongly suspected the Sapient Coalition Committee that established the rotating hospital where I was now in charge of running didn't consider our proximity to Talsk when designing the station.
It may not have been its intended purpose, but our little station designed to provide medical care to a few isolated communities was now on the front-line of the farsul asylum and refugee program. All farsul refugees accepted into the program left the system after at least receiving a physical and updated vaccinations, but many needed more care, especially those refugees who came from Predator Disease facilities. I held no resentments toward the patients, of course, but the fact remained that my little hospital was over-capacity from the day it opened and several expansion projects had done little to stem the flow of patients.
Moving patients to other facilities was more difficult that it sounded on paper. Farsul weren't exactly popular and fears that our patients would be badly treated by civilians or staff were not unfounded, so moving some of our long-term patients to more specialized facilities was an exercise in frustration. Even for those facilities where we could be sure our patients would be treated right, the waiting list was often absurdly long. Cattle rescues and predator disease patients needing long-term care were still more common that our healthcare system could support, even with all the work the Sapient Coalition had done to improve and expand it.
In many ways we were still stuck cleaning up the Federation's mess.
Currently our long-term goal was to establish a smaller rotating drum station to act as living quarters for the staff on the hospital. Besides opening up space on the station, frankly I think job postings out here would be far more popular if people could bring their families and get a little time away from the patients, even if that meant adding a shuttle commute to work. Maybe even give the people at the nearby mining outposts places to vacation to if not move. Oh- and we could add in hydroponics labs and meat printers, cut down the cost of imports.
We're way too strapped for space right now to add a park. Hell, keeping our little recreation areas has been enough of a fight. If Physical Therapy hadn't joined in, we'd have lost it for sure.
I knew the outcome of that.
It would have been more rooms. More patients. And one less thing that made this place bearable.
I was lost about to reach for my pad and take a note when there was a knock at my office door. "Doctor Liric?" a deep-yet-feminine human voice called, "It's Doctor Anderson, can I come in? We might be having a situation."
Expansion plans could wait a bit longer. Besides, the diminutive human was one of my favorite people on the station. And not just because it was rare to meet a human I could look in the eye while standing on my hind paws. As one of the longest term hospital staff, she had a ocean of institutional knowledge that had made my term as Outpost Head run much more smoothly. If she said there was a situation, something was going down, and the worried look on her face as she poked her head through my door confirmed it.
"You're fluent in the Farsul language, right?" I made an affirmative gesture with my ears. "Oh thank god. I keep trying to read the report on our new patient, but I keep getting gibberish."
"We're getting a new patient?" I paused, "You can't read the report? Are you having translator problems?!"
She was wringing her hands, "Yeah, they're coming up from Talsk on the next jump ship from Capitol Hospital. And no, I don't think so, I can read everything else just fine. I think maybe the report is full of typos that the translator can't parse-"
"Top of the queue, right?" I confirmed as I reached for my pad.
"Don't you need to do something with your translator before you read that?"
I opened my pad and began to read, claws tapping at the screen, "No, I'll just read the report in its natural form, I'm fluent so the translator won't take over. Benefits of neural learning."
She gave a strained smile, "I love technology."
"Mmm," I hummed, "You're right, this patient is coming up from Capitol- personal recommendation of a Doctor Vorek with suggestion of refugee status by medical necessity. First page seems normal enough-" I flipped to the next section and my brow furrowed as I tried to parse the meaning. "Premature triplets, well that makes sense. Almost all Farsul multiple births are born premature, their bodies can't handle it as well as some other species-" I squinted at the report, wondering if I was reading it right, "premature triplets and we're only getting two of them? Even if the third died, we should still be getting the body for autopsy."
"Yeah, and they should have the materials on-planet to deal with premature infants, especially at Capitol," Anita confirmed, her face drawn, "There has be something else going on."
I squinted at my pad, even enlarged the text a bit, even though logically I knew it wouldn't help. "Some kind of birth defect, I think. In the two we're getting at least. How do we know the third doesn't have it as well?" My voice was rising in frustration, "Never mind the typos, we're missing a good two-thirds the information we should have! This report is incomplete!"
"Is this saying the birth defect is neurological?" Anita pointed at a single phrase in the near indecipherable series of supposed-to-be acronyms at the bottom of the display.
"It might be, if the doctor missed a space and hit the wrong key twice -which on standard Farsul keyboard configuration is actually plausible." I rubbed the base my ear irritably, "Anita, are you sure this isn't some sort of trick?"
"Not from this hospital." The human doctor shook her head, and imitated the negative tail gesture with her hand. "The head doctor is one of ours and he paw-selected the staff. We've never had a problem with sabotage from that hospital, and they are actually involved in the refugee program screening on the ground. They're some of our most trusted operatives on-planet."
My lip curled, "The head doctor's Farsul, though. He could be biding his time."
She snorted a little, "He's an ex-PD patient. He hates the Farsul gerontocracy with the passion of a thousand suns."
"Ex-PD and running a hospital?" I had to check.
"He specialized in treating Sivkits. He found the gene edits and they silenced him. Trust me, he's no friend of the Federation."
My ears went back, "You think he'd be working for the Coalition, then."
"He was evacuated from a PD facility when we invaded Talsk and volunteered to come back and get their healthcare system back on its feet. Partly to help people, partly to watch the gerontocracy's world burn. He's kinda vengeful that way. Look Liric, I know him. I've known him for years, even before I became the liaison with the Talsk hospital system, and he's a serious hardass. Tough as nails. And he's a good doctor. If something has him this shaken up, it must be big."
I paused. "Remind me again why you didn't apply for my job?"
She grinned, "Honey, I'm not cut out for admin."
As hospital administrator, it wasn't usual protocol for me to greet new patients personally. However, with the asylum situation... and admittedly my own curiosity, I decided to greet the jump ship holding our new patients. I wasn't alone of-course. First, even though internal biometrics and scans confirmed the presence of two infants and a travel incubator only, sabotage could never be ruled out, so a three-sapient security team lead the way. Also, Doctor Narong Charoensuk was accompanying me as a representative of the pediatrics ward, along with a venlil nurse to begin patient intake. Due to the age and presumed urgency of the case, immigration would deal with the asylum request later.
The security team cracked the shuttle doors, scanners in hand as they checked the ship for any unpleasant surprises. The leader of the group gestured me over. "It's clear, ma'am," the large Takken confirmed, before the security team stood aside to let us doctors enter.
I went first, rearing up and taking a brief glance in the incubator where two little brown lumps of life breathed, before checking the information display on the travel incubator and syncing it to my pad. Already I was getting more information than the request for asylum had provided.
Not that it answered everything. Where were the parents? Where was the third sibling?Why couldn't Doctor Vorek write a decent report?
All questions for later. For now, I could see that one of the infants was slightly hypertensive. I absently charted the finding in the communal file as the pediatrician leaned over the incubator.
A gasp caught my attention. Doctor Charoensuk was backing away from the incubator, blood draining from his face, the nurse appearing at his elbow to steady him. No emergency beeps from my pad or the incubator, but the reaction went straight to my instincts. I surged for the incubator and the infants inside. I leapt up to check on them again and froze, sinking back my haunches as my front paws stiffened in horror.
Two infant Farsul sharing the incubator, pressed together head-to-head. It was adorable, and almost mundane. If you didn't look closer.
The infant facing me was tiny, but perfectly formed. Eyes still sealed shut, ears flat to her head, common for a premature Farsul. She had dark brown fur just like her sister and pale blue skin peaking out on her paws and muzzle where the fur was at its thinnest. The fur on her head twisted, instead of following the normal scalp arrangement. And when I looked up, the fur continued in an unbroken wave onto her sister's head.
There was no separation.
There was no separation.
There was no separation.