It turned suddenly to regard the FROB, then went on. “Come closer! It is in bed, with a limb and most of its body immobilized, it has been blasted into low orbit with tranquilizers, and it isn’t likely to bite you!”
The Hudlar came forward and said shyly, “We all, everyone who was there, wish you well. That includes Patient Eleven Thirty-two, who is pain-free now and making good progress. And Charge Nurse Segroth whose good wishes were, ah, more perfunctory. Will you recover the full use of the limb?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Tarsedth broke in. “With two Diagnosticians on the case it doesn’t dare not make a complete recovery.” To Cha Thrat it went on. “But so much has been happening to you recently that I can’t keep up. Is it true that you ticked off the Chief Psychologist in front of everybody in the Chalder ward, called it some kind of witch-doctor, and reminded it of its professional duty toward Patient AUGL-One Sixteen? According to the stories going around—”
“It wasn’t quite as bad as that,” Cha Thrat said.
“It never is,” the DBLF said, its fur subsiding in dis-appointment. “But the business during the FROB demonstration, now. You can’t deny or diminish what happened there.”
“Perhaps,” the Hudlar quietly said, “it would rather not talk about that.”
“Why not?” Tarsedth asked. “Everyone else is talking about it.”
Cha Thrat was silent for a moment as she looked up at the head and shoulders of the Kelgian projecting like a silver-furred cone over one side of her bed and the enormous body of the Hudlar looming over the other. She tried to make her unnaturally fuzzy mind concentrate on what she wanted to say.
“I would prefer to talk about all the lectures I’ve missed,” she said finally. “Was there anything especially interesting or important? And would you ask Cresk-Sar if I could have a remote control for the viewscreen, so I can tune in to the teaching channels? Tell it that I have nothing to do here and I would like to continue with my studies as soon as possible.”
“Friend,” Tarsedth said, its fur rising into angry spikes, “I think you would be wasting your time.”
For the first time she wished that her Kelgian classmate was capable of something less than complete honesty. She had been expecting to hear something like this, but the bad news could have been broken more gently.
“What our forthright friend should have told you,” the Hudlar said, “is that we inquired about your exact status from Senior Physician Cresk-Sar, who would not give us a firm answer. It said that you were guilty not so much of contravening hospital rules but of breaking rules that nobody had dreamed of writing. The decision on what to do with you has been< referred up, it said, and you could expect a visit from O’Mara quite soon.
“When asked if we could bring you lecture material,” it ended apologetically, “Cresk-Sar said no.”
It did not make any difference how it was broken, she thought after they had gone, the news was equally bad. But the sudden, raucous sound of her bedside communicator kept her from dwelling for too long on her troubles.
It was Patient AUGL-One Sixteen who, with Charge Nurse Hredlichi’s cooperation, was shouting into one of the Nurses’ Station communicators from the entrance to the Chalder ward. It began by apologizing for the physiological and environmental problems that kept it from visiting her in person, then told her how much it was missing her visits — the Earth-human wizard O’Mara, it said, lacked her sympathetic manner and charm — and it hoped she was recovering with no physical or mental distress.
“Everything is fine,” she lied. It was not a good thing to burden a patient with its medic’s troubles, even when the medic was temporarily a patient. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you,” the Chalder replied, sounding enthusiastic in spite of the fact that its words were reaching her through two communicators, a translator, and a considerable quantity of water. “O’Mara says that I can leave and rejoin my family very soon, and can start contacting the space administration on Chalder about my old job. I’m still young for a Chalder, you know, and I do really feel well.”
“I’m very happy for you, One Sixteen,” Cha Thrat said, deliberately omitting its name because others might be listening who were not entitled to use it. She was surprised by the strength of her feelings toward the creature.
“I’ve heard the nurses talking,” the Chalder went on, “and it seems like you are in serious trouble. I hope all goes well for you, but if not, and you have to leave thehospital … Well, you are so far from Sommaradva out here that if you felt like seeing another world on your way home, my people would be pleased to have you for as long as you liked to stay. We’re pretty well advanced on Chalderescol and your food synthesis and life-support would be no problem.
“It’s a beautiful world,” it added, “much, much nicer than the Chalder ward …”
When the Chalder eventually broke contact, she settled back into the pillows, feeling tired but not depressed or unhappy, thinking about the ocean world of Chalderescol. Before joining the AUGL ward she had studied the library tape on that world with the idea of being able to talk about home to the patients, so she was not completely unfamiliar with the planet. The thought of living there was exciting, and she knew that, as an off-planet person entitled to call Muromeshomon by name, its family and friends would make her welcome however long or short her stay. But thoughts like that were uncomfortable because they presupposed that she would be leaving the hospital.
Instead she wondered how the normally shy and gentle Chalder had been able to prevail upon the acid-tongued Hredlichli to use the Nurses’ Station communicator as it had done. Could it have forced cooperation by threatening to wreck the place again? Or, more likely, had the Chalder’s call to her been supported, perhaps even suggested, by O’Mara?That, too, was an uncomfortable thought, but it did not keep her awake. The continuing spell of the Earth-human wizard or the medication it had prescribed, or both, were still having their insidious effect.
During the days that followed she was visited singly and, where physiological considerations permitted, in small groups by her classmates. Cresk-Sar came twicebut, like all the other visitors, the tutor would not talk about medical matters at all. Then one day O’Mara and Diagnostician Conway arrived together and would discuss nothing else.
“Good morning, Cha Thrat, how are you feeling?” the Diagnostician began, as she knew it would.
“Very well, thank you,” she replied, as it knew she would. After that she was subjected to the most meticulously thorough physical examination she had ever experienced.
“You’ve probably realized by now that all of this wasn’t strictly necessary,” Conway said as it replaced the sheet that had been covering her body. “However, it was my first opportunity to have a really close look at the DCNF physiological classification as a whole, as opposed to one of the limbs. Thank you, it was interesting and most instructive.
“But now that you are completely recovered,” it went on, with a quick glance toward O’Mara, “and will require only a course of exercises before you would be fit for duty, what are we going to do with you?”
She suspected that it was a rhetorical question, but she badly wanted to reply to it. Anxiously she said, “There have been mistakes, misunderstandings. They will not occur again. I would like to remain in the hospital and continue my training.”