"Naffie, you've had more than your share lately," Bardie said firmly, and she and Nellie turned into ICU bay 22. Naffie was deft with the antigrav unit, slipping the unconscious patient onto the bed, which folded its sensitive wings around its new occupant with tender intensive care.
When Bardie reached her own cubicle, the first thing she did was program her screen for a ten-minute printout on O'Hara, Lt. R. E. C. She took a fan-bath; even a cup of water could make you feel cleaner. She dialed for a hot high-protein meal, inserted herself into her bednet, and ate. The buzzer woke her and she had to blink hard to clear her eyes enough to see the screen. O'Hara was holding his own. She stayed awake until the next report but with great difficulty. She reprogrammed the screen to rouse her only if there was a significant relapse and was asleep almost before she lay back in the net.
To her surprise, she got a whole ten hours of sleep, waking up to feel guilty at the elapsed time. The screen was flashing a no-change and she had to think hard to remember why she would be monitoring a patient in her cabin. Then Humpty O'Hara's case came to mind and she tapped for a review.
He, too, had slept ten hours. His vital signs were strong, all along the line, with no hint of rejection from any of the new organs. But no signs of awareness, no return to consciousness. Which, Bardie thought, was kind. No one had discovered the universal pain suppressant. She didn't like to think of the pain, inevitable as it was in her profession.
She dressed, drinking the high-protein glop that was supposed to be all she'd need for the day's efforts, and left her cubicle. The corridors were amazingly vacant, and the sounds of personalized snores furthered the thought that there had been no new assaults. A lull in a massacre was definitely welcome. She had only thirteen more days of this to endure before she was out of it. She alternated between wanting to be so occupied that the interminable thirteen days would be over and done with and wanting to have time to adjust her thinking to a civilian standard.
She stopped in the duty room and discovered that she and Nellie were in the next shift - if there was one. She had an hour's leeway. The information screen was scrolling through data on the last assault, but she had long since ceased trying to assimilate either victory or defeat - it all meant bodies to mend. She chided herself for letting that thought intrude. 'S'truth, but whatever victories were won against whatever enemy, she found no glory in it, no matter how necessary the action, how urgent the winning, or what odds and against what, whom, or why. She couldn't remember now what had prompted her to opt for a MASH assignment, apart from a momentary mental aberration. She had learned a great deal - maybe that's why she had come - but there was a large pit of nothingness that one day she would be required to look into, process, and put aside.
Bardie was somewhat surprised to find herself entering bay 22 of the ICU and stopping by bed 4. The vital signs were as strong as could be expected, the new organs still functioning normally. There was even a healthy tinge to O'Hara's skin.
"Can't raise so much as a groan from him," Naffie said, slipping in to stand beside her, his bright eyes flicking from the screen to her face.
"Have you tried, Naffie?" Somehow Bardie Makem resented that.
"In the line of duty, of course." Naffie grimaced. "He really ought to come to long enough to know he's still alive. In gratitude, if nothing else."
Bardie grinned at Naffie's disapproval. "So you could hold his hand and reassure him?"
"I don't really think he's my type." Naffie flounced off.
Bardie pulled back the thermal cover for a visual check. All the incisions and repairs looked good under their skinplas dressings. Of course, he hadn't been thrashing around with either delirium or pain. She laid her hand on his chest: the skin was warm under hers. She felt his forehead, smoothing back the crisp hair; it was unusually soft to the touch, not wiry as the curling suggested. He really had the most handsome face. Idly, she brought one finger lightly down his cheek, to the thin pink scar, and was surprised to see a faint smile appear on the sleeping face.
"O'Hara? O'Hara?" She spoke softly. "Roger?" She spoke a little louder, for the smile was still there. "Roger!" He took a deeper breath and then seemed to settle further into sleep, his head turning ever so slightly to the left on the pillow, toward her, the smile in place. "Roger, lad. Wakey-wakey." His brows pulled fractionally together in annoyance. "Roger, I know you're in there. Open up!"
"You're having more success than anyone else," said the ICU duty nurse at her elbow, startling her. "And we've tried."
"Since when is a grimace an indication of alertness?"
"Since it's the only reaction anyone's got out of Sleeping Beauty."
"It's not a coma," Bardie said, reviewing the signs.
"No, it's not. Normal sleep pattern. Doesn't even vary when the medication begins to wear off."
"More should have that facility," Bardie remarked as the patient in the next bed began to moan piteously. She walked as quickly as she could out of the ward.
Both she and Nellie stopped by bed 4 at the end of their shift, which had been relatively quiet. Mopping-up operations were rarely as hazardous to life and limb, though they'd had some minor repair work from the pong-stick land mines and some of the nasty heat-seeking darts the Khalians deployed at such times.
At the top of the next shift, Bardie paused for another visit to bay 22, bed 4, where several colleagues had gathered, including the head psych.
"Ah, Surgeon Makem," Brandeis said, his wide smile resembling nothing more than a trap for the unwary. "I understand you did miracle surgery on this patient. Can you enlighten us in any way as to his current somnolent state?"
"He hasn't regained consciousness yet?" Bardie was surprised and saw concern and disbelief in the other medics at the bedside. "Well, he did experience major bodily insults. Sufficient trauma there to keep from wanting to know."
"Ah, then," Brandeis said, leaping upon her suggestion, "this could be psychosomatically induced?"
Bardie shrugged: she patched bodies, not minds. "His pressure suit kept him alive, maybe even conscious, but he had to have known that he was badly injured. The suit doesn't record how long its inmate is conscious, merely his vital signs."
"Good point!" Brandeis and the others turned back to regard the calm sleeping countenance. "Could be! And his records do indicate 'mercy' in preference to disembodiment."
From his tone, Bardie thought Brandeis was annoyed that another "subject" had slipped away from him. Brandeis did a lot of counseling to "brains."
"Dr. Makem did get a response from Lieutenant O'Hara," the duty nurse said. She'd been standing to one side and Bardie hadn't seen her. She could cheerfully have beheaded her.
"Ah, when? And what?" Brandeis wanted to know, his expression almost avid.
"Oh, I just felt his forehead." Bardie felt silly: the hands-on was such an anachronism with so many sophisticated sensors to take accurate readings.
"And?" Brandeis encouraged her.
"Faint smile. Might have been reflex." She could feel herself blushing.
"No doubt," someone murmured in a droll voice. "One would have thought that such a handsome man wouldn't have objected to brain duty."
"Who'd see him?" The words were out of Bardie's mouth before she could think and she blushed even more furiously.
"A perfectly natural vanity," Brandeis remarked with an equanimity not echoed in his hard eyes. Brandeis was a tolerably attractive fellow, in excellent trim, and according to wardroom gossip, had plenty of activity in the hetero relationships that were not all professional, so Bardie wondered at the subtle envy.
"Well, Dr. Makem, if you would be so good as to repeat your gesture…" He stepped aside and indicated that Bardie should move to the patient. Bardie did not like his expression, his manner, or the suggestion.