Chapter 7 Nola
Week three. I've seen every resident on the station at least once.
I have complete medical files for sixty-nine of the seventy-two.
The three holdouts are a Vorath teenager named Kellik who doesn't trust doctors and communicates his displeasure through subsonic rumbles that make the treatment table vibrate, a human man named Griggs who insists he's "fine, never been sick a day in my life" despite clearly having high blood pressure that I can see in the flush of his face and the way he gets winded climbing the stairs to level three, and a Keth elder named Senna who communicates exclusively through Fen because she refuses to interact with humans on principle.
Apparently her experience with human doctors on a Helix transport was unpleasant enough to permanently sour the relationship.
I'll get them. Give me time.
Renna's leg is improving. The infection is retreating, the swelling is down, and she's complaining about the restricted activity, which is actually the best possible sign.
When patients start arguing about getting back to work, it means they feel well enough to be annoyed, and annoyance is the first cousin of recovery.
She's been directing kitchen operations from a chair, pointing at things with increasing authority, and Olek has been following her instructions with the patience of someone who understands that being needed is medicine in itself.
The medbay is starting to feel like mine.
I've reorganized the supply closet by species compatibility.
Each shelf is labeled: Human, Keth, Vorath, General.
The surgical tools are sterilized and laid out in trays ordered by procedure type.
The recovery beds have clean sheets, rotated daily, folded with the hospital corners that my residency attending drilled into me until I could do them in the dark.
I found a secondhand UV sterilization unit in one of the storage bays, half-buried under spare hull plating, hauled it to the medbay with Fen's help, rewired it with Fen's expertise, and now I have proper instrument sterilization instead of chemical wipes and hope.
The medbay smells different now. Clean. The sharp tang of antiseptic over the metallic baseline of recycled air. It smells like a place that heals.
The children are the part I didn't expect.
I expected injuries, infections, chronic conditions.
I didn't expect Salo following me down the corridor asking if he can be my assistant, or Mika drawing pictures of the medbay and leaving them on my desk, or the way my chest does something involuntary when Dara tells me her kids have started sleeping through the night because "knowing there's a doctor on the station helps.
" I am a tool. I'm useful. That's all this is.
I'm not getting attached. I repeat this while taping Mika's latest drawing, an anatomically creative rendition of the human heart, to the supply closet door.
This morning I'm building a vaccination schedule when someone I haven't met appears in the medbay doorway.
She's small, maybe five foot two, wrapped in a blanket despite the station being adequately warm.
Her eyes are sunken and her skin has the particular pallor of someone who hasn't been eating enough, a grayish undertone that tells me her iron is low before I even run a scan.
"Are you the doctor?" she asks. Her voice is thin, uncertain, the voice of someone who isn't sure she belongs in this doorway.
"I am. Come in. Sit down."
Her name is Petra. She's been on the station for two months. She's twenty-two, and she's pregnant.
"How far along?" I ask, keeping my voice neutral. The scanner is already in my hand, warm from being on its charging dock.
"I don't know. A few months, maybe. I didn't... I wasn't trying to..." She stops. Her hands are shaking. She grips the edges of the blanket and pulls it tighter, a self-soothing gesture that speaks to anxiety she doesn't have words for.
"Okay." I set down the scanner. Some things come before medicine.
Before the device, before the data, there's the person.
"Petra, I'm not here to judge anything. I'm here to make sure you're healthy.
That's it. Whatever the circumstances, whatever brought you here, the only thing that matters in this room is your well-being. Can I take a look?"
She nods. Her eyes are wet but she doesn't cry. Not yet. She's holding it in the way people hold things in when they're not sure the space is safe enough to let go.
I scan her abdomen carefully. The reading comes back clear, a small heartbeat distinct from hers, strong and regular.
Approximately fourteen weeks. Second trimester.
Fetal development is on track, which is remarkable given the nutritional situation on this station.
The placenta is well-positioned. The amniotic fluid volume is normal.
Whatever else is happening, the biology is doing its job.
"You're about fourteen weeks," I tell her. "The baby looks healthy. You're a bit underweight, but we can address that with dietary adjustments."
"Fourteen weeks." She says it like she's calculating backward, placing herself in whatever circumstance led to this.
I don't ask. Some patients tell you their story.
Some patients need you to not ask. The not-asking is sometimes the most important thing a doctor can do, more important than the diagnosis, more important than the treatment plan.
It says: I see you, and I don't require your pain as the price of my care.
"I'm going to set up a prenatal care schedule for you," I say. "Regular checkups, vitamin supplements, monitoring. I'll need to add some things to the supply list, but the basics I can handle now."
"I don't want anyone to know."
"Medical information is confidential. I don't share anything with anyone without your permission. That's not just a policy. That's a promise."
She looks at me for a long time, like she's searching for the catch. People who've been through hard things always look for the catch. The free help that isn't free. The kindness that comes with conditions. The doctor who offers treatment and then wants something in return.
"Okay," she says.
I do a full workup. Bloodwork, vitals, nutritional assessment.
She's deficient in iron and several vitamins, which I expected.
Her B12 is low enough to concern me, and her calcium is borderline.
I give her supplements from my personal supply, dividing the bottle so I have enough for other patients while ensuring she gets what she needs, and adjust her dietary recommendations based on what's available in the mess hall.
"The protein blocks have iron," I tell her. "They taste like cardboard, but they're nutritionally dense. Eat them even when you don't want to. The vegetable rehydrate that Renna makes for dinner has calcium if she uses the bone broth base. I'll talk to her about making sure it's available to you."
"Without telling her why?"
"Without telling her why."
After she leaves, wrapping the blanket around herself like armor, I sit in the medbay and add prenatal supplies to the list for Voss.
Prenatal vitamins. Iron supplements. Folic acid.
Basic delivery supplies, because fourteen weeks means this baby is coming in roughly twenty-six weeks, and if Petra is still here, I'm the one who's going to deliver it.
I add another item: portable ultrasound unit.
The scanner I have gives basic readings, but for prenatal care I need imaging, I need to see the baby's development, check for abnormalities, monitor the placenta position as it changes.
A portable ultrasound would let me do all of that.
Whether a smuggler supply chain can get one to the edge of space is another question.
But I'll ask. The worst that happens is Voss says no, and Voss saying no is just the starting position for a negotiation.
I've delivered babies before. Four times, during residency.
All standard births, all in proper medical facilities with backup surgeons and neonatal equipment and crash carts and teams of nurses who knew what to do when things went sideways.
Delivering a baby in a medbay at the edge of space with limited supplies and no backup is a different conversation entirely.
It's a conversation I'm going to have with myself over the coming weeks, probably at 3 AM, probably while staring at the ceiling.
I'll figure it out. I always figure it out. That's not confidence. That's the lesson you learn growing up on a mining colony where the nearest hospital is a four-hour shuttle ride and the shuttle only runs twice a week: you figure it out or people get hurt. There is no third option.
In the afternoon, I go to the mess hall for a late lunch and find Thresh sitting alone at the end of a table, reviewing something on his datapad.
This is unusual. Thresh doesn't sit. Thresh moves.
Thresh is a constant circuit of the station, checking systems, monitoring feeds, solving problems. Seeing him stationary is like seeing a shark stop swimming.
Something is either wrong or different, and at this point, I'm not sure he knows the difference between the two.
"You okay?" I ask, sitting across from him.
He looks up. The amber eyes are sharper today, less filmed with exhaustion than usual.
He's been sleeping more. I know this because the security feed review logs, which Fen showed me how to check, show that his late-night checks have been ending earlier.
Not dramatically, but measurably. He's getting five hours instead of four. It's something.
"Supply manifest," he says. "Voss is arriving tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? I thought she wasn't due for five more days."
"She moved the run up. There's increased Helix activity in the neighboring sector. She wants to make the delivery before the patrols shift."