Chapter 1 Nola #3
The terminal interface is outdated, running a version of the standard Lattice medical software that was deprecated two generations ago.
The patient record fields are designed for single-species populations, which means there's no built-in support for Keth cardiovascular baselines, Vorath bio-luminescent health markers, or the half-dozen other physiological variables I'll need to track for a multispecies patient base.
I'll have to build custom fields, which means learning whatever legacy scripting language this terminal runs.
I add it to the mental list. The list is already long: supplies, vaccinations, allergy databases, humidity regulation, the water leak Thresh probably hasn't mentioned yet, and now custom medical software for a terminal that belongs in a museum.
Every item on the list is something the previous medic should have addressed.
Every item is something that three months of vacancy turned from a problem into a crisis.
The manifest itself tells a story beyond the medical data.
The arrival dates span three years, with the earliest residents having been here since the station's founding.
Some have been here for months. Others arrived weeks ago.
The pattern is irregular, clustering around dates that probably correspond to Helix crackdowns or refugee network coordination cycles.
Three residents have no arrival date listed, which means they came before the record system was established, which means they were among the first people Thresh brought here, the ones who helped build a refugee station out of an abandoned mining relay.
I look at the names: Fen, listed as chief mechanic, arrival date three years ago.
Renna, food services, eleven months. Pahl, no role listed, two years.
These are the core. The people who stayed when staying was the harder choice, who chose the edge of space over whatever the alternative was, and who built something that, despite its underfunding and understaffing and terrible supply closet, functions.
Three months without a doctor. Some of these people have probably been sick and just not saying anything, because when you don't have a doctor, you learn to keep quiet about the pain.
You learn to limp quieter, cough into your pillow, tell everyone you're fine.
I know because I grew up around people who did exactly that, who treated "I'm fine" as a survival skill rather than a lie.
The mining colony had a saying: if you can walk, you can work, and if you can work, you're not sick enough to complain.
My mother repeated it without irony until the day she collapsed on the extraction floor and spent three days in the clinic with a kidney infection that had been building for weeks.
She'd been drinking more water, she said.
She'd been taking the over-the-counter analgesics that the company store sold at a markup.
She'd been fine. She was always fine. The infection had progressed to the point where her back was hot to the touch and her urine was the color of rust. She was thirty-nine.
The clinic doctor told her she was lucky, which is the word doctors use when they mean "you almost died and the only reason you didn't is statistics.
" I was fourteen. I stood in the clinic and watched a man in a white coat explain kidney function to my mother using words she didn't know, in a tone that assumed she should, and I decided two things: I would become a doctor, and I would never, ever make a patient feel stupid for not knowing the name of the organ that was failing them.
I pull up a blank schedule and start building a triage protocol.
Everyone gets seen in the first two weeks.
Priority cases first: children, elderly, anyone with a listed chronic condition.
Then general assessments. Then we build a vaccination schedule, an allergy database, a proper medical record system.
I'm good at this. Not brilliant. Not gifted. But I'm organized, I'm thorough, and I don't cut corners. That's what people need from a doctor most of the time. Not genius. Just someone who shows up, pays attention, and does the work.
I pull up the last thing on my list for tonight: the station directory. I want to know who's in charge, who does what, and where the power structures are. Every posting has politics. Every station has someone who actually runs things versus someone who officially runs things.
The directory is short. Shorter than any station I've worked on, and I've worked on some lean operations.
Thresh: Security Chief. Fen: Chief Mechanic.
A handful of other names with various roles: water reclamation, food prep, cargo handling, communications.
No station commander listed. No administrator.
No organizational chart. No human resources officer, which means there's nobody to complain to if things go sideways, and also nobody generating those quarterly morale surveys that accomplish nothing except reminding everyone how bad morale is.
Thresh is security chief, but he's also the one who met me at the dock, gave me the tour, knows the supply situation, and apparently has been providing medical care.
That's not a security chief. That's someone running an entire station with a security chief's title.
That's someone who's been doing the work of five people and calling it one job.
I close the terminal. Tomorrow I start seeing patients. Tonight I figure out where the mess hall is, whether the food is edible, and how many things about this station Thresh isn't telling me.
My guess: all of them.