Alien Emergencies - James White [131]
“Nonsense, you’re not going insane!” Conway broke in. But he did not feel as sure as he sounded, and he was uncomfortably aware that Prilicla knew his feelings and was beginning to tremble again.
“The obvious course,” Conway said, trying to regain his clinical calm, “is to desensitize you with a hefty sedative shot. You know that as well as I. But you are too good a doctor to self-administer the indicated medication which would, we both realize, simply be treating the symptoms, without first doing something about the disease, like reporting it to me. Isn’t that so?”
“That is so, friend Conway.”
“Right, then,” Conway said briskly. “You also realize that we can’t do anything about curing the condition until we have you back in the hospital. In the meantime we’ll treat the symptoms with heavy sedation. I want you completely unconscious. You are relieved of all medical duties, naturally, until we have the answer to your little problem.”
Conway could almost feel the little empath’s objections while he was lifting it gently into a pressure litter fitted with gravity nullifiers and the incredibly soft restraints required by this ultrafragile species. Finally Prilicla spoke.
“Friend Conway,” it said weakly, “you know that I am the only medically trained empath on the staff. Our patient will require extensive and delicate cerebral surgery. If my condition precludes me from taking a direct part in the operation, I wish to be treated in an adjacent ward where this abnormal hypersensitivity will better enable me to monitor the EGCL’s unconscious emotional radiation.
“You know as well as I do,” it went on, “that brain surgery in a hitherto unknown life-form is largely exploratory and very, very risky, and my empathic faculty enables me to sense when surgical intervention in any area is right or wrong. By becoming a patient I have lost none of my abilities as a diagnostic empath, and for this reason, friend Conway, I want your promise that I will be placed as close as possible to the patient and restored to full consciousness while the operation is in progress.”
“Well—” Conway began.
“I am not a telepath, as you know,” Prilicla said, so weakly that Conway had to increase the gain on his translator to hear it. “But your feelings, if you do not intend to keep this promise, will be clear to me.”
Conway had never known the normally timid Prilicla to be so forthright in its manner. Then he thought of what the empath was asking him to do—to subject it, in its hypersensitive state, to the emotional trauma of a lengthy operation during which, because of the patient’s strange physiological classification and metabolism, the effectiveness of the anesthetics could not be guaranteed. His hard-held clinical detachment slipped for a moment and he felt like any concerned friend or relative watching a patient whose prognosis was uncertain.
Prilicla began to shake in its harness, but the sedative was taking effect, and very soon it was unconscious and untroubled by Conway’s feelings for it.
“This is Reception,” a flat, translated voice said from the Control Deck’s main speaker. “Identify yourself, please. State whether visitor, patient, or staff and give physiological classification. If unable to do so because of physical injury, mental confusion, or ignorance of the classification system, please make vision contact.”
Conway cleared his throat and said briskly, “Ambulance ship Rhabwar, Senior Physician Conway. Staff and two patients, all warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. Staff classifications are Earth-human DBDG, Cinrusskin GLNO, and Kelgian DBLF. One patient is an EGCL, origin unknown, spacewreck casualty in condition nine. The second patient is also staff, a GLNO in condition three. We need—”
“Prilicla?”
“Yes, Prilicla,” Conway said. “We need matching environment OR and postop intensive care facilities for the EGCL, treatment to begin on arrival, and adjacent accommodation for the GLNO whose empathic