Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [25]
In public. He was the only one to watch her in private, like this, when she thought there was no one to see that her whole pose of cheer was nothing more than a facade.
"I wasn't finished. I wasn't even started yet."
"Damn it," he swore, scrubbing at his eyes again and pounding the arm of his chair. "Damn it anyway!" What careless god had caused her to choose the very words he had used, fifteen years ago?
Fifteen years ago, when a stupid accident had left him paralyzed from the waist down and put an end—he thought—to his dreams for med school?
Fifteen years ago, when Doctor Harwat Kline-Bes was his doctor and had heard him weeping alone into his pillow?
He turned his chair and opened the viewport out into the stars, staring at them as they moved past in a panorama of perfect beauty that changed with the rotation of the station. He let the tears dry on his cheeks, let his mind empty.
Fifteen years ago, another neurologist had heard those stammered, heartbroken words, and had determined that they would not become a truth. He had taken a paraplegic young student, bullied the makers of an experimental Moto-Chair into giving the youngster one—then bullied the dean of the Meyasor State Medical College into admitting the boy. Then he had seen to it that once the boy graduated, he got an internship in this very hospital—a place where a neurologist in a Moto-Chair was no great curiosity, not with the sentients of a hundred worlds coming in as patients and doctors. . . .
A paraplegic, though. Not a quad. Not a child with a brilliant, flexible mind, trapped in an inert body.
Brilliant mind. Inert body. Brilliant—
An idea blinded him, it occurred so suddenly. He was not the only person watching Tia—there was one other. Someone who watched every patient here, every doctor, every nurse. . . . Someone he didn't consult too often, because Lars wasn't a medico, or a shrink—
But in this case, Lars' opinion was likely to be more accurate than anyone else's on this station. Including his own.
He thumbed a control. "Lars," he said shortly. "Got a minute, buddy?"
He had to wait for a moment. Lars was a busy guy—though hopefully at this hour there weren't too many demands on his conversational circuits. "Certainly, Kenny," Lars replied after a few seconds. "How can I help the neurological wunderkind of Central Worlds MedStation Pride of Albion? Hmm?" The voice was rich and ironic; Lars rather enjoyed teasing everyone onboard. He called it "therapeutic deflation of egos." He particularly liked deflating Kenny's—he had said more than once that everyone else was so afraid of being "unkind to the poor cripple" that they danced on eggs to avoid telling him when he was full of it.
"Can the sarcasm, Lars," Kenny replied. "I've got a serious problem that I want your opinion on."
"My opinion?" Lars sounded genuinely surprised. "This must be a personal opinion—I'm certainly not qualified to give you a medical one."
"Most definitely, a very personal opinion, one that you are the best suited to give. On Hypatia Cade."
"Ah." Kenny thought that Lars' tone softened considerably. "The little child in the Neuro unit, with the unchildlike taste in holos. She still thinks I'm the AI. I haven't dissuaded her."
"Good, I want her to be herself around you, for the gods of space know she won't be herself around the rest of us." He realized that his tone had gone savage and carefully regained control over himself before he continued. "You've got her records and you've watched the kid herself. I know she's old for it—but how would she do in the shell program?"
A long pause. Longer than Lars needed simply to access and analyze records. "Has her condition stabilized?" he asked, cautiously. "If it hasn't—if she goes brain-inert halfway into her schooling—it'd not only make problems for anyone else you'd want to bring in late, it'll traumatize the other shell-kids badly. They don't handle death well. I wouldn't be a party to frightening them, however inadvertently."