Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [98]
“If routine physicals get in the way of your surgery, then let them slide. But as long as you aren’t slicing and gluing, we don’t have enough help for you to sit around waiting for another body to open up.” He leaned forward, putting his hands on Uli’s cluttered desk. He looked, Uli thought, about twenty years older than he had months before, when he’d assigned Uli his duties. Uli could also smell a faint whiff of alcohol on his breath.
“Eventually,” Hotise continued, “we’ll be fully staffed, but until then, we have to spread ourselves around.”
“And if the spread is too thin for the good of the patients?”
Hotise straightened. “Suck it up, Dr. Divini. There is a war on, after all.”
Uli sighed and nodded. He hadn’t really expected anything else. And tired or not, drunk or not, the man was right. A surgeon lying on a couch could just as easily be treating routine lumps and bumps.
Didn’t mean he had to like it, though.
“You have patients to see,” Hotise said. “So I’ll get out of your hair. Have a nice shift.”
The older man exited the office, and Uli glared at Hotise’s back as he left.
“I’m unfamiliar with all the nuances of human behavior,” C-4ME-O said, “but I think it’s safe to say that you didn’t come out the best in that exchange.”
“You’re the second wise-mouth droid I’ve met. If I never meet another one, my life would not suffer a bit.”
“Here’s the next patient’s chart, Doctor.”
“Go find something useful to do before I decide you need to be reprogrammed as a latrine cleaner. We can do that in the military, you know. Take a medical droid and put him to that use.”
“Idle threats do not become you, Dr. Divini.”
Uli smiled despite himself and looked at the chart. It described the complaint of one Sergeant Nova Stihl, a guard, who was having …
Bad dreams?
Great. Wonderful. He knew less about psychological maladies than he did Rodian influenza.
In the exam room, the patient sat on the table wearing a disposable flimsi gown. Offhand, he looked fit and muscular; on the face of it he didn’t appear to be beset with any major psychosis. His affect was calm.
“Sergeant Stihl. I’m Dr. Divini. What seems to be the problem?”
The man gave him a little shrug and looked embarrassed. “Trouble sleeping.”
“I see. Says here you’ve been having nightmares?”
“Yeah. I hate to waste your time on piddly stuff, Doc, but I’m starting to doze off at work. Maybe you can give me a pill or something?”
“No problem there, we have all kinds of sleeping meds. But we should probably try to figure out the cause before we try curing it.”
Stihl shrugged again. “You’re the doctor.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“Hard to say. I used to have a bad night once in a while at my last posting, but they’ve gotten worse since I was transferred up here. More frequent.”
“Uh-huh. Any stress at your job?”
Stihl laughed. “I’m a guard. I deal with sodders locked in detention who don’t want to be there, most of whom did something illegal to get there. Stress goes with the territory.”
“Been doing it awhile?”
“Since I joined up. Eleven standard years.”
“Okay. So the stress level now is what? More, less, the same?”
“A little less, actually. I was posted dirtside before. Some real touchy types on Despayre, most of ’em crazier than a rabid Shistavanen. Guys detained here on the station are generally military or civilian contractors who got too frisky or greedy. Not many career criminals. Easier to deal with, ’cause they got more to lose.”
“Okay. Recreation?”
“I do martial arts.”
“Getting hit in the head more than usual?”
Stihl laughed. “Other way around. I’m the teacher—I don’t get tagged, much.”
“Anything new or different so far as diet? Alcohol? Quarters? Relationships?”
“Not that you’d notice. I get along with my unit, eat the same stuff I usually eat, don’t spend my time drinking. Basic barracks are the same all over the galaxy; I share a cube with a few other NCOs; they aren’t any trouble. I tend