Hospital Ship (The Rim Confederacy #5) by Jim Rudnick Read Free Book Online Page B

face her as best he could.
    She came to attention, snapped him a salute, and then grinned at her captain.
    "Sir, I can hear you fine ... partial new ears, compliments of the best Barony surgeon they have here," she said and her smile was a mile wide.
    He remembered the injury to her ears over on Ghayth had been a result of the Ansible attack and the poor luck she had of being on that station at the time. The Ansible load of incoming data had blown right through the Atlas's Ansible system—as well as through Lieutenant Irving's eardrums. That had only been a couple of months ago, so the news that she had surgery and had been fixed up was good news, and Tanner grinned back at her.
    "Good to know—but tell me, any issues with the new ears or hearing," he said.
    She shook her head negatively. "Not in the least, Captain. They told me that the new inner eardrums and all were grown here in the—er—well, in the research lab they have that's sort of a secret. The replacement tissues work perfectly—and only a couple more procedures, but I can hear pretty good right now and that's great!" she said, and they both smiled widely.
    She came around to the front and pointed down at the robo-doc with its clear glass front showing his bare right arm lying inside on the appendage bed. Lights inside were a dull red in color, and a green line was slowly expanding on his arm starting at his wrist; it had grown now to halfway up to his elbow. After almost an hour, the process of healing his broken ulna was about halfway done, and he was about fed up with sitting here doing nothing.
    "Broken bone, Sir?" the lieutenant asked.
    "Aye, Lieutenant, one of the two in my forearm. Once it's healed, I'll be fine."
    "Will you be returning back down to the Atlas , Sir?" she asked, and he could tell by her tone that she had no idea as to why he was on the Hospital Ship.
    He looked down at his shoes, the new running shoes he'd never worn before, and noticed that although they had been white just an hour ago or so, now there were a couple of scuffs on the left toe that showed a stain. "So much for clean around here," he mumbled to himself.
    "Lieutenant, it's a long, long story, but I would like to let you know why I'm here to be honest. It's not a nice story, but I'll be here for a few months. Could we make a time and place and say get together then to talk?" he asked, keeping his voice flat in tone.
    She nodded and said yes, and they quickly worked out a date for a mid-morning meet-up in the big cafeteria over in the middle of the ship.
    They parted and he looked down to see if the green area had grown any more on his forearm, and he couldn't tell as the green healed section moved so slowly. Looking around, he was the only one here in the small robo-doc area this late in the day, but from his seat, he saw a couple of caregivers in white standing around one of the full body robo-doc units over in the far corner.
    He wondered what that was all about, but he couldn't get up to go and see.
    For another hour almost, he sat there and the chimes from the robo-doc caught him by surprise.
    From around a corner in the clinic, a nurse came to his side. At least he thought she might be a nurse, but as they all wore white scrubs with only name tags that were too small to read, he didn't know for sure.
    She put down her tablet on the side of the robo-doc and then looked at him.
    She smiled down at him as she hit a few buttons on the control panel of the robo-doc, and he watched as the red lights and the now big green areas of light turned off and the top slid to the right to allow him to move his arm. He slowly lifted up his right arm, flexed his fingers, and was happy to discover there was no residual pain.
    Everything seemed to be okay, he thought. My arm is fixed ... wonder if my brain could be fixed so easily . He shook his head since he knew the answer to that was negative.
    The nurse noticed his head shake and looked at him.
    "Still have pain, Captain?" she asked