He tried to ignore that suddenly frightening thought by reminding himself that he was still alive and capable of receiving new impressions and continuously modifying his total experience as a result of them, while the taped material had been frozen at the time it had been donated. In any case, the donors were long since deceased or far removed from Sector General. But Conway’s mind felt as though it was beginning to doubt its own authority, and he was suddenly afraid for his sanity.
O’Mara would be furious if he knew Conway was indulging in this kind of thinking. So far as the Chief Psychologist was concerned, a Doctor was responsible for his work and for the tools, both physical and psychological, which enabled him to do that work. If the Doctor could not perform satisfactorily, then the person concerned should seek a less demanding job.
There were few jobs more demanding than that of a Diagnostician.
His hands were beginning to feel wrong again, and the fat, pink, and strangely awkward fingers were trembling. Conway stowed away his DBDG instruments and turn~ed to Hossantir’s Melfan assistant, whose ID was still smeared with blood and only partly readable, and said, “Would you like to resume, Doctor?”
“Thank you, sir,” the ELNT said. Obviously it had been worrying in case Conway, as a result of his intervention, had thought the Melfan incapable of doing the work. Right now, he thought grimly, the opposite is true.
“It is not expected,” Hossantir said gravely, “that you should do everything yourself, Conway.”
Plainly the Tralthan knew that something was wrong with him- Hossantir’s eyes missed nothing, even when all four of them seemed to be looking in other directions. Conway watched for a few minutes until the team had closed up, then he left Forty-three to check on the progress of the other two patients. Psychologically he felt unwell.
The organ of absorption had been successfully transplanted into Ten, and Edanelt and his team were busy with the microsurgery required on the replacement limbs. The patient was out of danger, however, because the new organ had been tested with an application of nutrient paint and the sensors showed that it was performing satisfactorily. While he was complimenting the team on its work, Conway stared at the heavy staples which held the edges of the wound together-so closely sutured were they that the wound looked like an enormous zip-fastener. But nothing less would serve to hold an FROB’s hard, thick, and incredibly tough hide together, and the material of the staples was molecularly unstable so that they could be rendered flexible for withdrawal when the healing process was complete.
But an almost invisible scar, the Hudlar component of Conway’s mind insisted, would be the least of this patient’s problems.
All at once Conway wanted to run away from all this major surgery and its attendant postoperative problems, instead of having to make yet another examination of a third Hudlar patient.
Yarrence had concentrated its efforts on the cranial injury, leaving FROB-Three’s abdominal wound to the medics freed by the demise of FROB-Eighteen, while the remaining members of both teams were deployed on the limb amputation and replacement work. It was obvious after the first few minutes that they were engaged in performing a very complex but smooth-running operation.
From the talk around the frame he gathered that it was also an operation without precedent. To Conway it had seemed to be an obvious solution to FROB-Three’s problem, replacing the missing forelimbs with two from the rear. While not as precise as the originals they would be much more satisfactory in every way than the prosthetics, and there would be no rejection problems. He had read in the old medical texts of Earth-human arm amputees learning to draw, write, and even eat with their feet, and the Hudlar feet were much more adaptable than those of an Earth-human DBDG. But the admiration that simple solution had aroused among the team was making Conway feel embarrassed, because, given the present circumstances, anyone could have thought of it.
It was the circumstances which were without precedent-the Menelden disaster with its aftermath of massively injured Hudlars requiring transplant surgery together with the ready availability of spare parts. The possibility of one of the transplant cases being able to return to its home planet with the bonus of a pair of forelimbs which were almost as good as the originals was an idea which would have occurred to any moral coward like himself, who dreaded those postop conversations with patients whose transplants were from normal donors rather than from themselves.