Page 47 of Elanie & the Empath
She only rolled her eyes. “Well, are you?”
The answer didn’t come quickly, but we had nothing but time out here. “Being a physician is rewarding, I suppose. I get to help people.” I considered my role aboard theIgnisar, wondering how much I actually helped anyone while catering to the rich and famous on their sexcations. “Or I try to, anyway.”
“I saw the diploma on your wall. First in your class.” She stirred her stew. “From a good school too.”
There was an insinuating edge to her tone. I narrowed my eyes at it. “And now you’re wondering how a doctor who was first in his class at a good school wound up working on a commercial pleasure cruise-liner?”
She shrugged. “You probably could have gone anywhere. Why theIgnisar?”
“This is a long story,” I said, setting down my empty container. “And not a particularly nice one, either. I’m not sure it’s great for dinner conversation.”
“Good thing I’m almost done.” She ate another bite, set her empty container down, and leaned forward. Her eyes were liquid gold. “I’m listening.”
I hadn’t talked about it in years, the incident. The memories were deep, hidden under layers of bitterness and regret. But the fire was warm, the wood crackling, and Elanie was waiting.
“My final residency after med school was at one of the most prestigious military hospitals on Imperion. I had a patient there, the wife of a high-ranking KU official. She’d fallen while they were skiing in the Trasord Mountains. Hit her head. She had a bleed. It was small, easily treated if we’d caught it in time. But there was a storm, and it took them too long to get off the mountain. When she finally came in, she already had widespread damage to her brainstem. We tried everything: stem-cell regeneration, DNA cloning, even a bio-synthetic transplant. Nothing worked. It was just”—I shrugged—“too late.”
While Elanie’s brow furrowed, I ran a hand through my hair. “Her husband was nearly catatonic. Total emotional collapse. I’d never felt anything like it before or since. He refused to accept what had happened to her. He couldn’t let her go. Despite how many patient care meetings we had or how many times we described her injuries to him and how she would never come back from them, he didn’t believe us. This went on for months, and the whole time—” My throat spasmed, cutting me off. I cleared it gruffly and tried again. “The whole time, I couldfeelher. For months, I felt her. Shewas still in there, her consciousness. And she was in misery.”
“Sem, that’s…”
“Horrible?” I suggested when she couldn’t find the word.
“Yes. Horrible.”
“I was the only Portisan employed by the hospital, and leadership didn’t want to hear it when I advocated for her and for what she so clearly wanted.” I shook my head, trying to force out the memory of the way she begged and pleaded to anyone who would listen to take mercy on her. “I couldn’t live with it. It was wrong. Nobody should be able to make decisions like that for someone else. Nobody should be able to decide that their wants and needs are somehow more important than someone else’s. Nobody should steal someone else’s ability to choose their own fate. Not for love. Not for anything.”
“What happened?”
I lowered my voice. Not because I was worried someone would overhear us in this private cave, but because it was still so hard to say any of this out loud. “I stayed late after my shift one night and snuck into her room. I told her what I was going to do. I got her consent. Then I implemented our assisted death program, modifying her ventilator so it filled her lungs with nitrogen instead of oxygen. I sat with her until it was over, and she thanked me before she went. It was somehow both the proudest and the most shameful moment of my life. I’d made it look like an equipment malfunction, probably could have gotten away with it too. But I came clean the next day.”
“What?” she blurted out. “Why?”
“Of all the choices I’d made that day, trying to lie about it was the only one that had felt wrong.”
“What did they do to you?”
“Her husband gave me a black eye and a broken jaw, for starters.” I winced at the memory. “Which would have been worse if security hadn’t stepped in. Then I was court-martialed and found guilty of malpractice. The only reason I wasn’t found guilty of murder and sent to prison for the rest of my life was that my father has—well, hehad,” I corrected with a sting in my side, “a lot of sway in the medical community. Eventually, I was allowed to practice medicine again, but it didn’t matter. Everyone knew my name and what I’d done. The only person willing to hire me after the smoke cleared was Captain Jones. And the funniest part of this whole thing, if there is a funny part, is that I never even wanted to be a doctor in the first place.”
“You wanted to be a mechanic.”
My head cocked. “How did you know that?”
“You told me after we landed here, right before you nearly died.”
“I forgot.” I huffed a laugh. “But it’s true. I’d much rather be working on the ship than on her guests. But my father insisted that I practice medicine. And now that I am, he refuses to acknowledge that I exist.”
“Your statement was accurate.” She frowned at the fire. “That was not a nice story. But I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
I gave her a grateful nod, and we were silent for a moment. Until something occurred to me.
“Can I ask you something?”
She pulled her hair over her shoulder. “Sure.”
“Why Macey?”
Flames licked along her throat. “What?”
