MCAH Online

It is completely unedited, so forgive any errors! But I thought you might enjoy a bit of it. KindlesFlame is the head of the student medical clinic, professor and former dean of the medical college, and he and Jahir have lunch every week.

      “So how are you feeling?” KindlesFlame said. “If I’m to take my readings at face value, I’d say you’re adapting handily to the world. Any more bouts of fatigue?”
      “No physical ones, at least,” Jahir said. “I’m not fond of cold, however, and I am so deeply involved with my studies that I’m surprised by such novelties as food and sunlight.”
      KindlesFlame chuckled. “Well, another two weeks and you’ll be done with it, and you can rest between terms. How are you feeling about the material now?”
      “Fairly confident,” Jahir said. “Though God and Lady know I may be deluded as to my competence on the matter. The subject remains alien to me—if you’ll pardon the expression.”
      “It’s apt,” KindlesFlame said. He leaned back in his chair, hands resting on his knee and his cider cup steaming between them on the table. “And it’ll get easier, the deeper you go into it.”
      “That’s encouraging,” Jahir began.
      “Unless it doesn’t, and then you’ll drown,” the Tam-illee finished, and laughed at his expression. “Oh, rest easy, alet. I’m teasing. Once you get to be my age you’ve seen so many mournful faces near finals that they all blur together and you stop being able to take any of them seriously. ‘This too shall pass.’ ”
      “Yes,” Jahir said, thinking of all too many things here that would. He glanced up. “Do you know, Healer, that I still have not a notion what to do with what I’m learning?”
      “Is this about the decision on what track to take?”
      “Only inasmuch as my lack of imagination gives me no guidance,” Jahir said. He cupped his gloved hands on the walls of the mug. “I have to imagine, though, that one does not enter into a degree at this level without some idea of how to employ it.”
      “You’d be surprised,” KindlesFlame said dryly. “But here now. Let’s assume that you came here for a psychology degree so that you could use it in some way. Is there something you could do at home with it?”
      The thought was risible. A license to practice therapy among people who were riddled with secrets and vicious fears. He would never be done with the work, were he allowed to begin it at all, and he wouldn’t. No one would talk to an heir to a seat in the royal House, unless they wanted to manipulate the situation somehow. “I’m afraid not.”
      “So that limits you to practice here, in the Alliance,” KindlesFlame. “If ‘limit’ is the right word with all the known worlds available to you, and all the starbases and ships linking them besides.” He tapped his finger on the desk, as he was wont to do while thinking. “Have you any interest at all in the research track?”
      “I think not,” Jahir said. “At very least, it has not drawn my attention at all.”
      “So your choices are medical or clinical.”
      “Just so,” Jahir said. “And I find the clinical route attractive, in a pastoral way; it’s something I could imagine sustaining save that I wonder if I would not become overmuch involved.”
      “That’s always a concern, of course,” KindlesFlame said. “But I’m not sure how you’d avoid it in the medical track either. If anything, it’s more extreme there: acute cases tend to incite acute feelings.”
      “Mmm.” Jahir looked away. “I suppose. But at least those cases are severed from you decisively.”
      “Maybe,” KindlesFlame said. “But I think you’d find the clinical setting a better fit for your personality. And I think you’d have an advantage there, being Eldritch, one that would work against you in an acute care setting.”
      “Ah?” Jahir asked. “How so?”
      The Tam-illee grinned. “Everyone’s going to want to tell you their problems.”
      Jahir frowned at him. “If that is more teasing, Healer—”
      “No, not at all. I laugh at it because it’s true.” He took up his cup and sipped from it before saying, “There’s something about you that inspires confidence. I think part of it is that people are aware at how many secrets Eldritch keep, and assume that their own secrets will be just as safe. And people will think… ‘he’s lived so long, he’ll have seen everything already, so my personal shame won’t be so shocking.’ There’s a psychology, you see, to a therapist’s appearance: species, comportment, dress. Some part of that you can control, and some part of it you don’t. And you just… have it. That thing that makes people want to talk.”
      “Are you serious?” Jahir asked, startled.
      “Oh yes,” KindlesFlame said. “You listen well.” He smiled. “Probably to keep from talking too much. Yes?”
      “Perhaps,” Jahir said, and the Tam-illee chuckled. “But surely these things don’t make up for my being able to read their thoughts. Would that not distress patients?”
      KindlesFlame snorted. “With you gloved and keeping your distance all the time? Not at all. No, I think you’d be a very successful therapist, if you committed yourself to it. Not to say you wouldn’t excel at the medical application, if that’s really where your heart lies…?”
      “I don’t know,” Jahir admitted. “I find chemistry easy, at least. Probably the easiest part of my studies.”
      “That’s handy, particularly if you want to specialize in pharmacology.” KindlesFlame nodded. “That’s not a bad thing for a practicing therapist, as well. In fact, if it interests you, you can always take the pharma courses as an adjunct to the clinical track. It’ll make a little extra work for you, but you’ll use it.”
      Jahir shook his head minutely. “You aren’t making the choice any easier, Healer.”
      “It’s not my job to make the choice easy. It’s my job to make the potential choices clearer, so you know which one you want.” KindlesFlame stirred his cider, inhaled the steam. “You still have one more semester to decide, anyway.”
      Jahir attended to his own drink, watching the students pass on the sidewalks below their perch on the glassed-in balcony. Their posture had changed as the weeks had worn on, and now with finals approaching he thought he could read their nervousness, their late nights, and their focus in their body language and the speed of their walk. “If an Eldritch therapist inspires confidences, what of a Glaseah? I don’t see many of them.”
      “In the medical campus?” KindlesFlame shook his head. “You’ll catch some of them in the research labs, but for the most part they’re not often practicing any form of medicine. You’ll find the exceptions, but the culture tends to turn out scientists and teachers. Which is a pity, because they’re a friendly species… they put people to ease. And they’re hard to faze, emotionally.”
      “I see,” Jahir murmured. At KindlesFlame’s inquisitive look, he said, “My roommate is a Glaseah, and two years into his psychology degree.”
      “Ah! Well.” KindlesFlame grinned. “There’s a gem. I bet he’ll never want for work. If he’s going clinical. Is he?”
      “He’s not sure,” Jahir said.
      “I hope he does go into practice,” KindlesFlame said. At Jahir’s glance, he said, “Like I said earlier, once you get to be my age, you’ve seen so many students that the patterns become obvious. I like to see a student break the mold. They’re usually the ones that go the farthest.”

Those Tam-illee names can get awkward. Anyway! Page 231, and we continue. I am teasing Vasiht’h for falling in love with Jahir: “You keep trying to figure out how to describe the color of his eyes.” “Yes, well, you do that with all those woman actresses on TV and it doesn’t make you in love with them.” “I’m an artist. We fall in love with everything beautiful.”