Earth Awakens (The First Formic War) (30 page)

“If you
are
lying about this device,” she said. “I mean it. I’ll cut you in your sleep.”

She was all bluster and no bite, Bingwen saw. He wondered if she had always been that way or if the Formics had done this to her. Probably the latter, just as the Formics had changed him, bringing his survival instinct front and center and burying the person he used to be under a mountain of grief.

What had she endured? he wondered. Had she seen her parents die? Had she found their corpses as Bingwen had? Or had she been spared that? Maybe she and her brother Niro were merely separated from their parents. Maybe they clung to the hope of reuniting somehow.

“So where are you from?” asked Bingwen.

“What do you care?”

“I’m from Dawanzhen. Or a village near there anyway. My family farmed rice.”

“Yeah, you and everyone else. So what.”

“How long have you been here?”

“This isn’t an interview, Stick. Stop asking questions.”

“Sorry. I haven’t seen someone my age in a while. I guess I’m kind of hungry for conversation.”

“Well the rest of us are hungry for food. So unless you’ve got some in that pack of yours, keep your questions to yourself.”

“Get used to questions. That’s how the device makes a diagnosis and determines what to test. It asks a lot of questions.”

Her scowl softened. “Like what?”

“Like how long has your brother been hurting?”

She looked worried again. “Since last night. It started as a stomachache, but now he can’t bear it. I stole some pain pills from the med closet, but I wasn’t sure how much to give him. Bug said if I gave Niro too much, his heart might stop.” She opened the palm of her hand to show him four white tablets. “What do you think?”

“I think we need to hurry and charge this.”

Pipo saw that he was serious, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him to the front of the line. She pushed the girl aside who was using the charger and gave it to Bingwen, who immediately started gathering juice into the device. People in line objected, some cursed. A woman threatened to intervene, but Pipo gave her a look that would melt stone and told her that they were charging this for Mama Goshi who needed it immediately and if the woman didn’t like it she could go take it up with Mama Goshi herself. Then the Med-Assist was ready, and Pipo and Bingwen were running off.

Back at the cots, the children gathered around when Bingwen booted up the device and placed it over Niro’s stomach.

“This isn’t going to hurt him, is it?” asked Pipo.

“No,” said Bingwen. “Just have him lie still.” He tapped through the commands, typed in the symptoms, and listened to the instructions.

“What language is that?” said one of the boys.

“English, bonehead,” said Pipo. “What does it say, Bingwen?”

“It says I need to prick his finger and check his blood.”

For a moment he thought Pipo would object, but then she gripped her brother’s hand and nodded for Bingwen to continue. Bingwen swabbed Niro’s fingertip, retracted the disposable needle prick, and stuck the boy’s finger. Niro cried out and Bingwen placed a drop of blood on the scanner. “He has an infection,” Bingwen said once the results came in. “And now it’s telling me to press on his stomach.”

“No!” said Niro.

“You said you weren’t going to hurt him,” said Pipo. “So far that’s all you’ve done.”

“This is how the device works,” said Bingwen. “I do some tests. The more results it has, the more accurate the diagnosis. This is exactly what a doctor would do.”

Pipo hesitated again. Niro clung to her. The other boys looked uneasy. A few adults had gathered to see what the commotion was about.

“I can’t advance unless I do this,” said Bingwen.

Pipo bit her bottom lip a moment then held Niro tighter. “Do it quickly,” she said.

Bingwen set the device aside. “What hurts worse, Niro, when I press down on your belly or when I release?” He didn’t need to wait for an answer. Niro cried out when Bingwen released the pressure. Bingwen checked the appropriate box and placed the device over the stomach. “Now hold still. It’s going to take a series of images. This part won’t hurt at all.”

Tears had welled up in the little boy’s eyes, and Pipo looked on the verge of crying as well. Several adults had heard Niro cry out, and a crowd was slowly gathering around the bed. When the results came in, the device said it was 97.5 percent confident of the diagnosis.

“His appendix is about to burst,” said Bingwen.

Pipo’s eyes widened. “Burst? What does that mean?”

“It means we need to find a surgeon immediately. They need to remove it.”

Pipo sprinted to retrieve Mama Goshi, and the old woman arrived a moment later, puffing and irritated at being disturbed. She scowled and gestured at the gathered crowd. “What’s all this?”

“Niro’s stomach is going to burst,” said one of the boys.

“His appendix,” said Bingwen. He showed Mama Goshi the device. He could tell from her expression that she couldn’t read English or understand the scans she was looking at. But she did seem to understand Niro’s moaning and the worry on the faces of the gathered adults. Mama Goshi unclipped her communicator from her hip and called the doctor. She tried explaining the issue, but she couldn’t answer the doctor’s questions or properly pronounce the terms Bingwen keep feeding her. Finally she gave up and thrust the communicator into Bingwen’s hands. “
You
tell her.”

Bingwen read to the doctor the full diagnosis: acute pain localized to the right iliac fossa; elevated white blood count; rebound tenderness and guarding in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen; he shared the numbers for hemoglobin, hematocritin, blood sugar; he described the results of the ultrasound and CT scans, which had identified an inflamed appendix with pus, fibrin, and congested blood vessels on the surface. Bingwen didn’t know many of the English words and thus what their Chinese equivalent would be, so he simply pronounced them in English and hoped the doctor understood.

When he finished, the doctor said, “How old are you?”

“Eight. But I don’t understand most of what I’m telling you. All I know for certain is that Niro needs surgery immediately. Can you come?”

“Yes. I’ll send someone to get him right away. You did good.”

Two soldiers arrived minutes later with a gurney and took Niro away. Pipo insisted on going with him, but the soldiers wouldn’t allow it. When they were gone, the crowd dispersed. Bingwen could see the adults whispering to each other, passing the news.

Pipo stared at the exit where Niro had gone, and Bingwen tried to reassure her. “The doctor sounded kind. When I told her it was appendicitis, she didn’t seem nervous. I’m guessing she’s done that surgery many times before.”

Pipo turned to him, and for an instant he saw the girl she had been before the war, small and afraid and delicate.

Mama Goshi asked to see the Med-Assist device again. “Where did you get this?”

“From a soldier,” Bingwen told her. He didn’t want to tell her it was Mazer’s and that Mazer was somewhere in the facility. He worried she might try to return it to him.

She gave it back to him and said, “Come with me.”

Bingwen followed her to the nurses’ station where a boy lay on a cot.

“He says his ears and jaw hurt,” said Mama Goshi. “Can your doctor pad tell us why?”

Bingwen looked at the boy, and the two nurses seated around his cot regarded Bingwen curiously. They were not real nurses, Bingwen saw. They were mothers and grandmothers from farming villages, simple people, doing as best as they knew how, which medically wasn’t much.

Bingwen set up the device and followed the instructions. Soon the device asked that he attach an otoscope head to the camera lens. It showed him a picture of one, and he asked the nurses if there was such a thing in the medical supplies. One of them left and returned with a few options. Bingwen attached one as best as he could and continued. The boy had a severe inner ear infection, and the Med-Assist recommended the appropriate dose of antibiotics and pain medicine.

Mama Goshi had him scan other people next. A woman had a ruptured disc in her neck. A man had a sinus infection. A crying baby had acid reflux. A pregnant woman wanted to know the sex of her unborn child. Some of the people he could help; others he couldn’t. Sometimes they had ailments the device couldn’t identify.
FURTHER LAB WORK REQUIRED
, it would say. Or
ADDITIONAL TESTS NEEDED
. Or
PLEASE SEE A DOCTOR FOR FURTHER ASSISTANCE.
Other times it prescribed medicine that the facility simply didn’t have.

Word of the failures didn’t spread nearly as quickly as the successes, however, and soon people from Fang, Fire, and Wings were coming for a diagnosis, forming a line that stretched down the tunnel.

Bingwen pulled Mama Goshi aside. “What you’re having me do is rather dangerous,” he said. “I’m not a doctor. The device is for emergencies in the field, when a real doctor is inaccessible. It’s a last-resort option. It can be wrong. These people need a real doctor.”

“We don’t have enough,” said Mama Goshi.

“Then we need to get some,” said Bingwen. “Can you take me outside the facility?”

“Why?”

“The Med-Assist can’t get a sat connection this far underground, and I know someone who can help.”

She announced to those waiting in line that they were taking a break. Then she took him up a service elevator to the garage. Bingwen had retrieved his radiation suit, and he slipped it on once they reached the main door. Two soldiers guarding the exit stopped them when they approached.

“He needs a moment outside,” Mama Goshi told them. The men looked at each other, shrugged, and let Bingwen out.

“Knock twice to be let back in,” said one of them.

“And don’t let the Formics eat you,” said the other.

They closed the door behind him. It was night out. Bingwen walked a short distance away until he got a strong signal. He checked the time. New Zealand was four hours ahead. It was the middle of the night there, closer to dawn. She had told him to call at any hour, however.

She answered on the third ring, her voice groggy. “This is Kim.”

“It’s Bingwen,” he said. “The boy. From China. I’m sorry to wake you.”

She was instantly alert. “Bingwen. I’ve been so worried. Are you safe? Where are you?”

He hardly knew her. He had never even seen her face. She had helped him perform the surgery on Mazer, and he had learned afterward that she and Mazer had been … what? Not husband and wife yet, but whatever came before that. A couple? And yet despite this brief tenuous connection she and Bingwen had shared, he felt as if he
did
know her, that she was someone special to him. A friend, yes, and maybe even more than that. Not a mother, no. But
like
a mother. A half-mother. A woman who knew him and valued him and worried over him. He would never say as much to her, of course, and he had never even thought such a thing prior to this moment. But it felt so wonderful to be fretted over, thought about, remembered, that he found himself smiling.

“I’m safe,” he said. He told her everything then, all of it spilling out of him. About the base, the conditions, Mama Goshi and Pipo and Niro and Hun, the fourteen-year-old driver. He told her about the cocky Lieutenant Li and the sick people in Claw and Fire and the other barracks. He wasn’t sure why he was divulging every detail, but it felt like such a release to talk to someone. Mazer was fine, by the way, he told her. He had healed. He was healthy. He could run and move. It was as if he had never been hurt.

She broke down at that point. At first Bingwen didn’t realize she was crying. There was only silence on her end, and for a moment he thought he had lost the connection.

“Dr. Arnsbrach?” he said.

“I’m here,” she said, her voice shaky.

He felt like an idiot then. Mazer was her first concern. He had lost the connection with her shortly after Mazer’s surgery when the device’s battery had depleted, and Kim had not yet heard how Mazer had recovered. She had been sick with worry all this time, and Bingwen had just yammered on and on about trivial things when it was Mazer she wanted to know about.

When she collected herself, she apologized and blamed her emotions on the lack of sleep and told him more than once that under no circumstances was he to tell Mazer that she had cried. “Promise me, Bingwen.”

He promised.

She asked him where Mazer was now.

“He’s here at this underground facility. He’s helping to lead the soldiers from here. It’s some big operation. I don’t think they’re sending him out to fight. I think he’ll stay here where it’s safe.”

The line went quiet again.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

She sniffed. “Yes, I’m just … relieved.”

Bingwen was suddenly angry. “He should have called you and told you all this himself.”

“It’s complicated, Bingwen.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s good manners.”

She laughed. “Oh Bingwen. I hope you and I can meet in person someday.”

He remembered why he had called. “I need your help. We need doctors. There are thousands of people here and hardly any medical staff. I know you can’t send doctors. This is a war zone. The skies aren’t safe. But would you or any doctors you know be willing to see patients via the nets? Through holos? You can’t treat them obviously. At best you could partially examine them and diagnose them. People here could conduct whatever tests you needed, assuming we have the equipment for it. We’d be your hands. None of us have any medical training, so we wouldn’t conduct any procedures or surgeries if they were needed. We would leave that to the real doctors here. That would be their focus. Instead of spending time examining patients, they could dedicate all their time to performing procedures only they can do. So we identify the emergencies, they address them. More people could be seen that way, and we could hopefully avoid what almost happened with Niro.”

When she spoke again, the worry in her voice was gone, replaced with steel-hard confidence. “Bingwen, I’m going to my office right now. There are several nonprofits that do this sort of thing. I’ll get our people on it immediately.”