TBntG-3 Chpt 53

=The Bull and the Genie=
==Chapter 53 - Book III - The Clan Invasion==
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==Aftershocks: 2==
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===Restoration of Religions===
Mary Cheng waited with the other dignitaries, and kept an eye out on the security detail. There weren't a lot of BDS supporters left, but well, it didn't take many to blow up a crowd. They had an outer security perimeter out four blocks, an inner one at the last block, and security teams working through the crowd.
 
After all, if anything was going to bring BDS supporters out, this one would.
 
"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I invoke the blessing of Consecration upon this alter…" The bishop was the bishop for Luthien, a position that had existed for many years, handed down when an occupant retired or was murdered—because Catholicism was illegal in the Combine. Especially Catholicism which had named the Coordinator as a false idol.
 
But they had survived, little groups meeting secretly, some of them destroyed in one purge or another, but never all. Not just Catholics. Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Buddhists, you name it. The Combine had never been nearly as successful as it thought it had in abolishing religion. Directive 27 had abolished the state support for religion in the combine, although Mary had been forced to go to the mat, surprisingly with the help of Melissa and Hanse Davion, along with Edward, to keep people from trying to suppress religions associated with the old regime, but from now on, no religion got government subsidies…
 
Well, save for one gift from the Occupational Commander. The final battles in the Imperial City had reduced the palace to ruins. So Mary, as occupational commander, had killed two birds with one stone, eliminating a possible place that could be made into a shrine for hardliners and providing room for all the religions that had been suppressed to create their new temples. The fact that such a district was nicely secure against any possible attackers was just a bonus. Of course, then had come the question of the order of rebuilding and placement, and Mary had solved that by rolling some dice.
 
Said dice had promptly gone missing from her desk and according to one of her law officers, were now worth something like 10,000 Cbills—in addition to multiplying like pieces of the true cross.
 
The Bishop wore carefully maintained but tattered robes of office—the robes worn by Peter Yamamoto, martyred nearly two hundred years ago. The censer a priest was swinging, the fragrance clear even where Mary was, was a different matter, being created in the 15th century on Earth and sent out here along with a delegation from the Vatican.
 
Mary was Episcopalian, but she'd made it plain—no UMC officer was to participate in a religious ceremony, save as an observer, while in uniform. She'd watch, but she wouldn't partake, even when her sect had its church consecrated in the next week. Too many people were watching them to see what they really wanted.
 
Tomorrow the Synagogue would be consecrated, and Mary hoped the Rabbi who was about 110 and had survived more years running from the Dracs than she wanted to think about, wouldn't drop dead of old age, or get blown away by a stiff breeze.
 
And then the bishop started the short sermon, before the rest of the service and the after-service brunch. In respect for the still messed up supply lines, the church had decreed that it would consist of water and a single relief meal pack, the rest being donated to the overall relief agencies.
 
And they'd made it through the week without anyone trying to blow up the place.
 
Progress! Mary thought.
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===Tale another Cheng===
Interstellar Red Cross Treatment Station 7
"Okay, everyone," Jennifer Cheng said. "Some of you will have to do this alone, so I need you to watch." A few of the interns were sick, but not most. They were past the "bring in people, black tag half of them and watch them die." The ones who were going to die from burns, radiation, chemical weapons, or the like had died already.
 
"Sixteen year old female, dosed with HS-21 chemical warfare agent, the one that dissolves your eyes." The girl was under, thank God, this wasn't one of the categories of injuries you couldn't use a general with. The waldos she was using were up to date, another gift of Edward's core, built by the Lyrans. If he hadn't distributed them, I bet we'd never have had this. 
 
She removed the dressing, showing where the eye membrane had dissolved into a slurry, infection already setting in the girl's empty eye sockets. "Okay, I've had more experience with injuries like this, since I'm from Brannis, but you'll note, they gave her emergency dressings, but infection is already setting in and damaging the optic nerve. Probably because the medic either wasn't trained in this, or had other problems and so just slapped it on and left it for us."
 
One intern gulped. "If you can't hold it in, leave the operating theater before you puke," she said. It wasn't as bad as the last month. Even with the UMC attempting to keep the casualties down, the pediatric wards the IRC and other groups had brought had been overwhelmed. Jennifer's practice on Brannis had brightly colored animals on the walls, and special suckers with mild calming agents to get a fearful child ready for a procedure…
 
On the first days after the UMC declared the zones safe for civilian relief agencies, it was meatball surgery, trying to keep people alive so you could hold them until real treatment could be granted, seared limbs, shattered limbs, people screaming for their parents, and the grating on the floors running red with blood as it flowed into the drains.
 
At least that was over, not that Jennifer would forget about it any time soon.
 
"Right, now you'll see I'm removing the infected and decayed tissue. You have to get it all, and do not trust the computer to catch everything. After that, we irrigate the eye socket." She continued working on them. "Now, we're not going to provide transplants. That's a level of surgery we're not prepared for here, so we'll insert a C-Z eye prosthetic. She reached via waldo for the little silver sphere.
 
Another fruit of the core.
 
"But that won't let her see!"
 
"No, but it will do two things. First of all the prosthetic does allow the user to sense spatial objects. You can't read a book or look at a flower, but you won't run into walls and fall downstairs." Jennifer paused. "Also, the implant helps prevent degeneration of the muscles around the eye socket or the optic nerve so that there won't be problems with transplanting an actual organic eye, likely cloned from her DNA in order to avoid rejection issues." She bent down and gestured at them to come closer. "Now you won't be doing this by yourselves for some time, but in order to assist, I want you to watch what I'm doing…"
 
Seven hours a person, and we have about four thousand with partial or complete eye loss at this facility. About fifteen man-years, so yeah, we'd better have more than one person working on this…
 
Jennifer had started out wanting to be a mechwarrior when Mary had come back. That had lasted until her veterinarian phase, and her LosTech prospector phase, and of course her single disastrous foray into politics in high school.
 
Then she'd, as Mary had said she would, gotten off-world, doing med school on Taurus, then, doing a residency at the Canopian Institute of Pediatric Medicine, which even during the darkest days of the succession wars, had been a cutting edge institute.
 
Younger Jennifer had never noticed. Older Jennifer remembered how big sis had tried to gently steer her away from dreams of being a mechwarrior. Had talked about what warriors could and could not do.
 
A warrior can win the battle. But heal those left? A warrior can't do that. A healer can. And for all the misery of residency, of the times when she had to tell a parent that for all of the miracles the core had brought, sometimes there was nothing to do but to prepare for the end… She wouldn't give it up for the world.
 
And after seven hours, they were finished, and she had time to take the new interns through the ward.
 
"Some of you aren't used to injuries like this," Jennifer said. "But remember that our job is to stabilize and prepare the patients for later and more comprehensive cure. This one, male, age 15, currently in high oxygenation tank, forty percent third-degree burns, six percent fifth-degree burns mostly around the face and upper body due to medium laser exposure. It looks terrible, but this patient is stabilized, and will not die. So we continue maintenance care and monitoring until they can be transported to more comprehensive care facilities for treatment and facial reconstruction. Our job is first of all to ensure any patients do not die, and secondly, ensure that the health conditions they are suffering do not get any worse. Remember your training, and if you feel overwhelmed, there's no shame in requesting a mental-health break, and your superiors have the full right to order such a break."
 
She nodded. "Okay, it's late, and it's time for dinner. And that's another lesson. We're all very upset, but you do your patients no favors by being so upset that you don't eat and then are in the middle of a procedure when low blood sugar hits." Not that many of them will eat a lot tonight, but getting them in the habit is important. 
 
With that, Jennifer Cheng and her gaggle of interns left the ward.
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Book 3 - 53