Meyer waved her hand nonchalantly when Isa asked if he could ask Pontiff Gregorius to stroll through the private garden at night. "Of course, there won't be any problem. His Holiness is already informed of your presence in the colony, and is also very grateful for the service that MFE is going to do with our medical staff. He will undoubtedly be delighted to share his nightly walk in the garden with you, don't be afraid."
"And we can go see a Cretan clothing store after the visit to the Medical Center, certainly." Mac added, smiling. "I think there's one a few streets over from the school, it's right Greta? Does it sound familiar to you?"
The monsignora scratched her chin thoughtfully. "Yes... there is a small fashion store there, and it's run by a Cretan family. But they do not import clothes from Crete, but rather they design, sew and make them themselves. I've looked at it sometimes, although I've never bought anything, Cretan clothing is... too colorful for me." Then she glanced at her black clerical uniform and smiled. "Furthermore, I rarely have the opportunity to dress in civilian clothes. But there's a good chance they have something you like there, Isa, and their designs are heavily influenced by Hispanic and Cretan culture."
Mac was glad that Isabella didn't mind that she took advantage of her visit to the Medical Center to make one last round of her patients. She was very meticulous with the rounds, also because her neuropathology specialty treated complicated diseases that she had to constantly monitor to avoid unforeseen worsening. "I've almost everything under control, really. Knowing that I was going to be away for a long time and that I will not be able to personally attend to my patients, I've left everything well tied up during my absence, but I've a patient under observation with early Parkinson's due to prolonged inhalation of mercury vapors that I diagnosed today before meeting with you, and I would like to supervise the start of treatment before I leave with you."
Warned by Meyer, Mac and Isa could see Antonio approaching the table, bringing the three plates with dessert. He delicately served them in front of each diner, with a bow of his head. "Dear señoras, Monseñora, I hope the food was to your liking." The restaurant owner smiled broadly at the three women. "Here are the famous torrijas, a recipe that is my mother's pride, and which has been passed down from generation to generation of my familia, since Earth times. I assure you that you haven't tasted such an exquisite postre as much as my name is Antonio Garzón de La Hoz."
Mac had never tasted that dish. She looked at her plate as she picked up the fork. What she had in front of her was some kind of soft toast, coated with egg and sugar. She cut off a small piece and put it in her mouth, tasting it carefully. It wasn't hot, nor cold, and the first taste that came to her mind was a mix of sweet sugar with some cinnamon and a distant citrus touch. The outer coating was clearly egg, fried, and the core was a milk-infused bread. The overall result was a delicate and creamy texture, with a mix of sweet flavors that went together perfectly, and made Wilson feel almost like home, like family, although she had no idea what that could be like, because she I had never been to Crete.
The neurologist raised her head and looked at Antonio, who was watching her with an almost apprehensive smile, waiting for her verdict. "It's... delicious, Antonio, my congratulations."
The man smiled even wider and visibly relaxed. "Oh, I thank you very much, doctora. It's a magnificent dish, whenever I make it it reminds me of my childhood, and my origins, but unfortunately I'll never be able to make it as well as my dear mother, may Deux have en Su Gloria." Antonio made the Sacred Gear sign on his chest. "When I serve it I'm always a little scared that I haven't followed the recipe instructions correctly, and that I've disgraced my mother's name."
Meyer also praised the Cretan's dessert, although she had already tried it before, and soon there were only the empty plates in front of them, which the waiter, who could be Antonio's son, quickly removed. The clergywoman asked for the bill, after which Antonio brought a datapad which he handed to Greta. She hovered over the top of the screen with her handheld communications device, and handed the datapad back to the restaurant owner, who bowed his head gratefully. "It has been an great honor to have received you in my casa, my dear señoras and Monseñora, and is a great honor too that you have been kind enough to taste my humble dishes. Can I offer you the complimentary glass of liquor and a Cretan handworked cigar, si les place? It's included in the price, por supuesto."
Meyer smiled and shook her head. "No, thanks Antonio. On another occasion I would not refuse a good cocktail of rum and fruits to wash down the meal, and I would even smoke one of those spectacular cigars that you import, but I think that today is enough for us. We must get going and continue with our visit, or else we will be forced to take a nap before we can do anything else."
"Ay, a good siesta after lunch fixes everything, so you can continue with the day, Monseñora, I always say that." Antonio smiled, looking at them with an expression that indicated that it was very likely that he himself would go to sleep after that. "However, I will not insist. Vayan con Deux, my dear ladies, and come back whenever you want. You're in your house."
When the Cretan left, the three women got up from the table and left the restaurant towards the street, led by Meyer. They noticed that there were a few more people walking down the street, most of them office workers who had left work during the mid-day break and were on their way to have their meal in some public canteen or restaurant, or were heading to the elevators that went down to the highway, to go home to eat. The streets were not crowded, which was impossible given the small population of the settlement, but there was much more movement than before they entered "The Hispanic Spoon."
The group returned along the same path they had taken before on their way to the restaurant, almost reaching the elevator of the Pontifical Palace again, but before arriving there, they turned to the left along a wide street that led to a small circular square. In the center there was a statue about four meters high, made of metal, with the symbol that represented Deux, a large cybernetic eye inside a gear, spinning slowly in the top. On the other side of the square, among the buildings that surrounded it, you could see a medium-sized square building, six floors, made of cement, with the façade covered with smooth rectangular metal panels, and with many wide glass windows.
It had a wide entrance, disabled-friendly, up to which reached also a fork of the service lane that existed on each street, and above this main entrance you could see a cyan hologram that said <<Medical Center>>, next to a medical cross of the same color. Above the roof were metal rails that ascended to the roof of the cave and higher, through a hole in the rock, and were undoubtedly the supports for an elevator that ascended to the surface, where there is more space.
Without stopping walking, Mac pointed towards the building, addressing Saito. "Well there it is. It has eight floors, two of them underground. It isn't very big, but currently it's sufficient for the flow of patients we have. However, when the colony grows it will need to be expanded, and it is likely that it will probably be relocated to the surface, in one of the two new biodomes. It will also be something positive for patients that when looking through their room window they can see sunlight, and not a holographic projection."
The group crossed the square and reached the entrance, next to which had been parked a vehicle painted dark blue, marked with insignia on the doors that said <<Pontifical Gendarmerie>>. Leaning on it, two agents, dressed in a dark blue uniform, black bulletproof vest and armed with holstered pistols, stood guard. Passing by them, the three women climbed the few steps that led to the large sliding glass door, which opened automatically as they advanced, leaving aside the ramp for disabled persons. The three women entered a reception atrium, decorated in a modern and functional style, with walls painted in white and with cyan lines at mid-height, far removed from the neoclassical style seen in other types of buildings in the colony, and illuminated with luminous panels on the ceiling that cast a neutral light over the entire room. A few meters in front of the door there was a large white counter, with some cyan decorative lines, behind which what looked like two nurses were sitting in front of computer terminals, wearing a uniform consisting of a white medical overalls with some cyan-colored details on the shoulder pads and on the sleeves. There was a seating area against the wall, which must have functioned as a waiting place, in which there was a single person sitting, looking at a portable communications device, and they were able to notice the presence of another armed Gendarmerie officer, watching the room from a corner.
Meyer stopped and looked at Mac. "Well doctor Wilson, I think it would be better if you lead the visit here. It's your workplace, and you probably know much better than I what things might be interesting for Isa to see."
Mackenzie smiled and nodded, looking at Saito. "It will be a pleasure." Mac took a look around and continued talking "Well Isa, this is our humble Medical Center. The 2 underground floors it has are dedicated to a morgue, an autopsy room and some testing laboratories, so I don't think you'll be very interested in visiting them. Then there are 3 floors of standard shared hospital rooms, in which we can accommodate about 250 people. We also have an Intensive Care Unit floor, right down here in the emergency care area." Mac looked to a double door to the left, above which was a sign reading <<Emergency & ICU>>. "Then we've two more floors, at the top, that share areas specialized in rehabilitation, and operating rooms for scheduled operations." Wilson pointed her finger toward the ceiling. "We also have a direct elevator from the Medical Center to the surface, but we use it mainly for patients arriving to the emergency room, when there is a serious accident outside."
Mac gestured for them to follow her and headed towards an open double door on her left, above which was a sign that read <<Medical Consultations>>. The door opened onto a wide hallway along which there were several rows of seats near the walls on the left and several doors on the right, next to which were small signs with the names of doctors. Along the way they passed several people, mostly civilians, but also a couple of doctors wearing the same white coat that Mac was wearing, and another armed agent who was watching the hallway leaning against a wall. A few dozen meters further across the hallway was a medium-sized waiting room with glass walls, in which there were two or three people sitting.
In general, the appearance of what they had seen so far of the medical facilities seemed quite clean and orderly. However, if you looked closely enough, the white paint on the walls was starting to peel in places, the white tile floor was cracked, and the cyan felt on the patient waiting seats was worn and discolored due so much use. In the waiting room, one of the screens on the glass walls that indicated the patient's shift was blinking because of some error.
Wilson pointed to the doors lined up along the hallway. "This is where most of the work is carried out, in medical consultation offices where the primary care tasks are carried out for patients who arrive sick, when they aren't in serious condition. I myself have an office here, because even though I'm a specialist doctor, I've to spend hours dedicated to primary care medical consultation, since fortunately there is much more work on this than on more serious things, and it's necessary to have staff available." Mac waved her hand and with a smile indicated the hallway that continued beyond the waiting room. "If you follow me here, we go around the building through the primary care wing and I'll show you the emergency wing, where we receive the most serious cases."
The group continued walking down the hallway and turned the first corner to the right, continuing forward toward the emergency zone. They left behind several treatment rooms, more consultation offices, a couple of staff rooms and some bathrooms. They crossed two more corridors, leaving the chrome doors of an elevator on the left, until they reached red double doors on which a sign once again indicated access to the ICU and emergency areas. When they went through it, the three women found themselves in another corridor with several doors, and at the end a large room where there were about twenty medical boxes around a central counter where there were several nurses. From the room another hallway opened to the left through a door to the ICU area, and to the right were several resucitation and trauma rooms. Continuing towards the back, attached to the wall were visible the metal doors of a large elevator with a sign next to it that said <<Surface Elevator>>, and at the very end, on the wall that faced the street they could see the wide doors with direct access from the street, for urgent entry from emergency vehicles.
The atmosphere was quite calm, and the medical staff were sitting at their posts, except for 4 nurses and a doctor who were caring for two people who were lying on stretchers in two of the boxes. Both appeared to have bleeding bruises on their heads, although they were conscious and complained of pain while they were being assisted. Two Gendarmerie officers were present in the emergency room, one observing the injured from a slightly secluded place, and the other chatting amicably with one of the medical staff in the counter. As the three women walked through the area, they could see that the appearance of the area was the same as in primary care, with white floors and walls, although here the lines painted halfway up the walls were red, instead of cyan. As before, an observant eye could notice that, despite everything being clean and tidy, the equipment on display was quite a few years old and had seen better days. The stretchers were worn, and some even had tears in their upholstery, showing the interior filling, and the resuscitation devices, vital signs monitors, and systems for obtaining radiographic images in the trauma rooms were several generations old.
Mac and Meyer greeted a doctor standing near the counter, who introduced himself to Isabella as Dr. Azarian, head of the hospital's Emergency Department. "It's a pleasure to meet you Dr. Saito. I'm really grateful to your organization for the help you're going to give us with the training of our colleagues. Believe me when I tell you we need it." The doctor, a short, bald man, made the Sacred Gear sign on his chest. "Deux gives us strength every day to face everything that this planet throws at us, and little by little we are taming it. You can't imagine what this was like when we arrived here. But your help will be essential to improve the health care that we can offer to the colony." He looked quickly at one of the stretchers on which one of the patients was lying and made an apologetic gesture. "I beg your pardon, I must attend to these people. Nothing serious, fortunately, just a small accident in urban transport, but the injuries are very scandalous." He gave Greta a respectful look and bowed his head as a sign of farewell. "Monsignora."
As they watched Dr. Azarian go away, Mackenzie adressed Isabella. "Mainly two types of cases are usually treated here. Small domestic or urban accidents, and quite serious work accidents. The first are quite common, and the second not so much, although they happen much more often than I would like." Mac glanced sideways at Greta, who blushed slightly. "Before your arrival, I was precisely speaking with Greta that we had to talk to the Ministry of Industry about the safety protocols for our workers, especially those who use heavy machinery. Lately there have been many accidents that could be avoided by investing a little more in more exhaustive inspections."
Meyer raised her hands in apology. "It's true, I already told you that I have to talk to Monsignor Patel about this." The clergywoman looked at Isabella, with a certain embarrassment in her gaze. "It isn't true that the Government neglects safety protocols, but indeed recent accidents in the tunneling of new galleries, during our colony expansion works, indicate that we have to improve some aspects of safety inspections. And Mac, as a doctor, insists that I, as head of the Ministry of Science, and head of the Health System, be the one to put pressure on Industry to improve these aspects."
"Certainly, and it is something that I hope will improve quickly." said Wilson, with an expression of annoyance and some anger. "We already have enough with the accidents caused by sand storms among the workers who are dedicated to the exterior maintenance of the biodome, and the filters of the air pumps for the undergound colony"
The monsignora protested. "Oh but that's practically unavoidable..."
Mac interrupted her friend with a wave of the hand. "I know. That is why it's so important that we worry about other accidents that are really avoidable."
Mackenzie didn't intend to attack her friend, she knew that it was not her responsibility to put a stop to the high workplace accident rate that existed in the tunneling work, but she knew that Greta could be very insistent at the Concilium when she wanted to. That's why she poked her that way, to somehow force her to complain to the Minister of Industry. She felt a little bad for insisting so much on the clergywoman, but after all she was a doctor, and her role was to save lives. And the best way to save them was to prevent them from suffering accidents.
Wilson realized that Isabella probably didn't know what they were talking about, and decided to explain it to her. "I put so much effort into preventing accidents in tunnel tunneling work because, in fact, we already suffer enough serious disasters in outdoor work." Mackenzie moved her head upward, as if she could look through the hospital ceiling and the tons of rock to the surface of the planet. "Our beautiful and precious biodomes are splendid, but they need regular maintenance on the outside to combat and repair the effects of sand storms, especially the harshest ones. Also the air pumps that blow air from outside into the underground galleries have filters in their mouths that eliminate sand particles, and which must be changed from time to time. Not to mention our underground factories, whose chimneys poke through the surface and expel harmful gases to the outside. The constant gale is very good since it immediately disperses the smoke, but the sand carried by the wind quickly erodes the chimneys, and they need to be repaired. All of this work is done daily by people who run a terrible risk outside the protection of the biodomes."
Mackenzie settled in, leaning against the nurses' desk as she tried to find the words to explain the dangers of the planet's surface. "As Greta already told you, Pygar's problem is not its atmosphere, whose composition is perfectly breathable, nor its soil, which isn't sterile, but its climate. In the midst of constant electromagnetic sandstorms, it's impossible to survive without proper equipment and masks with filters that prevent you from suffocating from the sand and metallic mineral dust that invades the air. And that's only for the mildest ones, because in the middle of a big storm nothing can survive outside. You would fly like a leaf and the force of the wind would crush you against some rock. Or simply an extreme gust of wind would launch millions of razor-sharp sand particles against your suit and it would disintegrate it with you inside." Wilson paused briefly, so that Saito could mentally process how strong the wind could be to be able to do something like that. "To make the situation worse, these types of storms on the planet are quite... unpredictable. We can look at historical weather patterns and build a sort of storm calendar, but it's not precise. On many occasions the damn planet surprises us with a violent variation in the pattern and catches our maintenance teams off guard, which usually ends in a catastrophe with serious injuries, and sometimes deaths."
The neurologist fell into an awkward silence, which Meyer broke with hard voice. "However, it's absolutely necessary that work crews be outside to make the aforementioned repairs, it's a matter of survival of the entire colony." She looked at Mac, who looked back at her, but without denying the monsignora's words. "Without maintenance, the biodomes would collapse in a few months, the filters would become clogged and stop supplying clean air, and the machinery and instruments on the outside, necessary for the correct functioning of everything, would break down. And no, we don't have drones or machinery adapted to these conditions that can carry out these tasks. Believe me, if we had them, the Church not hesitate to use them instead of sending our people to do such work." Greta looked down, sad. "I'm afraid that this is a danger, which for the moment the workers of our external maintenance teams must face. We provide them with the best suits we can provide, and we have acquired pressurized armored vehicles so that they can move on the surface relatively safely, although sometimes the systems fail due to the electromagnetic characteristics of the storms. But when they have to go outside to work, they risk their lives, and at the moment there is nothing the Church can do to prevent it."
Mac turned to Isabella and extended her hand towards the psychologist, pointing at her. "That's why among the study requests that we sent to MFE we had some for paramedic training. Since we cannot prevent these accidents from happening, our chief medical officer Dr. Finch believes that we then have to improve our emergency team for outside rescue operations. And this involves acquiring two powerful fully mechanical tracked armored ambulances, without any electronic system, and forming an efficient paramedic team that can go out at full speed to rescue our workers, as soon as our scanners detect a strong storm by surprise."
Meyer opened her mouth as if to say something, but at that moment a loud alarm began to sound through several speakers in the ceiling of the entire emergency area, while flashing red lights came on at the nurses' desk, and next to the surface elevator doors. Everyone stood still for a second, while one of the nurses typed something into a terminal at his workstation. He then screamed. "Four are coming from outside! Two unconscious, one unresponsive, head trauma, critical erosions and a possible amputation of a lower limb!"
The three women were able to watch Dr. Azarian curse horribly and order the nurses to prepare four trauma rooms, while shouting for more doctors through a communicator on the wall. Mac paled intensely. "Isa..." Wilson swallowed and looked gloomily around the emergency room. "I'm afraid you'll be able to observe personally just what I've been telling you."
