1091. About health, 8
(Armylè)
By the end of Summer, the children spent a few days by Maya’s family. A house like mine, but more crowded and merry. The opposite to the manor really.
Amélie was there and eager to dote on Prume since they weren’t at school anymore. And her mother too was genuinely happy to see Prume doing so well. Amélie was spoiling my child, and Samanthine questioning her with far more serious concerns in mind.
Sam’s confidence was tough to build, but rising too nevertheless. Against Sam’s bet, Prume had spent her holidays perfectly fine, both under sun and in water, running and jumping or climbing after her sister. She wasn’t as strong nor had the infinite stamina Elyne seemed to run upon, but she was doing ever so well.
Prume was a picture of physical and moral health really lately. She still had the shadows under her eyes and her other scars like her bigger lip with a visible vein on it, but otherwise she was all fine.
Prume was growing slower than Elyne again, but nothing worrying again.
For her age, she seemed fine.
Samanthine told me how the medical reports she had compiled and reported over had been shelved without anything more done about it. She regularly reopened the folder to add her observations akin to after such a day when Prume came to visit.
Her post scriptum notes to this case were encouraging, since the situation was good.
Far above everyone’s normal expectations, from proper understanding and experience of medical science...
The tribunal that had gotten our doctor fired had long forgotten all about this now. Their theories had been insane, but Prume was seemingly proving them true anyway. And the dean Samanthine kept trying to reach to discuss this never replied. Him and the others didn’t seem to care. Maybe the fact that she was doing fine was enough.
Prume could have changed her genome by herself, but they didn’t want to investigate the topic further?
And so did Elyne apparently by the way, although that was a footnote no one seemed to care about.
Sam was outraged about this. She was really angry against them.
How could doctors, the medical elite of the city, refuse to study further into the details the physiology of Prume, she couldn’t understand.
Prume had nearly died one too many times. They ought to find the bottom of her case to cure her and learn from her. Why wouldn’t they?
Samanthine was sharing with me her worries and anger, because she really cared for the little one as well, and for everyone’s else as well. Like any disease, it might eventually affect others.
Prume might be showing the preludes of a brutal string of mutations, in the best of case. More likely she wasn’t an evolutive aspect, but sick from a new form of disease we had yet to properly comprehend. This auto immune weakness that affected her might be the early sign of something direr that could reappear further down the line in the city.
And if that illuminated theory that her own will could drive her biological changes was somewhat true, then it meant that Prume might hold some metabolic aptitudes way out of normality. More simply put, if her body was able to heal better and faster even against radiation stress and other abnormal decay, then she held in her something unique, with an immense potential. Something that might turn into more diseases or become an evolution advantage if properly understood and controlled.
What was behind, in a body able to do abnormal things, it was altogether the gamble of a stronger advantage and something extremely dangerous. But the power and aim of medicine was understanding these things precisely to better heal what doesn’t end up well, and make the most of what is well, for the better of all.
Whatever was in Prume, if it was halfway the truth, it deserved deeper studies.
Because if there was something new in Prume, the moral duty was to learn from it to be ready against the worse and invest in the better. I could relate with her from a moral point of view. If it could protect Prume from further risks of death, of course that was sensible. But... I wasn’t clear about what it meant at this point when Prume was doing just fine now.
And Sam cussed against the dean. She cursed him.
The old man deserving her anger had not only refused to reply to all and every of her calls.
He never openly denied her concerns, but he had been putting a stop to all of her endeavours to push her aim further. He censored and blocked everything she attempted to do to reopen the case, one way or another.
As if for him it was all pointless?
The dean was in the highest authorities for the city for medical care. But she would try going higher and making more noise if he kept censoring her. Sometimes she did, and he managed to smother everything, most likely. At this point Sam was fighting a conspiracy she felt. She didn’t understand why. I couldn’t follow so far.
The old ape had accepted multiple interviews in his office with her. Each time, he simply listened, pretended to agree, to do things as she commanded, and never did anything, or cancelled them right away.
He maintained the status quo, at all costs apparently. He kept Sam away with a disdainful indifference, keeping her in the dark.
He still agreed to meet her as much as she wanted, politely. He listened to her arguments, turning gradually into threatening rants over time and times. He wouldn’t comment. He would let her leave after she felt some sense of satisfaction or closure. Even though she would return soon enough after realising nothing had changed.
One other day, she was in his office again.
Yelling. Urging him to do something. For the city. For the patient. For ethics.
He listened, quietly, unmoved.
S - Why aren’t you listening to me?
- I’m always listening...
S - Then why aren’t you doing anything! You know the theory is bullshit!
She was yelling at him openly. But for the first time, he reacted somewhat differently.
He arranged his posture and opened his hands.
- Why am I not doing anything you say?
He marked a pause, letting her understand at least this time he might answer something. He stood up and went to look outside for a moment. He turned around and Sam was still there facing him, looking angry and her fists clenched. Maybe this time she saw something transpire out of him, another emotion that looked like compassion.
- If you really work for the ministry of health... Then someday, you will understand why I’m not going to do anything.
He turned his back on her, looking outside again.
She understood at the very least there was no point pushing this farce further and left.
~
Sam was biting her nails in annoyance and anger. She had been played all this time, and she still didn’t get why.
She wasn’t high enough in the hierarchy of the ministry to fully understand what he had meant. Or she simply was still too young and immature, even her, to grasp the wider perspective he had seen.
Either way it was insulting and frustrating. And she finally accepted that he would never let this case be reopened. He would not do a thing to help Prume Gains. Because he wanted that nothing would be done.
The health ministry was the pinnacle of medicine understanding and organisation for knowledge, education, materials, logistic and organisation devoted to human health.
Needless to say, this institution and ministry had been a cornerstone for the foundation of the city since its very beginning. Keeping everyone safe and healthy, reinforcing every drawback, watching every risk, and curing every disease and wound ever occurring. Then preventing reasonably everything. There were still occasional drugs available in the city, starting with alcohol, or diluted methamphetamine and morphine. First because the line between medicine and drugs was subjective. Second because everyone was highly educated to keep the social and medical risks minimal. Prevention did its part in an intelligent society.
The ministry handled all the medical apparatus and equipment as well. They handled their manufacture and use indirectly. It was a small state within the state, focused on optimising the management of health in the city to its optimum. And it was doing so rather well by all the observable metrics really. It played its part well along every other organ of the city.
Since it was also bearing the responsibility of population control, they were the official body answering parents wishing to have a child, whether they were welcome to, or asked to wait.
So far the population control had not needed to go stricter than kind requests, because the population was rather on the low side, and people were generally respectful enough to put a sock in it if the answer was the request to wait.
We learnt in school that should the population grow to more difficult thresholds for the amount of resources we had and the length of their regenerative cycles in our factories, the ministry had the power to issue other levels of refusals, in gradual increments. But so long we would be smart as a population, accepting the occasional personal sacrifice to our every desires and wishes, everything would remain just fine.
Afterward, they were also handling the authorisations for brain scanning and surgeries, including the citizen’s blue sun implant after birth. The blue diamond was like a piercing or a skull nail really.
It was illegal to play with citizens’ brains, because in our day and with our level of technology, we could do unsavoury things to people’s minds and capacities, if we started to open and rewrite things inside.
So to avoid things turning for the worst, just like deadly weapons use against other people were not allowed, brain alteration and surgery against other people was not allowed. The only exception was for medical emergency, handled by the central ministry authority. They didn’t want anyone to start tinkering someone else’s brain on the first occasion and pretence, so this wasn’t given lightly.
Don’t kill people and don’t tweak their brain. These were two of the top laws of the city.
Their exceptions handled by the ministry of health under exceptional circumstances only.
It was rare for a need of open brain surgery, so the authorised personnel was minimal. But anyway what mattered is how the health ministry watched in every conceivable way for our health and safety on every aspect.
For Samanthine, the old man’s odd answer had been a slap.
She didn’t see the real meaning. It felt like a veiled threat.
He didn’t want her to continue caring for the Gains. He wanted for her to do nothing.
That much was clear. Otherwise he would keep abusing his power to stop things. She was in painful anger, realising she was nearly powerless against him.
I think... He didn’t want to threaten her especially.
I think, he wanted to protect us.
In a way he couldn’t not state aloud.
He wanted to prevent further researches to be done, because he had already understood a piece of the answer. And he didn’t want it to be found and made public. He had foreseen what would happen otherwise.
The dean might have understood very early the same moral conclusions that Samanthine had.
And I think... Only him had been able to read through the fine prints and numbers, how far Prume’s potential really was.
He saw the early sign of Pantadôra.
He thought this might be far more than the city could chew. And the best thing he could ethically do, was to throw the first plausible veil he could find and bury this box away from sight.
Prume might have something unrealistically potent in her, both destroying her and making her survive the unthinkable. And if this was made public, they would need to research it to its proper end, and take the proper precautions for everyone else.
Prume would be locked in the deepest cell of the ministry’s laboratories, never to be allowed to see the sun again.
She would suffer, one way or another. She would get the bitter end of her life in our bright city. She would be kept alive most likely, but to torturous ends in a jail never to leave, before everything imaginable is learnt from what she holds.
In the best case scenario in this outcome, she would be released after a few months or so, if she’s proven harmless to everyone else and not to hold so much potential.
And if goodness forbids, it’s worse. Or if something really unreal is found in her... She would never be let go. She would live down there and be a test and research subject until the end.
She would die down there, like an angry sacrifice, turning to a vengeful ghost in the worst of possible futures.
I don’t really know myself how much benefits or miseries could stem from her. She’s just my little child...
I don’t know what she could become, good or bad. But I think it’s my moral and motherly duty to shelter her from the worse and raise her to become a fine and virtuous woman.
And here... I tend to think like the dean.
Sam rants and shares her anger with me. She doesn’t realise where I stand, and how much she became the real danger for Prume’s safety.
Gently, carefully, I will make Sam to let go.
She curses. I just smile bittersweet, and I tell her it’s okay. It’s okay Sam...
Just look how Prume is happy...
~
