A matter of health

"I don't know doc," Orion said. He was sitting on the edge of the examining table. The Captain had said that everyone needed a physical exam before serving. Orion thought it was dumb seeing as how he'd had the same thing done not a week before. "I'd like to help and believe me it's better than sitting in a shuttle waiting to get shot out of space, but still. What am I going to do on a space ship?"

"Well lad, we could always use more help around here." Dr. Vissili replied, "That is, if you suddenly remember anything about medicine. If you could recall that you were Solus's chief surgeon that would be very nice." Vissili looked up from the boy's arm after drawing his blood and saw a curiously worried look on his face. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Give it time m' boy, it'll all come back to you."

"What if that's what I'm worried about, Doc? You say what if I was surgeon, I say what if I was a murder? I mean do I even want to remember?"

"Of course you do, now what kind of talk is that? You've been given a rare chance, lad. If you were a murder in your old life, well then there's nothing to stop you from using this experience from changing your ways. Now then, we're all done with this formality of an examination. Aside from the odd minerals in your blood, you're as fit as anyone for active duty more so than some."

"Thanks Doc," Orion said as he hopped off the table. "If you've the need for something around here, I think that would be fun. Maybe save lives for a change."

"For a change, you remember something?"

"No, just pretty sure that whatever I used to do it wasn't in medicine. I don't seem to know anything about it."

"Well, no worries. I could set you up as a lab tech, that doesn't take much knowledge and I can get someone to teach you how to draw blood and the like. That way I can keep an eye on you too, see if there's something we can do for your memory. I'll talk to the Captain about it when I'm finished here."

"Thanks Doc, I appreciate it."

As Orion walked out of the sick bay Dr. Vassili, not for the first time, thought back to when he was a child and his parents took him to a zoo on one of the core planets. While there he had seen an Andarian Tiger. It stood five feet tall at the shoulder and was the top predator of Andari II. He had watched the tiger for nearly twenty minutes, just looking at the way it walked; as if the tiger could meet God on a narrow bridge and expect God to step aside. Orion Pax had the same walk, the fierce movement of a predator.