"Jean Lorrah - Empire 03 - Captives of the Savage Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lorrah Jean)

keep incisions as small as possible and to shorten the time the patient was exposed. But medical skills
were not all she was here to learn.

She was expected to continue her lessons in ReadingтАФand those did not go well at all. She had barely
managed to learn to leave her body behind while her "self" went out of body. She hated the feeling,
fearful that she would lose herself, never to return to the physical. And she was completely incapable of
leaving the simple plane in which another Reader might perceive her for one of the planes of privacy. She
must learn to do that before she could become a Magister Reader, and be safe from being married off as
Alethia had been.

She saw Alethia often, and knew that there was absolutely no pretense to her friend's happiness. She
began to understand more clearly the joy of Readers united both mentally and physically, and
sometimesтАФespecially when she had failed again at one of her Reading testsтАФshe thought she might not
mind being married offтАж if it were to the right man.

Facing surgery on Alethia's son, she almost wished that she had been failed by now, and thus could
avoid this responsibility. Hers were the best techniques anyone had for abdominal surgery; she could not
ask another surgeon to perform the operation or she would be denying the child his best chance to
survive, small as that chance was.

It was time, Melissa decided. She sent an aide she trusted to scrub the child with the precious soap
smuggled in from the savage lands while the authorities looked the other way.

She supervised the preparation of the surgery herself, the swabbing of the table with alcohol, the boiling
of the instruments. She and her assistants scrubbed themselves with soap and rinsed their hands in
alcoholтАФbut it was not enough. Their hands were where the infection clung, in their pores, to sweat out
as they worked. And they could not boil their hands.

Primus was brought in, drugged with opiates. He was unconscious, his pain gone for the first time in days.
Melissa breathed a prayer to the gods to assist her. She worked rapidly but thoroughly, Reading to be
sure she cut out every bit of infection, and sewed up the wound with greatest care. Then she just stood
there, wishing, willing, that the wound remain clean. She concentrated so hard that her Reading blanked
out for a moment, and she became dizzy. But that would accomplish nothing. There was nothing to do
but wait.

Alethia woke to the news that the surgery had been done. She sat by her son all night, while Melissa slept
only fitfully. In the morning Primus was awake and crying at pains in his abdomen, but they were only
gas, and Melissa did not want to drug him again. The herbalist gave him tea, and they placed fresh
compresses over the incision. It was still too early to know what organisms might be breeding in the
child's intestineтАФbut Melissa could not Read anything that seemed dangerous. She slowly let hope creep
up on her. As the hours passed, her hopes grew. The second morning Primus asked for breakfastтАФand
hope became certainty.

Melissa asked Magister Jason to Read Primus before she would believe itтАФbut the boy was healing.
There was no infection. She turned to Alethia, who had been Reading with them, and the two women
embraced, tears running down their faces. "Oh, Melissa," Alethia sobbed, "how can I ever thank you?
No one else could have saved my little boy." And for a moment Melissa felt as if Magister Jason's arms
were around her, too.

The next morning she was called for the first time into one of the privacy rooms. The screen was set