"Students, you know the residents you've been partnered with! Please remember that you are representing the university at all times, make sure your conduct is appropriate to that standard." The faculty member of the university sternly addressed the group of students.
The top twenty of the cohort had been given the opportunity to attend three days of partnered practice with a resident in a nearby hospital. Alex was among those chosen.
He looked across the residents stood opposite them. Some of them had friendly smiles, others looked serious and slightly impatient. He spotted the name tag of the resident he'd been asigned.
Without any awkwardness he stepped forwards and introduced himself, "Dr Gupta, it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Alex."
Dr Gupta looked the student he'd been partnered with up and down. Young, well-put together and confident enough to be the first student to introduce themself. It was a good first impression.
Dr Gupta was already walking before he began speaking, "Hello Alex. You already know my name. If your university hasn't already informed you, I'm a resident in the gastoenterology department. I expect you to answer questions to the best of your ability and engage with patients where appopriate."
The Doctor Alex had been paired with was a cleanly shaven man in his mid-forties. He didn't waste words when he spoke and walked quickly.
Alex kept pace with Dr Gupta without difficulty and nodded his head after he finished speaking. They walked in silence for the next minute, navigating past different wards and departments until they arrived at the gastroenterology department.
Dr Gupta looked across the bay of patients. Some had nurses by their sides holding sick bowls or giving medication, others lay almost motionless in bed.
He read through a list of names on the clipboard he'd been holding, "Bed five. Linette Davids, check her pulse and count her respirations, blood pressure as well. When you've finished come to my office, I've printed out the results of her blood tests and scans. You'll review her data and give me a diagnosis."
First year medicine students were taught how to do observations in a two hour workshop at the beginning of semester one. More than two months had passed since then. They were encouraged to practice on one another and friends and family. The ever-increasing demand of their studies meant that the overwhelming majority of students hadn't picked up a stethescope or counted a pulse since then.
Dr Gupta's request was considerably challenging for a new student, he expected Alex to be nervous or hesitant. The new student seemed completely unfazed.
"Pulse, respirations and blood pressure." Alex repeated back, his voice was steady and calm.
He approached Linette's bedside, "Miss Davids, my name is Alex, I'm a first year student at Michigan University. Dr Gupta has asked me to feel your pulse and check your blood pressure, is now an okay time do that?"
Linette appeared to be in her thirties. Her skin was pale and looked brittle. She turned to Alex and smiled weakly, "Sure honey, that's fine."
Alex smiled back and sat down in the chair by her bedside. He took the stethescope and blood pressure cuff off the table nearby and cleaned them with a wipe.
The cuff inflated as Alex squeezed the bulb. Linette's polite smile cracked a little and the pressure was clearly uncomfortable. She was thin and her skin was stretched tightly over protruding bones.
"Seventy-six over sixty." Alex said softly.
Linette sighed and laughed bitterly, "It's been that way for a while hun, no need to start pressing the red buzzer."
Whenever Damien insulted him, Alex could always come up with a comeback in a second or two. Now, he found himself without words.
Sometimes silence said more than words could. He smiled and gently turned over Linette's hand, placing two fingers over her arterial pulse. He glanced up at the clock on the wall and started to count. Linette's pulse was faint, he could feel the few milliseconds of irregularity that crept in every few beats.
Alex willed his powers to his ring and middle finger. A bridge formed between him and Linette. He urged softly for her body to speak to him.
Information flooded the bridge from her to him. Her body was suffering, her small intestine was struggling desperately to extract the molecules it needed from her food, but it wasn't enough. He could feel with complete clarity the uneveness in her heartbeat.
Alex kept counting. He didn't try to use his powers to fix her, he couldn't. That kind of control was far away. He'd tried a couple weeks ago to just slightly tweak the viscocity of slime produced by a snail he'd found crawling through his window. Outside of his body, his powers lacked the automatic protective features he knew.
His intuition supplemented gaps in his understanding, he could freely alter his body, even creating structures he knew nothing about if he was willing to endure the resulting pain when they collapsed. He knew nothing about the composition of snail slime or what gland produced it.
The minor tweak to the snail's mucus had killed it within seconds. The seemingly inconsequential change threw it's genome into chaos. It died twitching and oozing foul-smelling pus in his hand.
The snail had taught him a lesson on the nature of his powers. He wasn't a god that perform miracles at will. Any changes he made to other living things had to be meticulously thought through.
At the same time as he counted her pulse, Alex counted the rate at which Linette was breathing. After sixty seconds he smiled and took his hand from her wrist. His fingers seperated from her skin and the bridge between them broke. The streams of information his powers had whispered for her body to give him fell silent.
"Thank you Miss Davids, I'm all finished. Can I get you anything?" Alex asked.
Linette looked at the handsome young man in front of her. The word student was written in bold red letters on his white doctor's coat. His eyes weren't pitying like some of the doctors and nurses she'd met.
She smiled and waved her hand, "Thanks honey, I'm alright."
Alex nodded and stood up. He cleaned the equipment with another wipe and placed them back on the table.
He knocked twice on Dr Gupta's door. The polite but not friendly voice called out, "Come in."
Dr Gupta looked up from his computer and gestured to a stack of documents on the table, "Review the notes. Tell me what you think. Don't rush."
Alex nodded and sat down. In his head he had a three-dimensional picture of Linette's various organs. He could draw out more information from the model and percieve the levels of different hormones in her blood and which teeth needed extra brushing.
The stack of documents was thick. The facts and figures helped him give names and explanations to the information he knew through his powers.
Alex placed the documents down and aligned up their edges, "Ulcerative colitis. The symptoms fit and the dose of morphine she's on for the pain fits too."
Dr Gupta nodded slowly, "Correct."
He drummed his fingers against the desk and leaned closer to his student, "Did you cheat?"
Alex met his gaze without fear, "I didn't cheat."
Dr Gupta leaned back slowly, "The nurses were watching you, if you're lying to me they'll come through that door in a couple minutes and tell me.
I don't mind if you get the answer wrong. I mind if you've lied to me. This course, this profession, it needs integrity."
"I didn't cheat." Alex replied calmly.
Dr Gupta's rigorous questioning and challenging assignment would push any student. He liked the challenge and he had nothing to hide. Over the last few days he'd studied the names and presentations of hundreds of different diseases, committing them firmly to his long-term memory by speeding up the activity of his hippocampus. He'd worked hard to prepare for the three-day experience and he wasn't ashamed to use his powers to his advantage.
Since he realised some time ago how it was affecting his emotions, Alex hadn't relied on speeding up his neural processes to speed through homework and studying. He did things at his natural processing speed, only enhancing the functions of his hippocampus. The result was a bordeline photographic memory and improved recall.
Enhancing his hippocampus didn't come with the colder more robotic mood that accelerating his neural processes did. The longer he had his powers, the more Alex realised how many hidden dangers and double-edged swords were waiting for him to find them.
A knuckle rapped against the door. Dr Gupta called for the person to come in.
The nurse wore blue scrubs and a hairtie held her hair in a tight ponytail. She looked at Alex and then to Dr Gupta, "Good kid, he didn't try anything funny."
Dr Gupta's expression didn't change. One correct answer didn't make a student a genius. Luck could make an idiot look just as outstanding as a prodigy.
He straightened his tie, "Well, he got it first try."
The nurse raised an eyebrow and smiled, "Not bad kid. Dr Gupta will give you a hard time but he's a real softie on the inside."
Dr Gupta's brow twitched, "Miss Chanders that's not-"
The door was already swinging shut behind the nurse. The last thing Dr Gupta saw was her ponytail swishing out of view.
Dr Gupta straightened his tie again. He typed on his computer for a few moments and proceeded to turn it to face Alex, "This is the patient information system we use. The patient has celiac disease and IBS, I want you to tell me what you'd prescribe."
The question was at a level that drew on knowledge that wasn't taught until third or fourth year. Dr Gupta stared closely at his student as Alex read over the patient's profile.
Alex read the information over once, twice and then for a third time. His thoughts churned and his memory threw out the names of a hundred different drugs and their functions.
After a while he smiled with his lips shut and shook his head, "Prednisone for the swelling in the abdomen, imodium to control the diarrhoea."
The answer was decent but far from perfect. Both drugs worked for a wide range of things and he didn't know what interactions they might have when given together. In class it would've been an acceptable answer, but to a gastroenterologist it was amateurish.
Dr Gupta's impression of his newly assigned student was slowly rising. After a little thought he'd rationalised that answering ulcerative colitis correctly, even if it was lucky, still required a strong foundational understanding.
He opened a new tab on his computer and typed in the name of a drug. He explained for each of the patient's conditions what drugs he would prescribe and how best to minimise any potential contra-indidications between them.
Alex listened and nodded, neuronal connections surged as his hippocampus stored Dr Gupta's teaching into his long term memory.
The lesson didn't take longer than five minutes. Once it was finished Dr Gupta stood up. Alex followed him.
The older man went round the ward, speaking to patients and reviewed their medications while Alex checked their pulses and recorded some simple observations. They were important but simple tasks that a nurse or healthcare assistant could've done, but Alex was hungry for any chance to practice his skills and happily did as Dr Gupta asked.
The day went by quickly. Each time he felt a patient's pulse, Alex used his powers to build models of their illnesses in his mind. The models enriched his understanding and showed him how the diseases worked in ways that textbooks couldn't.
The process of connecting to their bodies became easier, more natural. His control over his powers sharpened.
That night Alex lay in bed watching his ribs flow about freely beneath his skin. The models his powers had constructed throughout the day were stored away in a corner of his mind, with a thought he pulled them to the forefront.
He willed his ribs to return to their usual rigidity and positions. Then, focusing carefully he imagined changing the activity of the mitochondria in the model's small intestine.
The model held for a few seconds, then the cells began to die. The death spread to every organ and soon the model collapsed entirely. Alex's head throbbed painfully. A vein bulged in his temple. It took nearly a minute for the pain to subside.
'Again.'
His determination didn't waver. The models were a way of practicing his powers, they could teach him how to heal people instead of hurting them. He could fix things that medicine couldn't. He thought of his parents watching TV at home on the coach.
He wasn't a saint. He didn't want to save the whole world. He just wanted to protect the people he cared about. If he had to hurt a little to achieve that then so be it.
His practice continued into the night.