Dr. Petrov adjusted his spectacles, trying to communicate with his eyes to the frightened nurse that she should ready another syringe of tranquilizer. They’d already used several on their patient since he’d awoken yesterday and had promptly started screaming.

“That goo, as you call it, has literally saved your skin, my dear Grand Minister. Had we not applied the Neoderma, you certainly would have died by now. You suffered third-degree burns over seventy percent of your body, charred skin, blistering, shock, and deep tissue damage, and the medication was necessary to—”

With surprising strength, the Grand Minister grabbed Dr. Petrov’s arm and yanked, pulling him down to the bed. The clipboard he’d been holding flew from his hands and fell with a clatter to the white tile floor, the papers attached to it fluttering like dry leaves in a breeze. He stared at the Grand Minister in wide-eyed shock.

“I would rather die than be defiled with that shit you call ‘medication,’” he snarled into Dr. Petrov’s face, spraying spittle. “Do you hear me, imbecile? I would. Rather. Die!”

Appalled, Dr. Petrov extricated himself from the unnaturally strong grip of the Grand Minister, and straightened, motioning to the nurse. He smoothed his hands over his hair, and down the front of his white coat. With as much dignity as he could muster after having been momentarily overpowered and practically assaulted by a one-eyed, one-armed, no-legged patient, he said, “While you are under my care it is my obligation to ensure you do not, in fact, die, Grand Minister . . . but once you’re released, you’re free to do as you wish. In the interim, we will continue the Neoderma therapy, and any other courses of treatment I deem necessary, including the CellRenu you’ve been receiving intravenously, which is helping to repair the damage to your lungs and air passages from inhaling smoke and superheated air.”

The Grand Minister fell silent, staring agog at the bag of clear liquid dangling from a metal hook beside his bed. The plastic tube that snaked down from it ended with a steel cannula embedded in a vein in the back of his hand. Dr. Petrov took the opportunity to snap his fingers, and the nurse darted forward, the syringe held ready in her pale, trembling hand.

“You’re injecting me with . . . them?” the Grand Minister whispered, his face a mask of horror. “You’re putting their poison in my blood?”

Dr. Petrov cared nothing for politics. He didn’t care about ideologies, either, except when it came to honoring his Hippocratic oath. And he had a secret thought, which he hardly even dared admit to himself, that the “disgusting animals” from which all the astonishing medicines of the last quarter century were made were far less disgusting than many of the people he knew. Like his assessment of the mental state of the Grand Minister, Dr. Petrov kept this dangerous opinion in the dark, quiet basement of his mind, where it would never see the red light of day.

“It’s not poison, sir. It’s medicine,” sniffed Dr. Petrov. He nodded to the nurse, and, with his help and after much flailing and cursing on the part of the Grand Minister, she succeeded in plunging the needle into the vein in the crook of his spindly arm. They watched as he struggled to keep his eyes open, and failed. His limbs grew lax, and he quickly drifted into a drugged sleep.

The doctor and his nurse shared a smile and the tenuous relief of two soldiers who’d just dodged a hail of bullets. There would be another volley as soon as the Grand Minister awoke again, but for now, thankfully, they could enjoy some needed, if short-lived, peace.

“Well.” Dr. Petrov straightened his glasses and smoothed his lab coat again. He was surprised to find his palms were sweaty. “Nothing like a little wrestling match to get the blood going, eh, nurse?”

She gave an exaggerated eye roll, exhaled a shaky breath, and chuckled. “I have to admit, Doctor, this one gives new meaning to the words pain in the ass.” She chuckled again, then clapped a hand over her mouth, realizing what she’d just said. And about whom.

“It’s all right,” said Dr. Petrov, keeping his voice low. “I couldn’t agree more. Just be careful you don’t let that slip again in front of anyone else.” He rounded the end of the bed, patted her shoulder, and watched with pleasure as a blush spread across her cheekbones.

“Yes, Doctor.”

“So,” he said, turning brisk. “What do we have up next?”

The nurse bent, retrieving his lost clipboard from the floor. He followed her from the room to the nurses’ station just outside and tried not to admire the alluring twitch in her hips as she walked; he was a married man, after all. His fidelity was less about adoration for his wife, of which he had little, and more about pragmatism, of which he had a lot; the grass was never greener on the other side of the fence, he knew, only a different shade of green than the one on your own. And probably riddled with gopher holes you’d twist your ankle in, and thorny burrs that would cling to your socks. No sense disrupting your entire life to graze in new pastures when those same pastures would look downright dull once you’d been grazing in them a few months or years down the road.

Some men claimed variety was the spice of life, but Dr. Petrov knew that particular spice only led to diarrhea.

From the station counter, the nurse picked up the data pad with the rounds log and ran a finger down its list of contents, perusing with pursed lips. Something about her face was different, but Dr. Petrov couldn’t put a finger on it. Less makeup, perhaps? Her skin definitely had a glow he hadn’t noticed before.

“Four-ten fell out of bed again. Minor contusions, nothing pressing. Five-sixteen needed an additional two pints of B positive, and is stable. Five-thirty-one is complaining of chest pain, but his tests are all negative . . . oh, here’s one.” She brightened. “The patient in six-oh-two who came in last month is awake, and asking for a doctor—”

“Six-oh-two? Talking? Are you sure?” He was positive the nurse was mistaken; that particular patient had been involved in an accident at the waste treatment plant that had left him comatose, with zero brain activity. For him to be awake would be nothing short of a miracle. Dr. Petrov had seen too much in his time to believe in those.

“Yes,” said the nurse, looking up from the data pad. “Six-oh-two. He’s just finishing his supper now, I believe.”

“He’s eating?” Dr. Petrov was astonished.

The nurse shrugged. “Said he was starving. Asked for steak.”

Now Dr. Petrov was more than astonished, though he couldn’t think of the word that would properly convey the depths of his shock. Patients awakening after experiencing severe brain trauma were disoriented, mute, as weak as newborn lambs. And after a prolonged coma, they often couldn’t speak until months had passed and they’d relearned a variety of forgotten skills, including language. For this patient to be cognizant, hungry, and demanding a meal went beyond miracle territory and straight into . . .

The hair on the back of his neck prickling, Dr. Petrov slowly turned and stared down the long, sterile corridor toward room six-zero-two. “Nurse,” he said slowly, “pull his history for me.”

“Certainly, Doctor.” With a few swipes and taps on the device, she had it, and handed the pad over.

Male, aged twenty-nine, admitted mid-November after a head injury caused by a high fall. No response to pain stimulus, no verbal or motor responses, brain injury classified as severe. For all intents and purposes, he was as “alive” as a zucchini. His medical history indicated general good health prior to the accident, with the exception of diabetes which he’d had since childhood. It was being managed by a daily dose of . . .

Now all the tiny hairs on Dr. Petrov’s arms stood on end. He looked deeper into the patient’s history to confirm that he had, for the last twenty years, been taking Glucaphase, a once-daily pill manufactured—as all drugs were—by the Phoenix Corporation.