The young doctor had not grown much fonder of the day as it wore on. Hierarchies were natural, but bothersome, and left a great deal to be desired in the treatment shown toward hospital staff and patients alike ( Read more... )

Daedalus was surprised. Surprise was not often a good thing. It meant a miscalculation, or the lack of calculation, and he strived to be above either ( Read more... )

Technically, Daedalus’ day had been scheduled to start later than those of his colleague’s, but he was hardly one to sit on his haunches; he had arrived at the Institute at his usual time and gone to work. With no patients to see during the course of the morning, he had had the opportunity to focus on his tasks without interruption, save for a ( Read more... )

From his first session through lunch, Daedalus had kept to himself in his office, attention on his computer. It wasn’t just the patients who had questions, but the question was whether or not answers were forthcoming. He had his curiosities and even his doubts, to be sure, but now that he had come to see how the wheel turned here, but did he care? ( Read more... )

Daedalus did not leave things undone to the very last unless it was for a specific purpose, and so long before he was required to resume sessions face-to-face with the patients, he had already spent ample time organizing his data. It was what he was here for. It was what he excelled at. And so that was what he did. His time outside the hospital had ( Read more... )

Three more patients before the interim between therapy slots ( Read more... )

It wasn’t until Daedalus was done eating lunch that he turned his attention to his computer, where he had updated each of his files accordingly. Paper texts were troublesome in that sense: they could be difficult to alter, went missing often, and decayed like everything else that bore the test of time. But data was cleaner, more advanced, more ( Read more... )

In beginning his day in the Institute, Daedalus had stayed to his office, immersed in quiet work. There would be no wandering outside for him today; he found he rather preferred the bland, wintry days over the sunny ones. Perhaps he was just trained to.

That, and there was more to occupy him in the hospital than outside it when he was still ( Read more... )

The weather rather suited Daedalus today. He’d spent a few minutes of his break on the patio, poised against the wall where the light rainfall couldn’t touch him. Rain, huh? It wasn’t the feel of droplets on his skin, or the smell of damp earth, or the breath of fresh air that he was interested in, but nevertheless, he took a moment to himself ( Read more... )

Further changes were afoot in the Institute, as if the fact he’d spent most of his recent time away from his office--where these therapy sessions were expected to be conducted--instead of in it didn’t say enough. Woe to the patients, who had received even less attention than usual. Daedalus, though, was more interested in the schedule alterations, ( Read more... )