Free Wounds, Book 1 by Ilsa J. Bick

that holodramas were so fond of. “Arin?”
    He shook his head. “Still in V-fib. No pulse.”
    “Charging again, two hundred…” Listening to that crescendo whine, thinking about that weird heart: Arin said no periatrial waves at all. Her eyes raked over the man’s body, over smooth skin and taut muscle. I’m missing something, what’s missing; what if he doesn’t have a periatrium to jump-start…? The defibrillator trilled. “Clear!” She discharged the paddles, heard the puh , waited. “Arin, anything?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Okay; charging up; nurse, get me an amp of xentracaine ready after this next—” She broke off as the charger whined. “Arin, you said no periatrial waves, right?”
    Arin gave her a look. “That’s what I said.”
    “That can’t be right,” said the anesthetist. To Arin: “It’s not reading right.”
    “It’s right,” said Arin, giving her that look again. “I’m reading it right.”
    No periatrium, no way to jump-start— Kahayn gasped, then jerked around to the nurse. “Charge it to three hundred.”
    The nurse went as goggle-eyed as Blate. “Doctor?”
    “Just do it!”
    “Wait a second,” said the anesthetist. “That’s not—”
    “Three hundred,” Kahayn said to the nurse.
    “But, Doctor—”
    “Are you deaf? Three hundred!”
    The nurse swallowed hard, looked at the anesthetist, who shrugged, and then to Arin, who did nothing. Then she toggled up the charge. “Three hundred.”
    “Clear,” Kahayn said, hoping like hell that she was right. She thumbed the discharge. There was that dull puh . “Arin?”
    “That did something.” Arin looked at her over his glasses. “I got about five, six beats before the rhythm degenerated.”
    “I got a little flutter up here,” said the anesthetist, almost grudgingly. “Though heaven knows why.”
    Kahayn let out a breath. “Okay; Corporal, resume compressions; nurse, push in that amp of xentracaine, see if that’ll tamp down that cardiac irritability. Charge up the defibrillator again.” She and Arin exchanged a wordless stare; then he gave a minute nod, easily missed if she hadn’t been looking for it, and Kahayn said, “Three… fifty .”
    She saw the nurses glance at one another before the nurse dialed up the voltage. Without a word, she took up the paddles. “Tell me when the minute’s up.”
    That minute crawled by in an eternity of seconds, and it was long enough for Kahayn to wonder what she would do if this man—whoever and whatever he was—pulled through. The corporal had managed to clear away most of the blood and she stared now at his face: black, close-cropped curls slicked with blood capping a high forehead; delicate cheekbones; a chin that was more oval than square. That forehead wound was ugly and oozing, and he looked as if his nose was broken. They would probably have to give him some blood, and that forehead would need stitches. She would make him a nice scar…
    And then, with a jolt, she realized what was missing.
    No scars . Her eyes traveled over the man’s chest, his abdomen, his hips and legs. There are no scars anywhere, nothing, as if he’s never had a wound or prosthetic in his life .
    “One minute, Doctor.”
    “Right.” But she didn’t move. She stared into that face, and for a brief, disorienting instant, that wasn’t a stranger lying there— and whatever else you are because you are not like us, not like us at all —but her Janel, because they did look a bit alike and she missed the man he’d been.
    And then he was not Janel but a stranger who needed her: a man without scars inflicted by time and an unkind planet. And the difference between the two, between the man who had been Janel and the one here now, was the wound in her heart that had never properly healed.
    Oh, my beloved, how I wish I could have saved you, really saved you.
    “Clear,” she said, and then as the corporal jumped down, she placed the paddles on the man’s chest, took a deep breath and