FERN:

...So...who are these patients of yours, that you say were discharged?

DR. MAN:

Ah, well, as I do believe I've answered previously, I specialize in patients arriving through the paraviolet. They would no doubt appear rather unpleasant to your matter-senses, but like yourself they are multi-system self-sustaining biomaterial perceptoids.

FERN:

...And that means...?

DR. MAN:

It means your single biovessel houses every flesh-concept system you require to remain functional, even disconnected from the greater range. You are an independently sufficient collection of ideas and parts.

This is, of course, the only means of survival for the grey, disconnected as they are from cross-layer conceptual exchange. Other beings may vary from your level of complexity to free-roaming unisystemic vessels, and everywhere in between.

FERN:

So...you treat things with whole bodies, is what you're saying. Not these brain and heart guys.

DR. MAN:

They prefer cerebroids and cardioids, Fern.

FERN:

So...why wasn't I sent to you? Why did I wake up in the ward with all the..."oids?"

DR. MAN:

Difficult to say. Such beings fall ill only rarely, but ill on a far deeper level than the strictly matterborn...and their illnesses can ripple through the range to poison the very flow of concept.

They must have believed your condition, or at least that of your child, threatened much more than your own conceptual stability or even native zone.

FERN:

Hypothetically speaking...what do you think would happen if I did just stay put in my room and let the staff do their thing?

DR. MAN:

I'm afraid that is presently unanswerable. It is possible that they may correctly identify your condition - and your child's - and apply an appropriate treatment with a degree of success. Unfortunately, as we have established, our facility may or may not be functioning at proper capacity, and you have seen what can occur when a treatment is not successful. Your spleen friend. The digestivoid in room II.

I suppose you mean to ask if you are making the right choice by defying staff and conducting investigations of your own. That is your decision to make. Either way, you are risking...quite the pickle.

FERN:

I'm not even sure if I'm getting any closer to anything, honestly...I went to hell and back in the morgue and got nothing but this I.D. card out of it.

DR. MAN:

OH. Dear me. A staff card...? Why ever did you not inform me of this acquisition.

You are holding...significant power, Fern. Dreadfully so. The resources and knowledge you may access are quite staggering, and I would not rule out that surgical procedures may have been or may subsequently be attempted upon your child.

I must warn you, however. Prolonged physical contact with another entity's identification materials could prove a tad disastrous to one's conceptual stability. You do not want to undergo assimilation into miss tori's endosphere.

FERN:

Are you saying I could become Tori if I use her photo ID too much?

DR. MAN:

Yes, I suppose, if you want to word it so inelegantly.

You are lucky I am sympathetic to your situation, Fern. Another staffer would expunge your continuity on the quasiparticulate level for the danger you now pose to security.

I need not elaborate that this would pose...rather...a cucumber.

FERN:

Thanks...I'll be careful.