Trader’s Leap – Chapter 7

Millsapport

In which the Healers of Millsap are unhelpful.

That went… about as well as I was expecting, really.

There were moments when I had hope it would go better, but the point at which I became convinced it was going to go off the rails was when Healer Ferin chose to ask the question “What did you do to deserve this?”, which is never an appropriate thing to say to a trauma victim under any circumstances and especially not when one is treating them for that trauma.

I’m not sure I can put words around exactly what’s wrong with Ferin’s approach, but there’s definitely something up and I wouldn’t want her working on me.

(It occurs to me that this is the second chapter in a row where a Healer is not working for the best interests of her patient — since, strictly speaking, Hosilee ver’Fonat was also not acting for her patient’s best interest when she forced distraction on the Commander of Agents, though she saved many lives by doing so. We might be looking at a theme, here.)

I can, I think, put my finger on one part of what’s wrong with Healer Osit’s approach, which is that he was listening too much to his own assumptions and not enough to the actual person in front of him. I don’t think he had malicious intent in trying to extend his shield around Padi, but if he’d paid proper attention to what he’d been told about her case he might have anticipated her reaction — and even without that, a thoughtful Healer would have explained what he intended before he began doing it (and here we remember one of the reasons Shan wasn’t sanguine about visiting this Healer Hall) and an advertant Healer whould have been paying attention to her reaction as he started doing it, and I reckon if he’d been doing that properly he’d have seen trouble coming in time to back off before Padi felt obliged to insist.

I wonder what it says that when the narrator announced a scream coming from Padi’s direction, I never had any doubt that whoever was screaming, it wasn’t Padi.

3 thoughts on “Trader’s Leap – Chapter 7

  1. Skip

    At first I thought the male healer with the merry eyes would be nice, but…no. However, I did have reason to expect things to go awry somewhat, because Shan himself was not optimistic:

    Quote:
    … in the unlikely event that the Healers of Millsap proved to be pirates or brigands—while Lina accompanied the wounded Healer and the Emergent in need of Sorting. It was perfectly straightforward, he told himself, not for the first, or even the sixth, time. Nonetheless, his stomach, foolish organ, remained unsettled. As if she had heard his ruminations, Lina turned her head and smiled at him briefly. It might have reassured him, if he hadn’t known her for so long that her smiles hid no secrets from him. Lina was worried, too. Shan sighed.

  2. Skip

    I got the feeling the healers were guilty of judgmental preconceived notions re Shan and Padi. What continues to resound across these past six books is the destruction the DOI has done to Korval through gossip, disinformation, and character assassination alone. To say nothing of their darker murderous deeds.

  3. Ed8r

    I remember thinking, perhaps like Paul, that things would go awry in some way, and simply reading out of curiosity to see what the authors had in mind *this* time.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *