I’m so proud of you. I love you. Stay with us, sweetheart. PART ONE Contentions CHAPTER ONE The Sunlace … and [I] will abstain from every voluntary art of mischief and corruption, and further from the seduction of females or males, bond or free… -Hippocrates (460?-377? B.C.) Hippocrates must have never gotten the wife in the family way, I thought as I felt something tickle my foot. Or he definitely would have covered baby-sitting in the oath. “Okay.” I gazed around my operating table. “Who forgot to secure the door panel?” That startled the sapphire-skinned Jorenian nurse manning the prep tray beside me. “Your pardon, Healer?” Although her eyes were solid white-no pupils or irises-she wasn’t blind. Neither was I. I pointed down. Everyone looked down. A fold of white surgical linen twitched, then someone small and unauthorized giggled. The whole team tried to keep their blue faces straight, but if there weren’t big grins under every mask in the room, I was a Hsktskt.
