"You could bear it just fine, if you tried. And I could bear yours if I had to. I am grateful neither of us has to settle for work that's merely 'bearable', though." 

"Yeah, same here, except for how I'm, heh, between jobs right now. I don't think I'd be cut out for government at all."

"Fair enough. Most people are not." 

"You've got a nice wide range of experience, though, it sounds like. Are you looking to see patients directly, or focus on research?" 

"I'd prefer something in research; we seem to have similar enough tech trees that I should be able to catch up pretty quickly."

"I'm sure you will! You seem very quick to land on your feet." 

(Elix is clearly bored by all the adult conversation about jobs and stuff, and is trying to engage his sister in a whispered side conversation.) 

The porch door slides open. "Dinner's ready! Come on in, everyone." 

"Thanks," he says, and files into the dining room with the others.

Dinner is a stew-type dish that almost resembles chili, except for prominently featuring eggplant. The fake "beef" is reasonably convincing texture-wise, and the dish itself contains plenty of other flavour sources. 

Dale mostly monopolizes the dinner-table conversation, asking more questions about Earth's health care systems and medical training institutions. 

Bruce can explain so much about Earth academia and also about how healthcare works from the patient and provider ends at various levels of national economic development. He freely admits that parts of it are total clusterfucks. How has this planet dealt with the thing where patient handoffs suck and are dangerous but long shifts also suck and are dangerous?

"It's a difficult tradeoff! Most inpatient centres are standardized on twelve-hour shifts for bedside providers, now, but there are two staggered shift schedules. 6 to 6, am or pm, and another cohort working 10-10. We did an extensive study and mistakes are lowest if people work two or three shifts back to back, and if their housing is less than a ten-minute commute from the hospital and they're not doing childcare or other household work when they get home between two shifts. So most hospitals have housing nearby, temporary dorm-style and also family homes, and a lot of support with childcare. We have software designed for keeping nursing assignments as similar as possible day-to-day, since that cuts down on handover errors; it's a tricky optimization problem but, you know, what are computers for if not that? Doctors and medical trainees have a buddy system; they'll trade off days and nights with someone they know and have especially good rapport with, and the one on-call for a given timeslot will make the decision whether they're missing important patient context and need to wake their buddy to check. But adequate documentation addresses a lot of that, and computers changed everything for that too. All the data collection that can possibly be automated, is, that saves a big chunk of staff time." 

"That's pretty cool! I haven't done any big-hospital practice myself, so I don't really have a sense for what that would feel like from the inside, but it sounds good and the extensive computer support can only help. How about the research systems, how do you go from an idea to a funded experiment to a publicly available result?"

Dale is happy to get into this! It all sounds pretty smooth, logistically; their patient database is standardized and shared across the entire continent, with built-in support for including patients in various research studies. It doesn't sound like they have much trouble at all getting enough volunteers. Funding is a constraint, but the government has a generous budget line for it, and in the past couple of decades, some Underworld mad scientist types are suddenly wealthy enough to fund significant efforts on their own. 

Cassea eventually declares that this is more than enough shop talk. "Bruce? Would you like me to show you the guest room, so you know where it is for later?" 

"Yes, thank you. Sorry for the excessive shop talk." He has never been able to refrain from doing that, no matter what planet he's on.

"I'm not blaming you! Entirely my husband's fault." She pats Dale on the head. "Anyway, follow me." 

The guest bedroom is upstairs. Again, it's a spiral staircase, with a pretty tight radius but the stairs are 'carpeted' in some rubbery not-carpet material that feels soft underfoot and also offers lots of grippiness. The top of the stairs has, not a door exactly, but a sort of velet-curtain-like barrier that provides surprisingly good sound isolation; the kids' conversation downstairs is suddenly muffled and sounds twice as far away. 

The hallway upstairs has real carpet, a beautiful rug rolled out on top of what looks like hardwood floorboards. There are a few pictures on the walls. 

This planet has really good soundproofing tech and that's great. He looks at the pictures as they go by.

One of them is a really good vaguely-Impressionist-style portrait of Cassea. There's a photograph of the family together, both children a few years younger than currently. Beside it is what looks like a crayon drawing by a child of - probably also the family? Then there's a watercolour painting of a landscape, a beautiful bluff with a gnarled windswept tree growing on it, overlooking an ocean. 

Cassea notices him looking, and smiles broadly. "Veth painted that. She used to love painting, she's...stopped, lately." The smile dims a little. "Anyway, here's your room." 

The guest room has a door which offers EVEN MORE thorough sound isolation; when Cassea opens it and shuts it behind them, they're suddenly in near-total silence. One wall is almost entirely a window - no, sliding glass doors, opening to a teeny private balcony that overlooks the back yard. It's currently dimly-lit, though, with twilight fading into dusk. Cassea fiddles with a panel beside the door, flicking on various lights - some bright ceiling-light panels that are almost like true daylight, a string of fairy-light-esque globes strung around the perimeter of the ceiling, various lamps that seem to come with sliders for brightness and colour. 

"What's your bed preference?" she asks him. "The mattress is on the firm side but we've got a spare topper, if you like it softer." 

"Firm is fine, thanks. Cool collection of light fixtures in here." He thinks vaguely that he hopes Veth's schedule problem or inspiration problem or whatever her trouble is goes away.

"I'm glad you like them! Spare toiletries here." She pulls open a drawer and shows him a neatly organized and varied spread of everything you would find in a hotel room plus a lot more things like 'sleep mask' and 'lip balm'. "Spare linens and nightclothes in the wardrobe - the clothes are all one-size-fits-all, for unexpected guests, we can take you on a proper shopping trip tomorrow." 

"Thank you so much!"

 . . . Now that he's looking at a bed it's suddenly salient that he's several hours of jet lagged and has mostly been running on nervous excitement and curiosity. "Is it alright if I go to bed now? I'm kind of not used to this time zone yet."

"Of course! That's absolutely fine. Bathroom is down the hall that way, it's the one with the curtain instead of a door, should be easy to find. You're welcome to raid the fridge if you wake up early and want something to eat. Sleep well!" 

She heads out.