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The plane is trailing black smoke and streaking towards him and he doesn't know how he moves that fast but somehow he is in the office lunging toward Miriam and shouting and Mrs. Campbell takes one look at his face as he bursts in and starts helping him haul Miriam out the door and Doctor Campbell glances at the window and takes her legs and it isn't going to be enough or fast enough the other side of the door isn't far enough away but the other side of the door isn't the hallway anymore and they are somewhere else.
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"Certainly," things happen quickly.
A baby appears in midair and a wave of something invisible washes over them cleaning the red and black fluids off of it, a moment later they gives their first cry and the umbilical cord and placenta float off in another direction dropping into a small glass jar that appears from nowhere in particular.
Simultaneously, Miriam's contractions end and she feels abruptly less tired. The pain she's been feeling also stops and she can feel her body gently moving as her muscles are soothed, her connective tissues contract and all the various discomforts of pregnancy start to fade away.
Shortly after that a blanket appears, again from nowhere, wraps itself around the new baby and the whole assemblage floats down to be in Miriam's easy reach.
"You have a very healthy child there."
Miriam reaches up and takes the baby. Bryn leans over her shoulder.
“He’s beautiful Mim. What shall we call him then?”
"I can detect no significant health problems either currently at issue or likely to begin within the next twenty years. Naturally, this is no guarantee infections and injuries will not occur. Projections beyond twenty years are difficult and I prefer not to make them."
Erica Campbell has pulled her husband over into a corner and is speaking to him in a emphatic sotto voce.
"Really, Will, you must tell him."
Will looks over at the cluster around the bed.
"I don't - Erica, you mustn't get your hopes up so."
"If you won't tell him then I will. And that is final."
Erica turns and stalks back to the rest of the group.
"Excuse me, can you do anything about lung cancer?"
"Certainly, cancer is well within my abilities to cure. I can't guarantee permanent remission but unless you're exposed to significantly above baseline carcinogen levels my treatments should keep it gone for at least two decades. As I said, I try not to make predictions beyond that."
"There's a few steps. First I scan for unusual clumps of cells and try to positively identify them as cancerous tumors, then I do a comparative genetic analysis with the healthy tissue and then check all your cells for whether they're healthy. Depending on where the cancerous cells are I either replace them with saline or flash clone healthy cells. The final step is to examine the precursor genetics leading to the origin of the cancer and tweak your baseline genetics to make reoccurrence less likely."
"This is a human cell, slightly simplified for ease of illustration." A hologram appears in midair. "This part here is called the nucleus and it contains a number of structures call chromosomes." The diagram cuts away zooming in as they explain. "These chromosomes contain within them instructions for building your body, more or less. For various reasons, those instructions can get miscopied as you grow older, usually that has no significant consequences but sometimes it makes the cells with those miscopied instructions become cancer cells."
"I can, I've found that it's not very common to be able to do comprehensive scans at this level though. And the information processing required is extreme. Genetic analysis is about comparing the differences in the instructions."
Erica elbows Will.
"You can ask more questions about it later he said he can fix it!"
"Certainly, I'd be happy to. This will probably take five minutes or so all told if I'm being through. The major tumors should be done in about twenty seconds. I can talk while I'm working though." Already it probably feels a little easier to breathe and that continues improving noticeably for the duration of the mentioned twenty seconds.
"I'm replacing cells for the most part, reshaping tissue and rerouting blood vessels where it's malformed. I know how healthy lungs are structured and I'm changing yours to match that pattern."
"Certainly. I can guarantee that I can fix any medical issues you would like addressed... I only issue such blanket statements here in Milliways because it's not really my guarantee it's Milliways. No matter who you are or what your issue the person or persons in the infirmary are guaranteed to be able to address it. If you had an issue I couldn't address I wouldn't be the person here in the infirmary."
"The bar doesn't like people holding the door for long periods of time and while the door is closed time is paused in your world. If you all leave and close the door from the other side it will reopen to wherever the door would normally open. It's generally more likely you'll get your second Milliways door after visiting but there's no guarantees when or where you'll find it."
"I'm certainly open to trying to come up with something, I would need to know more details though. I don't have any sort of panacea in a bottle I can give out."