Somewhere else is an eating establishment or common hall of some kind, judging by the tables and chairs, the booths, and the soft couches dotted with pillows and plush blankets tucked around the fireplace to their right. The place is decorated in a seasonal manner, with Holly and mistletoe climbing the walls and the furniture and snowflakes, real or simulated, falling from the ceiling between exposed beams and gathering into a light dusting across the floorboards, under the tables and to the edges of the room.

There is a long bar across the tables from their entrance, studded with bar stools and lights. There is no one behind it.

The stunned silence of the new arrivals is quickly broken by a noise of distress from Miriam.  Erica kneels by her head to coax her through the contraction.  Will quickly surveys the room.

"Right, let's get her up on the bar, that should be about the right height." he says.

Will, Erica, and Bryn carefully lift Miriam, carry her across the room, and deposit her on the bar.

A napkin appears to her right as soon as she's been placed! It is unusually large for a napkin, and features a message written in black ink which is nearly as large as it is.

Welcome to Milliways, says the napkin, and then, Ordinarily I would offer all of you a free drink first of all, however given the circumstances I expect you'd prefer to be told that there is an infirmary down the hall to your right, instead.

Will turns to Erica.  "Would you run and see if they have a stretcher or a wheelchair?"

Erica nods and runs off down the hall to the infirmary.

The infirmary has four beds and a crystalline white sphere about half a meter in diameter that looks like it's made from quartz floating in midair in the middle of them. A second after she crosses the threshold, it blooms into a rainbow of colors.

And originating from roughly the right direction, a friendly upbeat androgenous voice calls out, "Greetings, welcome to the infirmary, how can I help you today?"

Erica splutters briefly, then visibly pulls herself together.

"There is a woman in labor in the bar area.  Do you have a stretcher or a wheelchair?"

The pattern becomes more angular, "I can certainly help with moving someone to the infirmary if that's required. I'm afraid I don't have physical objects designed for that purpose though. I'll come with you out to Bar."

Erica glances nervously over her shoulder at the pattern as she leads the way back out to the bar.  Bryn's eyes go wide when he catches sight of them.  Will is very focused on Miriam.

"Ah, Will, ah, this is..."

She looks helplessly at the pattern.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get your...name?"

The pattern turns a becomes fully cerulean and more circular. "I am RC1526. I am fully equipped to handle any medical matters. I understand that this person is in labor and that you would like assistance moving them to the infirmary?"

Will straightens.  "Yes, that's right."

"Wonderful," it floats over to Miriam, "do you agree to be moved? Also, if you'd prefer to delegate decisions about your care to one or more of the other people with you, you may."

Miriam looks faint.  "Whatever the doctor says, I suppose?" she gasps.

"As you wish." With no visible indication of what's causing it  Miriam rises into the air. Her body is fully supported as if on a memory foam mattress. RC starts to float back to the infirmary and Miriam floats after it. "I assume one of you can clarify which of you is the doctor. Also, I'd appreciate it if you could make introductions."

WIll straightens up and strides briskly after them.

"Right, I'm Dr. Campbell, this is my wife Mrs. Campbell, our patient is Mrs. Miriam Brindsley, and this is her husband Bryn Brindsley."

"I'm delighted to meet you, may I scan Miriam? She's obviously in labor but it's difficult to assess the details of her physical state without more information." It's a short way to the infirmary, RC deftly maneuvers Miriam through the door and settles her on a bed.

"Does the scan have any effects on the patient?"

"My scans have no significant impact on the patient."

"Then by all means." Will says, gesturing at Miriam.

Nothing seems to happen but the pattern shifts again. "Labor seems to be progressing smoothly, I can present three options. First I could simply bypass the remainder of labor and teleport the baby out, this would be the least stressful for Miriam, second I can take steps to make the remainder of labor as comfortable as possible by dulling pain and supporting her in a position more conducive to easy labor than lying back, third I could simply leave things in your hands it should only be another ten minutes now and I don't predict difficulties completing things without my assistance."

"Teleport? Like in a science fiction novel?"

"Perhaps, to be more explicit I will instantly switch the baby and the placenta with an equal volume of sterilized air from outside her body. I'd also do several other things to tell her body it doesn't need to be in labor anymore and make the transition as gentle as possible. As for the baby, I'd simulate the immuno-catalytic effects of passing through the birth canal, clean them off, sever the umbilical, provide swaddling and deposit them in Miriam's arms."

“Doctor! Is that a good idea?”

“I, ah, Miriam? Do you want to continue as you are?”

“Aah! I want to be done with this now!”

“I suppose that is your answer then. Please proceed.”

"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?”

“Let’s call him Edward.  Is he really all right?”

"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."

"Really! What can you share about your methods?"

"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."

"I'm sorry? Genetic analysis?"

"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."

"Fascinating! You can scan a living body at this level?"

"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!"

Will looks somewhat sheepish.

"Of course.  Ah, if you would?"

"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.

"Astounding! How are you effecting the change?"

"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."

"Wait, you can reshape tissue to make it healthy? Can you do that for scars?"

"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."

"Is there a way to get people into the bar? We've got to get David into the bar!"

"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."

"Is there any treatment we could bring with us?"

"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."

"Right.  David suffered severe burns on his back due to being caught in an explosion; the scars will never heal given our state of medicine and split open and bleed if he bends or moves too much."

"That's a challenge. I see three real options, I could teach you enough about skin graft surgeries that you could potentially implement the treatment yourself or with the aid of a skilled surgeon. Second, I could supply you with topical drug which would over the course of about five years of regular application be likely to ameliorate the issue. Third I could supply you with a custom organism that would eat scar tissue and keep the area sterile until fresh skin has grown in."

"Could you give more detail about the course of each treatment? Would there be particular risks of interruption or infection? What would be the odds of success in each case? Would there be restrictions to his activities during the course of treatment?"

"Skin grafts involve removing skin layers from some other part of the body, removing scar tissue from the affected area and then layering the skin from the donor area onto the area where the scar tissue used to be. This naturally has a significant infection risk though with the right medicines and care it can be minimized.

It's a very delicate surgery though and if it's done incorrectly the patient can wind up worse off even without infection if the skin graft doesn't bond correctly to the underlying tissue. As for odds of success it depends so much on the skill of the people doing it that I wouldn't want to estimate the chances with any confidence.

If it's done correctly in well sterilized facilities then it has a quite high success rate but like all skills it takes practice to get it right consistently. It also has a recovery period of several days of immobilization followed by several weeks where the patient needs to be careful not to overly stretch the skin at the joining lines or there can be scarring, though the scarring would be much less severe than what was there before."

"I'm familiar with skin grafting, though I'm not a surgeon.  Certainly at our technology level infection is a serious concern and I am not certain of the other requirements, but I would be fascinated to learn.  What about the other techniques?"

"The topical drug is a mix of signaling molecules and growth factors. It would need to be kept refrigerated to remain effective over the entire course of treatment. In effect it would stimulate your friend's body to heal itself by discarding and replacing the damaged skin. As I said though it would be a very long process. The risk would be very low though and even an incomplete course of treatment should yield some improvement. The other downside is that depending on the severity of the damage even a complete course of treatment might not fully resolve the issue. Drugs are inflexible tools."

RC pauses for a moment before resuming. "The third option would be as I said to make a custom symbiotic organism. The main risk here is that it would be a living creature and it would need to be kept healthy. I can try to make it as resilient as possible but there would be some tradeoff between resilience and effectiveness. There's also a lot of options for exactly how it works.

The version of the organism I would tend to recommend, would physically attach itself to the patient for the duration of the treatment and effectively become a part of the patient's circulatory system to get the nutrients it needs. The patient might have to be careful about what chairs they sit on but otherwise shouldn't be too inconvenienced. I'd expect treatment in that case to last a couple months. The main risks would be if the organism was removed mid treatment there would be an infection risk and subsequent to the treatment the patient would be at increased risk of skin cancer, perhaps a 5% increase in risk."

"Would the drug still work after trying the organism if that failed for some reason?  What about combining the drug with skin grafting techniques?"

"I'm not sure what would cause the organism to fail, Perhaps if it died for some reason then you could go ahead and use the drug. As for combining the drug with surgery, you should wait approximately two weeks as it might interfere with the initial parts of the healing process but after that it should result in a more complete recovery than would occur with surgery alone."

"How long will it take to learn the surgical procedures? Are there more advanced methods for preventing infection?"

"I am not reading your mind nor am I aware of the state of medical knowledge on your world. Without more information both of those questions are very difficult to answer. There are two categories of ways to prevent infections, ensure that infectious microbes are kept away from the body and removing or neutralizing infectious microbes in the body. I'm not certain which methods your world is aware of in either category."

We understand the importance of preventing physical contamination by frequent handwashing and cleaning, and the use of masks to prevent spread by droplets.  There is a new medication becoming available called penicillin that is an antibiotic and can cure many bacterial infections.  

"Ah yes, antibacterials are a very useful class of drug as long as you don't misuse them. Bacteria can evolve to resist them if you give them the chance."