"That's good." America is a crazy evil place so they hit children with hammers when they take them to see healers, but also Americans are weak so they use soft tiny hammers - None of this makes any sense and she knows that explanation is wrong but she doesn't have a better one.

"That's right," says the nurse. The bright fake smile is back. "It's a very tiny hammer, not scary at all. He'll show you on the doll first." And she'll gather up her clipboard and leave.

"- I wanted a backup holy symbol," Iomedae says to Alfirin when the nurse is out of the room. "And I was waiting two months for my armor to be made for me so it seemed a better time than I was likely to get once I joined the order. - you have to let it heal the slow way or it won't scar."

"People who follow your god don't have to do it?"

"Of course not! I bet it would make it lots harder to recruit people, and if they don't have a backup holy symbol and theirs gets shattered whose problem is that but their own?"

"I was just checking so I would be careful that your god is not secretly evil!"

"That is very fair. But no, it's just me. I asked the priest why more people didn't do it and he said '...because it would hurt' and so I figured that I wanted to. ...whenever I found situations where the reason it had not been solved was that solving it would be very unpleasant, I considered that a significant advantage, because I think I care wildly more about winning than most people and moderately less about it not being dreadful."

Evelyn is VERY sure that the girls are talking about Iomedae's scar - she's pretty sure, from Alfirin's face, that Alfirin was also learning about this for the first time and had a lot of questions - and she kind of desperately wishes she understood Taldane, right now, but - it wouldn't be better overall, she thinks, if she could eavesdrop on all of their conversations. She's certainly not about to ask. Maybe later - carefully - but not while they're in a doctor's office, which is clearly turning out to be an alarming experience for them. (That part in particular is one Evelyn is pretty used to navigating, though the reasons for it in this case are different. She's not sure she's ever met a kid who liked doctor's visits.) 

She tries to look busy reading a poster, and waits for the doctor to come in. She tries not to worry about the behavioral health exam coming up. 

The doctor is a man of about fifty, with a much more calming manner; he sits down on a chair at a good distance from the girls and explains the eye, ear, nose, and throat exams at a slow pace in small words. If they do not like an exam while he is doing it, he tells them, they can tell him to stop and he will. 

They may as well get it over with. 

If they tell him to stop he'll stop and then... presumably just do it again? "If you will stop if we ask, you will do again after stop? Why stop?"

"We will talk about what was bothering you, and I'll see if there is some other test of the same thing that wouldn't bother you in the same way. But ultimately, if we just can't find one, we can skip that test today. Now, don't make me regret telling you that by trying to skip all the tests just because they're no fun. I know they're no fun. They're important."

If they're important why does he let them skip some?

"...Okay."

"But you feeling in control here is also important, so if one of them is really getting to you, call a stop, we'll see if we can solve whatever's making the test stressful."

Then he will shine a lot of bright lights in their eyes and ears and throat, and move their head around and ask them to track the light and make 'beep' sounds in their ears at strange pitches and hit their knees with a very small hammer, unless there are any objections.

The bright light in her eyes is uncomfortable and the beeping in her ears is weird and kind of uncomfortable and she doesn't like being hit with a hammer because nobody in their right mind would like being hit by a hammer - maybe the hammer is a test to see if she'll complain about things she doesn't like.

"Is there a way to do this one without hitting with hammer?"

" - well," says the doctor, "I'm not really sure that there is. What's bothering you, you're worried it'll hurt?"

"Yes." Obviously. She does not give him the snails face because this is a test.

"Okay. Well, most people don't actually find that the hammer hurts. But you know what I'm going to do, is I'm going to get out my computer and check if there is a common substitute. The test with the hammer checks if your neurological system - your brain's control of your body - is working okay, but maybe someone has found another way to test that. I will see what our options are."

... Surely she is not the first person to object to being HIT WITH A HAMMER. So he's...pretending to not know if there's another way? She'll wait and see if he pretends to find another way.

"Well, look at this!" the doctor says after a minute. "Here's a lovely woman doctor in Louisiana who has solved our puzzle for us. She writes, 'When checking knee reflexes, press down on the dorsum of the foot while tapping the patellar tendon. This maneuver overcomes inhibition of the reflex, so that a brisk tap with the side of the index finger elicits a good response. Using the index finger avoids the need for a reflex hammer, which may upset the child.' Does that one sound any better to you?"

(Evelyn appreciates her pediatrician SO MUCH. You can't be very picky about more things than that, like the nursing staff - there just aren't that many pediatrics clinics in Reno, especially not once you filter for 'accept the state insurance for kids in foster care' and 'admin staff capable of handling slightly unusual paperwork' - but she shopped for doctors hard.) 

She knows what answer she's supposed to give here, even if she doesn't know what a dorsum or patellar or tendon or inhibition or index finger is (maybe it's a normal finger, but maybe it's some other tool that's just called a finger for reasons). "Yes, that sounds better."

"Right! Let's try it that way, then. I may need to practice a few times, as I haven't done it this way before. This here is your dorsum, and this is your pateller tendon, so I think what Doctor Darken in Louisiana is saying is that -"

And Alfirin's leg twitches when he taps it with his finger.

"Why...do they do this with the hammer. If there is another way that is easy."

"Well, most kids don't mind the hammer, believe it or not. It's just a little tap, and with little kids we don't call it a 'hammer'. That makes it sound scarier." He shows her a wedge of plastic. "See, it doesn't look as scary as it sounds, right? Would you rather the normal way or the way I just looked up?"