The Long Years

Astrid’s first few months in the Rushlight Biomedical Paramedic Training Program were brutally difficult. Thanks to years of earnest self-study and eavesdropping on VR seminars, she had all the background you could get from a textbook. The problem was the bench sciences where she had no experience with lab work, and had to struggle to keep up in what was already an accelerated program.
 
To make matters worse, she started having vivid nightmares almost as soon as she arrived at the campus. She’d wake up in a cold sweat, images of Thea’s broken and violated body floating in her mind, sometimes accompanied by images of the bullet-ridden corpses of Arjay, Box, and Mikos. Moses Reed’s face featured in the dreams all too often.
 
She got through those first few months mostly on determination, with some solace from her new friend Kara Kletskova, a fellow freshmen in the program. Kara would hear her sobbing at night. Astrid couldn’t share much in the way of the truth of the situation—plenty of her digital background to get into the program was a fine piece of creative writing—, but having someone to confide her worries for her family left behind was some help.
 
Kara was from one of the well-to-do families living in the Eastside enclaves. In addition to helping keep Astrid from having a complete mental breakdown that first year in the program, she was a supportive lab partner when they were in the same courses. Kara also recommended Astrid talk with the Rushlight on-premises psychiatrists who were more than happy to offer mood stabilizers, sleeping pills, or whatever else the students needed. They didn’t stop the nightmares, but Astrid could at least shake off the after-effects in the morning and get on with the day.
 
Astrid’s progress that first year was considered average, with Kara doing better in the standings, but what really saved her was once they started doing procedures. Astrid was a natural after all those years of tending to her friend’s injuries in D-town, and her empathy resulted in very high marks for “bedside manner” with patients.
 
The second year was also the beginning of “live fire exercises”. Being a paramedic was not just a matter of treating the injured, but often doing it while being shot at. Astrid was cool in a crisis, and helped Kara keep her wits during the long and stressful training field exercises. They celebrated their completed second year with a trip to a mall clinic for the full fashionware treatment for them both: techhair, chemskin, and light tatoos.
 
In the start of their third year, cybernetic augmentation was mandatory. Most of the students including Astrid already had neural interface links, but Rushlight and their clients expected their staff to be state-of-the-art. Astrid had learned plenty about cyberware over the years, but the idea of having a fully-functional limb sawn off or eye removed, and then replaced with a machine, was more than a bit terrifying.
 
Because the cybernetics were part of the program, it was done in phases. After each phase, the students would be given a series of therapy sessions to help them integrate the new functionality, and to ensure that nobody suffered from cyberpsychosis. It was these sessions that Astrid recalled most fondly years later: the patience, empathy, and understanding the therapists demonstrated through these treatments she found inspiring.
 
At the end of the fourth year, Astrid and Kara graduated the training program, and then moved on to the residency training. Rushlight Biomedical offered numerous medical services, including treatment clinics, cyberware installation services, and pharmaceutical labs which the graduates of the paramedic program were expected to staff. The real heart of the practical on-the-job experience, however, was as junior members of the response teams.