Jack of Harts

Rosalie and Rosalind were getting married, and they loved it. Dancing with wolves. Singing with birds. The whole fairy tale thing. They were so ecstatic they asked me to be the Maid of Honor. Now I’m not exactly a fair maiden, but I said yes real quick. I even asked if they wanted me to wear a bridesmaid dress. I would have done that for those two girls, and I would have looked oh so pretty doing it. But they thought I’d look better in a suit, so we went with that. They of course picked a pair of absolutely spectacular white dresses patterned after their grandma’s wedding dress. They looked old and new at the same time, and the girls could not wait to wear them down the aisle.

Most medical students study a specialty they hope will define their career. I for instance studied the Peloran Treatments. We’ve been trying to break them down so we could understand them better for centuries, and I was following that path. Rosalie and Rosalind had a far more altruistic specialty in mind. They wanted to improve the integration of various uplifted species into our society. Cats and dogs are the most famous, but various real doctors and crackpots alike have implanted better brains in all kinds of creatures from Earth and beyond. What is far more rare is modifying their vocal cords so they can talk, or giving them opposable thumbs so they can use tools. My two girls wanted to fix that oversight.

There are a lot of medical programs in Minnesota, and Rosalie and Rosalind wanted to learn from all of them. So they spent a year here and a year there, mining every medical college in the State for everything they could teach. Rochester, Duluth, Grand Forks, Minneapolis, and more. They even bounced through some community colleges that had close relationships with the local hospitals to suck in their specific knowledge. I followed them through every jump. They’d broken up with their boyfriends from Alabama or whatever, and I’d be an awful poor friend if I didn’t watch their backs and vet any prospective boyfriends. And of course they figured it was their job to check out all the girls I chased too. We really watched each others’ backs.