Ship-Sickness Dies, Patients Told Not To Worry

Ship-sickness, the diagnosis given to every patient on the colony since landfall, was retired on Thursday at the Lowmarket Clinic, aged 131. It was 4,212,806 cases old.

It began in the first week, when the ship's intake forms offered one box. Dr Kerstin Halloran, who kept the first ledger, ticked it for a broken wrist. Her successors ticked it for fevers, childbirth, a bad oyster and one fall from a roof. Nobody objected. The box was already printed.

The diagnosis outlived the ship, which was broken up for roofing in 2061. It survived three attempts at reform, each abandoned when the clinic discovered it had no other box.

Its replacement, a list of 340 conditions, went live at the counter on Monday. On Wednesday, Gaukhar Dabrowski, 44, arrived with a cough, sore joints and bleeding gums, after two years in cold storage on a surveyor's transport. He asked for ship-sickness.

The desk clerk told him there was no such thing and that he must have misread the form. He was sent home with a leaflet on oyster care.

"We looked for him everywhere," said Nkechi Madsen, clinic registrar. "Three hundred and forty boxes, and he fit none of them. Frankly, it was easier to believe he was a typing mistake."

Mr Dabrowski is recovering. The clinic has ticked him as a typing mistake.