Dr. Viveka Neetimata: A Study in Controlled Fury

The headaches started in medical school. Sharp, bilateral, triggered by stupidity—not ignorance, which could be remedied, but willful stupidity. The kind her classmates would display when they dug their heels in on which sources were credible. Since medical schools had become “flexible” in their curricula, it seemed like pursuing truth had become an upstream swim, with a waterfall just down from you. Veka would press her thumbs against her temples and breathe through it. The Australian Defence Force was paying her tuition. She could dodge fools for that.

The barracks clinic in Darwin should have been easier. Soldiers followed orders, protocols existed for everything, the work was predictable. But soldiers were also impressionable twenty-year-olds all caught up in the novelty of unvetted information streaming into their faced minds. Even though such neural connects were prohibited at the NCO level, the higher ups maintained a stance of no-opinion, and little enforcement occurred. For Veka, the headaches worsened.

Tenzin made it bearable. The Nepalese Public Health Officer understood systems the way she did—seeing patterns where others saw isolated incidents, tracking disease vectors through barracks like reading sheet music. They started as strangers, collocated by their employer. Over her term of service they became friends. When a gastro outbreak hit the forward operating base, they contained it in thirty-six hours through coordinated action that felt like dancing.

Then her mother's diagnosis arrived via secure message. Pancreatic cancer, stage three. Six months if lucky.

Emergency leave approved immediately. Major Hardwick, who knew her for her competence, dedication(and her recalcitrance) didn't ask questions, just signed the papers. Veka flew to Melbourne believing she could manage this like any other medical crisis—assess, plan, execute.

She hadn't counted on her brother.

Marcus had always been the charming one. The one who could sell water to the drowning, who collected followers like coins, who believed his own elaborate fictions. While Veka was in Darwin treating actual patients, Marcus had dabbled in startups that survived exactly as long as charisma could float them before capabilities had to take over, the exact same spaces where soft fraud thrived.

Their mother, terrified and desperate, fell for it. Or fell for him. By the time Veka arrived, Marcus had power of attorney and a treatment plan involving coffee enemas, mega-dose vitamins, and something he called "cellular consciousness realignment." And, using his POA he blocked Veka from seeing her in hospice.

The legal fight took three months. Three months of operational tempo that rivalled any military conflict; and her army was one. No time for sanity maintenance, no time for self-care. Fiorinal had been her Red Cross. Whisking the next debilitating headache off the battlefield so that her army could continue to press for tactical advantage. The theoretical risk of dependency had to be accepted to remain in the crucial fight. She had no reason to believe her thresholds would be lower than others.

Veka won. But the battlefield was a cratered hellscape of endless headaches; most of the craters filled with fiorinal without much more than side effect. Her mother died three days later, organs destroyed not just by cancer but by the toxic cocktail of Marcus's cures.

Back in Darwin, the clinic lights were too bright. Every arrogant soldier became Marcus. Every medical non-compliance became her mother choosing death by charlatan.

Major Hardwick noticed before she did. The shorter patience, the sharp edges becoming serrated. Alternating with episodes of withdrawing apathy. He called her in, closed the door, spoke quietly about stress and service and knowing when to step back. The rehab facility was discrete, effective, and Army-funded. Officially, she was on reassignment review. Tenzin sent one message asking if she was okay. She responded but rescinded before it was read. Tenzin will continue to wonder what he did, or didn’t do, during his friend’s time of need, to justify this severance.

In rehab, without the noise of immediate crisis, patterns emerged clearly. Not just her own—dependency as response to helplessness, anger as armor against grief—but larger ones. How individual medical failures cascaded into population-level disasters. How epidemiology was just medicine at scale, where no single patient could break your heart.

Major Hardwick wasn’t the type to reward weakness with empathy. Here he was conflicted; was Dr Neetimata defined by her knowledge and exemplary work ethic, or was she just another fake professional who had failed further uphill than most? His final gift was a placement at the University of Sydney's epidemiology program, GEC-funded but academically independent. No military obligation, but doors left open. He knew what she needed—distance from individual suffering, proximity to systemic solutions. He would pass judgement later when he saw what came of his gift.

Now, three years later, Dr. Viveka Neetimata studies disease patterns for the Global Health Initiative. She hasn't taken Fioricet almost as long. And the headaches? Are they there, or is the constant awareness of her own skull just a normal sensation? She hasn't spoken to Marcus since the funeral, and she has not been directly responsible for any particular patient’s care.

When LCol Hardwick calls about a strange disease cluster in the Mekong Delta—rapid onset, gastroenteritis with neurological involvement, possible environmental vector—she volunteers immediately. No assigned uniform, no explicit rank, otherwise the same pull as a Captain. Anxiety pokes into the back of mind; will this trigger a relapse? But unlike humans, numbers don’t lie, geography doesn’t change its story and time doesn’t insist on an alternate interpretation.

Naivety; does it ever cease to amaze us?