"Aphysician,medical practitionerormedical doctoris a person who holds amedical degree, practicesmedicine, and is concerned with maintaining or restoring humanhealththrough the study, diagnosis, and treatment ofdiseaseandinjury. This is accomplished through a detailed knowledge of anatomy,physiology, diseases andtreatment— thescienceof medicine — and its applied practice — the art or craft of medicine"
Doctors, in general, do not have an easy life. Three years of hard training, and at least another 10 years after that working to be proficient. They have one of the highest rates of mental illness due to stress than almost any other profession, and that's just normal doctors. When doctors' work they have to shut a part of there brain down, the part that cares. They can't hold a patients hand and make them better at the same time. Most doctors who work in hospitals and surgeries work with people they don't know. They would not be made to operate on someone they know and care about.
However doctors within the army and air force, or just with people in very remote places, do not have that option. In many cases, you can't just send someone in to cover for you, and even more so if you are the senior doctor there. You see people you care about dying and screaming in pain, and all you can do is shut the part of yourself that cares off. Lately on Atlantis that had been becoming more and more difficult for Dr Keller, as she had found out. These people got themselves into to danger more than once a week and it wasn't just the usual, bullet in the leg, or flu. She got the whole works. She'd had bugs, poison, alien weapons and a lot of training wounds, mainly caused by Ronan. It was Ronan in that bed now, looking so lost. He had screamed in pain as he came down of the wraith drug, but he looked more injured now, than he had before. He has lost his honour, she thought to herself. Everything that he thought he knew about himself, he is no longer certain of. It is as if he can no longer trust himself to be himself. He wouldn't look anybody in the eye, and was even quieter than usual, although she would not have thought that to be possible.
She wanted to shut herself off from the person, and just consider him the patient, but she was finding it difficult. He's a friend, she thought to herself, and it was maybe even becoming something more. She wanted to go into the room and tell him it was all going to be okay, but she couldn't say that. That would be her, Jenny, talking to him, Ronan, not Dr Keller talking to the patient. And yet she wanted to all the same. She stood outside the doors to the infirmary, her hand resting on the the handle, caught in a battle with her self. She hesitated, and then her hand flexed and dropped to her side as she walked away.