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Jan. 10th, 2012 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gabriel_tamIt had taken him some time to decide to make his original offer a more serious one.
However, the facts of the matter are simple: Mary is growing up, no longer the young girl he’d first met and become fond of, and her interest in medicine has not abated. Gabriel Tam remembers quite well his shock at the primitive state of medical care on Earth-that-Was in her era, and it’s quite evident from what she’d told him of the education that young women at her school receive that there’s very little opportunity to be had there.
(Except, of course, for the more advanced lessons provided by one ‘Gideon Wolfe’, but that’s neither here nor there.)
It had been simple enough to manage the apprenticeship, in the end. Gabriel had consulted Simon for advice, then worked with his ever-capable admin, Mark Jiang, and some of the contacts they’d made during his extended business trip throughout the Border and Rim to arrange the opportunity and see to the details of providing for her support for the duration. For Mary’s sake, they’d kept his involvement as quiet as possible, handling matters at a distance and through liaisons so that her time on Aberdeen would not be tainted by the hounding of story-hungry media or anyone with a political axe to grind. That lesson Gabriel’s learned all too well in the past.
It doesn’t stop him from making sure that she has his own personal comms code, along with detailed instructions on how to reach him at any hour of the day or night over the secure link, the same way that both River and Simon do. Nor does it keep him from instructing Bajian Li and Magda Conti, as heads of his security team, to arrange discreet surveillance and regular reports, just in case. Gabriel Tam is well aware of just how very far Mary is from home, family, and friends, and feels his responsibility keenly.
(And if she still reminds him in some ways of another bright young girl he'd sent away to school, that just makes him all the more determined to do right by her.)
When a grim Bajian arrives on his doorstep late one evening for an unscheduled visit, Gabriel knows it’s bad news.
He just hadn’t realized how bad it would be.
However, the facts of the matter are simple: Mary is growing up, no longer the young girl he’d first met and become fond of, and her interest in medicine has not abated. Gabriel Tam remembers quite well his shock at the primitive state of medical care on Earth-that-Was in her era, and it’s quite evident from what she’d told him of the education that young women at her school receive that there’s very little opportunity to be had there.
(Except, of course, for the more advanced lessons provided by one ‘Gideon Wolfe’, but that’s neither here nor there.)
It had been simple enough to manage the apprenticeship, in the end. Gabriel had consulted Simon for advice, then worked with his ever-capable admin, Mark Jiang, and some of the contacts they’d made during his extended business trip throughout the Border and Rim to arrange the opportunity and see to the details of providing for her support for the duration. For Mary’s sake, they’d kept his involvement as quiet as possible, handling matters at a distance and through liaisons so that her time on Aberdeen would not be tainted by the hounding of story-hungry media or anyone with a political axe to grind. That lesson Gabriel’s learned all too well in the past.
It doesn’t stop him from making sure that she has his own personal comms code, along with detailed instructions on how to reach him at any hour of the day or night over the secure link, the same way that both River and Simon do. Nor does it keep him from instructing Bajian Li and Magda Conti, as heads of his security team, to arrange discreet surveillance and regular reports, just in case. Gabriel Tam is well aware of just how very far Mary is from home, family, and friends, and feels his responsibility keenly.
(And if she still reminds him in some ways of another bright young girl he'd sent away to school, that just makes him all the more determined to do right by her.)
When a grim Bajian arrives on his doorstep late one evening for an unscheduled visit, Gabriel knows it’s bad news.
He just hadn’t realized how bad it would be.
