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The character of Dr. Josephus Picardo is taken (with permission) from SFCBruce's Hunger Games alt-universe deuterology, "Absolution"/"Epiphany." I highly recommend those two stories. Any resemblances between Dr. Picardo and the snarky Emergency Medical Hologram on "Star Trek: Voyager" are not coincidental.

Chapter 1
Feverish Katniss

June 21st, HG 74 (a Tuesday)
Morning of the 74th Reaping
Seven days until the Gong
The Everdeen shack, the Seam
District Twelve, Panem

BAM-BAM-BAM! "Katniss Everdeen, open up!" Head Peacekeeper Cray yelled. "We know you're in there."

For Dr. Josephus Picardo, the wait for the shack's front door to be answered was not long; but it was longer than he expected, given how small the shack was.

Soon the front door opened, and Capitol Coal's one physician got his first look at supposedly-sick Katniss Everdeen.

She was Seam, which meant that she had gray eyes, olive skin, and black hair. At the moment, the black hair had been worked into a sloppy braid. For a sixteen-year-old girl, she was short.

"Whoa," said redheaded Peacekeeper MacGregor, who was standing next to Cray. "Katniss looks really sick."

And indeed, the sixteen-year-old Seam girl did look ill. She had a blanket wrapped around herself, though this June morning was warm; Katniss was shivering. Her dark face was red, and her stare was glassy.

"Are you the dog?" Katniss asked the three men outside her door. "My daddy told me to wait for the dog."

"Um, Katniss?" said Peacekeeper MacGregor. "Your daddy has been dead five years."

"This is bullshit, girlie, complete bullshit!" Cray yelled. "Quit your faking and get to the Square right now, or I will flog you unconscious!"

"Congratulations on getting your medical license, Paulus," Dr. Picardo said. "Because of the three of us, only someone with a medical license is competent to determine whether this girl is sick or faking."

"Are you the dog?" shivering Katniss asked.

"Listen, doctor," Cray said, "I've dealt with this girl before. She's a little criminal. And now her mother, the district healer, says Katniss is too sick to attend the Reaping? I know bullshit when I hear it."

Doctor Picardo then asked Cray, "If I examine her and I conclude that she is not faking, will there be a problem? Between you and me?"

Cray's face turned even redder than usual. After a pause, he said, "No, there won't be a problem."

Dr. Picardo stepped forward and smiled at the shivering teenaged girl. "Hello, Miss Everdeen, I'm Dr. Josephus Picardo, the mine-company doctor. I'm here to examine you."

Katniss looked confused. "But my daddy's the miner, not me. You don't treat anybody but miners. That's why District Twelve needs Mother."

"This is a special time," Dr. Picardo said. "Let's go inside so I can examine you. Is anyone else in your sha—in your house?"

Katniss turned around and walked inside. She had a limp. She called over her shoulder, "Only Buttercup is here. Buttercup is the cat; he's evil. Buttercup will eat the dog if Daddy doesn't stop him."

"I meant, are any other people in the house?"

"No. Mother and Prim are at the Reaping."

"Like you should be!" Cray said, from half a meter away.

Dr. Picardo turned around, and discovered that, while Peacekeeper MacGregor had stayed outside, Cray had followed the doctor into the shack.

Dr. Picardo used his doctor-bag to give Cray a shove toward the open door. "Out. My examination of the patient will be conducted in private."

Cray leered. "She is kinda pretty for a Seam girl, isn't she? Well fed. And since she'll do anything to get out of the Reaping, you should hold her to that."

Dr. Picardo did not say that he thought Cray was a scummy pervert, but the doctor made sure his look said it all. "Begone."

Cray said, "I was about to leave anyway; I have a Reaping to oversee. Darius!"

Cray walked over to Peacekeeper MacGregor and murmured in his ear. Dr. Picardo overheard "...sure he doesn't find out too much. The doc's clinic is way too near the CLO," the Capitol Liaison Office.

While Katniss was wrapped in her blanket, the doctor took her temperature. Her temperature turned out to be a fiery 42.1°. Next, the doctor wrapped the girl's arm in a blood-pressure cuff. Katniss's blood pressure was as worryingly low as her temperature was worryingly high.

Then Dr. Picardo asked Katniss to disrobe. He intended to look for needle marks, just in case her healer mother had indeed helped fake the girl's illness. But that possibility vanished once Katniss threw the blanket on her mother's bed.

Now Katniss Everdeen stood naked in her mother's tiny bedroom, and Dr. Picardo saw how unfake the girl's sickness was.

Katniss Everdeen was thin, by Capitol standards. But she was not gaunt—by Seam standards, she was indeed well fed. And yet her family, Dr. Picardo had been told, had gone without a miner's pay for five years. Where Katniss had been getting her food for five years was a mystery.

But perhaps some horrible clues to the mystery were right in front of the doctor.

Naked Katniss had claw-marks on her hips and legs. The claw-marks were not deep, but they were inflamed. Katniss also had a long and deep gash, which went down and around her left leg, that was inflamed and oozing pus. A long cut along Katniss's left palm also was red, puffy, and oozing pus.

She has blood poisoning, Dr. Picardo thought.

Dr. Picardo gestured toward the girl's injuries. "How did you get these?"

"A squirrel," Katniss said too quickly. "A squirrel bit me."

That this brain-cooked girl could lie at all, told the doctor that her lie was well practiced. Add to this the fact that no animal inside the fence could have given Katniss those injuries, and the fact that Peacekeeper MacGregor and Head Peacekeeper Cray were clearly trying to keep a secret from the mine-company doctor, and the doctor was starting to get suspicious.

Doctor Picardo wondered aloud, "Is Cray pushing to get Miss Everdeen to the Reaping because it is his job to uphold the Treaty of the Treason? Or is he trying to hide the fact that she is doing illegal farming or fishing or hunting outside the fence, and Cray is eating some of her food?"

"Cray likes turkey," addled Katniss said. "And pussy. He's a shithead."

Dr. Picardo came to a decision. He wrapped Katniss back up in her blanket, then he yelled, "Peacekeeper MacGregor, please come here!"

Minutes later

Dr. Picardo had been shocked to discover that the Everdeen shack had only two rooms: a tiny bedroom for Katniss's mother, and a room for everything else. Cooking, entertaining guests, and watching mandatory holograms were all done in the same room where Katniss slept with her younger sister.

Dr. Picardo was further shocked to discover that the only things that covered the sisters' mattress was a blanket, which Katniss now was wearing as a robe; and a plain white bedsheet.

Dr. Picardo pulled the sheet off the mattress, and pressed that sheet into service as a stretcher. Dr. Picardo and Peacekeeper MacGregor carried their patient from her shack to the building that contained the offices of the Capitol Liaison and Capitol Coal.

Normally, such a trip would have been a straight movement from Point A to Point B. But since the building where they were headed was on the south side of the Square and this was Reaping Day, the path became much longer, and never passed closer than a few decameters from the Square.

Just before he, Peacekeeper MacGregor, and their bedsheet-stretchered patient entered the Capitol Liaison Building (from the back), Dr. Picardo heard the recorded voice of President Snow—

"War, terrible war. Widows, orphans, a motherless child..."

Dr. Picardo tuned it out. The Reaping was not important to him, or to anyone he knew, except as entertainment.

Soon afterward, in the Capitol Liaison Building hallway, Dr. Picardo and Peacekeeper MacGregor had to set Katniss on the floor while Dr. Picardo fumbled with the keys to unlock the clinic. A half-minute later, just as Dr. Picardo and the redheaded young Peacekeeper were carrying Katniss through the door, Dr. Picardo heard a Capitol-accented woman's amplified voice coming from the District Twelve Square: "As usual, ladies first."

Once the doctor, the Peacekeeper, and Katniss were in the clinic, and Katniss had been laid on an examination bed, Dr. Picardo said to Peacekeeper MacGregor, "Do you know Katniss's mother? What she looks like?"

"Aloe Everdeen? Yes, she's in her thirties, blond hair. I'm told she used to be beautiful."

"Go find her. And Cray. Tell them both I've got Katniss Everdeen here, and ask Mrs. Everdeen for her help. Meanwhile, tell Cray, quote, 'Katniss Everdeen, if untreated and Reaped, would have died before the Launching.' " This was the only justification, under Snow's laws, for excusing a child from the Reaping.

Now MacGregor looked confused. "You want me to ask for the district healer's help? Don't you have a nurse?"

"I gave her and Urbania—my receptionist and record-keeper—the day off. With the mines closed today, I naively thought"—Dr. Picardo rolled his eyes—"that Urbania, Antonia, and I would have an easy day today. Also, I'm asking Katniss's mother to come here because she is Katniss's mother, and Katniss is my patient."

Then Dr. Picardo lowered his voice. "Also, Peacekeeper MacGregor, Katniss got her injuries outside the fence, as you and your boss know perfectly well. Whatever this girl is doing when she's not in school, I think we can trust her mother not to blab anything to the Capitol Liaison, whereas Antonia would be in Domiducus Jones's office before lunchtime. And then Domiducus Jones would have pointed questions for the Head Peacekeeper, hm?"

"Um, right. Uh, thanks for helping us out," the redheaded Peacekeeper said. Then he hurried out of the clinic.

Afterward, Dr. Picardo was temporarily alone with his limping, brain-addled patient. He took a blood sample and a urine sample, and started his machines at performing their medical diagnostic magic. He got Katniss to lie on a table that he dragged under one of the icy-cold air-conditioning vents, in order to cool her off. While her body cooled down to 37.0°, Dr. Picardo tried to figure out how to fix what was wrong with her.

Right now, Katniss Everdeen was at death's door, but Josephus Picardo was resolved to not let her stay this way.

Once Katniss was cooled down, so Dr. Picardo planned, he and Katniss's mother would begin the work of cleaning her wounds and of stitching her up. Dr. Picardo expected Aloe Everdeen to come to the clinic soon, because the Reaping ceremony was about over.

It was almost an hour later when Aloe Everdeen came to Dr. Picardo's clinic.

Aloe Everdeen's eyes were red, and her face was tear-streaked.

Dr. Picardo asked her, "Why are you crying?"

Aloe replied, "Because Prim, my baby and Katniss's younger sister, is now on the train to the Capitol. She's been Reaped."