Back when Jos had been a fairly fresh student in medical school, he had frequented a Bamasian restaurant that had become all the rage among his peers. The food was cheap but good, and the servings large; the place was within walking distance of the student housing complex, and it was open all day and all night-perfect for students. Bamasian cuisine was varied, spicy, and something of an acquired taste, but Jos liked it. At the end of each meal, the traditional complimentary dessert was a small, sweet, baked bread ring, about the size of a bracelet. Cooked into the treat was a protein-circuit onetime holocaster. When you broke the ring, the ’caster projected a bit of Bamasian wisdom that glimmered and hung in the air for a few seconds before the organic circuitry decayed. The aphorisms were amusing to the medical students, who tended to eat as a pack for the family-style discounts. Often they would all break the bread rings at the same instant, then try to read the homilies before they faded away. Some of them were real howlers: "Avoid dark alleyways in bad neighbor-hoods." Or "Being rich and miserable is better than just being miserable." Or "Beware smiling politicians..." One evening, when Jos was exhausted from a long series of exams and tricky procedures he had mostly fumbled, and feeling overwhelmed by things he had never thought to see, never even considered might be a part of his training, he had cracked his sweetened bread ring open and gotten a message that had seemed personally crafted for him alone: "Minimize expectations to avoid being disappointed." At the time, it had struck him as oddly useful, if somewhat obvious, wisdom. If he didn’t expect any-thing, he wouldn’t be distressed if it didn’t happen. He tried to plug it into his life, and found it helped. Some-times he forgot, of course. Sometimes he expected to be able to save them all. He was a good surgeon; maybe, given the circumstances, even a great surgeon, and he never expected to lose a patient who had even the smallest chance of survival. When it happened, it was always a shock. And always disappointing.
—Medstar I: Battle Surgeons, Michael Reeves