Double Contact

By James White

Sector General Hospital serves any living being that needs medical care. It is not based on a planet but is a massive space-based hospital. It has doctors and nurses, human and nonhuman, all working together to treat any intelligent being that needs it, no matter how bizarre or different they may be.
As a hospital, they naturally provide ambulance and rescue vehicles, designed to respond quickly to whatever emergency comes their way. Sometimes those distress calls come from creatures never before encountered and of totally unfamiliar biology.
In this story, Dr. Prilicla, the Cinrusskin, is sent out with a crew to locate and attend the unknown beings who have launched distress beacons. Dr. Prilicla possesses a highly developed empathic ability. He is able to read the emotions of those around him. Plus he is a skilled surgeon. On the other hand, he is not a courageous being, like other Cinrusskins, who are known for their timidity and fragility.
Upon arrival at the location of the distress beacon, the doctor and his team find an alien vessel and a Monitor Corps vessel, both vessels disabled and in distress. The Monitor Corps vessel was in the area doing surveys and responded to the beacon, only to be attacked by the alien vessel. The Monitor Corps crew has to be rescued first, as they are in the most danger and several crew members are seriously wounded.
Once their are dealt with, Dr. Prilicla turns his attention to the beings on board the alien ship. The ship contains only two beings, both of which are surgically attached to the ship and both of which are suffering from injuries acquired during what turned out to be an accident or malfunction.
But why did they attack the first ship to respond to the distress beacon? And how can they be successfully treated for their injuries when the mere sight of a human being put them into hysterical panic? Because of this unreasoning fear of the human medical personnel, almost all the weight of their treatment will thus fall upon Dr. Prilicla's puny "shoulders." (Does Prilicla even have shoulders?)

This was an okay story. A little boring. Towards the end of the story, another new alien race is introduced, a spider people who kidnaps one of the human medical personnel with plans to eat her. But even the introduction of this new element does little to liven up the story.
It probably helps if the reader is familiar with the Sector General stories before reading this one.

Here is a link to a Wikipedia article about Sector General.

And here is Wikipedia's description of Dr. Prilicla:

A large but fragile winged insect-like being from the very low-gravity planet Cinruss. In addition to being highly skilled in the more delicate types of surgery, Prilicla is an empath and therefore can sense the emotions of most other lifeforms including many non-intelligent animals. Its tact and the desire of colleagues to avoid distressing it by displaying negative emotions generally makes others willing to follow its advice – a pattern that one reviewer described as "a pleasant Machiavellian streak." Despite its natural timidity and the distress that other beings' anger, fear and pain cause it, Prilicla uses its empathic ability in prolonged searches for survivors of space combat and accidents.