The Genocidal Healer(1991)

James White

Physician, heal thyself

Surgeon-Captain Lioren of the Monitor Corps was a hard-driving perfectionist who expected the same high standards to be met by all who worked with him. But while on a First Contact mission on the planet Cromsag, where plague had reduced a peaceful civilization to barbarism and war, Lioren's perfection was his undoing. In his zeal to find a cure for the plague, he inadvertently caused the death of the entire planetary population.

Lioren's guild lead him to seek a commensurate penalty--death. But the Monitor Corps was loath to waste talent. Instead, Lioren was stripped of his rank and assigned to Sector Twelve General Hospita as a lowly trainee in the Psychology department.

Then Lioren met the huge alien Groalterri, the first of its kind to allow contact with the Galactic Federation. It was vital that Sector General succeed in curing the giant being, but it would not even speak to anyone--except Lioren. The medical problem was a simple one, but what the alien needed most was the one thing that Lioren could nog give. For before he could offer help, Lioren would have to do the impossible--forgive himself. . .