Sick Bay was all white except where it was bare metal. The doctor was white and bare metal, and he had wheels. He unstoppered himself from a doctor-shaped hole in the wall and came rolling forward like a plow. He came to about the height of Jackson's chest.
"State your complaint," he said.
"My arm's going to have to come off," Jackson said, looking at the doctor carefully, deciding to believe Susiem when it said "This is the doctor."
"You're not competent to prognose. State your complaint. How do you account for the fact that you don't match any comparison in my files? Show proof you're entitled to receive medical treatment from this station."

(The sick bay doctor from 'Iron Thorn' (1967) by Algys Budrys)

"Emergency, Doctor," Susiem said. "This man is in command."
"You'll have to fill out forms," the doctor said. A hard, soft-white square on its top turned a very pale white-green. A stick popped up most of the way out of a hole beside the square. "Take the pen."
Jackson pulled it out curiously. It was the same shape and about the same length as the burnt sticks he had left behind at his home Thorn. But it wasn't burnt - it was light, felt soft at the surface but was as rigid as metal, felt slick, but didn't slip from his fingers. At the very end of it was what looked like a little ball of glass.
"Well?"
Jackson peered at the green white square. There were lines running across it now, bright white. At the beginnings of the lines there were shapes of some kind - patterns made out of lines, bent and crossing each other. "Kind of pretty," he said.
"Criticism is not your function. Fill out the forms."
"I think he's illiterate, Doctor," Susiem said.
"Well, let him make some kind of mark," the doctor said impatiently. "I'm sure there are others waiting. He's wasting time."
"He's in command."
"Well, then he certainly ought to be literate."
The little ball slipped much too easily over the top of the plate, if that was what you called it, but the light-pen, or whatever, left a nice white line behind it...
"Certainly tlhe arm," the doctor answered. "Uh - let's just have an overall look at you, while we’re about it." The doctor shimmied back and forth on his wheels for a moment: There was a little humming plow-noise inside him. "Hmm… Yes. Well you've certainly led an active life. But it's all healed very nicely - barring some of the fresh events, of course.
The doctor came apart, partway, with some kind of flip of his sides, which turned into a kind of chair-cradle. The seat and back, and the part that went under the legs, were padded, and so was the place for Jackson's right arm to rest. A trough that extended partway into the back rest was for Jackson's left arm. It was bare metal, and a little bar of light popped out on two stallcs over it, lighting up the leather wrappings as Jackson sat down.
At any rate, something that must have been a knife zipped down the length of Jackson's arm. It laid open the wrappings as neat as any slash Jackson had ever seen. It laid open his arm too, and it sure did cut down on his desire to do much talking. He sat there staring at his own bones, pink-white, in the halved shell of his arm. All around the torn, discolored place where Red Filson's dart had gone in on. its way to the elbow joint, it looked like something rotten. Sparks - maybe metal, maybe light - winked and flashed around the bone. There was a cloudy white puff of fog where the joint was; there was a suck of air and that was gone, whuummph! and then the joint was gone. The bones of his upper and lower arm didn't meet by a full third of a dozen finger-widths. More sparks, and the ends were notched and drilled, the way a carpenter might make a pegged splice.
The rotten place in the meat of his arm was getting less. Healthy-looking stuff was replacing it. His whole arm was tingling. The bar of light above it seemed to be shivering.