My tuppence worth. Although I love having more of a story to read, I agree with gen50 that the extra segment maybe slowed it down a bit. I think it *is* possible to imagine that Hakkai would have been a diligent doctor, but it's nice to see too. Perhaps less narration and more dialogue is the way to go? The problem is, you might then get into needing to restructure the whole story - so that the dialogue appears at the most pertinent times.

If I *had* to choose, I think maybe I preferred the first version. And I'm saying 'maybe' because having read it first, it might have prejudiced me for reading *this* version - if you understand what I mean.