"Excuse me."

Bor stopped as the tentative male voice called to him from Ward 4. He gave the Director's young friend a smile. "Hello, Adric. How are you feeling?"

Adric shrugged and returned to his bed as Bor followed him inside. "I'm getting stronger every day. Dr. Myak says I'll be able to leave the ward soon and be assigned my own room."

"Excellent. I know the Director is happy about that."

"Is she?" Adric looked away. "She visits me every day and we talk but she doesn't seem herself. I know my memory is a bit foggy still but I know something is wrong. Does she not want me here? She always seems to be in a rush to get back to work and she looks so sad all the time. Perhaps it would be better if I leave."

Bor sat on a bed opposite Adric. "And where would you go?"

Adric shrugged. "I don't know but I don't want to make things hard for Nyssa."

Allowing a smile to play on his lips, Bor reassured the young man. "You, my friend, might be the only bright light in the child's world right now. She won't admit it for the world but the loss of the Bantati girl two weeks ago is still weighing heavily on her mind. She's blaming herself because she didn't close the hospital when Valgaurd first mentioned it."

"So it is not me?"

Bor shook his head. "Unfortunately, the Director works almost around the clock barely stopping to eat or sleep. With Ashontal's death, she's even busier and part of her is burying herself in her work to absolve herself of her guilt. I wasn't sure if she was even allowing herself the pleasure of visiting you; I'm glad she is."

"Me too. I don't know what would happen to me without her support."

"And yet you were willing to leave if it would make her happier. She has that effect on people. Don't worry about the Director too much; that one was put together with an equal mixture of steel and heart. Now, I must get back to work; I'm going to see what I can do to make sure she gets out of the office and visits you more. I think it would be beneficial to you both."

As soon as Bor left the infirmary, a young technician approached him with a comm pad. "Vanir Bor, you asked me to inform you if I found anything that would show who or what is responsible for the malfunctions. I thought you should see this."

Bor took the report and paled as he read what it had to say. "Have you told anyone else about that?"

The technician shook his head. "I thought it was best to hold off telling the Director until I had talked to you."

"You are not to tell the Director or anyone else about this. Please, I beg of you for all that is important at this facility to give me a chance to rectify this myself."

"If you are sure, Sir. But I can't hold off forever, the Director needs to know."

Bor nodded. "I'll see to it. Thank you for coming to me first." Once he was alone, he frowned. "I can't let Nyssa find out about this."

XXXXXX

"Why are you insisting on keeping the hospital open?" Valgaurd practically growled his frustration. "Director, we've lost one patient who wasn't even terminal; how many more have to die before you see reason."

The stress of the last two weeks had taken its toil on Nyssa. Dark circles stood starkly out under her eyes from lack of sleep and she'd lost several pounds from not eating. Still her jaw was set with an aristocratic stubbornness that she'd learned from years of living around the Consul Chambers on Traken. "We kept this hospital open the whole time we were under attack from the Company two years ago and I'm not about to let computer malfunctions close us down now. I hate what happened to Ashontal but there are lives that we can save and we must do everything we can to save each and every one of them. Perhaps if you would do more to find out what's causing these malfunctions we'd be better served than from closing the hospital."

Anger filled Valguard's eyes. "I assure you I am doing everything I can, Director. Since it doesn't seem likely that I am going to convince you of the folly of keeping the hospital open, I'll leave you to your job."

Once she was alone in her office, Nyssa allowed her shoulders to slump forward. Her father had excelled at the politics involved in being a Consul of Traken and as Keeper Nominate but she didn't think she had inherited his ease of being a leader. Most of the time, it left her exhausted and this was no exception. She closed her eyes for just a moment to ward off the tears that were threatening. Though she'd never been much of a crier, the last couple of weeks had found her fighting back tears at the drop of a hat.

An almost inaudible thump on her desk made her open her eyes. A wicker basket was sitting on top of her paper work and Bor was standing in front of her smiling. She frowned. "What is this?"

"This, my dear Director, is a picnic basket. One takes it when they go on a picnic."

As much as she disliked arguing with Valgaurd, she wasn't sure she could handle Bor's riddles either. She sighed. "Who is going on a picnic?"

"You are. I was just down in the infirmary and was noticing that while young Adric seems to be looking better, he still looks rather pale. He could use a bit of sunshine and if you don't mind me saying so, so could you. You've been keeping yourself much too busy lately. Get out of here for awhile and enjoy catching up with an old friend. You both need the time."

Nyssa guiltily bit her lower lip. Though she'd made it a point to stop in and visit with Adric every day, she had neglected to spend as much time with him as she would have liked. But still, her duties as Director had never left her much time for the things she wanted to do. "A picnic sounds great but I just can't get away right now. I have to look over the medical requests so I can authorize transport…"

"All of that can wait a few hours. If you won't do it for yourself, think about Adric. All he's seen of this place is Ward 4."

"He still hasn't regained enough strength to do much walking but I suppose I could show him around the hospital."

"NO!" Nyssa almost flinched at Bor's sharp tone. Then he softened it with a smile. "I mean, what the boy needs is fresh air not a tour of a hospital. Dr. Myak will lend you a wheelchair so he can get away. Both of you get out of here and enjoy the afternoon. I don't want to see either of you back before sunset."

Nyssa sighed. While most of the time she could win arguments against Valguard, she had a harder time with Bor. "Okay, I guess an hour or two wouldn't hurt. I'll go see if Adric feels up to it."

She stood and picked up the basket. Bor caught her free arm as she started to leave. "Promise me you'll spend the entire afternoon away from here."

Looking at him oddly, Nyssa acquiesced and left her office wondering why he was so insistent. It didn't take her long to procure a wheelchair and convince Adric to join her. As she wheeled him outside his boyish grin was infectious as he held the picnic basket on his lap. Nyssa steered him down a concrete pathway that led away from the hospital. The boy looked around.

"It's beautiful here. Like Traken, right?" He still wasn't quite sure what memories were real. Nyssa nodded sadly before he continued. "You must spend a lot of time out here."

"Not really. It's not that I don't love it out here but I don't have a lot of free time. It seems like there is always someone needing something or something needing someone. Bor is constantly having to remind me to get more rest or to eat regular meals. He's as bad as a parent sometimes."

"You think of him as a father figure don't you."

Nyssa was glad he couldn't see her face turn sad as she answered. "Yes. As close as I felt to the Doctor, Bor has always reminded me of my father and has always treated me as a daughter. I don't know what I would do without him." Then afraid she might have hurt his feelings, she quickly added. "Not that I'm not just as thrilled that you are here too."

Nyssa stopped at a secluded spot a couple hundred feet from the hospital and helped Adric walk up a little hill to a suitable picnic spot. There she laid out a blanket and the two old friends sat down. Adric studied her carefully. "How did you end up here?"

Shrugging slightly, Nyssa opened the basket to check out what Bor had packed them. In a somewhat haunting voice she related to her friend how she'd come to be on the Lazar ship and had contracted the deadly Lazar disease. "So after seeing what the Vanir were going through I agreed to stay and synthesize the Hydromel they needed. Once we had completely broken away from the Company we relocated here and business has been booming."

"Are you happy?"

Adric's question took Nyssa by surprise. "What kind of question is that?"

Adric struggled to find the right words before he spoke. "Since I've been here, some of my memories are getting clearer, at least the memories that were all mine not the other Adric's. When you found out the Ma…that your father was dead, you got angry but you didn't cry. Later when your world was destroyed again no tears. But since I've been here it seems like you are always on the verge of tears."

Nyssa rose stiffly, "Are you saying I didn't care about that fact that the Master had killed my father or that he had destroyed the world I grew up in?"

"No!" Adric rose as well and touched her shoulder, forcing her to turn around. "I think before, you knew no matter how hard it was to lose the people you love that you were safe and that you could be happy. It's like you've lost that now."

"Maybe it finally just got too hard to lose the people I love."

Her quiet admission was lost on Adric for several minutes as he struggled to understand what she meant. Finally he sank back onto the blanket. "You left because of me, didn't you?"

Nyssa nodded and rejoined him on the blanket. "The Doctor explained why he couldn't go back and save you, or well the you we thought was you, but it still hurt to be reminded of the good times we'd had together." The tears that he'd accused her of constantly being on the verge of welled up in her eyes once more. She wiped them away impatiently. "Only they weren't all memories I'd shared with you; it was the other Adric."

Awkwardly Adric leaned over and embraced her. "Don't blame yourself for that Nyssa. There was no way of knowing it wasn't me. I tried…"

Nyssa pulled away. "You what? How?"

Adric shrugged and it was obvious it was still hard for him to talk about the time. "I made the other Adric do things I would never do to make all of you realize. He teamed up with Monarch, acted like a fool on Deva Loka, chose food over getting to dance with the most beautiful girl at the Cranleigh ball…"

Nyssa paled, "Tegan and I were so awful teasing you about eating so much."

"Don't blame yourself. I don't. I have a chance now to get back the life I lost. I don't want it to be full of regrets."

Before Nyssa could reply, a loud explosion rocked the ground they were sitting on. The two old friends held each other until the worst of the shaking had subsided. Adric looked at Nyssa as if to ask if that was a natural occurrence on the planet but Nyssa was staring off at the direction of the hospital, her face gray with fear. "That's the hospital. Something bad has happened."