A/N: Thanks for the reviews. I've got you hooked -- now to pull you in.

CHAPTER 2

The doors to sickbay swooshed open, and the sound of footsteps came to Malcolm where he was propped up in a sitting position on the biobed. The footsteps stopped a short distance away, and an accented voice asked, "Malcolm? You awake?"

He might have known Trip would be the first to visit him. Malcolm realized that, with the bandage over his eyes, it would be very easy to lie. The eyes could give so much away about what a person was feeling or thinking. He could remain quiet, feigning sleep, and Trip would leave.

But he replied, "Yes, I'm awake."

A raspy exhalation came from the other man, and Malcolm heard him take a step closer. "Ya gave us a terrible scare, Malcolm," Trip said, but Malcolm could detect the relief under the mock rebuke.

"Believe me," Malcolm said, "that wasn't my intention."

"I know, Malcolm. I'm just glad you weren't hurt any worse than you were."

Metal scraped abrasively on the deck plating as Trip pulled a chair over. The chair creaked in protest as Trip sat down.

"Doc says you don't remember everything that happened," Trip said.

"I remember enough," Malcolm said sourly. His unwitting contribution to his injuries rankled. He still couldn't believe he'd forgotten to put the goggles back on. "There was a power surge, and then everything blew up in my face."

Trip didn't say anything. Malcolm could hear him shifting in the chair. The normally talkative engineer was silent, an unusual enough occurrence that Malcolm wondered what was wrong. Then he realized Trip could have taken his last statement as an accusation -- perhaps a well-founded accusation -- since the override Trip had installed to shut down the power to the cannon apparently hadn't worked.

Malcolm hadn't meant the words to come out that way, but it was too late to take them back. Trying to move past the awkward moment, he asked, "Have you found out what caused the power surge?"

"Yeah," Trip replied. "It wasn't any one thing. Three different subroutines failed. If it had been only one, or maybe two, nothin' woulda happened. But three? It started a cascade effect, with nothing holding back the power. I'm sorry, Malcolm. I really thought my override would prevent something like that from happening."

"It's not your fault. It's mine." Malcolm snorted in self-derision. "I didn't take into account a contingency like that when I was designing the upgrade or running the simulations."

"Well, that's the whole idea of havin' these tests -- to work the bugs out."

Malcolm cleared his throat. "Why didn't the override work?"

It was Trip's turn to snort derisively. "It worked fine. Just not fast enough. The surge built up so quickly, jumping from subroutine to subroutine, the override couldn't catch up to it."

Malcolm shook his head, a motion that didn't provoke nearly as much as pain as it had earlier. Phlox had loaded him up on painkillers. "I know the phase cannons can handle the extra power."

"Yeah, but the systems carrying the power to the cannons can't."

Lost in contemplation of the problem, Malcolm absently raised a hand to scratch his forehead, only to encounter the bandages. Scowling, he dropped his hand onto his lap.

"What'd Phlox say about your eyes?" Trip asked softly. "They gonna be okay?"

"He thinks so," Malcolm replied. "He said there's a chance they won't be, but it's small. We won't know until the bandages come off."

Trip grunted in acknowledgement. Malcolm heard another loud creak from the chair as the engineer stood.

"I've got to get back to the repair work," Trip said. "I just wanted to check on ya in person."

"Repair work!" Malcolm said, aghast. He'd been so wrapped up in the mistakes he'd made that he hadn't thought about damage to the ship. "How bad is it?"

When Trip didn't answer right away, Malcolm strained to listen. He got the impression -- he didn't know how since he couldn't see the engineer's expression -- that Trip was reluctant to tell him.

"Come on, Trip," he said. "I'm in the dark here."

He heard Trip groan at the bad, perhaps tactless, pun. But he didn't care. He needed to know to what extent his poor judgment and carelessness had damaged Enterprise.

"It's bad, Malcolm," Trip said at last. "The portside cannon was destroyed. The hull in that area was almost breached. The repair work is mainly to patch up weakened spots in the hull, as well as clear out the debris in the compartment. Well, what's left of the compartment, that is."

Malcolm's hands clenched on the sheet covering the lower half of his body. "Bloody hell! What a mess I've made of this!"

"It coulda been worse, Malcolm. You coulda been killed."

Malcolm couldn't argue with that statement. After Trip left, sickbay was quiet. Even Phlox's animals were subdued, as if they were aware of Malcolm's tumultuous feelings. The doctor had gone off on an errand, but Malcolm was glad for his absence. He needed time for introspection. That meant he did what he always did in such a situation. He beat himself up with self-recriminations and what if's.

It was bad enough that he'd been hurt -- again -- but to have inflicted such damage on Enterprise! Now the ship was down a phase cannon. If the damage really was as extensive as Trip had told him, nothing short of a stay in a spacedock would fix it. Portions of the hull in that area might have to be replaced, not to mention the cannon which had blown itself up. He wouldn't know for certain until he could inspect it himself.

That would have to wait, he told himself sarcastically. He'd wouldn't be able to inspect anything until the bandages were removed, and even then, there was a chance he might not be able to see.

He supposed he could have bulloxed up things even worse, but he didn't know how.

Some security officer he was. He'd seriously harmed the ship he was supposed to protect, and had gotten himself injured in the bargain. It would serve him right if he was blind. He would only be getting what he deserved.

About an hour later, another visitor arrived in sickbay. Malcolm had been expecting him ever since he'd regained consciousness.

"Malcolm!" the captain said heartily, but to Malcolm, the good cheer sounded forced.

"Sir," he replied.

"I'm glad to see you're still among the living. You gave us quite a scare."

Malcolm grimaced. "Trip said pretty much the same thing, sir."

He heard a chuckle from Jon. "You have to admit, you're very good at spectacular explosions."

Malcolm let his head fall back on the pillow. What a wonderful way to be remembered -- for his spectacular explosions, and his even more spectacular screw-ups.

"Sir," he said. "I will have a full report ready for you as soon as I can."

"There's no rush, Malcolm," Jon said. "Trip can cover that for you."

"But it was my fault that--"

"It was no one's fault, Malcolm. It was an accident. You believed the upgrade would work, and there was an accident while you were testing it."

Malcolm thought the captain was sincere, but without being able to see his face, he couldn't tell for sure.

"Don't worry about the report, Malcolm," the captain continued. "You just get better. You're the best tactical officer in Starfleet. Enterprise needs you back at one hundred percent as soon as possible."

Despite his gloomy mood, Malcolm smiled.

"That's better," Jon said, his voice moving away. "I've got to get going. I'll check in on you later."

Malcolm nodded as he heard the sickbay doors open and close. That had been very generous of the captain to absolve him of blame. But he was sure the captain realized that, if he hadn't insisted on performing the tests, if he'd waited and done some more research and tinkering with the specs, the explosion might not have happened. The surge of pride he'd felt when the captain had called him the best tactical officer in the fleet quickly eroded under a new onslaught of self-doubt and guilt.

He was left alone with his pessimistic thoughts. There wasn't anything else to occupy him.

He'd never realized how limited a person's capabilities became when he was without sight. He couldn't read, he couldn't watch a vid, he couldn't even look at Phlox's animals. He supposed he should have been bored, but he was too busy chastising himself. When he heard the sickbay doors open again a short time later, he was almost grateful for the distraction.

The footsteps this time were lighter and quicker than either Trip's or the captain's. He thought he knew who it was. "Hoshi?" he guessed out loud.

"Very good!" came the familiar soft voice. "How did you know it was me?"

He smiled. "You don't stomp the deck plating when you walk, and you walk faster than most people on board."

He heard her laugh delightedly. "That's because my legs are shorter than those of most people on board," she said. "I have to walk faster to keep up with everyone."

"What brings you here?" he asked.

There was a pause, and he just knew she was giving him that look that said he was an idiot. She was very good at that expression. He wished he could see it now.

"Silly!" she said. "I came to find out how you are doing."

Try as he might, he couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. "As you can see," he said with a wave of one hand toward his bandaged head, "I'm not seeing much of anything right now."

"That's another reason I'm here," Hoshi said.

He caught a whiff of jasmine as she took a step over to the biobed. He almost jumped when her hand took one of his and placed an object in it. His hands traced the item, and he realized it was a data padd. But there was a cord dangling from it.

"I thought you might be getting bored," she said, "so I brought you a data padd with earphones."

Tracing the edge of the padd's casing with his fingers, Malcolm said, "That's very thoughtful." His voice cracked on the last word, so he loudly cleared his throat. Here he had been wallowing in self-pity, thinking about what he couldn't do, and Hoshi had come up with a solution he should have thought of.

"So, what's on the padd?" he asked. "Not language lessons, I hope."

She laughed again. "I thought about that. In fact, there is some Klingon grammar downloaded on it, in case you get really, really bored. I've included all the Klingon insults and curse words I know." He could hear the smile in her voice. "But mostly it's just audio selections of popular literature..."

Malcolm mentally translated that as trashy novels. Everyone on board knew she had a fondness for them.

"...including a novelization of the latest James Bond movie..."

That sounded interesting, but there were sure to be explosions involved, and he didn't want to hear a story about that right now.

"...and some music that Travis picked out."

Ouch! Travis had atrocious taste in music.

"How do I access this treasure trove since I can't see?" he asked.

"I thought I'd leave that up to you," she said, and he heard her move away toward the door. "It's just an ordinary padd, except you can't see the buttons."

He could not believe she was going to leave without guiding him through the procedure. Leaning forward, he called out, "Hoshi! Come back here!"

"You can figure it out," she said. "It will give you something to do."

"Hoshi!" he growled.

She wasn't intimidated. "And if I hear you had anyone help you with that, I'm going to confiscate it," she called back to him.

He was tempted to throw the padd after her as the sickbay doors swooshed open to let her out, but he thought better of it. The way his luck was going, he might actually hit her.

He ran his fingers lightly over the padd's buttons. He'd show her. He could figure this out.