McCoy circled the wheelchair for the third time, pausing now and then to crouch and fiddle with the various accoutrements and accessories. The replicator had spat it out half an hour ago, and he'd been here ever since, double-checking measurements and testing the brakes, handrims, and anti-tip bars. Everything appeared to be in working order, but he wouldn't know for sure until he got Rosalie into it and had her take it for a spin. It was designed specifically for her, after all, and she would know if it worked or if it didn't.

You did a fine job of it, son, if you ask me, his father said, staring out at the Decatur dusk from his favorite front-porch rocker, booted feet propped on the railing and gaze fixed on the meandering flight of the lightning bugs as they hovered lazily above the lush, green grass.

Yeah, well, it's not your ass that's going to have to sit in it every day. Or mine. It's Rosalie's, and she's a bitty thing. I don't want her getting pressure sores.

He prodded the gel-cell cushion he'd chosen with a skeptical finger. It had seemed perfect when he'd read its specifications in the medical supply catalogue to which he was religiously subscribed, but the longer he looked at it, the more uncertain he became. The gel was suitably pliable beneath his fingertips and distributed the pressure as it should, but the material was rough against his skin and didn't feel particularly breathable. In the controlled environment of the Enterprise, that wasn't a problem, but she wouldn't be on the Enterprise forever. When her contract was up, she'd be free to go wherever she pleased, and if she ended up in the dry, parching heat of Vegas or the humid, smothering heat of Georgia in the blazing heart of summer, her skin would need the ability to breathe and sweat. Not only that, but the material needed to be able to absorb sweat and wick it away from her skin without harboring bacteria. Sweat in the crack of your ass was miserable when you could walk it off and air it out and wash it off whenever you pleased. When you couldn't, well, it was its own kind of insufferable hell. And wet skin led to sores and fungal infections, and if neglected or left untreated, the former could cause sepsis, necrosis, MRSA, and other potentially-fatal systemic infections. Damned if he'd leave her open to all of that because he'd picked the wrong cushion.

I think you're being a bit too hard on yourself, son, his father noted mildly, rough fingers interlaced across the soft flannel of his shirt. You're a damn fine doctor, and plenty smart enough to know what she needs.

Maybe so, but he certainly didn't feel smart as he squatted in front of the cushion and gave it a firm squeeze. He was well-versed in bones and muscles and nerves, in the texture of flesh beneath his probing hands. He knew the balance of a laser scalpel or a cauterizer, the heft of a tricorder. Hell, he could often read a bioscanner by the pitch of its chirp. These things were part and parcel of his experience as a doctor, part of the backdrop to his daily life.

But wheelchairs and their intricacies were another matter. He'd seen them, of course, had felt their handles beneath his hands as he'd pushed laboring women to the maternity ward and ordered them to breathe, dammit, breathe, and for God's sake, don't push until you get to the delivery room, and skirted effortlessly around them with a twitch and swivel of his hip as he ran to the trauma bay with his scanner clamped between his teeth. But they'd been as ubiquitous as the sickbowls and packets of cotton batting that stocked the supply room, and just as inconsequential. They were just there, to be used when needed and then discarded. One size fits all, just like the scrubs and booties in the prep room of the OR. He'd never spared them more than a passing glance, and he'd certainly never had to design one from the ground up for someone who would have to rely on it for the rest of their lives.

And therein lay the crux of his anxiety. This wasn't a temporary stint; this was permanent. With good habits, luck, and proper care, Rosalie might easily live another fifty years. Fifty years of transfers and brake sets and popping wheelies with a flick of her wrists. Fifty years of swinging out the flootplates and trusting the armrests to be solid beneath her hands as she adjusted her position. Fifty years of rolling up under tables and pivoting on the fly to avoid kids with more energy than sense or restraint. Fifty years of rolling over grass and asphalt and up inclines and down hills. Fifty years of asking carbon fiber to do what her body never could, and if he got it wrong, she'd be the one to pay for it.

You're putting an awful lot on yourself, Len, his father said.

Yeah, well, she's got enough to carry, he answered, and ran the tip of his finger over the front caster to check for cracks and minute imperfections that could cause a catastrophic failure down the road and send her ass over teakettle to a date with a maxiliofacial surgeon and a cosmetic dentist.

It's not like you can't make adjustments or order a new one, his father said prosaically, and idly scratched the knee of his jeans as he watched the sky turn to rose and gold and the shadows lengthen across the grass.

That could take time, he pointed out, and gently rolled the chair back and forth. There's no guarantee the replicator won't get backed up again with orders for clothes or coffee mugs or one of Chekov's chess boards. And with Dr. Boswell in the picture, I'm not sure I've got that kind of time.

Dr. Moira Boswell. The thought of her soured the bile in his belly and brought the strong, sickly-sweet taste of his morning coffee to the back of his throat as he rose from his crouch and skirted to the back of the chair to grasp the push handles. He'd wasted no time looking up her credentials after the Friday night poker game in Jim's quarters, and what he'd found had made his heart drop into his shoes and his head regret the amount of bourbon he'd consumed the night before. He'd squinted at the screen of his padd with a cup of scorched coffee in hand and the gritty, greenbark bitterness of dry-swallowed aspirin on his tongue, and with every word he'd read through his Saturday-morning hangover haze, his dread had sharpened, an ulcer eating into the lining of his stomach. When he'd finished, he'd pushed away his half-drunk coffee and scoured his teeth with his tongue to rid them of the taste and the sweet glaze of melted sugar, and then he'd reached into his desk drawer for the bottle of bourbon. There'd been little more than a splash of amber liquid in the bottom, but it had been enough. He'd unscrewed the cap and considered pouring the contents into his cooling coffee, but then he'd simply lifted the bottle to his lips and finished it in two long swallows. He'd promptly chased that with his coffee, and then he'd turned off his padd with a jab of his finger and gone into the tiny bathroom to brush his teeth and splash water on his face.

A scrubbed face and clean teeth later, and he'd gone to sickbay, where he'd given himself a hangover cure and watched Rosalie potter aimlessly along the rows of empty biobeds or bury her nose in her padd. He'd hoped she'd talk to him, pepper with questions about his experiments or the ship or the universe outside the ship, but she'd been raised a lady, taught to keep her curiosity and her questions to herself, and she'd only offered him a wave and a soft, "Good morning, Doctor McCoy," and gone back to the twelve-inch world of her padd, head bent to the screen as she followed it down whatever path she'd chosen for the day. He'd glowered morosely at her bowed head until he'd been sure she wasn't going to talk, and then he'd occupied himself with reviewing his notes on his study of Khan's super-blood and its effects on damaged braincells until lunch time, when Nurse Ogawa had delivered a plate of alleged meatloaf to Rosalie's tray and he'd abandoned his fruitless study and returned to his quarters to continue his research into his esteemed colleague.

Vanderbilt class of '48. Two years in private practice in Dallas, Texas, and ten years climbing the ranks of Starfleet Medical. Her first hitch was as a JMO on the U.S.S. Excelsior. After that, she settled into a three-year stint as the base doctor on Riegel IV. Now, she was an eminent orthopedist at Starfleet Medical, with a host of commendations and journal articles to her credit. She and another doctor, an Andorian neurologist named Doctor Feleq, had spent the past two years researching organic bioprostheses and the use of nanotechnology in surgical procedures. Everything he found pointed to a brilliant, capable doctor who could provide considerable insight into Rosalie's condition and suggest treatment options that had never crossed his mind. He should be thrilled, relieved that more experienced eyes were on the case. Rosalie could only benefit.

But you're not, his father said. You've always been a good judge of character, and something about her rubs you the wrong way, sets your teeth on edge. It's the eyes, maybe. You watched a couple of guest lectures she delivered to the medical cadets at the Academy, and there was nothing behind her eyes, no hint of warmth or compassion. They were dark and cold and strangely predatory, the calculating, reptilian gaze of a gator lurking in the mudflats. Looking at them made your skin prickle.

Maybe you're being unfair. Maybe you're just pissed that such a golden opportunity is being pulled out from under you by a Starfleet bureaucrat with her eyes on another laurel for her extensive portfolio of articles and papers and professional plaudits that you can only envy, and disappointed that you won't be the one to see Rosalie through and send her out into the world with a handshake and a godspeed. It's only human to sulk a bit when someone comes along and upsets your applecart just because they can, and as much as you'd like to be above petty smarting, you're as human as the rest of us. Maybe the only thing wrong with Dr. Moira Boswell is your unbecoming case of chapped ass.

But you don't think so. It took you a while to figure it out, a while of stewing and sulking and skulking back to sickbay to perform a half-assed inventory of the gauze and bandage supplies to get your mind off your impending screwing at the hands of Starfleet Medical. You were wrist-deep in a stack of bedsheets when you realized why she bothered you so much, and the connection so appalled you that you had to grip the edge of the shelf to keep yourself from falling on your ass. An image arose in your mind of that godawful, grainy footage from the archives, of that boy screaming in that stander box while doctors and nurses watched his misery in dispassionate silence and droned at him to just relax and stand up, as though his tears and his terror and the agony of his spastic muscles were just a decision easily made and easily amended. White shoes and white scrubs and eyes lifeless as weathered statuary.

Her eyes were like theirs, cold and assessing and utterly devoid of mercy. You knew without a doubt that she spared neither a thought nor a prayer for the lives entrusted to her care. Not for the mice and Tribbles and piglets she vivisected in the course of her med-school days or in her subsequent research, and not for the patients she treated as a board-certified surgeon. To her, they were equally irrelevant, nothing but problems to be solved and conditions to be conquered by the might of her medical knowledge. If she looked at Rosalie, she wouldn't see a woman doing her best with what she had and trying to keep her head up no matter how high the water got. She'd see only the spastic muscles and misaligned bones and the fingers that fumble with anything finer than a brick. She'd break her just for the chance to put her together again and parade the results in front of her peers at medical conferences all over the galaxy, and she wouldn't care how much it hurt or how deep the misery ran for Rosalie. After all, she's just so many diagnoses in the depths of her padd.

The thought of turning Rosalie over to her made you light-headed, so you stood there with your head rested on your outstretched arm and looked at her from under it. She was lost in her padd, pale fingers splayed on either side of the casing, but after a minute, she looked up, brow furrowed.

You all right, Doctor McCoy? she asked and lowered her padd to her lap, and the concern in her voice made your heart ache because it was genuine, born of simple sweetness.

You couldn't tell her what was rolling around in your head, couldn't tell her that she was probably going to doctors whose hands would be indifferent to the hurt they caused, and who wouldn't give a damn about homesickness or straws that jabbed the roof of her mouth or bowls of blackberry cobbler or grits with sausage drippings and cheese and sawmill gravy. So you just nodded and grunted irascibly at her and went back to the safety of your inventory, and soon, she went back to the more civil company of her padd.

She was in therapy now, pinned beneath the marginally more benign hands of Stuart and Connor and still unaware of the changes in store for her should Boswell have her way. He'd have to tell her, and soon, but she'd been so cheerful this morning that he hadn't the heart to ruin it, not when she'd actually hummed while Nurse Ogawa combed her hair and mustered a tentative smile for Stuart. Besides, her stress levels were still alarmingly high despite these welcome signs of improvement, and he hadn't wanted to send her into a cataclysmic tailspin from which she might not recover. So he'd left her to march between her green-scrubbed wardens and come to set up her new chair.

And you didn't want to be the heartless son of a bitch who won her trust and then sold her down the river to a doctor from her childhood nightmares.

It's not my fault, he protested peevishly as he pushed the wheelchair in a slow, winding circuit around the room. My Starfleet career isn't but two years old, and thanks to that little stunt with Jim, I don't have the clout or the unimpeachable record to challenge a veteran with a proven track record. Starfleet doesn't give a rat's ass about your bedside manner or your popularity with your patients; it only gives a damn about results. She's got the credentials. All I've got is a whole lot of wish and an obnoxious gunslinger for a captain. If push comes to shove, I'm going to lose.

No, it ain't your fault, his father agreed, and rested his hand on his arm. But you feel like it is, which is why you're in here obsessing over the proper material for cushion covers.

He put the chair through its paces, turning it in elaborate figure-eights and tight circles around the replicator to test the bearings, bolts, and turning radius. Wheelies and impact tests and stability tests and tests to ensure that the armrests were firmly connected to the frame yet easy to remove. He tested the adjustable axle and removable wheels and the switch to control the anti-tip tubes. He fastened and unfastened the lap belt and removable shoulder harness. Maybe he couldn't save her from the grasp of ambitious doctors or the clinical hands of strangers and a treatment plan that made few allowances for fear and loneliness and simple human frailty, but he could do this for her. He could at least send her away with a comfortable, functional place to sit her ass.

And Christ, what a miserable parting gift that was after he had made her so many promises, but it was all he had left. Once he was certain the chair wouldn't fall apart at the first jolt, he returned it to the center of the room and set about installing the positional aids. Neither of them were strictly necessary, truth be told, but he wanted to see if they made a difference in her posture or comfort level. He picked up the padded bilateral side supports and his screwdriver and carefully installed them, screwing them into place with persnickety care. If they worked, they'd give her more trunk support and encourage her to sit up straight rather than list heavily to the right or slouch and compress her diaphragm. If they didn't, then he was out nothing but time and he could try something else.

Provided she doesn't become Boswell's newest lab rat, he thought glumly, and eyed the placement of the supports. They might need adjustment now that he looked at them.

Why don't you let her sit in it first? his father suggested mildly, and his chest cramped with longing. Five years gone, and he still missed him, still woke in the middle of the night to the memory of his voice.

He sighed and stretched and reached down to knead a knot of tension from the small of his back. This was as good as it was going to get until he could see her in it. He slipped the screwdriver into the pouch he wore at his hip to store bioscanners and hypos, and then he bent and released the brakes. Rosalie should be finished with her therapy session by now, and if he were lucky, getting to test out her new chair would distract her from the rankling indignity of being stretched like saltwater taffy.

There was no sign of her when he entered sickbay a few minutes later. He was so accustomed to seeing her golden head bent to her padd or gazing out the observation window that its absence surprised him. He slowed, hands on the push handles of her chair, and blinked at the unexpected emptiness.

Maybe the therapy session ran long.

"Where's Miss Walker?' he asked a passing yeoman pushing a cart full of fresh linens.

She stopped and stood to abrupt attention. "I think she's in the shower, sir," she answered nervously, and her hand twitched with the urge to salute.

"At ease, yeoman," he said kindly. "I just wanted to be sure nothing happened while I was gone."

"Oh, no, sir," she assured him. "She came out just like she always does."

"That's good," he said. "You can get on back to your work now."

"Yes, sir." She flashed him a rabbity smile and scuttled past him to begin the task of changing the linens.

She'd just finished the second bed and was moving to the third when Rosalie returned from the showers with damp hair and skin that smelled of hospital soap. She'd traded her usual green scrubs for a set of pink ones, and he was pleased to see that she was wearing her AFOs.

Nurse Ogawa trailed in after her. "Hello, Doctor," she said. "Rosalie wanted to change it up a little today."

"I see that." There was absolutely no difference between the pink scrubs and the green, but he could hardly blame her for wanting to liven up her drab surroundings with a splash of color.

"Afternoon, Dr. McCoy," Rosalie said cheerfully, and the blue of her eyes stood in startling contrast to the pink of her scrubs.

"Well, aren't you chipper today?" he remarked, pleased at her buoyancy.

She blushed. "Today's just...a good day," she said, and shrugged.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, and he meant it. She'd been somber and pained for far too long, and it was good to see color in her cheeks and light in her eyes.

Enjoy it while you can, muttered a cynical, taunting voice inside his head. That light'll gutter once she figures out you're passing her on. Hell, it might be what puts it out for good.

He suppressed a grimace at the thought. "I got you your chair here," he said doggedly, and pushed it forward a few inches.

Her eyes widened. "This is mine?" she asked softly, and reached out as though to touch it, but her fingers hovered uncertainly over the armrest.

"Who else would it be for? I told you I was working on it."

"I know, but it's-" She studied it intently, gaze wandering over the footplates and sleek carbon-fiber chassis. They lingered on the translucent spokes and simple silver lap belt and shoulder harness. Her hand still hovered in the air, fingers outstretched as though to caress a lover's face.

"It's yours, is what it is, and you might as well touch it because your backside'll be settled in it soon enough," he said gruffly, startled by her reaction. He'd hoped she'd like it, of course, had wanted to make a chair that was pleasing as well as comfortable and useful, but he'd never expected this. She was reverent, almost awestruck as her fingertips skimmed the armrests and trailed down the curve of the swing-away footrests.

She swallowed with an audible click. "It's beautiful," she breathed, as though it were priceless treasure and not a piece of medical equipment.

"It's just a damn wheelchair," he muttered diffidently, and fought the ridiculous urge to sidle from foot to foot.

"No." She laughed softly. "It isn't." When she looked at him, her eyes were wet.

"Well, it won't matter how nice it looks if it doesn't work the way it should, so let's get you out of that crate and see what we've got." Churlish and too sharp, but her display of emotion discomfited him.

"All right," she agreed placidly, and sat up. She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

For God's sake, why are you crying? he thought, bewildered and flat-footed, but he only shooed her toward her bed and followed her with the new wheelchair.

She maneuvered the bulky hospital chair parallel to the bed with the skill of long practice, set the brakes, and opened the footplates. He aligned the footplates of the two chairs opposite one another, and she held out her arms. He deftly rounded the chair and stepped between them, and when her hands were set firmly on his shoulders, he curled his around the spars of her hips and lifted her to her feet. It was elegant, graceful, and it was a measure of her confidence in him that she didn't tense when he swung her around in a precise one eighty and lowered her into the seat.

"That was smooth as cream," he said as her hands slipped from his shoulders and came to rest on the armrests. "That means the therapy's working."

"Well, I should hope so. I'd hate to think I was giving Stuart and Connor a bird's-eye view of my taint for nothing," she replied primly, and smoothed the knees of her scrubs as though they were a flowing skirt.

He guffawed helplessly at the incongruity of it, and she flashed that radiant smile again, eyes dancing with mischievous amusement. "I don't need to hear about your...let's just-," he grunted, and turned his head to forestall another honk of laughter.

She giggled and brushed stray wisps of hair from her forehead. "What do you want me to do first?"

"Just tell me how it feels, first of all," he said when he was certain he wasn't going to laugh like an idiot.

She dropped her hands to the wheels and gave them a tentative push. "Well, it's an awful nice glide," she said approvingly.

"We'll get to that in a minute. Right now, I'm more interested in how the seat and back feel. Do they have good support? Are they too hard? I don't want you getting pressure sores."

She wiggled from side to side and pressed her buttocks more firmly into the cushion. "Gel-cell?"

"Mmm."

She bounced. "What's the seal on them like these days? Used to be, if the seam failed, the gel spooged out onto the backs of my knees. Made it look like I was performing unseemly acts with the shaving cream."

Lord help me, he thought, and resolutely ignored the image of a naked Rosalie getting up to indecent business with the Barbasol. "I wouldn't recommend that. It burns like hell," he said matter-of-factly.

She gaped at him. "Do I want to know how you know that?" She hooted with laughter.

"Doctor-patient confidentiality," was his only reply, and she threw her head back and cackled, fingers tenting spasmodically over the edges of the armrests as her arms tried to draw up to her chest despite the Loxtan in her system. His lips twitched in happy sympathy. "Now that I've dispensed my wisdom, I need to know about the seat. You say the seam fails?"

She sobered with an effort. "Well, they used to. Usually, because I got it wet."

"Why was it wet?"

The last of her amusement faded. "Accidents happen," she said delicately, and developed an acute interest in her knees.

He folded his arms. "You had bladder control issues?"

"No."

"Bowel?"

"No," she snapped. "No." She studied her knees, and a muscle in her jaw twitched. "My plumbing works just fine, d-darn it all. It's the doors that don't work. Or the hallways. Or the nurses who think my need to go to the damn toilet should come after that text to their boyfriend on the importance scale. I'm remarkably fine, all things considered, Doctor. It's the world that's out of whack." She snorted, and the tears in her eyes now had nothing to do with wonder or gratitude.

Just another look at the wound, he thought, and wished he could offer her some consolation for the hurts that festered and shifted beneath her skin like shrapnel.

No, not like shrapnel, he amended. Like masonry dust. Like clots. He thought of a thirteen-year-old girl laid open beneath his scalpel while his overheating cauterizer fought a losing battle against the countless clots that choked her bloodstream and filled the operating room with the acrid stink of ozone.

He shook his head to clear it and opened his mouth to speak, but Rosalie wasn't finished. "And then there's-" She hesitated and shifted in the chair, and color crept into her cheeks. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. "Oh, hell, you're a doctor, and I'm a grown woman," she declared.

"I am," he agreed. "And you are."

She met his gaze. "Then there's my cycle." She was scarlet to the roots of her hair, but she didn't break eye contact. "Sometimes, it leaks. I need an absorbent material that's easy to wash or replace. Fleece is nice, but I don't need to tell you what happens to it when it meets Mother Nature. I'm not sure which is worse, the stink or the stain." She shifted again. "Sorry, Doctor. I don't expect you needed to hear that part. Sometimes my brain-to-mouth filter is on a time-delay."

"Sweetheart, I'm a doctor. I've heard just about everything. So what did you use back then?"

"A cover supplied by the seat manufacturer. It was some black, cotton-polyester blend. My mama or the nurse just threw it in the wash when it got dirty."

"Black in Georgia?"

"I know! I've burned my behind more than once. It hides stains better, though, and if I had to choose between a scalded backside and everyone at the dining hall seeing my embarrassing mishaps, well, you'll have to forgive me my sad vanity."

There's nothing sad about wanting a little dignity. He thought of a small, airless room that smelled of piss and festering rot. Please, son. Please. "I can get you something in black," he said.

"Don't trouble yourself about it. It's not an emergency."

"What about the fabric? It's not sticking or rubbing on you?"

"Not so far." She ran the tips of her fingers along the underside of her leg.

He made a mental note to get her up in an hour and check for abrasions or hot spots. "Why don't you take her for a spin, get a feel for how it handles?"

The ebullient grin resurfaced. "I thought you'd never ask." She released the brakes and set her hands on the handrims.

"Put on your lap belt before you go tearing around my sickbay in that thing."

"I didn't have a lap belt in the old one," she pointed out.

"Well, you've got one now. Use it," he countered implacably.

"Yes, Doctor." She reached for the buckle. "What are these?" She nudged the shoulder harness with her shoulder.

"It's a positioning harness. I thought it might help you sit straighter. And these positioning boards should give you trunk stability."

"Huh. Never tried those. My parents thought it was too much coddling and would just make me more dependent."

"There's always a risk, I suppose," he conceded as he reached for the buckle of the shoulder harness. "Maybe if they left you to sag in your chair by yourself for hours on end. Ideally, this should just provide some incentive for you not to slouch or lean quite so much. When you feel resistance, it's time to straighten up." He snapped the buckles into place.

"Will it hurt?"

"Your muscles might fuss at you a bit while they get used to things, but you shouldn't hurt, no." He slipped his finger between her shoulder and the strap to make sure it wasn't too snug. "If you do, just release the snap and tell somebody. I might have to do a little more adjustment or impromptu fleece surgery." He clapped her on the shoulder. "That feel all right?"

She wiggled inside the harness. "I guess. It's not pinching or rubbing."

"Then, Miss Walker, you are officially cleared for takeoff." He stepped back with a grandiloquent sweep of his arm.

She was gone with a laugh and a snap of her arms, and her turned to follow her progress as she glided down the corridor. Smooth as glass, and soundless save for the whetstone hiss of her palms on the handrims. Straight and steady, with no signs of strain on her joints. He followed behind her at a distance, watching the straight, regal line of her body and scanning the wheels for signs of wobble or warping.

You look like a lady now, Miss Walker, he thought proudly as she reached the end of the corridor and spun with fluid ease.

She's always been a lady, son, his mother corrected him gently. She just needed a little help showing it.

"How's it feel?" he asked, but he could see the answer in her face, in the unabashed joy he saw there as she threw back her head and shot forward with another snap of her wrists, eyes closed and chin tilted into the breeze generated by her motion. She was free, a child speeding down the hill on her ten-speed, hands held high and feet flying from the pedals. She was flying as high as her broken wings would allow. It made his chest hurt to look at her, and so he turned his head and studied the closed shutter of the observation window until the tightness in his throat subsided.

A sussurating hiss of palms on rubber. "You did this?" she said from the vicinity of his navel, and when he turned his head, she was in front of him, hands folded in her lap.

"Did what? I picked it up from the replicator, if that's what you mean."

A soft huff of laughter. "No, I mean, you made this, designed it?"

He nodded. "I studied a couple of catalogues and manuals, put together something I thought you could use. We can still make adjustments if something doesn't work."

She smiled, and tears glistened on the ends of her lashes.

"Well, hell, if it's that bad," he said, alarmed by the sudden waterworks.

"No, no," she said hastily, and flapped her hands at him. "No." She blinked to clear her eyes. "It's not bad, Dr. McCoy," she assured him, and snorted.

He stared at her in helpless, floundering bewilderment, and then she held out her hand. He extended his hand in reflexive turn and was startled by the dry, cool softness of her hand in his as she shook it.

"Thank you," she murmured. Her lips pursed as though to say something else, but then she simply shook her head and gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

It's just a wheelchair, he thought as she released his hand and spun to take another circuit, but as he watched her spin and pirouette effortlessly through the simple obstacle course presented by the room, he knew that wasn't true. To him, it was just a chair, brought forth by a few days' study of bioscanner readings, measurements, test results, analysis of her initial therapy sessions, and the medical equipment catalogues he'd pulled up on his padd early in the morning over cups of coffee and just before bed after shift. It was the least demanded of him by the tenets of his profession, but to her, it was something else entirely, something he couldn't quite grasp as he stood there on his two healthy legs and watched her run with every turn of her wheels.

He watched as she slalomed nimbly between Nurse Ogawa and the bed-making yeoman. The battered, bedraggled bird that had clung to him in the hydrotherapy pool was finding her wings and stretching them toward the healing warmth of the sun. She couldn't soar yet, but she wanted to. He could see it in her face as she grinned at a befuddled orderly stacking sickbowls and bedpans in a supply cabinet. What was more, she had the courage to try. All she needed was time and space and a gentle nudge when she threatened to falter. An easy touch, his father would have called it, and in his mind's eye, he saw his father coaxing a colicky mare around the paddock, whispering encouragement soft and low into her flicking ears and occasionally tugging on the lead or tapping her flanks when she threatened to founder.

I can get you there, sweetheart, I know I can, he thought as she rolled into another turn.

All you have to do is keep her the hell away from Starfleet Medical, his dolorous harbinger of woe reminded him.

Unaware of the shadows gathering around her, Rosalie twirled and rolled and sang. It wasn't a song he recognized, and it was off-pitch and warbling, tin plates in a dishwasher, but it was also inexpressibly happy.

Wonder if she'd be so happy if she knew where she was going, needled his conscience, and he turned abruptly on his heel and took refuge behind his desk, where his fingers prickled with the memory of that gentle squeeze.