Sheldon moved halfway across the world after the Arctic expedition disaster. It's been almost two years since he set foot in Pasadena.

He opened the door to the waiting room and stepped inside. Everyone in the room turned toward him. Some were curious, some were hostile, at least one was hopeful. A petite blond with glasses hurried over.

"Sheldon? I'm Bernadette," she said quickly. "Thank you for coming."

He nodded, watching the others in the room over her head. Leonard was glaring at him. Raj and Howard were looking at him with surprise. The older couple, Penny's parents he assumed, were watching the doctor flip through some papers. Sheldon moved around Bernadette and approached the doctor. Leonard stepped in front of him aggressively.

"What are you doing here?!"

Sheldon ignored the question, pushing past Leonard. He held out the envelope to the doctor who looked at him questioningly. "My name is Doctor Sheldon Cooper. I am Penelope Queen's power of attorney. Any further decisions about her care will be made by me." The doctor looked at Penny's parents with confusion so Sheldon moved to block his view. "I would like to look over her chart and then we will discuss her treatment options. How soon can I see her?"

"Just what the hell are you doing?" Leonard demanded.

"Who are you?" Wyatt asked aggressively.

Sheldon ignored Leonard and turned to face Penny's father. "As I said, I am Penny's power of attorney. She gave me the power to make medical and financial decisions in the case she was unable to do so. I am here to fulfill that obligation."

"When the hell did Penny do that?" Leonard demanded angrily.

Sheldon looked at him blandly, finally acknowledging the experimental physicist. "Before the Arctic trip. We all made her ours, and in return she made me hers."

Leonard's skin paled. His voice lost it's arrogance and sounded befuddled. "Why you?"

He looked down his nose at his bespectacled former friend. "Because she knew she could trust me."

An uncomfortable silence descended on everyone as Leonard slumped and looked away. The doctor cleared his throat. "Miss Queen is asleep at the moment. She should wake up in three hours. She is on some very strong sedatives." Dr. Green looked at the young woman's parents apologetically, but he had seen enough PoA's to know this one was valid. Especially since it was accompanied by a letter from a very well known lawyer. "She should wake up around 4 pm."

Sheldon nodded once. "I have some arrangements to make, so I shall return then. Please have that chart ready for my perusal then." He turned toward the door, but Leonard grabbed his arm.

"You can't do this!" he yelled. "You can't just waltz back into our lives after two years and take over!"

Sheldon sneered and jerked his arm from Leonard's grasp. "I'm not back in your life," he growled. "I'm in hers. And you have no say in it."

Mrs. Queen walked over slowly. She looked up at Sheldon questioningly. "You're the beautiful mind, aren't you? The one Penny was always talking about." Beside her, Leonard suddenly looked ill. Mrs. Queen reached out and placed her hand on his forearm. "Can you help her? Can you help my little girl?" she asked, on the verge of tears.

Sheldon sighed and placed his hand over Penny's mother's. "I cannot make you any guarantees, ma'am. I can only say that I will do everything in my power to make her well. I will not give up. I will not allow her to give up, either."

Wyatt cleared his throat with embarrassment. "We don't have a lot of money, but we have a lot of land. We can get a loan…"

Sheldon held up a hand. "I have not, nor will I, ask you for money."

"Why?" asked Mrs. Queen softly.

He looked down into hazel eyes so very much like Penny's. "Because she is the best friend I ever had. I will not abandon her, because she would never have abandoned me."

Leonard shook his head frantically. "You can't let him do this! He doesn't care about her! He's only after revenge!"

Wyatt looked at him steadily. "I don't care why he helps Penny, as long as he does. Nothing matters to me but getting my daughter healthy again."

"You're a bastard," Leonard snarled at Sheldon before storming out. Howard and Raj looked around the room uncomfortably before slowly following him out.

Sheldon turned to Bernadette. "Let's go somewhere we can talk," he said calmly. Bernadette nodded and quickly hugged Mrs. Queen before leading him and Missy out of the waiting room.

XXXXX

They settled into chairs around the small patio table near the hotel pool. Bernadette sighed and looked at the physicist. "Penny talked about you all the time," she said softly. "She said you are the smartest man she has ever known. That you are going to change the world one day." She grabbed a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. "She'd read three or four science web sites every day looking for your work. It's how she and I became closer. We both work at the restaurant, and were vaguely friendly. I'm in graduate school for microbiology and she began asking me to explain what she was reading to her. Within weeks we were hanging out all the time."

Sheldon's expression was stunned. "Penny was studying science? Keeping up with me?"

Bernadette nodded sadly. "Every time she ran across your name, she would smile for days. The paper you wrote about the possibilities of multiverses last year was very impressive." She looked down at her hands tearing little strips from the tissue. "I think that's when she began to quit."

Missy frowned slightly. "Quit what?"

Bernadette gave a small shrug. "Living." She looked up at Sheldon apprehensively. "She said it made perfect sense to her. That she was in the wrong 'verse. She was trapped in a 'verse where she was never going to reach her potential. She said that was why she had failed at everything she ever tried. Because in this 'verse, she was destined to fail, to never be anyone special, to never be happy."

Sheldon felt ill. His stomach rolled and he had to swallow several times to keep the bile down. His work had caused this?

Bernadette must have seen it in his eyes. She quickly shook her head. "No! It's not your fault. I tried, several times, to reassure her that she was wrong. To explain that she was looking at it wrong. But before I could convince her, she got sick."

Sheldon frowned. "Sick? What do you mean?"

"I knew she hadn't told you," Bernadette said wearily. "I told her she should, and she swore she would. I should have done it myself."

He clutched the edge of the table, instinctively knowing this was huge. "Tell me. I get the feeling we are not discussing a simple cold or chicken pox."

Bernadette brushed away the tears threatening to fall. "Penny got a voice role for an anime show. She flew to Japan for two weeks of recording. While she was there she ended up sick from mild mercury poisoning from some fish she ate. She went to the hospital and got treated. But they drew blood from her with a machine that was malfunctioning. It wasn't discarding the used needles, but reusing them. She has Hepatitis C." Sheldon paled and Missy gasped in alarm. Bernadette nodded. "She's being treated for it, but it's not going so well. When she found out what had happened, that she has Hep C, she began to, well, sort of fade. She goes to work, then home. That's it. She never goes out. She never has company. She just works and sleeps. She wouldn't even look at one of those web sites anymore. And now the accident happens," Bernadette said angrily. "It's too much, Sheldon! She can't take any more!"

"Tell us about the accident," Missy said softly. "What happened?"

Bernadette grimaced. "There's not much to tell. The police were chasing a man who had shot his girlfriend. They were speeding down a side street when the guy hit a large dumpster. He got out of the car and tried to run for it. Penny had just stepped out the back door to throw away some trash at work. The cops fired a couple of times at the guy and two of the bullets hit Penny. One hit her in the right side. The other grazed her temple. There's an infection near the base of her spine from the bullet wound." Bernadette took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's been fourteen days and so far, there's no movement or reaction to stimuli below the waist. The doctor's say it's too early to be certain, but there's a pretty strong chance that Penny's paralyzed," she said softly.

Missy gasped and Sheldon closed his eyes against the pain that invaded his chest.