"Easy, sir, easy. Don't try to move, you're okay," said a woman's voice. Mal blinked, trying to conjure where he was. The question was answered for him soon enough. "You're on an orbiting hospital ship, and you just came out of surgery."

Mal tried to look up at the woman speaking, but he was lying on his face, and his head was responding sluggishly to his commands. The slight movement increased the swimming of his head, and he retched, trying to vomit.

He felt a firm hand on his shoulder as though the sensation was coming from a body other than his own. "I told you not move around," she chided gently, pressing an injector against his arm and giving him a shot he didn't feel. "That'll take care of the nausea, just lie still while it takes effect."

His vision and his head cleared after a few minutes, and he started taking in his surroundings. He was lying face down in a hospital bed, with a partial view of an incongruously homey flowered curtain and an unseemly number of tubes attached to him.

"Feeling better?" the doctor asked.

"Yeah," said Mal. "Can I move now? Can't say as this is the most graceful position I've ever been in."

"No," the doctor replied. "You're temporarily paralyzed." She saw the shock on Mal's face and spoke with a tight smile. " Temporarily , Sergeant. You had shrapnel imbedded in a major nerve cluster in your back, and - shall we just say the typical protocols for back trauma don't involve tying the patient to a scrap of metal and dragging them across a rocky battlefield? It saved your life, but it also paralyzed you and caused severe internal and external bleeding. We've already removed the shrapnel and stopped the bleeding, but I need you to decide how to go on from here."

"Um -would it be too obvious to suggest that you de-paralyze me?" asked Mal.

She chuckled, sitting on a low stool next to the bed so that he could see her face. "It's the way we go about it that I need your input on, Sergeant. We can regenerate the nerve cluste