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Although Leonard loves every moment he gets to spend with Joanna, what he realizes is that he and Jocelyn have changed over the past seven years. Medical school has made him more serious, more driven than he was as an undergraduate. Jocelyn is less tolerant of Leonard’s crabbiness.

Leonard spends the year pining for the job he should be doing. He wants to be a doctor, he wants to make people better. He’s seldom at home helping with Joanna, but often at Bradley’s, hanging out with the Emory medical students.

That is where he meets Nancy.

Stardate 4757.9 (2105 hours)

The Farrezzi who had been loading carts were gone. Kirk nodded at Giotto. “Time to go, Commander.”

The gray-haired man grimaced. “You’re sure we’ll find our men in there? Pardon me, sir, but I’m not.”

“Neither am I,” Kirk replied, “but this is our only chance. We’ll board that ship and look in every storage closet if we have to. If Yüksel and Chekov are there, we’ll free them. If not, we’ll do everything we can to stop those slavers.” The captain wasn’t sure when he’d decided on this action, but if it was a violation of the Prime Directive, he’d sort it out later.

He had lives to save—both his own men’s and innocent aliens’.

Giotto relented. “Aye, sir.”

The captain was aware of how his crew saw him, but he didn’t think of himself as reckless. He did what needed to be done, even when that meant putting himself in danger. It rankled him that after serving under him for a couple of years, Giotto hadn’t accepted this about his captain.

The pair waited a few seconds to make absolutely sure that no Farrezzi was going to get in their way. The ramp into the nearest spaceship was twenty meters away. Shaded from the hangar’s bright orange light by the ship, their uniforms didn’t stand out. Phaser in hand, Kirk sped up the ramp. He tried not to think about what would happen if they were caught.

The ramp led into a cargo bay as spacious as the Enterprise’s. It was circular, with a giant column in the center connecting it to the upper levels of the ship. Glancing around, Kirk was surprised to find only a few pods. He’d seen dozens moved inside. It wasn’t a storage area, then.

There were five doors on the central column that he could see. “We have to split up.”

Giotto’s expression clearly showed how he felt. “Be careful, sir. I don’t want to tell Mister Spock that I let you go to your death.”

“I don’t plan on dying any time soon.”

“Few people do.” Giotto looked around the bay. “There’s one open door—you take that, sir, and I’ll cover you.”

“Good luck. Let me know when you find them.” Kirk headed toward the open doorway.

“You too, sir.”

McCoy had no idea what was wrong with him, but it was getting worse. Now he was seeing people. If this had been happening to anyone else, he’d have had them relieved of duty.

“Ah, but you’d like to think you’re too essential for that, wouldn’t you?” Jocelyn followed him as he headed back to sickbay. He needed to look at that research on quantum entanglement and telepathy, and at Ensign Padmanabhan’s data packet.

Jocelyn looked exactly the way she had all those years ago, on the last day of the divorce proceedings. A head shorter than McCoy, she had long, dark brown hair tied in a ponytail. The simple truth was, she looked great. He, on the other hand, looked twelve years older. He wondered what she thought of him.

No, that was nonsense! Jocelyn didn’t think anything of him, she was a hallucination, damn it!

McCoy headed straight to his office. Odhiambo looked at him as he passed her, but said nothing. Of Chapel, there was no sign. Good—maybe she’d gone back to her quarters to rest. He sat down at his desk and called up the Harding-Cyzewski paper. He was going to read this, and he was going to save those espers—

“Only you can do it, that’s right,” said Jocelyn. “That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the argument you’ve always used for shutting out everyone around you.”

No, it was true! He was the only person who could save the patients