Simone's present didn't start to become available until the day after her birthday. I had arranged a nice and quiet shuttle flight from the station in the middle of the local night. The shuttle pilot was very grateful for the shuttle bay and landed with relative ease.

I walked over to the shuttle hatch and waited for it to open before I spoke. “Thank you very much for coming.” I said and held a hand out to the very well dressed woman in a business suit. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun and she gave me an appraising eye.

She took my hand for barely a second and let it go. “Where...”

“I'll take you right there in a moment.” I said and looked at the pilot. “You're welcome to stick around.”

“I've got other runs to make.” He said and waved. “Just call when she needs a ride back.”

I waved acknowledgement and the hatch closed and the shuttle took off.

“Well, at least this shuttle bay confirms that you can pay my fee.” The woman said.

I smiled and motioned towards the other end of the cargo bay where the stairs were. I led her over to them and walked up them myself first, to her surprise. She fully expected me to have her walk up them first so I could watch her backside. I didn't tell her that I could 'see' it whenever I wanted, mainly because it would cheapen my gallant move of walking up the stairs first. I wasn't surprised when she checked me out instead.

When we got to the top of the stairs, I used Presence to make us silent and opened the door to the first room. The woman came to a stop and stared at the room's contents.

“Good goddess.” The woman whispered. “How in the world...”

“Selling salvage.” I said and waved her into the medical bay.

“Hunter, this...” She came into the room and the door shut behind her. “This is better than what I have at my private facility.” She said. “I'm very rich, and even I didn't spend this much money.”

I chuckled, mainly because I had gotten most of it as salvage. “I could say that looks can be deceiving; but, the walls are filled with extra processing nodes and imaging equipment.” I took her over to the console and had her sit in the very nice and comfortable chair. “Give this a going over and make sure it had everything you need. If it doesn't, or you use specific software that you want to have installed, let me know.”

“I'm sure it's fine.” The woman said.

“Don't agree right off the bat. I'm not a medical technician, so what's on there might not be up to your standards. I want them to be up to that or better.”

“You're really serious about this.” She said and I nodded. “It's too bad you don't have a med-bot.”

“I have one on the other ship.” I said and her mouth made a little 'o' of surprise that I hadn't seen in a while. “It's not fully interactive, though.”

“Only space stations have the capability to have a med-bot, no matter the quality.” The woman said.

“I'll go get it for you.” I said and left her there and went into the Udelis to retrieve the med-bot, then brought it over for her.

“It's an UR-B!” She exclaimed and came over to me, then knelt in front of it. “It's so nice to meet you!”

The med-bot made a motion with one of its medical appendages, which split open and showed her the various tools and medical devices it had.

The woman chuckled. “You're just as articulate as your brothers.” She said and pat the top of its body. “It's going to be so nice working with you.”

“You seem to know him.” I said and she nodded as she stood.

“I trained as a medical technician next to the UR, or User Restricted models.” She said. “They've upgraded the looks and the software to make them more presentable in the public eyes since then; but, they lost some of the versatility of the earlier builds.”

“Why are they user restricted?” I asked, curious.

“They can't operate on their own. They need a user nearby to tell it what to do.” She said. “It can't just run around and perform medical procedures without some kind of supervision.”

“Ah, I understand.” I said.

“You don't realize the resource you have here, do you?” She asked me.

“I know it's been a help to have it onboard, especially when we were doing search and rescue operations.” I said and she squinted her eyes at me and her thoughts went a little dark when she thought I was dismissing its importance. “Besides that, it was there when I was born and tended to my mother.”

The woman's face softened and she nodded. “All right, I won't rant and rave at you for using it like a food reheater and only taking it out when absolutely necessary.”

I chuckled. “I'm not worried about using it like that, mainly because of the power it draws.”

The woman nodded. “That's why they usually are assigned to a space station. The medical facilities have their own reactor cores to stop catastrophic failure of the station's main power.”

“Yeah, we can't use him while we're in hyperspace.” I said and she laughed.

“I'm surprised you can use it while fully stopped.” She looked affectionately at the medical droid. “Can you give me a hand checking everything over?”

The droid waved at her again and then I was summarily dismissed and told to come back when they were done. She even locked the door. I chuckled and went back to my room and went to bed.

The next day I went to the Udelis and made more satellites, then moved the completed ones into the cargo hold. The pressurized one still had all of Simone's things in it. I thought about adding temporary shelves and trying to shove Rhubin's, Kalina's, and Luxea's things in there as well, then decided it wasn't worth the effort. I took several meals over to the medical bay on the new ship and the door opened long enough to take them and closed it again.

I think she might like being here a little. I thought with amusement and then went back to work.

It wasn't until the next day that I received a call on my wrist com. I rushed over, stealthily of course, and entered the medical bay. I was surprised to see the medical technician with a smile on her face.

“Oh, no.” I said. “What happened?”

The woman laughed. “Nothing bad.” She said and waved at the console and the medical scanner. “We're done, and this place now meets my standards.”

“Did you have to install anything?” I asked and walked towards the console.

“Yes. Everything that anyone will need to work here.” She said and walked me through the programs and updates she had added. “You could have any medical technician work here, of any rank, and they won't have any trouble at all.”

“I'm glad.” I said and turned to face her. “Thank you.”

Her hand reached out and rested on my shoulder. “I wouldn't normally have done quite so much; but, you made this a great place. I couldn't in good conscience not do my best to get it up to date.”

“Plus, I have UR-B.” I said with a smile and she laughed.

“Yes! Ha ha!” She looked at the little droid and pat it. “We are going to do good work together.”

“Do you need to sleep before...”

“I couldn't sleep now if you knocked me out.” She responded.

“Good.” I said. “I'll be right back.”

I left the medical bay in search of someone. I found Simone near the engine room on the Udelis and she was changing one of the air filters.

“It's only processing at eighty percent for some reason.” Simone said and handed the thing to me, then she looked into the duct. “I don't see anything obstructing it.”

I 'looked' through the bulkhead and checked the entire duct in the section. “It must be in the filter, because I can't see anything, either.”

Simone sighed and put a new filter in place and closed the panel. “Not having a free engineer to do all this stuff sucks.”

I chuckled and lifted the filter. “We can take this over to the new ship and pop it into the medical scanner and see what's clogging it up.”

“That's not what it's supposed to be for.” Simone said.

I held a hand out to her and she gave me a big smile and took the hand, the she caught her breath at my happiness.

“Hunter, what... I thought the medical bay was already operational!”

“I thought it was too, until I talked to a very top professional in the medical field.” I said. “She arrived here at night about two days ago...”

“How the hell did you sneak someone onto the ship and then hide them for almost three days?!?” Simone asked, shocked.

I laughed. “The ship is huge and she never left the medical bay.”

Simone gave me a weird look and then chuckled. “I hope you brought her meals.”

“Nope! She's been eating medical supplies like there's no tomorrow!” I exclaimed and laughed as Simone groaned and stumbled when the Presence wavered so much she was almost sick. “I'm sorry.” I said and she sighed in relief as the Presence settled down.

“At least we're going to the medical bay.” Simone said. I don't know why the Presence wavered so much when he lied like that.

I smiled at her thought and led her into the room. “We're here.”

“Oh, good.” The medical technician said and walked over to us. “Hi, there. My name's Amanda.”

“Simone.” Simone said and shook the woman's hand.

“Hmm. Are you predominantly right handed or are you just used to using that hand for shaking?”

“Huh?” Simone looked at her and then at me.

“Just humor her.” I said and Simone nodded, then she answered all of the questions to the best of her ability. She hadn't let go of my hand, either.

“Good, good.” Amanda said, then she smiled. “I think I have enough data.”

“Data?” Simone asked. “For what?”

“So we can help you, of course.” Amanda said, like she was explaining it to a child. “Why else would I be here?”

“But... Hunter said...”

“I needed a couple of days to make sure all of the equipment was up to my standards, and surprisingly, it is.” Amanda said. “The software, though...” She shook her head. “I'm glad Herbie was here to help me find all the errors and mislabelled files.”

“But...” Simone looked at me.

“I asked her if you needed to be awake for this part, and thankfully, you don't have to be.” I said.

“Hunter, what... what's going on?” Simone asked and her nervousness overwhelmed her reasoning and she tried to mentally probe me to find out.

“Hey, it's okay.” I said and stepped close to her. “By the way, I'm paying off the bet.”

“Wha-” Simone gasped as my lips met hers and I poured my Presence into her. She shuddered at the intimate touch of both my lips and my Presence, then I put her to sleep while she was distracted. I picked her up and brought her over to the large medical scanner.

“I think I would have a lot more patients if I advertised you as the anaesthetic.” Amanda said.

“I don't think I would have the same impact on a random person.”

“Uh huh.” Amanda said and brought up the temporary scan just being in the room gave her of Simone. “Okay, I can see what you mean.” She said and sighed. “They butchered the poor girl.”

“Wait until you get the comprehensive scan.” I said. “Then you'll see what they really did.”

It took half an hour for the full scan, right down to the individual nerve endings in Simone's body.

“By all that's holy in the Goddess Laura's name.” Amanda whispered as she saw what Simone's arm stubs looked like at the microscopic level. “It looks like they just hacked away at her until her arms fell off.” She said and took a deep breath.

I reached over and gave her a touch of Presence and calmed her down.

“Whew. Okay.” Amanda said and looked at the medical droid she had named Herbie. “We have a lot of work to do to clear away all the damage and the healed over tissue and bone.”

The UR-B med-bot named Herbie deployed all of its appendages and then all of its tools, which meant it readily accepted the challenge.

Amanda nodded. “Let's do it.”

I transferred Simone to the operating table and stayed there, because I was going to be the one to stop Simone's blood from flowing out of where they were going to operate. Amanda and I had consulted briefly about what I wanted done, and she had been completely against it, until I showed her the footage from Hailey's magical recovery. With that as a baseline, she agreed to try and help on one condition. That I trade her one for one. She would help try to heal Simone and I would try to help her heal someone else.

I had agreed, and now we had a difficult job ahead of us. Doing something like this, cutting away all of the long ago healed areas on an old wound had not been done before. Usually, once something had healed, that was it. If you opened the wound again, all it did was cause more scar tissue to build up and then it wouldn't heal right, which would cause more damage than was there initially.

With my magical healing and restoration spells, if they could remove enough of the healed areas to essentially make a fresh wound, as if the other wound hadn't happened and healed. There was a good chance that when the regeneration spell kicked in, it wouldn't use the current state of the body and would restore it back to where it should have been had the initial damage had not happened at all, just like with Hailey.

It took three hours for Amanda and Herbie to remove all of the healed parts around the right side of Simone's body where her arm stub was. I held back the flow of blood and used Presence to keep circulation going around the 'new' wound. They had taken about a seven inch wide circle of skin from the area, cut away the musculature underneath, then snipped all of the badly healed blood vessels and nerve endings.

They had even cut the shoulder stub down and exposed the marrow in the center of the bone to give the spells the best chance to regenerate the limb and not just heal over like the first time. It looked raw and completely exposed when they were done, and then Amanda sat back.

“Give me a mental boost.” Amanda said to me, so I did the same gentle prodding I had done for the others, rather than the rushed normal boost I used to do. She took in a huge breath as her mind cleared up. “All right.” She said and moved her chair to the other side. “Only one more side to go.”

Amanda had started on the side with the worst damage and did that one first, so now she was working on the other side and it didn't take as long. After almost two hours, she sat back and looked at her work. Simone now had a large gaping wound on either side of her torso where her extra arms should have been. If I hadn't known that she had lost them over two decades ago, it looked like her arms had just been surgically removed.

“Now it's all you.” Amanda said and she and Herbie moved back and out of the way.

I ignored he medical technician's intense attention and used Presence to slightly lift up Simone, then placed the first of the three wooden engraved plaques under her and activated it with Presence. It was just as necessary now to get a magical picture of her body to go along with the electronic one we had. Plus, the magic let me see all of the damage that was inside of her, including all of the new wounds she had just acquired.

When it was done and had dissolved, I replaced it with the second wooden plaque and powered it up with Presence. This was the cleaning one and would remove any and all ailments and lingering problems that wouldn't have been caught before now. After ten minutes it was done and dissolved, then I put the final one into place.

Since I now knew that I needed to add Presence and she needed a lot of nutrients for this part, I nodded to Amanda. She attached our IV bags that were full of everything Simone's body would need as it regenerated and healed. I put Presence into the plaque and also surrounded us in a Presence Barrier to contain the resulting light that would be produced from the spell.

The bright white light filled the inside of the barrier as the spell activated and I started to pour my Presence into the spell and into her. I directed everything to the large wounds on her sides and I could almost feel that her body started to fight against it.

Perhaps it had gone so long without having the extra arms that it was reluctant to change? I asked myself and coaxed her own Presence into action. It had felt a lot less than it should have been, and now I knew why. She had taken so much damage at such a young age, that it hadn't developed like it was supposed to. Once I showed it in my mind that it was incomplete, Simone's body accepted the change to come and relaxed.

It was like a dam had opened. All of that held in energy from the spell, my Presence, and hers, flooded into the areas I was trying to direct it to and before our eyes, her shoulder bones started to grow and then the exposed marrow spiralled out and bone grew out from it. The first IV bag emptied and the second one was half empty by the time her arm bones had grown out to her elbows. Her forearms were next and then just like what happened to my hand when it regrew, her extra hands grew on the ends of her arms.

Muscle and ligaments formed next and the second IV bag emptied. I wasn't worried that we would run out, because her arms and hands finished forming when the third bag was only about a quarter empty. She was sucking in my Presence a lot as well. Surprisingly, it was not as much as Hailey had absorbed, which was the opposite of what I had expected. I thought an older and bigger person would need more of my Presence, not less.

The skin grew over the exposed muscle and covered the hands, completing the regrowth. The spell was still active, so I used the energy to go over everything I had detected. Old and healed breaks, deep tissue scars, some slight space vacuum damage to one of her lungs, and a ton of minor and minuscule scrapes and cuts to her skin. It even removed the callouses that had built up on her normal fingers and even on the heels of her feet.

The bright glow faded and I stared down at Simone in all of her glory and folded up the sheet under her and put a new one in its place. Amanda came over to look at the completely restored member of the Visidern species that she had seen pictures and had once seen in person a few years ago, when she had been on the station visiting a patient.

“How can they keep lifting these thin arms in a standard gravity well?” Amanda asked, curious.

“With difficulty.” I said and reached down to pet Simone's hair. “She's going to be unconscious for about a week.”

“I don't need to stay here for her recovery.” Amanda said and looked at me. “Although, I want to.”

“I don't mind having a professional care for her while she recovers from the shock.” I said and then smiled. “Do you think I can get a discount on your services for a week of work?”

Amanda chuckled. “You don't need it.” She said and then looked at the med-bot she called Herbie. “Then again, if you let me bring a couple of patients here and let Herbie assist...”

“Mutual benefits are fine by me.” I said. “Just don't have too much fun with Udelis' med-bot.”

Amanda nodded and we both stared at the sleeping woman on the operating table. Simone had been completely healed and now had her extra arms back.