"I'm sorry about that," Ratchet says, and he sounds like he means it, his voice weary. "I'm not exactly huge on sharing even when I'm not in a medical-slash-military facility on a random frozen planet where everything is probably bugged to hell and back. But I know it's not... exactly fair, either."

He draws in a deep breath, then releases it. "So. My hands. They aren't mine, exactly. Mine quit. Just... gave out, a few years ago. I've been a surgeon my entire adult life, I was Chief Medical Officer of an entire army during a shooting war that's lasted nearly as long as I've been alive and I've worked almost every day trying to keep people I know alive and eventually my hands just quit." There's a rawness in his voice, carefully controlled--an echo of remembered pain and helplessness and the terror, not of dying, but of being rendered useless. "Kind of hard to be a surgeon when your hands don't work. So... I went to a medical base in the middle of enemy territory to find a very old friend of mine. We went to med school together and he was brilliant--better than me in some ways, even, and I was good. I wanted to find him and give him the job, because I couldn't do it anymore. He--"

But York had given Ratchet North's name--York had given Ratchet all sorts of intensely personal information for absolutely nothing in return. Ratchet closes his eyes.

"Pharma," he says, his voice tired. "His name was Pharma."