Doctor Ellie Stolchak did not have many friends. She didn't need many, and if truth be told, she wasn't the easiest person to be friendly with. She was taciturn, dour, blunt and not given to easy camaraderie. It wasn't that she was deliberately unfriendly; but that was how she was often percieved.

Mostly, she held herself in reserve, refusing to make some inner part of herself accessible. Her bedside manner had once been compared General Patton's, with Patton coming off as the nice guy. Although Ellie Stolchak had never slapped a patient, she had once angrily booted one out of a recovery bed with a well-placed kick to the gluteus maximus.

And then, of course, there was the not-so-small matter of her appearance.

Even among those who felt kindly toward her, when preparing to introduce people to her, they quietly noted ahead of time that Doctor Stolchak was the ugliest doctor in the Fleet. It was undeniably true, it gave the person being introduced some warning, and was rather more polite than saying that she was the ugliest person in the Fleet, though that was probably also true.

She was a short woman from a high-gravity world, very nearly as round as she was high. She had a potato of a nose and squinty eyes that made her look almost mean as she was ugly. Her ears were crumpled and protruding; they looked like something a dog had buried and then dug up a year later. Her home had a thicker atmosphere than was common aboard Federation ships, so at the best of times her breathing was heavy and laboard as she fought to get enough of the thin air into her lungs. her voice was raspy; she sounded like she gargled with gravel. Her hair, pulled into a tight bun, looked like stiff and rusty wire. But even to describe the individual features of this woman was insufficient, because her appearance was the clearest possible demonstration that the whole was more than just the sum of the parts.

A famous poet had once been introduced to Elie Stolchak and had spent the next year of his life trying to find the proper words to describe her ugliness, before giving up and saying simply, "Transcendental ugliness. The language needs another thousand years of evolution before it's up to the task of describing this. The woman is a masterpiece. God must have intended this. There is no flaw in this work. She is completely and totally ugly, without the slightest blemish or flaw of beauty in the effect. She is a holy presence. I would announce my retirement before I would assume the task of evoking her appearance."

There were those who assumed on Ellie's behalf that these words were hurtful to her, and they rebuked the poet publicly for his tastelessness. But the poet replied that he meant no harm. Indeed, he intended his awestruck reaction only as the highest form of compliment. "Beauty is easy," he said, "It takes no particular ability. Any halfwit can speak in pastel. And many have. But true ghastliness is always an artform, it's raw and brutal and carved from the screams and passion of flesh-and-blood turned self-aware. Ellie Stolchak leaves me speechless. I would worship at her feet if she would allow me."

Whatever Ellie herself believed, she kept it to herself. She knew she was ugly. She used her ugliness as she used every other tool at her disposal. Indeed, she was the only doctor in the Fleet who could stare into the maw of a snarling Klingon and not be intimidated.