Barrayar

Gregor could remember when Miles couldn't walk. Couldn't lift his arms above shoulder level, could turn his neck, but only by twisting his whole body around with it. He remembered, in those early days when it was natural for Miles to be carried, when it was childhood and not deformity that kept him there, the neck brace Miles had worn to prevent him snapping his own neck during one of his frantic twists to grab something new.

He could remember Miles crying, because even the best, the safest, painkillers can't be given to a child for extended periods of time. And the desparate attempts by the doctors to find something, anything, that could be given to Miles.

Then there were the long, agonising months that followed breaking and resetting his hips. Miles's first attempts at walking, the stumbles that broke both his wrists and put him back in the chairs and his parent's arms.

When his wife asked what Miles was like as a child, Gregor always started from age eight.