Title: Soul on Fire
Author: Still Waters
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.
Summary: Christine Chapel shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone knew Leonard McCoy's gift for finding medical advances and adjuvants in the most unlikely situations……but tribbles as animal-assisted therapy?
Notes: While working on "There Were Days", I had an idea for another story, where Uhura gets drafted into McCoy's music therapy trial for sickbay. I began jotting some notes and thought of McCoy coming up with the idea of using tribbles as an animal-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to supplement the usual cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). It was just going to be a small scene, with Uhura recalling the story as Nurse Chapel told it to her, but it took on a life of its own and so, with Bones bouncing around in my head, grinning away, I felt myself expanding that little scene into five pages of his passion and method. It was contagious. I hope I do him credit.
Uhura was singing to a post-surgical patient when the crewman came stumbling into sickbay, hand fisted against his chest, gasping for breath, gray eyes wild with panic. Christine grabbed him with the urgency and efficiency of someone who had done this before, leading the shaking man to a quiet corner, throwing a clipped, "Doctor!" over her shoulder. McCoy ran halfway to the ill officer before he suddenly spun around, pushing off a nearby bed for extra speed. He ran back to his desk, grabbed a tribble from one of the many piles all over the ship and sprinted to the corner where Christine was keeping up a steady litany of redirection attempts, eyes on the screaming biobed monitors, one hand holding an oxygen mask to the man's face, while the other was engulfed in the officer's shaking hand, desperately seeking ground.
Uhura didn't think it was possible to be gentle while throwing a living creature at a human being, but there were no other words to explain McCoy throwing himself on his knees in front of the panicking man, freeing Christine's hand while thrusting the purring creature into the officer's now empty one, gently cupping his other hand and placing it over the soft fur, and moving him through a soft, stroking motion.
"Matthews, look at me," McCoy ordered, ducking his head further to meet the security Lieutenant's eyes. Christine stretched up and silenced the monitor alarms, dividing her attention between the readings and the two men in front of her.
Matthews shuddered.
Uhura hummed a few last notes as she recognized Matthews' face. He had been the security officer in charge of the disastrous Zandara III mission last month. That whole away team was suffering from post-traumatic stress.
"Tim, look at me," McCoy repeated gently, but just as firmly, continuing to move the Lieutenant's hand over the trilling creature's fur.
Matthews let out a shaking breath, the mask fogging unevenly. Long lashes slowly tipped upward and clouded gray met sharp blue.
McCoy's eyes softened into a smile. "That's it son," he affirmed. "Just look at me. You feel that?" he asked, steadying the man's hand on the vibrating creature in his hand.
Matthews sucked in a breath and nodded as his fingers registered the softness beneath them. He gave the tribble a shaky, experimental stroke.
"Good," McCoy encouraged as the Lieutenant began to find his own slow rhythm. The tribble purred happily.
"See that? He likes it. Listen to him purr," McCoy watched the officer's face as the soft trilling began to break through the screaming of the traumatized mind.
Christine Chapel shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone knew Leonard McCoy's gift for finding medical advances and adjuvants in the most unlikely situations. He was hardly one to pass up an opportunity to improve his practice……but tribbles as animal-assisted therapy? The man could still surprise her. With modern psychiatry a list of cognitive-behavioral scripts and a psychotropic hypo away, McCoy was winning the battle against PTSD with a vibrating, purring lump of fur that, fifteen minutes ago, had only served to reproduce and clog the ship's systems. She couldn't help but grin as the silent alarms calmed from life-threatening red to cautionary yellow flashes.
The tribble burrowed further into Matthews' cupped hand as he scratched either its head or hindquarters. The trilling deepened into a steady, satisfied thrum. Matthews' hand was steady on the soft orange body.
"I think you've made a friend, Tim," McCoy's eyes never left the Lieutenant's. The room was silent.
Christine glanced up as the monitor winked green once. Vital signs steady. She whispered the readings to McCoy, desperately trying not to break the moment. At his nod, she gently removed the oxygen mask from Lt. Matthews' face.
McCoy slowly brought his hand to the tribble's fur, silently stroking the opposite end of the creature, his eyes still fixed on Matthews in quiet, concentrated observation.
Christine let out a relieved breath. "Room air sat's 99%," she reported, her voice barely audible over the happy tribble. "All vitals stable."
McCoy nodded and moved his hand to gently brush against the Lieutenant's. Matthews breathed in, a man gently waking, and gray eyes slid into focus. Clear gray met focused blue. McCoy kept the contact. "Talk to me, Tim," he said softly, giving the Lieutenant control.
Matthews looked down at the tribble and the independent rhythm his hand had taken up. He closed his eyes, drinking in the soothing sound and moved the animal closer to his body, reveling in the thrum of contact. He looked back up into Dr. McCoy's eyes. "Wow, Doc," he breathed out, a contented smile on his face.
"I guess that about says it," McCoy chuckled. He shifted his hand from the tribble to hover near Matthews' elbow. "You feeling ready to talk?" he nodded toward his office. Matthews' eyes dropped to the tribble. McCoy smiled. "I wouldn't think of moving him, son," he assured. "That there's the most satisfied creature I've had in my sickbay all week. Besides, it's the least I can do after making you look at my ugly face for the last twenty minutes," he teased.
Matthews' snorted back a laugh as Chapel and McCoy helped him to his feet.
Feeling both as if she were an intruder on a patient's private medical treatment and an observer blessed enough to witness something incredible, Uhura quietly slipped out of sickbay.
An hour later, as Christine was finishing her charting, Matthews and his tribble calmly strode out of Dr. McCoy's office. As he passed the desk, he met Christine's eyes, the thanks he could never find words to express written clearly across his face. Christine smiled and bowed her head in thanks of her own.
As the sickbay doors swished shut, Christine turned toward McCoy's office and saw him standing there, watching the Lieutenant leave, his entire face lit up with one of his amazing smiles. He bounced once, before strolling to her side. She called up the section for doctor's notes and handed the PADD to McCoy. "Well, don't you look like the cat that caught the canary?" she laughed.
Ever the Southern gentleman, McCoy waved her back down as she got up to give him the seat. He pulled another chair over and met her dancing eyes. "My dear girl," he drawled, "this is what Nana McCoy called a 'shit-eating grin.'" He chuckled, "I quite clearly remember being taught the difference."
"I'll bet," Chapel grinned as McCoy began jotting down his notes and updating the treatment plan. "When did you come up that?" she burst out, nodding at the piles of tribbles behind them.
McCoy shrugged, immersed in his notes. After a moment's silence, he suddenly jerked his head up. "Chris, can you ask someone from bioacoustics to come down here?" he asked.
"Bioacoustics?" Christine raised an eyebrow, confused.
"Well, even if I could figure out how to neuter those things, there's no way we'll be able to keep them around," he said, still writing, "and I'll be damned if I'm going to let that mess up my new treatment plan."
Christine grinned and reached for the comm.
Two days later, Lt. Matthews was back in Dr. McCoy's office, learning to integrate the tiny earpiece into his treatment regimen. Not only had bioacoustics created a nearly invisible earpiece that played the deep, soothing trilling of Matthews' recorded tribble, but at Christine's suggestion, they had teamed up with the xenobiology department to create a simulated, handheld tribble, complete with orange fur and vibration.
Four weeks after the last tribble was removed from the Enterprise, Christine and Dr. McCoy were poring over Lt. Matthews' progress reports, feeding flashback data to the computer and grinning at the statistics.
Three weeks after the data analysis, Christine found herself reviewing the final draft of "Animal-Assisted Therapy In PTSD: A Case Study Using Tribbles As An Adjuvant To CBT" by Leonard H. McCoy, MD and Christine Chapel, RN during her biweekly tea with Uhura.
"I'm so sorry Nyota," Christine apologized, skimming the statistical review again. "The Journal of Space Psychiatry's deadline is tomorrow night and we just haven't had time around shifts to finish the review."
Uhura waved off the apology as she refilled Christine's teacup. "Please," Uhura assured her. "Do you want a fresh set of eyes?" she offered.
Christine looked up. "Do you mind?" she asked anxiously.
Uhura grinned. "Are you serious? I got to see the study begin – I'd love to see your data." She accepted the proffered manuscript and flipped back to the first page. "Besides, if Dr. McCoy's mood lately is any indication, I bet I'll be getting plenty of calls for him once this is published."
Christine chuckled. "It is nice to see that smile, isn't it?" she asked softly.
"You're a lucky woman," Uhura smiled. "There's nothing like a soul on fire. You could light sickbay with that passion."
Christine wrapped her hands around the cup's warmth and leaned back, eyes shining.
Three days after the latest issue of the Journal of Space Psychiatry was published, Uhura got the first of those calls, from none other than the head of Starfleet Psychiatry herself. She silently wished a nervous McCoy luck as she connected the transmission to his office. She'd have to ask Christine how it went.
Later that evening, Uhura found herself in sickbay, humming softly as her fingers stroked the Vulcan lyre, easing Ensign Ryver to sleep. McCoy had asked her to come down to help ease the Ensign's lingering anxiety from a bad anesthetic reaction earlier that day. Mr. Spock may have denied it, but Uhura knew one of the reasons he let her borrow the lyre was in sympathy for the young Ensign – human anesthetic was notoriously difficult on Vulcans.
The comm screen chimed. "Bridge Communications to Dr. McCoy," Uhura's evening relief called.
Christine answered the call as McCoy frowned at the PADD in his hand and continued rearranging the medical kit for the next day's away mission. "Chapel here," she acknowledged.
"Nurse Chapel, I have a xenoveterinarian, Dr. Paola, that would like to speak to Dr. McCoy," Lt. Roberts reported.
McCoy looked up, eyebrows raised.
"A xenoveterinarian?" Christine asked.
"Yes ma'am," Roberts confirmed. "She said she wants to talk about a pilot program for neutering tribbles?" he half-asked, hoping for an explanation.
Christine burst into laughter. McCoy bounded over to the screen. "Put it through Lieutenant," he could barely contain himself, bouncing high on his toes, grinning away.
Christine moved to Uhura's side, checking the now sleeping Ensign's vitals.
Uhura stood up quietly, watching McCoy. "Is that it?" she asked.
"Hmmm?" Christine returned.
"Nana McCoy's 'shit-eating grin?'" Uhura's eyes sparkled.
Christine almost choked on her laughter. "That's it," she confirmed, smiling fondly as McCoy grabbed for a PADD and began jotting notes with one hand, the other waving, punctuating his animated speech.
"You're right, sugar," Uhura smiled. "I can't take my eyes off him."
Christine sighed contentedly, watching McCoy work. She never even heard Uhura's soft coda, "or off you either."