A/n: So this was really hard for me to write, and for some reason even harder to copy it onto Word from my journal. I've had this hammering the back of my head since the first time I saw the movie.
Also, what is the deal with the visitors thing on the traffic page on fanfiction dot net? I know what a hit is, but what makes them visitors? It's kind of driving me crazy. A little.
Warning: This is The Scene between David and Leonard. As in, there will be an act of euthanasia.
Disclaimer: Gene Roddenberry owns it, not me.
The corridor was quiet save for the dim echoes of heart monitors that rang from every room. Nurses scurried quietly about their stations carrying charts, hypos, PADDs, and any number of medical devices. Everywhere he walked, no one spoke above a whisper, and no one met his eye. He hesitated at one of the nurse's stations, let the clean smell of antiseptic wash through him and calm his nerves. He recalled ironically that before med school, the smell used to make him sick. Now, so many years later it seemed to be the only thing that grounded him.
A nurse appeared suddenly at his side. "Dr. McCoy?" she asked. He acknowledged her with a small jerk of his head. He gathered himself for a moment before he trusted himself to speak.
"Is it true?" he asked quietly, not really wanting to know the answer. She gave him a patient file and he heaved a quiet sigh as he read it.
He had read dozens of patient's charts before, but never had they seemed so cold and impersonal. A complete medical history, but where was the man it was written for? The file mentioned briefly his arthritis, and he was irrationally astounded that it did not hold any hint of the memories of his gradual loss of movement, the sudden moments of bleak discovery when he realized he couldn't race his son down a hallway or the Thanksgiving years past when he had to ask for help carving the turkey. Nowhere did it mention that the first symptoms of his condition occurred on a Christmas morning while his granddaughter ran in the yard with her brand new scarf, screaming with laughter as her mother chased her. Never did it mention that the stubborn, irascible man had to be carried to the hospital because he'd lost the ability to walk on his own, or that he had complained loudly in his son's ear the whole damn trip. All that was written was a few sparse notes on his vitals and the test results confirming a grim diagnosis.
"He says he wants you as his health care proxy," the nurse was saying gently. McCoy handed the chart back without a word. The pronouncement made his stomach turn to lead. How was he supposed to decide when the man was beyond their means of saving? How could he draw the line between living and dead when a monitor so clearly indicated the former? He pushed the thought away, determined to make it through the visit without breaking down completely.
"He's awake, I take it?" he asked, slipping on the careful mask of the calm and steady physician. It was a role the nurse recognized too well, for she merely nodded once and led him to a small, quiet room in a deserted corner of the hospital. The frail old patient smiled when he saw him.
"They say it's pyrrhoneuritis," he croaked calmly, looking for all the world as though he were discussing bed sheets.
McCoy nodded quietly. "The test results were unmistakable," he said, feeling strangely as though he were giving a death sentence. How, how was he supposed to tell him? He gulped and looked at his feet, suddenly unable to watch as the pale, sunken face beamed at him innocently. "It's fatal," he managed to choke out. "You have a few months, a year at the most."
"The doctor told me," he replied, still serene as he studied the nervous doctor. "I want you to be my… whadya call it? A proxy? I wanted you to be my doctor, but they fed me some bullshit about conflict of interest."
Leonard just barely managed not to smile. "It is a conflict of interest."
David McCoy gazed at his son kindly, seeing the stiff discomfort and the carefully concealed pain. "Sit down, boy," he said gently, "You'll get a knot in your shoulders if you don't relax."
Leonard stared blankly at him for a moment, then slowly lowered himself into the chair next to his bed.
"How bad is it going to get?" he asked, and his voice suddenly carried a charge in it, the worry he had made himself hide for Leonard's sake bleeding into the words.
Leonard still couldn't look at him. Taking a deep breath, he informed the floor that painkillers had little effect in the final stages of the disease. David merely nodded in acceptance. "Will, ah… will you be there? This place is too quiet. Gives me the creeps. And… I always hoped I wouldn't die alone."
Leonard stayed by his father's side for the rest of the ordeal. They had never been particularly close, and in those last months Leonard learned more about his father than he ever would have otherwise. On good days, when the pain was manageable, they would talk about the family, shared memories of Leonard's childhood, Leonard's hopes and dreams. In the early months, David would regale him with stories of his own childhood misadventures, meeting Leonard's mother, his version of the great goat fiasco that Leonard's uncle still joked about at every family reunion.
When those days became more rare, he would hold his father's hand and just talk, his voice hardly more than a murmur. His father would squeeze his hand gratefully while he stared hard at the ceiling, eyes gleaming with tears of pain.
One day he came in and sat next to his father, taking in the changes. His face was haggard and thin. His entire body was tensed with pain, and had been for weeks. He looked, in a word, exhausted, but he held his son's gaze determinedly, obviously wanting to speak. Leonard slid into his customary chair without a word, waiting for his father.
"Son," he began quietly, and somehow that one word held every ounce of pain and exhaustion he felt. Leonard felt his heart drop like a stone. He'd seen terminal patients give up before. Too many, in fact. He started to object, but anything he might've felt about the study being done, his hope for a cure, for the future, was ground to dust as his father continued, every word obviously taking more effort than the last. His father had given up. He could hear it in every syllable.
"I can't keep doing this. When I was diagnosed, I was scared of leaving this world with nothing to show for it. I was more afraid of leaving you without really knowing your father. Hell, I was just plain scared of dyin'." Here, he drew a long, shuddering breath, fighting through a fresh wave of pain from his rebellious body. "I don't want to fight anymore. I'm a tired old man and I've long since accepted that this thing's going to kill me. Please, son." He turned his pained gaze up at him, and the situation was suddenly eerily similar to the day months ago when Leonard had walked into his room a nervous wreck to find his calm, noble father sitting serenely on the bed. Once again, his father was the calm, accepting dying man, and Leonard could feel himself moving quickly towards panic. Hysteria can be calmed, rashness tempered with patience, but how do you battle this resigned acceptance?
How do you convince a man to keep living when he's already saying goodbye?
"It hasn't progressed to the final stage," he pleaded uselessly. "You could last months with life support. A lot can happen in a few months. There might be a treatment." He tried to argue, but the words seemed laughably weak, platitudes and condolences repeated daily by every doctor who had ever worked with terminal patients. The words were hollow, an over-used, half-rehearsed script to a cheap B-movie. Against the tranquil conviction of a dying man, Leonard McCoy simply couldn't win.
"Months of what? This or worse? I don't want to spend the last months of my life lying uselessly in a hospital bed. I've done enough of that for a lifetime," he sighed, frowning regretfully at his son. "Lenny," he said gently, "please, let me die."
Every shred of him rose up in horror and denial. He couldn't kill his own father! He stood nervously, was pacing before he realized he had moved. And through it all, his father's gentle, pleading tone rang through him.
"If you won't give an old man peace, then grant your father his dignity." Leonard flinched at the words, listening to his father's argument with helpless fascination. "I don't want my only son's last memory of me to be so strung out on pain meds that I can't remember his name. I don't want you to have to watch that. You've helped me enough. You've been here every step of the way, and I'll never be grateful enough for that. But now you need to move on. Play with your daughter, save lives, love your wife. This is what I want, for both of us. Please, Lenny." He suddenly fell silent, his strength finally failing him. His eyes fluttered closed wearily.
He heard a quiet scrape of the chair as Leonard returned to his side. David couldn't hear what he said, but he felt a hand squeeze his briefly before he stood and strode away purposefully. He drifted closer to sleep, mind casting about for some way to convince him. He was surprised by a series of beeps to his left. He turned his head slowly and saw his son fiddling with the controls of the heart monitor.
"It'll be quick." His voice was suddenly very brisk. McCoy had gone back into doctor mode, cutting himself off from the maelstrom of emotions because he knew that if he allowed himself to feel, he would be lost.
David smiled faintly. "Thank you" was all he said.
Please review! Also, I have a second part coming if you're interested. ;)