Title: His Mission
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: A McCoy-focused reflection on the tricycle scene from "Miri."
Notes: I have to dedicate this piece to the lovely Swiss Army Knife, with whom I share not only a deep love and respect for McCoy, but also a deep attachment to this scene. I have always felt that you could define McCoy solely by his silent treatment of the tricycle in "Miri", and after briefly touching on that moment in the "Miri" chapter of "Asclepius Revisited", I really wanted to explore the scene further. Swiss, I credit your wonderful review with the push I needed to put this together. Thank you. I watched this one scene over and over, noticing something new each time, and found myself with several pages of text on a few seconds of nearly wordless action. I saw the sadness in McCoy's eyes as Kirk and Spock handled the tricycle, how he seemed like he could barely hold himself back from taking the bike from their hands, how the mound of dirt where the tricycle was found looked very much like a hasty grave. With a few lines from "Asclepius", this was the result of my journey into McCoy's heart. I hope I did him justice. This was written in one sitting with a particularly nasty cold so please excuse any blatant errors. Thank you so much for reading and for your support as I explore this world.
The first time Leonard McCoy saw an infant being dangled precariously over her bassinette, he panicked. Rushing into the hospital room on an adrenaline surge he hadn't thought possible after an on-call night where he had been nothing but 'on', he had intended to get his hands in place to support the child before explaining why holding one's newborn upside down by one leg while trying to untangle the blanket was exceedingly dangerous. What he succeeded in doing was startling the new father so badly that he lost his grip on the child, thus frightening the mother into a sudden shriek, which in turn shocked the infant into a relentless cry as she dropped toward the mattress. Luckily, the rest of McCoy's adrenaline rush was more coordinated and he managed to catch the child safely – a brief, silent hitch of relief before the infant resumed her panicked wailing over the heaving breaths and wide eyes of both her parents and her physician. After thoroughly apologizing for scaring the living daylights out of them, McCoy finally got everyone calmed down, himself included, and began gently teaching the parents the proper way to hold and support their newborn daughter's body.
When McCoy guiltily related the incident to his attending physician later that day, he came to realize that the panic had stemmed from an overwhelming confusion – the surprised shock of a deep-seated belief proven untrue. McCoy had always thought that the proper way to hold an infant was written into human DNA – an instinctive knowledge that went unknown until it manifested itself in the moment as muscle memory with no traceable origin. When he saw the young father holding the child by one leg, struggling with the tangled blankets, McCoy hadn't been able to understand how it had happened. Only later was he able to see that it wasn't a failure of genetic expression, nor was it malevolent intent – it was a simple lack of knowledge. A knowledge that, once shared by McCoy, had brightened the parents' faces with an understanding gratitude, and had translated to their bodies as McCoy transferred their baby girl into correctly supportive arms and hands.
And before he left the attending's office, McCoy had learned another important lesson in medicine – that while emotion was vital, it could just as easily harm as heal. It wasn't so much about regulating emotion, but understanding it – by assessing his emotions just as naturally and thoroughly as he assessed the physical and emotional states of each of his patients – and using that understanding to guide his approach. An extra moment's thought could make all the difference in establishing that all-important connection with a patient; could be the difference between teaching new parents on a lingering current of fear, or a steady, supportive calm.
As much as medicine was about healing, it was also about growth – a constant learning curve, continuous change.
So McCoy grew.
The next time he saw a newborn's head tipping dangerously back over a mother's crooked arm, he stopped briefly in the doorway, assessed his personal emotional reaction, filtered it down to what he needed in order to do the best for his patient…..and succeeded. With that extra split-second thought and understanding, McCoy had eliminated the gap between intention and success. And as he finished his residency and began his own years of practice, McCoy found himself in many similar situations – and continued to strive for that understanding. He may not have always been successful, his emotions may have gotten the better of him at times, but he always tried, always strove for that best practice…..to push past the sad resignation and desperate need to interject that clouded each repeated scenario.
The same feelings that clouded his vision now, so many years later, as he watched Jim Kirk dangle a rusted tricycle upside down in a lax, one-handed grip, on a desolated planet haunted by the chill of an as yet unnamed, but certain, devastating death.
And suddenly it was that young father all over again, only there was no thin mattress to absorb this fall – only a hard packed mound of dirt, a haunting reminder of the graves McCoy had yet to find.
Despite Spock's frequent, vocal insistence to the contrary, McCoy was a logical man. He knew the tricycle wasn't a child.
But it didn't stop his gut from churning with remembered panic, his mind from recalling his old mentor's lesson.
From feeling that same sad resignation and desperate need to interject.
As McCoy knew that the tricycle wasn't a child, he also knew that neither Kirk nor Spock would see it that way – he didn't expect them to. He also understood that, like that first father, Jim's handling of the object wasn't a failure of genetic expression (it wasn't a child and therefore had no real need to be held that way) or malevolent intent (if Jim had seen the tricycle as McCoy did, he would have certainly approached it differently). It was, once again, a simple lack of knowledge – in this case, largely brought about by a differing perspective from McCoy – but a lack of knowledge all the same. A deficiency McCoy desperately wanted to remedy, but one he forced himself to step back and assess. Teaching was useless unless the patient was ready and open to the teaching, unless everyone was on the same page.
And McCoy understood that he was chapters away from Jim right now.
In a completely different book.
And this was neither the time nor place for an attempt at literary reconciliation.
So McCoy stood back, strove to temper the emotion on his face, and marveled at how quickly one could feel alone in a crowd.
McCoy considered Jim and Spock two of his closest friends – so much so, that he often forgot about the considerable differences in their life experiences and their views of the world.
Such as the fact that Jim and Spock were military men.
Something McCoy was most certainly not.
A fact that had never been so clear as in this moment.
Jim had been the first to notice the tricycle, the history enthusiast briefly overshadowing the focused commander on a mission for answers. He strode over to the ancient toy, calling Spock over to share in his find. In another life, one where he had never been seduced by the sea or the stars, McCoy could have seen Jim as a history teacher – eyes lighting up, grin widening at the sheer joy of ancient discoveries and the sharing of that knowledge and excitement with others. And even while he knew that Jim saw the tricycle as an historical artifact, a relic of time long since past, McCoy couldn't help but cringe at the light, one-handed grip on the overturned object. He swallowed back a cry at Jim's stance, one leg perched up on the mounded dirt, desperately insisting to himself that it was not the desecration of so many hidden graves. His heart sank with the thump of the discarded front tire as Jim tossed it aside, McCoy's eyes following the detached rubber and metal at his feet with the same haunted shock afforded a dismembered limb. He marveled at the clear ringing of the old bell, bright as the days surrounding its use, ears flooding with the echoes of answering trills and buoyant laugher. And he nearly shuddered as, with a final, boyish smile, Jim passed the tricycle to Spock, both sharing a piece of his own ancient history and giving Spock a hands-on illustration of Earth-play, something he had undoubtedly studied in dry computer files on an even drier planet. Passed it one-handed and completely upside down, head to the ground, as the commander stepped forward again and continued on his mission.
Spock, bless him, took the tricycle with two hands, actually supporting the front handlebars and the body. Briefly. But with a look that clearly stated, "I have no idea why this object was given to me", Spock proved that he was not open to Jim's intended sharing and education at that time. The logical Vulcan and the task-oriented military officer saw no use in the rusted object in his hands – it served no purpose in his objective, and so it was summarily dismissed. McCoy hadn't realized he was already walking toward Spock when the science officer, without even a glance to where the bike was going, passed it back toward McCoy with an equally single-handed grasp.
Carefully skirting the edges of the mound at his feet, McCoy took the tricycle in a reverent two-handed grip – one hand supporting the frame, the other a back wheel…..and he tried to tell himself he felt peeling paint and the sharp edges of rusted metal instead of warm flesh and the rapid flutter of new life under his fingertips. That he felt the cool rubber and crushed sand lining the back wheel, not the ancient reflexes of an infant's tiny foot.
McCoy slowly bent down to one knee, laying the tricycle gently on its side on top of the mounded dirt, chest tightening at the seemingly backwards act of laying the dead above their grave. He tried to insist that the broken tricycle was not a broken body, even as he found himself positioning the toy in a reverent reflection of the recovery position, ever the healer, striving to recover that long-passed life. He told himself the echo of the bell had faded, even as his ears rang with the charged air, with the delighted shouts of children and the encouraging claps of proud-eyed parents, with the normalcy of childhood on a world cruelly decimated by an invisible enemy. McCoy reached for the back of the bike, to bend a knee into proper position, and hesitated at the stiffness there – the inflexible metal securing the back wheel an eerie reflection of rigor. Head bowed, McCoy gently spun the old wheel, briefly feeling the warmth of recent friction against sandy roads imposed over the leeched cold of long abandoned rubber. As the wheel creaked a haunting prayer, McCoy kept one hand on the body of the bike, the healer monitoring for a heartbeat in the vibration of the metal as he listened to the creak of the old wheel fade and was overwhelmed by the sounds and feelings of the lives surrounding the still form under his care.
Jim had seen an ancient object of interest, a slice of history, had felt the weight of that history in the old metalwork balanced in one loose grip, in the prickling of long disintegrating paint against his hands. Spock had seen an old tricycle, an object of no relevance to their assigned task, only noted through its apparent meaning to his Captain. But McCoy…
McCoy had seen the tricycle as the very lives of those connected to it. There was no distinction – rusted metal and the long dead flesh that once powered it were one, the clear call of the bell and the wild joy of unfettered childhood the same ring…
The lost wheel and decaying paint a wordless grave marker, an unbearable echo of voices long since silenced.
Until now.
Because the creak of the old wheel faded, the chill of the metal under his hand forgotten as the images, the voices of those he mourned so deeply came back to vibrant life by virtue of his very acknowledgement of their existence.
And so McCoy's eyes saw, his ears heard…he felt the lives surrounding that broken conglomeration of rubber and metal - the excited parents who purchased the bike, the overjoyed child who received it, proud smiles watching tiny legs furiously pumping equally tiny petals, shining eyes and streaming hair, scraped knees and elbows as gravity overtook the fragile balance of childhood, gentle hands and gentler words repairing skin and smoothing away tears.
The cool metal under his hand suddenly thrummed with renewed life, the creak disappeared from the back wheel leaving only the whisper of movement, of long held breath.
And for those few, brief seconds, the dead spoke again.
All because of one man, who, if incapable of healing life, held it in his nature to at least mourn what was lost.
As McCoy returned back to the stillness of the present, the faint crunch of the landing party's boots as they pursued their task, he reflected on his thoughts and realized he didn't mind being alone.
Perhaps he wasn't.
He may not be a military man, never would be, but he too had a mission.
As the anguished shout of a panicked child pierced the air, McCoy whipped around toward the sound, drawn to the raw emotion there, drawn to help. But even as the threat became clear, one hand remained firmly on the body of the tricycle, not forgetting that life under his hands.
Or his duty to protect it.
Because as this new voice came barreling toward him, throwing him to the ground and overtaking the echoes of those before, McCoy saw it with the same heart that saw the tricycle.
He saw life.
And that was his mission.
Jim and Spock's orders changed with Starfleet's needs, but McCoy's remained constant.
Whether it was to preserve it, heal it, comfort it, or mourn it, the core remained the same.
His mission was life.