The State of Euphoria
He had never known exactly why he was so scared of drowning.
Maybe it was the fact that going to a boys school meant that he was frequently surrounded by over-zealous and highly energetic lads of his age. Naturally, he'd joined in as well- which boy wouldn't? Unfortunately, this meant that being over-zealous could lead to catastrophe in lessons- swimming lessons in particular. Dunking was a prominent feature and if one boy accidentally breathed in whilst underwater diving for bricks, well that's just boys for you. And if there was so much splashing around and yelling by the other boys that no one noticed little Malcolm Reed struggling with a lung full of water at the deep end, then that was how boys were.
When the nearest boy to Malcolm dove for his brick and saw the other little dark-haired boy slowly sinking to the bottom, he immediately swam over and grabbed him and yanked him to the top.
The bruise from the yanking lasted for about a week afterwards reminding Malcolm how close he could have come to drowning. He'd not exactly hated the feeling. It was strange. His friend had got him to the surface of the pool and had yelled and yelled until the teacher had heard and seen and performed mouth-to-mouth on Malcolm.
But the actual sensation of drowning...
It was weird. Malcolm had felt almost high. He'd been told afterwards that it was probably the adrenaline.
Or maybe it was his cadet training where he'd had to learn to swim with a jumpsuit on- they never had them to fit, especially for the smaller people, and Malcolm was no exception. The sleeves and legs would hang far below his hands and feet and would drag him down.
Down and down into that pool, and of course it had to be the deep end.
He'd been saved by a pole hooking him out pretty quickly, but it didn't help the already developing aquaphobia, or his self-esteem having to be rescued in front of his cadet class.
Either way, now he was older and wiser- well older at least- and he'd studied his enemy, his phobia.
He didn't want to drown, ever. He was pretty sure that no one would want to. But through his research he thought he knew now why he had felt high after his school lesson where he'd almost drowned.
Studies showed that the lack of oxygen created the sense of euphoria in a person as they drowned, although this was debated, as he'd discovered as well, by actual drowning victims.
All he'd known at that time was that he felt high and drowning was horribly easy to just fall into- it was like falling into a comforting sleep, and he did not want that until he was a very old man, thank you very much.
In any case, he was on Enterprise now and Trip and Hoshi and everyone were his family. They needed him, relied on him, and liked him- the last amazed him every day and he was ever grateful for it too. It gave him a raison d'etre and his aquaphobia didn't dominate his life any more. He barely even thought about it these days.
He was sure it helped that he was in space and not in the Royal Navy.
But these people- this family- remembered his birthday, they respected him, and they joked around and spent time with him. And what was much more important was that they wanted to do it. He didn't feel like he was putting on them.
They gave him his state of euphoria, and this one was far less lethal.