Home is the Sailor

By

Pat Foley

Chapter 7

McCoy paused on his return home that afternoon – funny how a Vulcan castle was rapidly feeling like home, even to him, a transplanted Terran who had never had many kind words to say about this arid planet -- and took a short detour. He walked through the formal Vulcan gardens to a path that lead to Amanda's terra-formed ones. Ducking through an arched doorway led him through the shimmer of a force screen, past a curtain of hanging vines and roses, into almost another world. Irrigation systems and foliage, lush flowers and green leaves transformed the space from the arid desert gardens on the one side to a near human microclimate on the other. That is, if you discounted the gravity and the red sky. He took a deep gulp of the humid air, scented with flowers and let his fingers graze across the tips of a lavender hedge. The gravity was still a heavy drag, physically and emotionally, but just seeing green leaves and breathing verdant foliage soothed him.

His cardiac operation had not gone well. Even after decades as a physician and surgeon, the loss of a patient was painful. He needed some time, away from people, to regain his perspective.

The Vulcan who had died had been much older than Sarek. He'd never operated on a being so old. And thus less resilient. The patient had actually survived the operation itself. But several hours later his blood pressure had increased, and all that the healers could do with mental controls and drugs had been ineffective. The patient had died of a multiple neurological infarcts several hours later – strokes in layman's terms. Nothing that Vulcan's or Starfleet's technological, medicinal capabilities, nothing in the healer arts had saved him.

The healers had been matter-of-fact and prosaic about the death. McCoy understood professional reserve, too. But he still found it hard to lose any patient. It haunted him. And he'd been secure in his knowledge of the procedure this time too. It made him realize all the more how lucky they'd all been, the last time.

That was the problem, with medicine. You could never get too cocky. No sooner did you think you could cure a rainy day – or on Vulcan, a dry one – than you came up short against the realities of life – and death. And luck -- unless you were Jim Kirk – couldn't always be relied on. Not even Jim could, all the time, though he seemed to shower a lucky charm over those around him.

The death had made McCoy well aware he had been playing fast and loose in other ways too. Perhaps thinking that just because Spock had been rescued, that they had gotten him to Vulcan, he too would rise like a phoenix. It was what Jim expected, and Jim could be so persuasive, he could blind everyone, sometimes, to reality. Or make reality come out his way.

But McCoy suspected he himself had been too optimistic. He could see his errors now. To be fair to everyone – Spock, Jim, his parents, he needed to handle this situation with Spock more practically. Then if the worst happened – not that Spock would die, for physically he was stable – but if he couldn't pass command reinstatement tests, if his mind had in some way been shattered, too broken to shoulder command again, there was a backup plan in place, one everyone was well prepared for, could expect and could handle.

Though he suspected nothing, of course, could make Jim take that possibility well.

As for Spock, it was too soon for McCoy to say how he would react, if he had to face a civilian future. McCoy was sure, at least at the moment, that Spock had not even thought that far ahead. He had a long way to go to get there.

He had been resisting therapy.

Not in any extreme way. He had accepted his surroundings uncomplainingly, seemed content. But did not ask questions or engage beyond the superficial reality of the here and now. He seemed content to exist in a bubble that didn't include dealing with more than that which was directly before him, not pushing himself to look beyond into the next day, next week, much less next month. He slept; he was willing to engage in light conversation. He did eat, at least a little. For Spock, who lost his appetite entirely at any stress, that said much to McCoy. He accepted interaction that was non-threatening and non invasive. But at any more demands than that, he evaded, closed down, looked away, turned away.

From a civilian shrink's viewpoint, resisting therapy was a very bad sign, a warning that huge issues lurked therein.

From a Starfleet shrink's perspective, it was understandable and acceptable. Up to a point. Right now, it was normal, even predictable, for an officer who had been through what Spock had. But what was niggling at McCoy was that it couldn't last forever. And the longer it lasted, the bigger the problem. Sooner or later, an officer either had to yield to therapy, and go through his experiences, deal with them, and pass the reinstatement tests. Or if he could not, he was decommissioned and retired.

As for Sarek and Amanda, McCoy now suspected this was more than a casual visit home. That at least Amanda might have difficulty accepting if Spock did return to 'Fleet. But he couldn't be sure of that, yet, either.

He sighed, and spent a few necessary minutes just wandering through the gardens, taking in their beauty, and resetting his own equilibrium before he faced this next set of patients.

Coming in through the garden court door, he found a table set for dinner on the terrace. Only Sarek was there, looking pensive, fingers steepled, so deep in thought he didn't stir when McCoy came up behind him until McCoy set down his medical kit and reached for a glass and the tea pitcher.

"Evening, Sarek," he said as the Vulcan unfolded his hands. He drained half the glass and refilled it before setting the pitcher down, and drew his hand, wet from the pitchers condensation, across his brow and the nape of his neck. It helped. "Have you seen Spock this afternoon? I'd planned to check on him before dinner."

Sarek straightened fractionally, laying his hands precisely on the table. "We played chess earlier."

"Dare I ask who won?" McCoy said, with a trace of a smile.

"He was too fatigued to finish the game."

McCoy gave Sarek a sharp glance. Was the tone a little more clipped than usual? He took another sip of tea, shifting from one foot to the other, wondering if he was hearing any emotion in that even voice. Or if it was just his own reaction, the stress of his own day being overlaid on a Vulcan lack of reaction. He couldn't tell. "I'll look in on him in a minute," he said. "Is anyone with him now?"

"His mother is now reading to him to sleep."

McCoy set his glass down, raising a brow, not quite sure he'd heard correctly. "Come again?"

Sarek's eyes met McCoy's, not a trace of expression in their black depths. The absence of any emotion, even after all McCoy's experience with Spock, somehow unnerved him and McCoy drew back a bit.

"Spock does not have the mental capability, at present, to meditate before retiring," Sarek said. "A healer has determined that even with his skilled assistance meditation is not possible for Spock at this time. He has been having difficulty sleeping today. His mother's own habit is to read before retiring. She therefore thought it would relax him to be read to."

"I guess it might," McCoy said, uncharacteristically rattled by Sarek's mechanical inflection and absence of emotion as he related the events, more so than the news of Spock's difficulties. He swallowed another gulp of tea, reminding himself he wasn't some gauche human who had never been off Terra. Still, he had thought himself used to Vulcans, from Spock. And in dealing with the healers, in a professional situation, he hadn't been much cued to emotion himself. But now that he faced Sarek, alone, for the first time without Spock as an immediate distraction, he was coming up against the difference between a full-blooded Vulcan, and Spock. He topped up his glass, glad to see his surgeon's hands were steady, shoring up his equilibrium for the second time in fifteen minutes.

His usual methods of dealing with Vulcan logic and unemotion when it discomforted him – teasing Spock until he literally forced some trace of emotional reaction -- couldn't be used with Sarek. Now that Amanda wasn't around, McCoy realized how he'd been depending upon her to cue him with her own human body language to Sarek's much more fractional reactions and emotions. Without her to interpret Sarek for him, as she had been on the Enterprise and here up till now, he felt partially blind. And the cold, mechanical precise explanation had chilled him, even in the fiery heat of a Vulcan summer afternoon. "What were they reading?" he said, grasping at a subject for conversation, since Sarek had not replied to his pleasantry.

"Does it matter?" Sarek asked, with the same cool remoteness.

McCoy suddenly felt overwhelmed with the pull of the planet's gravity. The stress of the day, the whole alien environment, finally caught up to him. He sank down abruptly, putting off his intended visit with Spock for a few more minutes. If Amanda was with him, there was no rush. "I suppose not." He drew a careful breath of the dry air, sparing a glance for the impassive Vulcan across from him. But that wasn't quite an adequate description. Now that he looked at him more closely, now that he wasn't distracted by his own weariness, he could see that in spite of Sarek being far more controlled than Spock usually was, he was far from impassive. It came to McCoy that all that superhuman control wasn't the normal Sarek any more than it was the normal Spock. That it was masking very strong emotions. That behind those expressionless eyes and controlled hands Sarek was really angry. Or possessed by some strong emotion. McCoy could suddenly see, as he hadn't before standing above him, the tension in the set of the elder Vulcan's shoulders. He suddenly felt uneasy sitting across from him. As if the Vulcan were an unshielded anti-matter engine.

The opposite door swung open, and Amanda came in, a tray in her hands. McCoy felt himself relax as she seemed totally unphased by her husband's wooden visage. "He's asleep at last," she said to Sarek. "At least for now." She looked across at McCoy, and found a trace of a smile for him. "Hello, Doctor. I hope you had a pleasant day."

McCoy didn't bother to burden her with his troubles. "I take it that Spock himself didn't have the best one."

Amanda put down her tray and sat down at the table, pushing her long braid back off her shoulder and rubbing her neck as if she had a crick in it, from long reading. Her totally human body language, in the face of Sarek's strict control, was as refreshing to McCoy as the tea he was drinking. "He's not getting much rest today," she admitted. "Suddenly he's experiencing a lot of bad dreams when he tries to sleep. Very bad dreams."

McCoy let out a breath, relieved that was all it was. He'd had previous experience with a Spock who had trouble reconciling an emotional reaction to bad memories, one that had left him unable to meditate in the Vulcan way. So for Spock this might not be a neurological problem at all, just an emotional one. Sarek might not like that, but to McCoy that was not only expected, but something he was relieved to hear of, on a number of levels. If that were all it was, Spock was more or less on schedule. Bad dreams were a sign the reactions were coming to the surface, in spite of Spock's avoidance of them so far. If so it was a welcome phase, though he hoped it would soon pass.

"That's predictable," McCoy reassured her. "It won't be pleasant for him. Or for all of you. But it is the next stage of his recovery, at least from a psychological perspective."

"It is?" Amanda said, looking at him puzzled. "How can that be? It's like he is worse, now that he's been home a few days."

"It may look that way, sure. But before, he was still half in battle mode, shut down, all shields and barriers up. He couldn't let himself remember, or deal with what happened. He had to stay boxed up, prepared for the worst the enemy could throw at him. Or he came tentatively out, if the setting was innocuous enough, and he turtled up if it wasn't. But that can't last forever. It's not normal, though it may have seemed so. Now that he's beginning to feel safe and relax, he's going to experience his reaction to what he's been through, a reaction that up till now he's been denying. Difficult as it's going to be, he needs to feel it. Until he gets it out, gets through that, he won't be able to put it behind him." He smiled at Amanda's troubled face. "Believe me; unpleasant as it is for him and you, this is a good sign. I'd be far more concerned if he had buried his emotional reaction to his situation so deep he refused to deal with it. I was more than a little worried he might do that. Or that he'd have to go through painful therapy to force him to deal with it."

Sarek had been listening stolidly to this explanation without showing any sign of accepting it. "Vulcans control," he said. "They do not 'get it out'. They meditate. They discipline emotional reactions into patterns of logic, then dismiss the emotional contaminants. That is our way."

"With all due respect, Ambassador," McCoy said carefully, "how many Vulcans go through what Spock has?"

"Sarek," Amanda began, with a glance at her husband.

"Perhaps that has always been my point," Sarek said, with an icy precision that raised McCoy's hackles.

McCoy drew a sharp breath. "Whether you agree with his choice of career or not, whether he always follows your disciplines or not, what Spock does in his Starfleet career has been immeasurably valuable, to Starfleet and the Federation," he retorted. "Maybe it's time you recognized that point!"

"Doctor," Amanda said, eyeing her husband, whose eyes were flashing.

Suddenly aware of what he was doing, now faced off against Sarek of Vulcan in his own home, McCoy caught himself. Shaking his head, and holding out a placating hand, he let out the breath he had drawn before he said anything more that he might regret. After a moment, he mastered some purely human control. "Okay. I understand," he said slowly. "I may even agree with you in part. He's obviously had a bad day. Maybe he wasn't ready himself, to have Jim spend some time away from him. That might have been a bad judgment call on my part. And you both had to deal the results and I hadn't prepared you for what might happen. My fault. It must have been difficult for you, given you're not used to the problems of a service life. Maybe more difficult for you than it was for Spock. Certainly no one should have to experience what Spock went through. If it were my child, and I were forced to watch him deal with the fallout from that mission, well, I'd be mad as hell too. I do understand. But Spock is tough, and resilient. There's a good chance, in spite of what he's going through now, and how bad it looks, that he's going to be all right. I'm not saying he will fully recover, not yet. But don't take what appears to be a setback so much at face value, is all I'm saying."

Sarek had been listening to McCoy's platitude, with a trace of disbelief and when it was over, he drew a sharp breath and some of the control slipped from his voice when he said, "Doctor, with all due respect, you do not even begin to understand Vulcan --"

"I have consulted with your Vulcan trauma specialists," McCoy overrode him firmly. "And I'm willing to continue to consult with them and use them where necessary. You're his father, yes. But you're not a doctor, and Spock is my patient. I think I do understand him, so far as that goes. And unless something changes, I'm responsible for his treatment and his recovery. I'm afraid that's the way it's going to have to be."

"Sarek," Amanda said softly. She didn't look at her husband. She was gazing down at her hands, which were coiling her long braid around her fingers. "Please."

There was silence for a moment. McCoy looked from Amanda, who kept her head stubbornly down, to Sarek who hadn't reacted at all to McCoy's thrown gauntlet. Instead, he was looking at Amanda's bent head as if demanding a reaction. But Amanda didn't look up. Her shoulders were down. Except for that first soft intonation of her husband's name, she couldn't have been more subdued.

"What?" McCoy asked, not sure what was going on, except he was positive that something was. He had thought the conflict was between him and Sarek. But perhaps it wasn't.

Sarek glanced at him as if just recollecting him. Then he blinked, rose and without another word went out through the garden court door that McCoy had entered, his shoulders stiff with tension.

Amanda's eyes followed her husband through the terrace windows. They watched him wind his way through the gardens, until the foliage hid him from view.

"Whew!" McCoy said. "What was going on there that I don't know about?"

"Nothing."

"That was not nothing," McCoy said positively. "That was one ticked off Vulcan, for all his control. I didn't recognize his behavior as anger at first, but then it became pretty obvious. I thought I understood Vulcans. And Spock has a temper of his own. But Spock has nothing on Sarek. I was actually feeling a little threatened for a moment. Hell, more than a little."

"You had nothing to fear."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"It's personal, Doctor."

"I just happen to be a personal physician," McCoy drawled. He took another sip of tea, wetting his suddenly dry throat. He realized he was shaking a little. From fatigue, perhaps. Or something more, like adrenalin from a near battle situation.

She gave him a trace of a smile for his joke, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. "Sarek is all right," she said, her gaze back to where he had disappeared through the garden court. "Thank goodness," she muttered in an added undertone. "You just have no idea how difficult this is for him."

"To quote him," McCoy said, with a touch of his usual irony and a stab of his finger, "'Vulcans control.'"

"Not without some cost to themselves," Amanda said. She still looked upset.

"I'm sorry," McCoy answered, seeing her not react to his half attempt at humor. "That was unworthy of me. But if this is going to be hard for Sarek, maybe we shouldn't be here."

Amanda looked up, shocked. "Oh, no! You have to stay!"

"Amanda--"

"You can't take Spock away, again."

"Again?" McCoy raised a brow.

"Back to Starfleet, I mean."

"I know you want Sarek and Spock to have this time together. So do I. But I don't want to risk upsetting Sarek's condition either."

"What do you mean, his condition?" Amanda asked, turning and regarding him with suddenly narrowed eyes. McCoy couldn't have been more surprised at the change in her. She had gone suddenly from entreaty to the equivalent of a Rigilian spitcat, fur bristling.

"His heart," McCoy said, in some surprise.

She let out a breath and relaxed. "Oh. His heart."

"Yeah, that." McCoy said, a trace ironically, and with a touch of anger of his own, seeing her discount that concern, his anger further fueled by the memory of the Vulcan who had died today from that same operation, in spite of his own experience in performing it, and no risky experimental drugs. "His heart. The little matter that nearly killed Sarek not all that long ago. Obviously it seems to have slipped your mind, but it was pretty important to everyone at the time, and I'll certainly never forget it. I don't know what you're thinking of."

Amanda shook her head. "His heart is fine," she assured him. "It's not his heart that--" she stopped herself again, and let out a breath. "His heart is fine," she repeated.

"He's had checkups?" McCoy asked, eyes narrowed. "I don't need any more surprises."

"Regular ones. Believe me, Doctor, I confer with his healer." Amanda put her hand on her own heart in a gesture of sincerity. "I would never want to be surprised like that again either. I've had all the surprises I need in regard to Sarek's health. Nor would we ever be so unfair to you again. His heart is perfectly sound."

McCoy drew up a brow in puzzlement. "Then what isn't fine?"

Amanda shook her head, avoiding that question. "I just told you that Sarek is well."

"But you are concerned – not just for Spock, but for Sarek too."

Amanda looked long at McCoy. "It's really nothing that can concern you."

"If it impacts Spock's recovery in any way, it concerns me," McCoy said, staking his ground. "And you just said you were going to play fair."

Amanda bit her lip and sighed. "I hadn't thought of you in this equation."

"Well, here I am. And I'd like to know what I'm into."

"I can't talk about Sarek," Amanda said. "And it isn't really a factor. Just a concern of mine."

"Will it be a concern for Spock?"

Amanda half smiled. "What did you say, before? That's the question of the day. I don't know. I hope not."

"I don't understand. But again, if it concerns Spock, I do need to."

Amanda looked at him thoughtfully. "You're just as invested in Spock as Sarek and I, aren't you? Perhaps you feel, just like Jim does, that you are more invested than we are."

"As a doctor, yes, I am. As a friend, no. I'm not expecting, not demanding, anything of Spock except that he makes his own choices. I don't excuse Jim's behavior, but it's something I can understand," McCoy said. "Though I tend to think of Starfleet as a transitory career, for me and for most crewmen. It's not a lifestyle -- as it is for Jim."

"And for Spock?" She asked, her eyes on him.

McCoy was silent a long moment, now avoiding her searching gaze, thinking that through. "Until Sarek came on the Enterprise, it was darn close to being a lifestyle for Spock. If it had gone on any longer, I'd say he'd have been permanently settled in 'Fleet. Now, I'm not sure. I think, like most of us, Spock is looking for a home. Some, like Jim – true adventurers, true commanders -- find it in Starfleet because they need that adventure, that environment and they'd be wasted anywhere else. More than wasted. Take Jim away from Command and there's a part of him that would die a slow death. He'd never be the same. Men like Jim need a Starship to be whole. And Starfleet needs men like Jim."

"But not Spock."

McCoy sighed. "I don't know whether it is ethical to talk to you of Spock or not. Regardless that you're his parents, he's an adult."

"Not fully, not by Vulcan standards, Doctor," Amanda said.

"He's got a Federation passport and Earth citizenship," McCoy countered, just as quick.

Amanda sat back, blinking at that. "You are informed."

"He's my medical responsibility. I have a duty to know him." McCoy countered, and then sitting back himself, sighed. "On the other hand, it's in my professional opinion that Spock's in Starfleet partly because he's searching for something besides scientific discoveries. Home, maybe. A lot of displaced persons find a home in 'Fleet, because it can swallow up anybody, if you accede to its rules and customs. They're not always the best fit for Spock, though. And like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, much of what he's searching for I warrant he could find just as handily in his backyard. Maybe that wasn't true when he was a mixed up teenager, but he's a bit older and I daresay wiser now. Though there are days when I have my doubts on that, mind you."

"No argument here."

"But I'm not sure all that he's searching for, he can find at home. Probably he doesn't know either, yet. Amanda. Let me be clear, just as I did with Jim this morning, that my recommendations regarding Spock's medical status will have nothing whatsoever to do with your or Sarek desires. It's purely about Spock. Except that if he can't return to Starfleet, it's important to me to know that he will be welcome at home. That he'll have a home. Because I just can't see him in some impersonal Fleet rehabilitation center. Their care is good, but it wouldn't be a good situation for Spock."

Amanda drew a sharp breath. "That will never happen."

"It'd be over Jim's dead body too. And maybe mine, if I tried to pull Spock's commission without Jim's acceptance. But I don't think Spock's at risk of that. I won't say yet that he'll be able to con the bridge of a Starship yet – it's early days for that kind of assessment. But even if he can't, I suspect he'll recover eventually enough that there could be research and teaching positions available to him in Starfleet. The Academy would leap to have him back, under those conditions."

Amanda looked sad. "If it comes to that, I want him home. He can teach here."

"Where home is, is up to Spock. But purely from a shrink's perspective, I'd like Vulcan to be one of his options. And as a friend, too. I see too many perennial wanderers in Fleet. I can't say too many of them are really happy."

"It is one of his options." Seeing McCoy regarding her with a raised brow, she said. "You mustn't take Sarek's comments too much to heart. He wasn't being critical of Spock. It's just seeing how badly Spock was hurt was difficult for him, too. Don't think because Vulcans control their emotions that they are entirely unfeeling."

McCoy was silent a moment, pondering this. "I suppose it is hard, even for Vulcans, to risk losing a child."

Amanda laughed softly, without amusement. "You have no idea, Doctor."

"I'm beginning to think I should. Have that idea. Any chance Sarek would talk to me about it?"

Amanda looked astonished, then shook her head. "Never."

"Hmmm. I suppose it is early days for that too." McCoy sighed. "Well, do I have time to look in on Spock before dinner?"

"I think so. Sarek will want some time to meditate over what he will see as a regrettable lapse. And Jim hasn't come back yet either."

"He hasn't?"

Amanda shook her head. "Sarek and I were with Spock all day."

McCoy raised a brow. "That's good, though surprising. Maybe Jim is coming around too."

"Perhaps we will beat them yet, Doctor," Amanda said, with a faint smile.

McCoy smiled. "I always said sheer stubborn persistence wins out even over all these alpha males."

"If Spock has woken and would like dinner," she said, picking up her tray and taking it into the kitchen, "Let me know. He hasn't been sleeping very long today, because of the nightmares."

"I will." McCoy turned to climb the stairs. "Oh, one more thing – just curious -- what were you reading to Spock?"

"One of his favorites." Amanda said, with the trace of a smile.

"Surak's Constructs?"

"Alice in Wonderland."

"Of course," McCoy said, his brow clearing. "Now I know why Sarek was ticked," he grinned.

"You are wicked, Doctor," Amanda said.

"And so are you. And let me tell you, it's pretty obvious that Spock's as much your son as Sarek's."

"Now that is something Sarek wouldn't appreciate hearing," she teased back.

McCoy smiled in return. But as he wearily climbed the stairs to yet another patient, he wondered, briefly, where Jim had disappeared to…

So many patients. And just one of him…

To be continued…