A/N - This chapter is dedicated to SherlockianGirl, a beloved friend, beta, and staunch supporter of Team McCoy. *Woot* for Bones!


Summary - Leonard McCoy just wants to enjoy his summer. . . that's all . . . And she keeps getting in the way. . . .


Ma'am

The day was just about perfect.

A few clouds drifted lazily overhead, the bushes nodded and the trees swayed slowly in the tantalizing breeze. It was hot, but not too hot. It was humid, but not too humid.

So much could be done today.

This morning he had slipped out and gone for a swim before breakfast, then had skipped it altogether after filling up on fruit from random trees he passed on his way back. Then he had spent three hours at the library, huddled in a corner, whispering to the other boys about all the "grown up" books he had already read that summer, and explaining about livers and lungs and kidneys and then asking them to open their mouths, and he would nod and say "Um-hum" like it really meant something. . .

It was enormous fun.

He always refused to answer the. . . cruder. . . questions that the other boys inevitably asked, even though he had to admit that he himself had a certain interest in that. . . well. . . portion of anatomy. . . but. . . what was all this hubub about? He would shrug whenever one of them hinted that he might know things about. . . um. . . girls. . .

Inwardly, he would shudder. Why would anyone want to know? When the questions got too strange, he would say he had something else to do, and he would leave. . . because it was true.

He had tons to do.

There were books to be read, snacks to be eaten, birds to be watched and caught and examined, worms to dissect, trees to climb, wasp's nests to investigate, plants to pick and grind up into interesting pastes, and then there were games to play and mud to throw at the sides of houses. . .

Then there were baths to be taken, and several long pages of notes to be written meticulously out.

He wondered sometimes how other boys could stand not knowing what they wanted to do with their lives.

For Leonard McCoy, it was easy - play during summer, work during school, then work during medical school, then get paid for being a doctor. Marriage and kids somewhere in there.

That was all he wanted. He was sure of it.

What he wasn't sure of was why he had suddenly settled on this course of action. It was a bit strange for an eleven-year-old to be this sure about his future, wasn't it?

Ah well. Maybe it was because he had seen so much of Drs. Keenal and Pollath this past winter.

Keenal was an Aenar, but he was very well versed in Human biology, and well trusted in the district. Leonard liked him, since he seemed to think that the most important thing for a doctor to carry was a black bag. Always, no matter what he had been called out for, Keenal would have a black leather pouch at his side. Even if he never opened it, he claimed it made people more comfortable with his presence. He was just as incapable as everyone else Leonard had asked of explaining why all doctors must carry bags, or why they must at all cost be black bags, but Keenal was a fine doctor, not at all adverse to making house calls. Which was a good thing, as he had been called upon to make many to the McCoy estate that winter.

Leonard only vaguely wondered why.

Dr. Pollath was a woman of mixed descent and utterly charming manners. Leonard was quite unsure what the other boys meant by the word "crush", but Dr. Midi Pollath quite enchanted him. Everything about her was smooth and brown - her skin like polished wood, her hair like soft new bread, her eyes like amber stones, even her lips were warm pinkish brown. . . like the little mouse he kept in the barn. Sleek and sweet. He was not at all sure if it was her father or her mother that had been human, since he had never cared to ask, but the main representation of her heritage had formed itself into seven very long and flexible fingers on each hand. Fingers that were strong, warm and very gentle. She would often tell him that small and flexible hands were a boon to any doctor. Whenever she did, he would look at his own hands, and wonder if they would always stay as small as they were now. She loved to tell him stories of Tahiti, Guam, Tasmania, Zanzibar and Madagascar - and other exotic places where she had grown up, and all the wonderful things medicine had done for these places.

He was always disappointed when she ordered him from his mother's bedroom, saying that it was time for her "girl checkup", and he must not interrupt. He would go, and a half an hour later, Dr. Pollath would leave, quietly, out the back door, so as to not interrupt everyone else's after-dinner conversation.

He almost never wondered why Mother did not come down to dinner anymore.

Arabella McCoy had nearly always been absent from her son's thinking processes. Certainly he had never thought to tell her all his dreams and plans. She cared deeply when he did not bring home a good conduct report from school, and she insisted he be taught how to dance, but other than this she remained aloof, superior, a kind of present yet unattainable goal of perfection that Leonard had always found vaguely disconcerting.

He shrugged. It was a common enough feeling, he supposed. This afternoon was not going to be wholly used up in deep, dark brooding. He had things to do.

On the edge of the huge front lawn of the McCoy estate, there was a singular elm tree. Three branches up, there was a huge knothole that the branch totally concealed from any angle save straight on. It was where he kept his most treasured objects. Stealthily, he climbed up, and from the knothole removed a large, sealed, tin box. Tucking it securely under one arm, he climbed back down, and settled himself comfortably at the roots of his favorite tree. Then. . . he opened the box. . .

There was nothing very spectacular inside. . . only a boy's usual collection of oddities - but there was one thing in it which would have caught the eye, even if the box had contained a cache of rare and ancient treasures.

It was a book. A real one. With paper and ink and leather binding.

Leonard lifted it carefully out of the box, and opening it, began to read with rapt attention. This was his favorite summer pastime. Reading while breathing in the soft, sweet breeze, and having the scent and texture of a real book in his hands. Not to mention that the story was enthralling. . .

"Leonard!"

He looked up, suddenly startled out of his story-induced haze. For a second, he felt very odd. . . disoriented, worried, and vaguely angry. . . .

"Leonard!"

The voice was coming from the house. He swiftly pushed the book back into the box, and closed the lid, hastily running the several dozen meters back to his house.

"LEONARD!" came his mother's voice again, "Get up here!"

She was calling from her balcony. He wondered what was so important that she would call him like this in the middle of the day. A few long seconds of navigating the corridors brought him to her door.

Her door. . .

Of the room she had not left for seven months now. . .

All of a sudden Leonard had a strange sense of foreboding.

He knocked and she answered, opening the door dressed in her heavy brocade dressing gown.

"Ah, there you are Leo, darling," she purred in her matriarchal way, "I need your help with something. . ."

He entered the room, only vaguely noticing that the thick velvet drapes were actually slightly open, admitting more air and light than his mother had allowed for many weeks.

"What do you need, Ma'am?" he asked, politely.

It turned out she needed several things - her sheets changed, and her pillows turned, a new pitcher of water - chilled, not iced - and her medicine mixed. She asked for a light lunchon to be sent up - warm broth and dry toast - real, not replicated, and she asked him to personally deliver several small notes she had written to the household staff.

Leonard stood for a few seconds, somewhat bewildered, and wondered where Mezzita, mother's companion and lady's maid, had gone. But the next twenty minutes did not yield any answers, though they did give him a chance to practice a rather obscure tecnique he had only just recently read about. He supposed it took many years to cultivate a "bedside manner", though he doubted highly that many doctors would be crawling on the floor to look for errant spiders just so they could make their patients feel better.

At last, she was satisfied, and he hied himself away with right good will.

He had just reached his tree again when he heard the call - higher and with more hysteria this time.

"LEEEONARD!"

He sighed, because he knew that screech. It took him a quarter of an hour to catch the mouse and release it in the back garden.

He returned to his elm, and his book, and was just reaching a place in the story he particularly loved when -

"LEOOOONARD!"

He slammed the book down on the grass, and went to administer a hypo, fetch a cold compress, and adjust the second from the left window shade by one eighth of an inch. Precisely.

This time he walked slowly back to his tree, and did not dare look at his book. Quite honestly, he was waiting for it.

"Leonarrrrrrrrd!"

Ah. There it was.

Three more times he tested this theory, and it seemed it was true - all he had to do was LOOK at his book and she would call.

If this was what being a doctor would be like. . . .

At last, he settled back into a lazy sprawl against the cool tree trunk, wondering if there was any boy in the whole history of the South who had been so hen-pecked for no reason at all. For a second he cursed the atmospheric satellites that regulated the weather so well. What he wouldn't give right now for a hot day, swampy and miserable. It wouldn't be comfortable, but it would be real. . .

What the hell was wrong today?

Sighing, he leaned back against the tree again, and grasped his book, just about to dive back into the safety of the story. . .

"Leonard!"

This time he was mad, and thwarted, and forget bedside manners, he was going to tell her that.

"Leonard, where are the grey kittens. . ."

"MA'AM!" he shouted, "I MAY BE YOUR SON, BUT DAMN IF I KNOW!"

Her eyes widened and all of a sudden her lethargy was gone. She leapt, leapt from her bed and grabbed his ear, twisting hard. She threw him over the side of the bed, with all her strength and all her outraged dignity told him that a gentleman, a gentleman, mind you! - never - NEVER - swore at a lady, and was he in for a hiding he'd never forget. . .

He closed his eyes, already punished enough by her wrath, but dertermined to quietly take whatever she would mete out.

"Imagine what your father would say! His only son. . . . . "

He braced himself for the blow. . . that never fell.

There was a rustle and a strange choking sound, and he turned to see her. . . crying? Mother was crying?

She was. Slumped in her chair, and wringing her hands, for no reason he could devine she was crying. He stood, and stared. He did not understand. It was like opening the kitchen door, expecting to see a table with a plate of toast, but actually seeing Vulcans mating. . .

It was impossible. . .

It was. . . shocking. . .

She was still crying.

"Ma'am?" he managed no more than a whisper.

"I. . . I'm sorry Leonard. . ."

"Sorry. . . for what?"

"That. . . " she managed a long, deep breath, "That you. . . you will never know what it means. . . to have a brother. . ."

He stood, bewildered, but thinking, trying to understand.

After a few minutes, he thought maybe the past few months finally made a little sense. He reached out a hand and touched her shoulder, gently. "Well now, don't cry about that, Ma'am, please don't. You never know, do you?"

She smiled, at last. A sad, soft smile he had never seen before, but it was still a smile. "True, Leo dear. . . you never do know. . . you never do. . ."

"Is. . . is there anything I can do, Ma'am?" he faltered, trying to be polite and still make his wishes known, "Anything that would occupy you, and not. . . drive me crazy. . . please?"

She smiled again, broadly, and stood, shuffling her way back to bed. He lifted the covers snugly around her before she replied.

"Well now, how about you read me a bit of that book you're holding," she gestured at his treasure, still clutched in one hand, "It might take me out of myself for a spell."

"Yes, Ma'am." He smiled. This was perfect.

He opened the book to the title page, and began reading aloud. . . "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter One. . . . . . . ."

After nearly half an hour, he looked over and saw her, sleeping peacfully. He liked the way her breath came evenly, and her face seemed without pain.

Sure. . . he could do this.

The medical profession was looking better all the time. . .


A/N This chapter was quite difficult for me to write (for a variety of reasons, some very personal). I ask you, please validate an amateur writer's blood, sweat and tears (I kid you not. . . ) and leave a review.


Well, just one more crewmember to go. Can you guess who it is?