Interlude: Eight

Alasdair McBride found himself unable to sleep after he'd been called to sickbay to deal with the triggered hysteria of Commander Riker. He knew that from here on out, his days would be twelve to sixteen hours long, as they always were when he implemented his intensive program, and that he should, realistically, be getting as much sleep as he possibly could. But the complexity of Commander Riker's illness and the urgency required were perhaps a heavier burden than he had expected. He'd known, of course, when he was contacted by both Deanna Troi and the captain that Commander Riker was in crisis. Still, the extent of the crisis was a surprise, and he almost wished that Joao da Costa had had the gumption to have contacted him and given him a more realistic picture.

Well, that was so much water under the bridge, he thought, as he wandered his way through the ship until he came across the observation lounge. He entered, finding it dark and completely empty at this time of night, and so perfectly suited for his purposes. He set the lights at about fifty percent, placed his padd on one of the tables, and then stood and gazed at SB 515 below, where he'd spent the last fifteen years of his working life. He frequently used meditation techniques to solve problems, so he stood there at the window, and took a few cleansing breaths, and then proceeded to relax each muscle in his body. He scrolled through the variety of programs that he used, and decided to use a simple grounding exercise, to relax and the focus his mind on the problem at hand. He did this standing up, his eyes still looking at the starbase and the space around it down below, but his mind's eye was back on Betazed, in this mother's garden, listening to the sound of water tinkling into the pond and little stream that she'd created. He would be spending, he thought, about three months on this ship, and then, he decided, he would treat himself to a trip home. It was long past time. Young Joao, working with Counsellor Troi, would be perfectly set up to run his program, and he'd taken a six month leave of absence from his practise. Three months on this ship, he thought not a little wryly, and he would be more than ready for a small vacation home.

He turned away from the window, then, and seated himself at the table, and opened up the file on young Commander Riker. The latest documents were his own notes, taken by hand and then painfully transcribed into the padd. He'd found himself, once long ago, in a wartime situation in which computer setups were impossible, and had discovered, surprisingly, that his thoughts flowed better when he used the archaic writing paper and pen. It connected him, in a way that perhaps was a conceit, to the amazing doctors in his profession of centuries ago, and projected an image of mild eccentricity that made him less threatening to his patients and their families. So he wrote his notes out long hand, in perfectly formed archaic script, and then, when he didn't have the services of his secretary – as no doubt he wouldn't on this ship – transcribed them into the computer himself.

He glanced at his notes, written earlier in the evening – yesterday, it was now – which concerned Commander Riker's triggers and retrieved memory concerning mealtimes. He'd included his notes about Captain Picard's idea that the proprietor of Ten Forward, Guinan, should help Lt Otaka with Riker's mealtimes, and he'd also included Picard's concerns over Riker's inability to remember his relationship with his captain. Now he would have to add the latest trigger, and the information that Riker's personality was fragmenting into his younger self, and the concern that he'd either had, or could have, in the ensuing days, a psychotic break.

He wasn't ready to write those notes yet, though. He wanted to think about what had happened, and he wanted to think about the conversation that he needed to have with Captain Picard about his relationship with his first officer. There were concerns there, surely. Concerns on the part of the captain, and concerns of his own. He would schedule the meeting with Picard after the treatment meeting, which was to start at 0830, when Commander Riker would be working on visualisation with Deanna and then moving on into physical therapy with Lt Patel. It would not, he thought, be an easy meeting. It was clear that Picard was uncomfortable with the strength of his feelings for William Riker; that he worried, perhaps, that those feelings were compromising his role as captain of the ship; and that he also was anxious over the symbolic meaning of those feelings. After all, Riker was a young man, much younger than Picard, whose father had sexually traumatised him. That he should be having a sexual relationship with a much older man was cause for concern. That Riker was too ill to see that this was cause for concern only made it more serious. No, the conversation he was to have with Captain Picard would not be an easy one.

He left his notes and scrolled through his messages. There was a new one, dated from yesterday evening, from Deanna Troi, and he opened it. He read through it quickly, his fingers drumming absently on the table, and then sat back to digest the information. After Joao and Picard had talked Commander Riker through one of his triggered memories, the one which had seriously impaired his physical health by sending his blood pressure so high that the young man could have had a stroke, Picard had tasked Deanna and the acting first officer, the android Data, to research the memory to find out what was fact. Commander Riker remembered killing a child while he was in a psychiatric unit in his native Alaska, an incident that occurred when he was seven, almost eight years old. He'd read Deanna's transcript of the incident, along with Joao's notes. Riker had remembered deliberately, with premeditation, stabbing another child.

The records of this incident had been sealed by the Federation. Nevertheless, Lt Commander Data had managed to hack into the Federation archives, and Deanna had subsequently read and then forwarded on the material. Who exactly was Kyle Riker? McBride wondered. He was a minor diplomat and troubleshooter for the Federation, but that was surface only, clearly. What did Kyle Riker know – or what had he done – that the Federation would be complicit in the man's abuse of his child? He knew that Picard wanted him to continue the conversation with Kyle Riker that Picard had begun. He opened up a new document, and, since he didn't have his paper or his pen, began jotting notes and questions that would begin his background for his conversation with Kyle Riker.

He stopped after a few minutes. It was a beginning, after all. He needed to get Commander Riker into the program and on a schedule first before he could spend some time researching the father and preparing for his interview. Apparently Picard had received a request for an update on his son's status from the man. He would tell Picard what to say when he talked to him after the treatment meeting.

He opened the message and the documents from Deanna again, and this time he read slowly and carefully. William Riker had been admitted to ProvidenceHospital in Valdez, Alaska at the age of seven, suffering from hypothermia. The child had apparently attempted suicide by simply walking outside into the Alaskan winter and waiting to freeze to death. He had been rescued when his elementary school in the small village where he lived realised that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. He had been dropped off at the school by his uncle, Martin Shugak. Shugak apparently hadn't waited to see if young William would enter the school and William had not. Instead, he had left his backpack by the swings and then had vanished into the snow. He'd been found by Master Chief (retired) Henry Ivanov and medivac'd to ProvidenceHospital.

When the boy had recovered from hypothermia, he had been admitted to the Children's Psychiatric Unit at ProvidenceHospital. Because the boy had had previous emergency treatment and hospitalisations within the past year, it was suspected that abuse was the underlying cause of the boy's suicide attempt. However, as McBride read through the doctor's notes, this was never seriously dealt with while William was on the unit. Instead, there was a concentration on stabilising William's psychological state and diagnosing William's illness, with the idea that when Kyle Riker finally arrived back in Valdez from space, he would take the boy home.

McBride put the padd down and stood up again, turning back to the window. He was an intensely spiritual man, and he looked upon his practise as a mission, of sorts, of healing. His own family was multi-ethnic and multi-raced in origin. His grandfather McBride, a Scotsman who had found himself stationed on Betazed, had married a Betazoid woman. But his mother's family, also from Earth, was Scottish and Italian Jews. Technically that made him a Jew, something that had always amused him, as how many Betazoid Jews in the universe could there actually be, besides himself and his siblings? On a more serious note, however, he took the Jewish concept of tikkun olam – repairing the universe by bringing together the sherds of light that had been fragmented – as his own. The evil in the universe always surprised him. The evil that had been done to young William Riker was unconscionable.

William had not murdered the child he'd stabbed, a nine-year-old boy named Christian Larsen. Most of the cuts he'd made were superficial, but there had been one cut to the boy's neck that had been deep and had caused a significant amount of bleeding, thus causing William, no doubt, to believe that he had in fact killed the boy. Both children had been treated at ProvidenceHospital for their injuries. Christian Larsen had received treatment for his stab wounds and an arterial repair. William Riker had received surgery for a broken nose, deviated septum, and fractured skull, which had occurred when one of the behaviour techs had literally smashed William's face into the floor, after seeing the damage that had been done to Christian Larsen. Christian Larsen had been released from the critical care unit and had been returned to the psychiatric unit. He was then treated by new staff, after the old staff had been terminated, and was placed with a foster family. Currently, Christian Larsen was still living in Alaska, only in Anchorage instead of Valdez. He was an associate professor at the university there.

McBride thought, Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive. Who had told Commander Riker that he had killed Christian Larsen? And why had no one told William Riker, once he was returned home to the care of his father, that Christian Larsen was still alive? And what had Christian Larsen done to have the boy William respond so violently to him, when William Riker was clearly not a violent person, not as a child nor as an adult? Riker's tendency was to direct violence against himself, as in the two suicide attempts so many years apart. He sighed, and returned to his seat, and closed out his padd. There was, he thought, an evil here, below the surface. There was a complicity in the abuse of William Riker which included the Federation and, perhaps even Starfleet. After all, the boy's mother had been a decorated Starfleet officer. And yet William the adult seemed to have no knowledge of who exactly his mother was. He seemed to have no knowledge of his family at all. In fact, even Captain Picard thought that William was alone in the universe, with only his abusive father as his sole living relative.

It did not, McBride thought, make much sense. And yet he would have to take all these differing strands, all these stories with their multiple points of view, and weave them into a narrative that would save young Commander William Riker from a premature death. No one had ever said that the practise of tikkun olam was easy, just that it was a spiritual duty incumbent upon all Jews.

He hoped, however, as he realised how close it was to the start of Will Riker's first full day of treatment, that he had not been brought to Riker's case too late to gather up those sherds of light and turn them into something whole.