This outtake is written for Tamuril2. (And if anyone has a title for it, it would be most appreciated!)
If you read Portal as I was originally posting it (and have a good memory for details), you may notice a small discrepancy between this outtake and the scene as remembered in the story. However, don't go back looking for it now, as I have since edited that chapter to match this! Barbie
Historical Disclaimer: Since this is a holosuite, not real history, I have not made an effort to be a hundred percent historically accurate. However, any racist language is meant to be a reflection of that time, and in no way reflects my opinions.
Outtake Part One
Bashir had seen no other doctor since he had been here, and realized that each person trapped in the program must simply step into the place of one of the original characters, matched perhaps by some degree of similarity. It was easy to see how Sisko had found himself a slave, and Bashir guessed his stethoscope and other medical equipment had allowed him to take over seamlessly for the doctor.
~ Chapter 18: Endless Cycle
Monty Pearson, son of the livery stable's owner, stood tapping his riding crop against his leg, watching idly as his father's huge slave saddled his horse for him. In the corner, a small black boy struggled to muck out a stall with a pitchfork nearly twice as big as he was.
Monty let out a snort of laughter as the pitchfork twisted in the boy's hands, the handle coming down to hit him in the head. "That your boy, Humphrey?" he drawled.
"Yes, suh," the black man answered without taking his eyes from his work, "him's my Cletus."
"How did someone as big as you ever spawn such a runt?" Monty asked in mocking wonder.
"He'll grow, suh," Humphrey offered, seeming to hear something vaguely threatening in the other man's voice.
"Until he does, I doubt my father gets enough work out of him to cover the cost of feeding him. Runts like that should be drowned at birth, like kittens."
"He don' eat much, suh," Humphrey insisted as Monty strode a step closer to the little black boy.
The child's eyes rolled wildly as he looked up at his master, wide with terror in his thin face. "Show me you can earn your keep, boy," he ordered, flicking the tip of his crop at the boy's bare legs. "Or shall we go out to the pond?"
"No, suh! I work, suh!" He stabbed energetically with the pitchfork with more haste than care, then let out a cry as a sharp tine pierced through his bare foot, pinning him to the floor.
"Clumsy!" Monty jeered. "No!" he added, flicking his crop warningly at Humphrey as the man took a step toward his son. "You stay back, or he goes straight into the pond."
Anguish twisted Humphrey's features, but he dropped his gaze submissively. "Yes, suh," he muttered.
"Go ahead, boy," Monty purred. "Pull that out."
Cletus whimpered, staring at him in incomprehension.
"Go on! Do it!" Monty ordered sharply. "Or do you want to stay nailed to the floor like that?" He flicked the crop so the tip caught the top of the boy's pinned foot.
Knowing he could do far worse if he chose, Cletus grabbed the handle of the pitchfork in both hands and pulled it free with a sudden jerk. With an involuntary cry, the child crumpled to the ground unconscious, and Monty laughed harshly and kicked the still form with the toe of his boot. "I was right; you should have drowned that runt like a stray kitten."
"Yes, suh," Humphrey said tonelessly. "Your horse is ready, suh."
"Bring it outside," Monty ordered.
Humphrey obeyed, keeping his face set rigidly ahead, and held the horse's head for Monty to mount. As Monty gathered the reins, he flicked his crop across Humphrey's bare shoulders, just hard enough to sting. Then with a careless laugh he was off, riding out of the stableyard.
Humphrey waited until there was no chance the man would look back and see him before turning to hurry to his son's side.
But as he did so, he saw a figure approaching the stable, and his shoulders slumped as he recognized the doctor, a notoriously bad rider who would need help getting off — though the man would never admit it.
"Here, Doctuh Murray, suh," he offered, catching the horse's bridle to stop it and reaching a hand to the rider without seeming to notice that the doctor had changed in appearance since he rode out.
"Bashir; it's Dr Bashir," the man corrected, dismounting fluidly without accepting the man's aid.
Yet Humphrey seemed unaware of the change in name, even as his face registered no surprise at the doctor's new-found skill in riding. "I'll take yoh horse, suh," he said, then tensed as a thin whimper sounded from within the stable.
"What was that?" Dr Bashir demanded.
"Just a kitten, suh," Humphrey dismissed; the sooner the doctor left, the sooner he would be able to go to his son's side.
The cry came again, and Dr Bashir's eyes narrowed. "That was no kitten," he hissed, pushing past Humphrey and running into the stable.
Following the sound of the whimpers, he quickly found the child lying curled on the floor and dropped to his knees beside him. You couldn't call such a dark face pale, he reflected, but as he looked at the features pinched and bloodless with pain, the only word that came to mind was ashen.
"Hey, sonny, where are you hurt?" he asked gently.
"My foot," he whimpered.
A glance at the blood-smeared pitchfork told Bashir the rest, and he brushed a soothing hand over the boy's forehead.
Hearing Humphrey approach behind him, Dr Bashir turned to glare up at him. "You knew it wasn't a kitten in here," he accused harshly. "Why didn't you tell me a little boy needed my help?"
Humphrey blinked. "He's…black, suh."
Bashir shook his head impatiently. "I don't care if he's…orange with purple polka dots; he needs a doctor."
"Massa won' pay you, suh," Humphrey said doubtfully.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Bashir demanded.
The child whimpered again, and Bashir softened instantly. "All right, buddy, you'll be fine," he soothed, gathering the boy in his arms. "Dr Julian's going to fix you right up." He lay him on top of a stack of hay bales that stood against the barn walls. "Get me one of those horse blankets," he ordered, shrugging out of his coat and folding it to tuck under the boy's head. "He's going to go into shock if we don't keep him warm." Accepting the thick blanket, he tucked it gently around the boy, then opened his bag on one of the lower bales.
"All right, son, I'm going to give you something to make you sleepy and help it hurt a little less," he murmured, uncorking a bottle and pouring a little of the thick fluid it contained into a teaspoon.
"Son?" Humphrey murmured.
Bashir glanced quickly toward him, recognizing his error, but didn't attempt to correct it as he slipped an arm under the boy's shoulders, raising his head to lie in the crook of his own shoulder. "I know it doesn't taste good, but you need to be a good boy and swallow all of it," Bashir encouraged. *
Cletus obeyed, coughing slightly on the bitter liquid. "Easy," Bashir murmured, rubbing his back.
He cradled the boy until his eyelids began drooping sleepily, then gently laid his head down on the folded coat. "Just lie quiet while I check your foot," he murmured. "You…what's your name, anyway?" he added, addressing the man.
"Humphrey, suh," he replied, sounding slightly surprised that a white man had bothered to ask. "Him's my boy, Cletus."
Bashir nodded acknowledgement. "Humphrey, why don't you sit here by Cletus. I didn't dare give him enough to put him under, so he may need some comfort."
He shifted down the hay bales until he was next to Cletus' foot, allowing Humphrey to take his place at the boy's head. Gently he wiped away the blood and began probing the swollen flesh around the injury.
"Well, looks like he managed to avoid any damage to the bones or tendons," he murmured, keeping his voice low and soothing. "That means once this wound heals up, he should be able to walk without much of a limp."
Taking a bottle from his bag, he uncorked it, wrinkling his nose slightly at the strong odor of the raw whiskey it contained. Soaking a square of cloth, he began swabbing the ugly wounds on the top and bottom of the boy's foot.
"Doctuh, he's done fainted!" Humphrey exclaimed in alarm.
"Good," Bashir said briefly. "That means he won't feel it when I clean this out." But he paused briefly in his work to check the boy's pulse and monitor his breathing for a moment.
"Doctuh," Humphrey whispered, daring now to ask a question of a white man, "that pitchfork was all rusty…he gon' get lockjaw?"
Bashir's jaw tightened as he glanced at the filth covering the blood-smeared tine; he did not attempt to explain that rust had never given tetanus to anyone. "Not if I can get it cleaned out well enough," he said grimly.
Taking a square of cloth, he soaked it well in whiskey, then twisted the center into a cord and began pushing it through Cletus' foot, following the path of the wound left by the tine.
The boy moaned slightly, and Bashir winced in sympathy, imagining the screams he would have been hearing if the child had been awake. "Shh, sonny, I'm sorry," he murmured. Gently spreading the excess cloth open on top of Cletus' foot, he poured more whiskey down the hole, letting the alcohol soak through the cloth and disinfect the wound in the only way he knew how.
At last he gripped the small bit of twisted cloth at the sole of Cletus' foot and slowly pulled the rag the rest of the way through, swabbing the puncture as thoroughly as he could. A little blood oozed out after it, and Bashir gently swabbed it away.
He had few ointments or salves, or at least none that would do any good, and had to settle for bandaging the foot without a dressing. "That's the best I can do," he told Humphrey, straightening and tucking the foot under the blanket before latching his bag. "Why don't you take him on home now?"
Humphrey looked at him in horror. "Massa, if I leave the stable on count o' him, Massa Monty's gon' throw him in the pond like he say."
Dr Bashir scowled darkly. "Inhuman monster," he muttered. "Is there anyone at your house?"
"My woman Leanthy, she does washin'; she'll be there."
"I'll take him over for you, then; where is it?"
Too stunned to protest, Humphrey stammered out the directions.
Bashir nodded, lifting Cletus' slight weight and then picking up his bag. "I'll bring the blanket back," he promised.
"Thank you, suh," Humphrey said hesitantly, as if unused to having anything for which to thank a white man.
Several blocks down the street, the child stirred in Bashir's arms. "Poppa…?"
"No, buddy; it's Dr Julian," he said softly. "I fixed up your foot, remember, and now I'm taking you home so you can rest."
Alarm leapt into Cletus' eyes, and he began wiggling ineffectually in Bashir's arms. "I cain't rest, massa doctuh, suh! I gots to go back to work!"
"You have to rest, or your foot's going to make you sick," Bashir said firmly. "And I should think it would hurt too much to work, anyway." He had originally guessed Cletus' age to be around six, but now he saw something in his face that led him to amend it to ten, though far too small for his age.
"That don' matter," Cletus insisted. "I gotta work, or Massa Monty's gon' throw me in the pond like he say!"
Bashir's arms tightened protectively around the child. "No one's throwing you in the pond," he promised grimly; "not on my watch. Now you just lie quiet and don't worry."
Cletus sighed a little and let his head fall against Bashir's shoulder. It was not a gesture of trust, the doctor knew; he simply lacked the strength to struggle further.
"Poor little kid," he murmured, rubbing a thumb over the dark-skinned cheek his mind persisted in thinking of as pale. Perhaps, he mused, in treating so many varied species on the station, the word had come to indicate something other than color to his mind.
Even if Humphrey's directions had been unclear, Bashir would have known when he reached the correct shack by the clouds of steam billowing from the open door. Approaching the entrance, he peered in, catching a glimpse of a black woman before his costume glasses fogged over. "Hello, ma'am?"
A snort of derision greeted him. "'Ma'am'? I ain't no ma'am; just an old black mammy." Looking toward him at last, she saw the child in his arms, and her tone instantly changed. "Lawsy, what happened?"
"Cletus ran the pitchfork through his foot," Bashir explained quietly. "I'm Dr Bashir; I cleaned it up as well as I could, but he needs to rest and stay off it. Where's his bed?"
"Here, suh," she responded, and Bashir pulled off the useless glasses, wondering absently how nearsighted he should pretend to be as he followed her across the little room.
Cletus whimpered slightly as Bashir laid him down, and he brushed a hand over the boy's forehead. "Shh, buddy, it's all right." He polished the lenses of the glasses on his shirtsleeve before putting them back on and turning to find Leanthy watching him with suspicion.
"Why would a white doctuh wanna treat a lil' pickaninny like him?" Leanthy demanded.
Bashir looked at her evenly, so that she was forced to lower her gaze slightly to avoid meeting a white man's eyes. "Where I come from, a hurt child is a hurt child, regardless of color."
Leanthy snorted in disbelief. "An' where might that be, massa?"
"England," Bashir responded, taking the chance that she knew less about racial prejudice in the England of this time than he did. Opening his bag, he removed two paper envelopes. "These are for the pain," he told her. "Mix one with water and give it to him at bedtime, and the other in the middle of the night if he needs it."
Leanthy took the packets slowly, as if afraid they might burn her fingers, her distrust of him still evident in her eyes.
"If he's up to eating, you can give him a little thin gruel or corn mush," Bashir continued, "but if he's not hungry, just make sure he drinks plenty of water. I'll stop by tomorrow to check on him."
"No need for that, massa," Leanthy told him stiffly. "I done take care of his cuts 'fore; I gotta real good salve."
"That's as may be, ma'am…Leanthy…but this wound is too serious for even the best of folk remedies. It needs close medical supervision, at least until the danger of infection is past. So just try to keep him comfortable, and I'll see you in the morning."
Part Two coming next week!
* Illustration for this scene can be found at deviantart . com [slash] femalechauvinist [slash] art [slash] Comfort-Measures-853940321
I proofread all my stories at least once before posting, but if you see any mistakes I might have missed, please let me know!
Please note that I have internet access only once a week, and may not have time to respond to all reviews/messages. If you have questions regarding my Deep Space Nine alternate history, check my profile first to see if they're answered there. Thanks for your understanding! Barbie