The medical clinic needed very little to be re-opened. He found the stasis storage unit fully stocked with common medications and the biobed neatly covered with a sterilizing cloth. T'Gi had closed it methodically and carefully, with every intention to come back here and resume her work. It was troubling to think of her being now unable to do so.

T'Lyra came first, and he treated her eye. He had not known what to expect of the rest of the day. The re-opening of the clinic had been announced, but how busy he would be had been an open question. By the time that he was done with T'Lyra, though, he had several patients waiting, and a steady stream of them came. For the next three days, the waiting room was always full.

It was the first time he had practiced his vocation since leaving the Eian. There were no emergencies, no critical patients here. Yet, it was important work. He saw all of the things that people had been ignoring for the last two years because they did not want the inconvenience of going to Klan-ne, or felt that their condition was not important enough to justify taxing an overworked medical system. He saw joint pain and minor hearing loss and headaches. He vaccinated children whose parents were grateful that they did not have to take an infant on two trains and a ground car shuttle. He assuaged concerns from pubescent adolescents and aging adults that, yes, what they were experiencing was within the range of normal experiences for their age.

It took several days for the initial burst of activity die down. When it did, he spent time between patients reviewing the records for the clinic. Shi'aluk was an inconvenient, out of the way place for the rest of Vulcan, but it was central to the string of towns and villages along the along this part of the coast. The clinic took its patients from Shi'sif and Masutra-menal and Alem-masu Klomak and even as far inland as Slor-masu Klomak. If he took the clinic as his own, he would not be busy as he had been on the Eian or even at the hospital in Shi'kahr, but neither would he have to find a second profession to keep himself occupied.

He was reviewing the records still when he heard a noise in the waiting area. He got up from his seat, and found a man about to leave.

"I am still available, if you need me."

There was an uncertainty about the man. Most people-most Vulcans, he reminded himself, because Vulcan ways were not the ways of the galaxy-would not have allowed such profound indecision to be apparent. He was a man deeply conflicted about seeking help.

Veral waited, not speaking or even moving. Finally, the man nodded slightly, as if to himself and said, "I am Tenak and... Healer, I do not sleep."

Veral took him back into the treatment area. He gestured for him to sit, and took a seat across from him. "Tell me."

"I fought. I believe that peace is preferable, but I have never been a strict pacifist. When the call came, I went to fight without reservation. I was at the second Battle of Chin'toka, among others. It was a...deeply troubling experience." He swallowed hard, but otherwise kept his composure. "Since my return I have nightmares every night. I close my eyes and I see it all again. I survived it the first time. I kept my control. I endured the experience. Once. I endured it once, but now I endure it every night over and over again. I do not sleep, Healer, because I am..." He swallowed again. "And now I begin to experience the memories even in the daylight. I can smell burning flesh in an odorless room. I can hear screaming on a silent night. The worst of it, though, is that I am just so very tired."

"Have you sought help before now?

"No." He closed his eyes. "I know that I need help, but I ought not to. I am Vulcan, raised in the disciplines. Can I not master my own mind?"

"I served on a medical ship during the war. They worked the Vulcans harder than most. They were not wrong to do so. We could work harder and longer than many of the other species there, so it was logical that we did. But I do not think that they realized that it took a toll on us. The emotional races, they see us and they think we are impervious. A Trill patient once expressed surprise on learning that Vulcans do indeed feel pain. We master our fears and we control our grief and we do not vocalize our pain, and because we do not scream or cry, they think that we do not feel. And we allow them to think it, because they do not know our ways, and would not respect our silences if they knew. But we cannot see ourselves as the emotional races see us. We do feel, and we do hurt, and sometimes we do need help."

Tenak appeared close to losing his composure. Veral turned away and kept his mind closed to him, unwilling to do him the indignity of bearing witness to his struggle. When the man spoke again, he was in control of his voice, and Veral turned back. "I only want to sleep. I believe I would fare better if I could sleep. But I..."

"I suffer from nightmares as well. Many nights, I also cannot bear to sleep. I am afraid to."

Tenak's eyes widened just fractionally at the admission. He drew a breath and said, "I was in the garden two days ago. I saw the kastik-hohl-vel and I thought, if I only eat the seeds, I will have rest."

"That would be a rest from which you would not wake."

"I would not dream. I would not remember."

"There are other options, less permanent in nature."

Tenak drew a kastik-hohl-vel seed pod from his pocket. "I have been carrying it with me since then. In case the exhaustion grows too great." Veral said nothing, and made no movement to take it from him, though his instinct was to grab it out of the other man's hand. Tenak sighed and held it out to him. "You are going to have me hospitalized."

Veral took the seed pod and put it on the table. "Do you want to be hospitalized?"

"No."

"Do you need to be?"

"That is hardly for me to say."

"I would like your opinion."

Tenak was silent, honestly considering. "I do not believe so. I do not want to die. I only do not want to suffer any longer."

"Is there anyone whom you trust to stay with you, to protect you from yourself should the need arise, while we consider your treatment options?"

"My brother."

"You will permit me to call him when we are through, and tell him all that has been said here?"

Tenak nodded.

"Will you allow me to meld with you? What I need to do will be invasive. I will do my best to respect your privacy, but I may glimpse things you would rather I did not."

Tenak nodded again, but it was clear he struggled not to flinch when Veral raised his hand.

A meld as thorough as this, with a mind in great pain, was one of the most difficult of the healer's arts, and it left Veral drained. Tenak, unused to such experiences and by his own admission exhausted and in mental distress, was pale and drawn when Veral finally dropped his hand. The meld had confirmed, though, that Tenak could safely be left in the care of his brother.

Tenak looked ready to faint, so Veral waited until his brother arrived to discuss treatment options. He was almost an hour with the man's brother, and by the time he had finished prescribing a medication regimen and arranging a time to come and aid with meditation and discussing the protections required to keep Tenak safe, he felt ready to faint himself. On the Eian he had pushed himself past this state on a nearly daily basis. Toward the end of his time there, he had often started his day feeling as badly as he did now. Now, though, he knew that he could not safely see another patient. He closed the clinic and returned home.

He had gone too long without proper sleep. He felt tired enough to sleep without medication, but he could not bear the thought of the dreams, not now. T'Lin found him on the edge of the bed, examining the hypospray as though he had never seen one before.

He looked up at her. "This medication will put me into such a deep state of sleep that I will not wake even for a nightmare, or for much of anything else, and it interferes with memory formation, so that if I do dream, I will not remember it. It also leaves me unable to form memories for a few hours after waking. I do not like to use it, yet I know I should."

T'Lin sat down next to him. "Use it. I will stay with you while you sleep so that you will not be vulnerable though you sleep so deeply, and I will stay with you when you wake, so that you may fill in your mental blanks with my own memories."

He stared at her, shocked at her perfect understanding. "Thank you."

"Do not thank logic, aduna. Taluhk nash-veh k'dular." I cherish thee.

Veral lay down and pressed the hypospray to his arm. The last thing he felt before sleep claimed him was her hand against his forehead.

On the twentieth day the clinic was open, T'Lin came to him in the middle of the day. He was rearranging the furniture in the office when she walked in.

Seeing her, Veral opened his mind entirely to the bond, but he sensed nothing amiss. T'Lin's mind was calm and, now, amused.

"I am perfectly well. I came to see if you wanted to eat. The first of the ug'yon-kur harvest was brought in yesterday. Have you ever had it fresh?"

"No."

"Then come."

The scarlet colored sea plant was a dietary staple throughout the planet, but he had only ever eaten it dried and ground into a coarse meal. Fresh, it was served in long, fat slices.

They were not the only ones who had come out for the first taste of the harvest. The line to be served was long, and after they had gotten their food, it was difficult to find a place to sit. They could have returned to the clinic to eat, but the day was too fine and clear to stay inside. They found at last an open section of the sea wall. The sea and sky were calm.

T'Lin handed him his bowl of ug'yon-kur and a utensil. It was tart and sweet.

As he watched the people pass, he remembered thinking that T'Lin lived far from civilization, and belatedly corrected himself. This too was civilization. It was said that people from Shi'kahr forgot that Vulcan had more than one way of life. Perhaps he had been guilty of that. The culture of Shi'aluk was vibrant. It was not identical to the one he had grown up in, but no healthy planet with a sizable population had a monolithic culture. This was a place, a people, that he could grow to appreciate. He had already grown to appreciate them.

He looked at T'Lin.

"I am going to stay here, and take the clinic as my own, if you have no objections," Veral said, once they had finished eating.

T'Lin's eyes were bright. He could feel from her something rather more than contentment. "I have no objections," she said, with perfect composure.

"We can cohabitate, or not, as you prefer."

"Of course we will cohabitate," T'Lin said. "As for the rest of the details, they will keep, along with our debate about The Mastery and The Fall of the City, which I have not forgotten. Let us for now simply enjoy this moment."

The wind came gently off the sea. Around him people ate the harvest and talked of mundane things and went about their lives. A student was arguing with her tutor about Y'Nashal's more abstruse philosophical essays. A few children were swimming. Two women wove a net in the way that their ancestors had done for millennia.

Veral closed his eyes and let the peace wash over him.

end