Balm
Nyota Uhura is furious. Really, she is exhausted and frustrated and worried and sad, suffering from the aftermath of fear – and so, in her head, she says she is furious.
She snatches up the offending items from the bureau in Spock's quarters, and marches down to Sickbay.
Doctor McCoy is reading in his office, leaning back in his chair. He has already done his morning rounds, and is satisfied with his patients' progress. So, now, he enjoys the respite.
His respite is brief: A slim dark-haired fury storms into his office, places two items abruptly on his desk, and glares. He glances at the things, then up at her; and slowly lowers his reports. His eyebrows rise.
She says nothing, waiting - her hands upon her hips, her chest rising and falling with the anger in her breath.
McCoy is understandably cautious. "Good Morning, Miss Uhura."
She glares, still, and shifts her weight impatiently to the other foot.
"May I help you? Is there a problem?" And something in her face makes him rise to his feet. He moves toward her: He can imagine what her day was like, yesterday. And he had seen Spock when the Vulcan came back to the ship; he spent over an hour tending those wounds.
McCoy is concerned, now; but he has to tread carefully. It is important to not appear to make assumptions – that would only distract her. He takes another small step closer, gently places one hand on her back, drops his voice. "Has something happened to Commander Spock?"
She is trying, now, to hang on to her anger. If she lets it slip, she will cry. And crying would be too revealing. "Yes." She stomps her foot; then pauses, crossing her arms (shrugging off his solicitous hand in the process). "Damn it. Yes." She has spent a lot of time in Spock's company, and that shows, even in her emotional state. She paces three steps away, comes back halfway. She drops the pose in a gesture all her own. "You saw him. You know…"
And, of course, he did – and does. Spock had returned with a gash on his cheek and lacerations across his fingers, palms, and forearms. There were deep ones ragged on his side, hidden under layers of uniform – (He was, McCoy realized afterwards, bleeding enough to be thirsty) – and still he had said nothing. He had said nothing; just waited his turn, after all of the more urgent – or more vocal – patients.
He had silently left, at the end of his treatment, refusing to stay overnight for observation - though the doctor had tried to insist.
Now McCoy understands his stubbornness on that account: The whole time, Uhura was waiting, waiting alone. Leonard hadn't thought of that; he should have found some way to let her know. Like Spock's injuries, the hidden pain was the worst.
Just for an instant, he takes thought to damn Vulcan stoicism…
She blinks and looks away, takes a big breath. She glances at the doctor's desk – She frowns, balls her hands into fists, and looks McCoy furiously in the eye for a second, before glaring at the wall. "He's just being so stupid!"
Leonard's not sure what to say, and so: "Come, sit down," he says, holding the back of the visitor's chair invitingly. She glances at him; then walks over, sinks into it.
He slowly goes around his desk – allowing her a little time to gather herself – and lowers himself into his seat. He leans back in the chair - The message is plain, if she chooses to read it: He has all day. "Tell old Uncle Len all about it," he says gently.
She shakes her head, then buries her face in hands that tremble slightly. After a minute, she sighs, and straightens, wipes her eyes with the backs of her fingers. Finally, she meets his gaze. She smiles, just the littlest bit, wanly.
His heart turns over in his chest.
Now he's smiling back at her a little, too, encouragingly. He waits for her to speak.
She reaches forward and picks up the small sliver of white that she had put on his desk. It looks like soap. She cradles it in her palm a moment - holds it up with her fingertips - seems to breathe in its scent. "This one is called elmuvak na'neshlar t'vik-morsu." She hands it to him. "I say 'na'nesh,' and he knows what I mean."
McCoy takes the sliver, looks at it, turning it over and over with his fingers: It is waxy, creamy, like a salve in solid form. His body heat is not high enough to make it melt on contact, but he suspects that it would do so when drawn across Spock's skin. It is fragrant, spicy almost, with a hint of that familiar something that seems to infuse everything Vulcan. Holding it, he looks over at Uhura.
She sees the question in his eyes. "It's a balm," she states, "'for warriors,' he says - made of resin, and wax, and oils, combined. The herbs are all Vulcan, too – healing herbs from ancient times." She looks away from the sliver, down at her own hands, which she must consciously still. "This one is good for healing open wounds and broken skin."
McCoy hears Spock's voice in what she says, but hears pain, too. He has the vague feeling that if he examines this too closely, it might violate some strict sense of privacy. He nods, making no comment.
He is thinking of all the times Spock has come back to Sickbay with fading scars healing faster, cleaner than expected...
He glances up, and meets her gaze: She has been watching him. She nods toward the sliver. "This is all he has left."
McCoy nods – He understands; and now he understands the pain in her voice. He puts the sliver down, considering.
After a long moment, he picks up the pot. It is made of carved translucent stone, and he is reminded of some jars from an Egyptian exhibit he went to, once, as a kid. He takes off the lid, peers inside – The contents are golden in color, just as fragrant as the other, if slightly different. The jar is almost empty.
Uhura is speaking, and she tries to make her voice uninflected: "That one is the companion, elmuvak na'wadi-yareklar t'vik-morsu, the warrior's balm for unbroken skin. na'Wadi-yarek is applied to bruises and sprains, but also over muscles that will tighten, and areas that will need to heal deep within."
McCoy nods. Again, he senses the Vulcan words that she's not saying; and he wonders, just for a moment, whether Spock would be annoyed that she brought these things to him.
"There is a third, elmin na'kusut t'dvunek, an oil used for sore or tight muscles and for aching. But it is good for the skin, too."
She is watching his face; and when she speaks, her voice is pure Uhura. "I don't know how these things work, but they do. Really, that's all I need to know."
He wonders whether his expression revealed his skepticism. He hopes not: It's not really skepticism, exactly. He just finds this - well, a contradiction with the Vulcan's avowed devotion to logic.
Once more he has that vague feeling of glimpsing something deeply private, and old…
She stands and walks away a step or two. He waits for her to turn; but she starts speaking again with her back to him. "It's traditional Vulcan medicine, and it's almost like they help him focus his own healing, or something. Sometimes, I…" She tilts her head up, looking at the ceiling. Leonard suspects that she's blinking back more tears.
Her voice is mostly under control, and stronger, when she continues resolutely: "He won't talk about it any more.
"I think he plans to just use these until they are gone, and that'll be that."
She is silent for a few minutes, and her back is rigid, tense. She turns back toward him. "I've tried different oils, adding calendula and arnica and – well, all of the healing things from Earth that I have read about and been able to find…" He can see the frustration and need in her eyes. "But none of them are the same."
She tries to smile; she manages a small one, a little wry, inviting him to find some humor: "I even have Sulu growing things for me in the Botany Department, for heaven's sake!
"But no matter what I do, it's just not good enough, not right." She comes back to the visitor's chair, and perches on its edge, her fingers knotting together in her lap. "I can't get the Vulcan herbs, can't even find out if they still exist." Her voice is reluctant; she is looking away. After a pause, he sees she's blinking again at the ceiling. It is another second before she speaks, and he has to listen to catch the words. "I can't ask him, can't ask him to find out."
McCoy is no longer thinking of Spock, and green blood trickling on pale flesh. Instead, Leonard is watching this very human woman who loves him so completely; and the doctor sees how helpless and vulnerable she is feeling beneath her thin-stretched skin of anger and determination. Uhura is not used to helplessness: He wonders whether she has realized, now, how Achilles might have felt. But, of course, Achilles was not waiting in safety for his one weakness to come home.
Without thinking, he says, "I see."
She leans toward him, just a little bit, and turns her eyes on him, "Do you?"
"I think so." Leonard takes time to consider his words. "I won't pretend to understand Vulcan mumbo jumbo..." He looks into her enormous eyes, willing her to see his sincerity: "But I do know there is something there: Something that I don't understand, okay? Spock has healed from things that should have killed him, or left him - " That's a thought he'd prefer not to finish.
She nods.
She stands with a sudden movement, and as she steps away, Leonard is abruptly reminded of Spock, once more. She paces back again, and stands over the desk. She reaches out and touches the alabaster-like pot with one careful finger, and looks up to see him watching her. She snatches her hand back immediately, and her lips compress into a grim line.
When she speaks, he is ready for her clipped, angry words: "We are on a starship, right?"
He nods.
"Yeah," she says. "Thanks."
And she continues, with tightly controlled derision, "I was beginning to wonder. I mean, it's not like we don't have state-of-the-art scientific facilities or anything – the best brains in the fucking Federation, right?" She looks at him for confirmation, so he nods, again. "Good. Because it seems to me that the very best of them has lost his fucking mind."
He doesn't want her to say anything she's going to regret: "Listen, Uhura, if Spock –"
"Fuck Spock." Her voice is savage. She leans on the desk, her fingertips white where they press on the flat surface. "He has some noble Vulcan sense of honor or something that won't let him do this: It's just for him – way out here it won't help anybody else – so he can't justify wasting his time or the ship's resources.
"Well, I don't care. It seems simple, enough, to me: That stuff works. I want more of it."
She turns and stalks away that familiar couple of paces; and when she turns back, her arms crossed tightly across her chest, she is formidable. "Listen, McCoy. You are a doctor. You need to make this happen. Frankly, I don't care if you get the whole Chemistry, Botany and Xeno-Biology Departments in on it. If that means Spock has early morning meetings from now until next Christmas, it'll serve his stubborn ass right." Her hands are on her hips, now, and though her foot doesn't stomp, he still feels that movement. "You hear me?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Good." And as she turns and marches out, Uhura is anything but helpless.