Title: The Distance Between Insanity
Author: greatunironic
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Morgan and Julia are mine. No one else is mine.
Feedback: Yes.
Summary: "She emerges from the chaos, her ego bruised and hair tousled, and she is still shaken up." Endings, farewells, and dead-ends. Sequel to 'The Consequences of a Human Action' and 'Subspace Postcards'
Etc.: Well, you people asked me for another story, so here it is. One of my favorite OCs makes an appearance: Julia Bashir, though, I admit that she's acting a little different. I don't like this one as much as its forbearers, and the ending is...well, I don't want to give it away. Tell me what you think, people! I need to know.
------------------
1. years and months ago
It's been seven years since she saw him in person and it's been five years and nine months since she last heard from him. His letters have stopped coming those five years and nine months ago and it's been three years and five months since she's stopped looking for the letters.
Their mission has been accomplished and she has relocated herself to Montana. She likes the state. It's quiet and calm. In Montana, she lives in a little development full of little carbon copy houses with white picket fences and children playing out in the yards. Her neighbors accept her for who she is and don't really care that she's an alien. The neighbors also accept her little boy (who's turning six this summer) even though he's half human. They don't ask her where the father is.
She attends PTA meetings and gives valuable insight and a fresh perspective to the other woman (and sometimes men) there. She takes her son to the pool in the summer to swim and to school during the year. Every Saturday, she takes him to play with other children at the park and each Sunday, she takes him to Sunday school. She's like a regular mom. And no one asks her where the father is.
Every other Monday, Trip comes up from San Francisco and takes her son to a baseball game. For the boy (he's name is Morgan and Trip calls him Morg), Trip is a kind of substitute dad, though neither he nor she will ever admit to it. Morgan thinks of Malcolm as his father (though he never sees him) who's been gone a long time and Trip as his uncle, who's always around.
Morgan stopped asking where his father was when he was four. She could never tell him.
She misses Malcolm and wonders where he is and why he stopped writing her. Had they found him?
Sometimes, Trip feels like he took Malcolm's place in her life and in Morgan's life.
2. electro-shock therapy
The doctor watches from the observation room as he is shocked again and again. She forces her hands in her pockets, watching as her patient is shocked. He convulses on the table, his body shuddering and arching. It makes her sick but it's what she does.
She thinks she should stop it, she should help him. But it's her bread and butter, shocking him, killing him, reviving him. It's how she lives. It's sick but it's her job.
Somedays, she gets very close to the edge. Once, she had her hand on the comm unit and was about to order them to stop, dammit. She didn't. She gets oh so very close to stopping other times and doesn't because this is how she makes her living, helping these men try to get the information out of him. But then, she thinks about that little boy of her patient's and that woman he loves and how this has got to be tearing apart that family.
He convulses on the table.
Taking her hands out of her pockets, she taps the intercom and tells them in a cold, emotionless voice, "That's enough for today. We'll start again tomorrow."
They stop shocking him and his body shudders once more and then lies still. She goes down to the table and revives him. One of these days, she thinks. One of these days I'm not going to revive him. Today is not that day. She looks at him as he starts to breathe again. She watches him coldly and leaves. Inside, she's crying for him.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she walks out of the compound where they're keeping him and wonders why they keep doing this. It's been nearly six years and he still hasn't told them what he knows. She wonders why she's doing this. It's against all that she believes in. Then she thinks of the money and thinks that she's a cold hard bitch.
She walks to the edge of the compound where her car is parked. She gets in and drives away. She drives for three hours before she crosses the Montana state border. It's another two before she gets to the house. She parks on the other side of the street and watches surreptitiously as a little dark haired boy with little pointed ears plays with a bigger, blonde haired man. The mother sits on the porch. After fifteen minutes, she leaves and drives back to the compound.
She finds her patient still on the table, bound. She unties his hands and undoes the restraints on his feet, talking softly. She tells him about his love and his son and his friend, Trip. She tells him how the boy can throw. She lifts him gently, positioning her smaller body under him, and carries him out of the room. She puts him in a cell with a bed and tucks him in. She's still talking about his family. She kisses his forehead and tells him that, one day, she'll get him out of here.
He smiles at her weakly.
"I know you will."
He trusts her and it breaks her heart.
Doctor Julia Bashir goes outside and smokes a cigarette, Surgeon General be damned.
3. i don't like mondays
Trip comes over and takes Morgan to a baseball game. T'Pol watches them leave in Trip's car from the porch and then she goes back inside. She goes to the kitchen and to the fridge. She pulls out a tub of ice cream and gets a spoon from the drawer. She sits on the counter and, with practiced ease, begins to eat the ice cream, straight from the carton.
She starts to cry softly as she remembers the last time she saw him. She remembers that he took her to an ice cream parlor and they ate ice cream. She remembers how he walked her back to her hotel and that he stayed the night. Morgan was conceived that night. T'Pol remembers how the men came after her and Malcolm in the morning and that she and he ran fast and far to get away from them.
She only eats the ice cream when Morgan is away. She doesn't want him wandering into the kitchen and finding her crying there. She knows that he thinks she's very strong because she never really shows her emotions. She knows he's wrong. She's weak because she doesn't allow herself to grieve for her missing (and most likely dead) love.
T'Pol stops crying after a while and puts the ice cream away.
---------------
When Trip comes back with Morgan, T'Pol is reading in the study. Morgan runs in and hugs her while Trip stands in the study's doorway, leaning against the jamb and smiling as he watches the interaction between mother and son. Seeing these things, he can almost imagine what it would be like having the father here, playing with the son and standing with the mother. And it almost hurts that Trip is pretty sure he'll never get to see it.
Morgan sprints out of the room and Trip laughs gently at the boy's enthusiasm. He looks over at T'Pol and sees that she has a faint grin on her face. He asks her how she's doing. She tells him she's fine. He knows she's lying. Morgan looks like Malcolm more and more these days and he knows that it's got to be hurting her to see this boy growing up and seeing the man she loved and lost in him.
He knows that it hurts him. Malcolm was (is, is—Trip can't think of him as gone yet, not yet) his friend, one of his best friends. He misses him. And he knows that that hurt won't go away for a long time. He's able to imagine how much it must hurt T'Pol.
She goes out after her son and Trip follows. They follow Morgan to the front lawn. He picks up a ball and tosses it to Trip. He catches it and throws it back. T'Pol sits down on the porch swing and Trip goes out to play with Morgan. They don't see the car across the street. Morgan and Trip toss the ball until it's time for dinner. T'Pol ushers them in and cooks. They eat and then Trip helps T'Pol put Morgan to bed. After, he follows her back out into the kitchen.
They talk about inconsequential subjects and Trip, before he leaves, asks again.
"How are yew?"
She shrugs.
"I am fine."
He shakes his head.
"I'm not."
She nods.
"The nights are the worst."
He agrees and says, "And then there are the days."
4. hippocratic oath
They've made her begin again. She hates it. She hates seeing him like this, convulsing and shuddering on the table tied down by his wrists and ankles. She hates knowing that she's doing this to him. She hates knowing that she has the power to stop this, to stop it all, to save him, and she hates that she doesn't stop it because she's frightened for her life.
It's times like these when she starts to recite the Hippocratic Oath in her mind. She begins to recite it as she watches his body being shocked while they torture him for information. She starts with the classical version. She recites, speaking softly so that no one can hear her.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice...
That's the line that always gets her in the classical version. She's supposed to be helping the people that are her patients, protecting them. She shouldn't be doing this, letting those men shock him for information he will not give...
She watches, dreading the day they realize that what they are doing is not working, that he's not telling. She dreads the day because she knows that they will ask her to kill him. She knows it would be simple and easy to do, killing him. Just inject a little drug into the IV and wait. She knows that she can't do it. She can't willingly give someone a drug to end their life. And she knows that they will want her to.
Julia fingers the pack of cigarettes in her lab coat pocket. She started smoking in medical school. She can't remember why she began; only that she did. She remembers that she knew fully well that smoking could kill you (she was a med student, for Christ's sake). She began smoking anyway.
She remembers that old adage. The distance between insanity and genius is measured only be success. There was a time when she would have been a genius. Now, she really has to wonder if she's sane.
Watching, Julia remembers that not so long ago she was a highly sought after physician. She was brilliant. She was a genius. Then there was the accident and she was a loose canon. People walked on egg shells around her. She had, and still has, PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—and people didn't trust her to be a doctor anymore. She was consulted but never used in the field, and Julia resented it. When this job was offered to her, she jumped at the chance and took it. She should have listened to what it was really about.
His body leaps off the table again, only tethered down by leather restraints on his hands and feet.
Watching the machines, she knows that she needs to stop them for the day. She touches the intercom and tells them so. They stop and leave the room. She leaves the observation deck and goes down to him. She's taking off the restraints and is about to finish pulling them off when He walks in.
He is the man who is doing this to Malcolm. She knows him only as He and she has only seen him once before this day. She turns back to Malcolm and closes her eyes briefly. The day she has dreaded...she thinks that it may be today.
"Doctor Bashir." His voice is low a gravely, almost inhuman. She wonders if He's ever had his vocal cords ripped out and replaced because that's certainly what He sounds like. "We have no more use for him. Complete your job." He leaves.
It's today.
But then, she thinks, it's not. Julia thinks that she may have finally found her courage to be the doctor she once was. She takes a breath and pulls the restraints off with a renewed fervor. She will not be party to this man's death.
Lifting him gently, she carries him out of the room. No one stops her. She looks calm and acts like she's just taking him back to his room. She's not. In reality, her hands are shaking and she's running away. Julia doesn't know if she can do this. She has to. She carries him out of the compound, staying in the shadows and deposits him in her car. She takes him and they drive away, leaving that place forever.
She drives him for four hours into Montana. She finds the hospital where she works (she may not practice but she is still a consultant) and parks her car in the employee lot. She takes another breath and prepares to act. She drags him out of the car and lays him on the ground in a fashion so that it looks like he collapsed. She puts on a panicked face and runs into the ER. She yells to some orderlies that there's a man lying out there. She orders them to get a gurney and takes them to Malcolm.
The world becomes chaos for a time. Nurses and doctors are running around, trying to help him. Julia tries to help but she is pushed away by a nurse. Julia dives back in to help. It's an hour before they stop and Malcolm has been fully stabilized. The world is still in disarray and Julia is sitting in the thick of it, waiting by Malcolm's bed. Julia notes that she needs to get out. And so she does.
5. you can go home again
Trip wakes up on T'Pol's couch with Morgan standing over him.
"People called. They upset mommy."
He jumps up off of the couch and picks up Morgan. He takes him into the kitchen where T'Pol is. She's crying and Trip is shocked. He can't remember the last time he had seen T'Pol cry. Seeing her, Morgan squirms in his arms. They go to her and she looks up.
"They found him."
And that was all Trip needed to hear before he started crying, too.
6. the empty ward
It's an hour before Julia can go back into the hospital room. When she does, Malcolm is awake and watching her. Standing there, she is scrutinized by him and her hands begin to shake. A tear drops from her eye.
"I'm so sorry."
"It isn't your fault." His voice is rough.
"I should have acted sooner."
"You saved me."
"Sooner."
She stops talking and her to come over, weakly. She sits in the chair and begins to play with the hem of her lab coat. They sit in silence for a while and eventually he closes his eyes. She thinks he's asleep but then he speaks.
"I don't remember much."
She knows he's lying.
"But I remember enough, Julia. How's my son?"
"He's fine."
"Thank you for watching them."
She nods. "They're coming soon."
An eye cracks open. "Really?"
"Yeah. Go to sleep," she orders gently. He does so and she waits by his bed side, watching him sleep. She has done things to this man that are unforgivable. And, yet, he forgives her. She can't forgive herself.
----------------
She watches from the doorway as T'Pol and Morgan come in. She sits down in the chair Julia vacated and holds Malcolm's hand while he sleeps. Morgan, with all the innocence children possess, climbs right up into Malcolm's hospital bed and hugs his father. It's like he's known in forever, and, in a way, he has. Julia smiles. The family is together again. And, if she has anything to do about it, nothing would break them up again.
A man walks into the room next and Julia recognizes him as Trip. He smiles at the scene before him and she knows he's thinking the same things as her. He smiles at her and she smiles back. He asks her what her name is.
"Julia Bashir. I'm his—"she nods her head to the sleeping form of Malcolm "—doctor. I found him."
"I'm Trip Tucker."
They smile again and Julia takes her leave. Walking down the hallway, Trip's voice stops her. He runs up to her.
"Mal's still sleepin'. I'm gonna leave 'im 'lone with T'Pol and Morg. They should be with him now, not me. I'm 'is friend, but they're his family. I'll be there when 'e wakes up later, but fer now..." He shuffles his feet. She nods, encouraging him to continue. "You wanna get somethin' to eat?"
"Sure." Julia smiles. She emerges from the chaos, her ego bruised and hair tousled, and she is still shaken up. But, she thinks as she looks back at the way she came, it's almost over. She and Trip head to the mess.
7. home is where the heart is
Malcolm wakes up. There is a little body wrapped around him and someone is holding his hand. He looks to his left and finds a little boy with light hair and little pointed ears. His eyes well up when he realizes it's his son. To his right, T'Pol is sleeping, holding his hand. He smiles faintly. In the corner of the room, Trip sleeps slouched in a chair. Julia is sitting on the ground, her head pillowed against Trip's thigh, sleeping as well.
He smiles as he cries softly.
Fin