Title: Asclepius Revisited
Author: Still Waters
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.
Summary: 76 McCoy episodes. 76 McCoy-centric reflections, codas, and missing scenes.
Notes: "Dagger of the Mind" – not a particular favorite of mine, but there is one scene that always grabs my attention. The scene where McCoy comes onto the Bridge while Kirk is talking to Dr. Adams about Van Gelder's identity always intrigues me. I was fascinated by the quiet thoughts playing through McCoy's face as he stands just outside the turbolift doors, thinking deeply while listening to Kirk before moving to his side and almost tentatively stating that Adams' words don't ring true. The continued scene, where McCoy continues to insist something is wrong and is ignored by both Kirk and Spock for his lack of hard data on that feeling frustrates me as much as it probably did him. I loved McCoy's obvious expertise when he insisted that Adams' suggestion of a superior facility was ridiculous, and I always felt that McCoy had a history with Adams' work by the way he said that Adams knew better. I nearly cheer for McCoy each time he finally tells Kirk that the Captain has to answer McCoy's medical log doubts, thus beginning the investigation. I wanted to explore that scene further, as well as the fallout of the episode, where I felt that McCoy would likely have some guilt with the fact that Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Helen Noel did not have the best of days during the investigation he began. I particularly wanted to give Helen some exploration, especially the fact that, toward the end of the episode, she killed a technician on Tantalus when she pushed him back against the panel and he was electrocuted. I felt McCoy would recognize what everyone went through and would reflect on each of them individually in preparation for his subsequent treatment sessions. Here is the result. Any recognizable dialogue from the episode is obviously not mine. This was written in one sitting so, as usual, please excuse any blatant errors. Thank you so much for reading and for your support as I explore this world!
Edited 2/12/11 for one glaring oversight. Thank you SherlockiANNE for making me aware of my misstep. This is what happens when I write and edit while still ridiculously sick - I mean to go back and fix something and completely forget to do so. All set now :)
7.
Leonard McCoy was not a pessimistic man. He may have been prone to melancholy and introspection on occasion, but by nature he possessed an amazingly stubborn optimism, an unbreakable hope and belief in the goodness of life, an unshakeable stalwart core beneath passing moments of gruffness and haunted blue. He consistently looked for the good in people, strove to bring it out with his own actions, and believed in the goodness of his colleagues, in their mutual dedication to their oath.
Until they shattered that belief, that trust, with one unforgiveable action, dulling sparkling blue, smothering passionate movement, and by empathetic extension, injuring McCoy just as surely as they did the others who had trusted their commitment to life.
McCoy was certainly not naive enough to believe that everyone in his profession was in it for the right reasons. He had seen the fall of egocentrism, of neglect, of unethical behavior before. He had helped expose it before.
But it still hurt.
Each time it happened, it strove to dim his inner light, to crush his optimism, to cloud his eyes to all the good that still existed. And each time, he treated his wounds, smoothed the scars with a renewed resolution and dedication to his oath, and practiced what he sought. He refused to give into the darkness that had consumed those who had hurt so many of the lives they had all sworn to heal.
The darkness that he had found again today.
McCoy had never trusted Dr. Adams. He had followed the penology expert's studies closely over the years, had read the overwhelming praise doled out in peer-reviewed journals, had watched wave after wave of penal colony adopt Adams' framework for their facility protocol. He saw excitement sweep the general public, saw people like Jim, with no rehabilitative background, visit the colonies, and return with wide-eyed awe, speaking of Adams as some sort of long-awaited messiah, gushing words like 'revolutionary', 'humane', 'resorts.' Quoting impossibly perfect statistics.
It just hadn't felt right. Every time McCoy read another of Adams' studies or a report on one of his colonies, he heard his grandpappy's strong voice.
That dog don't hunt.
And when McCoy saw Dr. Adams for the first time by vidscreen at a remote access symposium on penology and rehabilitative medicine, it was barely five minutes before he heard his grandmammy's sure drawl as well.
Boy's crooked as a dog's hind leg and lower'n a snake's belly.
She only combined those two expressions when someone really didn't strike her right.
And Adams really didn't strike McCoy right.
Adams was smooth. He was quick with the right words and a practiced smile, moved seamlessly between almost bombastic speeches and colloquial hob-nobbing, and was accommodating to a nearly unheard of degree.
Dangerous.
So personable that just his name alone seemed to immediately erase from everyone's minds the fact that no one had been able to reproduce Adams' work independently. The only facilities using Adams' method that had achieved Adams' near perfect results were those that Adams himself had attended to personally.
No, that dog most certainly did not hunt.
McCoy had been bothered by Adams and his work for years, but since he was not a penologist and didn't focus on rehabilitative medicine in his own practice, McCoy often found the unsettling feelings pushed to the side. He had far too many responsibilities and research demands of his own to truly follow that area. Sometimes he completely forgot about the man.
Until today.
Until he struggled to sedate a former Tantalus colony scientist with an unidentifiable diagnosis and a tendency toward psychotic rants with just the right disturbing ring of truth to them. Not that such things couldn't happen with mental illness – schizophrenics could be completely rational and logical one moment before seamlessly moving into delusion the next. But this was different. Something just didn't feel right.
And here was Adams' name again.
When McCoy had wandered onto the Bridge, still deep in thought, he hadn't been planning to say anything just yet. He was going to wait until he could discuss the matter with Jim and Spock privately first.
But then he heard Adams' sickeningly smooth response over the comm, heard him verify Van Gelder's identity as if he was trying to defuse the shocking discovery ahead of time. He listened to Adams' explanation of Van Gelder's current condition, using the incredibly convenient excuse of an experimental treatment gone wrong (thus covering the inability to match the symptoms to any known psychiatric illness) with just the right touch of respect and admiration by giving Van Gelder the image of the highly ethical man who refused to administer a potential cure until he was sure that it would indeed do so.
But one had to be ill oneself to determine if a self-tested cure was effective. If McCoy hadn't been infected by the virus on Miri's planet, administering the cure to himself would have proven nothing - he couldn't cure something he didn't have. Preventative medicine was something different, but Adams had said that the experimental beam was hoped to 'rehabilitate incorrigibles' which meant that the subjects had to already be suffering from a certain level of illness, which supported the fact that it was curative, not preventative, therefore, Adams' explanation didn't follow. There would have been no scientific, logical reason for Van Gelder to test a curative treatment on his healthy mind for the purpose of determining effectiveness.
No, right now, Van Gelder was ringing far more true than Adams was.
And McCoy said so.
He told Jim that Adams' words didn't ring true, endured Jim's irritation and complete disregard for gut intuition at McCoy's insistence that while he couldn't explain it, he just didn't believe Adams. He barely held back his frustration as Jim expounded the greatness of Adams' colonies, the perfection of his methods, the wild hope and joy at an answer to a question that had plagued humanity for centuries - emotions that completely clouded all possibility as to the thought that the answer might not be so perfect. It was everything McCoy had heard and felt over the years in relation to Dr. Adams, and right here, right now, it was all coming to an impossible head. He begged Jim to listen. He almost decked Spock for interrupting with the 'logical' question to pose to Adams regarding the return of Van Gelder.
But then Adams responded to Spock's query. He asked if the Enterprise would be passing any superior hospital facilities to maximize Van Gelder's treatment options.
And McCoy had him.
It was a blatant attempt at redirection. By transferring Van Gelder elsewhere, no one would have the opportunity to match up the seemingly delusional rants with the corresponding reality of the colony.
Jim didn't see it, but he turned to McCoy for the recommendation. "Well Bones, you've got the ball. You care to recommend a better place?" he asked.
Now Jim had to listen. And McCoy needed to be heard. He told Jim that there were no superior facilities, stressed that Adams knew that. He reiterated that the real point was that something unusual was going on down there, to which Jim interrupted again with the accusation that it was simply an assumption.
McCoy had had enough. For years, Adams' so-called revolutionary, yet irreproducible treatment had been lauded while simultaneously making his gut churn. Jim had insisted that Van Gelder was not their problem earlier during McCoy's initial post-sedation report, but the man was currently in McCoy's sickbay, under McCoy's care, and that made him McCoy's responsibility. And if Adams was involved in the illness of McCoy's patient, then investigating Adams was also McCoy's responsibility.
This ended now.
Jim said the ball was in McCoy's court, so McCoy ran with it.
In just the language Jim required to mount a proper response.
"I'm required to enter any reasonable doubts into my medical log. That requires you to answer in your log. Sorry, Jim."
And there it was.
Maybe Jim was right – maybe it was all just a lot of 'I don't believe it', 'I can't explain it.' Maybe McCoy was making assumptions.
But McCoy knew he wasn't.
None of this struck him right. Adams didn't ring true in the slightest.
And now Jim was just as duty-bound as McCoy to find out why.
And in the end, they did find out why.
Found out that McCoy had indeed been correct in his doubts.
But there was no relief, no vindication, no joy in that find.
Adams had succumbed to the darkness, forcing his will on others, suffocating already ill minds with his own needs and wants, inflicting persistent pain to hide his own harsh secrets. Destroying not only the evil, but also the good of previous lives, emptying minds until they were mere husks, blank but for what Adams required to maintain the illusion of his success.
Preying on an emptiness, a loneliness that he himself inflicted on those given to his care.
So many, admitted for healing, plunged into the darkness of Adams' betrayal.
So many names McCoy did not yet know, harmed by their supposed healer.
And so many he did know.
Kirk.
Spock.
Helen.
Adams would never practice again – a verdict carried out, not by the legal system McCoy had hoped for, but the harshness of ironic justice. Betrayed by his own betrayal – killed by a forced loneliness with no smooth voice to fill the emptiness – the nothingness growing until it overtook life itself. McCoy knew that by insisting on the investigation, he had been instrumental in keeping the darkness from reaching innumerable others sent to Dr. Adams' care.
But it didn't erase the darkness that still surrounded him. The death of a man, even one as reprehensible as Adams. The shadow of guilt for insisting on a course of action that ended up harming friends and colleagues.
And oh, had they been hurt.
Spock, forced into an intensely personal and dangerous Vulcan ritual with the tortured mind of a non-Vulcan, with both his own and McCoy's worry for Jim electrifying the process.
Jim, subjected to Adams' neural neutralizer, thoughts torn from his mind, forged memories hammered into place, threats of pain threaded into threats to Adams' superiority, struggling to understand the machine as his own doubts rose, nearly becoming its next victim, yet still managing to rise up long enough to set a rescue into effect.
And Helen – the psychiatrist in desperate need of her own training. Helen, who had lost a role model in Dr. Adams' betrayal to a field she held so dear, a man whose theories she wove into her own practice of her craft. Helen, who had harmed her Captain, a man under her care and expertise, by using personal fantasies, born of momentary weakness and intense loneliness, in her testing of the neural neutralizer, using the beam's creation of emptiness and loneliness to try and ease her own. Helen, who had come through in the end, attempting to enable their rescue by shutting down equipment she had no knowledge of, who succeeded in a desperate moment of self-defense. A desperate moment where she killed a man. Another healer descending into the darkness of death, one even darker for her light nature and the tragedy of necessary, split-second action.
So many, so hurt.
And by extension, McCoy bled as well.
It always hurt.
But he had work to do. Van Gelder was returning to Tantalus with a team of intensive therapists and medical personnel to attend to Adams' victims down there, so McCoy's responsibility shifted down to a narrower focus - to attend to the three up here.
And so he pushed away the shadowy threat of pessimism cast by the overwhelming darkness the day had brought. Now was not the time for melancholy - it was time for introspection turned action. Adams' betrayal strove to shatter McCoy's optimistic core, but it wouldn't succeed, because McCoy needed to believe in the goodness of life in order to help restore it to those entrusted to his care.
And so, he treated this latest scar as he did all others. He renewed his resolution and dedication to his oath and stepped forward to practice what he sought. To be the healer his friends and colleagues needed, to use his own unshakeable inner light and goodness to reach that core in them. To defy Adams' darkness with their own natural light.
McCoy refused to allow Adams' forced despair to hold.
His grandpappy and grandmammy had taught him a lot – good manners, good cooking, shrewd character judgment – but most of all, they had taught him to stick to his beliefs, even when they weren't the most popular ones at the time. "Good ol' Southern stubbornness, tougher'n two day old congealed grits," his grandpappy used to describe his grandmammy. And whenever McCoy felt like he was at the end of his rope with his medical studies, they'd both chime in with an old favorite.
Don't let the bear get'cha.
McCoy had never seen a bear – they were extinct, living only in dusty library tomes and old holovids. But after seeing an old holo of a bear chase, he could understand how the expression came to mean what it did.
Don't quit. Don't give up.
Adams' darkness, the injury he had inflicted on others was the bear. And McCoy was sure as hell not going to let it overtake him, or those he had sworn to care for.
So he dug in, strengthened that inner belief, and strode out of the room.
To treat his patients.
To look that bear right in the eyes.
And send it on its way.