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: While I could have focused on the aftermath of McCoy being "absorbed into the body" in "Return of the Archons", I found myself more interested in two smaller moments in the episode. When Reger enters the room after McCoy gave Tula a sedative, McCoy very firmly remains in front of his patient, not allowing Reger to pass. He stays in that position when the lawgivers enter the room as well, and Spock stays right next to him the whole time. Later in the episode, when they are running from the people in the street, McCoy is the only one who looks down and sees that their missing crewmember, Lt. O'Neil, is among those stunned by phaser fire on the ground. When McCoy stands back up, holding onto one of Lt. O'Neil's arms, one of the security officers puts a hand on McCoy's back, as if ready to push him forward or out of the way. I decided to explore those moments through the episode's sociologist, Mr. Lindstrom. This is the first bit of writing I've done in over a year and a half, so please forgive any blatant errors. As always, I hope I did the characters justice. Dialogue quoted from the episode does not belong to me. Thank you for reading and thank you to all who have continued to follow this series over the years. I truly appreciate your support.
19.
Lindstrom was a sociologist. Human behavior, in all its infinite combinations of social contexts, was his specialty. So, while he was on this mission to provide expert analysis on the behaviors of an alien society, he couldn't help but observe the behavior of his own society, and of the individuals within it.
Like Dr. McCoy.
The physician had an amazing ability to focus on an individual in the middle of chaos and uncertainty. Lindstrom wasn't surprised when Dr. McCoy took a sobbing, traumatized Tula from her father's arms and directed her to another room so he could treat her. It was natural for him to move an injured party to a calm, safe space if possible. Lindstrom also wasn't surprised to see Mr. Spock assist the doctor. While Spock certainly wasn't comfortable with the highly emotional aspects of medicine, Lindstrom knew that Spock was not so much helping guide Tula, as he was keeping an eye on McCoy. Because Lindstrom knew that both Spock and Captain Kirk would be damned before they let McCoy out of their sight on a world as unpredictable as this one.
And while Lindstrom wasn't particularly proud of his own "what kind of father are you" comment to Reger (he really knew better than to apply his own views to another society), he had a feeling that McCoy felt some threat there too. Because when the rest of the landing party entered the room where Spock, McCoy, and a now sleeping Tula were, McCoy gave Reger a brief "she's asleep" without moving from his position between father and daughter. Lindstrom had seen McCoy interact with many patients and families. The physician's normal behavior was to give an update while moving to the side, so the family member could get close to their loved one. To McCoy, human connection was just as important, if not more so, than medications and surgery. He encouraged family and friends to touch, to talk, and to be near their sick loved one. But with Tula and Reger, McCoy was an immovable force, standing solidly in a guard position between patient and father, with Spock mirroring the action on his left. Even when the lawgivers entered the room, McCoy maintained his position in front of Tula, shifting his weight to keep himself between his patient and this new potential threat, while Spock remained a solid presence at his left, one protector protecting another.
This was why sociology fascinated Lindstrom. No human behavior existed in a vacuum - by studying one person, you naturally studied those around them.
Later, as the landing party was hurrying through the streets, pursued by dozens of blank faces and primitive, yet effective, weapons, it was McCoy who noticed Lt. O'Neil on the ground among the stunned victims of their phasers. While the rest of the landing party ran past the bodies, eyes forward toward the end of the alley, McCoy was the only one to look down and recognize a familiar face in the midst of chaos, one of those whose health he had sworn an oath to protect. And in the wake of phaser fire, with another group of weapon-wielding automatons coming their way, McCoy stopped, knelt to assess O'Neil's condition, and alerted Captain Kirk to the discovery of one of their own. Lindstrom watched as the Captain immediately turned, crouched at O'Neil's other side, and refused Reger's insistence that they leave O'Neil behind. Just as Lindstrom knew that McCoy wouldn't leave a patient, he knew Kirk wouldn't leave one of his crew. McCoy wasn't the only one who swore an oath to protect. The Captain took his responsibility for his crew as seriously as McCoy took his medical oath. They all knew that if O'Neil was left behind, McCoy would have stayed at the downed man's side, and leaving two crewmembers behind would have been even more unacceptable to the Captain. As Kirk helped McCoy bring an unconscious O'Neil to his feet, Lindstrom watched security put one hand to McCoy's back, phaser in the other, ready to either herd McCoy forward or put himself in front of McCoy to protect him. Spock was ahead of the Captain, keeping the way forward clear. And while Lindstrom knew that McCoy was trained to use a phaser, security's closer physical presence to the physician, rather than the Captain, made him wonder exactly whose safety their commanding officer had directed them to prioritize.
In the end, Landru's hold on the planet was destroyed. The body lost the guidance of its one omnipotent voice and began the process of learning that it was made up of thousands of individual voices. Landru's prime directive had been about the good of the body, at the expense of the individual. McCoy, however, saw that the body was the sum of all its parts, that the good of the individual was important not only for the individual itself, but for the greater body of humanity. It was obvious in his every action; actions that resumed as soon as McCoy's mind was his own again. The physician had blinked, sucked in a ragged breath, then turned to Lt. O'Neil as if his previous treatment had never been interrupted, all while the Captain watched with a relieved half-smile under eyes still haunted by the physician's brief loss.
As Lindstrom stayed behind to study and assist a society taking its first steps into the complexities of nurturing individuals while maintaining a common good, he knew he had plenty of examples on how to do it right.
All he had to do was think of Dr. McCoy.