That night the dream returned.

It had been years since he had the dream. For the first years after the Divorce, it came with frightening and devastating frequency. Sometimes the details were a little different. But always the same scene played in vivid color. The perfect coral dress she was wearing, her perfect blonde hair, the perfectly manicured nails, inside their perfectly appointed living room. Telling him she was done. Talk to my lawyer done. Done and taking Johanna. His daughter's frightened little face, trying to cling to her daddy as the perfect coral woman drug the wailing child out of what was soon to be not his home or his life. Sometimes the perfect coral woman looked like a spider. But usually, and more disturbing to him, she looked like herself. But still filled with venom.

After the Divorce he had turned to the bottle and sometimes other drugs, trying to drown the dream, the memories, and what was left of his life into oblivion. A lot of that period was lost to him, and he was glad. He had lost his family, his home, then his job, and finally almost his sanity and his life.

He did remember fragments of the day he almost died. He was staying in a cheap rented room in an unfortunate neighborhood in Atlanta near the university hospital where he used to work. He didn't actually recall swallowing the pills with the half bottle of cheap whiskey he drank to wash them down. He didn't remember turning on the small stereo that he had managed to keep from his part of the Divorce settlement. He did remember the words penetrating his brain through the haze.

Let your soul and spirit fly
Into the mystic

And when that fog horn blows
I will be coming home
And when the fog horn blows
I want to hear it
I don't have to fear it

He must have crawled to the toilet to make himself vomit. He remembered retching into the dirty basin and seeing fragments of red and yellow capsules floating in bile and slimy water and he thought it was too late, he would die anyway, that he would be killed not by the Divorce but by his own inadequacies and fear.

He did not know how long he laid on the bathroom floor in a narcotic fugue. When he came to, he was not sure if he was still alive or dead in some Hell that was just like life.

He eventually decided he was, after all, in the realm of the living. He showered, put on the cleanest clothes he could find and walked out of the dingy room with two things: The framed picture of him and his daughter in happier times, and the music pod with Van Morrison's album 'Moondance'.


He thought he must have screamed. He sat bolt upright in bed, trembling with fear and rage and wet with sweat. It took him a minute to realize he was awake and begin to shake off the terror. Then he knew he was going to be sick. He made it to the bathroom and vomited until he was empty and shaking with dry heaves. He looked in the mirror at his very pale and morose reflection. A different man stared back at him than the younger McCoy in the grim Atlanta apartment. But sometimes he could still feel that desolate and hopeless person inside.

He pulled off his soaked clothing and showered, watching the water run in rivulets down his body and circle the drain. He closed his eyes, wishing the layers of insecurity and despondency he wore might be as easily removed as physical grime and sweat. He stood in the shower a long time, his tears mixing with the water and washing away.


McCoy did not try to sleep after his night terror. He sat in the semi-darkness of his quarters the rest of the night. He composed a letter to Johanna, now almost twenty two, but he could only think of empty and trivial chit chat, so he did not send it. He straightened and tidied, a task he tended to ignore as long as possible. Outside of sickbay, he was not a good housekeeper.

He firmly refused to open his liquor cabinet. During his post divorce recovery, he had discovered he was not a typical alcoholic. Once he went through detox, he found he could take the booze or leave it. He had never been drunk or compromised when on duty, a habit that had saved his medical license when he lost his emergency room position. So he had continued to drink occasionally, sometimes more than occasionally. Rarely he drank enough to be inebriated. Not just tipsy but sloppy drunk. Three sheets in the wind, his Grandma called it. But that night he could feel the demons from the past lingering close at hand, their cold and steely claws sharp and ready. So he sipped water. And thought.

He thought about his failed marriage. It was a subject that lurked in the back of his mind, but he never allowed himself to dwell on it, at least not in the daylight. And there were times when he did almost forget for a while.

After a time, he had grown to realize and accept that both of them had fault to share. In many ways he thought he bore the greater burden in his marriage's demise because he had failed to pay attention to what was happening right before his eyes. They had once loved each other, that he believed. It had taken a few years for the fundamental differences between them to exert an ultimately fatal toll on their relationship. He could forgive her having someone on on the side during the last years they were together. He was working a great many hours, both as a physician and in research, and he understood loneliness as well as anyone. He could try to understand her love of possessions more than people, although that was harder. Jocelyn came from a privileged home, she was used to fine expensive things surrounding her. She had good taste, he supposed. And perhaps things were a substitute for his company.

What he could not forgive was her cruelty during the divorce and her willingness to use their daughter as a weapon against him. Her father's lawyers shredded him, and Jocelyn was granted full custody. He was allowed one afternoon every week with Johanna, dates he kept until his descent into depression and alcoholism accelerated. He was fired from Emory, officially for missing shifts, which was true enough. His supervisor, a kind man who realized McCoy was gifted but in trouble, fired him as gently as he could, and urged him to get help. After he lost his job, Jocelyn went back to court and terminated all visitation. Then his year of Hell on Earth began for real.

After his aborted suicide attempt, he entered a rehab program in the cool mountains of North Carolina away from Atlanta. During Hell year he had lost thirty pounds. On his already thin frame, the result was almost skeletal and was by far the hardest physical obstacle he had to overcome, harder than withdrawal from the drugs and alcohol, which was brutal but lasted only a few days. His nutritional problems continued to plague him for years. Sixteen years later, he was thinner than he had been before Hell, still had days when he forgot to eat or did not keep it down.

During his months in rehab, he was a good patient for the only time in his life. He did what was recommended by the doctors and staff and tried to cooperate in the psychological portion of his recovery. He learned more about psychiatry there than in medical school, but found he could not fully open up to his counselors, and the deeply buried private things stayed deep and private.

He was grateful for his stay in the rehabilitation facility. He was on his feet, sober, and recovering his health. He found solace in the misty and brooding Appalachians. He spent many hours, either in solitude or sometimes with the facility dog walking the forested paths and sitting beside the rushing and cold streams. He thought of changing professions and becoming a forest ranger. But then his talent, training and calling began to stir. He sent out tentative feelers to old associates, which eventually landed him in San Francisco and then Starfleet.

He began communicating with his daughter again, and over the years managed to see her at times, perhaps not enough to be extremely close, but enough that she thought of him as 'dad'. He never inquired about her mother, and Johanna, a sensitive child, did not volunteer much information. He knew Jocelyn had remarried twice, first to her paramour, then to an older man who seemed to be her true love. He could not find the graciousness inside to be happy for her or wish her well.

He ruminated for most of the night on memories he would have preferred to continue to suppress. Then toward dawn he went to his closet and searched for the small box he knew was there. It took a few minutes to find it in the jumbled space, but he did. He set it carefully on his desk and stared at it for a while. Finally he opened it, and took out the tape. It contained what was for a while the soundtrack to his life. Early in his recovery he had listened to it again and again as a reminder that at least at that one point he had wanted to live. It became his anthem, a talisman, his focus point when he wanted to give up and surrender again to the darkness. Once he gained enough strength and vitality to embrace life again, he removed that particular song from his playlist. He had not heard it in almost sixteen years until T'Phol brought it to life, unwittingly waking whatever devils slumbered in his dark place. He turned it over and over in his hands. In the end, he did not listen to it, but he also did not put it away.