Chapter 25- The Company You Keep
I got up early and headed for deck 5. There was nothing wrong with my voice, I could talk but I chose not to because I couldn't tell how loud I was without the ability to hear aside from the dull reverberation within my own skull. Apparently, the lift understood me because I was deposited neatly at my desired destination. On the way down the hall, I wondered how people who were truly hearing impaired or blind got around since it didn't appear that the ship in any way complied with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Perhaps Starfleet simply didn't allow people with disabilities join, although that seemed contrary to the spirit of the day where everyone had something to contribute. McCoy was not in yet, so I got my usual coffee and sat at my desk and read the PADD that Pavel had delivered the night before while I could still see. I smiled as I scrolled through the entries.
"Keep your head up, girl. See you at lunch even if I have to come drag you. –Love Uhura"
"I know that you would have saved him if there was any way possible, which tells me that there was no way possible. Sometimes things don't work out the way we want them to, but if I know you (and I would like to think I do) it wasn't for lack of trying. The Captain says I am taking too long- it is a message, not an essay. So I will have to go for now, but I look forward to seeing you on the floor again. I enjoy watching you improve. Soon you will beat Chekov! Ok, Captain is yelling at me now, he wants to know if I am writing a love letter! I still believe in you. –Sulu"
"Spock." I cracked up. He wasn't one to sign a sympathy card even if it was virtual, and there was no way he was going to type in something sappy. I had to respect him for that.
"Doc! Tomorrow is Saturday and you know what that means! Scotty and I will be at your quarters at 2000 for movie night- no excuses! Scotty figured out how to make the words show up on the screen so you can watch, well, read…or whatever. Sulu is giving me shit while I am trying to type. I will have to make him do push-ups until he dies or something. Just be there damn it.- Jim"
"Damn it! I'm a doctor, not a Hallmark card!" I didn't even need to see who that was from.
"So a lass is walking down the lane and she sees a lad sleeping under a tree wearing a kilt. She always wondered what Scotts wore under a kilt, so she sneaks up to him and takes a peek. Sure enough, he is bare as bones! She giggled and took the ribbon out of her hair and tied it around his boaby and skips off. When he wakes up, he looks down and says, 'I don't know where ya got off to, but I see ya won Best In Show!' –Scotty"
I couldn't help it, I laughed and I didn't care how loud I was or who heard me. McCoy rounded the corner with an amused look on his face. He raised his eyebrows at me and I showed him the PADD. He read it and had a laugh as well before tossing it on his desk and motioning for me to follow him.
Like a docile creature, I laid on the biobed still as could be while he went to work prying open each eye and passing a scanner over it again and again. With each pass, my vision became a little more blurry until all I could make out were shadows. It didn't hurt, but I hated having my eyes messed with, even if he was doing as I had asked. When he was finished, he held me by the shoulders while I sat up so he could cover my eyes and wrap a band of gauze around my head to hold it in place. I laid back down and began the mental countdown.
At first, everything was a void of stillness except the beating of my own heart. It was sort of peaceful in a way. It wasn't long before my thoughts kicked into overdrive to fill the silence. Isang songs, did some light math, and even tried to name all 50 states before the circumstances of my unique environment wore off and I began to think about my life in a very analytical way as I was prone to do when I was uneasy.
I thought about how unhappy I was as a child. My family was poor, but somehow managed to move several times from state to state, but it was never anywhere interesting. As a result, I never really had friends growing up- there simply wasn't enough time and as I got older I just decided it wasn't worth the effort anyway. Not that I didn't try, at least at first. But I quickly realized that the other kids didn't want to know me; I didn't wear all the latest clothes. What I most often wore was what you might call vintage, but really they were items that belonged to my mother or sometimes even my older brother that had been modified to loosely fit because my parents couldn't afford to buy new clothes. They hardly had enough to have food on the table every day. I remembered enduring winters without heat, and sometimes we would have to go without electricity or running water when we couldn't pay the bills. It still astounded me that this was not something that people ever thought about dealing with these days.
But it was more than that, I was somewhat precocious as a child. I was reading five levels ahead of my own grade and remembered being very bored in school. It was probably because of this that I couldn't really relate to anyone, even though I felt desperately lonely for human friendship. While everyone else socialized and passed notes among themselves, I was left on the outside looking in. Perhaps this was where I learned to be so in tune with people. If I couldn't be in the group, I could feel that I was if I could figure out what it was like for each member. I stopped for a moment to ponder how similar that made me to Pavel. I thought back to the trip to Chicago when he told me about his life in Russia and how difficult it was to scratch out an existence in the cold forest without a father. He had much the same experience with his classmates as I did. Maybe that was why I felt him to be so comfortable without really realizing it.
I was starting to think that perhaps a lot of my sense of loneliness had to do with me. Through most of my adult life I have had a string of acquaintances and coworkers, but a precious select few that I would call friends. Why was that? What was I afraid of? Even McCoy, who had shown more mercy than he should have had the good sense to was being kept at a safe distance. I swallowed and had to face the ugly truth: because of my job. People wouldn't respect me if they really knew me. I had to make them believe I was bordering on perfect to maintain my professionalism when all the while I was asking them to bear their souls to me. I was struck by the unfairness of it all. Like the sword of Excalibur, mine was a position of power and those who can wield the sword must be pure.
I might have held McCoy at arm's length, but he was afforded a special place within my inner circle as well. Everyone else got little glimpses of who I really was as I saw fit, but McCoy had a backstage pass only because he was in a similar position to me and could probably understand my foibles without thinking less of me. When it came down to it, we were almost mirror images of each other. On the surface we were very distinct, but in our inner worlds we both had the same restrictive standards and slavish devotion to our patients.
That was really what was at the core of all this: I was constantly engaged in a game of impression management with everyone. It was ugly, but it was the bare truth. To keep my position and a sense of authority, it was necessary to shut people out and deny myself the very contact I still craved. I could share a dirty joke with Scotty, get knocked on my ass by Sulu and Spock, have lunch with Uhura, and enjoy quiet solitude with Chekov, but that was all I could allow myself. I had to take pleasure in the small interactions we did have and maintain my distance.
The thought of being alone was distressing. In my previous life I was married to someone who would at least always be there. I couldn't have engaged in sustained impression management with him, that kind of stamina was just not possible if the scratches on my wedding band were any indication of how long we were together. Now he was gone and I had no one to go home to at night and complain about my day while wearing sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt. As it stood, only the ship's computer knew how epically horrible I was at directions.
Suddenly I began to feel a little anxious. The sensory deprivation was becoming harder to endure and although I knew that no matter the time, someone was always present in the sickbay, I felt absolutely alone. I took deep breaths and tried to calm down by telling myself that it was ridiculous to think I was abandoned, that this would all be over in no time and that any attempt to leave the bed would certainly be met with failure if not McCoy's wrath- most likely both. I jumped slightly when I felt a warm hand on mine and instantly I knew it was McCoy, somehow I just knew. The heart monitor no doubt drew his attention and I felt a little betrayed by the technology. Why did it have to be so good at what it did?! I also felt slightly embarrassed at my inability to control the symptoms of anxiety. He must have thought I was weak not to be able to hack my situation any longer because I felt cold metal against my neck and I knew what was coming.
When I woke up, the gauze had been removed from my eyes, and I blinked several times, but everything was still blurry. I sat up and rubbed them, but two hands grasped my wrists and pulled them away. I could just make out a blue shirt and parted dark hair. I sat there dumbly, realizing that if I couldn't properly see, that pretty well ended all possible forms of communication. He pushed me back down and again pulled my eyelids apart. I was not prepared for him to put drops in them and I almost screamed.
Of all my stupid hang-ups, eye drops were the worst. I hated having my eyes messed with, but eye drops almost made me come out of my skull and no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn't come up with a rationalization based in any kind of reality for it. I tried hard not to buck and fight him, but I was sure I whimpered at least once. Thank God I couldn't see his face well enough to witness the disgusted squint he was probably wearing or hear the sarcastic remark that slipped past his lips. I blinked rapidly against the newly formed oceans that lie over my eyes until slowly, my vision cleared and I saw him leaning over me, scowling. I gave him an embarrassed, apologetic look and his face relaxed into a soft smirk.
I instinctively turned my head when I heard something to my right. A nurse had dropped a tray of surgical instruments and while that sort of slip up would earn a person cleaning duty for a week as well as a loud lecture about safety, McCoy seemed pleased. It was muffled compared to the thunderous clang it should have made, but it was something.
McCoy took his sweet time discharging me, and I knew better than to simply get up and leave. No one, and I do mean no one, ever walked out on him and that included me. I got back to my quarters in time to meet Pavel at my door. He had just got off duty and it was dinner time. Even though a quick check of my eyes revealed McCoy's near perfect patch job, I opted for another dinner in with Pavel, which hilariously consisted of tomato soup and grilled cheese yet again.
Our after dinner card game was cut short when Jim and Scotty showed up just as he said they would in his message. Jim said something to Pavel and he turned red, but all I could hear was his deep voice- I couldn't make out any words. I again bowed to Pavel and followed them to the lower decks where we watched our movies. Tonight's selection was "The Full Monty" and I was grateful for the closed captioning since I often found thick accents hard to decipher. Watching the hodgepodge of average English men dance like Chippendales never failed to make me laugh, nor did Scotty's impression of them when he danced lasciviously with a barstool during the closing number while Jim folded a napkin as though it were a dollar bill and stuffed it in his waistband for his efforts.
I went to bed that night rethinking my philosophy. The messages on the PADD were nice, but it was the way in which the crew interacted that made the difference. Pavel could have done any number of things, including fence with his best friend, but he chose to spend time with me having dinner and playing cards. Jim and Scotty chose a movie that they knew I would like even if it wasn't their type because they wanted me to cheer up. McCoy was good at small surprises because he knew that it was the little things that made me smile.
If I was worried about my professionalism, all I need do was think back on all I had become privy to; all of the undercurrents that flowed and connected the members of the crew. The revenge game between Chekov and McCoy. McCoy's terrorizing Jim with the hypo. Jim's stuffing napkins in Scotty's pants like he was a $2 crack whore. Scotty's drinking, dancing and carousing with other people's girlfriends. The dirty jokes that he and I shared. It all ran together in an intertwined tangled mess of relationships that bound us all together to make us all a little more than just colleagues. Maybe, just this once things could be different. Maybe I could summon up the courage to step out of the shadows and join them since it seemed they were inviting me, each in their own way.