Chapter 59 - Evaluating


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McCoy watched from the relative safety of his office door as his patient was bullied into eating by a mother hen and mother bear. Fearsome as his own reputation was, he could never have achieved the same effect. It was a beautiful sight...as long as it was happening to someone else.

"I've finished the oatmeal. Now, can I get out of bed?" Allen all but begged.

"If you are still too ill to allow me to see what is going on up there." Selina tapped his forehead. "You are too ill to go wandering about the ship. Now, I am much overdue for meditation. You will be here when I return and if Christine says you have been good, we will see."

Sorenson raised an eyebrow. "Should I be frightened that you're channeling my grandmother now?"

She mussed his hair as she left. "You should be grateful."

Selina caught McCoy's arm as she passed through the door, drawing him into the office. "Len, something is still not right. Under no circumstances allow Faf near a computer."

"I'm afraid the horse is out of the barn there, darlin'." Len frowned. "I let him use my office to talk with Stone while you were off with Jim. What do you think he might have done?"

"I do not know, but he managed to check himself out of the infirmary at least twice when we were students." she warned. "I would suggest that any orders calling for him to be transferred should be independently confirmed."

"Only orders to come so far are from Stone telling me to perform an informal psych eval. I was going to ask if you think he's up to it, but if you think he's rational enough to be able to bust himself out, he ought to be up to answering some questions."

She put a hand on his arm. "If possible, do not let him know you are doing it. It is not just telepathy he objects to when it comes to someone trying to get into his head and he helped to program the last standard eval. He knows how to answer to obtain whatever diagnosis he wishes."

"Now don't you worry m'dear." He patted her hand reassuringly. "I started out as a country doctor, so I know how to talk with a patient round about. Besides, there's not a Yankee born yet who can bullshit a Georgia boy."

She frowned. "Faf was born in Iceland. I do not think that counts as 'Yankee'."

"Well, you can check me later since Stone says he's under orders to let you confirm whatever I find."

Her eyes narrowed. "He did not mention that."

"Don't get shook up about it, darlin'. Better you should wait 'til all his neurons are back to workin' and playin' well with together. I just thought you should know, in case he tries to give you any more grief about it when the time comes."

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Jim walked beside Spock on the way back to the transporter. "Okay, but if she and I did get together, you'd be okay with that, right?"

An eyebrow twitched, but the Vulcan remained otherwise impassive. "It has been abundantly and repeatedly made clear to me that I should refrain from expressing opinions on Ms. Chandri's personal affairs."

Jim laughed to himself. "Okay, I probably deserve that for calling you on the big brother thing earlier. But seriously, that wouldn't be a problem, would it?"

"Captain, -"

"Jim. We're talking as friends here, so it's Jim."

Spock very nearly sighed. "Jim, in the unlikely event that she should choose to engage in a romantic liaison with you, I would have to assume that she entered the arrangement fully aware of your proclivities and therefore had no expectations that might lead to disappointment."

Jim took a moment to run that statement through his Spock-to-normal-person translator. He frowned. "Spock, I'm not that bad."

Spock merely lifted an eloquent eyebrow.

"Right." Jim rubbed his chin. "But as long as she didn't get hurt, we'd be okay?"

Spock nodded fractionally. "In essence."

"Well that should be okay then. I mean, she was teasing me about the number of women I had in my head."

"The number of women ...in your head?" Spock did not look entirely 'okay'.

"She kind of stayed in my mind so we were basically passing mental notes while Maldi was talking." Jim explained.

"I see." He didn't sound especially pleased with what he saw. "Although it is perhaps to be expected that you would be on more familiar terms having cooperated in defeating Mr. Maldi."

Jim smiled and put his hands behind his back, imitating his XO's posture as they walked. "You're worried she might be actually starting to like me."

"Vulcans do not worry."

"Right." Jim grinned slyly. "And besides, if it came to a choice between having me or Bones as a brother-in-law, who would you rather have?"

Spock looked straight ahead, but at least one eyebrow lifted. "I believe it has been previously established that her range of choices is considerably wider."

"Okay." Jim chuckled. "But I think I'm growing on her."

Spock pressed his lips together. A riposte he'd heard frequently among humans sprang to mind, but he would not give in to saying 'like a fungus'.

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After chasing Christine away (which really ought to have earned some goodwill), McCoy had checked Allen's readings. Considering how many times his neurotransmitters had spiked after the cordrazine, it wasn't surprising that those weren't back to standard profiles, but he was improving steadily. Following some general 'how are you feeling' questions, McCoy decided to open with what he thought was a fairly innocuous question about why he liked chess so much and found himself challenged to a game. It would have been even more humiliating then the one with Selina, except that Allen proved to be a particularly gracious winner. In fact, he'd begun tutoring him on how to play. McCoy wasn't all that interested in chess, figuring that anything Spock liked that much probably wasn't for him, but he'd gone along since you could learn a lot about someone by how they teach. So far, he'd learned that Sorenson had a lot of patience.

"No, doctor, you really need to consider more than a move ahead." Sorenson said, handing him back his queen. "Now imagine placing a piece and then sort of turn the board in your head and think of how I could respond. Narrow it to the most likely responses and look at least four moves ahead for each of those."

"And you do this in like the millisecond it takes to you to play after I've made a move?" McCoy asked skeptically.

"After you've been playing for awhile, there are certain patterns you don't have to think about so much anymore. There are whole books of the most popular ones, in fact, but you learn better if you figure them out yourself." Sorenson nodded at the board. "Go ahead. You'll get it."

"You're more confident of that than I am." McCoy grumbled. "I'm a doctor, not a programmer. Holding all those sequences in my head doesn't come natural."

"Sure it does. You can do gene resequencing, right? That's a lot more complicated - lots more combinations and you have to think at least six moves ahead for each."

"Hmm. Well, if you put it that way..." McCoy studied the board, while thinking more about his opponent/teacher. Mindful of Selina's warning, he'd avoided asking any of the obvious questions. The person he'd met before all this mayhem was a bit shy and couldn't take a compliment. However, at least where chess was concerned he had a quiet confidence. But that might only be chess. He'd opened up a bit more while playing, but most turns in the conversation had largely been deflected with jokes.

To prepare, McCoy had pulled his file and his last two psych evals. Both evals were so perfectly normal, despite his jokes about being not all there and a record showing an extended personal leave, that McCoy suspected whoever'd done them was either negligent or incredibly gullible. But other than spending his first few years on a fairly unique island nation, Sorenson's background was utterly unremarkable: oldest of two children in a stable, supportive family. Bit of a loner, but that was fairly normal for the genius kids who gravitated to Starfleet. Given that he'd probably stood head and shoulders above his peers both intellectually and physically, McCoy had him pegged as the kid who'd learned to deflect teasing by making fun of himself first. The fact that he'd used that rather than his size said something about him too. McCoy decided on a move.

"That's a lot better. Not optimal, but sometimes choosing the fifth best move will throw an opponent expecting one of the top three." Allen winked. "I used to be able to beat Spock that way. Grey too, although she caught on quicker since she's not quite so logical - but don't tell her I said so."

"Considering my last attempt at playing her, I don't think there's much danger of me throwing her game any time soon."

"She's a fiend for chess and her last doctor was pretty good at it. We'll have to get you up to speed if you want to make her happy." He moved a pawn and all McCoy's previous calculations went out the window.

He tried to absorb the last move and the last statement. "You're teaching me chess because of her?"

"She didn't ask me to, if that's what you're thinking." Allen shrugged. "But I certainly owe you and I get the impression I might have been a bit out of line while I was drugged."

Len noted that Allen had stopped making eye contact. "It's just a surprising thing to do." He observed, moving a knight and hoping he'd hit on the right tactic. "Coming from someone who's in love with her, I mean."

Allen bit his lip, still focused on the board. "I know this is going to sound odd given recent events, but you don't have much to worry about from me. She may love me in her own peculiar way, but I've seen her 'in love with' before and that's a horse of a different color."

Len sat back, considering. "I didn't ask about her."

Allen nodded slowly. "I won't deny that I love her, but we ...work better as friends. Actually being in love with her was a long time ago."

"Back before you became Fafhrd?"

"There may have been some overlap there." He moved a bishop and looked up with a twinkle in his eye. "Checkmate. You know you'd play better if you'd concentrated on the game instead of trying to psychoanalyze me."

"Hmph." McCoy snorted. "Shoulda known that last question was too obvious."

"I'll leave it to you to decide if I'm demented, doctor, but I'm not stupid. I figured it out three moves into our first game." Allen smiled mischievously. "If Grey didn't like you, it would've been awfully tempting to mess with you."

McCoy narrowed his eyes. "You mean as opposed to what you've been doing?"

"Not all that much. And you have to admit that asking if I'm in love with Grey was a bit out of bounds." He cracked a crooked grin. "But no hard feelings, eh? Grey and I try to be on good terms with whoever the other's seeing."

"You think I'm her beau?" McCoy grinned despite himself.

Allen shrugged. "If I ever called her 'darlin', even back when I was, I'm pretty sure she would have slugged me."

"Gettin' a pass on that is sort of a southern thing." McCoy admitted. "You really think she likes me?"

"The last time a doctor saved me, she'd practically moved in with him by the time I came out of the coma." Allen looked up with a raised eyebrow. "If you two do get serious, try to stay alive, okay? I really don't want to go through that again."

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AN: Nordic Yankees: 1, Georgia boys: 0. But score may be reversed given Allen's assumptions about Bones and Selina.