Title: Coping
Rating: T
Author: Singing Violin
Series: Star Trek: Voyager
Summary: Chakotay suspects something terrible has happened to the captain, and he wants to help, but when he tries, he only makes things worse. Very dark, but not graphic.
Disclaimer: The Star Trek characters and universe are not mine.
Author's Note (Chapter 8): Again, sorry for being so slow. Real life. Thank you once again to Lia Harkness, who took time from her own busy schedule to read this over for me and give me some useful comments. And, as usual, she hasn't seen the final version, so all errors are mine. And thank you to those continuing to be patient, follow along, and review and/or send me pm's! Your feedback is invigorating!
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Fury rose within Chakotay like wildfire; he could feel every molecule in his body pulsating with angry energy, accelerating to the point at which he wondered if he would sublime and disperse into the sterile air of Sickbay. He gripped the side of the biobed adjacent to where the captain lay; his knuckles turned white as his fists tightened as much as they could, and then somehow further, anchoring themselves against the tide that threatened to carry his hands to Kathryn's shoulders where they could shake some sense into her. He wanted to yell, to scream, to say to the captain, What the hell were you thinking? — but the words died in his throat, killed by the reasoning center of his brain, which apparently was still in some semblance of control.
As he took deep breaths, forcing himself to cool down slightly, it occurred to him that there was an obvious question to ask. He turned to the female doctor, who was in the process of detaching the no-longer-needed monitor from the captain's forehead. "Can you reverse the procedure?"
The captain sat up sharply at the question, knocking the neural device to the floor, and answered before the EMH 1.1 had the chance. "No," she commanded, her voice solid and authoritative. Then she shrank, lying back down by propping herself first on her elbows and then lowering her torso to the flat surface. In an instant, the captain was gone and only the wounded woman remained. "Please, no," she begged weakly, staring up at the dull, grey ceiling.
Chakotay sighed, then looked over at the holographic doctor, who was rising after bending down to retrieve the monitor that had fallen from Kathryn's forehead. She nodded before providing her own answer to his query. "It might be possible, but of course, not against the captain's will."
Making a firm resolution, the commander submitted a verbal request. "Could you leave us alone for a moment, please?"
The blonde doctor nodded. "Indeed. Deactivate emergency medical hologram." As she shimmered out of existence, Chakotay noted how odd the command seemed in her lilting voice.
He then turned his attention to the remaining woman in the room. She was staring despondently away from him, and he almost thought she wasn't going to speak to him, but then she did. "I must have done it for a good reason," she pointed out. "Reversing the procedure is too risky."
Please don't freak out, he wanted to beg her before pleading his case, but he didn't want to seem condescending. "You didn't know how it would affect you; I think it's safe to assume you didn't expect this. Perhaps remembering would be better. Besides, we can't find out what happened, and therefore why it's causing issues, if nobody remembers."
"Maybe the Doctor has it stored somewhere?" she tried unconvincingly.
"Maybe," Chakotay conceded, "and I promise we'll look first. But if there's no record, then I think the only alternative is to reverse the erasure. And then, perhaps, we can work through things and get you better."
She sat up again then and addressed him directly. "Don't you get it? It doesn't matter what happened, especially if it's causing this. The fact is, something did happen, as you yourself figured out and informed me in my ready room — and that means I am not qualified to captain this vessel. If I can't even deal with my own issues, and I can't avoid them in the first place, how am I supposed to keep anyone else — let alone a whole ship full of people — safe? Whatever happened, I let it happen. I made it happen. And as long as I'm in charge, I'm likely to let it happen to someone else under my command. There's no reason for this crew to trust me anymore, and maybe they never should have."
Although he wanted to argue with her, to tell her that's the training talking, to make her see reason and stop blaming herself, he noticed worriedly that now she was shaking hard once again. Chakotay quickly scanned the room, found a medical blanket folded in the corner, jogged a few paces to get it, and jogged back, then draped it over her as he had before. And as earlier, her trembles did not seem to ease. He wished he could do something more...
Perhaps he couldn't, but maybe someone else could. He spoke quickly. "Computer, reactivate emergency medical hologram, female version."
The blonde woman reappeared instantly, and surreptitiously Chakotay monitored the captain's response to see if the female doctor's presence would calm or upset her, but Kathryn seemed not to react at all.
Until the well-meaning doctor, observing the captain's panicked state, pulled out a hypospray, presumably filled with some sort of sedative.
An easy fix, but not a permanent one, he reminded himself as the captain quickly pulled herself into a tight ball under the blanket, reminding Chakotay of what she had described of her previous interactions with the Doctor...and the promise he'd made to her.
Chakotay reached out and grabbed the holographic arm that contained the medicinal delivery device. "Stop," he ordered. "We have to find another way."
"This is the most effective way I can treat her current symptoms," the EMH responded, confused as to why the commander would call for her and then prevent her from treating her patient.
Chakotay looked over at the trembling patient, who wasn't offering an opinion of her own. "I promised her no more hyposprays," he explained, not wanting to elaborate further for fear of violating her privacy; the effect of the drugs on her had been relayed to him in confidence, and while it might be medically relevant, she needed to provide that information herself. All he could say was, "It was the condition under which she was willing to come here."
At that, the female doctor nodded. "I understand. But there is nothing else I know how to do. She must calm down."
Suddenly the commander had an idea. "Thank you, Doctor," he addressed the blonde. "I think I know how to do that."
The EMH 1.1 gestured with her holographic hand for him to continue. "Go ahead," she invited, "do it your way." She seemed slightly annoyed, but hurting the hologram's feelings was the least of his worries.
He moved to the side of the captain's biobed, but kept a few inches distance between them. "Kathryn," he spoke softly, gently. "I need you to listen to my voice and follow my directions. Are you able to do that?"
She nodded hesitantly.
"Good. I need you to count by sevens, starting with one."
"What?" she responded, clearly startled by the odd request, and calming slightly just at the distraction of surprise.
"Just do it," Chakotay insisted.
Kathryn sighed before fluently rattling off integers. "One, eight, fifteen, twenty-two, twenty-nine..."
As she continued, and the numbers became longer and more cumbersome to enunciate, she slowed down, and so too did her breathing. Finally, she seemed to near a semblance of a normal metabolic state; she'd stopped shivering, and had lowered the blanket to her lap, where she gathered its edges absent-mindedly in loose fists. "...one hundred and ninety-seven, two hundred and four..."
"You can probably stop now," he interrupted, and she complied, seeming relieved to abandon such a tedious task. "Are you feeling any better?"
"A little," she admitted, looking up at him uncertainly. "Thank you. How did you know to do that?"
"Anger issues," he explained. "It was a trick my therapist used to keep me from hitting things. Better for my knuckles: they weren't bleeding afterwards. Though I have to admit, it was a slightly more difficult task for me; I was usually exhausted before I hit one hundred." For a moment, he began to panic, wondering if mentioning his particular problem would seem threatening to Kathryn, but luckily she'd fixated on something else he'd said.
"You'd never hit one hundred, if you started with one. You'd go from ninety-nine to one hundred and six," she pointed out.
He chuckled slightly at that, recognizing that she was attempting to focus on just about anything other than what had upset her in the first place. "I started with a different number every time," he explained. "Otherwise I would have memorized them and it would have stopped working."
Suddenly Kathryn seemed to remember where she was, and her cheeks colored. "I'd better get back to my quarters," she told him, "now that we know what's going on. I should also transfer the command codes..."
Chakotay's heart sank in his chest, and then he remembered the other part of their bargain. "Not so fast," he reminded her. "You have not received a medical opinion that you are unfit for duty."
She turned to the EMH 1.1, who was still looking rather miffed. "Doctor?" she prompted hopefully.
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