He drummed his fingers irritably against the arm of the chair in the waiting room. Why were all waiting rooms decorated in the very same dull colour palette? And for that matter, why were physicians never on time, inevitably leaving their patients to cool their heels in such an environment, he groused.
No matter how early one arrived, the doctor was inevitably late. How many times had Beverly- He should leave. Just get up and walk through the door. Take the turbolift down and tell Laris… He sighed deeply in frustration. She'd know.
"Admiral Picard?" He stood stiffly and turned to face the intake nurse attempting to wipe the scowl off of his face. Given the woman's reaction, he'd only been moderately successful. Diplomatic Jean-Luc seemed to have deserted him of late.
"Yes?"
"This way." He followed her down a short hallway and paused to allow him to precede her into the room. "Have a seat, please. The doctor will be in shortly." She set a PADD on the desk before exiting.
Several minutes later a young man in his mid-thirties, well-groomed and about Picard's height, entered the examination room and introduced himself as Dr. Kolar. Almost an hour later and Picard had been weighed, scanned, probed, and prodded to within an inch of his life and well past the limit of his patience.
"You will be pleased to know that almost all of your results have come back within the normal range, Admiral."
"Jean-Luc."
"Right, Jean-Luc… Your companion-" Picard snorted loudly, and the doctor eyed him curiously.
"Housekeeper," he breathed out in irritation. Flustered at the unproductive turn and combative tone that the consultation had taken, Kolar attempted to bring them back to the matter at hand and address the obvious reluctance of his patient.
"Alright, housekeeper." Sensing a difficult conversation in the making given the subject matter he needed to broach, Kolar decided to be blunt. "Admiral, Jean-Luc…. I cannot hope to help you if you resist even simple communication."
Feeling chastised, Picard nodded.
"Your housekeeper informed the booking nurse that you are suffering from what she referred to as 'night terrors.'"
"I don't know that I would describe them as such," he said with dignity. "I… I thought that the dream sequences were memories."
"'Were'? You no longer believe that to be the case?"
"No… They are not memories, but as real as…" He fell silent.
"Would you classify them as hallucinations?" Kolar offered, watching his expressions closely now.
He sucked on his teeth, the word somehow offending something deep inside him in that place where he'd been secretly nurturing a hope that it really was Beverly that he'd been spending his nights with, that he was somehow…"
"Yes," he breathed. "Perhaps. But wonderful hallucinations all the same… Well, not all of them," he muttered under his breath.
Kolar skimmed his stylus over the PADD in his hands, making only brief eye contact. He had never met a doctor who had the same empathetic touch as Beverly, the same capacity to connect to her patient on a human level, the same care when delivering difficult news.
He had a brief mental image of her perched on the desk in his ready room, handing him a mug of warm milk doctored with nutmeg, and smiled softly in remembrance. He saw the younger man startle at his soft, out-of-focus look and he huffed out an amused breath. No doubt he was confirming all of the man's conclusions about his delusional state.
"Admiral Picard, Jean-Luc, in order to be as comprehensive as possible, I performed a level 4 neurographic scan. I have isolated an area of concern in your-"
"Temporal lobe," he completed.
"Uh, yes. There's no record of any previously abnormal results, Sir…" he trailed off uncomfortably.
There wouldn't be. Beverly hadn't found anything pointing towards a defect in his temporal lobe when he'd come to see her soon after Q had returned him from his little adventure through time. However, she'd given no guarantee either way about the possibility of a future IS diagnosis.
"I assume you're about to inform me that I am suffering from the onset of Irumodic Syndrome." The younger man hesitated.
"You've already received a diag-"
"Something like that," he smiled wryly. The possibility had been lurking in the back of his mind. He just hadn't wanted to believe it. She was so real. Everything about their time together rang so true. The diagnosis itself was secondary. The devastation was not the inevitable loss of his sanity, the progressive erasure of who and what he was. It was in the loss of hope, however vague and unlikely it had been. She had always teasingly mocked his tendency toward optimism…
He realised that the doctor was now going through the list of symptoms, the progression of the disease, and possible treatment options considering that he was already beyond the very early stages of the disease.
"There have been some recent efforts at developing treatments to alleviate the symptoms of IS and similar neurological diseases. But not enough, never enough. However, there is a clinical trial on Faron II tha-"
"No. Thank you, but no. I appreciate the offer, but I will not spend what little remains of my lucidity far from all that is familiar to me.
"I understand. The best I can offer you is something to temper the hallucinations, a neuro-inhibitor. It should help with the worst of the nightmares." Picard's eyes narrowed and his upper lip curled in dismissive disgust which Kolar pointedly ignored. "In the meantime, I want to set you up with someone in therapeutic-"
"No. Again, thank you..." He could not bring himself to use the man's title. Everything was so very close to the surface, and he was determined to maintain control over his reactions. Dignity was going to be in short supply in his future, and he would hold onto it while he could.
"The inhibitor? Does it… will it block all dreaming?" If all he was to have left before he lost his mind was this illusory pseudo-relationship with her, he'd suffer the nightmares. Hell, he might even agree to endure nightly hauntings by that single-minded, relentless bitch behind the door if it came to that.
"Yes, unfortunately, it's unable to be more precise. It will provide a blanket dampening effect. Walking over to the replicator and keying in a code, Kolar saw the older man shake his head.
"Take it anyway, Admiral Picard… Jean-Luc. The symptoms, like the disease, are degenerative and will only get worse." He nodded his head, wishing himself anywhere but in this office, at this moment.
Well, that was a complete and utter waste of time, he raged as he took the turbolift to the ground floor and stepped out into late afternoon sunshine.
After wandering the streets of San Francisco for hours, he somehow found himself looking up at a familiar sign. His feet, it seemed, had led him to the one place his head had perhaps subconsciously desired to go.
The atmosphere was very subdued given the early hour. The darkness of the place suited his mood perfectly. He hadn't set out to end up here, but now that he had it seemed a very good idea indeed. He might even get drunk. At least that way he could delay the decision about the inhibitor for another night. Surely enough alcohol would keep the nightmares at bay.
He took a seat at the bar and was just about to scan the area for the barkeep when a tumbler appeared at his elbow. He looked up and met Guinan's dark eyes regarding him consideringly. He quirked an eyebrow at her in question.
"You look like you need it," she observed blandly as he sniffed the tumbler's contents.
"Whiskey?" he asked, checking the chronometer on the wall opposite. "At 17h00?"
"You're the one who needs it," she challenged and received a grudging grunt in return.
"You know, you're the second woman in as many weeks to suggest that I look like a man in need of a good stiff drink."
"Smart woman. Anyone I know?"
"Laris, my… housekeeper"
"You don't sound too certain of that, Picard."
"That's because I'm not. Neither is she." He startled himself by laughing.
"What else aren't you certain of?"
"It shows?"
"It does," she stated calmly. "What's wrong?"
"I can't just miss a dear old friend?" he asked too innocently.
"You can, but I don't think that you're here to reminisce."
"I honestly don't know how I ended up here at all," he sighed. "Guinan…. You have been to… many places, seen many things."
"I don't know about 'many,' but sure. I've been around."
"Have…. Have you ever seen…. No. Have you ever experienced something that seemed so real…. And yet… all rational evidence points to the conclusion that…. it is not? Yet, you want so badly for it to be real, so much so that-"
"That you don't know if you've convinced yourself it's real, simply because the alternative is unimaginable?"
"Yes!" he exhaled harshly in relief.
"What are we talking about here, Picard? This isn't about Starfleet-"
"No," he stated emphatically. "This is personal." She contemplated him for a long moment before giving him her answer. Jean-Luc Picard was not a man of confidences, particularly not emotional confidences. She decided to meet his vulnerability with her own.
"When I lost my family, my people" she confided softly. "I came very close to losing myself in the memory of them, many of the few of us who remain did."
"And how did you decide… decide to-"
"To set aside the denial? Rejoin the living?" He nodded. It wasn't exactly what he'd meant but close enough. "I want to tell you that it was all at once, that it was easy, that there was a definite beginning and an end. But the truth of it is, I choose to rejoin the living every day. I don't know if your answers lie in reality or escape, but I do know that often the truth and the way forward are found somewhere in between."
"Somewhere in between…" he muttered as she looked him over once more.
"Now, do you still feel the need to tie one on?"
—-
He'd left 10-Forward under his own steam, which was probably for the best really, but a couple of hours later he was seriously regretting not taking Guinan up on her offer of 'hooch.' While picking at a late dinner he didn't particularly want, he grunted out monosyllabic responses to all of Laris' leading questions. Finally, she asked bluntly, "And?"
"And what ?"
"What did the doctor say, of course."
After a long moment of hesitation, he returned, "Healthy as a horse."
"Really?" she asked dryly, obviously sceptical.
"Blood pressure, reflexes, everything entirely within the normal range."
"And the dreams?"
"I…. He's prescribed a neuro-inhibitor," he evaded.
"I see… And he didn't suggest any further therapy?"
"I just told you…"
"Therapy, counselling, someone to talk to."
"It would seem that I have someone to talk to right here, Laris. Whether I want to or not." Her dark probing eyes refused to release his.
"What happened to her?"
"Who?" he prevaricated.
"Who…" she snorted. "Is this how the doctor's examination went, then?"
"I wish you would stop using that word," he snapped forcefully. "She left. Just disappeared. Cut us all off. Will, Deanna, Geordi…"
"You."
"Yes, me."
He abruptly pushed back his chair, abandoning his meal.
"I think I'll retire early," was all he said as he left the room.
Laris and Zhaban shared a look of mutual concern before Zhaban broke the silence.
"He isn't being completely honest."
"I know," she sighed.
—
Upstairs in his bedroom, he tried to immerse himself in his nightly routine only to find his mind relentlessly churning over the day's events, unable to switch off.
Perhaps he should contact Deanna…. Simply entrusting something as important as this to someone he'd met only today…. He released a harsh breath and unbuttoned his shirt, tugging it from his trousers as he did so. No, he was simply trying to run away from the diagnosis.
He sat on the bed and pulled his pants all the way off, emptying the pockets as he went. He dumped his communicator and the small hypo onto the nightstand and reached into the other pocket. If there was only some way he could be cer-
He'd mindlessly pulled what he assumed was a bit of wrapper or perhaps a tissue out of his pocket. Instead, he sat staring rather stupidly at a folded square of paper.
It took a full minute for him to force himself to smooth out the folds only to see two lines written in a bold slanting scrawl.
Sometimes things are exactly as they seem. Perhaps a second opinion, from a trusted professional.
He felt all of the air leave his lungs as his vision greyed slightly at the edges. Thank God I'm already seated, he thought. Guinan. It could be no one else. He knew better than to question how. That was a fool's errand.
His eyes shifted between the note and the hypospray where he'd dumped it on the nightstand. He'd only been looking for an excuse anyway, he allowed himself to admit. Just one reason to continue to indulge in the fantasy. Was it really fantasy though?
Sometimes things are exactly as they seem.
He didn't deserve her comfort, though. Perhaps the nightmares were his sleeping mind trying to remind him of that fact, exact payment, he rationalised. In the end, it mattered little either way. He simply couldn't bear to give her up. He opened the nightstand drawer and deposited the hypo inside, forcefully pushing it closed.