Path: newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!atl-c03.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!newsread.com!newsstand.newsread.com!POSTED.newshog.newsread.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated Approved: ascem@earthlink.net Organization: Better Living Thru TrekSmut Sender: ascem@earthlink.net Message-ID: From: "lyrastarwatcher" MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list ASCEML@yahoogroups.com; contact ASCEML-owner@yahoogroups.com Subject: NEW TOS: Apollo Physician 5/7 (K/Mc)[NC-17] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 525 Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 05:55:14 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.198.142.218 X-Complaints-To: Abuse Role , We Care X-Trace: newshog.newsread.com 1100325314 209.198.142.218 (Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:55:14 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:55:14 EST Xref: news.earthlink.net alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated:85565 X-Received-Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:56:29 PST (newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net) Title: Apollo Physician [NC-17] part 5/7 Author: Lyrastar url: www.geocities.com/lyrastarwatcher/apollo for easier reading ------ Chapter 8 ---I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.--From the Oath of Hippocrates I got breakfast--or should that be brunch?--and stopped by the lab first anyway. Like I thought, none of the readings were mature enough to be reliable, but Klaen Oyla was there, so I ran over Landry's data card and the preliminary findings with him. Nothing new. Had I had a bit more insight at the time, I would have recognized my stall tactic for what it was. If Klaen hadn't left first, I might have missed visitation hours entirely. But he did so I didn't. I left and made my way back to Emory, ignoring the childish part of my brain that was chanting for car trouble. When I got there, the first thing I saw was again the round window and the cityscape. But I didn't have time to consider it today; LJ squealed and ran straight to me, throwing herself around my legs. When I was eight, I had asked Mom for a dog. And again when I was nine and ten and eleven and every year right up until she died. I didn't know it at the time, but what I sought was that absolute unconditional love and trust that can only come from a pet or a young child. I never did get the dog; I don't know how I had lived this many years without the child. When I picked her up and she flung her arms around my neck and called me "Daddy," I thought my heart would burst. But it didn't, so eventually I tried to put her down. She would have none of it. She clung to my neck, a fact that gave me no little satisfaction to have Joey see--as petty as that sounded--so I carried her back over to the Bed. The status was yellow, still not activated. "How are you?" I tried as a son, having nothing to contribute as healer. Now LJ squirmed to be put down. Dad pushed himself to a sit, then opened his arms to her. He'd never done that for me. At least not that I could remember. In fact, we hadn't touched since my arrival. "Who knows? The damned doctors won't tell me anything." He chose every one of those damned doctors himself. But that was dad for you. "I'm sure they would if they knew anything." He cut me off. "You don't know; you just got here." You just called me, you bastard. No, you made your wife call me. That's what I thought. But what I said was, "I spoke with the chief of pathology. If they knew anything they would tell you. But they don't." "Pathology. Derived from 'pathos'--meaning suffering. A funny place to look for a cure. But probably the smartest." His face was tight. I glanced over at the pain meter. It spiked every time LJ moved against him. His sensory nerves must be ultra- sensitized, but he didn't ask her to move away. In fact he gripped her tighter. The meter spiked again; every touch must hurt. I knew how that felt. How many times had I longed and feared for him to touch me? How many times had I done anything I could think of to get his attention, and then froze when I did? I was too young and too needy to realize what I was doing--or care. I wanted to feel anything of him I could get, even pain. And now he was too old and too needy. He wanted to feel anything he could, even pain. Which of us was sicker? I picked LJ up and sat down on the side of the bed, holding her in my arms, not quite touching him. Only then did I notice Joey in the corner chair. She could still make my heart skip. Not that that was any secret. At least not to me. I made myself look away. I'd come here for my father--ostensibly. I perched on the edge of the bed, watching him play with my daughter. There was so much that needed to be said between us all, but I couldn't find the starting word. When my mother had been alive, I was in her bedroom watching her dress one day. She wasn't shy with me. She stripped and did what she had to do--in the bath, in her closet--and let me follow her there. I said something about her being naked once. She tweaked my ears playfully. "Silly! I've seen you naked more times than I can count. You peed on me while I changed your diapers." "I didn't, mama!" I laughed in protest. "I would never pee on you." "Oh yes you did." "Didn't!" "Did." She picked me up and rolled with me over and over on the bed, laughing until I thought I would barf. Then daddy came in. She stopped and covered herself. "Hollis, go play downstairs." I still felt like I could barf. "Yes ma'am." Later, I had asked her about it. She let Daddy see her naked; she let me see naked, so what was the big deal? "You've both seen me naked, but not in the same way. It doesn't work together." I didn't understand it then, but I knew it was profound. Every one in this room wanted to talk with my dad, but not in the same way, and I was the odd man out. I stood up. "I'll come back later." Jocelyn stood as well. "No. Lenny, if it's me, I can leave her with you--" "No," I barked. LJ looked up. "No," I said more gently, "I'm very glad you came. It's not that. I just need to go. I'll come back tomorrow, Dad." Glancing at the meter pressed against the top of the column, I plucked LJ from the bed. "Let her stay son; she's not hurting anything." That was a direct and damned lie according to the meter, but I set her back on the foot of his bed with a new game to play. "Bet you can't stay on the bed and keep from touching grampa." "Can so," she giggled. "You can't even touch him through the blankets and that's hard 'cause you can't see what's under there." "Can so; I can tell by the lumps." "Prove it." She took a spot beside his legs, not touching him by inches, and gloated happily at me. "I really have to go," I said as I headed for the door. "I'll go with you." Shirley grabbed her pack of sticks and hurried after me into the hall. "Is it as bad as they say?" she asked. I didn't know what they had told her. It didn't matter. "Yes--at least that bad." She rolled a caffeine stick between her fingers. "Do you think we're doing the right thing with the Biobed? New discoveries are being made all the time. I figure if it buys him even a few months--" She bit her lip and stopped mid-sentence. "I don't know," I said honestly. "Biobeds aren't the miracles the public seems to think. There's brain tissue lost every day--every hour that someone is dependent on them. And he'll still have the pain." She inhaled with a sharp whistle. "He didn't tell me that." I shrugged. "He's knows all there is to know about Biobeds. If he requested it, that's his decision." She shuffled. "He didn't; I did. He agreed--for me. I just can't let him go without a fight. But if he's going to be in pain the whole time--" The stick cracked in two between her clenched fingers. One part dropped to the floor. She watched it fall. I watched her watch it. "I don't know what's right anymore; I don't want him to suffer. I don't want him to go. What will I do with out him?" I saw the her eyes well up and a jolt of fear went through me unbidden. I had seen people cry before--next of kin, family, lovers- -probably thousands in my career, usually in hallways and stolen corners, just out of earshot, just like this really. But those times I had always been in my jacket or scrubs--the costume that reminded me of my role and insulated me from the deepest feelings and pain. I had felt for them--I know I had--but I had never felt with them, from their side of the glass. It stunned me utterly how different it could be. Suddenly she was crying hard tears. She threw her arms around my shoulders. Not knowing what else to do, I hugged her back. It didn't feel as awkward as I always had assumed it would. She repeated between her sobs, "What will I do without him?" *********** Chapter 9 ---...to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me;--From the Oath of Hippocrates Fritz covered my patients for me the next three days while I traveled between Emory and the lab. I sat with my dad and Shirley, talking about nothing in particular and watching him get weaker and weaker. I went over the experimental gels every morning. They showed the same neural decay pattern that had eluded medical treatment ever since medicine had become more science than luck. Assuming it ever had. I ran it by my advisor. All he had to say was that he was sorry, and to take all the time off I needed. "I'm not ready for this," I said. "The family never is. Haven't you learned that by now?" he asked. "Or did you think somehow it would be different with you. That your MD gives you some sort of special pull with death?" I shook my head. "No, I just thought we'd have more time." A while back I had attended a woman while she died of the cumulative effects of old age. Three of her surviving children were there keeping a 24 hour vigil. I'd gotten to know them all very well. The eldest daughter, Kendra, was a concert violinist, or had been until arthritis took much of her ability but none of her joy away. She'd had her mother living with her for the past six years and seemed to know what my patient needed better than she did herself. The son, Jackie, was the joker. No one could stay down around him for very long. At 6'4" and no less than 300 pounds, he dwarfed his mother when he took her hand. Still, when they were together, it was clear that he would always be her baby. The other daughter, Mina, lived on the Martian colonies and still taught graduate level Class M xenoichthiology there. She'd been commuting every weekend for the past several months to be with her mother and the fatigue showed. She wouldn't take a leave; it was a specialized field and she couldn't be replaced easily. She said her students were counting on her for their degrees. Nevertheless, the woman kept asking for Sarah, her other daughter. Things had never been easy between them, almost from the time that Sarah could talk. They fought through Sarah's teenage years and even after Sarah moved out. After a failed marriage Sarah had come back to stay at her mother's house. They had fought one last time--about something involving a boyfriend they thought--and Sarah had left in anger. That was over thirty years ago. The mother had sent stargrams; the first few were never answered, the rest had bounced. Using my access to the citizen's medical history databanks--not entirely ethical, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time--I was able to track Sarah down on Avior IV. She flew in immediately, but her mother was already comatose when she arrived. She died two days later. My patient had been 106, frail and tired. It was time for her to go and the other children were relieved that she'd gone in peace. Sarah was the only one to take it hard. "I always thought I would have time to make things right between us," she kept saying. The woman was 106, how much time did you think you had, I had wondered. Now I knew what she meant. I was out of time. ************ Chapter 10 ---I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect --From The Oath of Hippocrates It was late, but it was back to the hospital for me. This time standing at his door was the worst. When I passed through we would work this out one way or the other. I let myself in. Since my last trip, things had changed for the worse. Shirley wore the same jumper as yesterday, now rumpled and sweat-stained at the collar. Her Italian shoes had been tossed in a corner, in favor of unisex hospital slippers; her expensive salon coiffure was crushed in back and awry everywhere else. She fretted with Dad's food tray, mashing everything compulsively with a spoon. I watched from the door as he swallowed one or two bites. Not a drop spilled. She looked like an expert with this already. She glanced toward me briefly. Only a few smudges of makeup remained, and those were all in the wrong places. "Hollis, I'm glad you're here." For the first time since I had known her, I felt sorry for her. And I believed her. Dad wasn't so much sitting as he was positioned up on the Bed. The instrument panel showed that the heartbeat was his own, but that the respiratory muscles were already being supplemented. "Look who's here. It's Hollis." With apparent effort, he turned his head a little toward the door. I walked to the foot of the bed. "Hi Dad." He twisted his face away from the spoon that Shirley was holding in front of his mouth. "Hollis, I need to talk to you." Shirley placed the spoon back in the bowl and wiped an errant lock of hair back off of her face with the back of her free hand. "Good idea. Maybe Hollis can get you to eat." She shoved the food at me. "Try to get him to finish this at least. It has the supplements in it." She went into the bathroom and closed the door. I heard water begin to run. I stared down at the mashed food that I held, and a surge of minor panic ran through me. In eleven years of medicine I had performed or assisted in almost every surgical procedure known to the Federation, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to feed an invalid. Some doctor I was. Think of it like a baby, I told myself, like feeding LJ. I was sure Freud would have something to say about that, but it worked; he took the last two bites before turning his head away. "Hollis, I need to talk to you before your mother comes out. I don't want the Bed." "Sure. I'll call your doctor and let you tell them. They'll change the order." "No. No, I can't do that to your mother." She's not my mother. "She's not strong enough to let go like that. I want her to think that everything that could be done has been--or else she'll always wonder. I want you to take care of it." "Dad, I can't do that. I took the same oath that you did. If you don't want the Bed, fine. Say so but you can't ask me to play god just to spare you the tough decisions. I'm a healer; I can't take a life--or knowingly cause it to be lost." "We can't always offer a cure, but we can always offer relief. You said you wanted to help. I told you how you can. I'm dying; why not spare me a little of the hard part? I love your mother very much. This will hurt her enough." "And me?" What about me? "We're familiar with death, you and I. You can do this." "Dad, I--" I heard the bathroom door open. Shirley looked at the bowl with satisfaction. "I knew he'd eat for you." She started trying to feed him something off of the plate but he pursed his lips and refused. "So what were you two boys talking about anyway?" Shirley asked. "Happiness," he said, before I could get a chance. "I was telling Hollis that when it comes right down to the end, the only thing that matters is being happy and the happiness of the ones you love. "Are you happy, Hollis?" Dad asked. "No. Not yet, but I'm working on it." I twisted the ring on my left hand. Shirley bumped his arm as she tried to maneuver the spoon into his mouth between words. The pain meter spiked again." "Good. You make sure you get there. Everyone has to be happy." I settled down in a chair to stay for the night. At first we talked about LJ; she was safe and happy ground for both of us. We talked about Mom, and about the good times we had had. It's funny how things get slanted. He remembered a lot more good times than I did. Some things we saw differently, but others I had just forgotten. Over his head I watched the readings indicate progressively more and more support of blood pressure and respiration. The Bed was doing most of the work already. Around 2100, Shirley dozed off. Dad asked me to read him the data from above the Bed. I did. We both knew what it meant. The facial muscles were going now; soon he'd be unable to talk. And not much later-- "Leonard." I almost didn't recognize my own name from him. He said it again. "Leonard. The pain. Stop the pain." "I've done everything I can do. You've got to hang on." "The pain--I can't stand the pain." I glanced up. The pain meter was maxed. I put my hand against his chest. It couldn't matter now. His next words were so soft, I had to lean my ear almost to his lips. "Help me." I turned my face away so he couldn't see, but the shaking in my hands betrayed me, I'm sure. What the hell had I learned in all that time in training if I couldn't do a damned thing now? "Son, release me." "I can't do that, Dad." My voice sounded strange to me as if it came from someone else very far away. I felt his heart beating under my palm--his heart, but now beating to the perfectly timed instructions of the Bed. I felt his shoulder, gave it a little squeeze while it was warm and real under my hand as if to imprint the physical fact of his existence into my brain. "The pain--I can't bear the pain." He looked at me for the last time. "I love you, Dad." My voice was not even a whisper. I doubted he could even hear it, but the assurance wasn't meant for him. I took the control panel and deactivated the alarm. With one hand I pushed the control unit in, the other I laid back on his shoulder. I keyed the 'off' button. The alarm warning light flashed in the dim room. In the strobe, I watched him wince with every breath. I pressed the confirmation button, and the flash of the strobe increased. I watched the lines ease away from his face. I took his head between my palms and kissed him. Wherever my father was, he was no longer in the space beneath my hands. Goodbye Dad. Shirley still dozed in the chair by the window. I crossed to her and shook her gently by the shoulder. "Shirley. Shirley, he's going. There was too much nervous system damage; the Bed couldn't take over control of his heart. I tried to help him, but it won't work." She crawled up on the bed and hugged him to her, sobbing softly as I watched the electroencephalogram gradually taper to flat. I reset the Bed control and replaced it and then I called the nurse. "Is he--?" "Yes." She climbed off the bed and came to me, crying softly in my arms. "Thank god. Thank you," she sobbed into my neck. ********* Chapter 11 ---But in both [hospitals and private houses], let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head, (not how can I always do the right thing myself, but) how can I provide for the right thing to always be done? -- Florence Nightingale. I came home to a dark apartment. "Jerry?" I called. There was no answer. I went to the comm and keyed the code Jim had left. He answered from a vid screen, shirtless but wide-awake. "Doc, you look terrible." "Can you come over?" "It's really not a good time. I have a big test tomorrow." "Oh." I paused. "Can you come over anyway?" "Ten minutes." I curled up on my bed, not really thinking about anything. It couldn't have been more than five minutes before he appeared. "He's dead." He lay down next to me and put his arms around me. "I'm sorry." "So am I." I hugged him to me, and he stayed with me through the night. ~end part 5/7 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ASCEM messages are copied to a mailing list. Most recent messages can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEML. NewMessage: