Path: newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!prodigy.com!prodigy.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 7/7 (K/Mc)[NC-17] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 380 Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 05:55:18 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.198.142.218 X-Complaints-To: Abuse Role , We Care X-Trace: newshog.newsread.com 1100325318 209.198.142.218 (Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:55:18 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:55:18 EST Xref: news.earthlink.net alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated:85564 X-Received-Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:56:26 PST (newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net) Title: Apollo Physician [NC-17] part 7/7 Author: Lyrastar url: www.geocities.com/lyrastarwatcher/apollo for easier reading ----------- Chapter 14 --If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot. -- Final passage of the Oath of Hippocrates It happened about a week after that. I was at home, halfway through my breakfast biscuit and gravy, eating with one hand and scanning journals with the other, when I read the news. Not even big news; the article was written to focus on the plants: "Arcturian Stealth Creeper Trees Yield Secret." They'd been considered a nuisance plant, but now they were in wide demand, much to the delight of the Arcturians. Some enzyme had been extracted from them that could repair and even replace myelin in mammalian nervous systems. Phase I trials were being set up now. I read it three times before I really got it. They'd found a goddamned cure. My chair barked as I pushed back from the table. Jerry called to my back, "Hey, dishes in the bin. I'm a doctor, not your mother." I was already out the door and in the street with no earthly idea what to do. There was a bar around the corner. That seemed like a fitting salute. Besides, they tell me that's what men in pain do. I swiped my arm with the identichip past the reader, and the security beam let me pass. Through the dingy haze I could see only a couple single men scattered around the room, most likely leftovers from last night--it was barely past sun-up. The air was sour with the smell of cheap whiskey and maybe some quiet desperation as well. The land of the utterly lost. I felt right at home. "Whadd'll ya have?" I searched the row of bottles. "No loitering. One drink minimum." Nothing looked familiar. "Mister?" "Jack Daniels, neat." It smelled as foul as I'd remembered it, so I drained it in one gulp. The next one wasn't so bad. Or the next. He found me on the floor in the bathroom. I was just about to get up, I swear. "Whaddaryou doin here?" Jim pulled me up by one arm. I wasn't so much standing as balancing on his strength. "I think that's obvious. The question is, what are you?" "Getting' drunk." I almost fell, but he realigned his grip and kept me upright. "Good; in that case, you're done. Let's go." "I don't need your fucking advice or your fucking help." I yanked my arm back and fell against the wall. "Fuck." I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from having to watch the room spin. It didn't work. He was so quiet, I thought he had gone. When I opened my eyes, he was still there, crouched down in front of me. There were two of him. Two right hands reached for my arm again, but only one came to rest on my skin. "Okay, you don't need me, but I can't stand to see you like this--so do me a favor; come home for me?" I don't remember saying anything, but I let him pull me up. He tossed my arm over his neck and clamped his right arm around my waist. "Who won?" I mumbled. "You did, Doc." He flipped open his communicator. "Energize." "Oh, dammit! No--" My stomach flew up to my throat and down was yellow and quiet and there was no up or sideways at all. Then we were on a transporter pad. A little redhead in a minidress looked at me for a split second. Her hand moved behind the console and my legs dissolved under me and I was again infinite space and speed and then we were in my apartment. I jerked away from Jim and barely made it to the bathroom in time. He found me on the floor in the bathroom. This could get to be a pattern. "I never said anything about a goddamned transporter." I spoke into the bowl--unwilling or unable to raise my head. "Want to talk about it?" "No." I worked on pulling myself up. I could stand--if I didn't get too far from the wall. "Whaddr you doin?" Jim was rummaging through the medicine cabinet. "Looking for your Anti-ol." "I don't keep any. I told you, I don't drink." I staggered toward my bedroom and made it to the bed. "Jerry called you?" He sat down beside me. "They were worried when you didn't show up at the hospital." "I'm not going back. I can't do it." "You have to. That's the only way you can make it right." "You don't even know what 'it' is." "Doesn't matter. Healing is your service to the world. That's how you balance the scales--whatever it is that happened. For every hurt, you have to make a healing." I sat up and grabbed his shoulders, trying to focus on his face, but everything still wove and swam. "Jim, have you ever done anything so bad--so terrible that you couldn't tell anyone? That you had to keep it locked inside of you, even if it tore you apart?" My stomach heaved and I had to lie down. I closed my eyes to steady myself. I closed them just for a minute. I'd asked him some kind of question... Jim leaned down and kissed me. "Remind me to tell you about Tarsus sometime." I think that's what he said. I barely heard him as I fell into sleep. When the sun came streaming in, I awoke with the first and last hangover of my life. I had a medipouch full of stuff, but I didn't take a thing. The Puritans used to flagellate themselves for their sins. They might have had a point. I had twenty-two messages from various and sundry hospital personnel. I didn't answer any; I wrote my department head instead. "Doctor Gretez, this is Leonard H. McCoy. I regret to inform you that...." I closed the channel and called it done. Where does a man go to run away from himself? What space is big enough? It would be nighttime in San Francisco, but I called Jim anyway. He answered right away. "You okay?" "I don't know." "Does your mouth feel like sand, your head like a punching bag, your brain like a wasp's nest and your stomach like a hurricane?" "Pretty much." "Then you're okay." He tossed a little smile at me. "What's up?" "You still got one of those Starfleet applications around?" "No." I stared at him through the comm. "I left it on your dresser." I turned around. Sure enough, there was a chip with the Starfleet logo. I picked it up. "Medical Corp Application" was imprinted on one side. "How much did I tell you?" Except for a series of very unfunny Deltan jokes and a bottle blond with three breasts, I couldn't remember anything after the fourth drink. "Nothing." "Nothing?" "Nothing, except that you weren't going back to the hospital. I didn't ask why." "Then how'd you know?" I waved the chip in front of the screen. Jim gave a rueful snort. "How do you think I got here? "Have you told your family?" he asked. My stomach flipped ominously. I shook my head; that proved to be a very bad idea. I pressed my forehead into my palms and waited for the room to slow down. "I'll miss her something awful, but she has her mother, and she's a damned good woman. She'll be all right; I just can't stay. "Any hints on filling out the application?" "You don't need any. They're desperate for well-trained doctors. In fact, I'll be needing a good ship's surgeon myself in a couple years." He wasn't laughing. "Welcome aboard." "Thanks. I could use a friend right now. I guess I'll see you there next month." "Not unless you want to go the full command route. Medical Corps is just six months of Officer's Basic Training. That's on Bolius X." "Oh. That's a ways." "Yeah." "And you'll be in San Fran?" "Until graduation. Unless I'm on training assignment." I tried to process all this from my fog. "I don't suppose they send cadets to Bolius X very often." He shook his head. I licked my lips. My mouth was impossibly dry and it didn't help. "I was thinking-- I was hoping that this would bring us closer." "It will. We'll both be in space--and it's not that big a galaxy. My Sickbay will be waiting for you." The sick feeling in my stomach surprised me utterly. How had I gotten so close without even trying? The same way I had gotten so far from Joey? It made absolutely no sense at all. I tried again to wet my lips. "So--this is goodbye, for a while?" The words actually hurt. Jim nodded. "Could be quite awhile; I'll be commissioned and posted by the time you finish." "I wasn't planning on another good-bye." "It's not. It's more of an 'I'll meet you up there.' Anyway, I'd rather say it in person. I'm going to miss you too. More than I'd realized. Can you come over?" My head was roaring and my stomach lurched even higher in my throat at the thought of the transporter beam. "I'm not sure I'm up to it." He smiled pure sunshine at me. "Try." The next minute I was in his arms. No one seemed too surprised to see me go. Not the nurses, not Jerry, not my advisor, not Joanna when I told her. "You were always meant for bigger things," she said. I heard my daughter squealing in the background, and it was all I could do to hold my composure. Bigger things than that? "I suppose. Can I come say good-bye?" "I'd-- We'd never forgive you if you didn't." Packing wasn't hard; there wasn't that much to go. Most of what I wanted to take fit on computer chips--plus one finger-painting of a dragon. At least I think it's a dragon. I'll ask her when I talk to her next. I boarded the shuttle to Bolius X with my pathetically small duffel. "OBT?" the driver asked, sizing me up. She had brown hair cropped unfashionably short, but she wore it with pizzazz. "Yeah, does it show already?" "No, just guessing from the lack of luggage and the one-way fare. I know all the regulars. Frankly, you look more like a bookworm than a space cowboy." "Well, now I'm a cowboy." I snapped the words and I tried to wedge my duffel in a bin. "Whatever you say, pardner; they just pay me to drive the bus." I looked across at her. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just having a rough time--sort of starting over." "Aren't we all?" I smiled. The shuttle lurched clearing the clamps taking my stomach with it. "Ohh." "Space sick? Not a promising start on a glorious new career." Her eyes twinkled as we cleared the bay doors and sailed into open space. "I'll be all right." She patted the empty copilot's seat. "Come sit by me. It's a six hour trip, but not so bad when you can follow the viewscreen." Gratefully, I took her up on her offer. "Thank you, ma'am." "Eastern Alabama?" she guessed. "Western Georgia," I corrected. She smiled. "I love the south. I left Columbus eight years ago, thinking it was too small for me, but now-- Tell me, do the whippoorwills still sing through the summer nights?" "I guess. I never had much time to listen." "You should've made time," she said. "You miss it when it's gone. That and the smell of honeysuckle right after it rains. And the accents." She smiled again, this time right at me. "I especially miss the accent." Unsure of what else to say, I changed the subject. "Why six hours? With warp drive--" "Can't warp inside the asteroid belt." "Why not?" She chuckled through her nose and shook her head. "Peach Fuzz, you got a lot to learn if you're going to make it in Starfleet." No kidding. I'd better put starting a stalled spacecraft on the top of that list. I rubbed my chin. "Peach fuzz?" "Georgia, you said?" "Yeah, but it was plums they grew around our town," I said. "Have it your way. Plum it is. You might as well sit back and enjoy the ride, Plum. You're in good hands." I glanced over at her. Her eyes were on me, not the control panel. "You'll get every other weekend off. Think you might be free for one of them?" she asked. "As far as I know, I have nothing else to do." "Good. Neither do I. Neither did I." She smiled and patted my knee, as she set course around Mars and into the great galaxy beyond. ~Lyra May, 2004 ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ASCEM messages are copied to a mailing list. Most recent messages can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEML. NewMessage: