Work Text:
It’s important to clean medical equipment.
Twice.
Throughout sickbay.
So yet another sanitizer tool is hard in Joseph’s hand, pointed to disinfect yet another microscope, when the door opens and Pelia doesn’t quite dart through but doesn’t quite sweep through, either.
Curly hair bounces as she stops.
“I am in need of medical attention.” Her gaze alights on Joseph, which is novel. Usually, Pelia seems more interested in the supply cabinets than anything else in sickbay.
“How interesting.” Joseph sets down his sanitizer tool next to the microscope, his steps toward Pelia practiced with medical concern just in case she’s telling the truth. “You seem fine but, every time you’ve come in here, something from my supply cabinets goes missing.”
Her hand waves, neither dismissive nor an admission of guilt from a woman who is neither old nor young, strong nor frail — a living embodiment of a forever transition in the form of a unique accent and a discerning yet exuberant mind.
She’s a medical marvel, even for her species.
She’s also puckishly charming and if Joseph loses another medical tricorder to her thievery, he’ll have her quarters searched to get his things back.
“What are your symptoms?” Joseph can play along with Pelia’s excuse for being here. Sickbay is quiet, so he’ll keep watch over his equipment. Besides, he’s had no one to talk to for hours, and New Year’s Eve shouldn’t be so damn —
The lock in his chest rattles.
Never mind that.
“Acute hypothermia.” Pelia eases herself onto a biobed, sits in a way that’s both impish and prim. “And also hot flashes.”
The medical scanner whirs as Joseph observes Pelia’s completely normal readings. “Tell me more.”
“Well, you see,” her lean toward him is guileless, yet conspiratorial, “it’s New Year’s Eve and you’re here when you could close up shop and be called to duty if needed.”
“Yes, I know.” Joseph taps to log the visit — patient is in perfect health. “Shouldn’t you be at a party somewhere on the ship?”
The sound that comes from Pelia is both indignation and resignation. “I’ve seen thousands of New Years. Why should this one be so special? So important? Is there something about this new year that I should know, Dr. Joseph M’Benga? Or are you going to try to pretend that your clean equipment needs more cleaning when you — a doctor — choose to hide out here in order to let your own wound fester without giving it proper attention?”
Joseph’s head turns away from Pelia, his gaze on the medical transporter, the controls that brought his daughter back again and again until they didn’t anymore. Then he looks Pelia in the eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, but you do. You’re a doctor, so you know all about birth and death and the time in between spent prolonging the inevitable. Living and loving is who we are as sentient creatures, Dr. Joseph M’Benga, but you don’t talk about people you loved and lost.” Pelia’s face is both placid and a stormcloud, pulling Joseph in deeper. “And I’ve met too many souls like you who hide this — this hot and cold of grief — in a way that they think is protective but is in fact harmful, deeply harmful. Take it from an engineer — you can engineer a starship or even some of your fancy biomedical devices. But attempting to engineer your own thoughts to avoid what makes you uncomfortable is a sure way to break any machine, even one as complicated as the human mind.”
It’s as if Pelia’s advice is an old-fashioned scalpel cracking into Joseph’s chest, exposing every fissure, every raw part of him that doesn’t speak of his daughter Rukiya, of his wife Debra, their departures from his life a dull drumbeat of loss that becomes piercing, needle-sharp, on holidays or birthdays or when he has something he wants to tell them.
And he wants to tell them that Pelia should mind her own business, let him keep the lock on his chest where Rukiya and Debra stay close to his heart but not his mind because if Joseph stops to think about what he’s lost, if he lets himself go down into that pit of grief even though Rukiya is technically alive, he might never emerge.
“I would think,” Joseph’s tone is harder than he intends it to be, “that someone of your longevity would recognize that there is no right or wrong way to mourn.”
“Oh, but my dear doctor who is a terrible patient,” Pelia’s eyes alight with wisdom, yet darken with sorrow, “there is a right way to mourn. It’s individual, but it does exist for each person and each situation. And your way — this not talking about the people you love, this avoiding your friends when you worry that your grief will be too much for them, this shutting out memories as if you might break something you can’t heal if you let your loved ones out — this is not the right way for you.”
His heart palpitations are so rapid that they would trip an alarm if Joseph were on a biobed.
Lanthanites aren’t psychic, damnit. They’ve just seen so much that it can seem as if they are. Besides, Pelia has probably read his service record. The deaths are logged there.
And she’s probably watched him — along with everyone else — since she’s been onboard. Lanthanites observe. El-Aurians listen. Getting members of those two long-lived species together could be an exercise in empathy a Betazoid might envy.
But he’s distracting himself.
Again.
Because a doctor’s hands aren’t supposed to shake and a doctor’s voice isn’t supposed to break as the lock on his chest trembles and shatters. “I only got ten midnights — ten New Year’s Eves — with my daughter.”
And a doctor isn’t supposed to crumple forward, let his patient hug him, hold him, comfort him, hands that aren’t young or old patting his back, a voice in his ear that’s instantly recognizable despite staying long-hidden: “So this New Year’s Eve, you’ll tell me about her. And about your wife. We’ll talk and you won’t be healed — we both know this — but you will feel better than you did before.”
He will. Because Pelia didn’t come to sickbay to steal anything this time. She came to end one of her many years and begin another by helping Joseph find something he didn’t know he needed to reclaim.
“Why are you doing this for me?” Not being able to see Pelia’s face helps give Joseph the courage to ask. “It’s a great kindness, but you barely know me.”
“Because, my dear doctor who is now my friend,” Pelia’s pat to Joseph’s back is firm, yet soft, “that is what life is all about.”