Fic: A Good Man, Ch 11
His little girl is turning five years old.
Leonard can’t believe where the time went. The memories of everything past press against him but he pushes them aside, not wanting to go down that road just yet. His heart’s still raw.
One thing is clear though-he’s going to be there for Joanna’s birthday. For once in his life, Leonard makes careful plans, buys his shuttle tickets in advance, lets his professors know about his upcoming absence, asks a few friends in the medical department to cover his shifts, lets Jim know where he’s heading off to. Jim doesn’t like it, since Leonard seeing Joanna means Leonard seeing Jillian, but Leonard just shrugs. Jim’s gonna have ta get over this grudge he has against a woman he doesn’t know.
Everything is set, he’s ready to go, he’s got his bags packed in advance, he’s counting down the days. He’s even got a bag of gifts (he knows Jill’ gonna disapprove, since Leonard’s spoiling Joanna), neatly boxed and wrapped. It’s like Christmas come early.
Then he gets a message from Starfleet. They’ve cancelled his leave of absence-an emergency situation with the Klingons or somesuch nonsense requires all personnel to report on duty. That includes Leonard. They need every trained medical hand they can get. Never mind that he hasn’t logged all the required hours yet to serve fulltime on a ship, never mind that they haven’t formally done all the paperwork to give him his official status as deputy medical officer. A crisis is a crisis. Leonard’s completed the bare minimum on the mandatory coursework, but even if he didn’t, he’s already got ten thousand hours logged in the ER. He’s going into space. He’s to report for duty in twelve hours. They have no idea how long they’ll be there.
He can’t fucking believe it. He is so angry. The emotion just piles up inside him as he shuts down his computer terminal and stares at it, wanting it to explode.
A year ago, two years ago, he would have gone. He would have grumbled all along the way and muttered a few choice curses about Klingons and Starfleet, but he would have called Jill and explained everything with an apology. “Sorry, but I have to go,” something along those lines. Duty calls, people might need him in space, their lives are on the line, he wants to do everything he can to help.
But he’s not the same man he was, even a month ago. Leonard’s given some thought about his priorities, and ever since he lost everything in that divorce, he’s come to realize exactly how much he’s lost. For the first time in his life, he decides that he’s gonna try and get out of this. It’s incredibly selfish of him, he knows. It makes him feel all conflicted and torn up inside. Duty and every single thing that lies in his heart, his beliefs and values, war against the aching love he has for his daughter. It’s a bloody battle. But he decides all the same that he wants to be there for Joanna’s birthday.
So Leonard does just about everything to get himself out of this without being a deserter or breaking the law. He brings up all sorts of technicalities, reasons why he’s still not qualified. He even brings up his aviaphobia and how he’d be a liability in space, since he’s not used to it yet. For seven hours, he gets brusque replies from admirals who’re too busy preparing for the crisis to deal with him, indifference and veiled disgust from the lower officers who just spit Starfleet protocols right back at him. They wave the fact that this is the crisis situation in his face, and it’s like the goddamn suspension of habeas corpus.
Four hours from Leonard’s departure time, he calls Jillian. Joanna answers the call.
“Hi papa!”
Leonard’s heart squeezes and he can’t fucking breathe.
“Hey honey,” he says gently. He can’t help that his voice is tinged with grief and exhaustion.
“Papa, why’re you sad? Did you get a boo-boo? I got a boo-boo today. I felled over and it hurt but I didn’t cry, cause momma said big girls don’t cry, and I’m a big girl!”
“Yes sir you’re a big girl, and beautiful just like your momma,” he manages to say, gathering a smile for her.
Joanna’s a child, but she knows, with that acute sense that all children have, that something’s wrong.
“Papa? Don’t be sad. It’ll be all right,” she says. Leonard just about chokes.
“Sad? What’re you talkin’ about, sad? Your daddy’s right as rain here. Just some things about work came up, sweetie.”
“When’re you comin’ over, papa? Momma says if I’m real good then we’ll all go to the lake together and eat apple pie. I’m bein’ real good, papa.”
“I’m sure ya are, honey. Can ya get your momma? I need ta talk ta her.”
“Okay!”
Leonard watches the screen as Joanna bounces away and out of the room. He can hear her calling “Momma! Momma, papa wants ta talk ta ya!” There’s a sound of Jill saying somethin’, and the sound of Joanna’s running feet back to the screen.
“She’s comin’, papa. Momma’s a big slowpoke,” she giggled.
“Now don’t you go disrespectin’ your momma, little girl,” he warns.
“Leonard?” Jill sits down to the screen. She’s got that look in her eyes and Leonard knows that she knows what this is about. “Joanna, honey, why don’t you go on outside and play a little, or play with your dolls in the other room. Your daddy and I need to talk.”
“Aw, momma-“
“Now, young lady. You’ll get ta talk with daddy again after I’m done.”
“You listen to your momma now, sweet pea.”
“Okay papa. I love ya lots!”
She bounds out of the room again and Jill waits a while before she turns and faces him.
“I saw the news on the nets,” she says without preamble. “I guess you won’t be comin’ home.”
The way she says it like it isn’t even a question feels like a knife slicing open his aorta.
“I tried, Jill, I swear I did. This thing must be somethin’ serious, ‘cause I can’t get outta it. I talked ta everyone who’d listen-“
“It’s all right, Leonard,” she says tiredly and looks away. “Have you told Joanna yet?”
“No,” he says quietly. “I’ll send the gifts before I go, and I’ll visit when I get back from space. But I don’t know how ta tell her.”
Jillian is silent for a while. Then she looks at him again, tears in her eyes. “Why’d you have to enlist, Leonard?”
He doesn’t understand the question.
“I couldn’t take it, being married to you and always waiting for you to come home from that damn hospital. Why’d you have to go and enlist and put me through the hell of being a soldier’s wife? We’re not even married anymore! Why couldn’t you have just stayed put at the hospital, like you always had?
“I hate you,” she whispers fiercely, tears streaming down her face. “I hate you for doing this to me, to our family. Now I have to wait and see if you’re going to come home from space in one piece, or if the Klingons’ve left your body as a smear out there in the blackness.”
Jill wipes her eyes and tries to stop the tears from falling again. She looks right into his eyes, that clear piercing look that gets to him every time.
“What’m I supposed to say to Joanna if you never return? What’m I supposed to tell her? That you died serving the Federation, protecting Earth? Do you know what they’ll give me if you die?
“They’ll come to my door, two Starfleet representatives. They’ll hand me a bag of your possessions, your Starfleet ID tags, and a flag. And a check, for compensation. There’s rarely ever a funeral-most of the time there aren’t any bodies to be recovered. You’ll have your burial in space,” Jill sobs. “I hate you, Leonard McCoy. I hate you.”
Leonard doesn’t have an answer to that. He hadn’t honestly thought about it. Sure, he had aviaphobia, but that was different. That was mostly based on fears of something unexpected happening. Dying in a battle in space? He didn’t think about that possibility for himself because his job was to prevent the deaths of others.
He sits there, dumb. He has no idea what to say to her. Jill’s crying dies down on its own and when she’s quiet, she looks spent. Leonard wants so badly to reach out and wrap her in his arms, but he can’t. He’s not sure that she’d let him, anyway.
Leonard knew, even during the divorce, that he had hurt Jill in some really deep ways. After the divorce, he kind of assumed that because they were separated, they wouldn’t be able to hurt each other anymore. It was a really stupid assumption because that’s not the way that emotions work. He should have known better than to think that. And now, sitting in front of his computer terminal, three hours and thirty minutes away from launch, he feels all twisted up inside, knowing that he’s still hurting her even when they’re so far apart. He wonders what kind of man he is, that he’d do this so thoughtlessly to the one woman he’s ever loved.
He’s still fumbling for some words when Jill breaks the silence.
“I’ll go get Joanna,” she says, wiping her eyes and putting on a smile. “We’ll have to go to the lake some other time.”
When Joanna comes in, she’s subdued. She knows something bad’s happening-the feeling is radiating off both her parents and it makes her want to curl up into her daddy’s arms and listen to his heartbeat while he strokes her hair and tells her everything’s gonna be all right.
“Daddy, when’re you comin’ home?” She wants her papa now. She doesn’t want all this sadness, she wants Momma and Papa to be happy. She’ll be a good girl, she’ll do anything so that they can be happy.
Leonard explains, as gently as he can, that he can’t come home. He’s gotta go into the sky and fight bad guys, he says. She doesn’t understand. He promised, and she thought she was being a good girl. She wants him to come home, she doesn’t want him to go away. She promises to be a good girl, the best girl, just please papa, come home.
“Please come home, papa. Please come home.”
Jillian takes Joanna into her arms as she starts crying. Leonard says the first thing that comes to his mind. It doesn’t come out as just words, but a quiet song, one of his country favorites.
I’m already there
Take a look around
I’m the sunshine in your hair
I’m the shadow on the ground
I’m the whisper in the wind
I’m your imaginary friend
And I know I’m in your prayers
I’m already there.
Joanna clings to her mother as she listens to her daddy’s voice coming over the line. She’s falling asleep when the song is over, and her mother adjusts her hold on her. Joanna hears her mother say something, a low “come back home safely” and her daddy’s promise, another promise he’s not sure he can keep, but he’ll do his damndest to come back to them.
When the transmission finally ends, he grabs his pack, mechanically heads to the docking area. Everywhere, the graduated cadets are buzzing with excitement over this new mission, eager to get into space. They’re young, they’re energized, they joke about taking on those grunt faces and wouldn’t it be awesome to blow up a Klingon battleship. Some of the older personnel are quieter-this is routine for them. Jim comes to see Leonard off. He’s a little jealous that his friend’s going into space and tells him not to have too much fun. Yeah, sure, Jim, I’ll make sure of that, Leonard says real sarcastically. The irony is just unbearable.
On the ship, Leonard doesn’t think. He doesn’t need to, not really. He does what he’s always done, and does what he does best. Their ship gets right into the middle of the skirmishes, but it never escalates into a full blown fleet to fleet battle. Leonard’s still plenty busy though, fixing up personnel and tending to the wounded.
The little tete-a-tete with the Klingons lasts a month. The engagement is short, by Starfleet standards. The younger ones are disappointed. This isn’t how they thought it would be. Leonard doesn’t care much for their idiocy and spends most of the time to himself. He knows things could’ve been a million times worse. Things’re already bad as it is because he hasn’t been able to contact Joanna the whole time they’ve been going against the Klingons.
When he steps off the shuttle and gets his feet back on solid ground, all he’s thinking about is going back to his room, taking a hot water shower, getting something decent to eat, and calling Joanna. He’s heading off in that direction when he hears something amid the bustle of the dock.
“Papa!”
A little bundle runs to him and he catches his baby girl reflexively and holds her close. Jillian walks over.
Everything that was aching and hurting and numb in him disappears. Jill smiles, though she doesn’t kiss him or hug him. That doesn’t matter. He just stares in amazement at her and his little girl.
And for a brief moment, he pretends they’re a family again.