Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft - Changed, Not Ruined
Carter Schimpff
(( Primary Sickbay, Deck 7 – USS Artemis-A ))
Bancroft: Alright. ::quietly and steady:: The good news is everything appears to be healing cleanly. No sign of infection, no tissue breakdown, nothing here that suggests your body’s lost the argument.
He had barely finished the sentence before he caught the movement at the edge of his vision – Alex turning, not fully, but enough to try and angle his face into view.
It was not the first time she had done that.
Ordinarily, he might have found it faintly amusing, but now, it made something in him sharpen.
Her question, when it came, did not sound like the sort of thing one asked when fishing for reassurance about antibiotics and nerve conduction.
Storm: But that’s just it, isn’t it? My body is in the middle of a fight against itself. And in a situation like that even if I don’t lose the argument, I do lose something, don’t I?
Roy frowned – not at her, but at the sudden, uncomfortable awareness that they were no longer speaking about the same thing.
His mind, efficient and catastrophically literal under pressure, reached first for the medical possibilities.
Tissue loss. Necrosis. Infection. Contracture. Structural compromise. The usual, cheerful catalogue.
Bancroft: I’m not sure I follow, Alex. What is it you think you’re losing? ::glancing back toward the scanner readout:: Because there’s no indication here of necrosis, gangrene, or any deeper tissue failure–
She moved before he’d finished the thought, twisting slightly on the biobed.
Storm: I’m sorry. Can I stop you there, for just a moment?
That arrested him more effectively than if she’d raised her voice.
Roy blinked once, then again, as his mind hurried to catch up with the possibility that he had already taken one wrong step and was perhaps in the process of taking another.
Bancroft: You absolutely can. ::the scanner lowering in his hand:: Of course. Did I– ::a small pause, recalibrating:: Is there a problem?
The question sounded clumsier aloud than it had in his head.
He heard as soon as he said it. And because he did, he also heard what sat underneath it: not alarm, precisely, but uncertainty. The rare and deeply unpleasant sensation of realizing he had excellent data and possibly the wrong language.
Then she said his name.
Not “Doctor.”
Not “Lieutenant.”
Not even “Bancroft,” which, in another life, might have sounded easier to survive.
Roy.
That, more than anything else, told him where they were now.
Storm: Roy, would you come around in front of me, so I can see your face as you explain this to me?
For one absurd, flickering second, he was struck by the thought that this was what it must feel like to be very politely summoned to judgment.
Roy set the scanner down without looking at where he placed it and moved, quietly, around the biobed until he stood within her line of sight. He did not crowd her. Did not hover. Just placed himself where she had asked him to be, his posture unconsciously softening as he did.
Whatever remained of Dr. Bancroft’s clinical cadence loosened another notch.
Then came the rest of it.
Storm: Please don’t talk to me like a doctor.
Her eyes closed briefly, then opened again.
Storm: I know I need one, but I need to hear this from a friend.
Roy stood very still for a moment.
Not because he didn’t know what to say, but because he knew – instantly and with uncomfortable clarity – that what he said next mattered in an altogether different way than anything he had said thus far.
Of course they were friends. Objectively, plainly, increasingly so. That was not the problem.
The problem was that some quieter, less manageable part of him had begun, some time ago, to resent the sufficiency of that word when applied to the two of them.
That was information he neither needed nor wanted in this moment. And, ethically speaking, it changed nothing.
What mattered was not what he felt, but what he did with it.
Alex was here as his patient. Vulnerable, hurting, asking not for less honesty, but for a different kind of it. If Roy Bancroft was going to deserve the trust she had just placed in him, then the answer was not distance, and it certainly was not indulgence.
It was care. Care, and discipline, and knowing the difference.
Quietly, without hurry, Roy stepped around the biobed until he stood within her line of sight. Whatever remained of Dr. Bancroft’s polished clinical persona softened – not vanished, but loosened, enough to let something more plainly human through. He pulled a rolling stool over and sat down on it, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.
Bancroft: Alright. Right now, I’m just Roy – not the man with the scanner. ::a beat:: Yes. Plainly. You’re going to lose something no matter what.
No euphemism. No evasion. Just the simple dignity of telling her the truth cleanly and plainly.
Bancroft: Your back is going to heal, Alex. But it isn’t going to go back to the way it was before. Some of the scarring will stay. Some of the sensation may take time to come back fully – and some of it may come back differently than it was before.
He let that sit between them for a moment, rather than rushing to soften it.
Bancroft: And before you ask – yes, that’s allowed to upset you.
Storm: Response
Roy’s expression shifted – not into pity, which would have been unbearable for both of them, nor into the polished neutrality of a physician trying to manage a reaction – but into something far more real, far more difficult to fake: recognition.
Bancroft: No. I mean that, Alex. You’re allowed to hate this. You’re allowed to be angry about it. You’re allowed to think it’s unfair and cruel and ::searching for words:: deeply inconvenient. ::a slight exhale:: That isn’t vanity – that’s grief.
Storm: Response
He moved then, just a bit – straightening so that his eyes met the level of hers.
Bancroft: I want you to listen – really listen – to what I’m about to say. ‘Changed’ is not the same thing as ‘ruined.’ You do not have to love the scars. You do not have to find them meaningful or noble or beautiful. You do not have to make peace with them on anyone else’s schedule. ::beat:: But you do need to know that they do not make you less whole.
Storm: Response
TAG/TBC!
===
Lieutenant JG Roy Bancroft
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1