actual text from another actual book
"But he had come to know T'Pol, at least, just a bit. She was everything a woman ought to be--graceful in her every movement, incredibly intelligent, courteous, refined, dignified...Come to think of it, Reed told himself honestly, everything that I wish I could be all the time. Except female."
"As he spoke, Cutler left Phlox's side and moved toward the group, hypos in one hand.
For an instant, Reed looked distinctly uneasy; then he steadied himself, and said easily to Hoshi, "Ladies first."
"Ladies first?" Hoshi looked at him quizzically. "What is that, some sort of British expression?"
"I'm not sure," Reed said. "My grandmother was always saying it so she could be first in the queue."
[...]
"With your permission, sir," Reed said, suddenly military-formal. "I should like to take care of a personal matter. It will only take a moment--"
"Take all the time you need," Archer said gently.
"--at which point I shall return and render whatever assistance I can to Ensign Cutler."
"Go," Archer told him.
For a moment after Reed left, the captain watched the empty doorway; the he sighed as he went to the companel on the wall and pressed the control for shipwide address.
Trip Tucker was sitting on the edge of his bunk, still rubbing his eyes, when the door buzzer sounded. He had been dreaming of the Keys, of diving in the ocean only to suddenly realize he'd been under water for hours without his scuba gear, when the captain's shipwide announcement had wakened him.
"Come," he groaned, then coughed to try to clear the sleep from his voice.
Malcolm Reed entered and stood in the open doorway, in uniform, hair neatly groomed.
"Malcolm," Trip said. "You're looking entirely too sheveled."
Reed drew his head back, confused; he was deeply preoccupied, and responded with no humor whatsoever. "Entirely too...what?"
"Sheveled. As opposed to dis-." Trip paused to squint at him more closely. "How the hell did you get out of bed and into uniform so fast?"
"Oh." Reed stepped forward, permitting the door to close behind him. "I've...I've been up for a while. That's what I've come to talk to you about, Commander."
"Well, can it wait? There's this little matter of the captain ordering everyone to sickbay...." Trip forced himself onto his feet, pulled a uniform off the nearest rung, and began pulling it on.
"Yes, I know. I was just there." Reed paused, then launched into a speech with swift urgency. "Look, Trip, I know that when we were trapped on the shuttlepod and we thought the Enterprise was destroyed and that we were goners, you overheard me making a will...."
"Oh, for God's sake," Trip said. "Is that what this is all about? There you go being premature again...." He hopped on one foot, trying to pull on a boot. "Sometimes, Lieutenant, you can be a bit--overly dramatic."
Reed's lean face composed itself into somber, dignified lines. "I'm not being dramatic," he said evenly. "Those of us who went down onto the planet's surface were exposed more than those who remained on the ship. I need for you to know--"
One boot on, Tucker stopped hopping. "Are you sure about that?"
"Yes. And I want to speak to you about my will."
"Well, why don't you just make a tape? Why tell me?" Tucker pulled the other boot on, then straightened to face his friend.
"Because I may not have time."
"Malcolm..." Trip groaned, in his will you please quit being so dramatic tone.
"Doctor Phlox is in a coma," Reed said. "I'll make a tape, if there's time, but I just wanted to make sure I talked to you first."
"Ah, hell." Trip sat, deflated. "I'm sorry to hear that. Are they sure it's the--"
"It's the radiation, yes." Reed paused. "I want you to have everything."
"What?"
"You heard me. Everything."
"But...but what happened to all those girlfriends?" Trip asked. Reed's generosity left him feeling secretly embarrassed by the implication of affection. "All the women? Your parents? Your sister?" He rose. "Look, I've got to report to sickbay. Let's talk about this later...."
"There might not be a later," Reed intoned, as Tucker walked past him and out the door.
"Look," Trip said, as Reed caught up with him quickly in the corridor, which was already filled with bleary-eyed personnel headed for the turbolift. "Keep your will the way it was. After all, I've been exposed to the radiation, too." He kept his tone light, matter-of-fact. "So if we're both goners, there's no point in your going to the trouble."
Reed ignored him. "There's some property in the Caymans. Quite a large agricultural spread in Argentina. And a flat in Knightsbridge..."
Trip felt a muscle in his jaw begin to twitch. He was tired, and although the news about Phlox was upsetting, he could not take any talk of death seriously. They would find a solution, just as they'd found a solution for every other life-threatening dilemma they'd faced since Enterprise had first launched. An innate optimist, Trip simply could not conceive of the crew succumbing to the malady that had claimed the Oanis. "Knock it off, Lieutenant," he said shortly. "We've got better things to do right now than worry about your read-estate holdings."
As they stepped onto the turbolift, crowded with groggy officers, Reed stepped beside him. Sotto voce, in a voice barely loud enough for the others to hear--but loud enough to embarrass Trip--Reed said, "I'm quite serious Commander Tucker. I've never been one for making friends, but I've come to consider you--"
"Knock it off," Tucker repeated, this time with more irritation in his tone than he actually felt. Now, in front of other crewmates, was not the time to discuss their growing friendship--and again, he felt sure that Reed was overreacting. Staring straight ahead at the turbolift doors, he said, "That's an order, Lieutenant."
Reed broke off in midsentence. He said not another word--reason enough for Trip to glance sidewise at him and see the stony expression that had spread across his features.
Damn, Trip thought. He had not meant to hurt Malcolm's feelings--but he also was in no mood to indulge thoughts of death. If Enterprise really was facing a crisis, then it was better that they all be a little angry than resigned or full of fear.
They made their way in silence all the way to sickbay."
"Beside him, Reed pressed down on the hypo, and, at the same time, let go a little groan; this time, Trip couldn't help himself. As another crewmember stepped up to receive an injection from him, one corner of his mouth quirked upward in a miniscule grin as he murmured out of the other corner, on the side toward Reed, "Careful. Don't want to scare the patients. Of course, one look at that ugly mug of yours and--"
"Help me," Reed said.
He enunciated it quite clearly, in that formal British accent of his, without any sort of inflection at all; Trip heard no fear in his tone, no dismay, no teasing--which is what he at first thought it was.
But it was no joke. The male ensign who stood in front of Reed cried out.
"Hey! Watch that hypo!"
Trip Tucker became immediately aware, in his peripheral vision, of Reed lurching backward, against the counter. He turned.
"Malcolm?"
Reed's eyes were wide and unfocused, as though he were staring at something just past the bulkhead across from him. Beneath the five-o'clock shadow of beard on his chin and cheeks, his skin had grown deathly pale.
Without looking at Tucker, Reed began to slide down, back against the counter.
On pure instinct, Tucker dropped the readied hypo in his hand--it went clattering across the metal deck--turned, and caught his friend before Reed sagged all the way to the floor. Cutler turned, and gave a short cry as well; the crewmembers standing in a line scattered in their efforts to move out of the way.
"You're all right, buddy," Trip said, which struck him as a perfectly ridiculous thing to say. Reed was clearly anything but: by this time, his eyes were rolling back in his head, and his mouth was working, but now only the very faintest sound came out.
Trip leaned his head down to listen.
"...what I said...remember..."
"Don't worry, Malcolm," Trip said. "I won't forget." As he spoke, Reed's eyes closed, and he let go a long, sighing breath, then went perfectly limp in Trip's arms.
Cutler rushed to him and did a quick scan.
"He's fainted," she said. "He's fine."
"What?" Trip asked, suddenly disgusted with himself for thinking his friend was dying."
"He stepped up to Trip, expecting the engineer to ask immediately why the ship had gone into warp.
But Tucker seemed not even to notice something that normally would have him chomping to get to his post in order to nurse his precious warp engines. Instead, he looked up at the captain with a gaze that seemed slightly lost.
"Trip," Archer said softly, reaching out to catch his chief engineer's upper arm. "You okay?"
Physically, Tucker looked fine--not even tired, even though he'd jumped out of bed in the middle of the night then volunteered to help Cutler inoculate the crew against radiation sickness. That was Trip: always ready for action, always the last one still on his feet. But Trip's expression was haunted.
"Malcolm," he said, and even before he turned to look at Cutler behind him, Archer felt dread settle into the pit of his stomach, then spread slowly outward over the rest of him."
""I just feel like such a damned heel," Trip said finally, the first normal Trip-sounding noise he'd made since they were in sickbay.
"Why should you feel like a heel? Cutler said you caught Malcolm before he hit the deck."
"Yeah, but he tried..." Trip broke off, his voice suspiciously wavering; he coughed, then threw back his head and took a stiff belt of bourbon. Then he sighed deeply, and the resulting alcohol breeze made Archer wince ever so slightly. "Aw, heck, he tried to tell me he was changing his will and leaving everything to me. Then he fainted in sickbay, and I made fun of him....""
"Malcolm Reed opened his eyes, feeling very much as he had the morning after he'd nicked a bottle of gin from his parents' liquor cabinet and awakened with his first hangover.
Leering over him was the face of Commander Trip Tucker.
Reed groaned. "I knew it," he muttered, and put a hand to his forehead. "I've died and gone to hell."
"No such luck, you little devil," Tucker drawled, in the Southern accent that evoked the image in Reed's head of vowels and consonants slithering down a slide coated in oil. Tucker was grinning broadly, apparently enormously pleased. It took Reed some time, in his weakened state, to realize that Tucker was actually pleased to see him. "I'm afraid you get to stick around with us a little while longer. And that land in Argentina is still safe and in the family name.""
""How much of a current does that thing have?"
"Not that much, in human terms," Reed said.
Trip clicked his tongue in contradiction. "Enough to curl your hair," he told the lieutenant, who instinctively ran a hand through his short, straight locks."
--all excerpts of adorable from Surak's Soul, J.M. Dillard
"As he spoke, Cutler left Phlox's side and moved toward the group, hypos in one hand.
For an instant, Reed looked distinctly uneasy; then he steadied himself, and said easily to Hoshi, "Ladies first."
"Ladies first?" Hoshi looked at him quizzically. "What is that, some sort of British expression?"
"I'm not sure," Reed said. "My grandmother was always saying it so she could be first in the queue."
[...]
"With your permission, sir," Reed said, suddenly military-formal. "I should like to take care of a personal matter. It will only take a moment--"
"Take all the time you need," Archer said gently.
"--at which point I shall return and render whatever assistance I can to Ensign Cutler."
"Go," Archer told him.
For a moment after Reed left, the captain watched the empty doorway; the he sighed as he went to the companel on the wall and pressed the control for shipwide address.
Trip Tucker was sitting on the edge of his bunk, still rubbing his eyes, when the door buzzer sounded. He had been dreaming of the Keys, of diving in the ocean only to suddenly realize he'd been under water for hours without his scuba gear, when the captain's shipwide announcement had wakened him.
"Come," he groaned, then coughed to try to clear the sleep from his voice.
Malcolm Reed entered and stood in the open doorway, in uniform, hair neatly groomed.
"Malcolm," Trip said. "You're looking entirely too sheveled."
Reed drew his head back, confused; he was deeply preoccupied, and responded with no humor whatsoever. "Entirely too...what?"
"Sheveled. As opposed to dis-." Trip paused to squint at him more closely. "How the hell did you get out of bed and into uniform so fast?"
"Oh." Reed stepped forward, permitting the door to close behind him. "I've...I've been up for a while. That's what I've come to talk to you about, Commander."
"Well, can it wait? There's this little matter of the captain ordering everyone to sickbay...." Trip forced himself onto his feet, pulled a uniform off the nearest rung, and began pulling it on.
"Yes, I know. I was just there." Reed paused, then launched into a speech with swift urgency. "Look, Trip, I know that when we were trapped on the shuttlepod and we thought the Enterprise was destroyed and that we were goners, you overheard me making a will...."
"Oh, for God's sake," Trip said. "Is that what this is all about? There you go being premature again...." He hopped on one foot, trying to pull on a boot. "Sometimes, Lieutenant, you can be a bit--overly dramatic."
Reed's lean face composed itself into somber, dignified lines. "I'm not being dramatic," he said evenly. "Those of us who went down onto the planet's surface were exposed more than those who remained on the ship. I need for you to know--"
One boot on, Tucker stopped hopping. "Are you sure about that?"
"Yes. And I want to speak to you about my will."
"Well, why don't you just make a tape? Why tell me?" Tucker pulled the other boot on, then straightened to face his friend.
"Because I may not have time."
"Malcolm..." Trip groaned, in his will you please quit being so dramatic tone.
"Doctor Phlox is in a coma," Reed said. "I'll make a tape, if there's time, but I just wanted to make sure I talked to you first."
"Ah, hell." Trip sat, deflated. "I'm sorry to hear that. Are they sure it's the--"
"It's the radiation, yes." Reed paused. "I want you to have everything."
"What?"
"You heard me. Everything."
"But...but what happened to all those girlfriends?" Trip asked. Reed's generosity left him feeling secretly embarrassed by the implication of affection. "All the women? Your parents? Your sister?" He rose. "Look, I've got to report to sickbay. Let's talk about this later...."
"There might not be a later," Reed intoned, as Tucker walked past him and out the door.
"Look," Trip said, as Reed caught up with him quickly in the corridor, which was already filled with bleary-eyed personnel headed for the turbolift. "Keep your will the way it was. After all, I've been exposed to the radiation, too." He kept his tone light, matter-of-fact. "So if we're both goners, there's no point in your going to the trouble."
Reed ignored him. "There's some property in the Caymans. Quite a large agricultural spread in Argentina. And a flat in Knightsbridge..."
Trip felt a muscle in his jaw begin to twitch. He was tired, and although the news about Phlox was upsetting, he could not take any talk of death seriously. They would find a solution, just as they'd found a solution for every other life-threatening dilemma they'd faced since Enterprise had first launched. An innate optimist, Trip simply could not conceive of the crew succumbing to the malady that had claimed the Oanis. "Knock it off, Lieutenant," he said shortly. "We've got better things to do right now than worry about your read-estate holdings."
As they stepped onto the turbolift, crowded with groggy officers, Reed stepped beside him. Sotto voce, in a voice barely loud enough for the others to hear--but loud enough to embarrass Trip--Reed said, "I'm quite serious Commander Tucker. I've never been one for making friends, but I've come to consider you--"
"Knock it off," Tucker repeated, this time with more irritation in his tone than he actually felt. Now, in front of other crewmates, was not the time to discuss their growing friendship--and again, he felt sure that Reed was overreacting. Staring straight ahead at the turbolift doors, he said, "That's an order, Lieutenant."
Reed broke off in midsentence. He said not another word--reason enough for Trip to glance sidewise at him and see the stony expression that had spread across his features.
Damn, Trip thought. He had not meant to hurt Malcolm's feelings--but he also was in no mood to indulge thoughts of death. If Enterprise really was facing a crisis, then it was better that they all be a little angry than resigned or full of fear.
They made their way in silence all the way to sickbay."
"Beside him, Reed pressed down on the hypo, and, at the same time, let go a little groan; this time, Trip couldn't help himself. As another crewmember stepped up to receive an injection from him, one corner of his mouth quirked upward in a miniscule grin as he murmured out of the other corner, on the side toward Reed, "Careful. Don't want to scare the patients. Of course, one look at that ugly mug of yours and--"
"Help me," Reed said.
He enunciated it quite clearly, in that formal British accent of his, without any sort of inflection at all; Trip heard no fear in his tone, no dismay, no teasing--which is what he at first thought it was.
But it was no joke. The male ensign who stood in front of Reed cried out.
"Hey! Watch that hypo!"
Trip Tucker became immediately aware, in his peripheral vision, of Reed lurching backward, against the counter. He turned.
"Malcolm?"
Reed's eyes were wide and unfocused, as though he were staring at something just past the bulkhead across from him. Beneath the five-o'clock shadow of beard on his chin and cheeks, his skin had grown deathly pale.
Without looking at Tucker, Reed began to slide down, back against the counter.
On pure instinct, Tucker dropped the readied hypo in his hand--it went clattering across the metal deck--turned, and caught his friend before Reed sagged all the way to the floor. Cutler turned, and gave a short cry as well; the crewmembers standing in a line scattered in their efforts to move out of the way.
"You're all right, buddy," Trip said, which struck him as a perfectly ridiculous thing to say. Reed was clearly anything but: by this time, his eyes were rolling back in his head, and his mouth was working, but now only the very faintest sound came out.
Trip leaned his head down to listen.
"...what I said...remember..."
"Don't worry, Malcolm," Trip said. "I won't forget." As he spoke, Reed's eyes closed, and he let go a long, sighing breath, then went perfectly limp in Trip's arms.
Cutler rushed to him and did a quick scan.
"He's fainted," she said. "He's fine."
"What?" Trip asked, suddenly disgusted with himself for thinking his friend was dying."
"He stepped up to Trip, expecting the engineer to ask immediately why the ship had gone into warp.
But Tucker seemed not even to notice something that normally would have him chomping to get to his post in order to nurse his precious warp engines. Instead, he looked up at the captain with a gaze that seemed slightly lost.
"Trip," Archer said softly, reaching out to catch his chief engineer's upper arm. "You okay?"
Physically, Tucker looked fine--not even tired, even though he'd jumped out of bed in the middle of the night then volunteered to help Cutler inoculate the crew against radiation sickness. That was Trip: always ready for action, always the last one still on his feet. But Trip's expression was haunted.
"Malcolm," he said, and even before he turned to look at Cutler behind him, Archer felt dread settle into the pit of his stomach, then spread slowly outward over the rest of him."
""I just feel like such a damned heel," Trip said finally, the first normal Trip-sounding noise he'd made since they were in sickbay.
"Why should you feel like a heel? Cutler said you caught Malcolm before he hit the deck."
"Yeah, but he tried..." Trip broke off, his voice suspiciously wavering; he coughed, then threw back his head and took a stiff belt of bourbon. Then he sighed deeply, and the resulting alcohol breeze made Archer wince ever so slightly. "Aw, heck, he tried to tell me he was changing his will and leaving everything to me. Then he fainted in sickbay, and I made fun of him....""
"Malcolm Reed opened his eyes, feeling very much as he had the morning after he'd nicked a bottle of gin from his parents' liquor cabinet and awakened with his first hangover.
Leering over him was the face of Commander Trip Tucker.
Reed groaned. "I knew it," he muttered, and put a hand to his forehead. "I've died and gone to hell."
"No such luck, you little devil," Tucker drawled, in the Southern accent that evoked the image in Reed's head of vowels and consonants slithering down a slide coated in oil. Tucker was grinning broadly, apparently enormously pleased. It took Reed some time, in his weakened state, to realize that Tucker was actually pleased to see him. "I'm afraid you get to stick around with us a little while longer. And that land in Argentina is still safe and in the family name.""
""How much of a current does that thing have?"
"Not that much, in human terms," Reed said.
Trip clicked his tongue in contradiction. "Enough to curl your hair," he told the lieutenant, who instinctively ran a hand through his short, straight locks."
--all excerpts of adorable from Surak's Soul, J.M. Dillard