One Thousand And Ninety-Six Days In The Making Of A Man

When Bones started at the Academy, he didn’t think it would change the person he was. He was older than the rest of the cadets, and he’d already undergone most of the so-called rites of passage that higher learning brought when he’d gone through his original medical training. Other than that, there’d been the small matter of having been married, having a child and then the divorce. Bones thought he was already the finished article. Privately, and occasionally in front of very good friends, he admits that this is one of those very few things that he was ever wrong about.

Bones decided not to room with Jim. He liked the younger man plenty, but he didn't think he would still feel like that if he had to live with him, plus, if Bones were honest with himself, he was scared of slowing Jim down. It was Jim's first time out of Iowa and Bones thought he deserved a free rein, and he didn't want to be the weight holding him back. He'd rather be a friend than a millstone.

He moved into one of the dorms that seemed to be almost entirely of medical students. This was apparently accidental, but it probably had something to do with no one else being able to stand med students. Leonard himself hadn't liked them when he was one and he wasn't looking forward to it now.

They were a strange mix. Some of them were only here for three months doing their electives, others were doing their whole medical training here and then there were the older guys like him who'd got their qualifications and were now going to specialise in space medicine.

Despite his worries, it was relatively quiet for the first month or so, but Bones didn't kid himself that it would last. Sure enough, the new medics soon figured out that it was possible to party all night and half of the day and still pass first year.

Bones tried to be understanding. It was like he'd thought about Jim Kirk. These kids were just enjoying not being tied to their mother's apron strings for the first time ever; they were going to cut loose.

He managed to maintain this calm even after the disaster that was Christmas. He'd taken off as soon as he could to go home and see his folks before Christmas. On Christmas Day he went to Jocelyn’s, because it wasn't his little Jo-bean's fault that her Mommy and Daddy couldn't see eye to eye any more or that her Daddy was planning to run away to space because he couldn't stand the idea of being on the same planet as her Mommy without being with her.

He was tidily dressed and arrived in time to see Joanne opening her presents. He spent most of the five hours there running a medical eye over Joanne, was she thriving like she was supposed to, asking Joanne about her nursery and generally driving Jocelyn mad by interrogating their daughter.

Once he'd calmed down and realised that the almost weekly vidphone calls hadn't been lying and Joanne was okay, it all went off without a hitch, up until he tried to excuse himself to go back to his hotel after dinner.

"You could stay, you know, we have a spare room. I think Joanne would like that." He almost had to steady himself against the door post; Jocelyn could calmly offer him a room like he was an old friend and not her ex-husband. McCoy wasn't capable of maintaining that level of coolness about Jocelyn yet, if he ever could reach that stage, so he made up an excuse about having to go back to San Francisco to work a shift. As his workaholic nature had probably been what first caused the fissures that later lead to them splitting, Jocelyn found it all too plausible.

"Leonard, you'll never change." She shut the door too quickly.

He raced back to San Francisco, where he didn't have a shift at all, and no one saw him for the next three days.

He was glad of the quiet of revision when he finally emerged from the worst of his despair.

That peace didn't last either. The first years did what every year did after realising that they'd passed by the skin of their teeth, they promised themselves that in future they would study harder. They did that for a couple of weeks at most before they got bored again.

It was the singing that finally got to Bones. They'd come in from nights out partying at all hours and sing, out of tune and out of time, to something that Bones didn't even recognise as music.

He'd finished a seventeen hour shift that felt even longer when he snapped.

The rant he went on became legendary, three minutes straight, taking them all down, no repetition or profanity.

He came back, much later, as an incognito guest, looking back at his old stomping grounds, and the med students, showing around a party of potential Starfleet recruits, who thankfully didn't recognise him, spoke of this as the landing where the famous rant had taken place. Of course, by then, he was the famous Dr. McCoy, and people had written exposé books about him, and his temper, and this had been one of the main talking points.

That night, the night he ranted, he took his main bag of things (a change of clothing, all his medical gear and text books) and moved into Jim's room.

Jim had driven off his previous roommate in double quick time, but McCoy thought he had more patience than that. Plus it couldn't be worse than the people he'd been living with before.

The beard lasted a little longer than his stay in medical dorms. A few of his lecturers and consultants had commented on it, mostly in a derogatory fashion, so McCoy had sworn not to shave it off. It suited him, and he saw no need to change, certainly not when it was grouchy old men who didn't like him because he'd changed specialism.

He decided it had to go after the third Lieutenant Commander that was his age called him "son".

The change was amazing. Everyone said how much more professional he looked now, and he was almost tempted to grow it back, but he couldn't be bothered with the hassle of having a beard again.

He was finding there were all kinds of things that he was becoming inured to however. Take Jim's habits for example. While he wasn't quite the playboy king gossip had him be, sure, he brought girls home sometimes. There was a time when Bones would have gone ape, hit the wall, but now, he just grabbed what he called his camping gear and moved into room 2222.

2222 was always left empty, rumour varied as to why. The more credulous of the students had that it was haunted by a ghost, with other stories moving from someone having been very ill with something catching in there all the way through to someone having died there. Truth was some poor kid had killed themselves, and the Academy was leaving the room clear until no-one who remembered it was left at the Academy. It might have been a waste of space, but it was standard operating procedure, it had also been like that in the halls where he'd studied for his original medical degree.

McCoy had an agreement with campus security. He'd go down and tell them if he was staying the night, and they'd not disturb him. They'd heard all the stories about Jim Kirk, found him in various states a few times, and thought it was the least they could do. McCoy smoothed the way with a couple of bottles of his Pop's moonshine every now and again. The system worked.

2222 was a little spooky, but that was more because it had been left empty than because of anything that had happened in it. He was a doctor; he was supposed to be able to deal with death, it happening and the aftermath.

He came here to think sometimes. Could he cope, in space, with the vacuum itself, with, if he stayed with being in Starfleet Medical, being the ultimate authority? Yes, he'd been that a couple of times even when he was just a local doctor, but there was always a support network there, whereas in deep space, there was nothing but the CMO and the black yonder.

Summer was quieter than term time. Most of the underclassmen went home; there was basically only him and Jim, and a couple more people from planets that you couldn't just hop to. He didn't know what Jim was doing with his time, but McCoy was spending his time doing extra shifts at the nearby hospital. Because of where it was, it got a lot of the non-Starfleet space injuries. He wanted to know what he was going to face out there before he went.

It was the "space cases" that got to him. Not that that was what you were supposed to call it, but really, it wasn't like there was even a proper name for the various syndromes that happened to some people when they went out into space. They looked into the abyss and some part of it twisted them and shorted out their minds. The first time he went up, he was close enough to getting that way that he’d been very glad of Jim's company. Jim didn't need to do that, but he did it anyway. McCoy's had a few odd looks sent in his direction when he's stood up for Jim, and threatened to throttle him often enough himself, but Jim's a good friend.

McCoy tries to cure himself of his fear before they start the shuttle piloting lessons in the fall. When that doesn't work, he tries to claim that as a doctor he's not likely to ever need to pilot a shuttle. That gets him an essay on five occasions in Starfleet history when a doctor has had to pilot a shuttle and extra lessons. After nearly crashing into the moon on his first try, he gets used to it. He'll never be comfortable piloting shuttles, but he'll be able to do it.

McCoy's life took a turn for the ridiculous round about then. For all that Jim insisted he wasn't doing this, he'd reached the fourth dorm in his apparent quest to sleep with every female cadet. It was the dorm where Uhura lived, and McCoy swore that she was half the reason it took Jim a year and a half to get through that dorm, if not longer given that he was still working on it when everything happened. Unlike Jim, McCoy had managed to have an actual conversation with Uhura, they were in the same class for a couple of the core modules. All of which meant that McCoy, along with half of the Academy knew Uhura's first name before Jim did. He just didn't use it. McCoy didn't know if it was because during class everyone was either Cadet this or Cadet that or not, but no one seemed to use their first names. Not that someone known almost universally as Bones could complain about that. If it wasn't your surname, it was some obscure nickname made up by your semi-insufferable roommate.

Of course, if Jim had actual acted like a normal human being around Uhura, he'd probably have had more of a chance. McCoy didn't think that Uhura appreciated Jim's laidback attitude to languages any more than she appreciated his attitude towards anything else. It was the grammar that did Jim in, couldn't figure out when you conjugated what, went blue in the brain trying to, and when it didn't work, Jim gave up. It was pronunciation that did for McCoy, trying to get accents on top of what he admitted was a strong one in his native English. It just didn't mesh; there were sounds out there that were common in some languages that McCoy didn't think he could get his tongue round, not even if he practised for a thousand years.

Even so, Jim was determined. And that normally got Jim Kirk what he wanted. It gave McCoy the victory in the prize booby stakes. Jim needed another guy so he could go on a double date with a Jersyk, a Endolian girl also focussing on languages. McCoy got dragged along because he couldn't think of a good excuse in time.

That was how he met Fluff. That was not her real name, but she got stuck with a Kirk nickname too. Her actual name was something long and French and no-one ever got it right. Jim gave up. Fluff hated her nickname, and mysteriously enough, the double date was a disaster.

Despite that, Jersyk ended up dating Jim for a while, and McCoy and Fluff spent most of their time together to avoid running into Jersyk and Jim half or fully naked in any number of unexpected places. He knows Jim started half of what seemed like five hundred rumours about him and Fluff, none of which were true. McCoy never went out with her, not like that. They used to meet in the Library, for a coffee, and then they'd spend the night talking about life, the universe, where they were going and where they'd been.

Fluff was one of the best things that happened to him at the Academy. For all that she looked five years younger than she was, with her hair in pig-tails and her fluffy cotton candy pink sweaters; she had interesting things to say. She was probably the first close female friend he'd had, where there was nothing romantic on either side. He'd married Jocelyn straight out of high school, and she'd been his best friend. He thinks this is something he missed out on, and was having fun catching up. It meant that he let Fluff get away with murder, like the time she laced daisies through his hair.

Okay, so he could see why the rumours started.

He and Fluff didn't help themselves when they still had their little coffee meet-ups even after Jim and Jersyk broke up. The last time he saw Fluff was before Jim's final attempt at the Kobyashi Maru. He left telling her that he'd report back on whatever stupidity Jim had planned. He never had the time to before Nero's attack on Vulcan. Fluff was assigned to the Farragut and they never found her body. Even years later it makes McCoy angry just to think about it, which makes him even angrier. Fluff was such a kind, caring person, he feels he shouldn't ever associate anger with her.

There are times when he misses her so much. It's not that he doesn't have friends, Jim, Uhura, Scotty and even Spock end up being the best friends any man could ever hope for, but sometimes he just wants someone to tell the stupid stuff to, to shoot the breeze and blow dandelion clocks with.

The only other time he didn't see that much of her was his second summer. She went home to France, while McCoy, and Jim, stayed in San Francisco.

McCoy took hospital shifts again that summer, anything he could get. Experience was always worthwhile. He met Grace while he was there. She was another doctor, not Starfleet, working as a nephrologist. They were working together to save a Martian miner who had damaged kidneys anyway and had then was involved in an industrial accident where a dewer of liquid helium fell on him, crushing him. It was hard work, intense surgery and then a heavy follow-up workload.

They started to talk, which lead to coffee dates, which lead to more. Grace was separated, told him when it first got serious. She understood what it was like to have someone you loved, that you'd spent lots of time with, and then suddenly they weren’t there for one reason or another. From the sound of it, Grace’s marriage went down the pan for the same reason as his. He’d never really thought Jocelyn was unreasonable, he just felt she didn’t understand the importance of a doctor’s duty to his patients, but he was glad he wasn’t the only one who’d gone through the banging your head on the wall level of arguments about your working hours.

He really liked Grace, could probably have grown to love her in time, but that was the one thing they didn't have. He had a year left in the Academy but after that it was off to space, and he'd heard what that did to marriages. There was a reason why Starfleet's divorce rate was almost as bad as doctors in general. He thinks that she must have felt it too, because, towards the end of summer, with enough of a gap between it and term starting again, she dumped him over coffee. He took it remarkably well, he thought, maybe because the writing was on the wall, clear as day, for both of them. He still saw her, occasionally, in the last fortnight of the holidays, and there was no searing pain, no running to the bottle like there had been with Jocelyn, but maybe that was a factor of time.

Grace did give him one of the shocks of his life, twenty years later, when she introduced him to her son, Leonard, at a Starfleet Medical ceremony. McCoy was so surprised he nearly choked on his martini. The boy is tall, and the sort of thin that will fill out that McCoy had been at his age. He knows he shouldn't ask, and he tries to even avoid mentioning the obvious. As he was determinedly avoiding any personal topics, and sticking to discussing Tellarite nephrology, she smiled a particularly affecting little smile and whispered to him, "don't worry, he's not named after his father, but his father didn't mind me naming him after one of the best men I ever met." He's relieved, even though he knows he shouldn't be, and that it was no one's business but Grace's, but he'd been such a lousy father to Joanna that he couldn't stand the idea that he'd let another child of his down in the same way.

It was the thought of seeing Joanna, and her mother, that pulled him through the Fall term in his final year. Nothing else did, it was work, work, work, and even Jim seemed to get his nose down to the grindstone. Bones later decided that most of Jim's time must have been spent writing the Kobyashi Maru work around. It would explain all the time he spent with Gaila, no-one, not even Jim Kirk, could spend that much time having sex.

McCoy struggled along till Christmas, when he went back home and saw his folks, and then he went to see Joanna. She met him at the nearest port, with her mother and *Steve*. Now he already knew that Steve existed. Jocelyn had told him, possibly because she knew that Joanna would have told him if she didn't do it first. Jim pointed out to him that he couldn't curse Steve and send him to the devil if he hadn't ever met him, but McCoy wasn't rational on this.

Steve turned out to be a good guy. McCoy's not sure if that makes it better or worse. Of course if Jocelyn has to be with any man that isn't him, he'd rather the man be a good man, especially with Joanna living with her mother. And yet, he hated Steve with a burning passion and he knows that it's stupid. McCoy mostly behaves, which involves avoiding alcohol and the topics of medicine, politics, Starfleet and the past five years. They manage, with some fancy footwork on all their parts, and it's, well it can't be a good Christmas, because Steve is sleeping in his marriage bed, but it's as good as it could be. When McCoy leaves after Christmas, Joanna waves him goodbye while holding Steve's hand. He thinks that was probably an omen or something, he certainly knows whose hand she was holding as she walked down the aisle and it wasn't his. Regrets, he's got a lot.

McCoy took all of that better than he'd taken previous Christmases. If he were a more foolish man, he'd say it was because he'd grown as a person, but McCoy is not an idiot. He knows the only reason he didn't get himself blind drunk is because he's on ward rounds first thing the day after. He'd never practised while drunk, and he was damned if he was going to start now.

Of course, the only reason he was even thinking about all of this is that Onwenu has called him back to Earth, to the Academy, from a colony posting, where he was helping vaccinate against Rigellan tuberculosis. He wasn't brought back to do anything useful, no; he has to give the commencement address. He's the only one of "the great Enterprise crew" who hadn't given it, something he managed by advanced sneakiness and being posted far, far away any time it even came up. Onwenu only convinced him this time by threatening to make him teach social medicine to the first year cadets for the next five years. STDs and drains to half-asleep dimwits who have no interest in it whatsoever, such are the threats of Starfleet's head of medicine.

"You know I'm going to tell them the truth. If they're not being shot at by bloodthirsty Klingons, they're being vaporised by those damn transporters, and if they survive all of that, they get to basically spend twenty-four seven dealing with ankle sprains."

"I'm sure you'll tell the truth, that's why I asked you to do it."

"Made me do it. With threats. I'm sure there's something against that in either your Hippocratic Oath or the Starfleet rules and regulations."

"Take it up with the head of Starfleet Medical."

The worst of it was that Onwenu was right. McCoy was trying to tell the truth. He had been sitting in front of a blank piece of paper trying to come up with something that covered what the Academy had taught him, and what was waiting out there for this graduating class. How the hell was he supposed to do that, he wasn't prepared for this sort of thing. That gave him an idea.

'There's an old Earth saying, that your school days are the best days of your life. That's bunk, and you all probably know it. You're sitting there, with your certificates saying you've graduated, and you're wondering 'what next?' You're thinking, 'what happens if I end up in a situation where I don't know what to do?' I can't offer many words of wisdom, other than it's going to happen. You can't be taught how to deal with everything. What Starfleet Academy has taught you instead is how to interpret what is happening so you can either find out what's going on and deal with it or be able to find out who knows how to deal with it, and that can be even more valuable than knowing what to do yourself. More than that, coming to the Academy has meant you've met people from different backgrounds and cultures, so even if all you do after graduating is go back home, you've had your lives enriched and you've enriched the lives of others by being yourselves. You'll have changed. You're not the same people you were when you first entered the Academy, you're now a mixture of your previous experiences and what you've learnt here. You've not finished learning, you've not finished growing, you never will, but being graduates of this Academy has granted you new avenues of growth. Take them, and you'll do yourself, your families and your Academy proud.'

It wasn't much of a speech, but it was a start.