Voyager’s EMH could heal almost any malady, except when it came to a broken heart. He would have if he could - he certainly wanted to. He’d learned that time healed most wounds, but this was one he worried would never get any better. The emotions had run deep and then there was that overwhelming sense of failure; failure that she, the Captain, had somehow not done enough for him, the Commander. She’d blamed herself for what he had lost.
He’d watched them through the years. He knew that her sense of duty kept her away from him in the early years of the voyage, and then later when she was ready to put that aside, he had moved on. The doctor knew what that had cost her; he was a keen observer of his patients. He knew what it took for her to put aside those feelings for Commander’s sake and be the friend that he needed. She celebrated his joys, wept at his sorrows and never let on how she really felt.
In the early days, the doctor would see them in sickbay - the Commander injured and the Captain at his side, waiting until he awoke. At other times, the Commander would be there for her, holding her hand or just offering a smile.
In the later years, the frequency of those visits slowed until the time came when she opened her eyes to look for him and he wasn’t there. There was no reason for his absence; he just wasn’t there. In that moment, as the doctor watched, he saw her heartbreak, saw the pain in her eyes before they shuttered and she was the Captain once more.
=/=
It just took a day.
His wife died and she blamed herself, for sending her on that away mission. She was full of self-doubt and recriminations and so she hid herself away. When the Commander tried to reach out to her, she rejected him. She could not face him - face what she thought would be blame in his eyes -but he didn’t understand that. He thought that she was still trying to keep him at a distance as she always had and he turned away from her for the final time.
The remainder of the journey was marked with the loss of 18 more crew. She took responsibility for their deaths. The doctor knew that she was thinking back to the day when Seven died; that if she were still alive, maybe those crewmen would be too. She put much stock in Seven’s ability to rescue them from difficult situations. The rest of the crew did not see it that way. The Delta Quadrant was hostile territory and sometimes injury and death was unavoidable. Yet she persisted with her feelings of guilt. It was her fault - it was always her - and the one person who could have reached out to her never even tried.
He died soon after they reached earth, from a virus that should have been easy to cure but the journey had taken its toll. Her grief knew no bounds when she finally understood that she was the one he had always wanted. The Doctor knew this too, because when the visitors were gone for the day, he would call for her, only her, and she would come and sit by his side just as she had done all those years ago.
=/=
Ten years later…
The doctor sat on a couch in her living room observing her. Outwardly she looked the same, but there was something different about her. She was full of coiled energy, something he had not seen in her since Voyager. She was looking out the window at the bay when he entered, and when she turned to greet him, he glimpsed that familiar pain and then it was gone, buried deep as always.
She smiled at him.
"So, how's married life?"
"Wonderful. You should try it."
"Oh, I think it's a little late for that. Marriage is for the young--like your wife." And Seven, the unspoken hurt was back. He turned the conversation back to her.
“I can only hope she ages as gracefully as you have. I, of course, will be the same handsome hologram twenty years from now as I am today."
She nodded at his attempt at humor, then asked, "Are you familiar with a drug called Chronexaline?"
"We've been testing it at Starfleet medical to determine if it can protect biomatter from tachyon radiation."
"And?"
"It's very promising. Why do you ask?"
“I need two thousand milligrams by tomorrow afternoon."
"Why?"
"That's classified. Will you get it for me?"
"Of course, Admiral. You'll have it by 0900."
"Thank you."
The doctor left her apartment completely bemused by the turns in that conversation. Chronexaline? In the ten years since the Commander’s death, she had never really engaged with him to ask him what he was working on at Starfleet Medical.
And he was right to be surprised that she had asked him over to give her a physical. In all the years he’d known her, she had never volunteered for a physical examination. He would nag and pester her, and she would only ever acquiesce at the very last minute, and only because she was required to by Starfleet. Each time that she finally agreed, it surprised him; today’s request had been an out and out shock.
She seemed to take no joy in her work; every year he expected her to quit, but she never did. He had a conversation with B’Elanna about it once. They had speculated that she needed her work to keep her going because that was all that she had left. Her mother had long since passed on, her sister lived off-world, and the voyager crew had slowly scattered amongst the various Federation planets.
He went over his conversation with the Admiral as he walked home. I need two thousand milligrams by tomorrow afternoon. That was an extremely large amount of Chronexaline, not a normal request for any mission, unless she was planning to...
That was it!
He stopped in his path. She was planning to take a trip to the past. It didn’t take long for the rest of the pieces to fall into place. He and B’Elanna were both wrong. It was true that she needed Starfleet, but not to keep her going. She needed it for what she could get from them - for what she had access to – such as the Chronexaline, something a civilian would never be able to get their hands on, not easily.
It also made some of the snippets of the conversation he had overheard between Janeway and Chakotay clear, such as her making a promise to him that she would do anything to change the past. And when he had died, she had left his room, only stopping to tell the doctor that she had work to do. He’d thought that she wanted to make arrangements for the Commander’s funeral, but she had left with such an expression of peace that it had made him wonder what had passed between them the night before.
He wondered briefly if he should put a stop to her attempt because, if she was about to do what he suspected she was, she would alter an entire timeline. But he rationalized that since he really didn’t know her true plans, he couldn’t possibly stop her.
Then he laughed out loud. Here was his opportunity to do what he never was able to achieve before, albeit indirectly; heal a broken heart. He picked up the pace heading back home back to Lana, hoping that his captain would also find the same kind of joy in her life when she reached Voyager - her home.