I had been in business 24 years before finally getting the injury that took me out of day-to-day management. I had been transitioning to working on the business instead of working in the business anyway, and my partner and I had brought up several capable business managers. My fellow founder Rufus Dixon, because he was an engineer and understood how systems best worked, found it easier to delegate and let the day-to-day go to those managers while he worked on larger business issues.
Me? More hands on than I needed to be, and not in the way yet, but still, doing too much.
I had married way, way, way out of my league … a scrappy 24-year-old commercial captain, shooting his shot with an admiral – an entire full fleet admiral who looked like 35, and so still would have been too old and prestigious for me if she wasn't a quarter-Vulcan and the equivalent of 30-35 at 55.
I had won, but it was one of those things where you win and still worry about whether you can hold the prize, and that pushed me to show myself worthy, to prove I could outwork and outship any man in my business in the galaxy, and thus be fit to be with Vlarian Triefield, a woman who had passed by admirals and commodores and captains and dignitaries and statesmen and rulers for three decades after the first man she had loved had been killed in the line of duty.
It took a concussion to at least silence all the voices in my head that went with my youthful insecurity, 18 years and five children into marriage and family. I was 42 when my doctor told me that I would need to take six months to a year off of any serious work. By the 23rd century, medicine was fully aware of the seriousness of severe concussions, so such prescriptions and the resulting societal supports for men thus injured were common.
Of course I chafed at first, but a call from my fleet captain cousin helped me settle down.
“Look, Captain Kirk,” he said, which immediately made me smile, “I'm going to have my doctor here explain this to you.”
His doctor was indeed the real McCoy, and broke down the effects of traumatic brain injury on the ability for men to make command decisions under pressure.
“Basically, every captain I've ever treated said he was fine until I explained it to him: you won't know you're not until you can't make that decision you need to make fast enough, or at all,” the doctor said. “But you're not just a captain. As a commercial business owner, you're actually closer to Admiral Triefield in a practical sense. When you make decisions, you affect your whole commercial fleet.”
I loved this man with my whole soul for opening my mind to the fact that I was on my own level … he was right.
“Your cousin, if he is just one percent reduced in his decision-making, affects the whole ship just one percent, but you being one percent off multiplies out over your whole fleet. I'll give you the advice I'd give an admiral: take your entire year off, and fully recover.”
“Yes, sir, Doctor, and thank you.”
That man helped to heal my soul, and made it easier to accept the long journey to full recovery.
Of course, I had to bounce it off my wife … after 18 years of marriage I was still a little afraid the real admiral was going to laugh at the entire idea that I was a practical admiral.
She didn't.
“I knew that from the beginning,” she said, “and I was just waiting on you to realize it. You've been the equivalent of full fleet admiral for three years now, without an Academy, or any budget except what your company makes. You're only 39 years old, and built the structure of your business from the ground.”
“You know, I never thought about any of it that way,” I said. “Too busy being in the middle of it, so much so that I don't know how I'm going to deal with a year off.”
“Maybe just one day at a time,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, with a chuckle. “You figure a Kirk would find a way around anything that boring.”
“You figure maybe a Mrs. Kirk could find a way to make a Captain Kirk enjoy his year off, day by day,” I said.
“I hadn't thought about that either,” I said. “I'm still … I'm still struggling with disbelief that you actually want me around, Admiral.”
“Well, here is something else for you to think about, Marcus,” she said gently. “You've known me 18 years. Do you take me as the kind of woman who would ever have married down? My near-ageless beauty, my glamour, my prestige, my salary, my access – do you think I ever would have married down?”
“No,” I said.
“So what does that mean, Marcus Aurelius Kirk?”
My head was pounding at the effort to comprehend what she was saying, but my heart was singing, reality being clear at last.
“I am the man,” I said.
“You always have been, Marcus,” she said. “You just had to slow down long enough to have time to really believe it.”
“But now I can't do anything,” I said.
“Except learn how to be loved for who you are, for a year or so,” she said.
“Is that even possible for a man in the 23rd century, with all that there is to do in the galaxy, and all the men competing for space and time?” I said.
“You're going to find out,” my wife said. “Mandatory time off, the final frontier.”
I thought about that for a long moment, and then smiled.
“It would take a Captain Kirk for a challenge that big,” I said.
“Boldly go by enjoying the time, right here,” she said, and then kissed me and also put her fingers on my head so she could extend her telepathy at full power to ease my pain.
“You keep doing that and I'm going to get better really soon,” I said. “I just remembered: if I've got a year off, that's a lot of days that I can make love to you anytime I want.”
She smiled.
“The endless possibilities are of course what makes the frontier so alluring, Captain,” she said in a sultry voice, and then added another kiss that let me know she was ready for all possibilities, when the time came.
*In Apophysis 2.09, there are many ways to shape a fractal around certain given shapes ... in this case I wanted some messiness and depth... the twisted heart shapes around the core indicating the disturbance of perception brought on by the concussion, and the swirling emotions that go with the realization of temporary disability and what that does to preexisting insecurities ... and yet, solidly at the core, like a light at the end of this subtly 3D-effect tunnel, there remains the love that binds a family together...