Love Through the Angst. Beverly Crusher, Chief Medical Officer of the Starship Enterprise was angry. No, actually was furious. For the past month, her best male friend and been making himself scarce. So, she sat alone in the Happy Bottom Riding Club on her own at the table they’d always shared and glared at her plate, muttering to herself, “Well I’ve had it with him and his high-and-mighty attitude. If he can’t afford half-an-hour to spend with me, then sobeit. Damn him anyway, I’ve got better things to do than to be available to his beck-and–call. If he doesn’t want my company, then he can go to hell, I’ve had enough of this.” She angrily stabbed her fork into some, by now, limp lettuce and chewed as it if was rubber. Seeming to have a malevolent aura surrounding her, the other crew members in the lounge left her exclusively alone, and that suited Beverly just fine.
Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the ship, sat forlornly in his Ready Room, staring at his sandwich and rapidly cooling Earl Grey tea, hating himself for what he was doing, but seeing no other way to assuage the pain of unrequited love. He had loved Beverly Howard since the day they first met and continued to love her even though she married his best friend, Jack Crusher. The crushing guilt of that love, compounded by the untimely death of Jack only made Jean-Luc loathe himself more, so he spent only a short time on Earth consoling Beverly before he escaped on the Stargazer into deep space. He didn’t reply to her contacts and slowly he put her in the back of his mind. Twenty years on, Jean-Luc finds himself about to take the Captaincy of the Enterprise, the Flag Ship of the fleet. To his dismay he finds that Beverly has been assigned as his CMO. He does his best to block the posting, but ultimately he has to admit she is the best candidate for the job. What starts out as stiff formality soon morphs into a tentative friendship, not the strong connection they shared in the past, but neither of them could deny there was an attraction.
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