The Trouble With Tribbles Part 33

"The Trouble With Tribbles" came in a close second though. Six votes. I found it very easy to empathize with Hubert Humphrey two months later. Ah, well...

At that same convention, by the way, they had an auction. They auctioned off an hour of my time for twenty-two dollars. They auctioned off one of my tribbles for twenty-two dollars and .fty cents.

One thing about fans-they let you know how much you are worth.

280.

281

282

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

The Very Best Tribble Story Ever Told...

Sometimes I wonder about that other STAR TREK episode.

You know, the one they didn't .lm because they made "The Trouble With Tribbles" instead.

I wonder what they would have shown if they hadn't bought my story.

It's worth thinking about...

-but not too much. Because "The Trouble With Tribbles" did something that no other episode of a TV series has ever done-it saved a life.

A lady named Bjo Trimble told me this story (It's p.r.o.nounced Bee-jo, and yes, she did take a lot of kidding about "the Trouble with Trimbles...") about a friend of hers who was called "Nurse Enterprise" at the hospital where she worked. Of all the tribble stories, this is the best.

Bjo had organized STAR TREK's fan liaison, and was even responsible for handling the fan mail for a while; she set up STAR TREK Enterprises and even masterminded the "Save STAR TREK" campaign which inundated NBC with letters.* She was the second-most-intense STAR TREK fan I have ever met.

The .rst-most was a lady named Tim Courtney, a statuesque woman of magni.cent proportions and deep internal beauty. For many years, Tim had been a fas.h.i.+on model in San Francisco-and a very good one too. After a while, though, she became dissatis.ed with her life as a model and trained to be a nurse. Not just an ordinary nurse-but a special duties nurse, which means working with terminal and severely handicapped patients.

Bjo met Tim Courtney at-of course, it had to be-a "Save STAR TREK" rally in the Bay area. Bjo had planned it only as a small rally, but like all STAR TREK activities, it got out of hand-more and more people found out about it and wanted to attend; until .nally, Bjo received a phone call from Tim, who asked if she and one of her small patients might attend.

Bjo describes Tim this way: "She had more vitality and energy and enthusiasm for life than any three or four other people could contain in one body. We immediately liked her.

"Our friends.h.i.+p with Tim continued even after we moved down to Los Angeles. I was getting little odds and ends of things from Gene Roddenberry-.lm clips and such that I could sell to help defray the costs of organizing the letter campaign-and I'd send some of them up to Tim, mostly .lm clips or stuff out of publicity, posters and pictures and such.

"Tim had a very big soft heart for the kids, and she would take the stuff into the children's ward, especially the permanently handicapped children who weren't going to get out of bed. Or even out of an iron lung. In fact, there were three children in sort of a half-circle position in iron lungs, and they put a really big poster of Mr. Spock, with the Enterprise behind him, on the ceiling so these kids could lie there and see him. Of course, there are little mirrors on iron lungs too-and they had little tiny pictures on those. I had managed to obtain some photographs that we could cut up, and they pasted little borders of all the STAR TREK people around the edges of the mirrors. And then we got a couple of big color posters, one was of Kirk and Spock, those went up on the ceiling too.

"Tim was insatiable. She kept asking for stuff-and all of it went out to the kids: All of it. She got 'Flight Deck' certi.cates for the kids, and every time a kid was especially good, she gave them a STAR TREK certi.cate-and if you think about it, there's not an awful lot you can promise a kid who is nailed down in bed permanently. The children are very aware they're not going anywhere, they're very aware there aren't any big treats in store-except maybe, ice cream for dinner, or something like this-and so, aside from promising them a new book or something, there's not a lot you can give a kid who's going to be on his back for the rest of his life.

"So these things perked up the children's ward a good deal. Now, this one case that came in-she was not on it herself as part of her job as a special duties nurse; she was on another case, waiting for a terribly rich, old person to die; but she would spend as much time as she could over in the children's ward-they brought in this girl. (Tim never told me her real name); she was thirteen years old and in practice for the Olympic trials in skiing, and she had been struck with one of the more virulent forms of meningitis. So they had her in an iron lung.

"Now, the girl's mother went to pieces. She would come in and stand around talking to her daughter for a few minutes, and all of a sudden, she would break down and start crying, 'My baby! My poor child!' The nurses would have to drag her out of the room.

"Now, remember, the girl was conscious-nothing had happened to her intellect. Her body was paralyzed, not her mind.

"Finally, one day, the mother had been reading, evidently waiting for the girl to wake up, a Reader's Digest article which was bannered on the front of the magazine, 'Will Your Child Live Through Meningitis?' When the little girl had awakened, the mother laid the magazine on a table nearby, and forgot it when she left-leaving the article where the little girl could see it. She turned her head and could read the cover very clearly. You can imagine the effect that had.

"Between her mother's hysteria and her complete paralysis-she had been a very physically active child, but only the iron lung was keeping her alive now-she began to decline. She was practically willing herself to die.

"She was as cooperative as ever-but she was visibly sinking. She had lost all will to live. She didn't care any more and nothing was working.

"Tim wrote me about her, because she was such a beautiful child it really distressed her. The loss of any kind of life was a very distressing thing to Tim anyway-but she was very tied up in this little girl, and she said, 'If she just had something, something to believe in...'

"The odd thing about it was, the doctors were fairly sure by this point that she could recover from the meningitis-but she wasn't doing her breathing exercises. She had to do these exercises to build up her lung strength, a little bit more every day-but she was convinced she was going to die, so she wasn't doing them. Between her mother and the Reader's Digest article and the complete paralysis, she had lost all reason to care.

"Now, I don't know whatever made me do it, it was one of these silly impulses, but we'd already sent Tim posters and this was the only tangible thing we had on hand: -I sent her a tribble for this little girl.

"Tim took it in to her and said, 'Mr. Spock himself sent you a tribble. And this tribble is to help you get well. Because if you die, the tribble will die, he'll be so sad.'

"Well, this really got to the little girl-she loved that tribble. They put it on her pillow next to her head. And this was the turning point. She took up the exercises again; she began to cooperate, she began to listen and work and pretty soon she began to rally.

"Presently, she was out of the iron lung-she was keeping the tribble with her all the time-and she was progressing beautifully.

"Now, you know, when I'd gone over to the studio, I'd tried for something a lot more tangible, like a s.h.i.+rt or something, but I don't think it would have done nearly as well, because what could they have done except hang it on the wall? Instead, the tribble was a contact thing, the tribble was always there; she wore it around her neck. It was probably the best thing we could have sent her, she could see it and touch it whenever she wanted.

"She carried it around with her for all the weeks left in the hospital, rebuilding her strength, going through all the therapy exercises, but when she left, she went to Tim Courtney and said. 'I'd like to leave the tribble here at the hospital to help some other little girl.' And she did this very reluctantly; she had to do a lot of soul-searching because she really loved that tribble and she really wanted to take it with her, but she also realized that it could probably work for someone else.

"When she left, she was completely whole again, and as a matter of fact, there was nothing at all-except the dangers in extreme changes of temperatures-to keep her from going back and taking up for her Olympic trials again. (I don't know her real name, but this year I'm going to watch those trials very carefully for a .fteen- or sixteen-year-old girl...) "The stranger part of this is that less than two weeks later, another child, a swimmer in this case, a thirteen-year-old girl, was brought into the hospital with the same thing, meningitis. And the .rst thing Tim did was bring the tribble in and introduce him and explain that Mr. Spock had sent this tribble in especially for this little girl-and started the whole cycle all over again.

"As far as I know, the tribble is still at the hospital and still helping children, and probably can continue to, as long as children know about STAR TREK."*

So, who needs a Hugo?

That little girl's faith is a much better award.

If it hadn't been a tribble though, maybe something else could have inspired her faith-but it was a tribble, and I'm honored that it was something of mine that could create such hope in another human being.

Every once in a while, I begin to feel that my existence is justi.ed.

286.

287

*Bjo Trimble is also the lady responsible for "The Star Trek Concordance." A concordance is an index, and the STAR TREK concordance is an index to all of STAR TREK'S episodes. It was an invaluable aid to the writing of this book, but it is also fun to read for itself-it's chock full of articles and ill.u.s.trations about every imaginable detail of the show. (Can you identify Mako Root? Iirpa? The Symbalene Blood Burn?) You can get a copy of this 84-page, professionally printed index from Bjo for only $5.00. Write to: Bjo Trimble/ Star Trek Concordance, Box 74866, Los Angeles, Calif. 90004. Be sure to mention where you heard about it (it helps the bookkeeping.)

288

*Interestingly enough, Bjo Trimble does not know the name of the hospital where Tim Courtney worked; she never told her. All she knows is that it's one of the local ones in Oakland. If I knew where it was, they wouldn't have to worry about ever running out of tribbles...

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Books don't just happen.

They have to be researched.

I thought this book would be easy. I'd just sit down and write it. I'd dig out my .le copies of my outlines and scripts, annotate them a little bit, and have a book. Right?

Wrong.

I had to do more research for this project than for almost anything I've written before.

I had to send a spy sneaking into the Cal State at Northridge Theatre Arts Department to steal my senior project from their .les-there was only one copy in existence, and they had it. Without it, I wouldn't have had any of Gene c.o.o.n's notes or comments. So, thank you, spy-you shall remain forever nameless so they don't catch you.

I had to go over to U.C.L.A. and dig through their .les. Gene Roddenberry donated all of the STAR TREK papers to their television library. I spent a fascinating two weeks one afternoon going through them. Thank you, Ruth Schwartz and U.C.L.A.

I had to secure releases from Paramount Pictures and Bantam Books. Thank you, Paramount and Bantam. And thank you, Tony Sauber, in particular.

I needed information from the STAR TREK fans. I made a phone call to a lady named Cheryl Etchison, secretary of the 1973 STAR TREK convention. One phone call, and within two days, fans from all over the country were sending me articles and fanzines about STAR TREK and tribbles. Unfortunately, s.p.a.ce prevents their inclusion in this volume. But thank you anyway, Cheryl Etchison, Ruth Berman, Carol Lee, Mildred Broxon and all you others.

I had to talk to various STAR TREK people too. Thank you, Harlan Ellison and Gene c.o.o.n and Dorothy Fontana-for your reminiscences as well as your friends.h.i.+p.

And thank you, Bjo Trimble, for everything you've given me-especially the use of your .lm clips for the photo section. I didn't know how to end this book until you told me that story. So, thank you for that.

And thank you, Tim Courtney, for making the tribbles mean just a little bit more...I only wish you could have lived long enough for me to have gotten the story .rsthand. But thank you, anyway.

And .nally-thanks, Gene Roddenberry, for making it happen in the .rst place. It was fun, wasn't it?

DEDICATION.

This book should be dedicated to Irwin Blacker and Gene c.o.o.n and Gene Roddenberry and William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley and Jim Doohan and Walter Koenig and Nich.e.l.le Nichols and Majel Barrett and George Takei and all the other good people who made it possible.

But I'm sure they'll understand that this book is a special one--so it has to be for Betty Ballantine, who's pretty special herself.