Day 48: Men's Showers [Fourth Shift]
After a rough morning, Lunch was actually fairly easy to sit through. Sechs and Kibitoshin hardly knew him, so light conversation was fine. The things from Breakfast and this morning though, would be sticking with him for a while. When the nurse arrived to take him to showers, he was relieved to find he was the first one there. With that, there
( Read more... )
The doctor eyed him from the corner of his field of vision as he drew up close. Jim was physically in his prime. If he actually gave the man a full on physical, he suspected he'd pass every test with flying colors. The captain he knew was fit, but this Jim was in his twenties and at his peak.
McCoy rolled his eyes at that grin. Maybe because it was bordering right on flirting.
Actually, the captain he knew had been an incredible flirt at this age, to just about anyone who'd actually suffer through it, which meant the full gamut of nurses back then and himself when Jim was recovering at Starbase 7. The doctor had almost forgotten what it felt like, mostly because time had a way of changing things. Jim had left, McCoy went about his assignments, then he was eventually assigned to the Enterprise as the new senior medical officer. Jim had command by then. The shameless flirting, like how Jim used to think it was damned funny to try seeing how close he could get to kissing him before either of them bailed out, all that had petered out by then, then ceased entirely. As captain, Kirk had to set an example for the crew and display some degree of professionalism.
It looked like this Jim hadn't quite settled into that aspect of it entirely.
"If you're going to check me out, you could at least be discreet about it," the doctor sighed. He tested the shampoo, for a moment marveling at actual shampoo and water and not that junk that the sonic showers used.
'That' bad at middle age? What was that supposed to mean?
McCoy grumbled as he set to shampooing his hair. "And contrary to what you might think, Jim, your body doesn't just suddenly collapse at forty."
Reply
"Well, of course my body wouldn't," Kirk answered with the all-knowing assurance of a twenty-five-year-old. He fiddled with the temperature dial as he spoke. "But you've never been much for workouts or cutting down on your bourbon intake. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter..."
He paused the dial at a few degrees hotter than was strictly comfortable, as the water hitting his skin reminded him for the first time in hours of the deep cuts raked across his chest. They weren't quite fully healed, but damn near to it: there was some scabbing in spots, shallow enough to scrub off in a bath; the pain had diminished to nothing, and there were no longer any stitches left to itch. One could see why they'd taken off the gauze and bandages this morning. All in all, his injuries looked - and felt - several weeks old.
"Hey-" Kirk turned to the doctor, one hand still rubbing at the raised lines on his chest. Twenty-third-century medicine could have scars vanished as if he'd never been hurt at all, but he suspected they wouldn't heal so cleanly here. "What do you make of this?"
Reply
McCoy just looked exasperated all the same. "You drive me to drink sometimes, captain. A little social drink isn't going to put pounds on me or do me in. And keep thinking like that and you'll be seeing a belly at thirty or forty. You aren't going to be in your twenties forever."
It wasn't completely true: the risks Jim and Spock took were usually necessary ones, but that didn't mean he wasn't worried sick half the time. Sometimes sharing a drink with the captain was the only way to get Jim to unwind a little. Lord knew the captain needed to relax sometimes. Kirk might look completely at ease up on the bridge in a crisis, but McCoy knew better: Jim could be wound up tighter than a clock at times. There was nothing quite like having a quiet talk over a good Saurian brandy. The doctor didn't know how the other him on their end of the universe ran things, but he didn't ever drink on the job, and the few times he did indulge outside his shift was usually to drink with Jim and (more rarely) Scotty on occasion. It was a way to unwind, for both Jim and himself, but as a doctor, he was aware of just what to limit it to.
A few seconds of silence passed as they washed. McCoy was still scrubbing at his scalp when Jim asked for his opinion.
McCoy paused. It used to be one of Jim's ways to get a nurse or a doctor (usually himself) to get an eyeful during his convalescence at the Starbase, when he was bored in bed and, even if Jim would never admit it, he was lonely and needed a friendly face to talk to. The fact that he was proud of his excellent physique didn't hurt matters of course. It'd taken the first few times before the staff all wised up. His Jim had grown since then, ten years plenty of time to mature, if command didn't already do the rest. He got a little more subtle about his flirting, a lot more selective about when and where, and was more reserved as a whole. Some things hadn't changed though. With the Enterprise as the number one lady in Jim's life, there wasn't room for much else. Out of a ship of over four hundred crew, with everyone looking up to you, it was a lonely place as captain.
The doctor always had a hard time saying no to hard luck cases.
McCoy had a good idea what he was referring to. "I'd say you could stop pawing at it," he said. McCoy took the pause to get the shampoo out of his eyes, passing a hand over his face before he turned to actually look at Jim's chest.
He was right to be concerned. It was only twenty-four hours later, at least, if this place mirrored Earth on that regard, and all that was left were some fading scabs and not a sign of a single stitch or bruise. Just as he'd suspected after that physical, it looked like either the healing rate as a whole was accelerated here or just the captain's. McCoy hoped it was the first. That possibility was easier to deal with if it was across the board. He wouldn't have to worry about Jim being singled out for some reason either.
"I'd say that either you've suddenly gained a remarkable talent at recovery or something's changed in you since you got here," It might not even be limited there, it could be something in the air or food that was doing it. "Do you feel any different?"
Reply
His hands dropped back to his sides as Bones started studying him. Kirk had gained enough experience in Riverside with treating his own bad cuts (either from working in the garage or getting hit with a beer bottle) that he knew perfectly well he wasn't doing any harm to himself. But only one person was a doctor here, and in medical matters, Kirk trusted McCoy implicitly. Or to the least, he trusted Bones enough to only question what the hell he was doing after he'd been stabbed with a hypospray.
"No," Kirk said without hesitation, but tilted his head a little under the spray as he considered it. He'd seriously pondered this question nonstop yesterday, but clearly a few things had been altered. "They changed Spock's physiology to make him weaker, but I don't know why there'd be any reason to change mine. I feel as human as I've ever been."
He turned away to readjust the temperature of the water. "Maybe I should be grateful that they used their technology to heal me up like this," he sighed, flicking open the shampoo bottle. "It's dangerous enough going out at night without worrying about my wounds reopening... I just wish I didn't have the feeling that this is going to come bite me in the ass later."
Reply
"Well, if I can find a way to take an internal scan of you somehow, I think it'd be better to check you out all the same sometime," McCoy said. He wasn't counting on finding a tricorder or field reader tube immediately, if at all, here. The level of technology they were seeing was extremely advanced in some areas, yet startlingly primitive in others, such as their medicine.
At least the captain wasn't reporting anything too obviously wrong with him. It was the one bright spot in all this. There was plenty that could go wrong internally, of course, and he wouldn't know it immediately, but it was an encouraging start. McCoy just wasn't one to let it lie with a patient and assume all was well underneath. Better to check it out once he had the means and opportunity. If they could actually change a Vulcan's physiology without any seriously adverse effects, as effortlessly as switching a light, then who knew what else they were capable of?
It was startling that Jim had given voice to what McCoy had been wondering about earlier, whether it was Jim, all human, or an alien taking on his appearance for some reason. McCoy wasn't completely certain that it was the captain, but he was pretty close to it at this point. Spock's Vulcan voodoo should have come up with anything out of the ordinary too, and yet that last comment was almost as if he'd gleaned that suspicion from his mind. It was an idle thought but unsettling all the same.
The doctor covered up his sudden apprehension by focusing on scrubbing down.
"Well, assuming that this is an experiment, it wouldn't make sense to lose test subjects so easily," McCoy said. That was if he wasn't completely off the mark with his hypothesis.
Reply
The other him, the other Kirk, had been a man of ideals. Jim was certain of this now: that older man who resembled him, with the stern Vulcan and blue-eyed doctor at his side... despite the artificiality, there was truth to the images in his head. He didn't know what the other Kirk would think of Landel's Institute, whether or not he'd feel as angry about what he saw here. He didn't know if any of those ideals he possessed could explain what was going on in this unfamiliar world.
But he could guess, at least, that like him, the other Kirk wasn't much for luxuries, and even a hot shower wouldn't take his mind off of what was happening. "The prisoners keep disappearing here," Kirk said suddenly, leaning one shoulder against the tiled wall as he thought about this. "Before you arrived, someone posted a 'primer' on the bulletin. One of their warnings had to do with the sudden disappearance of allies... apparently, the signs were gaps in their memory and sleeping a lot, and then they'd be gone from the hospital."
He swiped distractedly at the soap dripping onto his forehead.
"Assume this is an experiment. It would make sense to take care of our injuries if physical trauma wasn't the point, but rather... emotional, mental. And the people who disappear - why? Why would our captors simply get rid of 'test subjects' like that?" He exhaled softly, losing steam with his train of logic. "It's like they're... looking for something."
Reply
He waited patiently for him to speak again. Jim leaned against the tiling as McCoy washed his own shoulder when he did break the silence. McCoy had it in mind to ask about that primer, but Jim would have had it on hand if he had it during the day or night, mentioned it earlier, and he wouldn't be talking about it in past tense if it were still available.
"That could be," McCoy said slowly. Although on a scientific level, you didn't usually go tossing research specimens until the experiment was absolutely over: otherwise you risked losing data that might be needed later. Aberrant behaviors could spot up belatedly.
McCoy was more concerned with where they went than why, and if they were all right. He was still having a hard time accepting that someone could be so heartless as to treat sentient beings as nothing more than lab rats. It could be any number of things: perhaps they were beamed back to wherever they were stolen from, died from the experiments, or simply blinked out as if they'd never existed. There was no way to tell for sure with what they currently knew. Of course that latter option then had problems with space and time, and plenty of quantum mechanics and potential paradoxes, namely that if they never existed in the first place because of the facility, you wouldn't have been able to steal them away and experiment on them, much less have patients remember them...and then since there was no experiment or arrival here, and no disposal, they would have actually existed then. A grandfather paradox if he'd ever saw one.
Time was a tricky business. He didn't like it one bit: grandfather paradoxes, temporal causality loops, Pogo paradoxes, the whole mess. Temporal mechanics wasn't his area of expertise. McCoy had always made it a personal priority not to go dabbling in it more than necessary, if at all. He could lead a long and full life never having to experience it himself.
He moved on, awkwardly trying to reach over his shoulder to take a soapy swipe over the left scapula. At this point, it wasn't wise to go forming too specific theories without more to go on.
Did I just sound like Spock right there? he groaned silently. He'd clearly spent too much time around the Vulcan. It felt like he knew Mr. Spock better than his ex-wife now, which was mildly depressing.
"It would help if we had an inkling about what they're after. If we had even that, it'd answer plenty about what happened to those patients. I don't think the nurses will just tell us if we say 'please' or if you just look at them, captain. We'll have to find another way."
The question was how to get that information. Venkman looked like a dead end. He doubted it was as easy as just asking the staff. Maybe they could interview the patients, see if there was a common ground or things they noticed. The nights seemed like the best chance too. Plenty of breathing room compared to the day shifts.
"At least it seems like there's symptoms," he pointed out after a moment. "We'll get some warning first," it was hard to be too comforted by that fact, but it was better than the alternative - getting the rug pulled out from under you suddenly. McCoy changed the subject after a moment, deciding to touch on a matter closer to home. "Did Spock talk to you about Mr. Chekov?"
And did he think the matter was over?
Reply
How had that worked? What had they done? It bugged him to have this gap in his life he couldn't remember - even drinking himself stupid had involved a certain level of control. Here, he had no choice. He blacked out when they wanted him to black out, woke up when they wanted him to wake. His mind was their open book. The lives of his crew could be snuffed out without even a touch, and brought back the next morning. The only person he'd met who had any semblance of authority here had acted as if he was genuinely delusional, same all the staff here.
"The nurses don't know anything," he said slowly. "At first I thought they were putting on an act, like the Head Doctor, but now I doubt it. I know when a woman lies, and that's not the case here."
A smile flickered on Kirk's uncharacteristically serious face, almost but not quite approaching humility.
"No. The only way to get information is at night, when they don't bother to hide what this place is. Except... we've been here a few nights already, and it's as if the only ones around are us, the creatures who want to kill us, and the voices on the intercom and on the radio. The only time I've heard of someone meeting one of these people face-to-face is... when Admiral ZEX was taken for CM-US."
He fell silent at that, but it didn't take a psychologist to guess where his thoughts were going next. Was that it, then? Their one chance to get answers? The graphic memory of ZEX's scarred head and bandaged eye should have been more than enough to discourage him, but once Kirk had hit upon an idea, he could never let it go, no matter how suicidal. So how did they choose their test subjects, then? More importantly, was there a way to put yourself higher on that list...?
When Bones mentioned Chekov, Kirk looked back up again. "Yeah, uh... Spock told me about what happened in the recreational field during lunch right after. Yesterday, right?" He abruptly straightened, forgetting all thoughts of showers or dangerous plans. "Why?" he demanded, leaning in. "Did something else happen?"
Reply
The days here seemed like a dead end when it came to information from anyone other than fellow patients. It couldn't be too much. Everyone seemed in as much in the dark about how they got here or why as they were. It left only the night as a way for information and exploration.
All the same, he found himself frowning at the captain. McCoy didn't like that sudden look of consideration that crossed Jim's face when he mentioned the admiral's experimentation sessions. He didn't like it one bit. The doctor wasn't a telepath. He was the farthest thing from that, but you didn't need to be one to figure out that it meant that he was considering something dangerous. He'd seen it plenty of times before, always right before Kirk threw himself, and his life along with it, headlong into some insane maneuver or confrontation.
McCoy reached over and turned the knob off, the water cutting out. The doctor fixed him with a steady look. "Whatever you're planning, you can stop right there. You're the captain. You're the least expendable person here. Spock needs you and so does Chekov." I need you too, was left unsaid.
The Spock and Chekov here were from this Jim's universe, which carried with it a certain bond. Jim had to be feeling his responsibility for the crew, his actual crew, heavily on those shoulders. He'd do everything in his power to watch over those two and get them back to his own universe, but sometimes it felt like at the risk of his own life. His crew needed him for inspiration, guidance if they were going to get back safely. If anyone could find a way out, it'd be the captain.
"Yesterday," McCoy nodded. "No, nothing new happened. Spock just thinks the matter is, logically, over and done with and I don't agree with him. I think Chekov could still be at risk."
Reply
Funny. He'd thought that he felt less on edge today, but he supposed it was impossible to ever completely relax in this place. Kirk rolled his shoulders under the spray, and let the warm water ease the tension in his muscles. "Bones, we're all at risk here," he pointed out, his light tone belied only by the tightness of his mouth. Of course McCoy had a point about a repeat incident, the odds of which Kirk didn't like to leave hanging in the air. However... he agreed with Spock's assessment, and had seen that there was more than just the three of them looking out for Chekov. If his harasser was stupid enough to try again after being told off by Spock and two others, then they'd be ready for him, and ready for anyone else who would attempt something. "You know I'd like nothing better than to have a few 'words' with that bastard, even if I get sedated for it, but like you said... none of us are expendable. All we can do right now is keep an eye on each other, make sure nothing escalates."
That wasn't exactly what Bones had said, and he was well-aware of that. The doctor's admonition was enough to push his idea to the back burner, but no further. Right now, they had plenty of alternative options, and no apparent deadline on their heads, but Kirk had no intention of letting his crew be trapped here for weeks, let alone months. If getting cut open by a mad scientist would get them closer to home, then it fell within his duties as captain to accept the risk.
And if McCoy's James Kirk was anything like him, then the doctor already knew how stubborn he could be. He wasn't in the mood to argue with Bones right now, and anyway, more lecturing would only make him dig his heels in further. Kirk considered, and quickly rejected, one idea to get Bones off his back - unfortunately, his best friend had a far too refined bullshit detector when it came to his antics. It was both the worst and best thing about him.
"Anyway, I'm not going to do anything to get myself killed," Kirk said reasonably. Considering that ZEX and others had returned from CM-US alive, this wasn't a lie. He flashed one of his confident grins as he rinsed the rest of the shampoo from his hair. "It's not my destiny."
Reply
McCoy reached for a towel and wrapped it haphazardly around his waist. He watched Kirk's back as he leaned forward to rinse the shampoo out, a frown on the doctor's face.
Jim had acknowledged the rebuke, but at the same time, had smoothly skimmed over it. Getting killed wasn't the only danger here. Those experiments on ZEX had altered something about him, possibly on a dangerous level to his mental health. It didn't do much to comfort McCoy. There was also that fact that what Jim considered 'dangerous' was of a vastly different definition than the rest of the sane population.
"Spock would have a fit if you tried that destiny line on him," McCoy told him. He hesitated for a moment. It wasn't really his place to be telling Jim how to do his job, but at the same time, someone had to remind the captain that he did have limitations. It did bother him that he wasn't entirely sure what Jim had planned. In his twenties, the captain was brash, head strong, and much more impulsive than he was used to. It felt like he was trying to hold onto a live firework.
The doctor got the distinct feeling that, if by some turn of events, Kirk wasn't the captain, telling him 'no' on anything wasn't going to do much good. He could be as stubborn as a mule.
McCoy went on quietly. "You're as mortal as the next man. At least let us investigate before you try and Kobayashi Maru your way out of this."
Reply
And Kirk had shown his gratefulness by doing his best to make good on his boast: officer in three years, his own ship in- well, who knew how quickly? Certainly not him, certainly not Pike. All he'd been expecting before that fateful distress signal was a coveted spot on the Enterprise. He hadn't been expecting to have his life saved by a time-travelling old Vulcan who would tell him that his true place was in the captain's chair of the same ship he'd just been ejected from.
Kirk had felt his mind, felt the certainty in Future Spock's friendship for him, felt the threads of the bond that tied their lives together. He hadn't had any choice but to believe. After being brought here, he'd been willing to stake hope on it - if his crew was meant to be on that ship exploring the final frontier, then they weren't meant to die here, any of them.
Bones' words brought him back down to Earth. Kobayashi Maru. What had seemed like a clever idea at the time had become the closest he'd come to losing it all. For as much as he owed Captain Pike and Future Spock, he owed Bones - his Bones - as well for bending rules to get him on the Enterprise. Without that, Nero might have won five times over... but who knew? Maybe, if he hadn't cheated on that test, Spock wouldn't have pissed enough to drop him on Delta Vega, and they wouldn't have gotten Scotty's help. A man could drive himself crazy questioning the what-ifs.
Whatever the case, he wasn't alone anymore, and he couldn't behave like he was.
"Of course," Kirk conceded, and looked back at meet his eyes so McCoy knew he meant it. To the least, he would have to confer with Spock before doing anything rash, and that would go easier if their investigations did turn out to be fruitless. They had time.
Still, being Kirk, he had to add, with uncharacteristic solemnity: "I'm getting you home, Bones."
Reply
That promise, so damn Jim to go promising something that big without actually knowing if it was possible, but dead-set about it and his own ability, made it difficult to get words out.
The entire time here, even if he'd run into familiar faces, he'd felt like he was back in that other universe, except maybe even worse: he was away from his actual home, the rest of the crew, no Jim, Uhura or Scotty or even Spock. He wasn't a genius like Scotty when it came to engineering, much less the know how to get a transporter to work between universes. Sure, he was surrounded by younger faces, people that looked, felt and sounded just as familiar as the people he knew, but there were obvious differences, in the way they reacted to him and amongst each other that set them apart from their counterparts. It was more comforting than finding himself smack dab here by himself, and yet, it also only drove home just how far he was from his own crew.
It only took five words to shake that feeling. He wasn't alone. Jim might not be his actual captain, but it was still Jim.
The doctor broke into a warm smile. He couldn't trust himself to speak just yet, he'd likely embarrass them both, so instead, he gave Jim a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. He couldn't put into words what that had really meant to him, only hoped that it was enough to tell Jim. After a moment, he dropped his hand and, inelegantly, cleared his throat. He wasn't ever any good at getting his personal feelings out in the open, and today wasn't going to be the day to start. For all those times he got on Spock's case about it, McCoy knew that he could be just as private about his own feelings.
The showers were clearing out, which looked like it was their signal to do the same. He already had the towel around his waist, but the captain? He glanced back at Kirk. Jim was still naked and under the shower head. McCoy cocked his head at him, folded his arms across his chest.
"You done preening like a peacock in here? You're going to get wrinkled before your time."
Reply
Leave a comment