The Immeasurable In-Between (Kirk/McCoy, R) part 1
Written for the Regeneration Challenge at jim_and_bones. Thanks to sangueuk for the prompt! Also HUGE thanks to mga1999 for beta reading, cheerleading and all-around awesomeness. If she's not on your short list of people who would be cool to know on the Internet, she should be.
Summary: McCoy fills the 14 days between Khan and when Jim wakes up in San Francisco. Xtreme attempts at canon reconciliation ahead!
Content: Medical details about Jim's condition, non-explicit descriptions of injuries and destruction, sex (in the next part, anyway; involving McCoy with himself and briefly with Carol Marcus).
Day 1
“Hold still, if you don’t want me to hurt--oh, fine, don’t hold still.”
McCoy gropes Khan’s cubital fossa for a vein and jabs the needle in before being entirely sure it won’t roll. There’s no hiss of pain--the son of a bitch is wearing a crocodile’s smile--but McCoy enjoys it anyway.
“It is likely that Starfleet will bring charges against you for unauthorized human experimentation,” Spock says, trying to hold Khan’s arm steady while Scotty’s improvised rodnium shackles do the rest. “Possibly also for mistreatment of a political prisoner.”
McCoy tapes the needle down, steps backs, and watches the bag fill with superhuman blood. He’s trembling with anticipation like the vampire Jim’s always accused him of being, begrudging every second that he’s not able to pump that magic blood into Jim’s frozen veins.
“Yeah, well, right now I don’t give a good goddamn.”
“Nor do I,” Spock says, releasing Khan’s arm with a grunt. “I was merely making an observation.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Dr. McCoy.” Spock and McCoy are almost panting with exertion, but Khan’s voice is smooth as an oil slick. “My blood is capable of inducing rapid cell regeneration, but it is not an elixir of immortality. It cannot cure death.”
The word hangs breathless and cold in the air, seems to mingle with the hiss of the vacuum seal on the cryo tube when McCoy pops it open. There isn’t time to think or plan or ask permission or do anything but bring Jim’s temperature up high enough for his blood to liquify. Without a beating heart it won’t flow, so McCoy’s got an external defibrillator going. Meanwhile, the turbocentrifuge spins up, separating Khan’s nominally human red blood cells from the stuff that will save Jim.
“How do you know what quantity to use?” Spock asks. “Should you not conduct further experiments first?”
“That’s a definite not.” McCoy resists the urge to elbow Spock out of the way because he knows he’s worried; he’s seen the traces of tears on his cheeks. “You know this option will be gone once we hit spacedock. Besides, what am I going to do, make him worse?”
He hiccups a laugh and touches a finger to Jim’s cold cheek, trying not to think how peaceful he looks in death, dark lashes resting against his cheeks, droplets of newly melted ice in his hair. There’s nothing beautiful about death, nothing except the after-image of the Enterprise’s captain, too vibrant in life to fade quickly.
This needle he slides in carefully, into Jim’s carotid artery, the better to get the serum to his brain. Khan himself watches with detached curiosity.
“You should leave him in peace,” Khan says. “It’s a good death, to sacrifice one’s life for one’s comrades.”
“If that is the death you desire,” Spock says, “I am sure it can be arranged.”
McCoy has no attention to spare to tell them to shut up. The strange, thick elixir is creeping, slowly, into Jim and McCoy’s whole body is wound tight, waiting for a sign of life. He feels, in the seconds that pass, like Dr. Frankenstein, like a fool and a bad friend and the man in the old ghost story who wished his dead wife alive, and to his horror got exactly what he wanted. But he doesn’t stop.
A minute, more minutes pass in silence, McCoy conscious of his own living pulse, of the sinking feeling in his stomach and tightness in his heart, of the misery that won’t actually kill him no matter what he feels. Contrary to popular belief, familiarity with loss doesn’t make it an easier; there’s a moment of miserable cowardice when McCoy wishes he could slip into one of the stasis pods for a few weeks or months, long enough to avoid the funeral and the tears and the questions. And then, just as he’s ready to ask Spock to hand him a blanket to lay over the departed, one of Jim’s eyelids twitches, and the bio display lights up like a fireworks show.
“Jim!”
McCoy’s never heard a sound like that come out of Spock; for a moment it even distracts him from the man on the table, but then Jim is shivering with cold and what else McCoy can’t guess, because even if he’s solved his capital-letter problem he’s just bought himself a whole bunch of new ones. Jim’s heart rate and BP are surging past normal, his temperature is rising rapidly and his immune system, as unpredictable as the rest of him, seems to be doing its best to kill the thing that saved it. McCoy feels both razor-sharp joy and surging panic.
Luckily he’s a doctor first, before anything else. He yells orders--for his nurses, for hypos and neural scans and blood tests--with hardly a quaver in his voice. Spock, paler even than usual, steps out of his way and summons Security to take Khan back to the brig, while the son of a bitch keeps sitting there, spine ramrod straight, watching the whole scene unfold like it’s some amateur circus that’s failing to entertain him.
“There are no miracles, Doctor,” Khan says, before permitting the red shirts to take him away. “I’m sure you know that. There’s a price to be paid for everything.”
McCoy doesn’t bother to answer, just brushes his hand against rapidly warming flesh and thinks, Whatever it is, I’ll pay it. Jim, alive, is the only thing he’ll want ever again.
Day 2
The last time the Enterprise limped back to spacedock there’d been giddy relief amid the sadness, a young crew that wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with doing the impossible, with a captain who wasn’t even supposed to be on board. The ship now is a perforated ruin, its surviving crew bruised and torpedo-shocked.
Whatever else he did to patch the crew up during the hours it took Starfleet to tow them in, McCoy at least spared them one terrible thing. The crew knows that their captain survived, though the ‘Fleet honor guard waiting at the dock looks confused, especially the guy carrying the flag. McCoy wondered who on the bridge had had the presence of mind to report Kirk’s apparent death. He passes Chekov and Sulu, fighting an uphill battle to help organize the triage; they see Jim and the ghost of what didn’t happen passes across their faces before they nod to McCoy and get on with their jobs.
McCoy sticks to Jim’s anti-grav stretcher like glue, pushing it past a team of medics that want to get their hands on him (despite the fact that Medical never lost gravity), past a grim-looking gaggle of senior officers barking orders into their communicators, and into the shuttle bay, since Jim is still technically coding even though his vitals have reached some kind of weird, way-above-normal stasis.
He pulls up at the first medical transport he can lay eyes on.
“What are we looking at here?” the medic asks, giving Jim a scan; his records are in the Enterprise’s central storage, which may not be currently capable of adding 2 and 2.
There’s a heartbeat where McCoy wonders if he can skip the part about the augmented blood, as he flash-forwards to the days full of questions that are going to arise from it. But McCoy’s going to need a lot of help, and the fate of his commission is the least of his worries.
“Cardiac death following delta radiation poisoning. Massive tissue damage subsequently repaired with an unknown human blood agent, allowing resuscitation of the patient.” McCoy finishes with a nod, fairly satisfied at his clinical description of died and rose from the dead.
The medic’s professional poker face breaks a little and she pauses her scan to flip a lock of red hair out of her eyes. She can’t be more than Jim’s age, probably another of the bright-eyed recruits who signed up after Vulcan. McCoy wonders how long it will take to rebuild Starfleet this time.
“Okay, Priority 1, then. He’ll be taken straight to the Internal Medicine ICU.” She injects the code chip into the pale, waxy skin above Jim’s clavicle. McCoy doesn’t move; he’s aware enough to realize that he’s half in shock, that he’s sweating even though he feels as cool as Jim’s skin, as space itself, that he wants desperately to do something foolish and human like brush a hand over Jim’s hair and wish him luck, but he’s being held in place by more than the medic’s bright eyes.
“Uh, sir?” she says. “We’ll take good care of him. You probably want to get back to the evac.” She gestures to the tumult behind him, and McCoy remembers that he’s CMO, that he’s Jim’s CMO.
“You’re right,” he says after moment. “I have other patients.” Jim disappears into the interior of the shuttle and it’s the last of him McCoy sees for a good, long while.
*****
McCoy doesn’t want to eat, but somebody--one of the endless, bustling somebodies--puts him in a chair and sets a tray in front of him. McCoy doesn’t want to shower, but he gives himself a perfunctory go-over with a manual sonic when someone points him toward a fresher. He doesn’t want to sleep--can’t sleep--and luckily everybody seems to have forgotten about that; there’s no night in the city any more, so as soon as he’s changed into a clean planetside uniform, McCoy heads over to Medical.
Swiping his finger over the scanner in the security kiosk does nothing--McCoy guesses a lot of Starfleet’s central computers have been taken down--so he enters as a visitor, a slow and tedious progression through through layers of staff and medics. The waiting room is full to bursting with the injured (McCoy helps briefly with triage) and people trying to find loved ones. At last, McCoy finds his.
“Ah, Dr. McCoy. I’ve been expecting you.” Even without her nametag, McCoy would recognize Dr. Adeola Kosoko, holder of the Stader Chair in Trauma Medicine and someone who’d had a prominent place on McCoy’s Do not piss off list at the Academy. Dr. Kosoko is tall, of indeterminate old age, and looking less harried by her massive caseload than McCoy feels with his one.
“I came as fast as I could. Goddamned computers--” Calm, he reminds himself, deep breaths. I want to see Jim. “I’m sorry. You know everything’s pretty much gone to hell. How is he?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.” She parts the curtains and there Jim is, rigged up on a biobed, pale as the sheets. A day later and stubble is scratching at McCoy’s chin where the beard suppressor is wearing off, but Jim’s face is as tranquil and unchanging as if he were still frozen. So many things about the situation frighten McCoy, but right now the one that has him scared is how easily it would be to lose track of Jim, his vibrant friend now a helpless body adrift on a sea of chaos-weakened bureaucracy.
Dr. Kosoko taps the padd in her hand, summoning his attention. “It says here that you tried a, hmm, experimental treatment on Captain Kirk. And that this experimental treatment reversed the effects of terminal Delta radiation poisoning.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Terminal,” Dr. Kosoko repeats again, looking at him sharply. “A massive exposure that should have killed him.”
“It did kill him,” McCoy says, eyes darting to Jim reflexively to remind himself Jim’s still there.
“I see.” Dr. Kosoko’s gaze reverts to professional neutrality, though McCoy can guess what she thinks about this bizarre report from an unshaven and traumatized man. “Well. There’s no question he’s alive, although I’m concerned about his neural function following his period of--” She diplomatically lets the word drop. “I’ve asked two of my colleagues in Neurology to consult. In the meantime we’re keeping him on level 2 life support pending further evaluation.”
“Of course.” McCoy reaches a hand toward the padd. “May I see the analytics?”
But Dr. Kosoko keeps the padd at her side. “I’m sorry, but you’re not assigned to Captain Kirk’s case. You are, however, listed as having his medical power of attorney, so I’ll certainly give you regular updates on his progress.”
“What in the--” McCoy tries not to sputter. “I’m the CMO of the Enterprise, with primary responsibility for the Captain’s--”
“The Enterprise has been moved to inactive status pending evaluation, and its personnel as well. It says here that you’re waiting to be debriefed by Command, and that in the meantime you’re not cleared to practice medicine at Starfleet Medical.” Kosoko’s voice, though firm, is not unsympathetic. “You’re welcome, of course, to see Captain Kirk during visiting hours.”
“Visiting hours?” McCoy rubs a hand across his prickly jaw, too bewildered to do more than raise his voice. “You’ve got a hospital full of injured people, and I can’t help them?”
Dr. Kosoko shrugs apologetically. “The city’s full of people who can use your help, I’m sure. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients. Please let the nurse know when you’re done visiting with Captain Kirk.”
Visiting reminds McCoy of home, of his dad stopping in on the pretext of checking up on a patient and staying for lemonade and cookies and a good gossip. There’s no Jim to visit with because Jim is locked away in his own head, for how long, McCoy has no idea. McCoy’s anguish fluctuates in and out of self pity; the only thing he could do right now to make himself feel better, he’s forbidden from doing. He wishes he could complain about it, to Jim, but his friend isn’t here.
So McCoy does what he can: pulls the heat blanket up a little higher, check the leads on the neurometer (they seem loose, and McCoy isn’t sure the busy nurse will notice), and resists the urge touch the lax hand lying on the covers. At least some color has returned to his cheeks, and as his mother used to say, where there’s life, there’s hope.
I’m sorry.
“Okay, then, Jim,” he says, giving the blanket a final pat. “Sleep well. See ya soon.”
Day 3
The city, like the Enterprise, is a wreck of twisted metal, shell-shocked people being herded from corner to corner by endless lines of security and medical teams. The sky is choked with planetary rescue craft and extra-planetary ones as well: McCoy saw a Tellarian ship skyhook the top 8 stories of the Procyon Tower into the air and off to god knows where (the Ecomonitoring Authority already having put its foot down about dropping anything into the Bay).
The bodies--McCoy knows, from whispers around the Starfleet campus, that there are thousands--are removed with care and stealth to avoid further traumatizing the living. The injured are taken into hospitals according to the seriousness of their injuries, which means that for the first time in modern memory, there are people wounded and in pain with no choice but to wait.
So McCoy spends his spare hours roaming the city with his medkit, looking for people tagged with yellow or orange triage lights, with wounds and sprains and sometimes worse. Mostly they find him, thanks to the shirt and the badge, though his Starfleet status is still an open question.
He’s sealing a gash on a woman’s arm when the badge peeps. He’s been waiting for it all afternoon but he still nearly starts out of his skin, which startles the woman in turn and makes her look skyward: up, where bad things come from.
McCoy finishes the job and hurries back to the Neurology ward where Jim--capable even now of pulling the plummest assignments--has been given a room to himself.
“Dr. McCoy,” says Dr. Kosoko, taking in his bloodstained tunic and the dust in his hair, “I am glad you were able to join us. These are my colleagues, Dr. Santek and Dr. T’Kan.” There are grim faces but collegial handshakes all round; the protocols must be respected. T’Kan grips her wrists behind her back and inclines her head in a way McCoy doesn’t find the least bit deferential.
“Doctor,” T’Kan begins, “Captain Kirk is currently in an induced coma pending evaluation of the impact of novel cellular regeneration following his exposure to Delta radiation. While his organ and cellular function appear largely restored, the regeneration process has led, via an unknown mechanism, to swelling of brain tissue. As this may exacerbate brain injury stemming from the initial hypoxia, it is our recommendation that he be kept in the coma until the swelling resolves or a more accurate prognosis can be determined. For now we wish to know whether this meets with your approval. Captain Kirk’s medical directive was deemed insufficient for this unusual situation.”
They all stare at him as if he can even think right now, let alone come to any kind of cogent conclusion. “What’s the alternative? Let him wake up and treat any possible brain injury?”
T’Kan nods gravely. “Precisely. Given the unorthodox nature of the treatment he received, we would be in what one might call uncharted territory. I am afraid I can give no estimate of the amount of brain damage Captain Kirk may have suffered. The last brain scans we have are from more than two months ago, and our models would be of questionable value in any case.”
Maybe, McCoy thinks, he’s been spending too much time around Vulcans, but he’s feeling distinctly judged by Dr. T’Kan and these other august doctors who practice space medicine on the ground. He feels disapproval in the way T’Kan stands between him and Jim’s bed, how Kosoko keeps her padd tilted away from him. He wants to ask what they would do, with someone they love dead on one side and the blood that would save him on the other. But the possibility of brain damage puts the whole mess on new and terrible ground. Unintended consequences he thinks, looking at Jim’s artificially placid face. Off into the unknown again. But I’ve always had you with me before.
He’d give his left arm to be able to do something, to review the brain imaging or have access to a lab or maybe just run a tricorder over Jim, something Jim hates but McCoy finds grounding. But he’s not here as a doctor. He’s not next of kin, either; that would be Winona, wherever in the galaxy she might be. What Jim entrusted to McCoy, he did so because they were friends, colleagues, because of McCoy’s alleged professional ability and ethics, and because they never expected to be in this situation in the first place.
I’m sorry.
“Go ahead,” McCoy says, feeling his shoulders slump with a new burden. There’s no blaze of hope, no surge of adrenaline, just a silent wish that Jim will be back sometime soon to tell him he was wise, or an idiot. That, and waiting.
Day 4
Under Admiral Marcus’s reign, Starfleet had emphasized resource utilization, including a mandate that personnel who shipped out for more than 3 months had their personal possessions put in storage so their quarters could be reassigned. Since this didn’t apply to the rank of captain and above, Jim had invited McCoy to dump his stuff in Jim’s spare bedroom, where McCoy had occasionally also dumped his exhausted body after nights on the town.
What all this meant was that if McCoy wanted to have more than a change of underwear to his name, he had to go to Jim’s apartment.
Pre-Khan, most of the Starfleet brass lived in a gleaming tower just south of the campus, but Jim had managed to wangle himself an apartment in a mid-rise in Sutro Heights, loaded with 22nd century charm and boasting one-half of an ocean view. McCoy takes the cramped turbolift up to the 18th floor and swipes his finger over the lock. The door opens with a pop and a whoosh of air as the pressure seal releases, admitting him along with whatever tiny flecks of dust will settle on Jim’s unused furniture.
“Blinds, 30 percent.”
The blinds snap open at McCoy’s command, and the apartment is filled with early-evening sunlight. The sunset might be spectacular, but he’s had his heart broken too many times before when slate-grey clouds gathered just above the horizon. Instead, he makes a cursory check: a few hanging epiphytic plants, a closed-system fish tank, everything uncharacteristically orderly the way Jim left it before he shipped out, not the usual chaos of strewn clothes and week-old coffee cups. Jim isn’t much of a nester--even his mild affection for this apartment is unusual--but the few things he’s accumulated are on view in the living room: a holo of the Enterprise’s maiden flight, a Kalan mud basket from their first extrasolar mission, and in a transparent aluminum case well out of the danger zone of Jim’s parties, the wooden ship model Admiral Pike gave him as a graduation present. It’s a fragile thing full of tiny details McCoy’s sun-dazzled eyes can’t make out, but he knows the nameplate on its prow says Enterprise. There had been two of her name in that era, Jim told him; the one Pike had chosen was the one that had come safe home.
McCoy opens the little cabinet that Jim uses as a bar and pours himself a bourbon to toast Pike’s memory. It’s bitterly unfair: twice Pike had undertaken a mission, full of vigor and promise, and twice it had all come apart on him. The first time at least he’d seen Jim, his son in all but name, make some order out of the chaos, but the second time even Jim hadn’t been able to save him. All that’s left is putting things back together.
At least the apartment faces away from the ruins of the city; the only trace McCoy can see is the ever-present dust and smoke dancing in the golden slices of sunlight. Beyond that, the Pacific ebbs and flows in tranquil blue and silver.
McCoy raises his glass to the little ship, downs the contents, and heads to the spare bedroom, intending to stuff a few changes of civvies into his bag and go. The thought of going back to his room in the Transient Personnel dorm makes his stomach burn more than the liquor. It’s closer to the hospital, but Sutro Heights is still only minutes away by hover cab. If Jim were conscious there’d be no question of his staying here. Maybe Jim would help him move the boxes off the spare bed, or maybe he’d bunk with Jim the way he did a few late nights in the in-between time after graduation and before they shipped out. He closes his eyes, just for a second, and he can feel Jim’s weight in the bed, see the sprawl of naked limbs, Jim boundaryless even in sleep, while McCoy curls up on his side, trying to respect the 50/50 rule.
Even epiphytic plants do better with a little water, McCoy thinks. He drops his bag, forages for pajamas, and tries to remember whether the good Indian place on 48th Street delivers.
Part 2 >>
Summary: McCoy fills the 14 days between Khan and when Jim wakes up in San Francisco. Xtreme attempts at canon reconciliation ahead!
Content: Medical details about Jim's condition, non-explicit descriptions of injuries and destruction, sex (in the next part, anyway; involving McCoy with himself and briefly with Carol Marcus).
Day 1
“Hold still, if you don’t want me to hurt--oh, fine, don’t hold still.”
McCoy gropes Khan’s cubital fossa for a vein and jabs the needle in before being entirely sure it won’t roll. There’s no hiss of pain--the son of a bitch is wearing a crocodile’s smile--but McCoy enjoys it anyway.
“It is likely that Starfleet will bring charges against you for unauthorized human experimentation,” Spock says, trying to hold Khan’s arm steady while Scotty’s improvised rodnium shackles do the rest. “Possibly also for mistreatment of a political prisoner.”
McCoy tapes the needle down, steps backs, and watches the bag fill with superhuman blood. He’s trembling with anticipation like the vampire Jim’s always accused him of being, begrudging every second that he’s not able to pump that magic blood into Jim’s frozen veins.
“Yeah, well, right now I don’t give a good goddamn.”
“Nor do I,” Spock says, releasing Khan’s arm with a grunt. “I was merely making an observation.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Dr. McCoy.” Spock and McCoy are almost panting with exertion, but Khan’s voice is smooth as an oil slick. “My blood is capable of inducing rapid cell regeneration, but it is not an elixir of immortality. It cannot cure death.”
The word hangs breathless and cold in the air, seems to mingle with the hiss of the vacuum seal on the cryo tube when McCoy pops it open. There isn’t time to think or plan or ask permission or do anything but bring Jim’s temperature up high enough for his blood to liquify. Without a beating heart it won’t flow, so McCoy’s got an external defibrillator going. Meanwhile, the turbocentrifuge spins up, separating Khan’s nominally human red blood cells from the stuff that will save Jim.
“How do you know what quantity to use?” Spock asks. “Should you not conduct further experiments first?”
“That’s a definite not.” McCoy resists the urge to elbow Spock out of the way because he knows he’s worried; he’s seen the traces of tears on his cheeks. “You know this option will be gone once we hit spacedock. Besides, what am I going to do, make him worse?”
He hiccups a laugh and touches a finger to Jim’s cold cheek, trying not to think how peaceful he looks in death, dark lashes resting against his cheeks, droplets of newly melted ice in his hair. There’s nothing beautiful about death, nothing except the after-image of the Enterprise’s captain, too vibrant in life to fade quickly.
This needle he slides in carefully, into Jim’s carotid artery, the better to get the serum to his brain. Khan himself watches with detached curiosity.
“You should leave him in peace,” Khan says. “It’s a good death, to sacrifice one’s life for one’s comrades.”
“If that is the death you desire,” Spock says, “I am sure it can be arranged.”
McCoy has no attention to spare to tell them to shut up. The strange, thick elixir is creeping, slowly, into Jim and McCoy’s whole body is wound tight, waiting for a sign of life. He feels, in the seconds that pass, like Dr. Frankenstein, like a fool and a bad friend and the man in the old ghost story who wished his dead wife alive, and to his horror got exactly what he wanted. But he doesn’t stop.
A minute, more minutes pass in silence, McCoy conscious of his own living pulse, of the sinking feeling in his stomach and tightness in his heart, of the misery that won’t actually kill him no matter what he feels. Contrary to popular belief, familiarity with loss doesn’t make it an easier; there’s a moment of miserable cowardice when McCoy wishes he could slip into one of the stasis pods for a few weeks or months, long enough to avoid the funeral and the tears and the questions. And then, just as he’s ready to ask Spock to hand him a blanket to lay over the departed, one of Jim’s eyelids twitches, and the bio display lights up like a fireworks show.
“Jim!”
McCoy’s never heard a sound like that come out of Spock; for a moment it even distracts him from the man on the table, but then Jim is shivering with cold and what else McCoy can’t guess, because even if he’s solved his capital-letter problem he’s just bought himself a whole bunch of new ones. Jim’s heart rate and BP are surging past normal, his temperature is rising rapidly and his immune system, as unpredictable as the rest of him, seems to be doing its best to kill the thing that saved it. McCoy feels both razor-sharp joy and surging panic.
Luckily he’s a doctor first, before anything else. He yells orders--for his nurses, for hypos and neural scans and blood tests--with hardly a quaver in his voice. Spock, paler even than usual, steps out of his way and summons Security to take Khan back to the brig, while the son of a bitch keeps sitting there, spine ramrod straight, watching the whole scene unfold like it’s some amateur circus that’s failing to entertain him.
“There are no miracles, Doctor,” Khan says, before permitting the red shirts to take him away. “I’m sure you know that. There’s a price to be paid for everything.”
McCoy doesn’t bother to answer, just brushes his hand against rapidly warming flesh and thinks, Whatever it is, I’ll pay it. Jim, alive, is the only thing he’ll want ever again.
Day 2
The last time the Enterprise limped back to spacedock there’d been giddy relief amid the sadness, a young crew that wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with doing the impossible, with a captain who wasn’t even supposed to be on board. The ship now is a perforated ruin, its surviving crew bruised and torpedo-shocked.
Whatever else he did to patch the crew up during the hours it took Starfleet to tow them in, McCoy at least spared them one terrible thing. The crew knows that their captain survived, though the ‘Fleet honor guard waiting at the dock looks confused, especially the guy carrying the flag. McCoy wondered who on the bridge had had the presence of mind to report Kirk’s apparent death. He passes Chekov and Sulu, fighting an uphill battle to help organize the triage; they see Jim and the ghost of what didn’t happen passes across their faces before they nod to McCoy and get on with their jobs.
McCoy sticks to Jim’s anti-grav stretcher like glue, pushing it past a team of medics that want to get their hands on him (despite the fact that Medical never lost gravity), past a grim-looking gaggle of senior officers barking orders into their communicators, and into the shuttle bay, since Jim is still technically coding even though his vitals have reached some kind of weird, way-above-normal stasis.
He pulls up at the first medical transport he can lay eyes on.
“What are we looking at here?” the medic asks, giving Jim a scan; his records are in the Enterprise’s central storage, which may not be currently capable of adding 2 and 2.
There’s a heartbeat where McCoy wonders if he can skip the part about the augmented blood, as he flash-forwards to the days full of questions that are going to arise from it. But McCoy’s going to need a lot of help, and the fate of his commission is the least of his worries.
“Cardiac death following delta radiation poisoning. Massive tissue damage subsequently repaired with an unknown human blood agent, allowing resuscitation of the patient.” McCoy finishes with a nod, fairly satisfied at his clinical description of died and rose from the dead.
The medic’s professional poker face breaks a little and she pauses her scan to flip a lock of red hair out of her eyes. She can’t be more than Jim’s age, probably another of the bright-eyed recruits who signed up after Vulcan. McCoy wonders how long it will take to rebuild Starfleet this time.
“Okay, Priority 1, then. He’ll be taken straight to the Internal Medicine ICU.” She injects the code chip into the pale, waxy skin above Jim’s clavicle. McCoy doesn’t move; he’s aware enough to realize that he’s half in shock, that he’s sweating even though he feels as cool as Jim’s skin, as space itself, that he wants desperately to do something foolish and human like brush a hand over Jim’s hair and wish him luck, but he’s being held in place by more than the medic’s bright eyes.
“Uh, sir?” she says. “We’ll take good care of him. You probably want to get back to the evac.” She gestures to the tumult behind him, and McCoy remembers that he’s CMO, that he’s Jim’s CMO.
“You’re right,” he says after moment. “I have other patients.” Jim disappears into the interior of the shuttle and it’s the last of him McCoy sees for a good, long while.
*****
McCoy doesn’t want to eat, but somebody--one of the endless, bustling somebodies--puts him in a chair and sets a tray in front of him. McCoy doesn’t want to shower, but he gives himself a perfunctory go-over with a manual sonic when someone points him toward a fresher. He doesn’t want to sleep--can’t sleep--and luckily everybody seems to have forgotten about that; there’s no night in the city any more, so as soon as he’s changed into a clean planetside uniform, McCoy heads over to Medical.
Swiping his finger over the scanner in the security kiosk does nothing--McCoy guesses a lot of Starfleet’s central computers have been taken down--so he enters as a visitor, a slow and tedious progression through through layers of staff and medics. The waiting room is full to bursting with the injured (McCoy helps briefly with triage) and people trying to find loved ones. At last, McCoy finds his.
“Ah, Dr. McCoy. I’ve been expecting you.” Even without her nametag, McCoy would recognize Dr. Adeola Kosoko, holder of the Stader Chair in Trauma Medicine and someone who’d had a prominent place on McCoy’s Do not piss off list at the Academy. Dr. Kosoko is tall, of indeterminate old age, and looking less harried by her massive caseload than McCoy feels with his one.
“I came as fast as I could. Goddamned computers--” Calm, he reminds himself, deep breaths. I want to see Jim. “I’m sorry. You know everything’s pretty much gone to hell. How is he?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.” She parts the curtains and there Jim is, rigged up on a biobed, pale as the sheets. A day later and stubble is scratching at McCoy’s chin where the beard suppressor is wearing off, but Jim’s face is as tranquil and unchanging as if he were still frozen. So many things about the situation frighten McCoy, but right now the one that has him scared is how easily it would be to lose track of Jim, his vibrant friend now a helpless body adrift on a sea of chaos-weakened bureaucracy.
Dr. Kosoko taps the padd in her hand, summoning his attention. “It says here that you tried a, hmm, experimental treatment on Captain Kirk. And that this experimental treatment reversed the effects of terminal Delta radiation poisoning.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Terminal,” Dr. Kosoko repeats again, looking at him sharply. “A massive exposure that should have killed him.”
“It did kill him,” McCoy says, eyes darting to Jim reflexively to remind himself Jim’s still there.
“I see.” Dr. Kosoko’s gaze reverts to professional neutrality, though McCoy can guess what she thinks about this bizarre report from an unshaven and traumatized man. “Well. There’s no question he’s alive, although I’m concerned about his neural function following his period of--” She diplomatically lets the word drop. “I’ve asked two of my colleagues in Neurology to consult. In the meantime we’re keeping him on level 2 life support pending further evaluation.”
“Of course.” McCoy reaches a hand toward the padd. “May I see the analytics?”
But Dr. Kosoko keeps the padd at her side. “I’m sorry, but you’re not assigned to Captain Kirk’s case. You are, however, listed as having his medical power of attorney, so I’ll certainly give you regular updates on his progress.”
“What in the--” McCoy tries not to sputter. “I’m the CMO of the Enterprise, with primary responsibility for the Captain’s--”
“The Enterprise has been moved to inactive status pending evaluation, and its personnel as well. It says here that you’re waiting to be debriefed by Command, and that in the meantime you’re not cleared to practice medicine at Starfleet Medical.” Kosoko’s voice, though firm, is not unsympathetic. “You’re welcome, of course, to see Captain Kirk during visiting hours.”
“Visiting hours?” McCoy rubs a hand across his prickly jaw, too bewildered to do more than raise his voice. “You’ve got a hospital full of injured people, and I can’t help them?”
Dr. Kosoko shrugs apologetically. “The city’s full of people who can use your help, I’m sure. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients. Please let the nurse know when you’re done visiting with Captain Kirk.”
Visiting reminds McCoy of home, of his dad stopping in on the pretext of checking up on a patient and staying for lemonade and cookies and a good gossip. There’s no Jim to visit with because Jim is locked away in his own head, for how long, McCoy has no idea. McCoy’s anguish fluctuates in and out of self pity; the only thing he could do right now to make himself feel better, he’s forbidden from doing. He wishes he could complain about it, to Jim, but his friend isn’t here.
So McCoy does what he can: pulls the heat blanket up a little higher, check the leads on the neurometer (they seem loose, and McCoy isn’t sure the busy nurse will notice), and resists the urge touch the lax hand lying on the covers. At least some color has returned to his cheeks, and as his mother used to say, where there’s life, there’s hope.
I’m sorry.
“Okay, then, Jim,” he says, giving the blanket a final pat. “Sleep well. See ya soon.”
Day 3
The city, like the Enterprise, is a wreck of twisted metal, shell-shocked people being herded from corner to corner by endless lines of security and medical teams. The sky is choked with planetary rescue craft and extra-planetary ones as well: McCoy saw a Tellarian ship skyhook the top 8 stories of the Procyon Tower into the air and off to god knows where (the Ecomonitoring Authority already having put its foot down about dropping anything into the Bay).
The bodies--McCoy knows, from whispers around the Starfleet campus, that there are thousands--are removed with care and stealth to avoid further traumatizing the living. The injured are taken into hospitals according to the seriousness of their injuries, which means that for the first time in modern memory, there are people wounded and in pain with no choice but to wait.
So McCoy spends his spare hours roaming the city with his medkit, looking for people tagged with yellow or orange triage lights, with wounds and sprains and sometimes worse. Mostly they find him, thanks to the shirt and the badge, though his Starfleet status is still an open question.
He’s sealing a gash on a woman’s arm when the badge peeps. He’s been waiting for it all afternoon but he still nearly starts out of his skin, which startles the woman in turn and makes her look skyward: up, where bad things come from.
McCoy finishes the job and hurries back to the Neurology ward where Jim--capable even now of pulling the plummest assignments--has been given a room to himself.
“Dr. McCoy,” says Dr. Kosoko, taking in his bloodstained tunic and the dust in his hair, “I am glad you were able to join us. These are my colleagues, Dr. Santek and Dr. T’Kan.” There are grim faces but collegial handshakes all round; the protocols must be respected. T’Kan grips her wrists behind her back and inclines her head in a way McCoy doesn’t find the least bit deferential.
“Doctor,” T’Kan begins, “Captain Kirk is currently in an induced coma pending evaluation of the impact of novel cellular regeneration following his exposure to Delta radiation. While his organ and cellular function appear largely restored, the regeneration process has led, via an unknown mechanism, to swelling of brain tissue. As this may exacerbate brain injury stemming from the initial hypoxia, it is our recommendation that he be kept in the coma until the swelling resolves or a more accurate prognosis can be determined. For now we wish to know whether this meets with your approval. Captain Kirk’s medical directive was deemed insufficient for this unusual situation.”
They all stare at him as if he can even think right now, let alone come to any kind of cogent conclusion. “What’s the alternative? Let him wake up and treat any possible brain injury?”
T’Kan nods gravely. “Precisely. Given the unorthodox nature of the treatment he received, we would be in what one might call uncharted territory. I am afraid I can give no estimate of the amount of brain damage Captain Kirk may have suffered. The last brain scans we have are from more than two months ago, and our models would be of questionable value in any case.”
Maybe, McCoy thinks, he’s been spending too much time around Vulcans, but he’s feeling distinctly judged by Dr. T’Kan and these other august doctors who practice space medicine on the ground. He feels disapproval in the way T’Kan stands between him and Jim’s bed, how Kosoko keeps her padd tilted away from him. He wants to ask what they would do, with someone they love dead on one side and the blood that would save him on the other. But the possibility of brain damage puts the whole mess on new and terrible ground. Unintended consequences he thinks, looking at Jim’s artificially placid face. Off into the unknown again. But I’ve always had you with me before.
He’d give his left arm to be able to do something, to review the brain imaging or have access to a lab or maybe just run a tricorder over Jim, something Jim hates but McCoy finds grounding. But he’s not here as a doctor. He’s not next of kin, either; that would be Winona, wherever in the galaxy she might be. What Jim entrusted to McCoy, he did so because they were friends, colleagues, because of McCoy’s alleged professional ability and ethics, and because they never expected to be in this situation in the first place.
I’m sorry.
“Go ahead,” McCoy says, feeling his shoulders slump with a new burden. There’s no blaze of hope, no surge of adrenaline, just a silent wish that Jim will be back sometime soon to tell him he was wise, or an idiot. That, and waiting.
Day 4
Under Admiral Marcus’s reign, Starfleet had emphasized resource utilization, including a mandate that personnel who shipped out for more than 3 months had their personal possessions put in storage so their quarters could be reassigned. Since this didn’t apply to the rank of captain and above, Jim had invited McCoy to dump his stuff in Jim’s spare bedroom, where McCoy had occasionally also dumped his exhausted body after nights on the town.
What all this meant was that if McCoy wanted to have more than a change of underwear to his name, he had to go to Jim’s apartment.
Pre-Khan, most of the Starfleet brass lived in a gleaming tower just south of the campus, but Jim had managed to wangle himself an apartment in a mid-rise in Sutro Heights, loaded with 22nd century charm and boasting one-half of an ocean view. McCoy takes the cramped turbolift up to the 18th floor and swipes his finger over the lock. The door opens with a pop and a whoosh of air as the pressure seal releases, admitting him along with whatever tiny flecks of dust will settle on Jim’s unused furniture.
“Blinds, 30 percent.”
The blinds snap open at McCoy’s command, and the apartment is filled with early-evening sunlight. The sunset might be spectacular, but he’s had his heart broken too many times before when slate-grey clouds gathered just above the horizon. Instead, he makes a cursory check: a few hanging epiphytic plants, a closed-system fish tank, everything uncharacteristically orderly the way Jim left it before he shipped out, not the usual chaos of strewn clothes and week-old coffee cups. Jim isn’t much of a nester--even his mild affection for this apartment is unusual--but the few things he’s accumulated are on view in the living room: a holo of the Enterprise’s maiden flight, a Kalan mud basket from their first extrasolar mission, and in a transparent aluminum case well out of the danger zone of Jim’s parties, the wooden ship model Admiral Pike gave him as a graduation present. It’s a fragile thing full of tiny details McCoy’s sun-dazzled eyes can’t make out, but he knows the nameplate on its prow says Enterprise. There had been two of her name in that era, Jim told him; the one Pike had chosen was the one that had come safe home.
McCoy opens the little cabinet that Jim uses as a bar and pours himself a bourbon to toast Pike’s memory. It’s bitterly unfair: twice Pike had undertaken a mission, full of vigor and promise, and twice it had all come apart on him. The first time at least he’d seen Jim, his son in all but name, make some order out of the chaos, but the second time even Jim hadn’t been able to save him. All that’s left is putting things back together.
At least the apartment faces away from the ruins of the city; the only trace McCoy can see is the ever-present dust and smoke dancing in the golden slices of sunlight. Beyond that, the Pacific ebbs and flows in tranquil blue and silver.
McCoy raises his glass to the little ship, downs the contents, and heads to the spare bedroom, intending to stuff a few changes of civvies into his bag and go. The thought of going back to his room in the Transient Personnel dorm makes his stomach burn more than the liquor. It’s closer to the hospital, but Sutro Heights is still only minutes away by hover cab. If Jim were conscious there’d be no question of his staying here. Maybe Jim would help him move the boxes off the spare bed, or maybe he’d bunk with Jim the way he did a few late nights in the in-between time after graduation and before they shipped out. He closes his eyes, just for a second, and he can feel Jim’s weight in the bed, see the sprawl of naked limbs, Jim boundaryless even in sleep, while McCoy curls up on his side, trying to respect the 50/50 rule.
Even epiphytic plants do better with a little water, McCoy thinks. He drops his bag, forages for pajamas, and tries to remember whether the good Indian place on 48th Street delivers.
Part 2 >>