S1E4: The Naked Time Stardate 1704.2
The Sickbay is on high alert, ramped up to a degree he hasn't seen since Charlie made hash of their lives. They are coming into orbit around Psi 2000, the doomed planet they are to rescue one scientific research party from before monitoring the planet's death. No one has been able the team for weeks now on subspace communications, and McCoy believes in preparing for the worst. Better they have everyone ready for multiple critical cases than sitting around on their thumbs to only be caught unprepared.
A bosun's whistle sounds overhead, and a few of the younger nurses screech to a halt in whatever they're doing. McCoy shakes his head as he punches the comm button - that's something he'll have to work on in the future. The captain might run the ship, but he runs Sickbay, and he sure as hell didn't call for a halt.
"Sickbay." He growls at the comm, leaning against the bulkhead as Nurse Chapel hurries past, her arms full of surgical kits.
"Stand down, Bones." McCoy opens his mouth to argue, but his captain knows him too well, hurrying on without waiting for a reply. "The research team is dead. I will be sending Spock and Crewman Tormolen to Sickbay as soon as they are back onboard. Kirk out."
Well. Damn. McCoy resists the urge to kick something as the thought of all those deaths twists his stomach.
_________________________________________________________________________
The away-team pair were met at Sickbay with hazmat suits and scanners - hardly the most welcoming committee to judge by Joe Tormolen's expression, but it had to be done. Transporter decontamination cycles can still miss things, and McCoy is chafing somewhat that he wasn't allowed to set up this scan in the transporter room itself. Still, they've done the best they can, and McCoy means to make a point here that just might even get through the Vulcan's thick skull. His exam on Joe is vigorous to the point of being a bit overblown, but Joe passes with flying colors.
When Spock's on the table, even he can admit that whatever killed that team of scientists on the planet has probably burned itself out by now - Vulcans tend to be a much hardier species than Humans as a rule, and even with a half-human heritage, if Joe is clean, odds are that Spock is too.
So he really, really doesn't feel a bit guilty at all for giving Spock a hard time. In fact, the sharp, impossibly flat response gets a grin from him - no changes there, sly sense of humor completely intact.
Of course, Kirk shows up after all of the dramatics are over, so his little display of medical disapproval has gone almost completely to waste. He does, however, show up just in time for the shock of what happened down there to smack Joe right between the eyes - the sturdy, cheerful officer suddenly balks, staring at his captain with scared little-boy eyes. And damn if Kirk can't get the boy to smile in under a minute - there's something to be said for signing on with a Captain with this much raw charisma. Still, he'll have to keep a close eye on Joe, make sure the trauma doesn't suck him under.
_________________________________________________________
The debriefing is, quite frankly, hell. Six people dead, in bizarre fashion, and no evidence one way or another as to how that might have come about. He can tell Kirk is angry, anger tightly controlled under an attempt at maintaining calm, but old Jim-boy truly does hate it when people go and die on him. He's asking impossible, irrational questions now, unhappy that he's not getting answers - is there a risk to the crew? Can this happen on board the Enterprise? Who the hell knows - they don't even know why or how it happened in the first place. It is only Scotty's firm confidence in his engines (and the odd mental image of the command crew taking showers with their clothes on) that saves the meeting from degrading into a shouting match.
The underlying message is chilling, however: If the command crew does go bonkers, the ship is doomed.
McCoy will be overjoyed to see the back of this particular mission.
_______________________________________________________
EMERGENCY! Rec room, 3-9! WE NEED MEDICS!
McCoy is on his feet and halfway to the door with his medkit in hand almost before the words fully register. Thankfully, that particular recreation area isn't too far from Sickbay. He can hear the booted feet of one of his nurses charging after him, can see crewmembers ahead of him flattening up against the walls to make room for them to fly by. They storm into chaos - Sulu and O'Reily, their hands all covered in blood, trying to support their bleeding friend between them... Joe Tormolen, the man he'd declared healthy only hours before. He gets the story in a somewhat coherent fashion, about Joe suddenly babbling about life and death and the wrongness of being in space and while McCoy can't quite fault the boy on his logic, there's better ways to deal with it than sticking a knife into your guts. Hastily he slaps a pressure bandage over the wound and recruits both helmsmen to get their friend back to Sickbay before they report for duty.
He is very much not looking forward to reporting this to Kirk.
_____________________________________________________
The surgery is going well. Swimmingly, actually. The boy did himself some damage - nicked part of the descending colon, sliced a kidney, and most importantly made a whopping tear in the renal artery. Heavy damage for so small a knife. If they hadn't struggled, the damage might not have been as bad - the knife was dull, and it was momentum and gravity that did most of the work in this case. Not that he will ever tell Sulu and O'Reily that - they do not need the guilt. Still, he's almost done, and then Joe here had better get used to a good long stay in Sickbay, with the threat of being shipped back to the nearest Starbase if he refuses treatment.
And then the boy just...
Ups and dies.
For no damn good reason at all.
Doesn't even respond to the epi injection. Not even a blip.
Once again, McCoy feels the urge to kick something. His toes hurt when he fails to restrain himself this time, but the bulkhead doesn't look any different. With an anger he can't decide is aimed at him, at Joe, or at the universe at large, he stabs the comm button.
"This is McCoy. Captain Kirk to Sickbay." He's sure that Kirk is, right now, raising an eyebrow at his tone. Somehow, he can't bring himself to care.
__________________________________________________
The Captain (Not Kirk, not Jim-boy, when he's like this, he's The Captain) is sulking in one of the exam room chairs, and McCoy can't keep himself from babbling. He's always been like this, he knows - he and that old Grim Reaper have been battling for years now, and he desperately hates losing. The Captain doesn't know that yet, and offers snappish remarks to his repeated, somewhat inane babbling. Yes, he knows that he can't know that Joe wanted to die, but damnitall, he sure as hell didn't put up much of a fight!
"I've lost patients before, but not like that. Not Joe's kind... that sort of man doesn't give up."
"Coincidence... maybe?" McCoy gives his Captain a sharp look, not liking where this is going.
"Jim, he was decontaminated, he's been medically checked, we've run every test we know for everything medically possible..."
"Not good enough!" That's The Captain's bark, sharp and frustrated. "Bones, I want the impossible too!"
McCoy knows he's about two steps away from decking his Captain. Righteously.
_________________________________________________
Half an hour later, to the accompaniment of some truly horrific caterwauling, two security members drag in a half-naked, unconscious Sulu. The story he gets out of them is beyond fantastical - Sulu, having abandoned his post, has been chasing crewmembers throughout the ship, and topped his performance by attempting to skewer the Captain. He's only unconscious now because Spock dropped him with one of those Vulcan nerve pinches.
McCoy decides to back it up with a hypospray full of sedatives. Sure, he's seen the science behind Spock's move, but he really doesn't feel up to facing crazed swordsmen. Especially as whoever is singing out there starts up 'Take Me Home, Kathleen' once again, with absolutely no respect to the actual melody.
________________________________________________
He feels like they're back under Charlie's power again as he frantically runs through every test he can think of (and a few he's making up on the spot) on Sulu, trying to figure out why a reliable crewman would suddenly decide he's a long-dead fictional Frenchman. The red-alert sirens wail, then cut off. O'Reily alternates between horrific singing and absolutely absurd orders. His last straw breaks when the ship shakes as if it were a misbehaving puppy, sending him sprawling across Sulu's unconscious form.
"Sickbay to Bridge." He calls, and soon he hears Jim's frantic 'Can you tie me in to sickbay!', which isn't at all reassuring.
"I'm getting you, Jim. Look, can you keep this beast level?" He can practically hear Nurse Chapel rolling her eyes behind him, but he can't work when the ship won't even stay steady under his feet. Crankily he reports this fact, and he knows Jim-boy is disappointed that he can't drop O'Reily.
As the singing starts again, he's bitterly disappointed too.
_______________________________________________
Main Chemistry lab went down soon after that. Harrison in biopsy held out a long while, but eventually he failed to get an answer - unfortunately before he could get an answer for those tests he sent in. Frustrated, he falls back to the old axiom - if you want something done right, do it yourself.
The way Nurse Chapel answers him though, as he heads out of Sickbay, sends chills up his spine. Is everyone on this ship contaminated already? He should go back, sedate her as well, make sure she's secure... but they are running out of time. She's going to have to hold out on her own until he can get some answers.
______________________________________________
He wants to kick things again, but his feet already hurt from the amount of running he's had to do today. All negative, all the tests negative! These are the most impressively healthy sick people he's ever met!
Frustrated, he slumps into the chair Harrison has abandoned in favor of painting the walls with biopsy stains. They're all going to die soon, but in fire instead of ice, if he doesn't come up with an antidote. Damnit, he's a doctor, not a God-damned magician, he has to have facts before he can make a treatment plan! Plum crazy is not facts!
...
There's a leftover sample, sitting next to the spectral analyzer.
Harrison had left something undone before he snapped. Or maybe not undone, just done wrong as his mind failed. Now what...
One test, one test that's too perfect in a series of perfect tests, so absolutely in the normals no normal person could ever hope to produce it! Chemical analysis of the blood, yes, the basics had their normal hodge-podge of just under the high of normal or just over the low, but when it got down to the nitty-gritty - base chemicals, not complex molecules, it began to get startlingly perfect.
He runs it again, praying to a God who's heard too many prayers from desperate physicians.
Water! It's water, turned into something ugly and unkind. Two technicians, looking frightened and lost, run in as he's mixing a serum that should, according to the calculations, turn this thing back into the water it was. They were in the hydroponics lab, before it turned into a nut house. He suspects they're tainted, but there's only one he knows is infected within his reach. After saving the formula in the computer, he sprints back towards the Sickbay, hypospray in hand.
________________________________________
Sulu screams.
It's heartrending, and for a long moment, McCoy is sure he's killed the cheerful, resourceful, friendly helmsmen.
Then the horrible sound stops abruptly, and Sulu stars at McCoy in utter bewilderment.
"I was... on the bridge...?" And it's the most beautiful sound McCoy has ever heard.
________________________________________
He remembers Scotty's warning, earlier today (earlier this morning! How times flies in a crisis) and knows how best to save the crew - his place is on the bridge. He and Sulu carry two full crates of the serum up through the turbolifts (with a short detour through Engineering, with a quick prayer to that poor benighted God as he treats Spock, hoping the Vulcan physiology won't betray the first officer) and Sulu helps while he captures and treats every one of the remaining bridge staff. The effect isn't as dramatic as it was on Sulu - no screams, thank God, just a sudden abrupt return to soberness. The Captain turns up looking bewildered and listless, and McCoy doesn't have the patience to ask him to roll up a sleeve - the tunic tears under his hand and he dumps a full dose of the serum into the triceps without so much as a by-your-leave. His reaction is slow, so slow McCoy is afraid he's going to have to give a second dose, not knowing how that will affect human physiology.
It works, however. Everything works - the serum, the bizarre plan he's pretty sure he doesn't want details on that got them out of crashing into the planet below, all of it. There are no further crew deaths, only a series of confused and misplaced crewmemembers trying to remember what happened to their morning. McCoy tells them to forget it, pretend it didn't happen, since technically it is happening again.
Just... with fewer swordsmen and less singing this time.
A bosun's whistle sounds overhead, and a few of the younger nurses screech to a halt in whatever they're doing. McCoy shakes his head as he punches the comm button - that's something he'll have to work on in the future. The captain might run the ship, but he runs Sickbay, and he sure as hell didn't call for a halt.
"Sickbay." He growls at the comm, leaning against the bulkhead as Nurse Chapel hurries past, her arms full of surgical kits.
"Stand down, Bones." McCoy opens his mouth to argue, but his captain knows him too well, hurrying on without waiting for a reply. "The research team is dead. I will be sending Spock and Crewman Tormolen to Sickbay as soon as they are back onboard. Kirk out."
Well. Damn. McCoy resists the urge to kick something as the thought of all those deaths twists his stomach.
_________________________________________________________________________
The away-team pair were met at Sickbay with hazmat suits and scanners - hardly the most welcoming committee to judge by Joe Tormolen's expression, but it had to be done. Transporter decontamination cycles can still miss things, and McCoy is chafing somewhat that he wasn't allowed to set up this scan in the transporter room itself. Still, they've done the best they can, and McCoy means to make a point here that just might even get through the Vulcan's thick skull. His exam on Joe is vigorous to the point of being a bit overblown, but Joe passes with flying colors.
When Spock's on the table, even he can admit that whatever killed that team of scientists on the planet has probably burned itself out by now - Vulcans tend to be a much hardier species than Humans as a rule, and even with a half-human heritage, if Joe is clean, odds are that Spock is too.
So he really, really doesn't feel a bit guilty at all for giving Spock a hard time. In fact, the sharp, impossibly flat response gets a grin from him - no changes there, sly sense of humor completely intact.
Of course, Kirk shows up after all of the dramatics are over, so his little display of medical disapproval has gone almost completely to waste. He does, however, show up just in time for the shock of what happened down there to smack Joe right between the eyes - the sturdy, cheerful officer suddenly balks, staring at his captain with scared little-boy eyes. And damn if Kirk can't get the boy to smile in under a minute - there's something to be said for signing on with a Captain with this much raw charisma. Still, he'll have to keep a close eye on Joe, make sure the trauma doesn't suck him under.
_________________________________________________________
The debriefing is, quite frankly, hell. Six people dead, in bizarre fashion, and no evidence one way or another as to how that might have come about. He can tell Kirk is angry, anger tightly controlled under an attempt at maintaining calm, but old Jim-boy truly does hate it when people go and die on him. He's asking impossible, irrational questions now, unhappy that he's not getting answers - is there a risk to the crew? Can this happen on board the Enterprise? Who the hell knows - they don't even know why or how it happened in the first place. It is only Scotty's firm confidence in his engines (and the odd mental image of the command crew taking showers with their clothes on) that saves the meeting from degrading into a shouting match.
The underlying message is chilling, however: If the command crew does go bonkers, the ship is doomed.
McCoy will be overjoyed to see the back of this particular mission.
_______________________________________________________
EMERGENCY! Rec room, 3-9! WE NEED MEDICS!
McCoy is on his feet and halfway to the door with his medkit in hand almost before the words fully register. Thankfully, that particular recreation area isn't too far from Sickbay. He can hear the booted feet of one of his nurses charging after him, can see crewmembers ahead of him flattening up against the walls to make room for them to fly by. They storm into chaos - Sulu and O'Reily, their hands all covered in blood, trying to support their bleeding friend between them... Joe Tormolen, the man he'd declared healthy only hours before. He gets the story in a somewhat coherent fashion, about Joe suddenly babbling about life and death and the wrongness of being in space and while McCoy can't quite fault the boy on his logic, there's better ways to deal with it than sticking a knife into your guts. Hastily he slaps a pressure bandage over the wound and recruits both helmsmen to get their friend back to Sickbay before they report for duty.
He is very much not looking forward to reporting this to Kirk.
_____________________________________________________
The surgery is going well. Swimmingly, actually. The boy did himself some damage - nicked part of the descending colon, sliced a kidney, and most importantly made a whopping tear in the renal artery. Heavy damage for so small a knife. If they hadn't struggled, the damage might not have been as bad - the knife was dull, and it was momentum and gravity that did most of the work in this case. Not that he will ever tell Sulu and O'Reily that - they do not need the guilt. Still, he's almost done, and then Joe here had better get used to a good long stay in Sickbay, with the threat of being shipped back to the nearest Starbase if he refuses treatment.
And then the boy just...
Ups and dies.
For no damn good reason at all.
Doesn't even respond to the epi injection. Not even a blip.
Once again, McCoy feels the urge to kick something. His toes hurt when he fails to restrain himself this time, but the bulkhead doesn't look any different. With an anger he can't decide is aimed at him, at Joe, or at the universe at large, he stabs the comm button.
"This is McCoy. Captain Kirk to Sickbay." He's sure that Kirk is, right now, raising an eyebrow at his tone. Somehow, he can't bring himself to care.
__________________________________________________
The Captain (Not Kirk, not Jim-boy, when he's like this, he's The Captain) is sulking in one of the exam room chairs, and McCoy can't keep himself from babbling. He's always been like this, he knows - he and that old Grim Reaper have been battling for years now, and he desperately hates losing. The Captain doesn't know that yet, and offers snappish remarks to his repeated, somewhat inane babbling. Yes, he knows that he can't know that Joe wanted to die, but damnitall, he sure as hell didn't put up much of a fight!
"I've lost patients before, but not like that. Not Joe's kind... that sort of man doesn't give up."
"Coincidence... maybe?" McCoy gives his Captain a sharp look, not liking where this is going.
"Jim, he was decontaminated, he's been medically checked, we've run every test we know for everything medically possible..."
"Not good enough!" That's The Captain's bark, sharp and frustrated. "Bones, I want the impossible too!"
McCoy knows he's about two steps away from decking his Captain. Righteously.
_________________________________________________
Half an hour later, to the accompaniment of some truly horrific caterwauling, two security members drag in a half-naked, unconscious Sulu. The story he gets out of them is beyond fantastical - Sulu, having abandoned his post, has been chasing crewmembers throughout the ship, and topped his performance by attempting to skewer the Captain. He's only unconscious now because Spock dropped him with one of those Vulcan nerve pinches.
McCoy decides to back it up with a hypospray full of sedatives. Sure, he's seen the science behind Spock's move, but he really doesn't feel up to facing crazed swordsmen. Especially as whoever is singing out there starts up 'Take Me Home, Kathleen' once again, with absolutely no respect to the actual melody.
________________________________________________
He feels like they're back under Charlie's power again as he frantically runs through every test he can think of (and a few he's making up on the spot) on Sulu, trying to figure out why a reliable crewman would suddenly decide he's a long-dead fictional Frenchman. The red-alert sirens wail, then cut off. O'Reily alternates between horrific singing and absolutely absurd orders. His last straw breaks when the ship shakes as if it were a misbehaving puppy, sending him sprawling across Sulu's unconscious form.
"Sickbay to Bridge." He calls, and soon he hears Jim's frantic 'Can you tie me in to sickbay!', which isn't at all reassuring.
"I'm getting you, Jim. Look, can you keep this beast level?" He can practically hear Nurse Chapel rolling her eyes behind him, but he can't work when the ship won't even stay steady under his feet. Crankily he reports this fact, and he knows Jim-boy is disappointed that he can't drop O'Reily.
As the singing starts again, he's bitterly disappointed too.
_______________________________________________
Main Chemistry lab went down soon after that. Harrison in biopsy held out a long while, but eventually he failed to get an answer - unfortunately before he could get an answer for those tests he sent in. Frustrated, he falls back to the old axiom - if you want something done right, do it yourself.
The way Nurse Chapel answers him though, as he heads out of Sickbay, sends chills up his spine. Is everyone on this ship contaminated already? He should go back, sedate her as well, make sure she's secure... but they are running out of time. She's going to have to hold out on her own until he can get some answers.
______________________________________________
He wants to kick things again, but his feet already hurt from the amount of running he's had to do today. All negative, all the tests negative! These are the most impressively healthy sick people he's ever met!
Frustrated, he slumps into the chair Harrison has abandoned in favor of painting the walls with biopsy stains. They're all going to die soon, but in fire instead of ice, if he doesn't come up with an antidote. Damnit, he's a doctor, not a God-damned magician, he has to have facts before he can make a treatment plan! Plum crazy is not facts!
...
There's a leftover sample, sitting next to the spectral analyzer.
Harrison had left something undone before he snapped. Or maybe not undone, just done wrong as his mind failed. Now what...
One test, one test that's too perfect in a series of perfect tests, so absolutely in the normals no normal person could ever hope to produce it! Chemical analysis of the blood, yes, the basics had their normal hodge-podge of just under the high of normal or just over the low, but when it got down to the nitty-gritty - base chemicals, not complex molecules, it began to get startlingly perfect.
He runs it again, praying to a God who's heard too many prayers from desperate physicians.
Water! It's water, turned into something ugly and unkind. Two technicians, looking frightened and lost, run in as he's mixing a serum that should, according to the calculations, turn this thing back into the water it was. They were in the hydroponics lab, before it turned into a nut house. He suspects they're tainted, but there's only one he knows is infected within his reach. After saving the formula in the computer, he sprints back towards the Sickbay, hypospray in hand.
________________________________________
Sulu screams.
It's heartrending, and for a long moment, McCoy is sure he's killed the cheerful, resourceful, friendly helmsmen.
Then the horrible sound stops abruptly, and Sulu stars at McCoy in utter bewilderment.
"I was... on the bridge...?" And it's the most beautiful sound McCoy has ever heard.
________________________________________
He remembers Scotty's warning, earlier today (earlier this morning! How times flies in a crisis) and knows how best to save the crew - his place is on the bridge. He and Sulu carry two full crates of the serum up through the turbolifts (with a short detour through Engineering, with a quick prayer to that poor benighted God as he treats Spock, hoping the Vulcan physiology won't betray the first officer) and Sulu helps while he captures and treats every one of the remaining bridge staff. The effect isn't as dramatic as it was on Sulu - no screams, thank God, just a sudden abrupt return to soberness. The Captain turns up looking bewildered and listless, and McCoy doesn't have the patience to ask him to roll up a sleeve - the tunic tears under his hand and he dumps a full dose of the serum into the triceps without so much as a by-your-leave. His reaction is slow, so slow McCoy is afraid he's going to have to give a second dose, not knowing how that will affect human physiology.
It works, however. Everything works - the serum, the bizarre plan he's pretty sure he doesn't want details on that got them out of crashing into the planet below, all of it. There are no further crew deaths, only a series of confused and misplaced crewmemembers trying to remember what happened to their morning. McCoy tells them to forget it, pretend it didn't happen, since technically it is happening again.
Just... with fewer swordsmen and less singing this time.