Fic: On the other side of every mountain
Title: On the other side of every mountain
Author jactrades
Written for: uber_wench 's awesome art! Be sure to check it out!
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters/Pairing: McCoy-centric, with a large dose of Kirk
Rating/Warnings: R, mostly for language.
Wordcount: ~6,300
Genre: AU/Fusion with M*A*S*H. Yup, that old show.
Summary: For trekreversebang . It's nine in the morning, they've already been in the OR tent for four hours, and Jim Kirk, surgeon extraordinaire, feels chatty. Of course.
Notes:Only the first half got beta'd by the amazing hellokatzchen , all errors are mine. MASH plotlines (and a bit of TOS) shamelessly used.
I've also created a fanmix/playlist that I wrote to: (there was another mountain)
“You know, I’ve been thinking.”
Len doesn’t even bother glancing up from his patient. He’s on his fifth sliver of shrapnel, a tricky extraction, and dollars to donuts that Jim won’t shut up on whatever has entered his head, anyway. “Nurse Tamura, more suction here, please.”
“Bones, don’t you want to know what I’ve been thinking?” Jim asks, sounding hurt.
A slight pull and this bit of metal is out of the kid’s small intestine. Cut isn’t even bleeding too badly, all things considered. Len spares a glance over at the other near-infant in the operating tent. “No, Jim, I don’t reckon I particularly care what you’ve been thinking.”
A moment of blissful quiet.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Jim starts again, and Len looks up to see his goddamn blue eyes nearly twinkling over the white mask. “The Army’s getting awful good at giving us an accurate count of our incoming causalities before the fighting even commences. They got the count perfect for the past two engagements. This is a power that they clearly aren’t harnessing fully, Bones.”
“You don’t say.”
“Well, they’ve been fighting over that same mountain for what, four months?” Jim asks, a rhetorical question if there ever was any. The whole camp has been keeping count. Chekov started humming The Grand Old Duke of York under his breath when they passed the two month mark. “About half as long as you’ve been in Korea, right?”
Len murmurs an acknowledgement. Feels like he’s spent a lot fucking longer than eight months at the 4077th.When he heard he was being sent to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, well, this wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. Plenty of surgery, but it sure ain’t much of a hospital, the mobile part is highly questionable, and, thanks to Jim’s antics, it doesn’t much seem like the army. Just a hell of a lot of injured soldiers, most of them barely old enough to shave.
His hands move about on their own, stitching up the soldier’s abdomen, while he glances around the tent. Jim’s got his own shrapnel’d soldier well in hand and they’d given the easy leg wound to Spock. Lord knows what the Army thought it was doing placing a diagnostician - first-rate or not - in an OR to do meatball surgery.
“Instead of fighting it out and wasting all that ammunition, our brass could just meet with the North Korean brass,” Jim continues, “and figure out how many would’ve died in order for each side to gain absolutely no ground. Use one of the government’s massive computer thingies, maybe. ‘Eliminate’ each side’s soldiers, and bam, you’re done. No fuss, no mess, and, I might add, no need for any MASH surgeons, either. It’d be the picture of efficiency.”
Len waits a beat, then looks up when he hears nothing more from that corner of the room. “Jim, that is the stupidest idea I’ve heard out of your mouth in the past week. And that includes the fashion advice you were plying Sulu with while playing poker the other night.”
There’s the hint of a smile in the wrinkles of Jim’s mask. “Look, if Sulu is willing to listen to the fashion advice of a farmboy from Iowa after a martini or five, then who am I to refuse him? Anyways, I really do think that the pink blouse-“
“I concur with Dr. McCoy, Dr. Kirk,” Spock interjects unexpectedly with that arch tone of his. “This… proposal… of yours is, indeed, illogical. I must admit, then, that it is surprising that our Army has not yet implemented such a project.”
There’s another moment of silence around the tent. Len raises an eyebrow at Spock. Either the man has stooped to making an actual joke or he’s cracked under the pressure far faster than Gary did.
“It would be most efficient,” Spock adds blandly, returning Len’s eyebrow raise.
Jim breaks, starting with a low chuckle that turns into a full-out belly laugh, reddened gloves shaking over his patient. The rest of the OR staff gets over their shock and joins in, although Christine is giggling a bit nervously, eyes wide as she stares at the doctor she’s been half-assisting, half-teaching for the past eight days.
It’s the first time Spock has joined in on the surgery banter since he arrived at the unit and that’s… that’s a good sign. He’s getting more comfortable with the rest of the medical staff, maybe, or with the job itself. It’s probably Jim’s doing - Colonel Pike may command the base and Len somehow inherited the title of head surgeon when he replaced Puri, but it’s Jim that’s crafted a team out of them. And the surgery’s only as good as the medical team running it.
Stitching done, Len pulls his gloves off with a snap, resisting the urge to collapse on the cot behind him. Chekov had roused them from the Swamp, the tent they called home, long before the sun rose. Night maneuvers - the troops stumble about in the dark like bulls in a china shop, injuring themselves more than they do the enemy. Spock’s soldier, the leg wound, had been grievously attacked by a foxhole, apparently.
He starts to shake his head at the thought before he notices Nyota watching him from over where she’s assisting Jim. Len coughs, trying to fake that the head shake was just him cracking his neck, but the glint her eye when she returns to exchanging muttered insults with Jim suggests he’s not fooling anyone.
He leans against the cot behind him, causal-like, watching Jim and Spock at work across the room while Tamura moves Len’s soldier into post-op tent next door. Spock is more comfortable, Len realizes - the man’s face is as impassive as ever, and he’s still too damn slow by half but his hands are moving with more confidence now.
‘You can always tell a surgeon by his hands,’ was what Len’s daddy had told him that summer between college and medical school and Len has learned the truth of it since. Gary Mitchell had moved fast, hands flying over a patient, but he’d always been jittery while scrubbing up, and worse after the day’s crises were over. Pike joins in when they’re overloaded with casualties; the colonel isn’t familiar with the latest techniques, but the man has more surgical experience in one finger than the rest of them combined and it shows in how he works.
Jim’s hands, now, Len’s never seen them move with anything other than confidence, inside the OR or out it. The kid might have barely started his residency when he’d been called up, but he’s shaping up to be a damn fine surgeon. Len would like to take some credit for that, but he’s suspects that if you ask Jim, all honors would be heaped on Dr. Puri, god of the surgeons.
It’s a stupid ass thing to be jealous about.
xxx
December 18th, 1950
Dear Sam,
Korea is cold as all fuck.
On the plus side: there’s nurses this time around from the start, no bleeding or bullet holes necessary to get their attention, and they’re mostly plenty friendly. And I’m not one of the infantry grunts either, not that you’d know anything about that, Major Kirk…
I don’t know why I’d forgotten how loud a base is, day and night. No artillery here or anything - the front is a good eight klicks away - but a bunch of men who don’t want to be here squeezed too close together in canvas tents can make plenty of noise.
Gary, one of the doctors I’m bunking with, sure as hell doesn’t want anything to do with Korea, but he got his degree on the Army’s dime at the end of the last war, so he’s here. We get on well enough - our goal is to have a working still by the time it’s warm enough for the alcohol to stay liquid.
The other doctor here is the venerable Dr. Puri. I mean that seriously, Sam - the old man is sharp as a tack and has been practicing medicine longer than I’ve been alive. He’s an Army lifer, like Colonel Pike. He’s... Puri’s been good to me, inside the OR and out of it. I sometimes wonder if
He was at Normandy, too. Not, you know, immediately, but after. Clean-up, I guess.
Damned cardshark, too.
- JTK
xxx
Len realizes what day it is just as he’s collecting his meal in the mess after a quick shower. It’s too late for breakfast but he’s disinclined to call the mush he’s carrying on his plate anything so grand as lunch. Glancing around the tent, he spots Chekov and Scotty in a corner hunched over the new June issue of Popular Mechanics and that, along with Jim’s comment in surgery, starts him on counting days. It’s ten since Sulu “borrowed” the medivac helicopter to buzz the camp, which was six after Jim volunteered to help that soldier at the front, which, yeah, makes today the twenty-first.
Damn.
He sits down abruptly, head in hands, suddenly utterly exhausted. He’s tired of working, eating, and sleeping in tents. He’s tired of inventing new and exciting techniques in the field of trauma surgery. He’s goddamn tired of the color green. And he’s tired of missing his baby girl growing up.
Sitting up a bit, Len twists his gold wristwatch around to see its face; the band’s always been slightly too large for him. Jo-Jo will be officially turning seven in thirty minutes, Georgia-time, and will probably be awake in another eight or so. And this’ll be the first birthday he’s missed, from the morning pancakes to the catching of seven lighting bugs - “plus one for luck, right, Daddy?”
Even after he quietly started living full-time at the cramped apartment in Atlanta near the hospital, Jocelyn had never said a word about keeping Joanna on her birthday.
A laugh from the corner interrupts his darkening thoughts. Chekov is clearly excited, hands splayed wide and moving quickly as he explains something to Scotty. Len can’t hear what they’re saying but Father Scott is looking on at the waving hands with the serene expression that means he’s thinking engineering. A moment later he pulls out a pencil and a scrap of paper and starts scribbling down something, which he then passes to Chekov.
The corporal looks down at whatever it is - math, probably - as happy as a pup with a new bone. Of all of them, Chekov belongs here the least. He should be in a university somewhere, maybe Scotty’s MIT, using that brain of his for math or science or what-have-you, not sitting around a MASH camp filing med reports.
Len looks back down at his mush and steels himself for the first bite.
“Dr. McCoy?”
Sulu’s standing before him, paperwork in one hand, purse in the other. And, oh Lord, it looks like he took Jim’s suggestions regarding the pink blouse. Pink blouse, pink skirt, pink hose even - never let it be said the sergeant isn’t resourceful.
He looks like the damned pink atrocity masquerading as a doll that Jocelyn got Jo for her last birthday, actually. Down to the same slight grin. The resemblance lifts Len’s mood by a hair.
“Sulu,” Len starts, trying to be tactful, “you realize that wearing poodle skirts ain’t gonna get you out of Korea any quicker, right?”
Colonel Pike, smile hidden behind a hand, had finally acquiesced to Sulu’s valiant efforts to prove his insanity (cross-dressing was only the latest of many schemes) and asked for a psychiatrist to come evaluate the 4077th ‘bout a month back. To the surprise of no one, Sulu hadn’t gotten a ticket via Section 8 back to the States, though he’d come out of his interview with Dr. Gaila Freedman with a smile on his face. Rumors - started by Jim, probably - suggested he might have gotten something else, though. Admittedly the sergeant had been in a cheerier mood since Gailia’s visit, and there’d been some letters being sent out, so. Jim had tasked Chekov and his innocent smile with getting some solid evidence.
Sulu flashes Len a conspiratorial smirk, bangs flapping down into his eyes. His haircut isn’t regulation, Len realizes absently.
“Of course, Doc,” Sulu replies. He shifts his balance slightly, straightening and Len is suddenly reminded of the panther that wouldn’t quit pacing, tail all a-swish, when he’d brought Jo to the Atlanta Zoo. “I just like fucking with everyone, to be honest. Especially Jim.”
Sulu shrugs and he’s back to resembling the doll of nightmares, slight grin, pink, and all. “Gives me something to do.”
Well. That puts the other night’s poker conversation in a new light.
Sulu drops the files he’s carrying down on the table, narrowly missing the cooling mush. “Anyway, I’ve got the paperwork for the latest bunch. Do you want it now?”
Len looks down at the pile already resting on the table for a moment, then back up at the sergeant, with an quirked brow.
“It’s not like you’re going to eat that, right?” Sulu asks after an awkward pause. “What is it, even?”
Len rubs his neck thoughtfully.
“I hadn’t figured out, exactly,” he admits. “Doesn’t quite look like food ought.”
Sulu responds with a snort. “Whoever thought Cupcake’d make a good chef was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you ask me. I’m surprised we all haven’t had to report to the OR for food poisoning.”
“Eh? What’s that about sandwiches, now?” Scotty calls out, raising his head from the - schematic? - that he’s been sketching out beside Chekov.
Before anyone can respond, Chekov beeps. All the heads in the mess turn toward him. There’s another loud beep. Reddening, Chekov fumbles out from his pocket a… contraption of some sorts? (There’s a reason Len studied medicine rather than engineering.)
“It's hooked up to the base’s RADAR system,” Chekov offers shyly to the room at large. “We’ll have helicopters in a moment.” He passes the device to Scotty who’s clearly chomping at the bit to examine the… thing.
A few seconds later, the PA system sounds the base:
“Attention all surgical personnel. Report to operating room. Incoming casualties arriving by chopper, ambulance, and jeep. It's gonna be a big one, folks.”
McCoy pushes himself up from the table.
xxx
December 20th, 1950
Dear Sam,
For the record, it doesn’t pay to make assumptions about how well teenagers and the clergy can hold their liquor.
But that’s two more for the Morale Improvement Project. It’s all FUBAR right now - Mitchell of the shaky chemistry knowledge isn’t allowed near the still again - but Father Scott - Scotty - assures me he’ll have it up and running in no time. Am still not sure how the Jesuits recruited an engineer.
Nurse Uhura still won’t tell me her first name. Any big brotherly advice there?
- JTK
xxx
Walking out of the mess, Len realizes just how bad it is today.
Medics and nurses are streaming about, bringing the soldiers down from the upper pad - it’s mostly only the choppers that have arrived so far, but there's already more casualties than he’s seen before. As he glances around, he notices that some South Korean troops mixed in with the Americans.
“Nyota!” Len barks out.
She waves distractedly from the far side of the clearing, half hidden behind a jeep that’s just rolled up with more casualties, already speaking rapidly to one of the wounded Korean soldiers. Len jogs towards her. “What’s it look like?”
A glance tells him that the soldier will get by fine, even if the break will be a long time healing. Nyota says a few more soothing-sounding words to the man before turning to Len.
“We’ve got about thirty so far, maybe fifteen serious surgeries,” Nyota says. “All of the South Korean soldiers came in without any sort of write-up. Christine’s already in the OR scrubbing up with Spock.”
“Get a rundown from everyone conscious enough to tell you anything,” Len says when she pauses. “We don’t want to miss anything that the patient could have told us about. Then you’re with Pike for the simpler surgeries.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.”
“Sir!” Len whirls to see Colonel Pike standing behind him.
The colonel, already dressed and scrubbed for surgery, strides by to examine Nyota’s patient. “Relax, McCoy. You’re head surgeon - this sort of mess is your bailiwick, not mine.”
Len nods. Pike’s told him as much before, but it’s not exactly the sort of situation he expected when he was drafted. Who puts a thirty-one year old doc from small town Georgia in as head surgeon? He hasn’t even made fellow at Atlanta General yet - but he’s learned that civilian logic and Army logic don’t quite match up.
Pike looks over his shoulder. “Word from Seoul is that it’s a big one - they tried to take that mountain back. Long day today.”
Len’s already heading back towards the O.R. “Sounds like some general bit off more than he could chew again on that damn hill.”
The colonel gives a sorry-sounding chuckle. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
xxx
December 26th, 1950
Dear Sam,
Lost my first one today.
- JTK
xxx
“Spock - anything that’s bleeding steadily, but’s a clean wound. Christine, you’re with him. Where’s Jim?”
“Hey,” Jim says, jogging into through the flap of the O.R., hair dripping. There’s a bit of soap residue on his neck running down from his left ear and disappearing behind his collar. “Triage?”
“’Course,” Len says, nodding. “No sense in standing there suckin’ on your teeth.”
Together they move to the sinks to scrub up. In the time he’s been here they’ve fallen into a rhythm as a team. Jim may not be as experienced a surgeon as Len is, but he’s fast at what he knows, and the best of any of them at just tactically assessing a wound and moving in. So Jim’ll blaze through the room, almost too bright to watch, while Len’ll handle the delicate ones.
Drying his hands, Jim turns, gives that cocky ass grin of his while meeting Len’s eyes. Len fails at holding back his snort, and Jim grins that much wider. “Alright, let’s do this thing, Bones.”
They fall to it.
First one up for Len is a sucking chest wound, Janice assisting and Tamura on anesthesia. It’s bleeding all over and the kid’s lung is near collapsed. Urgent as all hell but not unusual, and Len finds his mind wandering.
That rhythm between him and Jim had been there from that first day in Korea.
Jim and Chekov had found Len in the officer bar on the base in Seoul, tossing back a couple in a futile effort to forget the flight in. From the base in San Francisco to Wake Island to Honolulu to Tokyo to Seoul, hop, hop, hop, not even enough time between planes to be properly sick. He’d looked like shit, to be honest.
Jim hadn’t looked much better, dark circles under bloodshot eyes. Chekov had passed better as an officer than either of the doctors seemed, and he looked (still looks) ‘bout twelve.
“Lenny McCoy?” Jim had asked, sidling up on the stool next to Len’s. Despite looking worn-down - Len would learn later that news of Puri’s chopper spinning out had reached the 4077th the day before - Jim had been fairly quivering with a tightly-wound energy.
Raising an eyebrow, Len’d tossed back the last of his whiskey - the bourbon available had all been shit, which, well, welcome to Korea. “Get you a drink if I never hear you call me that again. Name’s Len McCoy - either’s fine.”
Jim’d motioned the bartender over. “Jim Kirk, doctor. Our jeep driver here is Pavel Chekov, current rank of first lieutenant, seeing how this is an officer bar.”
“Buy you each a drink, then. Anything to keep my bones on solid ground before we go off rattling in your jeep,” Len had said, before really giving Chekov a look in the dim bar. “Wait a minute, kid, how old are you?”
“Eighteen, sir,” Chekov had promptly replied, the slightest hint of something foreign buried under a country twang. “But in Russia we were not issued birth certificates, so,” Chekov shrugged, smiling, “perhaps my mother misremembered a bit.”
Len had eyed the kid a bit longer before sliding over a bill for the three shots Jim’d ordered. Swinging around to face the other doctor, Len had grabbed the drink.
“And I suppose you’re twenty-six and just out of med school?”
“Close,” Jim had said, raising his glass with a smirk Len’d soon become familiar with. “Twenty-five.”
It was less than an hour later when it’d first occurred to Len that maybe Jim Kirk was a goddamn liar. It wasn’t the last.
“Kirk,” he’d yelled, “You’re running like a flatfooted mule dragging a dead horse, not a twenty-five year-old Captain of the damn US Army. In case you forgot, we’re trying to get away from them” - he’d pointed towards the North Koreans who’d ambushed the Jeep on its way to the 4077th - “and closer to them.” The American troops hadn’t been far away, but Jim had started limping almost as soon as they’d abandoned the Jeep with its blown axel.
Jim’s response had been of the non-verbal kind - from the hand not resting around Chekov’s shoulder.
“Seriously, kid,” Len had panted, “You okay? Not hit?”
“Fine,” Jim had puffed, wincing on every step. “Just an old injury.”
Of course, by the time they had reached the American troops, so had the North Korean artillery.
Chekov had been carrying the first aid kit from the jeep, and Len, of course, had a few supplies on hand, and they had just… fallen to it, him and Jim, with Chekov assisting as best he could. Like a perfectly practiced team.
His first field surgery in Korea had been a sucking chest wound too.
xxx
December 28th, 1950
Dear Sam,
Aurelan’s letter arrived. Pete looks just like you at that age - clearly the Kirk genes are triumphant.
It’s hard to believe he’ll be thirteen in a month.
It was on the 25th, actually. But there’s no fucking way I’m going to tell a kid his dad died on Christmas. So the paperwork and the letter back to the widow says the 26th. Christmas should be presents and candy and lights, not mourning.
Puri said, well, he said the usual. Said that it happens, said it doesn’t get easier but somehow you get along. I told him I had experience with that last one.
Scotty and I shared some one of his bottles, exchanged some stories from U of Chicago and MIT, and a bit from the war. The last one, that is.
Miss you Sam,
- JTK
xxx
“Bones, we have a problem over here,” Jim says, sounding as close to panicked as Len has ever heard.
Len glances over - it’s another shrapnel causality, which could mean anything. “Jan, can you close him up?”
Janice nods, cool and collected, and Len moves back from the patient. He owes Christine something big after this one - the nurses have saved their asses more than once today and it’s all due to the extra training his head nurse insisted they get.
“Jim?”
“Well… do we happen to have any spare aorta’s lying around?” Jim asks, eyes down as Len steps up to the cot.
“…Jim?”
“Look,” Jim says, pointing at the artery descending from left ventricle. “When I opened him up I thought it’d just been nicked, with most of the damage in the lungs, but…”
He reaches up, adjusts the overhead light to shine at as deep an angle as possible.
“Fuck,” Len says vehemently, drawing eyes from around the OR and not really caring. Fuckiddy fuck. The aorta is completely cut up on the posterior side, impossible to see unless you’re looking for it. It’s a wonder the soldier’s still alive.
Len looks up, sees Christine give a quick shake of her head. Wasn’t likely that they’d’ve stored anything like that from the last cadaver - people with shredded aortas didn’t tend to make it back from the front, even with the choppers in action.
Jim’s face is drawn beneath the mask, eyes worried. Len reaches up, stops - no sense in smearing blood all over Jim’s mostly clean coat. He settles on a shoulder nudge.
“Not your fault, kid,” he murmurs, thinking through and discarding options one by one. “I wouldn’t have thought to look either.”
They have enough blood - miraculously enough - to keep the soldier alive for a few more hours. Could try a graft from the smaller veins that are available, but the chances of that working are… close to nonexistent. Len’s pulled off a few in his time, but this… It’s another kettle of fish altogether.
“Doctor McCoy,” Spock says suddenly, making Len jump slightly.
“Spock, it’s Len, or, God help me, Bones here in the OR,” Len says. He’d rub his forehead, but, well, gloves fresh from surgery.
That makes Spock pause for a moment, but only just. “Very well… Len. The soldier with the head injury is the solution for the aorta case. In my professional opinion, of course.”
Lord. Len gives up the fight and rubs his head - it’s not like it makes that much of a difference after that squirting artery two cases ago. The worse thing about Spock, in Len’s professional opinion, is that he sometimes makes absolutely no sense. It’s only when Jim shoots him a smirk that Len realizes he might’ve said that last bit out loud.
“The head injury, Spock?” Len asks.
“We have all agreed that there he won’t live for much longer,” Spock replies coolly. “The… body is already comatose and will remain so, with no higher functioning in the brain, given the specifications of the wound. There is no reason to not extract the aorta and use it to save another man’s life.”
Len can’t keep the horrified expression off of his face, and he’s not sure he wants to, anyway. “Good God, man, are you actually suggesting that we kill that man? Of all the cold-blooded, unethical… Have you even heard of the Hippocratic Oath?”
“On the contrary, Len, I believe the unethical act would be to knowingly allow two men to die when we can save one with no change in the outcome for the other,” Spock shoots back with ice in his voice.
Len turns to Jim, expecting to find support from the other surgeon. Jim is chewing on his lip, face blank, eyes down, but something in his posture reminds Len that Jim is no slouch on thinking tactically. Something in the war - Len doesn’t know exactly what, because they don’t talk about it, ever - had aged Jim past his twenty-five years.
Jim raises his eyes and, yeah, there it is.
“I think it’s.. it’s maybe the right choice, Bones,” Jim says hesitantly, eyes still down. A pause, and then he looks up, meets Len’s eyes. “No, I’m sure it’s the right choice,” he continues, his voice a bit stronger, reaching an arm out to Len. “Triage, right? We save the ones we can. We can save this man.”
Len doesn’t know what he’s feeling, what’s showing on his face, but, whatever it is, it makes Jim flinch back before he makes contact.
It’s the summer after that first year at med school all over again, an impossible choice, and Len just can’t do this again. He remembers in a flash the weight of that syringe of morphine, walking into his father’s sickroom, holding onto his Da’s hand.
Somehow, this one, with an unknown soldier, hurts more. Maybe because he’s worked as hard as he could to be a better doctor, to never be in this position again.
Goddamn.
“Bones?” Jim says, as if from a distance, and Len realizes that Jim’s been talking to him for the past few moments.
“Yeah, Jim.” Len says with a sigh. He is so damned tired of everything to do with today. “You and Spock are both right.”
He turns, finds Christine in the same place she was earlier. Huh. Guess it’s felt longer than it’s been.
“Nurse Chapel,” he says formally, “please prepare a syringe - 3,000 milligrams of morphine.” It’s more than enough, especially with the injuries the soldier has already sustained, but this isn’t the sort of thing to take chances on.
“Sulu” - the man is always hovering in the OR, ready to run for an x-ray or help a nurse move a patient. Sulu’s good people - “Sulu, go get Scotty.”
After a moment’s thought, right before Sulu’s out the door, Len adds, “Be sure to keep Chekov out of the OR for a bit.”
The next few minutes, while they wait for Father Scott, are some of the quietest the OR’s ever seen, at least as long as Len’s been at the 4077th. There’s still surgery to do, of course, so they keep on doing it. Colonel Pike’s been in the corner the whole time, working on a nasty intestinal wound with Nyota assisting. He’d been watching it all with serious eyes. But they both knew it was always going to be Head Surgeon McCoy’s call.
Then Scotty’s arrived, and now Christine is walking towards him with that same heavy syringe. Len’s steeling himself up to reach out for it when Jim plucks it out of Christine’s hands.
“It’s okay, Bones, I’ve got it,” Jim says firmly, grip tight on the syringe.
“Jim,” Len starts, suddenly boiling angry. “Jim, this is my responsibility.”
“You’re always saying that ‘I’m your goddamn responsibility, Lord help us all’,” Jim says. He’s got the weakest of half-smiles on his face, and the shitty ass attempt at a Southern accent would have snorting at any other time. “So this is just sort of - delegating the responsibility down a level?”
“Jim!” Len near-shouts. “Give me the damn syringe.”
“Bones,” Jim says softly, blue eyes meeting Len’s carefully, wide and, and - concerned. “I know you can do this. But you don’t always need to. I’ve got this one, ‘kay?”
He turns around, heads towards the corner where Scotty is murmuring last rites.
“Besides,” Jim adds, turning his head with the first real smile on his face since this whole fiasco started. “You’ve got a history-making aorta transplant to get ready for.”
xxx
January 2nd, 1951
Dear Sam,
The front’s moved back - behind us, actually. Guess the Mobile part of the name is purely decorative. Word from Seoul is that they’re pretty sure they’ll be able to take back the line in the next few days, so we’ve been issued sandbags and orders to stay put.
It’s still fucking cold.
Last night I wandered by Chekov’s tent, saw he still had his lantern on. Chekov is… he’s hard to explain. Just a kid who signed up too early with glory in his eyes. Like me, I guess. Real smart, though, like you.
He was fingering a hole in his blanket, just sitting there looking at it. A stray shot must’ve come through, hit his bed sometime today. The bullet hole was only inches away from the little teddy bear he has.
Who the fuck recruits a boy who’ll bring a teddy bear to Korea? Not that he is, anymore - a boy, that is. Not after last night.
Guess we all have our comforting things to keep us going, though. Sulu with his stunts and pranks (fucker pulled the best one on me the other day), Chekov with his bear, Scotty and his, well, scotch, Nyota practicing her Korean & Chinese on anyone who’ll stand around long enough to listen, Pike with his watercolors of the Mojave…
And I still write you.
- JTK
xxx
It’s late when Nyota taps his shoulder. He’s finishing up on one last case, his third after the aorta transplant. That kid’ll survive, and, with any luck, walk eventually. So will this one, he thinks, as he finishes the last few stitches. Spock’s watching over the still-critical cases in the post-op tent, Pike is digging into the paperwork, and Jim is -
Well, Jim is off somewhere. Len’s not sure how he feels at the moment towards the closest thing he has to a best friend.
“Nyota, darling, whatcha need?” Len asks, not turning from the patient.
“You’re needed, actually, in the Colonel’s office.” Nyota replies, a small smile on her face. “Go on, I’ll finish up here.”
She shoos him away before he’s quiet aware of what’s happening. He pulls off his gloves and coat, rinses off, walks out into the warm night.
The stars are out.
Jim's the only one in Colonel Pike's office when Len gets there. The other surgeon's back is turned, fingers coiling the phone's cord around a pen while he talks.
"Mrs. McCoy... Alright, Miz Jocelyn, he'll be here any moment. They've just called him out of surgery... Well, we weren't sure, ma'am, if we'd be able to get a hold of you," Jim says, voice at its smoothest, honey practically flowing outta his vocal cords.
Len stands there, dumb for a moment as he slowly works out who it is Jim must be talking to. It just plumb doesn't make sense - calls back to the States are as rare as hens teeth, only for military purposes, and there’ve been none since the main line from Seoul to Tokyo went down last month.
Jim turns, catches sight of Len. "Bones!" he mouths, breaking out into a grin while simultaneously rolling his eyes at the phone. Len stands there, still not quite sure of what's going on, let alone where he stands with Jim now.
"Yes, ma'am," Jim says into the receiver, still laying the charm on thick. "I'll be sure to do that. And, uh, it looks like Dr. McCoy has finally arrived. Now you be sure to tell your lovely daughter Happy Birthday from me and the rest of the 4077th, okay?"
He takes a step, grabs Len's shoulder, pulls him closer. Hand over the receiver as he passes it over, Jim whispers, "You've got five, maybe six minutes before Chekov thinks we'll lose the connection."
Len stands still for one more second, watches Jim walk out of the tent, before snapping to and pulling the phone against his ear.
"Jocelyn?" he says into the phone, hesitantly. It’s not that he’d hate to talk to his wife - in name if not in fact, but -
"Daddy!"
And it's his baby girl.
xxx
December 31st, 1951
Dear Sam,
It’s been a little over a year since I came to Korea, a little over a month since we got a new head surgeon, and a little over an hour since I got the Christmas card from Aurelan. Auri never could get anything out on time, could she? Got warm socks in my package, though, so don’t think I’m complaining.
Pete sent me a letter too. It was mostly questions about you.
I think this is time to say goodbye, Sam. I still miss you, but. I should be writing Peter, not you, you know?
Always,
- JTK
xxx
“Jim.”
Len walks slowly into the Swamp, pulling the tent flap out of the way automatically. It’s been a long day.
Jim looks up from the papers in his lap, gives a careful sort of smile. “Hi Bones. Pull up a cot? Martini?”
“You sure this latest batch won’t blind me?” Len asks, only half joking. This sure ain’t the most refined of gin that they’re getting out of the still, despite all of Scotty’s tinkering.
“Pretty certain,” Jim says lightly. “Good chat?”
Len wasn’t sure if they were going to discuss that, just like they don’t discuss the letters that Jim had been looking through just now.
“Yeah,” he says, slowly. “Yeah, it was… good.”
He lays down on his cot, finally. Jim gets up, fiddles with the still and the martini glasses that Gary had left behind. Glasses full, he comes over, silently sits down right next to Len’s head. Len looks up at him, brushes his hand as he grasps the martini glass.
“Thanks, Jim.”
Jim gives him a smile, the bags under his eyes making that blue of his eyes stand out more. “It was a group effort, you know. Finest kind we got here. But… you’re welcome, Bones. Anytime.”
Author jactrades
Written for: uber_wench 's awesome art! Be sure to check it out!
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters/Pairing: McCoy-centric, with a large dose of Kirk
Rating/Warnings: R, mostly for language.
Wordcount: ~6,300
Genre: AU/Fusion with M*A*S*H. Yup, that old show.
Summary: For trekreversebang . It's nine in the morning, they've already been in the OR tent for four hours, and Jim Kirk, surgeon extraordinaire, feels chatty. Of course.
Notes:Only the first half got beta'd by the amazing hellokatzchen , all errors are mine. MASH plotlines (and a bit of TOS) shamelessly used.
I've also created a fanmix/playlist that I wrote to: (there was another mountain)
“You know, I’ve been thinking.”
Len doesn’t even bother glancing up from his patient. He’s on his fifth sliver of shrapnel, a tricky extraction, and dollars to donuts that Jim won’t shut up on whatever has entered his head, anyway. “Nurse Tamura, more suction here, please.”
“Bones, don’t you want to know what I’ve been thinking?” Jim asks, sounding hurt.
A slight pull and this bit of metal is out of the kid’s small intestine. Cut isn’t even bleeding too badly, all things considered. Len spares a glance over at the other near-infant in the operating tent. “No, Jim, I don’t reckon I particularly care what you’ve been thinking.”
A moment of blissful quiet.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Jim starts again, and Len looks up to see his goddamn blue eyes nearly twinkling over the white mask. “The Army’s getting awful good at giving us an accurate count of our incoming causalities before the fighting even commences. They got the count perfect for the past two engagements. This is a power that they clearly aren’t harnessing fully, Bones.”
“You don’t say.”
“Well, they’ve been fighting over that same mountain for what, four months?” Jim asks, a rhetorical question if there ever was any. The whole camp has been keeping count. Chekov started humming The Grand Old Duke of York under his breath when they passed the two month mark. “About half as long as you’ve been in Korea, right?”
Len murmurs an acknowledgement. Feels like he’s spent a lot fucking longer than eight months at the 4077th.When he heard he was being sent to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, well, this wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. Plenty of surgery, but it sure ain’t much of a hospital, the mobile part is highly questionable, and, thanks to Jim’s antics, it doesn’t much seem like the army. Just a hell of a lot of injured soldiers, most of them barely old enough to shave.
His hands move about on their own, stitching up the soldier’s abdomen, while he glances around the tent. Jim’s got his own shrapnel’d soldier well in hand and they’d given the easy leg wound to Spock. Lord knows what the Army thought it was doing placing a diagnostician - first-rate or not - in an OR to do meatball surgery.
“Instead of fighting it out and wasting all that ammunition, our brass could just meet with the North Korean brass,” Jim continues, “and figure out how many would’ve died in order for each side to gain absolutely no ground. Use one of the government’s massive computer thingies, maybe. ‘Eliminate’ each side’s soldiers, and bam, you’re done. No fuss, no mess, and, I might add, no need for any MASH surgeons, either. It’d be the picture of efficiency.”
Len waits a beat, then looks up when he hears nothing more from that corner of the room. “Jim, that is the stupidest idea I’ve heard out of your mouth in the past week. And that includes the fashion advice you were plying Sulu with while playing poker the other night.”
There’s the hint of a smile in the wrinkles of Jim’s mask. “Look, if Sulu is willing to listen to the fashion advice of a farmboy from Iowa after a martini or five, then who am I to refuse him? Anyways, I really do think that the pink blouse-“
“I concur with Dr. McCoy, Dr. Kirk,” Spock interjects unexpectedly with that arch tone of his. “This… proposal… of yours is, indeed, illogical. I must admit, then, that it is surprising that our Army has not yet implemented such a project.”
There’s another moment of silence around the tent. Len raises an eyebrow at Spock. Either the man has stooped to making an actual joke or he’s cracked under the pressure far faster than Gary did.
“It would be most efficient,” Spock adds blandly, returning Len’s eyebrow raise.
Jim breaks, starting with a low chuckle that turns into a full-out belly laugh, reddened gloves shaking over his patient. The rest of the OR staff gets over their shock and joins in, although Christine is giggling a bit nervously, eyes wide as she stares at the doctor she’s been half-assisting, half-teaching for the past eight days.
It’s the first time Spock has joined in on the surgery banter since he arrived at the unit and that’s… that’s a good sign. He’s getting more comfortable with the rest of the medical staff, maybe, or with the job itself. It’s probably Jim’s doing - Colonel Pike may command the base and Len somehow inherited the title of head surgeon when he replaced Puri, but it’s Jim that’s crafted a team out of them. And the surgery’s only as good as the medical team running it.
Stitching done, Len pulls his gloves off with a snap, resisting the urge to collapse on the cot behind him. Chekov had roused them from the Swamp, the tent they called home, long before the sun rose. Night maneuvers - the troops stumble about in the dark like bulls in a china shop, injuring themselves more than they do the enemy. Spock’s soldier, the leg wound, had been grievously attacked by a foxhole, apparently.
He starts to shake his head at the thought before he notices Nyota watching him from over where she’s assisting Jim. Len coughs, trying to fake that the head shake was just him cracking his neck, but the glint her eye when she returns to exchanging muttered insults with Jim suggests he’s not fooling anyone.
He leans against the cot behind him, causal-like, watching Jim and Spock at work across the room while Tamura moves Len’s soldier into post-op tent next door. Spock is more comfortable, Len realizes - the man’s face is as impassive as ever, and he’s still too damn slow by half but his hands are moving with more confidence now.
‘You can always tell a surgeon by his hands,’ was what Len’s daddy had told him that summer between college and medical school and Len has learned the truth of it since. Gary Mitchell had moved fast, hands flying over a patient, but he’d always been jittery while scrubbing up, and worse after the day’s crises were over. Pike joins in when they’re overloaded with casualties; the colonel isn’t familiar with the latest techniques, but the man has more surgical experience in one finger than the rest of them combined and it shows in how he works.
Jim’s hands, now, Len’s never seen them move with anything other than confidence, inside the OR or out it. The kid might have barely started his residency when he’d been called up, but he’s shaping up to be a damn fine surgeon. Len would like to take some credit for that, but he’s suspects that if you ask Jim, all honors would be heaped on Dr. Puri, god of the surgeons.
It’s a stupid ass thing to be jealous about.
xxx
December 18th, 1950
Dear Sam,
Korea is cold as all fuck.
On the plus side: there’s nurses this time around from the start, no bleeding or bullet holes necessary to get their attention, and they’re mostly plenty friendly. And I’m not one of the infantry grunts either, not that you’d know anything about that, Major Kirk…
I don’t know why I’d forgotten how loud a base is, day and night. No artillery here or anything - the front is a good eight klicks away - but a bunch of men who don’t want to be here squeezed too close together in canvas tents can make plenty of noise.
Gary, one of the doctors I’m bunking with, sure as hell doesn’t want anything to do with Korea, but he got his degree on the Army’s dime at the end of the last war, so he’s here. We get on well enough - our goal is to have a working still by the time it’s warm enough for the alcohol to stay liquid.
The other doctor here is the venerable Dr. Puri. I mean that seriously, Sam - the old man is sharp as a tack and has been practicing medicine longer than I’ve been alive. He’s an Army lifer, like Colonel Pike. He’s... Puri’s been good to me, inside the OR and out of it. I sometimes wonder if
He was at Normandy, too. Not, you know, immediately, but after. Clean-up, I guess.
Damned cardshark, too.
- JTK
xxx
Len realizes what day it is just as he’s collecting his meal in the mess after a quick shower. It’s too late for breakfast but he’s disinclined to call the mush he’s carrying on his plate anything so grand as lunch. Glancing around the tent, he spots Chekov and Scotty in a corner hunched over the new June issue of Popular Mechanics and that, along with Jim’s comment in surgery, starts him on counting days. It’s ten since Sulu “borrowed” the medivac helicopter to buzz the camp, which was six after Jim volunteered to help that soldier at the front, which, yeah, makes today the twenty-first.
Damn.
He sits down abruptly, head in hands, suddenly utterly exhausted. He’s tired of working, eating, and sleeping in tents. He’s tired of inventing new and exciting techniques in the field of trauma surgery. He’s goddamn tired of the color green. And he’s tired of missing his baby girl growing up.
Sitting up a bit, Len twists his gold wristwatch around to see its face; the band’s always been slightly too large for him. Jo-Jo will be officially turning seven in thirty minutes, Georgia-time, and will probably be awake in another eight or so. And this’ll be the first birthday he’s missed, from the morning pancakes to the catching of seven lighting bugs - “plus one for luck, right, Daddy?”
Even after he quietly started living full-time at the cramped apartment in Atlanta near the hospital, Jocelyn had never said a word about keeping Joanna on her birthday.
A laugh from the corner interrupts his darkening thoughts. Chekov is clearly excited, hands splayed wide and moving quickly as he explains something to Scotty. Len can’t hear what they’re saying but Father Scott is looking on at the waving hands with the serene expression that means he’s thinking engineering. A moment later he pulls out a pencil and a scrap of paper and starts scribbling down something, which he then passes to Chekov.
The corporal looks down at whatever it is - math, probably - as happy as a pup with a new bone. Of all of them, Chekov belongs here the least. He should be in a university somewhere, maybe Scotty’s MIT, using that brain of his for math or science or what-have-you, not sitting around a MASH camp filing med reports.
Len looks back down at his mush and steels himself for the first bite.
“Dr. McCoy?”
Sulu’s standing before him, paperwork in one hand, purse in the other. And, oh Lord, it looks like he took Jim’s suggestions regarding the pink blouse. Pink blouse, pink skirt, pink hose even - never let it be said the sergeant isn’t resourceful.
He looks like the damned pink atrocity masquerading as a doll that Jocelyn got Jo for her last birthday, actually. Down to the same slight grin. The resemblance lifts Len’s mood by a hair.
“Sulu,” Len starts, trying to be tactful, “you realize that wearing poodle skirts ain’t gonna get you out of Korea any quicker, right?”
Colonel Pike, smile hidden behind a hand, had finally acquiesced to Sulu’s valiant efforts to prove his insanity (cross-dressing was only the latest of many schemes) and asked for a psychiatrist to come evaluate the 4077th ‘bout a month back. To the surprise of no one, Sulu hadn’t gotten a ticket via Section 8 back to the States, though he’d come out of his interview with Dr. Gaila Freedman with a smile on his face. Rumors - started by Jim, probably - suggested he might have gotten something else, though. Admittedly the sergeant had been in a cheerier mood since Gailia’s visit, and there’d been some letters being sent out, so. Jim had tasked Chekov and his innocent smile with getting some solid evidence.
Sulu flashes Len a conspiratorial smirk, bangs flapping down into his eyes. His haircut isn’t regulation, Len realizes absently.
“Of course, Doc,” Sulu replies. He shifts his balance slightly, straightening and Len is suddenly reminded of the panther that wouldn’t quit pacing, tail all a-swish, when he’d brought Jo to the Atlanta Zoo. “I just like fucking with everyone, to be honest. Especially Jim.”
Sulu shrugs and he’s back to resembling the doll of nightmares, slight grin, pink, and all. “Gives me something to do.”
Well. That puts the other night’s poker conversation in a new light.
Sulu drops the files he’s carrying down on the table, narrowly missing the cooling mush. “Anyway, I’ve got the paperwork for the latest bunch. Do you want it now?”
Len looks down at the pile already resting on the table for a moment, then back up at the sergeant, with an quirked brow.
“It’s not like you’re going to eat that, right?” Sulu asks after an awkward pause. “What is it, even?”
Len rubs his neck thoughtfully.
“I hadn’t figured out, exactly,” he admits. “Doesn’t quite look like food ought.”
Sulu responds with a snort. “Whoever thought Cupcake’d make a good chef was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, if you ask me. I’m surprised we all haven’t had to report to the OR for food poisoning.”
“Eh? What’s that about sandwiches, now?” Scotty calls out, raising his head from the - schematic? - that he’s been sketching out beside Chekov.
Before anyone can respond, Chekov beeps. All the heads in the mess turn toward him. There’s another loud beep. Reddening, Chekov fumbles out from his pocket a… contraption of some sorts? (There’s a reason Len studied medicine rather than engineering.)
“It's hooked up to the base’s RADAR system,” Chekov offers shyly to the room at large. “We’ll have helicopters in a moment.” He passes the device to Scotty who’s clearly chomping at the bit to examine the… thing.
A few seconds later, the PA system sounds the base:
“Attention all surgical personnel. Report to operating room. Incoming casualties arriving by chopper, ambulance, and jeep. It's gonna be a big one, folks.”
McCoy pushes himself up from the table.
xxx
December 20th, 1950
Dear Sam,
For the record, it doesn’t pay to make assumptions about how well teenagers and the clergy can hold their liquor.
But that’s two more for the Morale Improvement Project. It’s all FUBAR right now - Mitchell of the shaky chemistry knowledge isn’t allowed near the still again - but Father Scott - Scotty - assures me he’ll have it up and running in no time. Am still not sure how the Jesuits recruited an engineer.
Nurse Uhura still won’t tell me her first name. Any big brotherly advice there?
- JTK
xxx
Walking out of the mess, Len realizes just how bad it is today.
Medics and nurses are streaming about, bringing the soldiers down from the upper pad - it’s mostly only the choppers that have arrived so far, but there's already more casualties than he’s seen before. As he glances around, he notices that some South Korean troops mixed in with the Americans.
“Nyota!” Len barks out.
She waves distractedly from the far side of the clearing, half hidden behind a jeep that’s just rolled up with more casualties, already speaking rapidly to one of the wounded Korean soldiers. Len jogs towards her. “What’s it look like?”
A glance tells him that the soldier will get by fine, even if the break will be a long time healing. Nyota says a few more soothing-sounding words to the man before turning to Len.
“We’ve got about thirty so far, maybe fifteen serious surgeries,” Nyota says. “All of the South Korean soldiers came in without any sort of write-up. Christine’s already in the OR scrubbing up with Spock.”
“Get a rundown from everyone conscious enough to tell you anything,” Len says when she pauses. “We don’t want to miss anything that the patient could have told us about. Then you’re with Pike for the simpler surgeries.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.”
“Sir!” Len whirls to see Colonel Pike standing behind him.
The colonel, already dressed and scrubbed for surgery, strides by to examine Nyota’s patient. “Relax, McCoy. You’re head surgeon - this sort of mess is your bailiwick, not mine.”
Len nods. Pike’s told him as much before, but it’s not exactly the sort of situation he expected when he was drafted. Who puts a thirty-one year old doc from small town Georgia in as head surgeon? He hasn’t even made fellow at Atlanta General yet - but he’s learned that civilian logic and Army logic don’t quite match up.
Pike looks over his shoulder. “Word from Seoul is that it’s a big one - they tried to take that mountain back. Long day today.”
Len’s already heading back towards the O.R. “Sounds like some general bit off more than he could chew again on that damn hill.”
The colonel gives a sorry-sounding chuckle. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
xxx
December 26th, 1950
Dear Sam,
Lost my first one today.
- JTK
xxx
“Spock - anything that’s bleeding steadily, but’s a clean wound. Christine, you’re with him. Where’s Jim?”
“Hey,” Jim says, jogging into through the flap of the O.R., hair dripping. There’s a bit of soap residue on his neck running down from his left ear and disappearing behind his collar. “Triage?”
“’Course,” Len says, nodding. “No sense in standing there suckin’ on your teeth.”
Together they move to the sinks to scrub up. In the time he’s been here they’ve fallen into a rhythm as a team. Jim may not be as experienced a surgeon as Len is, but he’s fast at what he knows, and the best of any of them at just tactically assessing a wound and moving in. So Jim’ll blaze through the room, almost too bright to watch, while Len’ll handle the delicate ones.
Drying his hands, Jim turns, gives that cocky ass grin of his while meeting Len’s eyes. Len fails at holding back his snort, and Jim grins that much wider. “Alright, let’s do this thing, Bones.”
They fall to it.
First one up for Len is a sucking chest wound, Janice assisting and Tamura on anesthesia. It’s bleeding all over and the kid’s lung is near collapsed. Urgent as all hell but not unusual, and Len finds his mind wandering.
That rhythm between him and Jim had been there from that first day in Korea.
Jim and Chekov had found Len in the officer bar on the base in Seoul, tossing back a couple in a futile effort to forget the flight in. From the base in San Francisco to Wake Island to Honolulu to Tokyo to Seoul, hop, hop, hop, not even enough time between planes to be properly sick. He’d looked like shit, to be honest.
Jim hadn’t looked much better, dark circles under bloodshot eyes. Chekov had passed better as an officer than either of the doctors seemed, and he looked (still looks) ‘bout twelve.
“Lenny McCoy?” Jim had asked, sidling up on the stool next to Len’s. Despite looking worn-down - Len would learn later that news of Puri’s chopper spinning out had reached the 4077th the day before - Jim had been fairly quivering with a tightly-wound energy.
Raising an eyebrow, Len’d tossed back the last of his whiskey - the bourbon available had all been shit, which, well, welcome to Korea. “Get you a drink if I never hear you call me that again. Name’s Len McCoy - either’s fine.”
Jim’d motioned the bartender over. “Jim Kirk, doctor. Our jeep driver here is Pavel Chekov, current rank of first lieutenant, seeing how this is an officer bar.”
“Buy you each a drink, then. Anything to keep my bones on solid ground before we go off rattling in your jeep,” Len had said, before really giving Chekov a look in the dim bar. “Wait a minute, kid, how old are you?”
“Eighteen, sir,” Chekov had promptly replied, the slightest hint of something foreign buried under a country twang. “But in Russia we were not issued birth certificates, so,” Chekov shrugged, smiling, “perhaps my mother misremembered a bit.”
Len had eyed the kid a bit longer before sliding over a bill for the three shots Jim’d ordered. Swinging around to face the other doctor, Len had grabbed the drink.
“And I suppose you’re twenty-six and just out of med school?”
“Close,” Jim had said, raising his glass with a smirk Len’d soon become familiar with. “Twenty-five.”
It was less than an hour later when it’d first occurred to Len that maybe Jim Kirk was a goddamn liar. It wasn’t the last.
“Kirk,” he’d yelled, “You’re running like a flatfooted mule dragging a dead horse, not a twenty-five year-old Captain of the damn US Army. In case you forgot, we’re trying to get away from them” - he’d pointed towards the North Koreans who’d ambushed the Jeep on its way to the 4077th - “and closer to them.” The American troops hadn’t been far away, but Jim had started limping almost as soon as they’d abandoned the Jeep with its blown axel.
Jim’s response had been of the non-verbal kind - from the hand not resting around Chekov’s shoulder.
“Seriously, kid,” Len had panted, “You okay? Not hit?”
“Fine,” Jim had puffed, wincing on every step. “Just an old injury.”
Of course, by the time they had reached the American troops, so had the North Korean artillery.
Chekov had been carrying the first aid kit from the jeep, and Len, of course, had a few supplies on hand, and they had just… fallen to it, him and Jim, with Chekov assisting as best he could. Like a perfectly practiced team.
His first field surgery in Korea had been a sucking chest wound too.
xxx
December 28th, 1950
Dear Sam,
Aurelan’s letter arrived. Pete looks just like you at that age - clearly the Kirk genes are triumphant.
It’s hard to believe he’ll be thirteen in a month.
It was on the 25th, actually. But there’s no fucking way I’m going to tell a kid his dad died on Christmas. So the paperwork and the letter back to the widow says the 26th. Christmas should be presents and candy and lights, not mourning.
Puri said, well, he said the usual. Said that it happens, said it doesn’t get easier but somehow you get along. I told him I had experience with that last one.
Scotty and I shared some one of his bottles, exchanged some stories from U of Chicago and MIT, and a bit from the war. The last one, that is.
Miss you Sam,
- JTK
xxx
“Bones, we have a problem over here,” Jim says, sounding as close to panicked as Len has ever heard.
Len glances over - it’s another shrapnel causality, which could mean anything. “Jan, can you close him up?”
Janice nods, cool and collected, and Len moves back from the patient. He owes Christine something big after this one - the nurses have saved their asses more than once today and it’s all due to the extra training his head nurse insisted they get.
“Jim?”
“Well… do we happen to have any spare aorta’s lying around?” Jim asks, eyes down as Len steps up to the cot.
“…Jim?”
“Look,” Jim says, pointing at the artery descending from left ventricle. “When I opened him up I thought it’d just been nicked, with most of the damage in the lungs, but…”
He reaches up, adjusts the overhead light to shine at as deep an angle as possible.
“Fuck,” Len says vehemently, drawing eyes from around the OR and not really caring. Fuckiddy fuck. The aorta is completely cut up on the posterior side, impossible to see unless you’re looking for it. It’s a wonder the soldier’s still alive.
Len looks up, sees Christine give a quick shake of her head. Wasn’t likely that they’d’ve stored anything like that from the last cadaver - people with shredded aortas didn’t tend to make it back from the front, even with the choppers in action.
Jim’s face is drawn beneath the mask, eyes worried. Len reaches up, stops - no sense in smearing blood all over Jim’s mostly clean coat. He settles on a shoulder nudge.
“Not your fault, kid,” he murmurs, thinking through and discarding options one by one. “I wouldn’t have thought to look either.”
They have enough blood - miraculously enough - to keep the soldier alive for a few more hours. Could try a graft from the smaller veins that are available, but the chances of that working are… close to nonexistent. Len’s pulled off a few in his time, but this… It’s another kettle of fish altogether.
“Doctor McCoy,” Spock says suddenly, making Len jump slightly.
“Spock, it’s Len, or, God help me, Bones here in the OR,” Len says. He’d rub his forehead, but, well, gloves fresh from surgery.
That makes Spock pause for a moment, but only just. “Very well… Len. The soldier with the head injury is the solution for the aorta case. In my professional opinion, of course.”
Lord. Len gives up the fight and rubs his head - it’s not like it makes that much of a difference after that squirting artery two cases ago. The worse thing about Spock, in Len’s professional opinion, is that he sometimes makes absolutely no sense. It’s only when Jim shoots him a smirk that Len realizes he might’ve said that last bit out loud.
“The head injury, Spock?” Len asks.
“We have all agreed that there he won’t live for much longer,” Spock replies coolly. “The… body is already comatose and will remain so, with no higher functioning in the brain, given the specifications of the wound. There is no reason to not extract the aorta and use it to save another man’s life.”
Len can’t keep the horrified expression off of his face, and he’s not sure he wants to, anyway. “Good God, man, are you actually suggesting that we kill that man? Of all the cold-blooded, unethical… Have you even heard of the Hippocratic Oath?”
“On the contrary, Len, I believe the unethical act would be to knowingly allow two men to die when we can save one with no change in the outcome for the other,” Spock shoots back with ice in his voice.
Len turns to Jim, expecting to find support from the other surgeon. Jim is chewing on his lip, face blank, eyes down, but something in his posture reminds Len that Jim is no slouch on thinking tactically. Something in the war - Len doesn’t know exactly what, because they don’t talk about it, ever - had aged Jim past his twenty-five years.
Jim raises his eyes and, yeah, there it is.
“I think it’s.. it’s maybe the right choice, Bones,” Jim says hesitantly, eyes still down. A pause, and then he looks up, meets Len’s eyes. “No, I’m sure it’s the right choice,” he continues, his voice a bit stronger, reaching an arm out to Len. “Triage, right? We save the ones we can. We can save this man.”
Len doesn’t know what he’s feeling, what’s showing on his face, but, whatever it is, it makes Jim flinch back before he makes contact.
It’s the summer after that first year at med school all over again, an impossible choice, and Len just can’t do this again. He remembers in a flash the weight of that syringe of morphine, walking into his father’s sickroom, holding onto his Da’s hand.
Somehow, this one, with an unknown soldier, hurts more. Maybe because he’s worked as hard as he could to be a better doctor, to never be in this position again.
Goddamn.
“Bones?” Jim says, as if from a distance, and Len realizes that Jim’s been talking to him for the past few moments.
“Yeah, Jim.” Len says with a sigh. He is so damned tired of everything to do with today. “You and Spock are both right.”
He turns, finds Christine in the same place she was earlier. Huh. Guess it’s felt longer than it’s been.
“Nurse Chapel,” he says formally, “please prepare a syringe - 3,000 milligrams of morphine.” It’s more than enough, especially with the injuries the soldier has already sustained, but this isn’t the sort of thing to take chances on.
“Sulu” - the man is always hovering in the OR, ready to run for an x-ray or help a nurse move a patient. Sulu’s good people - “Sulu, go get Scotty.”
After a moment’s thought, right before Sulu’s out the door, Len adds, “Be sure to keep Chekov out of the OR for a bit.”
The next few minutes, while they wait for Father Scott, are some of the quietest the OR’s ever seen, at least as long as Len’s been at the 4077th. There’s still surgery to do, of course, so they keep on doing it. Colonel Pike’s been in the corner the whole time, working on a nasty intestinal wound with Nyota assisting. He’d been watching it all with serious eyes. But they both knew it was always going to be Head Surgeon McCoy’s call.
Then Scotty’s arrived, and now Christine is walking towards him with that same heavy syringe. Len’s steeling himself up to reach out for it when Jim plucks it out of Christine’s hands.
“It’s okay, Bones, I’ve got it,” Jim says firmly, grip tight on the syringe.
“Jim,” Len starts, suddenly boiling angry. “Jim, this is my responsibility.”
“You’re always saying that ‘I’m your goddamn responsibility, Lord help us all’,” Jim says. He’s got the weakest of half-smiles on his face, and the shitty ass attempt at a Southern accent would have snorting at any other time. “So this is just sort of - delegating the responsibility down a level?”
“Jim!” Len near-shouts. “Give me the damn syringe.”
“Bones,” Jim says softly, blue eyes meeting Len’s carefully, wide and, and - concerned. “I know you can do this. But you don’t always need to. I’ve got this one, ‘kay?”
He turns around, heads towards the corner where Scotty is murmuring last rites.
“Besides,” Jim adds, turning his head with the first real smile on his face since this whole fiasco started. “You’ve got a history-making aorta transplant to get ready for.”
xxx
January 2nd, 1951
Dear Sam,
The front’s moved back - behind us, actually. Guess the Mobile part of the name is purely decorative. Word from Seoul is that they’re pretty sure they’ll be able to take back the line in the next few days, so we’ve been issued sandbags and orders to stay put.
It’s still fucking cold.
Last night I wandered by Chekov’s tent, saw he still had his lantern on. Chekov is… he’s hard to explain. Just a kid who signed up too early with glory in his eyes. Like me, I guess. Real smart, though, like you.
He was fingering a hole in his blanket, just sitting there looking at it. A stray shot must’ve come through, hit his bed sometime today. The bullet hole was only inches away from the little teddy bear he has.
Who the fuck recruits a boy who’ll bring a teddy bear to Korea? Not that he is, anymore - a boy, that is. Not after last night.
Guess we all have our comforting things to keep us going, though. Sulu with his stunts and pranks (fucker pulled the best one on me the other day), Chekov with his bear, Scotty and his, well, scotch, Nyota practicing her Korean & Chinese on anyone who’ll stand around long enough to listen, Pike with his watercolors of the Mojave…
And I still write you.
- JTK
xxx
It’s late when Nyota taps his shoulder. He’s finishing up on one last case, his third after the aorta transplant. That kid’ll survive, and, with any luck, walk eventually. So will this one, he thinks, as he finishes the last few stitches. Spock’s watching over the still-critical cases in the post-op tent, Pike is digging into the paperwork, and Jim is -
Well, Jim is off somewhere. Len’s not sure how he feels at the moment towards the closest thing he has to a best friend.
“Nyota, darling, whatcha need?” Len asks, not turning from the patient.
“You’re needed, actually, in the Colonel’s office.” Nyota replies, a small smile on her face. “Go on, I’ll finish up here.”
She shoos him away before he’s quiet aware of what’s happening. He pulls off his gloves and coat, rinses off, walks out into the warm night.
The stars are out.
Jim's the only one in Colonel Pike's office when Len gets there. The other surgeon's back is turned, fingers coiling the phone's cord around a pen while he talks.
"Mrs. McCoy... Alright, Miz Jocelyn, he'll be here any moment. They've just called him out of surgery... Well, we weren't sure, ma'am, if we'd be able to get a hold of you," Jim says, voice at its smoothest, honey practically flowing outta his vocal cords.
Len stands there, dumb for a moment as he slowly works out who it is Jim must be talking to. It just plumb doesn't make sense - calls back to the States are as rare as hens teeth, only for military purposes, and there’ve been none since the main line from Seoul to Tokyo went down last month.
Jim turns, catches sight of Len. "Bones!" he mouths, breaking out into a grin while simultaneously rolling his eyes at the phone. Len stands there, still not quite sure of what's going on, let alone where he stands with Jim now.
"Yes, ma'am," Jim says into the receiver, still laying the charm on thick. "I'll be sure to do that. And, uh, it looks like Dr. McCoy has finally arrived. Now you be sure to tell your lovely daughter Happy Birthday from me and the rest of the 4077th, okay?"
He takes a step, grabs Len's shoulder, pulls him closer. Hand over the receiver as he passes it over, Jim whispers, "You've got five, maybe six minutes before Chekov thinks we'll lose the connection."
Len stands still for one more second, watches Jim walk out of the tent, before snapping to and pulling the phone against his ear.
"Jocelyn?" he says into the phone, hesitantly. It’s not that he’d hate to talk to his wife - in name if not in fact, but -
"Daddy!"
And it's his baby girl.
xxx
December 31st, 1951
Dear Sam,
It’s been a little over a year since I came to Korea, a little over a month since we got a new head surgeon, and a little over an hour since I got the Christmas card from Aurelan. Auri never could get anything out on time, could she? Got warm socks in my package, though, so don’t think I’m complaining.
Pete sent me a letter too. It was mostly questions about you.
I think this is time to say goodbye, Sam. I still miss you, but. I should be writing Peter, not you, you know?
Always,
- JTK
xxx
“Jim.”
Len walks slowly into the Swamp, pulling the tent flap out of the way automatically. It’s been a long day.
Jim looks up from the papers in his lap, gives a careful sort of smile. “Hi Bones. Pull up a cot? Martini?”
“You sure this latest batch won’t blind me?” Len asks, only half joking. This sure ain’t the most refined of gin that they’re getting out of the still, despite all of Scotty’s tinkering.
“Pretty certain,” Jim says lightly. “Good chat?”
Len wasn’t sure if they were going to discuss that, just like they don’t discuss the letters that Jim had been looking through just now.
“Yeah,” he says, slowly. “Yeah, it was… good.”
He lays down on his cot, finally. Jim gets up, fiddles with the still and the martini glasses that Gary had left behind. Glasses full, he comes over, silently sits down right next to Len’s head. Len looks up at him, brushes his hand as he grasps the martini glass.
“Thanks, Jim.”
Jim gives him a smile, the bags under his eyes making that blue of his eyes stand out more. “It was a group effort, you know. Finest kind we got here. But… you’re welcome, Bones. Anytime.”