Bones knitted his eyebrows into such an irregular snit that even Jim found his grimace a little unsettling. He was squinting at his PADD and glancing up at his friend periodically, weighing the most expedient way to find out exactly why the navigator had been in the shore party. Trying to summon the strength to be angry took too much out of the effort his heart put into thumping against the seemingly cramped space in his chest. They may have been well along in the process of fixing the transporter glitch that left his Pavel behind, but Leonard had a distinct understanding of the place he had been left behind. He alternated between pacing and feeling too weak to move, glaring down at the transporter pad.
Jim moved up next to his friend and pried his fingers free of the PADD and its foreboding readout. "Bones, he may not have been…" he started quietly, clamming up immediately under the direct glare of his friend. Jim being completely inured to Leo's intense temper, Scotty glanced up at the stutter in their usually unstoppable exchange of dialogue.
Leonard narrowed his eyes and pointed to a specific section of Pavel's medical chart. He silently turned back to his unwavering stance before the pad, poised to launch at Chekov the second he was back aboard.
Leonard's eyes flicked around the perimeter of the transporter as he considered how disastrous the plant exposure could be. Many victims with less formidable mental capacity than Pavel would enter a sort of shocked stasis on exposure, eventually leading to an organ shutdown that wasn't manifest enough to be called biological. That was the peaceful route: people with more rooted mental walls got to experience the brunt of having them torn down along with whatever they were anchored to. Leo housed enough of his lover's past to know that what lurked behind the walls was hideous and could be volatile if ruffled in any wrong way. The stress of losing all his progress, all the protections that brilliant brain had instituted to protect itself would be irreparable. The pressure would be great enough to make him forget the most fundamental things; his stars, his friends, his favorite books. It would be violent, a concept he could never associate with the beaming, thoughtful man he'd given his existence to. He cradled the worry in the deep of his stomach, feeling his grasping attempts to gallantly slay the monsters away for the insufficient fantasies they were. Pavel would be totally alone in there, his terrors given free reign by a simple mistake with a mishandled plant on some backwater Class M. Detachedly, he considered why Jim was worried about it being weaponized. He wondered how Sulu hadn't taken more care handling it.
Bones sighed. There was only so much he could do for his body if his mind wasn't willing to work with him. He wanted to roar at Jim, throw him, mangle him, accuse him. Jim knew the chance of exposure before they went down there and focused on the rarity of an outbreak instead of the potential severity. Compounding this potential was Pavel's unique immune susceptibility. It was still fairly common on some parts of Earth that had mandated a less effective galactic vaccination before a certain date in an attempt to condense the vaccine list-unfortunately about twenty years ago. Pavel was utterly resilient when it came to Terran diseases, but more exotic immunodiseases found an easy host in his lover. Unlike the time with what essentially became Andorian hiccups, Pavel wouldn't be all giggles and "Lyonya, just kiss it better…"
Jim took a deep breath and retained his place by his friend. He wanted to search his face for some signal of how to help. The officer in him would say that Chekov is an ensign, he signed up for Star Fleet and was in the line of command. Nothing irregular at all. Things happen on away missions. However, he found as usual that the officer that cared for regulation was absent when it came to his Bones and any regulations. What he had done, as a friend, was endanger the love his best friend had so cautiously opened himself because of the Jim-Kirk-patented-ignore-the-worst-possibilities scheme. Bones didn't need to scream or rage at him, and they both knew it. Pavel just needed to get through this if Kirk was to have a passing shot at speaking at Bones ever again.
The doctor always looked a little harassed and certainly sounded it, but now he was utterly silent. He looked like it took a substantial bit of concentration to stop himself from climbing onto the pad. Scotty supplied a quiet "Two up," when the transporter lit up enough to beam back Sulu and Chekov.
The scramble of the next few minutes looked all types of disorganized for oblivious crew encountering them. Len suspended his rage, allowing Jim's help getting Chekov to the medbay and a very clear point at which Jim needed to disappear to preserve his limbs. Kirk backed up towards the door to the medbay, standing there unsure of what was expected of him. Sulu still stood at his friend's side, not letting go of his hand until Nurse Chapel shooed him away. Stepping away from the bed, his eyes flickered up to Kirk. He shook his head as he approached the door to leave. As he passed, he addressed Kirk with his reasonable, measured Captain-this-isn't-a-suggestion tone, "Captain, good time to attend to the bridge."
Over Sulu's shoulder, Kirk took a last glance at his friend's form dominating the space around the ensign's biobed and followed him out. Len's heart stumbled at the naked panic on Chekov's face, erratic limb thrashing finally convincing him that a hypo might calm the hysterics. He whispered soothingly into Pavel's hair despite the betrayal of his quivering voice while he worked up the detoxification IV and hoped it would siphon the most direct dose from his system fast enough. Applied at the base of his neck, he smoothed back the agitated blond curls as he gently laid his head down.
Having done what he could accomplish biologically, Len had to start counteracting the damage that had already put such panic onto the precise features before him.
"Tell me where you're at darlin', can't help if I don't know what's up," he tried, scanning Pavel's unfocused eyes. He wasn't thrashing anymore but the large tranquilizer dose did nothing to disguise the anguish. Pavel tried to lick his lips to speak but snapped his jaw back closed and wriggled his head in a clear negative gesture.
Taking up a hand, Chekov withdrew his with wide eyes and started to jitter again. A few more minutes of alternating coaxing when Pavel seemed placid enough and enhancing the tranquilizer when that didn't work, and Chapel elected to put him under. Whatever Pavel had been trying to express was obviously something Bones didn't really want to know about and Pavel was more disinclined to remember.
It had been a strenuous twenty hours attempting to pull him out of the botched transport job, and Bones felt helpless. He wanted to get up to research more, but he'd effectively memorized the considerable body of work on it. Chapel had tried to wrest him away from the bed when she detected the edge in his voice tipping over to mania. She knew better than to think she'd be successful, so she settled into some paperwork to stay nearby.
Doctor mode had to be powered down, and Len felt like he watched from outside himself as he dejectedly rested his upper body on the bed. Nestling his head against Pavel's thigh, he curled his palm around his opposite hip and listened to the clicking monitors until he couldn't remain conscious anymore.