Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek: 2009. I don't own any Star Trek seasons or series or episodes, though I have watched bits of all of it, including a movie in 5th grade where the TOS crew had to save the whales or something like that. I own a few new OC characters, but I'll relinquish ownership if it means avoiding fines. ;)
A/N: I blame long drives and thoughts of Star Trek for this one! :)
Vinegar vs. Honey
Most days Leonard McCoy felt like his decision to become a Starfleet medical cadet was validated. It was only a month and a half into his career, and he had performed life-saving surgeries, attended to the needs of a campus full of accident-and-disease-prone cadets and professors, started papers on the latest xeno-medical discoveries and so on.
And then there were days like today where McCoy just wanted to chuck his PADD at his over-exaggerating patient's head and go down to the cantina to drown out the knowledge that someone this moronic was potentially going to be the only barrier between him and the ink black, star-spangled death by vacuum that hulked outside the hull of a starship.
"It does hurt a lot," First Year Engineering Cadet Jonas B. Avery said, his lower lip on the verge of jutting out like a two-year-old's beneath shifty eyes and an angular nose, "I'm not making it up."
Frowning, McCoy rubbed at his face and looked briefly around the exam room, trying to reign in his irritation. It was one of those airy open areas with four biobeds, two of them currently occupied. While McCoy had the joy of tending to Cadet Hyperbole, Dr. Jabilo M'Benga was treating an Orion girl who had a severe case of logorrhea on top of a broken arm.
From Cape Town, South Africa, M'Benga was almost the same age as McCoy but he was graduating in the winter with an internship on Vulcan waiting for him. He was soft-spoken and undemanding but he had an air of command about him, and he was always respectful of the nurses and orderlies. Probably would've been a good friend if they could've had more time or more classes together.
Damn. McCoy felt asinine being his age and having classes again…However, he would rather have courses in internal starship navigation than get on one of those flying death traps and be unable to find his own sick bay.
Sitting beside the Orion on the bed was one of the nurses on duty, Teague Davis. She was a tiny snippet of a girl with big brown doe eyes and curly blond-brown hair that bounced around her shoulders, escaping from a light blue headband that wasn't regulation issue. A grin dashed across her baby face as she joked with the Orion, distracting her from bothering M'Benga with her babbling.
This was the third or fourth time he had had a shift at the same time as her though they hadn't yet directly worked together. He'd heard enough about her though to know that she liked making patients comfortable in the hospital, often bringing them things and staying after hours with more serious cases. She seemed capable, compassionate, and overly busy, always dashing around the hospital and the medical school and usually shadowing one of the older nurses, often Christine.
Speaking of the devil, Christine Chapel was occupying the small desk set in the corner of the room, hiding her smirk behind a PADD. McCoy tossed her a glare. She was supposed to be making sure he didn't tend to cases like his current one, but here he was, dealing with ridiculousness. Christine was of middling height and weight, and she had all that long, bright blond, curly hair pulled back in a loose bun. Blue eyes glinted with amusement as she met his gaze. She had a sharp nose and high cheekbones and a full kissable pair of lips that made him think...about nothing. Nothing at all.
Reliable, firm and popular among both the doctors and the nurses, she was a few years his junior but about two years ahead of him in the Academy. From what he knew, half of the ships in the fleet were already clamoring to have her aboard. He also knew that she had a quick wit, a love of shoe-shopping and a voracious appetite for Devil's Food Cake and Bloody Marys.
Not that he cared about all that. He was just glad that he had someone experienced and competent as his nurse, though he personally thought she was taking far too much unprofessional enjoyment out of sending him this current patient. He rarely got to work with Christine since she was in high demand and he was a first year, but their weekly study sessions for Doragin's class on space diseases were giving them time to get to know each other.
So she should've known better than to send him a possibly sprained pinky finger.
Avery was kicking his legs back and forth and allowing his Adam's apple to jump and jiggle. He glanced at McCoy from behind a wave of wild black hair that needed a trim and then looked down, brown eyes momentarily betraying his open fear and agitation. The kid was more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and that only set McCoy further on edge. He could feel his blood pressure rising as a steady hum began to buzz in his head, like a mosquito whining on a sticky summer night back home.
"Look, it ain't anything serious, if it is even anything," he said, "I'll wrap it up, if you're worried about it, and then you can get out of here."
"Oh." Avery tapped his heels against the bed base. "But, I, I…uh, you see, um—"
"What is it?" McCoy frowned and crossed his arms over his chest, one eyebrow raised. "Anything else? Any paper cuts? Minor warts? I could always saw off the offendin' finger," he said drolly, a dangerous half-smile on his face.
The boy paled considerably. "I was just, um…" He poked a finger into the squishy cover of the biobed. "I…"
"Spit it out, man!"
The cadet flinched and flung up his unharmed hand, shielding his neck. "Oh, God, please, don't hypo me!"
McCoy' eyebrows came together with a near-audible click. "What?"
The boy cowered and clamped his hand over his neck. With an awkward scooting motion, he started to edge toward one end of the bed. "I'm fine, never mind, I'm good!"
There was a quiet smothered chuckle from the desk and muffled sounds that were suspiciously akin to laughing and giggling from the other corner. McCoy grimaced and then looked back at the kid.
"I'm not going to hypo you, you—"
"He won't, Jonas, but he wants to," Christine said as her boots clicked on the floor. She approached the bed. "Fortunately, his snarling is far worse than his bite."
Avery made a noise that sounded entirely too much like the word 'opinion,' and McCoy tightened his grip on his tricorder. For the love of everything holy, why did he have to get this guy today? It'd already started off as a bad day, what with Jim's last night fling waking him up with a flood of tears when she realized Jim had left her to go to class. Then the cafeteria was out of grits by the time he got there. And then he was late to Dr. Roni's class because he had to yell at Jim for leaving that poor girl in their room.
"Here, I'll take care of it." Christine wrapped up the kid's fingers efficiently and quickly while McCoy watched. The boy snatched a look at him every now and then, eyes wide, before he looked back at the nurse, focusing on her like she was some kind of blessed, saintly rescuer. Which made the kid the fool in distress, McCoy thought darkly.
When she was finished, Christine nodded and stepped back. "All right, all done. Take a couple pain pills, try not to move it around too much, and if it starts to hurt worse, come back here."
Avery was out of there in a flash, not even tossing a look back at the medical team. McCoy jerked a thumb after him. "What was with that kid?"
"He most likely was trying to ask you a legitimate question about his silly finger, but you scared him," Christine said nonchalantly, though the look she sent his way was laced with an odd mix of disapproval and humor, "Actually, he was probably terrified of getting you before he even came here, and then ending up with you, and you in this kind of mood…" Christine tcched and walked back over to the desk. "It's amazing he didn't keel over from your scowl alone."
"Hey, it's not my fault he came in here with something like a maybe, could be injured little finger," McCoy responded, feeling a wave of defensiveness well up. He held up his own little finger for emphasis. "You can survive this being broken, let alone sprained."
He glanced over to where M'Benga was almost finished with the plasti-cast; the girl had gone silent, probably drinking in gossip for spreading around campus like verbal manure later. McCoy despised gossips. Luckily, M'Benga chose that time to take the girl and lead her out the door nearest to him, saying something quietly to her. Thank God for small blessings.
"You know, it might help if you weren't so dang vinegary to him."
Had he heard that correctly? Davis was looking his way, big, brown eyes devoid of the trepidation he usually saw in the eyes of the younger nurses and interns. 'Course, she had never looked at him like that; when Christine had introduced her the first day of his hospital rounds, she had been cheerful and undaunted in the face of his impressive sarcasm. It would've been enough to piss him off if she wasn't so blunt and genuine about her optimism. She had moved near the table in the middle, which would've been neutral ground if the room was cut in two between the doctors. Which it wasn't.
He raised an eyebrow. "Did you just call me vinegary, half-pint?"
She nodded, loose curls bobbing. "Mhmm. And you are, at lot of the time." She didn't even attempt to look busy by messing with the instrument stand nearby or typing on her PADD with that pinched, irritated expression the way Christine did when she wanted to berate him. "By the way, I'm at least two-thirds of a pint."
"Not from where I'm standin'," McCoy replied with a snort. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at the tiny young woman. "And are you trying to say something about how I handle my patients?"
"Be careful, Teague," Christine warned, "He does bite."
"I'll survive," Davis piped before looking back at him, "And, yes, actually, I am. Statistically speaking, roughly one-fourth of all Starfleet personnel have some kind of fear of medical…" Her hands rolled in the air as she visibly searched for the word. He stared at her and her flying hands and wondered if she was serious. Her eyes were sincere enough, for all the hand-waving. "Procedures. They don't like sick bay. It freaks them out worse than getting shot at by the enemy or diving into black holes and time-slips and whatnot."
"Uh-huh," he said, having a feeling he knew where this was going, "And you think me being more sunshine and buttercups is going to assuage these overwhelming, incapacitating fears?"
She held her hands up and grinned. "Not exactly. I mean, I'd personally be sort of horrified if you suddenly started sweating unicorn glitter and barfing rainbows—"
"Ditto," Christine put in. He didn't even bother to glare at her, knowing he'd only be met by her looking down at her PADD.
"But if you didn't try to bite their heads off at every chance, at least, they'd probably come in earlier," Davis said, obviously coming to the conclusion of her argument, "And they might actually come in on time for physicals and boosters and the like."
Christine tapped her stylus on her PADD and then pointed it at Davis. "Oh. I see where this is coming from. Remember the old adage, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?"
Oh. Vinegary. "Sometimes vinegar works better," McCoy said firmly, "Look, kid, it usually works better. And I don't do honey." He was sort of kind when it was called for, but he had found that most people didn't respond well to kindness. They didn't take their meds or they refused follow-ups or they didn't come around at all. Like Jim. Jim would only survive with vinegar. Besides, McCoy wouldn't be so demanding if he didn't care. Oh well, she would learn. She'd learn or she wouldn't be on his team in the future, if he ever got a team. Still, he had to grudgingly admit that she had something of a point. He frowned down at her. "Look, if you're that worried about it, you can be the honey, ok? I've heard that you're sweet and sugary enough to compensate for the whole damn hospital staff, so you can cover my part entirely. Sound good?"
She stuck her tongue in the side of her mouth and glanced him up and down, seeming to consider the offer. Her eyes brightened, and in the next moment, she stuck out her hand. "I accept." A smirked appeared. "You go on being grouchy and generally terrifying to patients, and I'll make up for it later."
Maybe this kid wouldn't be so terrible after all. Even if she was set on being saccharine to the patients, she could at least stand up to him when she thought he was out of line. And then compromise when he blocked her. He nodded and shook her hand, his engulfing hers. "All right, then."