Blood Boil
"Time flows in waves, sometimes these waves meet their ebb and die. This is neither good nor bad, it simply is. History does not repeat itself. Time simply happens again. This is always bad." – From a ninja turtles comic, but in this text it's very prophetic.
Iron and copper blood - lets not forget that Spock is indeed HALF human..there is a possibility that some anomalies exist in this blood that make him less vulcan.
This will eventually Ship Spock/Bones. This may be very subtle, but none the less will exist in that context.
He woke with a start his hand on his head as he shifted forward. He growled and rolled his legs off the berth, as he stood moving to the washroom. He pulled the glass across the counter sliding it down into the sink as he filled it with water and downed the glass like a shot of whiskey.
He stood there a moment, observing himself in the mirror. This was getting out of hand. He kept seeing visions and rehashing memories that were not his own; he was helpless to stop them.
His mind prodded the meld bond, the one he shared it with mere meters away in the next room. The feelings were returned and he nodded. "Guess it's chess again." He sighed grabbing a shirt before turning into the next room to set up the game board.
"Get a stretcher in here now!" The young doctor grumbled about how good the 'help was these days' as a penlight flashed into the eyes of the Vulcan on the floor. "Really? You go and do this, you damned green blooded-" He didn't have time to finish the statement as the stretcher appeared and he continued to scan as the medical assistants and first responders began to move the prone male onto the backboard.
"Careful with the commander."
"What happened to him Bones?" kirk.
Turning McCoy shook his head. "I won't know until I have a closer look."
Kirk nodded his eyes clearly on the commander, but he spoke evenly; calmly. "Keep me informed."
"Yes sir." McCoy turned away to the lift and followed his crew back to medical. He pressed a wall communicator. "McCoy to medical, Nurse Chapel prepare a private medbay and ready those neural scanner devices. "
"The Vulcan devices that you distrust?" came the response.
"Just do it." McCoy said and looked down at Spock as he released the communicator button. "I'm never going to let you live this down." He uttered and the lift opened and McCoy led the team forward.
Nurse Chapel was keeping the medical bay doors open as the Vulcan commander was pushed in on the floating stretcher. "I need my med kit." McCoy demanded.
She spun on her heels. "Yes sir." Lost in the muffle of voices.
"You lot get him on the med bay and get the damned stretcher out of my way." He said as he began to mutter and turn on various scanners in the room. "NURSE! MEDKIT! NOW!" he was wearing thin, but she appeared just as he had finished yelling and handed the kit over.
McCoy set it down on a small table and extracted a hypo and injected the Vulcan. "Lets get a look at those organs shall we?" He said and pressed a few buttons on the scanner. "Scan the hobgoblin's blood…I want to know what's happening in there damnit."
Kirk looked up as the lift opened onto the bridge, it had been four hours since Spock had been taken from the bridge. Kirk stood and turned meeting Dr. McCoy's eyes. "Report."
"In your ready room, not here." McCoy said, and the serious of that make Kirk cringe slightly as he extended an arm for the doctor to proceed him.
McCoy walked in and turned around as the doors shut. "Gimme your arm kid."
"What?" Kirk came forward. "What for?"
"Because…I have to inoculate you." McCoy held a hypo in his hand. "It's not good, it's a virus; Choriocytosis." He took Kirk's sleeve and rolled it up pressing the hypo into his arm with a hiss. "I'll have to set up a schedule and get everyone else on board inoculated temporarily."
Kirk winced only a moment. "I hate those things."
"So what is this virus doing to him?" Kirk asked as he rolled down his sleeves.
"It's suffocating his organs Jim, it's preventing the oxygen from getting where it needs to go." McCoy shook his head. "Like a pinched fuel line in a prototype ship, you have to find the engineer who built her to fix the damage. Or in this case we need to find some real Stobolin. Spock will be come immune to the synthetic stuff in a few days a week if we're remotely lucky. And then the crew will become immune to the inoculant, and we'll have a full outbreak on our hands."
"So it is contagious. There is a cure, no bigs…we'll head back to Starbase-"
"It's not that easy Jim, this stuff is rare, impossibly rare. There are very few places to get it." He sighed. "All humans and Vulcans on board will be susceptible to this….wel that's no true ..any of the life forms on the ship with Iron or copper in their blood." McCoy shook his head. "We'll have a damned full blown epidemic on our hands. Vulcans rely highly on the transfer of oxygen to their organs, we can only hope that he's human enough to not make this much worse than it could be."
"How did he catch it?" Kirk turned still rubbing at his arm.
"No idea Jim, but we need to do something. Get in touch with Starfleet, and ask them for their help." McCoy sighed. "It's the best we got, I'll be damned if I lose that green blooded-" McCoy bit his own tongue he was far too frustrated to continue that rant.
"I'll keep you in formed." Kirk nodded. "Keep me updated on his progress I'll be by later to check in with medical."
"Yes sir." McCoy began to turn and shook his head. "Make it fast Jim, he doesn't have the time you might think does." It sounded grave coming from the older man; and it absolutely was.
Spock was in quarantine, and wasn't going anywhere. He had regained consciousness but it hadn't been lasting. His in and out was broken by requests for McCoy. "I told you commander." Nurse Chapel administered the next synthetic dose. "He's not here right now…he's talking to the capta-"
The doors hissed open and McCoy stepped in. "Doctor." The nurse turned. "he's asking for you."
McCoy dropped the hypo onto an empty berth and moved to Spock's berthside. "Easy." He said. "You don't need to be moving around Commander." He looked to the medical bay scanner and then looked back at the patient. He put a hand on Spock's shoulder as his other hand began to tap at the computer screen.
"What…" Spock's voice was weak, and though his face remained stoic his eyes gave the doctor witness to his emotions.
"It's called Choriocytosis. Have you heard of it?"
The Vulcan nodded. "We're giving you a synthetic form of Strobolin. It will be a temporary solution." McCoy sighed. "Jim's contacting Starfreet about the possibility of getting our mitts on the real stuff." He said as the Vulcan grabbed his wrist lightly. "What can I do to make you comfortable commander?" McCoy's barriers fell and he couldn't crack a joke right now, it wasn't possible. "I cannot do much..." he admitted honestly. "But I can lower the lights if you like, or raise the heat, I know how you damned vulcans like your heat."
Spock said nothing as his hand rose up. McCoy eyed the hand as it inched for his face and blinked. "What in the name of a texas torna-" Suddenly, that hand pressed into his face. "What are you doing?"
"Live." Spock said, truly fearful of his own demise but it wasn't clear to McCoy the context of the word. "My mind-..my thoughts-" He muttered unable to finish the sentence but able to complete the meld without the need to say the pedantic lines that accompanied.
McCoy felt a flash and toppled backward slamming into the bulkhead, knocking down a medical tray and hitting the floor.
The clambering caught Chapel's attention and she ran in. "DOCTOR!"
McCoy blinked and held a hand up to her. "I'm fine." He uttered calmly but blankly. "He just …." He turned forced himself up not caring about the mess. His body wavered and he groaned before looking directly at Spock as his hand found the bulkhead behind and his other hand remained on his head. "What was that?" He muttered. "You ...he nodded and a wash of thanks hit him, as he knew exactly where he needed to go.
Spock could only nod at him. McCoy turned and shook his head, he was very dizzy and processing a lot of information and memory at one time.
McCoy hit the comm on the wall and took a breath to steady himself. "Captain its McCoy."
"Go ahead Doctor."
"We need to head in the direction of the planet Allanor." McCoy uttered still pinching his head. "They are going to have the Strobolin we need to save the commander…possibly the rest of the ship if it gets that bad in the interim." Did he just say interim?
"And you know this how?" Kirk questioned him.
"Look Jim that emotionless Vulcan touched me…he did something and I just… He told me, okay, that's the simplest way I can tell you." He uttered. "Get to Allanor."
Kirk was hard at work looking at the Star Chart. "That's right smack in the center of the neutral zone Bones. The Romulans will not be too thrilled about us entering that space."
"I don't care if it's in the middle of a pit fight with a Klingon targ and his Master. You need to get there now all our lives could depend on it." McCoy cut the communications.
"Sulu …make it happen." Kirk's chair spun forward and he leaned forward looking as an ensign brought up a datapad with information on it and walked away.
"yes sir." The helmsman turned and punched in his coordinates. "Setting course for Allanor." He said calmly. "Course laid in…."
"Maximum warp." Kirk sat back in his chair. "Medical emergency like this warrants it." he said and looked down flitting through the pad. "Hows the repairs Scotty?"
"Fine, jus't fine." He appeared standing up from the floor turning to the command chair. "How bad is 'e?" Scotty leaned down on the side rail of a console he had been repairing. "Heard it's a wee bit on the bad side."
"Its very bad from what Bones says, and if we don't get the antidote in time, this will spread to the entire ship." Kirk shook his head slowly. "We have to make due for the moment. As you were." he didn't like dismissing Scotty like that, but his mind was elsewhere and idle chatter didn't seem right at the moment.
McCoy was still holding onto his head. "Nurse, get a list of all the crewmen who do not have Iron or Copper based blood." He stated. "We're going to need them, as they will be immune, and if we cannot stop this it may be that we'll need them to run the ship in the event this epidemic becomes unmanageable."
"Yes sir." She left and left the doctor to look back at the Vulcan.
Spock said nothing only rolled his head to one side, his breathing low. "You are never allowed to do that again." He shook his head. "Ask for a pen next time." He shook his head and sighed. "What did you do to me?" He put a free hand behind him and braced on the wall. "Well I know what you did to me and why you did it but… Jesus…" He hissed as the words came out calmly.
McCoy blinked as he looked up. "Don't apologize… stop whatever it is you're doing." He grabbed his head again. "Don't push your emotions at me." As suddenly as the emotional transference was affecting him it was gone. "Promise me this isn't permanent."
The Vulcan said nothing and turned his young head away weakly and closed his eyes. "Meditate if you can…you need to stay awake for my next round of scans." McCoy muttered and pinched his eyes but attempted to gather himself enough to work through the shock of it. "Don't move to much and stay outta my head."
The Vulcan nodded, but McCoy, on the periphery of his mind could see the Vulcan wasn't sorry in the slightest. He felt the emotional transference and also the shock from Spock that he should be more affected by it. It flared as he felt the vulcan slip out of consciousness, but Spock seemed to mentally recover and then he felt the emotions slid out.
McCoy could only hope it could be reversed, the next feeling he got was disappointment. "I said stay out of my head!" he groaned and shook his head. "I'm sorry..." he uttered honestly he hadn't meant to shout. "I'll try to manage." McCoy looked over at Spock but rubbed his temples. "I'll start the next scan."
The Vulcan tried to close himself off, but with his already compromised body that was looking less likely that he would be able to, so he tried to let McCoy control the emotional link, the bond, that was in place.
Spock hoped that if he died, McCoy would be able to take his memories, everything he had learned, and be able to use the information. He knew McCoy was the best choice, at least he wouldn't laugh at the memories. Spock sighed and rolled his head and watched as Nurse Chapel came to his right and McCoy stood to his left. "Give him the next dose, and raise the heat in here four degrees, and lower the lights." McCoy droned softly.
"Yes Doctor." She nodded.
To be continued...
