Only Human
By JuniorMintJulep
It all started with Chekov. The kid just wouldn't leave.
"Chekov, he's gonna be fine. You need to get some rest." McCoy tried to keep his tone even, but goddammit, it'd been a hell of a day. Or was it going on two days now? He'd lost track soon after the first members of the landing party beamed up, and his reality had shifted into that weird, surreal other-time that ran alongside the everyday world, where the only thing he could see was the broken body in front of him and the others that were waiting and hurting. It was over now, and he should have been glad for it, but as the last effects of the adrenaline faded he was left only with an exhaustion that pinched his eyes, a nausea-tinged headache, and a stubborn, guilt-ridden Russian.
"No, no, no, I will not leave him. This is my fault."
Sulu was the last one he worked on, not because he had the least-serious injuries, but because he was the last they'd pulled out of the rubble of the archeological ruins the team had been surveying. After the earthquake ended, and before the aftershocks had even subsided, Kirk was searching through the dust and debris for the two men, but it was Spock who found the ensign near the entrance of a dry, collapsed aqueduct, with only minor injuries, and Sulu further in, his leg pinned beneath a boulder. The doctor had heard Kirk tell Carter, as she cleaned up the captain's torn and bloodied hands, that the whole time they were digging, the kid was babbling about how Sulu shoved him out of the way just before the structure came tumbling down, and how it should have been him.
Even in the twenty-third century, crush syndrome was tricky business, but they'd gotten to him in time, and if McCoy could really believe in a higher power he would have promised to send up a prayer of thanks over the shot of whiskey he was very much looking forward to having. Just as soon as he could talk some sense into Chekov.
But the navigator was just sitting there, head in his hands, his shoulders all bunched up. A fine, reddish dust still coated the curls on his head and the back of his shirt. Chapel, tired of watching him pace back and forth, back and forth, had dragged a chair around to the side of Sulu's bed and pushed him gently down onto it. Where now he sat, and would not budge. He rubbed the bandage on his temple and McCoy gave a little kick to the base of the chair.
"I told you to stop that. And go, now. Like I said, sitting there staring at him won't make him wake up any sooner and it won't change what happened. Remember what we talked about a while back, how you can't control some things and you just have to live with that?"
The ensign groaned and shook his head. "Yes, sir. But you don't understand, sir. He is—he is . . ." Either he couldn't find the words he was searching for, or he couldn't find the strength to say them, because he fell silent and his gaze drifted to the unconscious form next to him.
He is your friend McCoy finished silently for him. The doctor knew that; he'd watched with interest as the relationship grew between these two men who were so different—Sulu the daring, swashbuckling risk-taker, and Chekov the cautious perfectionist. The one, a Starfleet brat who had lived all the way across the galaxy on an Earth colony with a history of violence; and the other, who grew up a sheltered prodigy on the outskirts of Moscow, the youngest of five kids (a number nearly unheard-of these days), and who had never left Earth before finding himself unexpectedly assigned to the Enterprise on that fateful day.
Something had clicked between them, though—when you work alongside someone day after day in the stressful sort of conditions often found aboard a starship, you tend to either love them or loathe them after a while, and these two had chosen the amicable route. In the last several months he'd seen the friendship intensify over many rounds of vodka and sake, and more than a few rounds of fencing. From the chatter he'd overheard in the rec room, he gathered that the pair had also earned a formidable reputation as master gamers among the holo-groups. And based on the looks he'd seen the two exchange lately, the nuances of their body language, he wondered if something deeper was developing. But that, of course, was none of his business unless they made it his business.
He also knew that if it were Jim or even Spock lying on that bed, he'd be sitting there, too. But the kid was injured, and enough was enough.
He looked at the ceiling and rubbed his face, frowning at the stubble he found there. "How many times have I told you to stop calling me sir? Get outta here, Chekov. Go back to your quarters, and go to sleep."
"Doctor—" Chapel had that look on her face, the one that said she was going to grant herself permission to speak freely. He put up a hand to silence her.
"They both need their rest. You think he can actually sleep sitting there in that chair, Nurse?"
Chris narrowed her eyes at him, and it was the closest she would come to challenging him in front of another crewmember, but the message was clear. He ignored it.
"Getout, Ensign. Now," he snapped. "And be thankful your friend is alive."
Chekov looked up at him, and with the shadows under his eyes he looked much older than his eighteen years. Then his head went back down and, to McCoy's horror, some of the most wretched and forlorn sobs he'd ever heard came pouring out of him. His entire body shook and he pulled his knees up to his chest, and in an instant Chapel was there, her arm around him.
McCoy noted absently that Chekov's scalp laceration was bleeding again, and he sighed. "Look, Pavel—"
"Doctor McCoy," Chapel cut in, "I know you need to follow-up on those lab results we sent over earlier today. Why don't you let me take care of Ensign Chekov?" She was the consummate professional, pleasant but firm—for the both of them, he suspected—and he was grudgingly grateful that she'd provided him with an easy way out. He hesitated for only a moment before he nodded and turned toward his office.
Her glare made the back of his neck prickle as he passed. "Nice work, McCoy. Very nice," she murmured at him.
As he'd expected, it was only a few moments before the sounds from the adjoining room subsided. And he wasn't surprised when she appeared at his door, arms crossed and tight lines around her mouth.
"I need your approval to administer ten cc's of melorazine to Ensign Chekov and admit him overnight for observation. We have plenty of empty beds, so I can put him next to Sulu."
He poured the whiskey and closed the bottle with great care. "Yeah, that's fine," he muttered. "Log it in." He turned his attention to the stack of datachips on his desk and pretended to sort through them, waiting for her to leave. But she didn't, she just stood there in silence, and he finally yielded to the tiny seed of guilt that had taken root in his gut.
"What is it, Chapel? Just say it already." He heard the irritation in his voice, but she didn't back down.
"All right then, I will. Everyone knows you flunked Bedside Manner 101, Leo, but it's not like you to talk to your patients like that. At least," she amended, "not when they're here through no fault of their own. You look at Sulu, and what do you see? Probably the same thing I see: five hours of surgery, functioning kidneys, a femur that will heal, and a patient who will pull through. That's great, but what do you think Chekov sees when he looks at him? Because I promise you, he's in more pain than Sulu right now."
His eyes went involuntarily to the biobed across the infirmary, and from the distance now he could see Chekov's best friend in a different way, lying there as pale as death, a tube down his throat, IV line taped to his arm, his body mottled with purple and black contusions.
"But he's gonna walk away, Chris. Chekov's in there acting like Sulu's ready for a funeral shroud, even though he'll wake up in a day or two and be fine, and before you know it he'll walk out of here." His voice rose and as the words left his mouth he realized he was arguing with himself, not her, and that somehow this was bigger than just Sulu, in a vague and primal way that he didn't quite understand yet, and could not begin to explain to her.
"Isn't that the point?" She gave him an uncertain and slightly annoyed look, and he knew that she had just recognized the disconnect he was feeling, that what he was saying was not what she was hearing. Hoping to forestall any further probing, he held his hands up in surrender and tried to gentle his voice.
"I'm sorry, Chris. You're right, I was out of line. I'll talk to him in the morning, okay? In the meantime, I'll take my own advice and get some sleep."
Her eyebrows went up, but her stance relaxed a little. "Hmm. I'll hold you to that, you can be sure of it." She stifled a yawn and leaned her head against the entryway. "Are you all right? I mean, really all right?"
He was glad she couldn't see his face as he bent to retrieve a stray datachip from where it had fallen on the deck. The iciness was gone from her, because she couldn't hold a grudge any longer than he could, but it was replaced with something far more threatening. The urge to gather her in his arms, to hold her and be held, to taste her, was almost irresistible.
"I'm fine. I'll be fine." He gave his full attention to replacing the chip on the stack with the others.
"Uh-huh. You know, for some reason I don't believe you, but I guess I'll have to live with that for now." She glanced at his untouched shot glass. "You want some of that melorazine yourself while I have it out?"
"No. Not tonight," he answered, too quickly, but she only nodded and pushed away from the door and after a quick, unexpected kiss, she tousled his hair and pinched his cheek. "Don't forget to shave," she said over her shoulder. "Or you'll look like a Tellarite before too much longer. Have a good night."
Not very damn likely. As soon as the door slid behind her, he flipped on his computer terminal and scrolled through the screen full of unread messages to find the one at the very end, the one he'd opened—was it just yesterday, before all of this started? —and then pushed away to the back of his brain out of necessity. He had hoped, for one wildly irrational moment, that maybe it was just a jumbled memory, a hallucinatory by-product of his sleep-deprived brain, but there it was, in stark black and white, and he stared at the subject line with a mixture of dread and anxiety that drew upon his last reserves and made him glad he hadn't eaten anything in a while. He clicked it open with fingers that did not seem to belong to him, and before the night was over he would close it and open it more times that he could count.
