It had been a normal day at work. Nothing was different. Everything was the same. Angry customers, under-trained coworkers, and a list the length of my arm of things that still needed done; you know, the description of the grand majority of jobs. I could leave you guessing as to what my line of work was, not that it matters; what my job was and you knowing that is, but I will fill you in. I was a waitress and a young one at that. My mom was a career waitress. She was worked at this breakfast place called Jo's. I got a job there as a host when I was eighteen and a quarter. Before I turned eighteen and a half I was promoted to waitress. I was following in my mom's footsteps. Unlike her, I had the luxury of living with my family as I grew from child to adult. My home with them, with my favorite people in the world, was where I was driving that night. It had been a long day. I guess too long.
All I wanted to do was get home so I could watch Star Trek with my family. It was a simple pleasure. Seeing the life and death situations they faced on TV filled in my own relaxed life complimentary. I was going to college, but I had my doubts about the future career I had picked in the medical field. Dr. McCoy gave me a lot of hope in that. He was happy. Why shouldn't I be? Then there was the engineering side of things. My dad was an engineer of sorts. Maybe I would follow in his footsteps instead of my mom's. It was kind of my escape route. If I couldn't bring myself to go to medical school, I would be an engineer instead. Going to college and being like someone from Star Trek was my career goal, no matter what I was doing.
With that fresh in my mind I turned onto the highway in the Jeep my family had brought me home from the hospital in. There weren't usually a lot of people on the road at that time of night. Ten p.m. was pretty late in my hometown. My radio went on about something significant happening with the solar system. I was catching the tail end of the discussion though, so I had no real idea what they were talking about. It was because of my beloved TV show that I had taken an interest in space. Once, I even bought myself an astronomy book in hopes that I would read it and learn all about outer space and be more like my favorite characters, but I had only gotten to the second chapter and it had been a few months. I don't know why I didn't keep up with it. I wanted to finish it even then. That was a character flaw of mine- losing momentum.
It came as a great surprise to me when some idiot on my left hand side ran the red light and plowed into my door. There was nothing I could do. The steering wheel moved in my hands and I couldn't grab it. My body flew to the side and I couldn't stop it. The Jeep rolled until it hit the bus stop and rested on its side. The disfigured cage of metal around me that was once a piece of my history had finally lost momentum, but my body hadn't. Nothing felt safe and I screamed as my face hit the steering wheel I still held white knuckled. I had a thought with my eyes closed. There was blood. My alarm only grew when I realized how warm it was in large quantities. It had a human quality to it. Me; I was everywhere, part of me that was. I was on my dashboard and my rearview mirror, on my uniform and my hands. When I finally opened my eyes nothing I thought was covered in blood was.
There was a grey linoleum floor beneath me and I was underneath something. Was I under my car and what I thought was the floor was the highway? I looked all around me and I couldn't even see my car. There were only blinking lights and controls, but they were not traffic lights. They were panels lining the walls. It was under one of those that I was under. To my right was a heavy screen with something glowing behind it. Where was I? All I could do was keep screaming. My eyes shut tight again from the pain in my face, but a man shouted back and my eyes opened wide.
I found myself looking up and across the room into the eyes of a man in shock. "Please help me! Help me, help me!" I screamed at him, holding my broken face in my blood soaked fists. "Mr. Scott to Dr. McCoy," the man in a red shirt turned and yelled at a little box on his desk. "McCoy here," the little box spoke back. "Send a medical team to engineering immediately. I don't think I can explain it." My head throbbed in defeat and hit the ground harder than I thought it would. It knocked loose what blood clots had attempted to form across my face, which sent a fresh out pour of my warm blood on the linoleum. At the sound and sight of it the man in the red shirt rushed towards me. "Don't thrash about lass. McCoy is on his way. Hold still." I could only respond begging with my same call for help. There was nothing else I could think to say. All of my thoughts were crowded out with unmanageable pain. He pulled his shirt up and over his head. In the same motion he pressed the garment hard against my face and I let out a shriek of pain at the fabric against my skinned flesh, tender and exposed. "I cannot have you bleeding out in the meantime," he petitioned me. Still in animalistic fear I tried to push the shirt away, but he held it there all the same. His body was uncomfortably close to mine as he tried to control my bleeding. I was not accustomed to having someone so Johnny on the spot with me. The usual space people keep between themselves dissolves when a person is on the brink of death I guess. All social constructs go out the window.
The doors across the room swished open to reveal a flustered Dr. McCoy. He carried a tricorder with him and without wasting our time on words he took a reading of me. He mumbled something to Mr. Scott, but I was starting to fade out again and I couldn't understand them. How had I gotten here? A high pitched woosh of air later and the doctor on his knees beside me had injected into my neck. He loaded his hypospray again and I was out cold.
I started to wake up to the sound of monitors beeping. There was a comforting touch in my left hand; the feeling of another human's flesh grabbing mine. I had been in the engineering room with Scotty. I was in a car crash and then I was in engineering. How? There was the sound of someone shifting their weight from one foot to the other out of nervousness on my right before I heard them speak. "Mr. Scott, you should be getting back to your duties," McCoy mumbled as he worked with his PADD and oversaw the stabilization of my vitals. The scott's grasp on me tightened as he replied, "I cannot be leaving her side like this. The accident did happen in my division you know. In a way I'm responsible for the lass." The doctor sat down his PADD and huffed, but before he could voice his biting remarks the doors swooshed open.
"Bones, what happened? How did she get aboard my ship?" The addition of the third voice in the room brought me fully awake. I tried to sit up, but Scotty gently held me down with his other hand. The lighting had a blue tint to it and covered the whole room a level or two brighter than I would have liked. To the right of me there was an identical bed covered in neatly folded metallic orange sheets and surrounded by more monitors with colored lights flashing. It all looked familiar, yet at the same time felt foreign. I hadn't even said a word and already there was this man in a yellow shirt yelling at me.
"Not now. She needs to rest," the doctor said. He held the taller man back by his shoulders. "What are you doing standing there, Scotty? Get back to your post," the man demanded. "I sir," the scott replied solemnly. "There was no need for that, Jim. He was just worried about her." This whole time I was trying to come up with something to say to calm him down. I didn't know how I had gotten there either, but he sure seemed upset about it. The pain was still clouding my head. I wasn't screaming in pain anymore, but it was starting to come back. The two men had started arguing again, but the doctor heard me when I squeaked out his name. "I want answers, Doctor McCoy… I will be on the bridge and expect a full report from you on her condition within the next hour," the man with the yellow shirt commanded as he exited the room.
"Pay no attention to him," dismissed the doctor now hovering over my head with a sensory probe. His eyes were a soft blue, the same color as his uniform. "I didn't mean to cause all this trouble," I whispered. The doctor finished scanning my head before his eyes met mine again. "I will take care of Jim. You just sleep and we will sort this whole thing out later in the morning." Later in the morning? "What time is it?" I asked. "One A.M.," replied the doctor with a faintly amused grin.
Opening one of his bottles of Tennessee whiskey and pouring himself a drink before starting his report on my condition for the captain, McCoy reached the completion of another hard shift. The rest was simply his duty as the paperwork and long hours never seemed to end for the chief medical officer. It was his spirit for his profession and his big heart for people that pulled him through. Even though his hours for a normal man were in for the day, he still had that report to finish. Another drink before he rose to his feet and he was off to the turbolift, PADD in hand and not a single idea in his mind as to how I had suffered all the injuries I had.
He still had some time left before Kirk needed him, so the weary doctor decided to pay Mr. Scott a visit before hand. Maybe he would have some answers. The doors opened with their familiar swish to the main engineering room. Wet floor signs had been placed where my pool of blood was under the left-hand side control stations. An ensign was getting readouts on the matter/anti-matter reactor, but Scotty was nowhere to be seen. "Do you know where Mr. Scott is?" McCoy asked the ensign. The young man explained, "Mr. Scott asked me to cover his duties here. Between you and me, he wasn't looking too good; like he had something on his mind that was making him sick or something." The doctor thanked him and left to look in Mr. Scott's office.
There he was doing the same thing the doctor had been, drinking away his headache. The only difference was that unlike the doctor, he drank scotch and nothing else. "Is she going to be alright, McCoy?" Scotty jumped to his feet. The doctor explained to him that I was going to be fine. I just had some bones and soft tissue to regenerate, among some minor brain damage. "Scotty, I uh… thought I might like to ask you a few things." The scott took another shot upon hearing that, his delight in hearing I was still alive fading from his face. He had heard that kind of tone from him before. It was his "I'm tired and confused, but Jim is going to chew me out for not having any answers" tone. "It is like I told you. I was here at my desk when I hear a loud noise and a girl screaming. I looked to my right and there she was in a bloody heap on the floor," the engineer pleaded his case. "I know, Scotty. I was just hoping for some answers for Jim," the doctor said as he straightened up to leave. The expression on Scotty's face was bleaker than it had been even earlier. "You can go check on her if you like. Doctor's orders," McCoy added with a smirk, "You aren't in any condition to be of any help here. If she is feeling up to it, maybe you could bring her something to eat." The smile on Scotty's face grew as he corked to bottle on his desk. "Aye, sir. I know just the thing. That I will."
"Ah, Dr. McCoy. What is the report on the girl?" With his jaw resting stubbornly on his fist, Kirk swiveled in his chair to greet the doctor. "Well, Jim… I don't know how she got here, but I can tell you we came this close to losing her. I could give you the medical jargon, but simply put she's lucky to be alive, Jim." "You haven't given me any answers, Bones. When can I speak with her?" The captain questioned, rising out of his chair to pace the bridge. "If she is awake you can speak with her now. Scotty is probably down there at the moment." The doctor made sure to mentally kick himself for that one. Kirk raised an eyebrow. "I thought I told him to get back to work." McCoy shifted his weight from his heels to his toes and back while he thought about how to explain his actions gently. "You did, but you should have seen how worthless he was in his condition-." Kirk stopped his pacing to interrupt McCoy. "In his condition, Dr?"
Thanking the ship's maker for automatic doors, but cursing at him for not making them quieter, Scotty balanced a bowl of soup in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other. They were the two best things he could think of for me. I didn't see him come in, but I heard the doors open and dismissed it as another nurse going in or out. Not knowing if I was awake or not, he quietly set the food and drink down on the little table by my bed. It wasn't until he came close enough to do so that I noticed it was him. "How are you feeling, lass?" he asked in a hushed voice. It took me a minute to register what he was saying before I could even respond, "For my first car wreck, I'm not great, but I'm live." Scotty thumbed at the edge of the medical table as he repeated to himself, "A car wreck?" I saw no need in hiding anything. "Ya, I was on my way home from work when some idiot plowed into my left side and sent my car rolling into this bus stop. I think I must have hit my head or something. Then woke up here. I don't know." He just kind of stared at me before edging his hand towards the drink on the table, so not knowing what to do I laughed at him, "Don't look at me like that. It's the truth." I couldn't figure out for the life of me what he was thinking. "Are ya hungry at all?" Scotty quickly and conveniently changed the subject. "I'm starving. Thank you. What is in the glass?" His eyes lit up and his chest puffed up with pride. "Scotch; my homeland's finest. I thought it might help take the edge off things for you." I laughed again at the reality of it. "With all the things Dr. McCoy has me on, I don't think there is any edge left to be taken off... but, it is worth a try." The beeping of the monitor above me reminded me how real this all was. That was my heartbeat up there and it was getting quicker. Of all the inopportune times to be talking to a good-looking guy this was definitely one of them. Hoping it would make that noise slow down, I drank the Scotch while he smiled at me in satisfaction. "Nice. I, uh… thanks for doing all this." A deep pink flushed his cheeks as he wrung his hands behind his back and looked down at the sickbay floor, "It is no trouble at all lass." Scotty handed me the bowl of soup before heading back to his work noticeably flustered, but assured now with his own eyes that I was going to be alright.