"It's like living in a giant aquarium," Scotty said petulantly, poking at one of the hyposprays on the trolley next to the bio-bed.
"Stop that," Chapel said automatically, running her scanner over his abdomen. She put down the diagnostic equipment and sighed.
"It's like I told you," she said firmly. "It's not sea-sickness."
"We're in the bloody ocean, woman!" Scotty protested. "And I'm feeling sick!"
"The scanner's come back negative," Chapel said, rolling her eyes. "It's psychosomatic. You just hate being under water."
"It's not natural," Scotty said, glaring out the small window set in the wall of the room. A school of pretty purple fish drifted past.
"The same could be said for space travel, you know," Chapel teased.
"Heresy!" Scotty hissed.
Chapel laughed, shook her head, and punched a code into the replicator in the wall.
"Peppermint tea," she told him, as he took a dubious sip. "It does wonders for the digestive system."
"I'll take it with me," he said, eying the room for a waste recycling unit.
The red alert klaxon sounded suddenly, startling both officers into action.
"All hands to emergency stations," Chekov announced from the bridge. "Mission parameters have changed. Shuttle Bay One, prepare to receive damaged shuttlecraft."
"Oh bloody fantastic," Scotty growled, plonking the cup of tea down on the medical trolley so hard it splashed all over the floor. "That's the third shuttle this month that those idiots have managed to destroy."
He headed for the door, Chapel hot on his heels. As they moved quickly through an assembling Sickbay, one of Chapel's junior nurses handed her an emergency kit before disappearing back into the melee of people and equipment behind them.
"Any word on casualties?" she asked M'Benga, who fell into step with them.
"Nothing from the shuttlecraft," he replied, picking up his own kit. "Comms are down. But apparently they never made the pick-up with the captain and McCoy. They're using Plan B. Micheals!" he called over his shoulder. "Your team to shuttle bay one!"
One of the other doctors on the team nodded, and disappeared with two nurses in the opposite direction to Christine and the two other officers.
By this point, they'd made it out of Sickbay and had hustled into one of the turbolifts.
"One of these days I'd like to see Plan A come off," Scotty said irritably.
"Don't hold your breath," Chapel advised darkly.
Plan A had been risky, at best. Plan B, she knew, was downright suicidal. Granted, Len hated shuttlecraft, but she was pretty damn sure that leaping hundreds of feet off a cliff into the ocean and then swimming back to the ship wasn't high on his to-do list either. God, she'd be hearing him bitch about this for weeks.
If I'm lucky, she thought, and then immediately tried to shake those dark thoughts from her head.
Scotty split off as the corridor broke into two, and headed for the main shuttle bay, cursing under his breath.
"Bridge, this is Chapel. Do you have a lock on the captain and Dr McCoy?" she asked, as she dodged personnel moving rapidly towards her.
There was a slight pause, before the officer manning the science station instead of Spock answered her.
"Affirmative, Lieutenant," the woman said. "We're reading their vitals, and they're green. Moving towards airlock five, should be with us in six minutes."
"Understood, Chapel out."
"Chris, if their vitals are reading okay, then I should head over to the shuttlebay," M'Benga said, stopping in his tracks. "They might be coming in with injuries."
"Go," Chapel told him, and M'Benga reversed direction and disappeared.
Christine waited anxiously by the entrance to airlock five. Six minutes seemed to drag out into decades. Finally, the outer doors opened and the tiny room was flooded with water and the presence of two tall men dressed in the skin-tight and highly revealing Starfleet wetsuits.
As soon as the outer doors closed, she ordered the computer to drain the water from the room. As soon as the salt water had been sucked into the Enterprise's recycling tanks, the inner door released and she could enter the room, medical tricorder at the ready.
"I'm fine," Kirk said dismissively as she zeroed in on him.
"Tricorder is reporting otherwise, Captain," she replied as she circled him. "Your shoulder was damaged as you entered the water."
"It's nothing," Kirk protested as McCoy took the tricorder from her hand, nodded, and plucked the hypospray she had selected from her kit out of her other hand.
"Bones, this is an emergency, and I don't need…my God, did you sharpen that?" he accused as McCoy jabbed him in the upper arm.
"Painkiller," McCoy said gruffly. "Tide you over until we get the hell out of this mess."
Chapel let the familiar bickering between the two old friends wash over her as she turned her attention to her section chief. Heart rate was elevated, but not unusual considering the circumstances, which were being argued about in the background.
"Do you have any idea how difficult it is to run in robes, Jim?"
He'd avoided the damage to his shoulders that Kirk had received on entering the water; his diving technique must be better, something that he'd no doubt crow about later, when this latest emergency had been resolved.
"Tell me exactly which of your tactics classes at the Academy taught you that plunging a hundred feet into freezing cold water was a good way of ensuring the survival of your crew?"
His core temperature was stable; the wetsuits were designed to regulate body temperature, although they hadn't been wearing the usual gloves, so the tricorder was registering a drop in his extremities.
"For the love of God, man, I'm a doctor, not a diver!"
McCoy ran hot; most nights she found herself turning away from his warm body in bed, despite his best octopus impersonation, all grabby arms and winding legs. Now she wanted to chafe his cold fingers in her hands, bring him in close to her body so she could check with her own eyes what the tricorder was telling her.
Not now, though. Later.
Scotty arrived at the door, loudly complaining about the treatment that his beloved ship was getting after spending the last few days submerged at the bottom of the ocean. Kirk turned to deal with him, leaving McCoy enough time to grab one of Chapel's hands.
"You're okay," she told him quietly, squeezing his hand hard instead of throwing her arms about him, as she wanted to do. "Cold hands, though."
"Cold hands, warm heart," he said. "That's what my great-gram used to say, anyway. And they can't be any colder than your feet," he went on, his voiced tinged with humour.
Kirk darted out of the door suddenly, off to deal with the next crisis.
"Go," Chapel said. "I'll see you later."
McCoy nodded, gave her a look that was part apology, part promise, and ran after his friend.
Chapel watched him disappear up the corridor. Watching her lover sprint away from her was never pleasant, she mused, but at least those tight wetsuits showcased a very pretty picture. She wondered how long it would take him to realise just how many people would be staring at him, and how gruffly embarrassed that would make him, and smiled as she packed up her kit.
They could look all they want. Only she got to touch. And later? After whatever the hell had gone wrong had been made right?
There was going to be plenty of touching. Especially if he was still wearing that wetsuit...