Patient Zero

A/N: T for language (and maybe a little bit for Jim Kirk being a flirt, just sayin').

Disclaimer: Sadly, I'm not nearly as profit-minded as Cyrano Jones. No credits changing hands here.

When they had finally managed to stabilize Jim, they'd started a full day's worth of tests to make sure he would stay that way.

Leonard had been wearing the same clothes for two days and sleeping on the couch in the break room. Christine Chapel was standing next to him when the results came in one by one. She gave a soft, relieved laugh and squeezed his shoulder, moving to log the information as Leonard tapped out a quick message to Philip Boyce.

"You should go home and get some rest," he said to Chapel after a moment, stifling a yawn.

She caught it anyways and pressed a hand over her mouth to contain it. "What about you?"

"I'll head out in a few minutes," he lied easily, sitting in the chair at Jim's bedside. "I don't know about you, but I'm gonna sleep like the dead." He didn't need to look at her to feel her skepticism.

"I spoke with the on-duty nurse. She'll comm you if anything happens."

Leonard nodded, turning to meet her eyes. "Thanks, Christine."

"Night, Leonard."

The door swished shut behind her.

Leonard turned back to Jim and let his head fall into his hands, the heels pressing into his eyes, massaging the outline of his skull.

There was fallout to come. He wasn't naïve enough to hope for mitigating circumstances, not even if Boyce was willing to go to bat for him. The head of Starfleet Medical was still accountable to the Hippocratic Oath, and in the eyes of the boards, Leonard knew, he'd played at God.

Not for the first time, the steady pulse of the heart monitor drew his gaze back to the biobed console. Jim's vitals hadn't changed. The serum was doing its job, even if it had done a number on Jim's immune system in the process. He would be knocked out for a good while, at least a week.

Jim would hate this if he could see himself, Leonard thought. He was all but buried in medical equipment: portable regen units, an IV drip, a respirator mask. He was wan and still, far worse than Leonard had ever seen him after the odd bar fight during their Academy days. But alive.

No such thing as a no-win scenario. The thought flitted through his mind, unbidden, and a reluctant smile tugged at Leonard's mouth.

"Goddamnit Jim," he murmured. He laughed quietly to himself—then blinked as his vision suddenly blurred with tears. "Goddamnit," he whispered again around the knot in his throat, and let them slip through his fingers until they ran out.

Under the respirator mask, Jim kept breathing.

The room was suddenly much, much brighter.

Leonard blinked and squinted, readjusting—who the hell turned on the damn overheads?—before he realized that it wasn't the harsh overhead lights at all but the goddamn sun, pouring in through the room's east-facing window. He was right in the middle of a sunbeam. It had warmed his hair, even with the building's meticulous temperature regulation.

Chapel was tapping his shoulder lightly. "Well. You did sleep like the dead," she said dryly.

He straightened up, twisting left and right, and stood gingerly, bracing himself against the arms of the chair: both of legs were asleep.

"Are you ok?" Chapel asked.

Leonard didn't answer right away.

From a purely objective, medical standpoint, no. Unlike much of the crew he'd escaped serious injury in Alexander Marcus's attack on the Enterprise, but aside from the lack of sleep, he'd been subsisting exclusively on caffeine, protein nibs, and replicated hospital food.

"Yeah, fine. Just tired," he lied again. When Chapel kept staring, he gestured vaguely behind himself in explanation. "Sleeping in a chair. Not for the faint of heart."

"Hm." Chapel turned back to the bioscanner, checking over Jim's vitals again. "Well…this probably isn't the best time to tell you this, but Lieutenant Commander Scott has been trying to get in touch with you."

Leonard frowned. "Scotty? Why?"

"No idea," Chapel shrugged, "but it sounded important."

Leonard pulled his comm out of his pocket and found several missed audio calls, about one an hour starting around two a.m. He turned to the door and returned the call. The engineer picked up almost immediately: "Doctor! Is Jim all right?"

"Yeah, he's—" Leonard paused, cleared his throat. "—he's stable. He'll be ok."

"Thank heavens. And they call me the miracle worker."

"C'mon, Scotty, you know it wasn't just me."

"Yes, well…listen, I need your help with something."

"Is it urgent?"

"Aye. It's…it's a wee bit of an emergency, actually."

Leonard scrubbed his hand over his face. "I—agh—all right. Where are you?"

Scotty hesitated before answering. When he finally spoke, it was with the sheepish tone of a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Up in spacedock."

"Dammit, man, you're supposed to be off-duty! Haven't you gotten any sleep?"

Leonard saw Chapel shoot him a look from where she was standing in front of the bioscanner, one light-colored eyebrow arched high. It was like having Spock in the room with him. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"I couldn't just leave her in such a state!" Scotty protested.

Good lord, he was talking about the Enterprise. Leonard massaged his temples.

"And besides," the engineer pressed on, "if I hadn't gone back, I wouldn't have discovered—"

He broke off abruptly.

Leonard looked at his comm to see if the call had dropped, and frowned when he saw it hadn't. "Discovered what?"

On the other end, the engineer let out a shaky breath. "Look, Doctor…just please get up here, all right?"

Leonard sighed. "All right. I'm on my way." He closed his comm.

"Hypocrite," Chapel chided.

This time Leonard did roll his eyes. "Comm me if anything changes," he said, ignoring the daggers she glared at his back as he walked out the door.

The Enterprise transporter room rematerialized before him, Scotty at the control panel.

Leonard suppressed the flicker of nausea that followed him off the transport pad, willing himself not to think of the way the ship had rattled as it had gone down over the Pacific Ocean. He focused instead on the engineer. The man looked harried, with dark smudges under his eyes, still in the gray maintenance jumpsuit he'd been wearing when he'd been beamed back aboard with Jim and Dr. Marcus.

Apparently, Leonard looked equally worse for the wear. Scotty regarded him with wide-eyed worry: "Y'alright there, Doctor?"

"M'fine." Leonard waved a dismissive hand, following him out of the transporter room. "What do you need my help with?"

"Well…" Scotty hedged, "…it's easier to just show you."

They fell into step side-by-side and turned down an adjacent corridor. Although Leonard knew the route from the transporter room to the Medbay by heart, the path still felt strange and unfamiliar. The hallways of the Enterprise were darker than he'd ever seen them. Even during the ship's "night" the corridors were lit as if to provide the illusion of moonlight: a soft, cool, uniform glow. Now there was barely auxiliary maintenance lighting. It made sense. With the carnage on the waterfront ensconcing the smoldering remains of the Vengeance, Leonard was unsurprised Command hadn't yet sent work crews up to the Enterprise to assess the damage.

Squinting ahead, he caught sight of a familiar doorway, one he knew led to the turbolifts. It was closed, probably shut automatically during the attack. He moved toward it, reaching out to the console.

Without warning a hand on his collar yanked him back with surprising force. Scotty shouted in his ear:

"Not that way!"

Leonard batted his arm away and whirled on the engineer, adrenaline draining from his system as quickly as it had spiked. He stared at the other man in silence, resisting the urge to curse, waiting for an explanation.

Scotty's eyes darted to the door console then back. "Hull breach," he said, simply.

…Oh.

Leonard followed Scotty's gaze to the tiny panel just to the right of the door: no different from any other door console on the Enterprise. The same command options. The same emergency call button.

There really ought to be a sign, he thought faintly.

It was probably a good thing he hadn't eaten breakfast.

Seeing the look on his face, Scotty's eyes widened. He started babbling: "No, no—Leonard, it's not—it wouldn't've—there's a repair shield; you wouldn't've gotten sucked into space or anything, it's just—"

"It's ok." Leonard cut off Scotty's frantic backpedaling. He looked the engineer in the eye. "Really. It's—I'm fine."

The engineer shifted his feet, abashed. "Sorry."

Leonard cleared his throat, stepping back from the door, gesturing to the hallway to their right. "Maybe you should lead."

They took a circuitous route up from Engineering, first crawling through a Jeffries tube, then combing their way through one of the supply rooms on Deck Five. Walking through the empty corridors in silence, it occurred to Leonard that this must have been the route Scotty had taken with Jim's body. Glancing over at him, he could see the memory written into Scotty's face, the tension he was carrying in his shoulders.

They ended up at the back entrance of the Medbay, the one Leonard hardly ever used. From the hallway, it looked nearly identical to the front entrance: the same opaque doors, the same white caduceus printed onto them.

He waited for the door sensors to engage and slide open at the sign of their approach, frowning when they didn't. He glanced over at Scotty, who was standing at the door console, tapping in an override code.

"I didn't want any of them to get out," he said, casting a guilty look over his shoulder.

Leonard felt his heart rate tick up a notch. "Any of them?"

"You'll see."

"Scotty—"

But before he could say anything else, the Medbay doors parted before them. Leonard's brow knitted into a frown. "What…"

It was as if he'd walked into a summer night back in Savannah—as if he'd wandered into the woods behind his grandparents' house. He'd done so once when he was twelve, on a night with no moon. Couldn't see worth a damn, but he'd been surrounded by the chirping of crickets and frogs, the occasional soft hoot of an owl.

It was exactly like that now, with the night song of rural Georgia replaced by…cooing.

"Computer," Leonard said, "Lights one-hundred percent."

The Medbay flashed into view, all white walls and sterile surfaces, and…

Leonard felt his mouth gape open.

…Tribbles.

Thousands of them.

Leonard's feet seemed to move of their own accord, carrying him into the room as he surveyed the chaos.

They were everywhere: crowding the biobeds, poking out of coffee cups, nestled between knobs on the emergency eyewash sinks. There were trails of them like breadcrumbs, leading into the operating theaters, the hot room, the supply closet, his office. The floor looked like it was made of multicolored cotton balls.

Leonard stepped gingerly, glancing between his feet and the row of supply cabinets on the other side of the room, trying to map a feasible route through the purring clusters.

"I found it like this a few hours ago," Scotty stage-whispered behind him, as if the tribbles could understand him and take offense. "It's madness! They've been going at it like, well…tribbles."

Leonard shook his head.

It didn't make any damn sense.

Starfleet doctors had been using tribbles as therapy animals for decades. Sure, they'd first encountered them as the result of the grain debacle on Deep Space K-7 back in the 20s, but once zoologists figured out how the little buggers reproduced, getting them sterilized was a simple matter. Unlike their feral counterparts, domesticated tribbles didn't breed, and their sale and transport was highly regulated.

Behind him, there was a deafening crash and an ungodly shrieking. Leonard whirled around to see Scotty clutching a metal tray and scrambling to his feet, still whisper-shouting: "Sorry! Sorry."

Tribbles were scattering in his wake, fleeing ineffectually to the safety of the nearest biobed. They really were prey animals: they wiggled back and forth like the stuffed wind-up toys he'd given Joanna when she was a toddler.

Leonard shook his head and opened a supply cabinet, dodging a flood of the tiny animals as he reached for a tricorder. The scanner's whirring joined the chorus of coos.

Scotty leaned against a biobed, carefully clearing a space for himself to sit. "I don't understand," he said. "I thought therapy tribbles were fixed."

"They are."

"Then how…?"

Leonard pressed a hand to his forehead. "I don't know. I don't…"

He was so damned tired. The tricorder was returning nothing out of the ordinary: just a plethora of new, tiny, harmless lifeforms. He scrubbed his hand over his eyes. If he could just think, then maybehe could puzzle it out on his own. If his memory weren't buzzing with violent turbulence and atmospheric burnout and I-hope-you-don't-get-seasick. If he hadn't spent the last forty-eight hours in a lab, and then bent over an operating table, watching Jim flatline not once but twice before finally, finally managing to get his immune system to accept the transfusions…

Leonard's eyes snapped open.

Of course.

"Khan," he said aloud.

Scotty stared at him. "Beg pardon?"

"Khan's blood." He looked up at Scotty, wide-eyed. "One of the Enterprise tribbles—it was dead. Khan's blood revived it. I was trying to understand how he could've lived so long. It's how I knew what to do with Jim. The transfusion must have regenerated its reproductive organs."

Scotty blinked. "It re-grew a pair of balls?"

"Ovaries," Leonard said. "And yeah. Hence the nursery."

"What do we do?" Scotty asked, stricken. "We can't tell anyone about this. They'd find out about…you know."

Leonard didn't need to hear the end of his sentence. He nodded absently. Ultimately, he was the one responsible for this, just as he was the one responsible for Jim. He turned back to Scotty.

"Scotty, when you were a kid, did you always want to be a Starfleet engineer?"

Scotty frowned. "Pretty much, yeah."

"Never wanted to be anything else?"

The man offered a gentle shrug. "Well," he conceded, "there was a week there when I wanted to be Kermit the Frog, but otherwise…"

"Never wanted to be a veterinarian?" Leonard asked dryly.

Scotty paled. "Oh, bloody hell."

The labor itself was simple. A monkey could have done it.

A quick database search revealed there was a standard hypo injection for sterilizing tribbles. It was painless and quick, targeting the animals' reproductive systems, chemically tying the tubes. The two men donned plastic gloves, armed themselves with hyposprays, and set to work.

The hard part, as it turned out, was staying organized.

Contrary to their reputation as cute, fuzzy lumps that existed only to purr, be petted, and act as Klingon detectors, the tribbles didn't seem to like staying in the same place. Leonard and Scotty started off simply moving the ones they'd fixed to a set of biobeds on the far side of the bay, but quickly realized they liked to wiggle around, inching their way to the floor on a misguided, slow-moving quest to get back to their tribble-buddies. After three separate rounds of having to scan every tribble within three meters of the starboard wall, they came up with a new system, clearing out supply bins and filling them with sterilized tribbles, then storing them in one of the operating theaters.

Half an hour in, it became clear neither of them would be leaving anytime soon if they wanted to beat the clock to the next population spike. Scotty determined they should work to music. Leonard hunted through the communal playlist stored in the Enterprise database. They settled on M'Benga's surgery playlist, an odd mix of Vulcan choral chanting and mid-20th century Terran classical music.

They made creeping, inching progress, but progress nonetheless. Slowly, sections of the main bay began to emerge: first the supply cabinets, then the sinks, then the desks and biobeds—then the aft port part of the room, aft starboard… Sometime into hour three, they filled all of the available floor space in Operating Theater 1 and started moving bins into Operating Theater 2.

To the strains of "Blue Suede Shoes," Leonard prayed they were working faster than the birthrate.

Well into hour six, and halfway through their fourth cycle of "Suspicious Minds," Leonard had started to think he might possibly be losing his.

As the tribbles' ranks had dwindled, it had become harder and harder to find them. Now the room was empty—or at least, it appeared to be.

He was staring at the PADD in his hands, at a thermal image scan of the Medbay. He could see the overlapping clusters of red-orange dots in the two operating theaters, representing the bins of sterilized tribbles. In the main bay, however, were two unmoving dots, right next to the row of biobeds where he and Scotty were searching.

"Computer," he ground out again, "how many lifeforms are located in the main Medical Bay?"

"Two lifeforms," came the cool, robotic reply.

Leonard sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Computer, where exactly in the Medbay are these lifeforms?"

Bright green coordinate marks popped up on the screen of his PADD, overlapping the two red dots. Leonard groaned.

Scotty poked his head up from behind one of the biobeds. "Maybe try asking the sequence again?" he offered.

"This'll be the third time," Leonard muttered. He looked up, as if searching for divine inspiration. "Computer. How many lifeforms are present in the Medical Bay?"

"Seven-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-three."

"Isolate search: exclude external offices, supply and inventory rooms, and operating theaters. How many lifeforms?"

"Two."

"How many lifeforms aboard the ship?"

"Seven-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-three."

"How many in Medbay Operating Theater One?"

"Four-thousand, one-hundred and sixteen."

"And how many in Operating Theater Two?"

"Three-thousand, six-hundred and five."

"And how many in the rest of the goddamn Medical Bay?"

"Two lifeforms."

"For fuck's sake."

"Query not understood. Please repeat."

"Go jump in a lake."

"Unable to comply."

Leonard sat heavily on one of the empty biobeds, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

He could feel brain cells dying in the back of his head, the stirrings of early-onset dementia, vague homicidal urges... They couldn't leave until the tribbles were found. If they left the ship with pregnant tribbles on board, they would wind up in the same exact position as they'd found themselves in six hours ago, or worse.

They couldn't fucking leave.

He glanced through his hands down the length of the biobed. It had never looked so inviting. He resisted the urge to curl up in the fetal position and conk out then and there.

"Computer," he mumbled at his knees, "how many lifeforms present in the Medbay?"

"Seven-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty-three."

"Main bay only; exclude all other rooms."

"Two lifeforms."

Leonard groaned.

Then a gentle hand tapped his shoulder. He dragged his head up to see Scotty frowning in concentration. "What kind of lifeforms are they?" he asked.

"Lifeform scan requires authorization rank lieutenant commander or higher," the computer said coolly. "Please state authorization code."

Leonard blinked, then after a moment's hesitation, recited: "Authorization code Chief Medical Officer, 2-8-5-4-3-Chicago."

"Scanning." A brief pause. "Main medical bay contains two lifeforms: humanoid; Terran male."

The room fell silent.

Leonard and Scotty exchanged a glance. Leonard looked back up at ceiling. "Computer…" he said hesitantly, "…are there any other lifeforms present in the area just scanned?"

"Negative."

Leonard and Scotty stared at each other. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then the corner of Scotty's mouth twitched, and Leonard felt himself snort. Scotty threw back his head and let out a howl of mirth. Soon both men were bent double in hysterics, bracing themselves against the biobeds. More than once their laughter died down, only to start up again when they made eye-contact.

Leonard wasn't sure how long they stayed there giggling like a pair of hyenas, but he managed finally to get some of his breath back: "We—we should scan the ship—double-check there aren't any of 'em hiding anywhere else."

Scotty nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. "Good idea."

They glanced at each other and immediately started chortling again.

"Ok! Ok, enough!" Leonard pushed off the biobed, stumbling to door of the Medbay, Scotty trailing close behind. They stepped up to the wall console in the empty corridor, leaning on each other like a pair of drunks.

"What's the verdict?" Scotty asked, giggling.

Leonard looked over the scan results and then leaned against his forearm, grinning like an idiot.

"Just us."

They needed sleep, but more than that, they needed food.

In what was probably a flagrant abuse of Starfleet property, Scotty configured the transporter to beam them to an alley behind a diner in Marin, not far from the Academy campus, the smell of bacon grease so strong that Leonard barely registered the faint stirrings of nausea over his hunger pangs.

Seated in a sunny corner booth, they ordered a heart-attack inducing amount of food from a platinum blonde teenager—Maddie, her nametag read—who gave them the hairy eyeball over the top of her notepad before taking their menus and walking off to the kitchen.

Scotty had his elbows on the table, and was fiddling with the salt shaker. "So," he said softly, after Maddie had disappeared, "what are we gonna do?"

Leonard blinked at him. "I'm gonna inhale a plate of biscuits and gravy. I don't know about you."

"No, I mean, about the—" Scotty waved his hand in a vague gesture, sending salt crystals flying everywhere. "—you know. They can't sit around in the Medbay forever."

Leonard felt himself deflate. "I don't know, Scotty. Talk to me when I've had a night's sleep."

"Or three," the engineer agreed. He poked halfheartedly at a pile of salt crystals. "I don't suppose you know of a shelter that'd look the other way on the whole…unlicensed breeding issue?"

Maddie returned with a coffee pot and they fell silent until she disappeared again.

Leonard took a long drink of slightly-burnt coffee, closing his eyes as the caffeine washed through his bloodstream. When he opened them again, he regarded Scotty over the rim of his mug. "Do I look like a pet guy?" he asked dryly.

Scotty shrugged. "Could be. You could be a horse guy. Isn't that a thing where you come from?"

"Big difference between a horse and a tribble."

"Dog?"

"Already got a crew of eight-hundred to look after; kind of defeats the purpose."

"Cat?"

"It's like a dog with claws."

Scotty laughed. "Fair enough."

Leonard took another sip of coffee, glancing tiredly out the window. "You know who would love a pet, though, is my daughter. Been beggin' her mother for a puppy lately."

"How old is she?" Scotty asked.

Leonard had to give his brain a moment to catch up, to calculate. He hoped it was the sleep-deprivation talking. "Five."

"Well." The engineer regarded him knowingly. "Good age for a tribble."

Leonard raised an eyebrow at him and Scotty shrugged. "Just a thought."

Their food came then, and the next few minutes passed in silence but for the scraping of cutlery and the odd sigh of satisfaction that both men seemed content to let pass unacknowledged.

Having plowed halfway through his breakfast combo, Scotty spoke up again. "Maybe," he mused around a mouthful of sausage and eggs, "we can send 'em to the Klingons."

Leonard blinked at the gravy dripping off his fork, then looked up slowly.

Scotty swallowed his bite. "Care of Starfleet, you know."

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Leonard took a slow, deliberate sip of his coffee. A smile started to tug at the corners of Scotty's mouth.

For the second time in as many hours, both of them burst out laughing.

Never mind that they were a pair of grown-ass Starfleet officers: they giggled their way through the rest of the meal, insomnia-drunk, brainstorming progressively more and more absurd solutions to an already absurd problem. Maddie circled around periodically to refill their coffee and Leonard accepted each time, delaying the inevitable. When he could feel his pulse fluttering in his chest like a rabbit, he knew he'd hit his caffeine limit. He took his leave, transferring Scotty a few credits and clapping the man's shoulder before dragging himself back into the thin, wintry midafternoon sun.

At the risk of incurring Chapel's wrath, he stopped back by Starfleet Medical to find Jim still asleep and stable. He breathed another sigh of relief and made his way back to his quarters, where he crashed fully-clothed on the narrow matchbox bed, and slept for eighteen hours.

For the second time in three days, he woke to a face full of sunlight.

It felt like he'd been out drinking: he had a bad case of cottonmouth and was in desperate need of a shower—a real one, not a sonic like he'd had at the hospital for the sake of hygiene and efficiency.

He found two messages waiting for him on his PADD. The first he'd been anticipating: a summons to Philip Boyce's office, no later than 1400 that afternoon. The second was from Scotty, sent about two hours ago:

2259.60, San Francisco

Scotty: Had a brain wave—I think I've got it figured out. Give Jim my regards.

Leonard sighed.

Will do, he typed back.

Provided Starfleet Medical didn't kick his ass all the way back to Georgia.

He dumped his medical blues in the hamper and indulged in a water shower, only to realize when he got out that his dress grays were still in his quarters on the Enterprise. He settled for the somewhat rumpled shipboard uniform and headed straight over to Starfleet Medical. If he was about to get stripped of his license—or drummed out of the fleet—better to get it overwith now.

Philip Boyce's office was in an admin building separate from the hospital, on one of the upper floors. There were floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Marin headlands, and a dark, heavy-looking oak desk, lined with a stack of PADDs, a black monitor console, a line of holos in silver frames facing inward. Behind it was a bookshelf of the same wood. On the open shelves, Leonard could see a handful of heavy paper books, one or two awards, a Packers hat, more holos. A woman with a round face and a red-haired girl and boy featured prominently.

Boyce himself was standing over the desk—towering over it—making handwritten notes on one of the PADDs. He was a bear of a man, with deep-set eyes and a heavy jaw concealed by a bushy, graying beard. He glanced up when Leonard knocked then saluted.

"Doctor McCoy," Boyce rumbled. "At ease. Come in." He gestured at the chair in front of the desk. "How's your captain?"

Far from at ease, Leonard sat and Boyce mirrored him. "Stable, sir," he replied.

Boyce crossed an ankle over his knee and leaned back in his chair. His expression was neutral, open, but he made eye contact and didn't break it. "Glad to hear it. That was quite a feat you pulled off there."

Understatement of the century. Beyond that, Leonard didn't know how to answer. "Well, it was…certainly a first," he said finally.

Boyce said nothing, nodding slightly, his expression unchanged.

The room fell silent.

Leonard shifted in his seat, unsure whether Boyce was merely thinking through what he would say next, or waiting for Leonard to speak—to offer an explanation.

His mouth was dry when he opened it again. "Sir, I'm prepared to hand over the records of my actions over the last few days, when they're requested. Lab work, notes on the surgery and transfusions, follow-up testing."

Boyce nodded again. "I'm sure that would be very helpful."

At that point, Leonard had to break eye contact. His eyes flicked over Boyce's shoulder as he spoke, to one of the holos: some sort of camping trip. Boyce was standing with the redheaded kids and the round-faced woman against a backdrop of evergreens, wearing an apron and holding a spatula.

"If Command or JAG have any questions about the serum, I'm…available to answer them," Leonard said.

"What serum?"

Leonard blinked. "…Sir?"

Boyce hadn't moved. He looked neither surprised, nor did his question sound like much of a question. "My understanding," he said, "is that Captain Kirk was critically injured in the attack on the Enterprise. That the ingenuity and quick response of his CMO and medical staff ultimately saved him from what would have been a terrible death, while members of the bridge crew concurrently assisted in the recapture of Khan. All performed admirably in the line of duty." He regarded Leonard meaningfully. "Is there some other version of events you're aware of, Doctor?"

In the ensuing silence, Leonard realized he'd been holding his breath. He let it out, straightened a little. "No, sir."

"Maybe there's a more detailed account in the classified report," Boyce said, still not breaking eye contact. "Unfortunately, it happens to be above your pay grade."

"I understand."

"Good." He stood and Leonard did the same. "Well, Doctor, I believe you have a patient to look in on."

Leonard didn't need to be told twice. Feeling vaguely lightheaded, he saluted and turned to leave. At the door, Boyce called after him:

"McCoy…"

Leonard turned back. "Sir?"

Boyce didn't quite smile, but his eyes seemed somewhat warmer. "Get some sleep."

Jim woke up two weeks later, dazed and grateful and in no condition to be receiving visitors en masse. While Leonard and Christine ran tests to make sure he wasn't about to slip back into a coma, they also ran interference to make sure his guests weren't taking too much out of him.

Not three days after they'd taken him off the respirator mask, Leonard walked in one morning to see him with a PADD balanced on his knees. Jim still looked exhausted, but he glanced up with a smile that reached his eyes, and Leonard didn't have the heart to make him hand it over.

"You would be working not a week out of a damn coma," he muttered. "Do I want to know how you got that?"

That earned him a grin. "I have my ways."

Leonard huffed and approached the bioscanner to look over Jim's vitals—and stopped when a familiar sound reached his ears.

He turned slowly, catching sight of what he'd missed before: a baseball-sized, calico ball of fluff, perched on Jim's stomach and cooing softly. Jim was petting it with two fingers as he scrolled through a Chronicle op-ed.

Leonard blinked. "Where did that come from?" he asked.

Jim looked up with a smirk. "Starfleet Medical has therapy tribbles, Bones. You know that."

"Not enough for every Tom, Dick and Harry in long-term recovery."

"Sure about that?"

Leonard raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "I guess not. Are you sure you haven't had any visitors this morning?"

Jim grinned. "A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."

"Uh-huh."

"Actually," Jim said. "There's something for you too. Courtesy of an anonymous benefactor." He reached under the biobed and produced an honest-to-god cardboard shoebox, with a message scrawled across the top in black magic marker:

For your little girl, if she wants.

Leonard chuckled and shook his head.

There were holes in the lid.

A/N: Scotty's erstwhile childhood ambition to be Kermit the Frog was blatantly swiped from Hot Fuzz. (My thanks to the inimitable Simon Pegg.)