Christine in the Grass
"If you want me again look for me under your boot soles." -Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
Chapter 1-
It was practically a medical fact around the Enterprise sickbay that she was his least favorite. The other nurses called it 'going to Chapel' when he called them into his office to berate them. She could have built a summer home on his shit list and everyone knew it was personal. She dropped things, gave too much or too little medication, was constantly referring to her PADD and asking annoying questions that she should know the answer to, but so did all the others in her year.
So what was it about her that he found so intolerably irritating? Maybe it was the fact that she was so clearly a Yankee. The small pendant brooch with a glossy anchor from some Yacht club, the turns of phrase she used, even the way she flicked her hair back from her face when it slipped out of her braid screamed East Coast new-money to his ears. Perhaps it was the way she hummed sometimes as she was going about her duties. Perhaps it was the way she giggled occasionally at an inappropriate time—rocking back and forth as she tried to restrain herself.
Whatever the reason for his dislike, Nurse Christine Chapel had stood at the end of Dr. Leonard McCoy's desk, head down to hid the pressed-together lips and the humiliated flush more times than he could remember. But he had never seen her look so utterly petrified as she did just then.
Her normally creamy pale skin was almost sheet white with fear and pain. The sensible, professional bun she wore to work was mussed and sloppy now and the fingers gripping the medical cabinet that pinned her to one wall were cut and bleeding.
"I think... I think something's gone clean through my calf," she said unnecessarily as he bent in front of her. He had the tricorder out already and could see quite clearly the wicked piece of metal that had pierced through her peroneous longus.
Though it must have been agony she'd made the right decision not to push the cabinet off herself. When he pulled it free he knew it was going to bleed profusely. She might have bled out looking for a tricorder or a bandage. Despite himself, he was impressed. He'd seen more than one person who should have known better pull something out of their own wound, some of them quite a bit more seasoned than she was.
"On three I am going to lift this off of you Nurse Chapel. Don't try to help me push. Just lie as still as you can and try not to let the leg move as much as possible. Do you understand?"
"Yes Doctor."
"One...Two...Three."
She gasped as the cabinet came free but she held still as he'd commanded. Blood rushed from a wound the length of his index finger like lava pouring from a crack in the earth. He bent down again and held the muscle together as he engaged the beam of the tricorder that would knit the flesh whole again. Once the wound was healed he went to the cabinet and got out some rubbing alcohol and cleaned the area around the wound of blood to make sure that the surface was fully intact and he hadn't missed anything. The pungent stuff ran pale pink into her shoe and sock, soaking them, but she didn't complain.
"You'll need to take an antibiotic and an antiviral to make sure it doesn't fester. Wash you hands with soap as well and get everything that might be in there out of those wounds too before you close them."
"Yes Doctor."
He stood and looked around the sickbay as she did as she was told. The normally obsessively clean space was a jumbled mess. The cabinets were locked tight but whatever had been out on the counters was strewn across the floor as were the contents of several medical carts that had been knocked over. With a sigh he went to his office and began to try to piece together in how big of a pickle he had really landed.
A few moments later the chime on his door sounded.
"What?" He snapped. She came in with a basin of water and a wary expression. "What is that for?"
"Your right arm Doctor."
He glanced down and for the first time noticed that he was bleeding sluggishly from his right forearm. He nodded. "Leave it. I'll attend to it in a moment."
Carefully she placed the basin, a bandage and two pills on his desk. "What happened Doctor?" She asked nervously.
His jaw clenched. "The ship split in two. Diplomatic mission my ass. That's probably when the cart was thrown into you. The medical bay and lord knows how much of this side got torn off."
On the whole though he knew they were damn lucky to have been where they were when the ship tore apart. There was an auxiliary power supply that fed the medical bay when the main power was shut off. Without it they would have lost life support immediately even if they hadn't been sucked out into space.
"Are.. are there any other survivors?"
His mouth tightened. "Your guess is as good as mine. When I left the bridge the Captain was working to beam most of the crew down to the surface and separate the saucer section. I don't know if he was successful."
She bit her lip. "Where are we now?"
He grimaced. "Floating mostly. I turned on the sensory system long enough to get our position and heading. Now I'm trying to figure out where in the name of all the angels that lands us."
"Have you turned on a homing beacon?"
He shook his head.
He could see by her expression that she knew the implication of that. The power supply to the medical bay was never meant to be used long-term and it wouldn't replenish itself. He hadn't turned on the beacon because he'd seen from the sensors that they were headed into some fairly uninhabited space and he didn't anticipate running into any ships anytime soon. With the Enterprise torn in two their only chance of survival was to come within short hailing distance of some planet or colony.
"Have you calculated our closest landing point?"
He shook his head. "I can't get the telemetry on this damn thing right. I will brief you when I know more."
It was such a clear dismissal he was surprised when a moment later he realized that he hadn't heard his door close again. He looked up. The damn girl was still in his doorway, biting that damn lip and looking nervous. "What?"
"It's just... I think I have some experience with that system sir. If you like, I could give it a try?"
He didn't bother to keep the incredulity from his voice. "You have experience with telemetry?"
"Yes sir. I've been sailing since I was a girl and small yachts use a similar navigation algorithm."
He almost sighed. Of course she'd been sailing yachts since she was a girl. "Oh by all means then Nurse Chapel, be my guest." He slid the PADD towards her and took up the washcloth she'd left for him in the basin.
As he washed and bandaged his forearm he watched her work. He she wasn't exactly sure what she was doing. But neither did she look entirely lost. She was working through a problem that she'd never solved before but she was doing it systematically.
He was impressed.
It was a not something a lot of people knew how to do in his experience. He would have expected her to be daunted in the face of something new but instead she looked only concentrated.
After a while she frowned and wordlessly slid the PADD back to him. He glanced down and to his surprise saw that she had indeed solved the problem. There on the display was their set trajectory if nothing intercepted them done to within a tolerance of a meter on either side. He was less pleased when he saw where it was. It would be eight and a half days before they were within short hailing distance of anything- a small moon that served as a junction stop between two small shipping lanes in this quadrant.
"Well I hope you like the taste of emergency rations Nurse Chapel."
Her brow furrowed. "Is the replicator not working Doctor?"
He shrugged. "Maybe but even if it is functional itself it's useless without the library, which is stored centrally in the main memory banks: a part of the ship we no longer can even see out of a viewing port."
"Even... even the medical library?"
"Yes that too, of course. Though I've told the engineers at least a thousand... are you alright Nurse Chapel?"
She'd gone suddenly very pale. "Yes, fine Doctor. It's just the stress."
He got up and came around the desk. She flinched back from him. "I only want to measure your pulse," he told her gruffly. He took her by the wrist and found that it was racing. But when he scanned her with the tricorder he found she wasn't bleeding internally. Her heart rate was elevated and her blood was racing but there was no physical cause for it that he could find. Perhaps she was right and it was only stress.
"You should get some more rest Nurse. It's almost two hours past standard midnight at any rate. We should get some sleep, though it isn't as though we'll have much to do tomorrow anyway."
"Yes Doctor."
She was a bigger idiot than he thought if she didn't think he could hear her crying. Christ he could practically smell her tears. The thought of it made him irritated. It made him want to yell at her to shut up, to grow a spine, to stop being so goddamn melodramatic. Instead he'd ground his teeth and tried to relax on the cot in his office.
Half an hour later when she was still sobbing and he was no closer to sleep he got the Romulan ale out of the drawer in his desk and poured himself a hefty glass. It didn't help though. He lay awake listening to the small, pathetic noise of her pain. Only when after two hours she quieted down and he could hear the soft, even sound of her breath in sleep was he able to fall into a restless sleep of his own.
AN: Please let me know what you think! This is my very first story I've ever shared so I'm very curious to know what you guys think (it's also my very first ever written in this AU so let me know how I'm doing on that too please!). Also I don't have anyone to Beta this so if you notice even a little grammar/spelling correction please drop me a line! xoxo -TwineLove