Fic written for the prompt of "What you do when the world's not ending."
Title: What You Do When the World Doesn't End
Characters: Christine Chapel, Leonard McCoy (McCoy/Chapel)
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Christine likes to make lists to calm her nerves. After Narada, they could all use some calming.
One week before the emergency alarms sounded at the academy starting a chain of events that ended with one planet eviscerated and another saved, Christine sat on the narrow bed in her dorm room and made a list on her personal PADD. Lists had a tendency to calm her and she was feeling jittery about the midterm she had to take in the morning.
This one was titled: "What I want to do before I die." She had typed in "What I want to accomplish before I die," but then erased it when she realized that accomplishments were all well and good, but she wanted experiences. Thirty thoughtful minutes later, she had a list typed and saved and was drinking a glass of water and getting ready for bed, like any responsible student who wanted to pass her test the next day.
Nowhere on there did she write that she wanted to become head nurse through default; that she wanted to fuck the new CMO on the desk in his office because no one seemed to know what was going on or who the hell was even captain now and it was a way to forget, at least for a little while. Of course, she didn't know that half the medical officers and technicians would be wiped out in the first few minutes of the Enterprise's maiden voyage. She didn't even know Leonard McCoy then, at least beyond their cursory interactions at the clinic. She also hadn't known that silly lists like this get thrown out the window when dealing with actual death—there are things you want, things you need way more when faced with no future.
A little over a week later, she wasn't thinking about all the damn "experiences" she had so wanted, she was thinking of the ones the dead would never have. And what do you do with that?
Make a new list, that's what. Something to do anyway in the face of canceled classes and a eerily quiet campus. Before she starts, she shakes her head at herself, remembering that number one on her old list was "go into space."
She titled it "Christine Chapel's List of What You Do When the World Doesn't End (and you may have had something to do with the saving of it)."
1. Call your mother. (She had too, almost immediately, and Christine was definitely not the type to call her family often. Lauren Chapel had cried and nagged at the same time, telling her that she needed to eat more because she'd looked too skinny on the vid broadcasted everywhere. "I've been busy," Christine said in response, but she dutifully ordered a sandwich from the replicator that evening and managed to choke down a few bites while scanning the headlines herself.)
2. Kiss the hero of the hour. ("You're just stroking his ego more than he needs, Christine," Leonard had muttered after she'd kissed Jim on the forehead and he'd grinned up her, splitting his lip even worse. "He deserves it, just this once," she'd countered, noticing Leonard still wouldn't meet her eyes. I was there too, she wanted to say. Stop pretending otherwise.)
3. Drink. (She had consumed more alcohol in their time off since Narada than she had in all her time at the academy. There were many nights that were just a rush of drinking and talking and comfort with those left behind, the friendships she'd forged in those few days on the ship together.)
4. Study. (Classes and final exams may have been canceled, but Christine was determined to graduate on time—there was no way that ship was taking off without her because she didn't remember a common medical procedure.)
5. Repeat #3 and #4 (She did so until she wanted to pass out in a haze of a wine-and-Andorian-anatomy-charts-induced coma.)
That's where McCoy found her, five long days after the day the world didn't end. Somehow, he was able to break in to her apartment (she suspects Jim helped) and wake her up from her sprawled position on the couch, helping along her hangover with a convenient hypospray. She wondered if he just kept a supply of necessary drugs with him at all times now, if that was his way of coping. As if some other emergency was going to pop up and he wanted to be ready.
"Leonard—what?" She sat up slowly and pushed her pile of PADDs and reference materials to the floor with a crash. "What are you doing here?"
"No one had heard from you in two days. I, that is we, were worried."
She smiled at the change. "How is everyone?" Christine asked softly.
"They're fine, everyone's fine. Well, as fine as you can be after the adrenaline crash." He stroked a hand down her hair absently and she couldn't help turning into the hand. "Listen, do you want to get out of here? I was thinking of taking a shuttle and—"
"Yes," she said, beyond caring about details by this point.
Don't be alone. (The saying went that everyone dies alone, but Christine didn't believe that, didn't want to believe that. What would be the point of living, otherwise?)
By the time the Enterprise left on its five-year mission with her on board as head nurse (this time not just by default), Christine had given up making lists.