First off, thanks so much for all the reviews and favorites! I cannot believe how well received this story is :) I really appreciate all the feedback! So based off your guys reaction, this next chapter is from McCoy's perspective.
Im playing with a really funky idea right now, and all yall might just hate it, but i'm going to play with it until told otherwise. The story doesn't necessarily have to continue with this plot. Guess you'll have to read to find out what it is!
Note: All first person is in Italics
Disclaimer: I obviously own nothing, lets be honest.
With much terror, i post this chapter. Enjoy :)
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Some things about a hospital room would never change.
The sadness.
The worry.
The questions.
The lack of energy.
Even in this era, this hadn't changed.
The machines were still loud indicators of a body that wasn't working, the charts a detailed documentation of everything that was failing in your life.
Leonard liked that. No secrets. No lies. Just fact.
Facts were problems that could be worked with- solved if you were lucky.
He frequently damned this concept as what dragged him into the profession in the first place.
Sure, there were some things you couldn't fix.
Divorce cases.
Sometimes people came in that were too far gone to do anything about. You did everything you could. Consoled the family, sent away the body, wrote a check. By some cruel chance of fate, these patients were more than likely young people with stable families and bright futures ahead of them. These were the situations that left him a emotional wreck.
Leonard McCoy didn't want to Jim Kirk to be one of those cases.
Jim was in an extended state of unconsciousness on a hospital bed. He had been in a medical induced coma for six days. Surrounding him was a state-of-the-art containment tube. No contaminates could come in, and most importantly, none could escape. After all, the whole purpose of Jim's mission had been to save lives, not to kill the whole damn building with radiation.
He looked dead. If it wasn't for the readings on the screens, McCoy would have had to physically check his pulse to know if he was alive. Thanks to a combination of life aboard a spaceship and his recent battle with death, Kirk's skin was eerily white. It was a far cry from his typical glowing self.
The worst thing was his silence. He didn't know if he could mentally handle one more day of a completely quiet Kirk. It was some terrifying nightmare. It would be like this until McCoy said otherwise. Heavy medication was keeping him under in the meantime.
If only Jim could see the size of the hypos he was being stabbed with now.
When the radiation stabilized to a point of safety, Jim would been allowed to wake up on his own. Whether or not this would happen was still a question on everyone's mind. The process itself was unprecedented and, according the the Vulcan's numbers, very likely to fail.
This worried McCoy incessantly. Quite honestly, he couldn't remember his last full night of sleep. Spock told him it was approximately eight days ago. He didn't need to know that. There were much more pressing matters to concern his busy self with.
The thing is, you can't just go freezing dead bodies in torpedo shells- it isn't acceptable. You especially can't freeze dead bodies and then leave them unattended.
This was his case, and his case only. No decorated doctor was going to take it.
If Jim died, it would only be because there was absolutely nothing else he could do to save him.
If he lived, it would be his success, his great accomplishment in life.
If it worked, it would preserve his the captain in the state he had been in just before his death.
This "mission" was the hardest he had ever embarked on in his life. However, the decision to join had been the easiest of his career. He had the chance to save the person who mattered most to him.
This was motivation enough for McCoy.
Goddammit Jim.
McCoy stared at the myriad of screens in front of him. He knew he shouldn't be surprised- Jim was the exception to every rule in the playbook.
Until two weeks ago, Leonard had assumed that a body that had been dead such an extensive length of time was really truly honestly dead. Not that you could blame him. He didn't need his seven years of medical school to know that a dead body is a dead body.
Until two weeks ago, he had assumed that somebody completely and totally intoxicated with high level radiation was a very, very dead man.
The Captain had been so irradiated it was a miracle there had been any functioning organs left for him to work with. Radiation can do all sorts of terrifying things. It destroys hair cells, organ function, muscular usage, and most importantly brain function. In the 20th century, before they fully knew the extent of nuclear power, the United States had dropped atomic bombs on Japan. Those who didn't die immediately suffered terrible side effects.
Apparently this data did not apply to him.
Apparently hundreds of years of scientific findings did not apply to Jim Kirk.
Over the past two weeks, he had learned that with a bit of blood from a complete maniac and an ancient cryotube, you could an revive a Starfleet captain.
Who knew?
Jim Kirk knew, even if he didn't know exactly how at the time. Apparently, he didn't believe in no-win scenarios. Not even in death.
However, there was something bothering McCoy- Jim's vitals were actually reading above normal. It was hard to tell considering his previously incomplete medical records, but Jim's muscle mass and strength actually appeared to be significantly greater than before his near-death experience. His brain activity was hyperactive- possibly even dangerously so.
And maybe it was to be expected. For Christ's sake- they had injected him with super-human blood. What if Jim actually had a bit of Khan in him? It was more than possible that the blood they had used to revive him had actually taken over his body, making Kirk another potential pawn in Khan's army.
Just one more reason why joining Starfleet was a bad idea.
The thing is, he couldn't test his theory- not yet. The radiation in Jim's blood was still so high that all tests came out royally screwed, even with the newest sensors. All other abnormalities in the blood are hidden under the guise of radiation.
But if the blood really did what he thought it might, the outcomes were endless.
In the little sleep he got, McCoy dreamed about this. He dreamed about Jim waking. He would break the restraints of the hospital bed and punch his way through the window.
"What am I?" Jim would scream this from the ledge, "What have you made me?"
His desperate blue eyes looked wild.
I would open my mouth. Try to make myself speak the truth about his condition. But nothing would come out. It felt like a hand was over my mouth, physically stopping the words I had formed.
Then, Jim would yell a manic cry.
"You can do nothing for me! NOTHING! I am one of them now. This," he gestured to himself with a choke, "this is all your fault."
Spock would rush in. He would reach through the broken glass, but the glass repaired itself. He punched the glass, but just like Khan, you couldn't physically destroy it. It took so much more than a simple punch.
Spock screamed.
Jim jumped.
Nobody with a normal physiology could possibly survive that sort of fall.
The new Jim always did though.
He hit the ground running.
Like Khan had done just days ago.
Starfleet officials would come to take him away. But it wasn't the shiny red cadets he was so grudgingly familiar with. These men were cold, and very distinctly not Starfleet. They were Khan's army. Like the Nazi's of the 1940's, these men were perfectly uniform. They were clearly the product of Eugenics- one of the man's most distinctive ideals.
The men would threaten him: threaten him with the life of his daughter. Demand that they tell him where Jim went.
But McCoy could never say anything. He didn't know.
This wasn't his game. He screamed this in his head again and again. Leave me alone.
"What did you do to him? How dare you make him one of us?"
A hard punch, the shock of a phaser.
"We were perfect. You are a threat to us. You have destroyed what we once had by letting a loose cannon into our perfectly created race".
He saw red.
"You will die for what you have done."
McCoy couldn't help but wonder if it was really a dream after all.
Wake up kid.
We need you.
Authors Note: So i really feel like this is something that actually legitimately happened at the end of STID. Does anybody have any opinions on why this hypothesis might be right or wrong? I was thinking about it and it sort of blew my mind.
