Notes:

Dr. McCoy sank into his office chair and sighed the mother of all sighs. The deepest sigh physically possible. Exorcist sighed.

Jesus, but he hated his job tonight.

He had just spent nine hours in surgery, up to his elbows in bright green blood, desperately trying to keep his patient - damn it, yes, his friend - from dying. He hadn't entirely succeeded - he'd hauled Spock out of four cardiac arrests on the table, and that wasn't even his biggest concern right now.

He didn't reach for the bourbon yet. He wasn't certain enough that Spock wouldn't crash and have to be pulled out of another one.

"Jesus, what did I sign up for?" he breathed to the empty room.

He was the only physician on board trained in Vulcan medicine well enough to perform the necessary surgery. Hell, he probably wasn't qualified to do the necessary surgery, but it had been just that: necessary. Without it, he knew damn well that the First Officer would be dead, and Jim would be shattered.

Fuck it, Jim was going to be shattered anyway. There just...wasn't any coming back from this. Not really.

A tap on his door made him jerk up, but Nurse Chapel shook her head when she peeked it around the doorframe.

"Just to let you know," she whispered gently, "Spock's gone into the healing trance."

He sighed again - this time with relief - and nodded. "Thank you, Chapel. Would you contact the Captain and ask him to come to my office?"

She nodded sympathetically, and left him alone to his thoughts for a little longer.

Christ, just what was he going to tell Jim? It's over, Jim. It's over. This little Eden you had going with your First Officer, that complete love that we all saw you heading for? Well, it's going to be different now. It's going to be different and you'd better hope it's honest-to-God, world-ending true love that you and he have got going for you, because otherwise there is just no way you'll make it.

God, he couldn't.

He couldn't do it. He'd watched Jim falling in love for the last six months. Bones even knew when Jim had first noticed his Vulcan officer - at the two-years-without-dying-on-this-stupid-mission party last February, and Spock had been in 'casual' clothes for the first time - at least, the first time that Jim would have seen. Jim had taken one look at that ass, and Bones had known.

But it hadn't been just lust. Bones had watched as Jim moved from lust to attraction to love. Watched his look turn from calculating and shrewd to soft and - urgh - completely sappy whenever he caught sight of Spock. Jim had been bending McCoy's ear for weeks about asking Spock out before he ever got up the nerve to do it, and McCoy even knew when they'd first done the nasty, from the ear-splitting grin Jim had worn for the next four days.

And now...now...

Now, it was over. McCoy knew relationships, and just how much change they could handle. A baby was right up there on the list of 'possible upheavals to our perfect lives', even when you had been planning for one ever since the wedding night. And he and Jocelyn had been in love, impossibly in love, but they hadn't been able to weather all the changes that a baby brought with it.

This? This was so much worse. There was no planning for this - and McCoy was terrified, for Jim's sake, that there was no weathering this either. They'd not been together long, not nearly long enough to handle this, and McCoy could send the end in sight. And this was all assuming that Spock's healing voodoo worked and he didn't up and die from the shock and damage of his injuries in the night. Which was entirely possible - all too possible.

McCoy reached for the bourbon.

He hadn't wanted to operate. He'd fought to keep his hands steady. As much as the Vulcan wound him up, and for all their sniping and bickering and occasional downright nastiness to each other, he liked Spock. He genuinely respected the man - Vulcans had balls, if nothing else, and McCoy was man enough to respect a guy with brass balls the size of Spock's. Hell, he put up with Jim on a much more regular basis than everyone else on board, and that alone took serious guts.

He hadn't wanted to operate on a friend; hadn't wanted to feel that man die under his hands. But he had - repeatedly - and now his hands were shaking again.

He'd been a wreck. More or less, a cliff had fallen on top of him, and he was quite understandably a wreck. He had more broken bones than intact ones, and he had lost so much blood that they'd used all the transfusion stocks. McCoy would have preferred another half-pint, but it wasn't possible now. When they'd got him out, the rocks had scraped him raw, and half of his internal organs had been exposed to the sandy air.

McCoy had never wanted to throw up so much since his very first autopsy class in Mississippi.

In terms of recovery, he even had to split it into long-term and short-term. In the short term, he was terrified of what that head injury (cracked the skull like an egg, lucky his brain fluid hadn't leaked out) had done to the Vulcan. In the long term...Jesus, McCoy didn't even want to think about the long term.

Someone knocked on his door. Probably Jim.

"Enter," he croaked.

Jesus, just what the hell was he going to tell him?

Jim lingered in Sickbay long enough to note that Spock was still alive, and McCoy was his attending physician, before hauling ass and trying to sort out the mess.

The first issue was to hail the Io and retract their distress signal. Johansson would most likely not be pleased, but he could, quite frankly, go fuck himself. And undoubtedly, Yang would have sent Jim a message by the next shift demanding more information.

The second was to run off an emergency report to Starfleet, sketching out their crisis and promising more information. Jim knew that the moment Pike saw Spock's name on the injured personnel list, he would be calling, and Jim had to steel himself for that. Spock had been Pike's First Officer too, and Jim knew that if anyone in the world right now was as fond of Spock as he was, it was Pike.

It probably wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation.

While he waited for the inevitable, Jim added a glowing commendation to Chekov's personnel file for his quick thinking, drafted the usual letters to the dead crewmembers' families (but didn't finish and send them until he had a complete death toll (Jesus) from Sickbay) and sent a message to Lieutenant Ro in Communications asking her to arrange memorial services.

Three dead, three in surgery fighting for their lives. And please, God, don't let that rise to four.

He was halfway through the preliminary report to Starfleet when Uhura commed him.

"Admiral Pike for you, sir."

"Patch it through to my quarters," Jim said tiredly.

"Aye, sir."

A moment later, Pike's face appeared on his screen, frowning, and Jim mustered up a weary smile.

"Forgive my sloppy salute, sir."

"Fair enough," Pike said. "What the hell happened, Jim?"

Jim. A social call - or near enough - then.

"Off the record, sir?"

"Off the record."

"After all the Klingons, and the Romulans, and all the hostile planets that like slinging poisoned stuff at us...I wasn't expecting an accident."

"An accident?"

"Yeah," Jim swallowed. "There was an earthquake, and the cave that some of the geology geeks were investigating was crushed. An accident. Absolutely no one to blame, and nobody could have seen it coming."

Pike's expression softened slightly. "And that's harder, in a way, isn't it?"

Jim swallowed again, the lump in his throat refusing to move. "Yeah. Yeah, it is, sir."

"How's Spock?"

Jim shrugged. "I don't know. He's in surgery; has been since we got them out. I haven't heard a thing from Dr. McCoy as yet."

Pike nodded. "How many casualties?"

"Three so far. Out of six."

"The Io sent a report saying they were answering your distress signal. Did they...?"

"No, sir. Our kid genius Chekov did it again. Used the tractor beam to drag the cave innards out, then we manually extracted them from there. The transporters wouldn't work through the rock," Jim shook his head. "Sir, without him, we would probably have lost all six of my crew down there. I've added a commendation, but I'd like you to add a supporting commendation. He deserves it."

"I'll have a look over your final report, but it certainly sounds like he does," Pike agreed. His expression softened further. "How are you holding up, Jim?"

Jim shrugged. "I'll be better once I know something."

"Jim..."

"I have to go, sir. A lot of paperwork crops up when this sort of things happen. I'm sure you remember the hell of paperwork."

He signed off before Pike could really respond, and sat staring blankly at the empty screen for several minutes. It still hadn't hit yet. He supposed that was because he'd not really gotten a look at Spock, down on the surface, but it still hadn't hit. He kept expecting the call from Sickbay and for McCoy to be bitching about Vulcan mysticism and computers, and for Spock to be fine and looking impassive as always.

Jim was no idiot - after being caught in a cave in, there was no way Spock was going to be back on the bridge tomorrow, or even out of Sickbay tomorrow, but...

That didn't quite stop him from expecting it.

"Sickbay to Captain Kirk."

"Kirk here."

"Chapel here, sir. Dr. McCoy would like to see you in his office right away."

"On my way."

He swallowed, steeled himself, and walked as slowly as humanly possible towards what he was sure wasn't going to be an easy discussion.