Chapter 3: Purple Paper Pushers

"Ow. Jim stop it!" Lizzy sent a glare in the direction of Jim Kirk. For the past hour, while she'd been trying to study, he'd been throwing screwed up wrappers in her direction. Subspace field dynamics was difficult enough without having to babysit Jim Kirk.

A small piece of purple dyed wrapper bounced off her nose and landed smack bang in the middle of the book she'd been reading from. With a sigh she flicked it off with a forefinger. There was no doubt that Kirk obviously was taking classes on how to annoy the student populace. Again for the umpteenth time she wished Leonard was here to help her watch the 'child'. But Leonard had, rather deviously, secured a prolonged stint in the research lab, which meant peace and quiet. Damn him.

Another screwed up colourful ball bounced off her brow bone, this was getting ridiculous. Unable to concentrate on anything other than how many ways she could kill Kirk and convince Leonard to help hide the body, the large tomb of paper in front of her snapped shut. With heavy movements the irritated engineer lifted herself from the chair and made her way to library door, her irritating 'child' following behind with his endless sweet wrappers. Step, step, flick, step, step, flick..step, step, fli-

Spinning on her heel so fast it made her dizzy, Lizzy made to threaten Kirk with a near death experience. Which she would have done had she not been experiencing her own.

Her unnaturally fast, anger induced spin had left her entirely unbalanced. It was no help that they heavy tomb fitting snuggly into her shoulder bag had shifted her centre of gravity enough to make her its new test toy. Face passing from anger to sheer dire panic in a matter or moments, Lizzy watched her world tip in a many reminisce to her emergency flight manoeuvre exam. There was no way this was ending well for her.

In her blind panic she grasped onto the only thing close enough. The thing happened to be Kirk and Kirk was unfortunately not a secured object. Both Kirk and Hayes made like failed gymnasts. Their limbs flailing like the air dancers of the 21st century Earth. Except they didn't dance to tuneful music but two rather womanly shrieks, only one of them came from Hayes, and a cacophony of painful expletives.

Perhaps they were lucky that the flight of stairs was cut short by a corner, but you could easily bet that they'd say differently. With a painful yelp Jims arm collapsed beneath him as he pelted into the floor which propelled him into a fetal position slamming him bodily into the wall. He was luckier than Lizzy.

With an audible crack face met brick and Lizzy's forehead ricocheted off the wall with a spectacular spray of scarlet. In the last dregs of consciousness her thoughts ran on two tracks. Her nose was definitely broken this time and Leo was going to kill them both. Black spots swam in her vision and she was out before she hit the ground with a less noticeable thud.

~oOo~

Christine Chapel had been enjoying the peace an quite of an empty sickbay. A warm coffee in one had and her current novel of the month perched in the other. But trouble was only ever a hairs breath away, and in this case it came stumbling and tumbling in the form of two battered cadets.

Renowned play boy Jim Kirk was hefting, with the help of a commandeered security cadet, the prone form of Lizzy Hayes. The were followed by an ominous trail of blood and the current doctor on duty. Both Kirk and Hayes looked like they'd passed their sell by date and then remained hidden in the back corner of the cupboard for a few months further. Lizzy's head was lolling with every step her two support posts took, splattering more blood on the floor in red rosettes. That girl needed a revolving door.

Rolling up the sleeves of her nurses uniform, Christine relived Kirk of post duty sending him scampering to biobed with a stern glare. With little trouble the nurse and burly security cadet lifted Lizzy onto a biobed of her own.

With Lizzy situated on her back Christine could clearly see the damage. That nose was most definitely broken. Blood pumped out in a steady flow from the crooked feature that wouldn't look out of place of a hallows eve witch. There was a large purple welt forming on the ridge of the engineers brow bone that contrasted with the pale complexion her skin had adopted.

In a shock inducing moment, Lizzy's eyes snapped open only to blink rapidly at the lights. Her voice was quiet and wispy as though she couldn't quite catch her breath. "Hi Chris...and Chris two? I didn't know you had a twi-" She slipped back into unconsciousness, head bouncing lightly off the bed.

In the next bed over Kirk was yelping his woes in a stream of colour curses as he attempted to dodge the enquiring hands of the doctor. That arm was most definitely broken

With Lizzy flickering in and out of consciousness and Jim attempting to repel treatment like two same poles on a magnet, this was turning into a bit of a disaster.

Lizzy shifted again and let out a pained moan, weaved into her whimper was docator McCoy's name. She was asking for him.

'Indeed' thought Christine 'Where is McCoy when you need him?'

~oOo~

Leonard McCoy was quite proud of himself, quite proud indeed. All morning Jim had been pestering him like a petulant child but being unable to enter the labs he'd left for bigger and better targets. That had left him all alone in the equipment filled space. The quiet was absolute heaven.

A part of him, granted a small part only, felt bad for ditching Jim. Especially when Jims next target would most likely be their only female friend. Poor Lizzy, she was in for a hellish time with the mood Jim was in today.

The doctor sipped at the steaming coffee perched on the counter in front of him sighing as the caffeine worked its way though his system. If only sickbay could be this quiet then life would be perfect. No junior doctors trying to act the hero, no hysteric nurses breaking down every five minutes, no stubborn patients exacerbating their injuries and illnesses. Just quiet.

Of course hell would freeze over thrice before that ever happened. So much for wishful thinking.

With another contented sigh he delved deeper into the medical journal that had been resting on his knee. This was the lif-

Two junior doctors burst through the doors in mid conversation. Their loud voices chasing away the peace and quiet that had settled on the lab. 'Dammit'. The two made no hurry to quieten their discussion as they settled themselves in front of their chosen equipment.

"-I was there! There were two really loud screams and some shouting, then this horrid bang."

"Were they alright."

"I don't think anyone is going to be 'alright'" the junior doctor made quotation marks with her fingers, "when you fall down a flight of stairs."

"I heard there was blood."

"Well I didn't see them fall, but when I got there, there was blood, yeah...I think the poor girl broke her nose."

"They were lucky they didn't break their necks." They both murmured an agreement on that one.

"What happened next."

"Well the girl was out for the count, but Kirk wasn't." McCoy felt uneasiness settle in the area of his stomached. "He tried to wake up the girl, but obviously that was never going to happen. She smacked her head off that wall, bless her." The smack was punctuated by the young woman's hand slapping against the counter. "He kept mumbling about how doctor McCoy was going to kill him or something." If McCoy knew Kirk, and unfortunately he did, there was only one women that would cause him to express those sort of concerns.

"What was the girls name again."

"Umm...I think its Lilly? no wait Lizzy...yeah Lizzy. She's in my brother engineering class don't you know."

Leonard didn't know, and indeed he probably never would do. Because as soon as the vowel and consonants pertaining to Lizzy's name had left the lips of the gossip giving cadet he was gone. He was in too much of a rush, with his lab coat billowing like a pale cape crusader imitation, to care that there were two very confused medical cadets left in his wake.

He stormed down the corridors like a rampaging rhino and the cadets clustering the corridors gave him the respect of one. They dodged, dived and clambered over one another to clear a path for the stampeding doctor.

Although doctor McCoy's bedside manner were somewhat of an academy legends, grossly exaggerated by traumatised patients, it wasn't that which was parting the red sea. One look at the enraged doctor was enough for anyone to have reason to move. It was that or be trampled because that man had no intention of stopping for anything.

With the fury of a tempest he burst into sickbay. And found it completely empty save for a distressed looking Chapel.

"Doctor McCoy... I tried to stop them but you know what they are like with treatme-"

He didn't wait for her to finish, instead he whirled like a matador dodging a bull and resumed his vicious pace down the hall. They couldn't have got far, Chapel would have come got him before they had been gone too long.

His large strides ate up the hall way and as he turned the corner, he caught a glimpse of brown. 'Got you!' His inner voice screamed triumph as he caught up with the two escapees.

Lizzy was leaning against Kirk like he was the only think keeping her upright and Kirk was attempting to do that with the use of one arm.

"What the hell do you two think you're doing!?" An angry shout laced the corridor and cadets scarpered like mice to their respective destinations leaving the two escapees to their, no doubt deserved, fate.

Lizzy wobbled as she tried to stand and, through the pain medication, pointed to Kirk. "His idea." She slurred before collapsing into McCoy's body. Steady hands caught her as their own glared death promises at the blamed.

With a stern frown Leonard pointed back in the direction of sickbay. "March." His voice left no room for argument and like a chastised child Jim did as he was told. Lifting a slightly delusional Lizzy into his arms, Leonard followed close behind. The stern frown stayed on the surly doctors face as a reminder of the dangerous ledge Jim Kirk was walking on should he turn to look back.

When the doctor and the two escapees, well one escapee and one engineer who'd been too out of it to realise she was escaping, returned Christine had never been so relieved. There was a high probability that McCoy would have killed them both, in fact she was now owed a tube of Ben and Jerry's finest from a junior nurse.

Leonard laid Lizzy on the nearest vacant biobed and turned to Jim, gesturing to another. "Sit." Once again left with no argument Kirk sat feeling rather like a naughty puppy. "What they heel do you think you're playing at Kirk! You could have concussion and she " he gestured towards Lizzy "most certainly has. Do you know what to do for a concussion, have you suddenly become a doctor to discharge other patients? ..." Leonard waited, leaving the words to sink in and not expecting an answer. "No."

Jim Kirk wasn't an idiot, but there was many an occasion when he did idiotic things. As Lizzy would often remark, he'd been dropped head first off a cliff one too many times as a child.

As fate would have it Lizzy had drifted into a light sleep, he'd have to wait to chastise her.

~oOo~

Three minutes into waking up several things had occurred very quickly for Lizzy. First a blinding headache that most definitely beat the hangover from last Saturday. Secondly some jumped up junior had tried to stab her with a hypo. Thirdly she was given a stern talking to via doctor McCoy. And finally she was still saddled with Kirk except this time there was no escape. She was stuck in sickbay under the watchful hawk eyes of one doctor McCoy in a bed next to Kirk...hell.

In an attempt to distract herself from the dire situation she had woken up in, she was doing the studying she had planned before the morning had gone all pear shaped.

FLICK

The purple piece of rolled up paper bounced off her nose and dropped into the middle of her textbook, ridiculously reminiscent of events hours earlier. The growl could be heard from out in the corridor.

"For Gods sake Kirk, grow up!"

~oOo~

Thanks to all the faves and follows. I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and the bacon sandwich I ate while writing it, hope you all enjoy it too. Have at it readers!