On a ship as tightly knit as theirs, it was only a matter of time before the word got out.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, and no matter what he might say in defense of it, Leonard McCoy was one of the most well loved figures on the ship. His irritable and cantankerous nature was predictable and strangely soothing, his loyalty and dedication inspiring. He was respected by all and loved by a great many. The news of his condition hit them all hard.
Beyond the diagnosis, the facts were few. They knew that Doctor McCoy had been diagnosed with xenopolycythemia and had less than a year to live. They knew that the Captain and Commander Spock had responded to it like they did a crisis threatening the end of the world.
And really that was all they needed to know. They'd seen Jim and Spock save planets, end wars and bitchslap fate in the face a good few times. If they were on McCoy's case then all would be well. It was a matter of when they found the cure, not if, and so within days of the news leaking, the crew were cautiously optimistic.
They didn't see what Nyota did. There were only a handful of people who did.
McCoy's diagnosis was six months ago, and they were no closer to a cure than they had been the day they started.
Oh they'd ruled lots of things out, and that Spock said, trying hard to maintain his own hopes as well as Jim's, was positive.
She was the only one who he let see his mounting frustration and his growing fear. He hid it from everyone, McCoy and Jim especially, but he'd never been able to hide from her.
She'd gotten used to a cold bed and a distant lover, not begrudging him a second he spent in the labs pouring over Jim's blood.
His professional work was faultless. The same could be said for all three of them. In the past six months they had overseen two First Contacts, presided over peace talks for a six hundred year old conflict, found a cure for a deadly neurotoxin and mapped out nearly one million kilometers of uncharted space. The conflicts they had encountered had been few and far between, their enemies sensing quickly that a fight was exactly what Jim Kirk wanted to settle his nerves, and they would not emerge victorious.
The commendations were coming in thick and fast, the requests for their presence increasing tenfold, and through it all Nyota marveled that no one could see how rapidly the Enterprise's core foundation was crumbling into dust.
If they didn't find a cure, there would be three dead men at the year's end. If the heartbreak didn't kill them, Kirk's bad luck would do the job.
Speaking of bad luck…
"Captain! Cap- Jim, can I have a word?" She tried to act like she hadn't been hovering outside Jim's quarter's for the best part of twenty minutes. Jim had a completely unique shift pattern and an incredibly long one at that. He'd just got off twenty four hours on duty and any sane person should have been hitting the sack hard. Jim had returned to his quarters, showered, and was now heading out again, no doubt to meet Spock in the labs.
"What can I do for you Lieutenant?" Jim said tiredly. He looked like hell, wearing the strain far worse than Spock who had the benefit of Vulcan genetics on his side. He also wasn't using himself as a lab rat the way she knew Jim was. He had the perpetually pallid complexion of a man who was donating blood far too frequently and in too great a quantity and it perfectly matched the dark circles under his eyes. Knowing him as well as she did, she was also convinced that he only ate because failing to do so would jeopardize his ability to give blood as frequently as he did, and even then she knew both Spock and McCoy had to remind him.
She didn't think McCoy had started to show any symptoms of his condition but he was as good a lair as Jim when he wanted to be and had an M.D. to hide behind.
"I was just… I want to volunteer." She offered, nearly having to jog to keep pace with his longer stride.
"Volunteer for what?" Jim frowned at her, oblivious as to how she could help. He had an army of researchers who were either trained in biology or chemistry or both, he had Spock, who had the sharpness of mind and the stamina to review test results almost faster than they were delivered, and he had his own razor sharp intellect. What did he need her for?
"I want to help out in the lab." She said stubbornly, already having been nominated by their friends to be the one to infiltrate the operation. Christine had already tried and failed, sabotaged by McCoy who had given her a great deal more responsibility in sickbay over the last few months while he divided his time between his job and research. Of the others, only she had a prior relationship with all three men and with that the freedom to push a little harder than was strictly professional.
"You have a chemistry degree you failed to mention to me?" Jim said, entering the turbolift and taking them down to deck fifteen.
"No but I replicate a mean coffee." She said, ruthlessly pushing Jim's blatant weak spot. "And no offense, but you look like you need one."
Jim smiled tiredly and rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, coffee would be good right now."
She felt a little guilty about taking advantage of him when he clearly needed a long night of sleep, but desperate times…
They were long overdue an intervention.
"Excellent. I'll come down after my shift and be lab mother." She said, not waiting for Jim to protest.
"You're hardly the maternal type." He told her, letting her take the lead as they left the lift and entered the lab.
"And if you were my son I'd have you over my knee in a heartbeat." She said serenely, smiling at Spock who had looked up from his work at the sound of their arrival.
"My brain is way too fried to even respond to that." Jim shook his head in astonishment. "So many unfulfilled fantasies. Yes, Spock, I used to have a crush on your girlfriend, despite the number of times she threatened to castrate me…or maybe because of it, I never really wanted to delve that deep into my psyche." He slid down onto the stool next to Spock like his whole body ached. "Anything?"
"Nothing, forgive me." Spock said, his voice soft and physically painful for Nyota to hear.
Jim closed his eyes and shook his head. "You gotta stop apologizing every day." He sighed. "Alright, send over the last batch of samples and I'll run them through a couple of new sims."
Nyota made her way over to the replicator, fully intending to get Jim the coffee he so clearly needed, but just caught the hesitant look on Spock's face. "Jim… we lost the latest batch. They were contaminated."
Jim looked up in distress. "How? What happened?"
"The K12 Unit filed them incorrectly alongside yesterday's recordings. The initial date was salvageable and I have corrected the error to ensure it does not happen again, but-"
"But we're out of the red stuff." Jim concluded with a pained grimace. "Okay, so we just move up the harvesting process."
"That would be most unwise." Spock frowned. "It has not yet been forty-eight hours since your last transfusion."
"Better put a shit load of sugar in that coffee, Uhura." Jim called over to her.
"You should not be drinking caffeine at all." Spock scolded.
"And yet it's that or something stronger." Jim threatened, moving over to a small biomedical station set against the far wall. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal an arm riddled with black and blue marks and took a seat. "Christ, I can't believe we still have to use needles for this shit." He grimaced, disinfecting the skin and lining up one long transfusion set, the silver needle gleaming in the bright laboratory lights.
"Can't you just use a computer sim from a base sample?" Nyota asked, horrified by the extent of the bruising.
"Unfortunately not. We did try initially but Jim's blood is most unpredictable." Spock looked rather distressed at the fact. "While we can extract some basic hypotheses from digital replications we need live samples for the actual tests." He stood from his seat and moved closer to Jim, who was flicking at his arm in annoyance.
Nyota was no medic but she knew it was a whole lot less painful putting things into the bloodstream with hyposprays than it was using any means of extracting blood from the body. "Should you be doing that?" She asked, clutching a hot cup of coffee in her hands as Jim struggled to find a vein he hadn't abused too much.
"No he should not." Spock said, his hand curling over Jim's and stilling his progress. "You are not fit. We can wait a few more days."
"Can we?" Jim snarled at him, his anger suddenly bright and bursting beyond the surface. "Because we've been at this for six whole months and have nothing to show for it but this!" he pointed angrily at his arm. "And what if it takes us another six months? Bones doesn't have that time to spare, Spock! I know my limits, okay? And even if this is pushing them what's the worst that could happen? Please. We have to keep working. Please."
She knew Jim had won when he dropped the anger and turned to pleading. There weren't many people who could say no to Jim when he looked at Spock the way he did then. Even Nyota would have given in to the urge and hugged him, and she wanted to wring his neck nine days out of ten. Jim was abusing that look a little too often in her opinion, but what could she really say? The man was trying to save his best friend's life.
Spock relented, returning to his seat and his data, silent and full of self reproach as Jim finally found a vein and slid the needle into his arm.
"Just the one, Jim." He finally said as Jim settled back and let the blood run from his arm into a machine that processed and divided it up for testing.
"We need-"
"Just the one." Spock said sternly. "We can get more in a few days."
Jim looked like he wanted to protest but eventually settled down.
After several minutes, the machine beeped. Jim sat up, carefully extracted himself from the needle and tubes and moved to take a seat at his station.
He made it two steps before passing out cold in the middle of the floor.
Nyota was actually closer to him by that point and rushed to his side. "Jim!"
He was already coming to by the time she pressed her hands to his face, eyelashes fluttering. "This isn't my desk." He said in confusion.
"You fainted." Nyota told him, stroking his hair and fixing him with her sternest glare. "You have to take better care of yourself."
"I did not faint." Jim looked highly offended by the idea.
"You swooned like a princess in a fairytale, you idiot."
"Maybe I just like the view from down here?" Jim shrugged. It didn't escape her notice that he hadn't tried sitting up.
"Jesus Christ," She looked over her shoulder as McCoy barged into the lab with Spock at his side and crouched down next to Jim.
"Don't yell at me, Bones." Jim said sadly.
"Like it makes any damn difference when I do." McCoy grumbled, scanning Jim over.
"You know why I do it." Jim pleaded.
"Does anyone know why you do anything?" McCoy glared at him, then up at Spock. "You're supposed to stop him pulling stupid shit like this."
"Spock isn't my keeper, Bones." Jim struggled to sit up, letting Nyota ease her hands under his back and help. She was glad he spoke up in defense of Spock because if he hadn't she sure as hell would. Spock tended to hoard guilt like it was going out of style.
"You're a grown man for christsake. You shouldn't need a keeper." McCoy snarled at him. "This rate you're going to end up dead before I am." Everyone recoiled, McCoy included. "I didn't mean it like that."
Jim ignored him and pushed himself to his feet. He shook off the hands that moved to steady him and without another word stormed out of the lab.
"Jim! Damnit." McCoy slumped down into the chair Jim had left unoccupied. His head in his hands.
He looked exhausted and worn thin. "Coffee?" Nyota offered, uncharacteristically timid with him.
He glanced up, his face sober and lacking even the hint of warmth it usually excluded. "He drives me fucking crazy some times."
"I'm pretty sure that's going to be the title of most of our biographies one day." She said, smiling at him.
"I should go talk to him." McCoy sighed, though it looked like he lacked the energy to even stand…an emotional weariness, not yet a physical one.
"I will go." Spock said quietly. He'd not said much since Jim had collapsed. "Please know, doctor, that despite the way it perhaps looks, both Jim and I act with the very best of desires. It is not our intention to hurt you in any way. Quiet the opposite in fact."
"I know, Spock." McCoy said wearily. "I know."
Spock nodded and silently left in pursuit of Jim, leaving Nyota alone with McCoy.
She didn't hesitate in wrapping her arms around him. Jim and Spock might be hurting, but he was the one this was happening to and he needed more than the extra stress they were creating.
He said nothing, simply curled his arm around her and leaned his head against her shoulder.
"Do you think they'll be alright?" He asked her, worried as always for everyone but himself.
She could not lie to him.
"I don't know."