Thanks to all of you who continued reading after so long. The mystery will be cleared up soon! (Not in this chapter but in the next.) Please R&R.
Dr. McCoy was ready to go crazy down in sickbay. It had been nearly an hour already, and still no response from Haney. The part of him that was able to think rationally about the situation told him that an hour was really not much time. Even if the doctor had received the message himself and responded immediately, it still would have taken forty minutes. Even so, the irrational part of him was tempted to page Uhura every five minutes to check if she'd received a communication. The only thing that stopped him was knowing that this would be insulting to the Lieutenant as well as irritating. She was a good officer, she understood the urgency of the situation, and she had promised to contact him immediately. He had to trust her to do her job.
He was just getting ready to give in to desperation and ask Uhura to send the message again when his intercom beeped. He could tell from her voice that the news was not going to be good. "Dr. McCoy, I've received a communication from Starfleet Academy Hospital. Dr. Haney is on vacation. They understand the seriousness of the situation, and they're going to try to reach him, but…" Uhura's voice cracked slightly, "he's hiking in the Himalayas, and they are not confident that they will be able to contact him."
McCoy sat down heavily at his desk chair. So that was it. Now it was a waiting game. The best he could do would be to try and keep Jim comfortable until Haney contacted him, or until… "Damn it!" McCoy slammed his fist on his desk. He wouldn't think that way, he couldn't afford to. It wasn't fair to his friend to give up on him prematurely. If this was some alien virus or poison, who knew? It could reverse itself, and Jim could recover as quickly as he'd deteriorated.
A hoarse scream broke McCoy's train of thought, and he practically leapt over his desk in his rush out of his office.
He wanted to keep sleeping, but he couldn't. The pain in his back was blinding agony, beyond anything he'd ever experienced. And to make it worse, someone was screaming, and screaming and wouldn't stop. He couldn't take it… the screaming… and the pain, why wouldn't it stop? Someone, Bones, make it stop!
His eyes flew open suddenly, and as the stark reality of sickbay rushed into his consciousness he was all at once aware of the fact that the voice he heard screaming was his own. He made a superhuman effort to stop himself, to shut his mouth and quiet the noise, but he was only successful in bringing it down to a level somewhere between a whimper and a moan.
"Jim… Jim… Can you hear me?" Bones was talking to him. The captain was loath to move his head. Any movement at all caused a fresh burst of pain, so he slowly shifted his eyes in the direction of the voice. The doctor's worried face came into view.
"Jim, I want to give you some more pain meds to help you go back to sleep, but I need to bring your heart rate and blood pressure down, first. I know you're scared, Jim. I know you're in pain. But I need you to try and relax."
"Can't relax… Bones", he ground out through gritted teeth. "Back… hurts. Oh…god…." He couldn't catch his breath. He was panicking. He had a high pain tolerance, had always prided himself on his ability to take a punch without blinking, for never showing when it hurt, but this time, he could not take it, and he didn't know what to do. Every breath hurt him, but he couldn't stop himself from panting. As fast as he was breathing, he wasn't getting any air.
Dr. McCoy put his hand over Jim's, and leaned over so that his friend could easily see him without having to turn his head. "Look at me Jim." His voice was calm but commanding. He'd used the same tone with women in labor, junkies going through withdrawal, and victims of violent crime. It was the voice of a competent professional, and it told the patient that he was in control, that everything would be okay. He'd never before had to use it with Jim, but it had the same effect. Jim looked at him.
"Jim, you're having trouble breathing, so I'm putting this oxygen mask on you. Don't panic. Jim… don't panic. Look at me. Don't fight it. It's going to help you breathe. Look at me. Breathe in and out. Jim… it's okay. In and out… in… and out."
Slowly the heart rate indicator began to drop, and even more slowly the blood pressure indicator followed.
When the levels were finally low enough, McCoy breathed a sigh of relief as he pressed a hypo into Jim's neck and gave him a temporary respite from misery.
Spock was in the command chair when the blue and green world of Idaus came into view on the screen. "Lieutenant Uhura, please hail the Idausians and attempt to establish communications."
The communications officer went to work, and after a moment, a loud raspy voice was heard, shouting over static. "Hello… hello? Enterprise? Can you hear me? Are you there?"
Uhura turned the audio down slightly, and then turned to Spock. "I'm not receiving an image over the view screen, Commander. According to the reports, they were given sufficient technology by the Federation to transmit images at this close range."
"This is acting Captain Spock, of the USS Enterprise speaking. We are receiving your audio transmission. With whom am I speaking?"
The raspy voice filled the speakers again. "Captain Spock, thank you so much for coming. This is Controller Pyloc. I wasn't sure if you'd received my… our distress signal. I'm so sorry I can't let you see a face with my voice. We've been having some problems with our communications, among other things. I was very worried that you wouldn't get here in time."
"What was the reason for your distress signal?" Spock asked calmly. If he'd believed in such things, he might say that he was getting what a human would describe as a bad feeling about this Pyloc. He recognized the name from his research on the planet. This particular Idausian was the preeminent elected official on the planet, the equivalent of a president or prime minister.
"I'd really prefer to discuss this with you face- to-face," Pyloc responded. "I'm having a little trouble hearing you, and I'm worried this transmission could fail any second, with the problems we've been having."
"I'm afraid I cannot order a landing party down to your planet without further information," Spock replied. "I at least need to be briefed regarding the reason for your distress signal."
There was a pause in the transmission before Pyloc said, "I cannot give you details right now, but trust me when I say that the troubles we are having will mean dire consequences for your Federation. I really must insist that you come down to Idaus so that we can discuss this in person. I can ensure that you will be safe. I have very powerful friends in the Federation who would not be happy to hear that you refused a meeting with me." Pyloc's voice was becoming and more shrill as he abandoned diplomacy and began a tirade. "I would not have dragged you across the stars if the situation was not urgent, and I am insulted that you do not trust or respect me enough to come down here and meet with me like civilized beings. I don't know who you think you are, but I have never heard of you, and I will personally…" A burst of static interrupted Pyloc's rant and was followed with silence.
"I've lost the transmission, Commander," Uhura reported. "I'm trying to raise him again." She tried for several minutes before announcing that the planet's communication systems seemed to be down.
It took under an hour to assemble a landing party. Besides himself, Lieutenant Uhura was the only high-ranking officer in the party. Pyloc clearly spoke fluent English, but Uhura might be needed to translate for other Idausians who did not. He could not afford to take any other high-ranking officers, considering that the captain was out of commission, and so little was known about the situation before them. It went against Spock's training and instincts to lead his crewmen down to a planet with so little information, but the Federation had been very clear that the Enterprise was to offer the Idausian leaders whatever assistance they required.
Before heading to the transporter room, Spock stopped into sickbay. He wanted to personally brief Dr. McCoy on the landing party's mission… and he wanted to personally check in on Jim.
He was unprepared for the sight of his captain lying on a biobed, so clearly close to death. He wasn't prepared either for the tired, hopeless doctor who was keeping vigil at Kirk's bedside. McCoy had told him that morning that he was waiting on some information that might save Jim's life, and at that time he seemed to be holding out some hope that he could still save him. But critical time had gone by, and each passing hour seemed to have taken a great emotional toll on the doctor.
"You have not yet heard from Starfleet Academy Hospital." It was not a question. The answer was obvious.
Dr. McCoy jerked, as if startled to find that someone else was in the room. He turned weary eyes to Spock. "Oh, I've heard from them. They've sent two communications letting me know that they haven't yet been able to reach Dr. Haney."
Spock could see that nothing he could say would lend any comfort to the doctor, so he decided to give McCoy the information he had come to deliver. "I am leading a landing party down to Idaus. Our attempts to communicate with the Idausian leader were unsatisfactory, so I was forced to make the decision to beam down to the planet." Spock expected some kind of angry outburst from the doctor at the abrupt change of subject. Didn't he know Jim was dying? Didn't he care? Who gave a damn about that waste of a planet, anyway?
But Dr. McCoy didn't have the energy or the heart to chastise Spock for his insensitivity, and the Vulcan walked away feeling an unjustified pain in his heart that he could not admit, even to himself. He was used to feeling like an outsider, but he suddenly felt it more acutely. McCoy had every right to call the Captain a friend. He had put in the time, gotten to know James Kirk on a personal level. Spock could not say the same. Most of his interactions with the captain had ranged from mildly unpleasant to ferociously violent. So why did he feel that he was in danger of experiencing a deep personal loss over a man that he barely knew?
