((A/N hi! i own nothing but adellia D: keep the reviews coming, please! i love them so :3))
The next week was tense. For a week, neither one of them said a word to each other. It was very obvious Adellia was no longer angry after the second day, but both of them seemed to be so ashamed of themselves that facing each other was not an option. Bones made sure to schedule the two of them separate, with him taking the night shift and her taking the day shift. He knew she would prefer the day shift, even if there was technically no sun. At meals, Adellia sat with Uhura, while Bones sat with the others. Neither of them talked about the other, and any attempt to bring it up was immediately deflected.
Kirk had been trying to get Bones to talk for that entire week. By now, many people had heard about it. Both of them hated the little looks they got, for both of them were deeply private people. Everybody knew who Bones was, of course (most referred to him as the "loud-mouthed doctor who sometimes curses at you"), and they assumed there was only one Vulcan on the medical team, which was very true. Needless to say, it didn't take long for people to notice who they were, and why people were talking about them. It was interesting gossip, fueled by their never being together.
There was one thing Bones could not schedule, and that was check-up day. Check-up day was probably the worst day Bones could endure, but all of the other doctors thought it would be funny to leave two spaces right next to each other, perfect for both him and Adellia. He rolled his eyes and walked over to his table, glaring at each person to both of his sides, until Adellia walked up.
Bones looked sick most of the time, but when she was around, it seemed to get worse. His eyes drooped a little as he looked forward, and the nurses began to bring people in. When he glanced over to her, he found she was looking just as sick and worried as he was. He hated that she was upset over this. He couldn't help but wonder what her life had been like if he had just made that awkward moment stay an awkward moment, and never have kissed her. He knew she would be happier, probably with some lovely Vulcan, or…whoever she wanted, really. And then he remembered who she obviously wanted. Why the hell did she even want him in the first place?
Adellia was thinking along the same lines. If she hadn't kissed back, he could be with anyone else—not the shrew she thought she was. He could even have multiple partners, and she really and truly would not judge him. He didn't seem the type, underneath the smell of whisky, but she never knew what life would have been like had she not kissed back. Of one thing she was sure: She would have been much less popular among the staff.
The Cadets were to come in first. They walked in, single-file, and sat down at each table. Adellia moved forward, pulling her gloves on as she waved a tricorder over her cadet, taking him and his stats in. She pulled up his file, and sighed. "It says here you have a history of diabetes. How often are you taking your blood sugar?"
She barely listened to his answer, though she wrote it down automatically. All she could think about was standing right next to him like she was, and not being able to talk to him. Her hands moved up to feel under his chin, and she stared forward, doing all of this very automatically. He was too close for her comfort. Was there no other available table? She tried to go through what the medical bay looked like when she walked in. No, no other available tables.
She was done with her first cadet, and she scanned him to bring up his file. She repeated the process over and over again, until she heard a voice that pulled her out of her funk. "Ooh, hello, Dr. Adellia! It is nice to be seeing you again!" She looked up to see the voice belonged to Ensign Pavel Chekov, and she wondered when they got to his level. Did she really hit the snooze button through all of the cadets? She hoped no crucial mistakes were made. This was far too distracting for anybody's good.
"It's nice to see you, too, Ensign Chekov. Been taking care of yourself?" she asked, and waved her tricorder before downloading the results into his chart. Even with the chipper Chekov in front of her, she was still acting on autopilot so to speak. She forced on a smile for his sake as she went through the steps.
"Ooh, yes, wery much so. An apple a day keeps the doctor at a distance! Zough, I vould not mind seeing you ewry once een a vhile, so I may just skip my apple some days," he said with a small laugh. He was obviously just being polite, but that certainly caught Bones' attention a little bit. He didn't exactly like what he was hearing out of him, to be honest.
Adellia chuckled. "Well, I'm flattered, but I like you enough to never want to see you in here," she said softly, and she began to feel under his jaw, frowning. "Some inflammation…do you have an infection? Your temperature's normal…" she mumbled, and she sighed a little bit. Chekov would have some inflammation. Or was this normal?
"My throat haz been feeling just a leettle bit sore," he admitted, and looked back over to her. "Perhaps we could be seeing each other in ze galley sometimes, I would enjoy zat greatly," he continued, and smiled a little bit as she chuckled, but continued to perform some checks.
"Hm…could just be that we're in a ship…a sore throat can be common on a ship, because it's so enclosed…" she mumbled, feeling Bones' eyes on the two of them every once in a while. This irritated her a bit to think he was observing her, like she was still some sort of rat in a cage. Perhaps he wasn't trying to make her feel that way, though, she…ooh, she didn't know what she felt anymore…
"I have heard zis, of course, of course," he mumbled, and he looked back up to her, smiling a little sheepishly. "Zank you for taking such good care of me, I greatly appreciate it. I hope my doctor iz this pretty and nice on ze next check-up day—"
"Alright, alright, I've heard about all I care to hear," Bones finally said, and he ignored the engineering woman that popped up next when he turned to him. He rounded on the shrinking Chekov, his finger pointing right in his face dangerously. "You watch it, alright, you little commy—"
"Dr. McCoy!" Adellia snapped, but in her effort to avoid a scene, she managed to create one. So after staring at him for a moment she sighed, and allowed a very confused Chekov to walk off, with his clean bill of health. After her next patient came up, Adellia began to speak to him in a calm voice. "I don't know you think you are—"
"He was being a little twit, I was sick of it, he's such a little—"
"I'm taking my ten minute break," Adellia said, and she finished checking out the nervous man in front of her as quickly as she possibly could. She walked away from the table and left the medical wing, absolutely full of rage that he had the nerve to just…
She walked through the corridors to her quarters, but on the way, the ship rocked a little bit. Adellia stopped, and in one exhausting moment, her anger turned to worry. An announcement for all personnel to return to their posts was turned on, though the fact that it was the automated one rather than Kirk's voice made her blood run cold. He was too busy to make the announcement himself, it seemed. Adellia turned around and ran towards the medical bay as the red alert sounded, and she knew everybody but her on this ship was doing their ship. And that killed her.
They worked for what felt like hours, when the unthinkable happened. The bumps against the ship stopped so suddenly, that the silence the followed was absolutely bone-chilling. Every doctor in the medical bay worked in silence, trying to ignore the sounds of tricorders, hyposprays and heart monitors bleeping and blooping throughout the place.
That silent was interrupted with Kirk's shaky voice:
"Ladies and gentleman." A pause. "We are being boarded, by a fleet of Cardassian ships. In an attempt to retrieve the human prisoners, they ambushed us. We fought hard…we all fought hard. And I want to congratulate every single one of you on a job well done. They have promised they will followed the Intergalactic Geneva Convention guidelines for…prisoners being captured." One more pause. "Everybody will report to the shuttle room, where they will be taking us to their ship. This is not the end for anybody, or anything. This is a hiccup. Kirk out."
Bones looked up from a patient, and he began to yell for the nurses and doctors to prepare the medical shuttles for all the most critical patients. This entire situation was a headache, and even though all he wanted to do was to walk with Adellia to the shuttles, he knew very well that would not be an option at all. His first order was to watch over these patients, not make sure she had a hand to hold.
After she was done securing her last patient, she sat down in her shuttle, looking down at the ground. Her eyes were wide, and her face was so pale, she had a greener tint to her than usual. All around her body were green bruises, and her hair was an absolute mess, but none of that seemed to matter. She could honestly only think about one thing, and that was how her friends were doing. How Bones was doing.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up. She expected to see Bones. She prayed it would be Bones. But above her stood the equally green-bruised Spock. After a moment he sat down across from her, buckled up, and looked forward. The two of them looked at each other with a small, longing sigh. He wished she was Nyota, and she wished he was Bones.
"We will see them another time. Of this I am certain," Spock said, softly.
"Certain?" she asked, and they took off with another word to each other. Nobody was certain.
Back in Bones' ship, which he happened to share with Chekov (naturally), he stared forward. He wasn't paying attention to the little Russian's scared glanced over towards him, he wasn't paying attention to the God-awful language the Cardassian in the front was speaking. All he wanted to know was how Jim was, how Adellia was, and maybe—just maybe—a little bit how Spock was.
When they took off, he grabbed on the armrests and closed his eyes. When he did, he heard that quiet song Adellia sang to him on the way to the Enterprise, and he felt a little better. But he would have been much more at ease if he could have heard it from her lips, and felt her hand in his.
