This Reason is subtitled "Why we love Dr. McCoy". Sometimes, I just want to hug the guy (even though he'd probably hypo me). And I remember someone saying this was an all around good idea for the crew. Remember to review and stuff like that!
Rule #49: If you don't know what it is or what it does, DON'T TOUCH IT!
Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy was, for lack of better terms, appalled. How was it that a crew of 430 men and women (correction, 429, not including McCoy) survived day to day with a seemingly all around lack of common sense? He couldn't understand it, these people managed to get hurt in the stupidest of ways. He was starting to think that he could write a book entitled: How I Hurt Myself: the Stories of Injuries on the Starship Enterprise. He certainly had enough source material.
Normally, the various injuries and illnesses crew personnel came in to Sickbay with were normal: cuts, bruises, allergic reactions, colds, and hangovers. Then there were the not so normal ones but were still fairly common: broken bones, deep gashes, alien viruses, burns (chemical and heat), and concussions. The rarer injuries were hard to list, since some were one time occurrences (a gunshot wound, for instance), but were normally continuations of the more common injuries of the Enterprise crew.
There were also the very unusual but common ones as well, such as paper cuts. McCoy did get one from time to time himself from his paper books, but almost every other day a crew member came in with something he classified as a paper cut. Only the crew of the Enterprise could manage to get paper cuts from electronic PADDs.
However, Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy had noticed over the years that out of the multiple stupid and idiotic ways the crew managed to injure themselves, there was one method that took the cake: Touch.
It was as if the entire crew had a drive to touch anything and everything that was dangerous. And not just with their hands. Oh no. McCoy would later refer to Kirk's order to penetrate the hole in space as a kid saying "we don't know what it is, and it could be dangerous. Let's poke it with a stick!" Only the "stick" was the Enterprise. And the "poke" almost got them all killed by a giant space amoeba-thing.
In all seriousness, most of the crew that came into Sickbay came because they touched something they weren't supposed to. A Lieutenant for some reason wanted to know what would happen if he touched a conduction coil. He was carried in by his buddies unconscious and with his singed hair standing on end. Another crewman came in one day after eating a kind of food that happened to be slightly poisonous to humans. An Engineer came in for touching a melted generator unit that he thought had cooled off (it had not). There was even that one time where Chekov decided to pick a flower before scanning it first, only to find it covered in corrosive poison.
The only time there were no injuries in Sickbay due to people touching things they weren't supposed to was after the Psi 2000 incident. Everyone was afraid to touch everything, especially each other, for a few weeks before they finally realized they weren't contagious anymore, and that non-humanoid things couldn't transmit the disease, in which case the injuries from touching things they weren't supposed to started right back up again. McCoy estimated that Kirk went two weeks before making out with another girl, which was a record for the Captain. And for some reason, Nurse Chapel avoided Spock for months. McCoy still hadn't figured that one out.
But the one crewman out of everybody on the Enterprise who topped all the rest for touching what he wasn't supposed to was Captain Kirk. When ever James Kirk showed up in Sickbay, it meant there was something seriously wrong with him. Kirk never came to Sickbay by his own will unless he really needed McCoy's help. The man would shrug off injuries that would have others in bed for weeks, which forced McCoy (and sometimes Spock and others) to drag the Captain down to Sickbay and strap his ass down to one of the bio-beds. Today was no different.
"Damn it Jim!" McCoy cried. He hadn't gone on the away mission with Kirk and Spock for once, and something bad had happened. Kirk's shirt was torn, revealing a deep gash along his chest that extended down his right arm. "Do I want to know what you did down there?"
Kirk winced. "No, Bones, probably not."
"Too bad, I do," McCoy growled. "Now si'down!"
Kirk sat down before the Doctor could shove him into a sitting position, and McCoy started treating his injuries. "I'm serious, Jim, what did you do?" the doctor asked.
"Curiosity," Kirk mumbled.
"What?"
Kirk slowly explained what had happened. Basically, they had beamed down to the planet to inspect the station post there. They were walking through the station's garden, and while Spock was inquiring about a familiar plant species, Kirk wandered among the plants. One with bright and strangely colored bark caught his eye, and he decided to see if the bark was really as soft as it looked. It was, but the razor leaves the plant shot at him as a defense mechanism were not. By time he finished his story, McCoy was ready to literally kick him out of Sickbay for stupidity.
"Honestly, Jim," McCoy cried. "Out of everybody on this ship, you lack more common sense than everyone else combined!"
Kirk shrugged. "You could say that."
If looks could kill, Captain James T. Kirk would have been dead on the spot. However, McCoy chose a different method.
When Kirk woke up, he found his chest and arm bandaged. He also found he was strapped to the bed. And had very thick gloves on his hands.
"Damn it, Bones," he muttered.
The poking the space amoeba with the Enterprise came from a comment I saw on YouTube on that episode. I felt it was something McCoy would say.
