A/N: Thanks for all the support! Hope you still like my story!
"Then his hands swelled up like balloons and his tongue went numb so he couldn't talk! It was a bonding moment for sure." McCoy laughed at the memory.
"You could have killed him!" Raylene replied, holding her aching stomach after laughing so hard for so long.
"But I didn't," he pointed out, "Jim was perfectly safe. I'm a trained professional."
"Who nearly killed his best friend." Raylene added.
McCoy smiled at Raylene from his seat across from her on the floor. They had been playing checkers with an assortment of rocks Raylene had collected; she was winning and McCoy had tried to divert her attention by telling stories.
He had started with his best story from his teenage years, when he was a wild child on a farm in Georgia. Then he told his best story from the academy – he skipped over his college years telling Raylene she wasn't old enough for those yet. Finally, he had arrived at his adventures on the Enterprise, and he had a lot to choose from. The stories with Jim were always the best.
"I assume we have forgotten our game of checkers?" Raylene asked.
"Only If you're done." McCoy played it off even though he was hoping she would end the game.
Raylene noticed he wasn't used to losing. "Okay, we can call it a draw."
"Fair enough. Next time, we'll finish the game and declare a winner." McCoy smirked as he helped pick up the pieces.
Raylene tried to hide her grin as she stood from the floor followed by McCoy. Both of them had regained their strength and McCoy could nearly walk without a limp. Raylene returned the box of checker pieces to her room. When she came back into the main room, McCoy was sipping from a glass of water, leaning against the makeshift counter.
Striding across the room, Raylene took the spot next to McCoy and leaned against the counter too.
"I wish I had something a little stronger than this weird tasting water." He said while studying the glass in his hand.
Without a word, Raylene stepped in front of McCoy and opened the cabinet to the right of his head. She kept her gaze on him as she rifled through the glasses on the shelf. McCoy was slightly unsettled by her being so close to him.
Finding what she was looking for, Raylene pulled the bottle out and held it up for McCoy to see. "I hid this from you. With all the medicine you were taking, I knew it wouldn't be good."
"Wow," he studied the bottle of alcohol, "this is some good stuff. How did you get this?" McCoy took the bottle and started pouring two drinks.
"It came from my ship." Raylene admitted.
"Your ship?" McCoy stopped pouring to look at her.
"I promised I would tell you my story," she confessed, "now pour me a drink and get ready for story time." Raylene took a seat on McCoy's cot.
McCoy finished pouring the drinks and brought them over to his cot. He handed her one glass and pulled up the stool to sit across from her; he thought he could understand more if he could see her face while she talked. "Cheers."
McCoy held out his glass toward her. She bumped her glass against his and they both drained the amber liquid from the bottom. He let out a satisfied sigh once he swallowed. "That is some really good stuff."
"I had a feeling you knew your liquor."
"At one time, I was considered an alcoholic," he replied. "But I haven't been drunk in the five years I've been in space. I can't afford to on my crazy ship."
She laughed. "Would you like to hear about mine?" Raylene questioned. McCoy simply nodded and she began her story. "I joined Starfleet after the Romulan attack on Vulcan. When I had heard what they had done to the planet, I knew I wanted to be able save people from that kind of destruction.
"I had completed a nursing program in South Carolina, but I had never thought about being a doctor until one of my advisors suggested it at the academy. I had completed most of the basics already so I was enrolled in the upper level courses and graduated in three years. The only thing I hadn't done was finish an internship." Raylene glanced at McCoy to gage his interest.
"So, then what?" He pressed her to continue.
"I applied for an internship on the starship Sagittarius. It was an explorer ship that had helped to populate some nearby planets, and every year it seemed to go farther into space."
"Oh, boy." McCoy rolled his eyes at the thought.
"What?' Raylene stared at him for a moment. "Don't tell me you're a starship doctor who's afraid of space travel?"
"Why wouldn't I be afraid? It's a damn miracle that we have lived so long in space." McCoy reasoned.
"You're something else, you know that?" Raylene smiled.
"Just get back to your story, Ray." McCoy waved a hand at her to continue.
"Fine," she refocused herself. "I was accepted and joined the crew of the USS Sagittarius. It was a three-year mission to help populate a newly found Class-M planet, and then search the galaxy around it for new life. My internship was to be monitored by the CMO, and, when he thought I was ready, he would sign off that I had completed my training and I would be a doctor.
"I was on the ship for about a year," she continued, "and my internship was ending. I thought I was going to be a doctor, and then we found this planet. It came up on our radar out of nowhere." Raylene had a distant look that McCoy couldn't read.
"Raylene, what happened?" McCoy reached out and touched her knee to reassure her.
Raylene focused on his hand. "We picked up a signal and sent a shuttle to investigate. The shuttle had been gone for a few days before they sent us a distress call, but it was fuzzy and we couldn't understand it. We went into the atmosphere of the planet to get a better signal, when the power on our ship went out. We fell out of the sky so fast and we barely had time to find our seats, and all I can remember is getting into my emergency seat in med bay just before the ship hit the ground."
A tear escaped Raylene's eye. "I watched everyone I knew be thrown around while the ship skidded across the ground. When it finally stopped, I had to cut my seatbelt off, and I crawled through the wreckage searching for survivors. I found a few near med bay and we crawled out of the ship only to be captured by the Shogitar.
"They brought us back here and began torturing us one by one. One by one, they took my crew away, and one by one they never came back. I was the only one to survive." Tears streaked her face as she looked up at McCoy. "Why did I survive? Why am I still here when my crew is gone? Why me, Leonard?" Raylene began to sob and McCoy moved to sit beside her. He wrapped his arms around her, pressing her against his chest.
McCoy waited for her to calm down before he tried to speak. Once her breathing was close to a normal rate, he pulled away slightly to look at her face. He wiped away the tears on her cheeks with his thumbs. "I don't have the answers. I don't know why they have kept you or even me alive. If I were them I would have killed me by now." Raylene couldn't suppress her laugh.
"Honestly, I don't know why you haven't killed me yet." McCoy added. He was rewarded with another small laugh and a smile.
"The thought did cross my mind." Raylene jested.
McCoy smiled at her comment and wiped away the new tears that had escaped her eyes. "Do you want to know why you're still here?" He paused, but didn't let her answer. "You're still here because you're the strongest woman I've ever met. You're a fighter, and you were never going to make it easy on those assholes, or on me.
"That night, when they took you, I thought that was it. I thought I was going to lose the only friend I had on this planet, and I couldn't stand the thought of not waking up with you making that awful breakfast." McCoy smiled.
Raylene hit him in the chest with her hand. "My cooking is not that bad. It's the materials."
"Of course it is, sweetheart. Now, let me finish." He watched her relax. "When they brought you back and I saw how limp you were, I knew you were dead, but I checked for a pulse," McCoy placed his fingers under her jaw at her pulse point, "and I couldn't have felt more relieved by the beating of your heart. I knew right then that you were a fighter, and I had to save you."
Raylene gazed at him. "Don't tell me the cowboy has feelings?"
"More than you know." McCoy answered, with a serious look in his eye.
Raylene was suddenly aware of how close he was to her, and she stood from the cot. "Now you know my story. I hope that answered all your questions."
"I'll let you know if I have more." McCoy smiled. "Goodnight, Raylene."
"Goodnight, Leonard." Raylene disappeared into her room.
McCoy watched her leave and knew he was in far greater trouble now, than when he had landed on this planet.