The Q Must Be Crazy II
Part 21
Kathryn still in Sickbay
Q Vitus
- - - -
"I think I might like to pilot a ship. We could get a little runabout and wander around the Delta. I've never had to do it that way, what with being able zap myself to any place in the Universe at my whim. It might be interesting."
Q was droning in his head as Chakotay slowly awoke in Sickbay.
"What am I saying? This is horrid! All horrid! I want out of this body! This was a set up! A trap! They knew that woman would rather kill you than love you! I mean, who wouldn't? Answer me that, Squiggle Head! Answer me that!"
The Doctor had skillfully reconstructed Chakotay's busted nose, but his face still showed signs of injuries that only time could cure. Bruised and swollen flesh puffed his tan features. His heart, the most ravaged part of him, sustained irrevocable injuries. He had no will to live. The finality of Kathryn's rejection, coupled with Q's presence made him consider—What? He did not know, but he knew he could not live this way.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Tom said softly. "How do you feel?"
"How does he think we feel?" Q grumbled. "Shouldn't he be on the bridge steering us into quantum singularity or some space anomaly on a Tetris tertryon tetracycline beam or something?"
"How do you think?" Chakotay spat.
"OK then. I take that as a 'better, thank you,'" Tom sassed back.
"I'm sorry, Tom," Chakotay quickly apologized. "Am I going to become like you?" Chakotay asked Q sadly, realizing that living with an inner Q for the rest of his life was on the docket. He was beginning to take on some of Q's traits. "Am I going to become a crazy, sarcastic, ba…?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Tom and Q said simultaneously. Tom was checking readings.
"Ah, finally!" The Doctor chimed in as he appeared. The Computer had signaled him that Chakotay was awake. "Status, Mr. Paris."
"He seems to be disoriented. Just asked me an odd question."
"Disorientation would be a natural occurrence at this stage," the Doctor told his part time assistant, Tom, while checking Chakotay's scans. "If the Captain's strike had forced that bone another centimeter, he would have sustained mortal brain damage and died within seconds. How's the Captain?"
"I'm so glad he's improved his bedside manner," Q said with caustic sarcasm. "In another time, he would have been declaring us dead and launching our carcass into space while caterwauling a solemn chorus of 'Amazing Grace!'."
"Would you just shut up?" Chakotay burst out.
"Mmm. Odd. Mr. Chakotay, do you know who I am? Do you know where you are?"
Chakotay looked at the Doctor through blurred vision. "I'm…in Sickbay."
"Mmm. I don't see anything unusual on his scans, but this sort of speaking out behavior may indicate something deeper is occurring within his physiology."
"Dolt!" Q called the Doctor."Moron! Idiot! Primitive Electronic Witch Doctor!"
"You are a piece of work," Chakotay told Q with disgust.
"Now see here…" The Doctor said indignantly.
"Wait a minute Doc!" Tom said. "He's not talking to you."
"That is not a good sign. This is an anti-hallucinationatory agent." The Doctor put a hypospray to his patient's neck, but Chakotay grabbed his hand and fended off the drug.
"No! I don't need that! I'm not hallucinating!" Chakotay said with force and conviction.
"Hold it," Tom told the Doctor. "I think there could be something else going on with him."
"You are merely an assistant and a trainee, Mr. Paris. You are not qualified to make medical assessments and certainly not decisions."
"Listen to him, Doctor!" Chakotay ordered, hoping he could still order anyone on the ship.
"I may not know medicine, Doctor, but I know Chakotay. He has not been acting like himself for several days."
The Doctor looked disgusted with the two of them, but acquiesced. "Very well. I will study him more closely."
"Thank you," Chakotay and Tom said together.
"Do you two bicker all day long in here?" Kathryn demanded.
"Not all day, Captain," Tom told her. "Sometimes he shuts himself off."
"May I give Mr. Chakotay an analgesic or do I need to file an application with the Starfleet Medical Association?" The Doctor asked sarcastically.
"As your physician," The Doctor said loudly to both Chakotay and Kathryn. "I must strongly warn you against participating in Klingon mating rituals or any other type of extreme sex play…"
"Doctor!" Kathryn barked. "That is NOT what happened."
"No, Doctor," Chakotay added bitterly. "It seems that the Captain does not participate in any mating rituals at all with any living being! She likes holograms!"
Kathryn lay back on her pillow, holding her head as if the act could stop the pain of her throbbing cranium.
"You can leave at any time, Mr. Paris. Your shift is over," the Doctor told Tom petulantly. He went to check Kathryn's readings.
Tom looked from Chakotay to the Captain. "I'll be on the bridge if you need anything," he said to them. "The Doctor hates it when symptoms and readings don't add up, Chakotay. Makes him tetchy."
"You and B'Elanna," Chakotay spoke to Tom with the chip on his shoulder at the ready. "Are you serious with her, or is she just another conquest?"
Tom was surprised at Chakotay's abrupt personal question.
"Chakotay," Tom drew closer to him and spoke quietly, so that the Captain would not hear. "Have you ever been completely and totally head-over-heels, hell-bent-for-glory, come-what-may, I'm-all-hers in love?" Tom said dreamily.
Chakotay turned away.
"Is he a complete dimwit?" Q asked.
"Yes," Chakotay said with frustration to Q, but Tom thought he was answering about Janeway.
Tom realized what he had just said and done.
"Damn, Chakotay! I didn't mean…I just meant….Yes, I'm very much in love with B'Elanna. Can I take her to the prom?"
"That's all I wanted to know," Chakotay said abruptly. "Because, if it were otherwise Paris, I would throttle you with my bare hands then smash your face into a bulkhead."
The two bucks stared each other down before for several long moments before they both broke into laughter.
"Be home by midnight!" Chakotay joked. "B'Elanna is my little sister in many ways."
"Now, what is going on with you? I know you've had physical trauma, but what else is going on?"
"None of his business," Q sulked, still smarting himself from this recent incident with Kathryn.
"Nothing," Chakotay lied and closed up again.
"You can't con me, Chakotay. Never could. You wear your heart on your sleeve, as they used to say in olden times. What happened at that dinner to make Janeway break your nose?"
Chakotay grumbled unintelligibly, then said, "She didn't do it on purpose. It was an accident."
"That's a hellava accident."
"Is she all right?" Chakotay asked, realizing that Kathryn was injured as well. "How is she?"
"How is she? She's a menace, that's how she is!" Q interjected. "That's twice she beat us! On the same day, in two a different timelines!"
"She's been issuing commands from her biobed. Back to normal."
Chakotay sighed with relief for her recovery and with exasperation for her lack of change. Nothing he said or did would matter to her. She had made up her mind and no power in the Universe could alter that, not even Q.
"I'm sorry, Commander. We don't have anything on this whole ship to cure a love sick ex-Maquis," Tom said with sympathy. "If you need to talk, I'm a good listener."
"Shouldn't we be listening to syrupy violins, or something? I think I'm nauseated. Is this nauseated?"
Chakotay had to stop himself from another 'shut up' aloud, so he thought it to Q as hard as he could. His stomach did begin to turn, prompted, no doubt, by Q's reaction to Tom's sincere attempt to help.
"I think I'm beyond help and hope," Chakotay leveled with Tom. "I know that now."
Tom looked down, feeling inadequate to help the big dopey Dorvian.
"Have you looked in the mirror, Chakotay?"
"What? Is my face...?"
"I'm not talking about superficial injuries. There must be seven or eight women—that I can name off the top of my head— on this ship that are crazy about you. Haven't you noticed them?"
"I never thought…"
"Including, well, I'm not going to say who, but you can pick and choose. You're too …"
"I don't want anyone else. Every other woman is invisible to me."
"Now I am really going to be sick!" Q complained. "Can't we end this pointless discussion?"
"Chakotay! You're too good for this! You're too intelligent, spiritual, kind, strong, heroic, admirable, and I don't mean this in any other way than I mean it, you're too good looking!"
"Thanks Tom. I think you're cute too," Chakotay joked with a sardonic look. "If you weren't involved with B'Elanna, we could give it a go…"
"Fine," Tom threw his hands up with exasperation. "The Doctor wants you stay here for observation. You did have a near miss and…"
"He wants to say you've been weird, odd, strange, coo-coo, as if courting Her Royal Majesty was anything but weird, odd, strange, and completely insane. And for once, I have to agree with him."
"This whole thing was your idea! I would have never done that if you did not…" Chakotay cried aloud to Q, making Tom very worried. "You've only made it worse!"
"Doctor, I think you should check Chakotay!"
Kathryn was at his side, before the Doctor could make it.
"Oh no! She started it and he'll finish us off! At least your life will all be over swiftly! I can see your head stone now: Here lies Chakotay…"
"That's enough out of you!" Chakotay burst. "I don't want a headstone! I don't want anything! Just kill me now!"
She put her hand on the side of his head, "Shhh. Chakotay. You are going to be all right."
"No thanks to you!" Q and Chakotay burst out. Q meant Kathryn. Chakotay meant Q.
"Take it easy," Tom said, deeply concerned. He put his hand on Chakotay's shoulder. "We'll find out who you're talking to, and fix it."
"I wish you would," Chakotay said, sincerely. "I wish you could."
"Come to finish the job, Captain?" Chakotay, Q and Tom said all at once. Tom was joking. Chakotay wasn't and Q was genuinely terrified.
"Alright, perhaps I deserved that, but no, I haven't," she retorted. "I came to see how you were, Commander." She put her hand on the side of his head again.
"Don't touch me!" Chakotay insisted, slapping her hand away.
"Good for you, Chakotay! Make her stand over there!" Q demanded. "Should a hazard like her even be allowed in a Sickbay? What is with that drug wielding holo-doc? Doesn't he protect his patients? She's a danger to herself and others."
Chakotay fell back on his bed with a sigh, wearied by Q's endless diatribes. If she only knew. Now she was damning two lost souls to a fate worse than death.
"You know what your problem is?" Chakotay burst out at Q. "You're spoiled! You're an idiotic, rotten infant who has had every privilege handed to him on a silver platter! You don't feel pain, or desire, or misery like us mere mortals that you want to crush with your boot heels. You don't have needs! Whatever you want, you just take! Maybe they were right to do this too you! Maybe they were right!" Chakotay broke into storm force gales of frustrated tears.
"Bravo! Bravo! Encore! Because that recrimination is so very constructive. You have completely put me in my place, and I will reform my ways." Q told him with bitter sarcasm.
"To whom is he speaking?" Kathryn asked as the Doctor frowned at the readings.
"He's not talking to anyone in this room," the Doctor told them. "I have a theory, but it doesn't add up."
tbc….
(Note: I've been having trouble uploading files to ff dot net. Sorry if the updates are slower–AnitaLife)