Rose fiddled with her blue dress sleeves, wrinkling her nose at all the smells in the medbay. It smelled like going to the doctor; like antiseptic and clean floors and latex gloves. Hospital-bed-looking-things were hooked up to displays behind them, showing the heartbeat, blood pressure, a nd other vitals. She spun to the side. There were medical instruments on carts and on the wall and in cabinets, but they all looked the same: mechanical and pencil-like.

Rose groaned in frustration.

Doctor said she needed to find something called a dermal regenerator, which could heal skin quickly without leaving any scars. According to him, he would be able to alter it so that it could fix the TARDIS—which was made of a material very close to organic tissue—instead of skin.

His description of what the dermal regenerator looked like was quite a bit less helpful than his explanation, however. His full description was: "a glowing, healing, shooting…. thingy."

Sighing in resignation, Rose began opening cabinets and rummaging through them, searching for anything that glowed, healed, or shot.

"You're new here, aren't you?" A blonde woman asked quietly after she entered the medbay. She put a metal contraption on a cart and studied Rose.

"What gave it away?" Rose laughed nervously, closing the cabinet. She really hoped she wasn't wearing any jewelry from home, or anything else to suggest she wasn't supposed to be there.

"I'm Christine Chapel," The nurse said, and stuck out her hand for a shake.

Well, at least in this universe, they still shake hands.

"Rose Tyler," Rose said, shaking her hand.

"Well, Nurse Tyler, welcome aboard the Enterprise."

"Thank you!" Rose smiled, thankful that this Nurse Chapel was kind enough to welcome her and alleviate her nerves.

Nurse Chapel looked around quickly before leaning in and lowering her voice, her face serious.

"Not to embarrass you or anything, but just so you know, you're not exactly up to code. The Doctor's going to give you a hard time about that. He's a real stickler for the rules."

"Up to code?" Rose whispered back, an eyebrow raised.

"The dress code. Women need to have their hair up at all times."

"Oh, sorry," Rose said slowly. She pulled at the ends of her hair nervously and searched her wrists for a hair tie, but she had none.

"No problem. Here, have a hair tie," Nurse Chapel offered, opening a drawer and revealing about a hundred black hair ties. "I like to keep them around for any newbies."

"Thanks!" Rose replied. She quickly did her hair up in a very sloppy bun, which looked nothing like Nurse Chapel's carefully styled hairdo. "How do I look?"

Nurse Chapel gave her hair a quick look, before forcing a fake smile. "Very… uh, unique."

"Why thank you," Rose said, oblivious to the problem. She turned back to the cabinet, pretending to act as inconspicuous as possible. "Say… you wouldn't happen to know where we keep the dermal regenerators, do you?"

"With the subdermal scalpels."

"And where is that?"

"Why, over near the bio-temporal chamber and the cellular regeneration chamber, of course," she said. Upon seeing Rose's confused look, she smiled and added, "behind the proto-plasers."

Rose blinked. "Oh."

I understood none of that.

Nurse Chapel smiled again and turned back to the cabinets, pulling out various medicines and sorting them by color. "So, what made you decide to join Starfleet?"

"Oh, uh… it sorta just happened. I was sort of…. traveling... What about you?"

"Wanted to join my whole life. It makes me feel like we're making a real difference, you know?"

"Yeah, I know the feeling."

Nurse Chapel looked around nervously before leaning toward Rose again and whispering, "Not to mention, the men aren't half bad either."

Rose laughed and whispered back, "Who? One of the doctors?"

"No, silly, the second in command," Nurse Chapel answered and smiled shyly. The two girls giggled.

Just then a middle aged man in a blue shirt entered the room. "Nurses, now is not the time for socializing," he said in a southern drawl. "Nurse Chapel, I need you to get that medicine and an extra hypospray to the fourth floor."

"Of course, Doctor McCoy," Nurse Chapel said. She started grabbing a few small containers holding multi-colored pills and something Rose thought resembled a sonic screwdriver. Nurse Chapel gave her one last meaningful look before exiting the medbay.

"And you-" Doctor McCoy paused, a scowl overcoming his features. "What the sam hill happened to your hair?"

"I'm sorry?" Rose said carefully, turning to face the doctor, and her hair on top her head bounced up and down, some loose ends falling into her face.

"Its looks like something made a nest and died."

"I'm sorry?"

"You'll have to do. Go grab a hypospray with 10 ccs of anetrizine and come with me. A patient needs attention now."

"Oh, I'm not… I don't…"

"Are you going to make me wait all day?"

"I actually need-" she started to say, only for the man to turn and disappear into a back room. "Alrighty then…"

This is not going well.. I still have no idea what a dermal regenerator is, and I have no clue what anetrizine is. A medicine? This is just fantastic.

Rose quickly grabbed one of the small sonic-screwdriver-looking-things, grabbed a couple of medicine vials, and followed the man—McCoy?—to the back room. Beds were lined up in a neat row, all unoccupied except for one at the very end, which housed a man holding his arm and twisting his face in pain.

"I have the stuff," Rose blurted, holding the instruments out to the doctor, feigning a polite smile.

McCoy raised an eyebrow, picking up a vile of blue liquid. "Is this a joke?" he spluttered.

"I'm… I'm sorry?"

"This is dermaline, not anetrizine," he growled, clutching the blue vials tightly, making them grate against each other with an unappealing screech. He opened a cabinet, angrily bringing out three red vials. "And seeing how we're trying to give Ensign Riley a painkiller so we can fix his broken arm, and not trying to prevent him from getting mild to severe sunburns, I'd say dermaline is rather unneeded, wouldn't you?"

"Sorry."

"Geez, kid, is 'sorry' the only thing you know how to say? You're going to drive me up the wall," he grumbled. He began attaching the vials to the hypospray.

"Sor- I mean, uh…"

Doctor McCoy shot her a glare and pressed the tool to the ensign's neck. "Just grab the medical tricorder so we can find out exactly how many bones are broken."

"Medical tricorder. Right." Rose turned, slowly looking over all the tools on the nearby table. "This?"

"Thats a neocortical monitor," he deadpanned, not even looking up from the patient, who was no longer writhing in pain, but looking at Rose like she was an idiot.

"Of course. I was testing you. What about this?" Rose lifted another piece of equipment.

"No."

"This?"

"No!"

"How about—"

"That is a scalpel!" McCoy snapped, pushing her out of the way with one hand. He snatched a small tool covered in multicolored blinking lights and smacked it into her hands. "Give me the readings from that."

Rose slowly slid towards McCoy again, looking at the tricorder and nodding her head solemnly, as if she knew what she was doing.

She did not.

"Readings?" McCoy grunted, taking a deep breath.

"The readings say it's bad," Rose replied grimly, trying to keep her face calm, but she had no idea what the various numbers on the screen meant.

"A bit more information would be nice."

"The readings say it's very, very bad," Rose said slowly, pursing her lips. The Doctor McCoy rose to his feet and snatched the medical tricorder from her hands, tapping furiously at the screen.

"Nurse, if you're not going to do your darn job—"

"I'm just telling you, sir, this looks pretty serious."

'It's a broken bone, Nurse. He'll be fine. Now—"

"Even so, you can't be too sure," Rose pointed out, playing with the hem of her dress and trying to act casual. "Perhaps I should go get the dermal regenerator. You could just point me in the right direction."

McCoy looked at her as if she had just grown another head.

"You're kidding."

Well, that didn't work.

"It's what the medical tricorder says to do," Rose said, and Doctor McCoy looked back at the tricorder for a moment before taking another deep breath.

"Nurse, can you tell me what a dermal regenerator does?"

"Uh… it glows, heals, and shoots?"

The doctor rubbed his eyes in frustration. "I don't know what game you're playing, nurse, but you better cut it out right now. I don't put up with any tomfoolery in my medbay."

"Of course, sir. I was just trying to be helpful, sir."

He grunted and turned back to the patient. "Just hold his arm still so I do my work, and do not test my patience any further."

"Of course," Rose sighed. She walked over to the patient and held his arm level as Doctor McCoy grabbed a tool from the cabinet and held it to the patient's broken bone. The patient stared at her with a slightly fearful expression, as if he didn't trust her with a simple broken bone but was too polite to point it out. After a few minutes of silence, she spoke again. "Really, I can go get the dermal regenerator. It's no trouble at all."

"We don't need the dermal regenerator." McCoy hissed, and his grip on his tool tightened in frustration.

"But it would be good to have on hand—"

"Nurse!" McCoy snapped. Rose jumped. "Behave, or I'll have you reported."

"I'm terrified," Rose muttered sarcastically under her breath.

"What was that?"

"I said 'I'll try'."

McCoy squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep, measured breath, the fourth one of their conversation; Rose was counting. "Go get the bone regenerator. It's on the shelf near the regeneration chambers. And so help me nurse, I swear if you bring me back anything other than what I asked for—"

"On it!"

Rose ran out of the room, and towards a separate section of the medbay. Luckily, the room was labeled. As was the cabinets and shelves.

Sitting right in plain view was a cabinet labeled 'regenerators'. A large collection of small tools sat under a label that read 'bone regenerators'.

And what do you know, there was another label that said 'dermal regenerator'. Rose grabbed the small, light tool, weighing it in her hand. It resembled one of those stupid, annoying little lights that doctors would always shine in people's eyes and ears. How this was going to help fix the TARDIS, she had no idea. But the Doctor knew what he was doing.

Hopefully.

Rose hid the small tool and began to discreetly leave the medbay, hoping to not draw any attention to herself.

No such luck.

"Where are you going? Get back here!"

Rose cringed, one foot out of the door. She could feel the southern doctor glaring a hole in the back of her head. She slowly turned around and trudged back to him like a child who had just been caught stealing cookies before dinner.

"Did you get the bone regenerator?" he hissed.

Rose smiled sheepishly and slowly produced the tool from her pocket, showing it to the doctor. She braced herself for what would undoubtedly come.

He lost it.

"THAT IS A DERMAL REGENERATOR! I ASKED FOR A BONE REGENERATOR! WHY IN SAM HILL WOULD I EVER NEED A DANG DERMAL REGENERATOR FOR A BROKEN BONE? HUH? I ASKED FOR A BONE REGENERATOR, DANG IT! DID I NOT? I DID! I DID!"

He pinched the bridge of his nose and took in a long angry breath, the fifth one of their conversation. "You… nurse… you can't just… I don't… you… just… just… Give me that!" McCoy angrily ripped the dermal regenerator out of her hands, threw it on his desk, and pointed at a nearby bed. "Go sit over there until I finish with Ensign Riley. Your assistance is no longer needed. You and I will have a very lengthy conversation when I'm finished, and I promise you, you will not enjoy it."

"But I-"

"Now!" McCoy snapped, his face furious. If looks could kill, his would murder.

Rose silently took her seat on the edge of the bed, watching as McCoy pulled at his thinning hair and disappear into the other room, evidently to go get a bone regenerator.

I am in big trouble now, Rose thought, biting her lips and swinging her legs. How will I ever get the dermal regenerator now?

She looked over at the patient, who was staring at her in fury.

"Sorry," she told him. He just scoffed and turned his gaze to the ceiling. Rose sighed loudly and rolled her eyes at herself. Did it ever occur to her to look at the labels on the cabinets? No! Did she think that grabbing the bone regenerator along with the dermal regenerator was a good idea? No! It never even crossed her mind!

She wished she had taken a theater class at her high school.

McCoy came back into the room with the bone regenerator in his hand, glaring daggers at Rose. He walked over to the ensign, waved the whirring regenerator over his broken arm a few times, and dismissed him.

He replaced the tool and faced Rose.

"Now, Nurse—"

"I am so, so sorry, doctor. I really was trying to help and it is my first day, I wasn't sure-"

"Don't interrupt me while I'm speaking!" McCoy growled. "I don't care if it's your first day. It's no excuse for your behavior."

"I never did mean to-"

"I am going to give you a full psychological examination. Once I finish you'll be excused from your duties for the rest of the day," he growled. "I will be sending a formal complaint to Starfleet, and I expect you to arrive tomorrow with your head screwed on correctly. Understand?"

"Yes, sir. But, um… how long is this 'examination' going to take?" Rose asked nervously.

"As long as it takes."

Psychological examinations really suck, Rose thought bitterly.

Rose felt like a test guinea pig. She was expecting a paper test or something asking her different questions about her mental state, not to be shoved in a hundred different machines and have a dozen different scanners run over her head for hours.

She hated sitting still, and the psychological examination made her sit still for three hours on end. It took every ounce of patience that Rose possessed not to leap forward and strangle the quick tempered Doctor McCoy.

It seemed to perplex McCoy when he didn't find anything wrong with her, but he dismissed her anyway, but not without his teeth clenched tightly in exasperation.

When she passed the grumbling doctor's desk on the way out, she discreetly grabbed the dermal regenerator and slid it into her pocket.

Hopefully the Doctor and Jack were having more luck than she was.

We, IdenticalSnowflakes and LogicalVulcan, thank our few devoted fans for reading our crossover. Since Doctor Who/Star Trek crossovers are not that common, we are especially glad that you are here!

We hope you enjoy this comical crossover with our favorite characters!