A/N: You guys, lockdown fatigue is kicking my psyche. I don't know what day it is, my semi-regular posting schedule is goin' down the drain, Nanowrimo's coming up (I'll be working on this story don't worry), I'm supposed to produce two short films by December... Have some grumpy Bones.
"Welcome to the most stressful week of the year," McCoy said, giving Elle a grin. "Yearly crew physicals. Starting with you."
Elle groaned like a dying land-shark and tried to backtrack out of sickbay. Chapel stepped behind her. "Nope," the nurse said unsympathetically. "You first, then you're all done and you can help us round up the rest of the ingrates."
"I'm not ungrateful," Elle protested, as she kicked off her shoes and hopped on the biobed. "I'm very grateful for free universal health care."
"Good. And if you behave Nurse Chapel will give you a sticker."
"I want a lollipop," Elle decided.
McCoy turned a parental eye on her. "That wasn't the deal."
"You started by bribing me, I set the terms of the bribe," Elle said primly, clasping her hands.
Chapel laughed. "She's got a point, doctor."
He rolled his eyes theatrically. "My own staff, conspiring against me. Fine. You get a candy."
"Nice."
After the physical exam, Chapel bestowed upon Elle an orange lollipop and a sticker with the Medical insignia. "You are now a deputy nurse," Chapel said. "Our secret weapon."
Elle fixed the sticker to her sweater and saluted. "What do I have to do?"
"Get these people to sickbay so they can have their exam on time," Chapel said, handing Elle a datapad. "I won't object to dragging ensigns down the corridor."
"I object," McCoy protested.
"It's not our fault you terrify half the crew and they don't want to come in," Chapel replied dryly.
McCoy huffed. "Fine. Whatever." He gestured towards the door. "Go forth and bring me my patients."
Elle saluted and marched out of the door.
-/\-
"You have your yearly physical in fifteen minutes."
"You can't put this off, he'll just come and find you himself and then you'll really regret it when you come down with Rigellian fever and you have to get a hypo."
"Ensign, if you don't report to Sickbay in the next five minutes I'm going to sic Commander Stabby on you."
That last one usually got 'em. Nothing like a prop knife to the ankle for some motivation.
Elle left to get lunch and came back half an hour later, totally expecting the Med staff to be celebrating the last of the crew exams. Instead she found Bones and Chapel glaring at each other across a biobed.
"Just leave it, Chris," McCoy said tiredly.
"Do you want me to tell the captain?" Chapel asked.
"No, I'll do it."
They caught sight of her and clammed up. "I'll finish up," Chapel said, and bustled away.
Elle bit her lip. "Hey, um, everything ok?"
"I only want to cover it once, let me page Jim." He moved to the wall comm. "Captain Kirk to sickbay."
Elle followed him into his office and slid into a chair. "Don't tell me there's a shapeshifter lurking in the crew again?"
He snorted. "No, thank goodness. Once was enough."
Kirk entered a few moments later. "Report, doctor?" He plopped down into the other chair, obviously expecting good news.
McCoy sank into his chair behind the desk. "Well, all crewmembers have been evaluated. 98% of them are in optimal condition and the other two percent have no new health concerns. Only one person has come up with an incurable illness."
"Incurable illness?" Kirk echoed, startled.
"Xenopolycythemia. No cure."
Elle's heart dropped to her toes as dread curled in her stomach. "No..."
"Who, Bones?" Kirk asked gravely.
"Your Chief Medical Officer, captain," McCoy said.
"Bones..." Kirk stared at his friend and advisor, aghast. "Is it sure?"
"Chapel and M'Benga confirmed it," McCoy said, and steeled himself. "I'll be more effective in my remaining time here if you keep it to yourself, you too, Elle, and I'd like to request immediate transfer to Earth."
"Of course," Kirk murmured, still stunned.
"No," Elle said, and clapped a hand over her mouth when they both turned to look at her.
"Elle, sweetheart," McCoy said gently.
"You're a main character, you can't die," Elle said.
"Elle honey, this isn't a show, this is real life. Sometimes there is no-"
"No, but, you make it," Elle insisted. "You make it, I promise. We just have to find the asteroid. There's an asteroid with people on it, a huge database from an ancient civilization that had advanced medical technology!" She smacked her forehead with her palm. "The, um, the fabric-something. The Fabrini!"
They shared a glance, hope lighting their eyes. "Are you sure?" Kirk asked.
"I'm sure," Elle confirmed. "Bones, you become Star Fleet head of medical for years, you holler at androids eight decades from now, you're not going anywhere, okay? We got this."
He took a deep breath and looked at Kirk. "It'll take some time to find a replacement anyways, we have a few weeks to chase this down."
"I'll talk to Spock." The captain got up, clapped McCoy on the shoulder, and left.
"I promise," Elle repeated, standing up. She gave him a hug and scarpered before she could start crying.
-/\-
The next few days Elle spent purely in astrometrics, looking for the asteroid on sensors. Nothing showed up. She knew that they were making arrangements for Bones to leave, that the captain and Spock were going over CMO profiles, trying to find someone to replace Bones-but who could? No one could. It was Bones.
"Elle, honey-"
"Sorry, gotta go," Elle said, and rushed past a well-meaning Nurse Chapel.
Chapel followed and caught up with Elle in the observation deck. "Elle, sweetheart-" she tried again.
"He's not going to die," Elle snapped, and to her chagrin, started crying. "He's not."
Chapel hugged her tightly. "We all want to believe it, Elle, trust me, we do, but you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that... that Dr. McCoy may leave us."
It descended into ugly-cry territory for a bit as Elle battled with the idea that Bones: beloved, grumpy, eat-your-veggies Bones might actually die. "He's supposed to outlive everybody 'cept God and Spock," she sniffled into the nurse's shoulder.
"And he probably will," Chapel soothed, "this is the Enterprise, we do six impossible things before breakfast every day. But, we need to be balanced, and you need to make time to spend with Dr. McCoy and your other classes."
Elle took a shaky breath. "Okay."
Chapel handed her a tissue. "Good girl." She kissed Elle's forehead. "Take a warm shower, put on your jammies, and have some tea. You'll feel better. Go on."
-/\-
For the next two weeks Elle lived in a strange world, part of an exclusive club of the Med Staff, Kirk, and Spock, the only people who knew that Dr. McCoy had a terminal disease. Every alert from the bridge and every stray space rock they passed, Elle's emotions did a rollercoaster that started in 'hope!' and always ended up back in 'hurry-up-and-wait'. It was exhausting. The captain's dark circles got darker, and nobody mentioned that Spock spent every night in one of the labs, researching medical history on certain terminal diseases.
Two weeks after the prognosis, Elle's quiet time was interrupted by a yellow alert of approaching objects. It was the most beautiful sound Elle had ever heard. As it turned into a red alert, Elle whooped.
"Showtime!" she yelled, startling everyone in the yeomen's department. "I gotta go!" She raced for the bridge.
"Phasers one and two are ready."
"Fire phasers."
Firworks exploded on the viewscreen. "Missiles destroyed, keptin," Chekov reported.
"Alter course to missiles' point of origin," Kirk ordered. He turned to Elle. "Please tell me this is what we've been waiting for."
Elle watched the asteroid grow in size and hopped up and down. "This is it. The hollow asteroid!"
"Hollow?"
"It must be so, captain, as there are no visible engines. It is leaving a trail of hard radiation though, atomic, very crude."
"Lifesigns?" Kirk asked.
"None that our sensors can pick up, sir."
Kirk swiveled his chair. "Let's try hailing them first. Lt. Uhura?"
"Aye sir, standard hailing frequencies."
They went up and down the scale of greetings and hails, even trying some scraps of Fabrini language Spock located in the Federation database. Nothing.
"Course of asteroid, I mean spaceship two four one mark one seven," Chekov said, after some computing.
"Interesting," Spock said. "The course Ensign Chekov just gave for the asteroid would put it on a collision course with Daran Five."
"Daran Five? Inhabited?" Kirk asked, wrinkling his nose.
"Correct. Population approximately three billion and seven hundred twenty four million, if memory serves me correctly. Estimated time of impact three hundred ninety six days."
"Mister Sulu, match Enterprise speed with that of the asteroid vessel. Someone's going to have to go over there. If there are people, we need to warn them to change course. And if there aren't, who knows what we might learn from the last bits of Fabrini civilization." He stood up. "Spock, your recommendations on an away team?"
The command duo got in the elevator.
"That's the most cheerful the keptin's looked in weeks," Chekov muttered to Sulu. "I vonder vat's going on?"
Sulu shrugged.
Elle escaped from the bridge before anyone could ask her anything.
-/\-
"I'd like to go along."
"Doctor, wouldn't it be wiser-"
"Look, if Elle's right, then I'm the best person for the job, I know exactly what I'm looking for."
"... fine."
Elle watched McCoy get on the transporter pad with the rest of the security and anthropological away team. Spock traded a look with the captain and took his place on the transporter dais. "Energize," he ordered calmly.
The away team vanished in a haze of sparkles.
Kirk turned to Elle and put an arm around her shoulders. "Givin' me grey hairs, the lot of 'em," he grumbled jokingly, and pressed a kiss to Elle's hair. "Come along, Miss Consultant, you can keep me company while we wait for an update."
"In the episode, you and Spock went down," Elle told him.
He turned an exasperated look heavenwards. "I'm just adventurous, I'm not reckless," he said. "Who beams down their two commanding officers to a possibly hostile asteroid?"
Elle stifled a giggle.
The wait wasn't long. Only half a cup of coffee later, Spock called in to the ship. "Captain, we've discovered the inside of this asteroid does indeed hold the last remnants of the Fabrini civilization. However, all the inhabitants are in stasis."
Elle choked on her coffee. "That's new."
"Stasis?" Kirk echoed.
"Yes, sir. Records indicate that they have been in this vessel for over ten thousand years. Their guidance systems malfunctioned at some point and they missed their chosen resettlement point."
"And now they're about to crash into Daran V," Kirk mused. "Is there any way to reprogram their guidance system?"
"Yes, sir. Their database also contains the sum knowledge of their culture, sir, including all their medical knowledge."
Elle sighed in relief.
Kirk beamed at her. "Do you require more away teams, Mr. Spock?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, and we'll need to create an uplink to the Enterprise library computer."
"Understood." Kirk signed off and looked at Elle. "Bones is going to be all right."
"Main characters don't die," Elle repeated. "Or if they do they come back."
"Good to know." He tugged at her ponytail and went to arrange a second away team.
Elle sat in the briefing room with her cup of coffee and had herself a good old-fashioned cry of relief. Bones was going to be okay.
It took another week to reprogram the guidance system to send the Fabrini civilization to an uninhabited planet, and another two days after that to find the cure to xenopolycythemia.
McCoy grumbled through the entire treatment process, which was hilarious.
"They say doctors make the worst patients," Chapel said sagely.
"They were right," Elle agreed. "But he's going to be okay now?"
"He's going to be okay," Chapel confirmed. "Dr. McCoy's gonna be around for a long time."