Title: "Aegri Somnia"
Author: tprillahfiction (2008)
AEGRI SOMNIA (Chapter 5)
Morning came with another hypo from the doctor. Spock opened his eyes.
"I can't keep giving you these things, I'm running out," said McCoy. "Look at your fingernails."
Spock held his hand up and noticed the blue-green color. "Interesting," he rasped.
"The cyanosis indicates you're not taking in enough oxygen; I'm under-dosing you. Harder for you to speak?"
Spock nodded.
"Well then," the doctor said. "The time has come for you to shut-up."
Spock shook his head. He did not feel well enough to protest.
"Are you hungry? Here, eat this." McCoy shoved a vegetarian ration from the medi-kit towards the Vulcan.
"I am not hungry, Doctor."
"Eat it anyway; you need to keep up your strength."
Spock opened his mouth to remind the doctor that he was quite capable of fasting for long periods when he got the "EAT!" from the good doctor, thought better of responding and picked up the ration and had a tentative bite. "Are you not going to eat?" he enquired.
"After you." McCoy tore open up a water packet and thrust that at the Vulcan. "This too." As Spock drank it, McCoy observed. "Y'know this stuff isn't gonna last forever, maybe ten days at the most. We'll eventually have to find food and water outside. I already looked around out there this morning, it's still raining."
Spock shook his head. "I must have been in a deep sleep as I didn't hear you leave. It is dangerous to go out on your own. If you desire to go out again I will accompany you."
"Oh no you don't. You're not going anywhere. I'll see to our immediate survival. You can't go out in that damn rain."
"It has been raining since our arrival."
"I know. How long have we been here? A week? It must be." McCoy's face itched; it took a week for his beard suppressor to wear off. He munched on a dental tablet and sulked.
Spock had dozed off but his lungs were becoming rather heavy and woke up gasping and clutching his chest.
McCoy noted that the tips of Spock's ears were turning greenish-blue. He pulled the Vulcan to a sitting position then checked his bag. "Spock I'm seriously low on anything that would help. I'm sorry." He leaned over to listen to Spock's chest, pulled out his medi-scanner, used it and frowned at it.
Spock nodded coughing. "Then...Doctor...I will have to make due without."
"Eventually you won't be able to breathe at all if we don't get back to the ship for treatment."
"Thank you," Spock managed to say. "Your uncanny ability to keep a running commentary on my situation is most...irritating."
McCoy sat back on his haunches. "Alright, alright, fair enough."
"Perhaps, a positive attitude might be beneficial."
"How about if we see the Enterprise again and you live, I'll have reason to be positive. Until then, I'll grouse if I want to!" McCoy snapped, once again a little harsher than he'd meant to. A cold wind whipped in the shelter and McCoy folded his arms and shivered. "Dammit...Spock...I'm sorry..."
"Apologies are unnessary. You are adversely affected by the plummeting temperature."
"What Spock? You mean, I'm cold? Well of course! You do have my uniform on. We have no way to make a fire; any wood we have is sopping wet. Unless you have the ability to rub two sticks together and keep it lit, because I haven't been able to do it."
"I thought everyone in the Earth American South could start a fire with two sticks. Are you not familiar with the Earth custom of camping?"
"Very funny Spock."
"Have you a laser scalpel?"
"No, don't you think I would have used that to start a fire already? I don't have that in this kit."
"You do not have a calcium nytrate tablet?"
"Dammit...I'm gonna clobber you!"
Spock glanced at the glaring, shivering McCoy, clad only in the regulation black undershirt and thermal underwear. "It is imperative that you share my body warmth."
McCoy shook his head. He didn't want Spock reading his thoughts any more. "No, stop trying to mother hen me. That's my job."
Evening fell and the two men lay silent in the dark. When McCoy started to cough under his breath, Spock's ears pricked up. The good doctor was catching the affliction too.
Morning came, with a rumble.
"What the hell was that?" McCoy voiced it as both men started.
The rumble appeared again and the shelter shook violently.
"It would appear...that the land this the shelter is on...is unstable," said Spock looking around him.
In a pause in the shaking, McCoy started up to his knees then promptly fell down again.
"Doctor?" Spock inched over to him.
McCoy panted, "Jesus, I can't move...you've given me your damned disease."
"Ah, it is communicable, then."
"Go ahead, state the fucking obvious, Spock!" McCoy snapped.
Spock grabbed McCoy's shoulders. "You've given all the meds in your kit to me, haven't you."
"Yeah."
The shaking of the shelter grew more and more severe as the shelter collapsed around them. Spock desperately tried to get to his feet but could not. Stones and rocks tumbled down around them. They needed to leave, now.
Spock somehow found the strength to pull himself up and staggered over to McCoy to drag him towards the entrance of the shelter. Attempting to assist but failing madly; McCoy rasped loudly: "If the Pneumonia doesn't kill us this goddamn planet will!"
Spock gathered all the last of his strength to pick McCoy up in his arms, stagger out of the shelter and outside into the continuing storm. Even though the doctor was slim and theoretically not very heavy; it took everything for him not to keel over with the load.
He stumbled outside, grimacing with the rain pelting his face and with the weight of the prone figure of McCoy.
Outside, McCoy felt his head fall backward with the biting rain pinning his hair back. With seconds to spare, the shelter collapsed behind them into a pile of rubble with a loud crash. Spock at once mourned the loss of his tri-coder, lost on that ship; without it they were virtually blind out in the storm.
The Vulcan pushed on forward till the pair crossed quite a bit of terrain.
"There is another shelter in the distance!" Spock shouted to McCoy, but by this point the doctor was beyond caring.
Finally making it to the next shelter; Spock collapsed with McCoy at the entrance and remained there gasping for breath for awhile. He felt the doctor's wrist for a pulse and found it. As he held on to the human's hands then touched the face he noted the man's normally cool touch was becoming warmer. Spock lay listening to McCoy cough more and more severely till he started to choke. Picking up McCoy's head, Spock turned it so McCoy could cough. As he wiped the doctor's face, Spock noted the blood.
He looked around the new shelter to get his bearings. This one was more like a cave like structure but even shallower than the last. But by T'Prillah and the gods what was that that Spock could barely make out? A pair of animal hides next to a burned out fire. The Vulcan crawled, dragging McCoy with him, towards the animal skins and finally made it. He turned the doctor on his back pulled an animal hide over him, then dove under the one next to it.
McCoy stirred; muttering deliriously, "No...no...no!"
Spock grasped the doctor's fighting hands as put his head down to the chest. "No?" he queried.
"...don't hurt me..."
"Doctor, it's me." Spock touched the doctor's face to sooth him, then laid down and fell asleep next to him.
...end of chapter 5...