McCoy's eyelids dragged down and back up again as if the surface of his eyes was sandpaper. A simple blink lasted too long and created no more moisture than before. His vision blurred from being unclean, and the patient chart in front of him stayed unreadable. He strained, but it remained a haze.
"Bet you can use this, Len." Daniel Corrigan held out a damp, cool cloth with a small bottle of eyedrops as he clapped him on the shoulder with his other hand.
"Thanks, you don't know how much." McCoy wiped his eyes first, squeezing some of the solution into his eyes, and blinked until he felt the sandpaper gone and everything snapped back into focus. Then he scrubbed his face and neck. It felt great until he stopped and all the parts not cleaned, like his sweaty back, felt worse in comparison.
Corrigan looked just as bad: beard stubble, what hair he had in a mess from running fingers through it, hospital scrubs sticking to him from sweat not quite as bad as McCoy's. He had lived a lifetime on Vulcan and was adjusted to the heat. And to the increased gravity, so his muscles probably didn't feel like tired mush like his fellow human's.
Can't air-condition the ward to Terran levels, McCoy thought. Not when the patients like it at this temperature.
And nothing could be done about the gravity.
Daniel suddenly stared at him, making him fidget. "C'mon, Len, let's get you someplace cooler. You're turning gray." He glanced with more than a little humor at the head nurse. "And T'Ahiyya must be ready to complain about how bad we smell."
"I am too polite to do so, Doctor." She took the stack of patient charts from both of them. "Plus I am using a nasal inhibitor."
Corrigan winked. "Now that's a hint."
"I'll take that hint in one second, Daniel. Let me grab Micar's chart--"
"Completed, Doctor," T'Ahiyya said. "Nor does Micar want to be interrupted at the moment."
McCoy watched as Micar furiously painted his mural on the right wall. Any patients on that side of the room moved to the beds made empty by death and stasis on the left-hand side. The wall painting took shape in the faces of all the hybrids, starting with those that died and coming to those in stasis, Micar concentrating to the point where he knew nothing else. Those alive and awake, including the artist himself, were currently not sketched, but McCoy knew they were coming, joining the everyone else displayed amongst the foothills of Vulcan's mountains, their forms emerging from the rock, their backs to the desert. The sight, despite showing the hybrids in good health, gave McCoy the chills even in the ward's heat.
Elfin Pekhi, the inquisitive Nizar with a sideways glance as if just noticing the visitors, Sohan with his hair curling around his collar next to the black skinned, somber, physically intimidating Strahinja, also in stasis – twenty one faces of the dead and suspended, some figures uncompleted, all gazed at him… almost saying something.
McCoy shook his head at himself. Now he imagined a painting was talking to him.
Why couldn't the living be painted first? he wondered. Fill in the spot next to Pekhi that was obviously left for Vi'hai, so husband and wife would be joined in art as they were in life.
McCoy was standing at the foot of Vi'hai's bed as he slept, Phase III beginning its brutal ravaging of the young man's features. The privacy walls around his bed were open so he could wander into sleep while gazing at his late wife in the painting. Other nights, they were just as firmly shut when he could not bear the sight.
Leonard McCoy watched the other patients, those that were visible. Half were asleep, and the others had visitors or watched the mural unfold. He looked harder at the visitors, and recognized the anthropologists that had haunted the hallways since his arrival.
Goddamned vultures! These people aren't an experiment!
But they were, created by the Romulans to serve some unknown purpose, and infused with a language and culture forged by their brutal childhood and survival. Anthropologists and linguists studied such things, just as he studied the hybrids' reactions to tests.
But I'm doing it for their health!
And the anthropologists did it so the unique cultural subset would not be lost to death. He knew it, but he didn't have to like it.
"Doctor McCoy." He looked at T'Ahiyya and envied her calm. Damn, maybe he should have Spock teach him that meditation. "I advise you accept Dr. Corrigan's suggestion."
McCoy glanced at Daniel and suddenly grinned. "She's pushing me out the door, isn't she?"
"Both of us. We're getting in the way." Corrigan stretched his neck, and tired muscles popped and cracked. His smile faded as abruptly as McCoy's just came. "C'mon, Len. I need a drink."
McCoy folded his arms across his chest in the best, stubborn body language he knew. He liked this head nurse with her clinical mind and exotic looks. A few days never would equal the rapport he had with Christine Chapel, both when she was his head nurse and later as a fellow physician, but T'Ahiyya hopefully was used to humans. "I'll go if you go."
Her eyebrows rose in thought as if he asked her to consider a particular treatment for the patients. "Agreed." She turned to where her next shift of nurses were coming in and gestured for two to come over. S'Faia and T'Paevana did so, and took the patient charts and the orders for their shift. That included making sure the intensely absorbed Micar finished the high-energy biscuits and vitamin drink currently neglected next to his paint palette.
"Care to join us?" McCoy asked T'Ahiyya as they started leaving.
"I appreciate your invitation, Doctor, however I must decline. If I am to rest from my work, I will use the time to see my family."
Corrigan said boisterously, "Excellent priorities! Ones I'm going to copy as soon as I'm done chatting with Len and grab a shower before going home. I know you're being too polite, T'Ahiyya, because I can't stand my smell! Definitely can't go home with those sensitive noses about the place."
They parted company from the head nurse and headed for Corrigan's office. McCoy protested it wasn't necessary to lower the temperature any more from the existing coolness, but Daniel insisted as he poured them both drinks.
"It'll feel good to me too. I may be adjusted to Vulcan temperatures, but I still need to crank the air conditioning up once in a while." He dropped into his padded desk chair, took a deep swallow from his glass, and gave a heavy, tired sigh. "What do we think we're doing, Leonard?"
The sudden switch in topic threw him off, but McCoy made a great effort to answer a question plaguing him more and more. He finished his swallow. "We're doing what we can, Daniel. We're treating the malnutrition with everything we got. The nutritional drinks, the standard porridges, the high-energy biscuits and cakes. For the dehydration, all the combinations of sugar, salt, honey, and water are given regularly. Vitamins by the shipload are going down their throats as well. Milk and milk products are cut out because they're severe on the systems already hurt – Saavik, Jdehn and the other two should be okay with it though." He sat forward, arms on his knees, and his drink cradled in both hands. "The damnable thing – and I know this is what you're talking about – is, you can't cure malnutrition or dehydration when there's an underlying disease causing them. You got to get rid of the disease, and that's what we keep banging our heads on."
Daniel sat in silence before giving a sudden, weary grin. "Actually, I meant why are we drinking booze when our bodies really need water?"
McCoy stared at him before bursting out in laughter, throwing back his head and using the motion to flop deep in the couch. He stayed that way, staring up into the ceiling as his chuckle petered out. "You know what, Daniel?"
An answering chortle reached him. "What?"
"That joke wasn't even funny, but--"
"But it was good to laugh."
"Yeah."
Corrigan chuckled again, weaker this time, and drank again from his glass. "Yeah... but now that you opened the can of worms..."
"Thanks a lot."
"Len, what the hell are we going to do? Keep going over the same tests hoping for a miracle, or prod these poor people for more samples? Now we're sealing them up in stasis until we find a cure. What happens if we don't? Do we keep them in there forever or do we take them out to die?" Daniel rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "I just read Rrelthiz's report – did you see it? She's nailed it, Len. No manmade disease – excuse the prejudicial word 'manmade' – but no such disease doesn't leave tracks! Especially one with such a long term and with vastly different stages! Where the hell is the trigger or triggers that tells the body it's time to go into one phase or the other? Something that complex, it's got to show! But we've found nothing -- nothing! No virus, no bacteria, and no chemical signature of any kind."
"Daniel, you're preaching to the choir. That's why we both look like crap and we drinking booze instead of water and why we won't leave the hospital even though we've got nothing more to do right now."
Corrigan picked up one of the family holos adorning his desk. He looked beaten. "We can't give up and we're scared to death that's exactly what's going to happen. That someday we're going to swallow the very bitter realization that all thirty-three of our patients are going to die of this thing, and we can't do a thing to save them." He drained his glass. So did McCoy. "I'm older than you, Len. I've learned a hundred different times the painful lesson that a doctor isn't a god who can cure anything. Every time, I hate it more."
McCoy raised his head enough to see the other doctor. He forgot sometimes that Corrigan was somewhere around forty years older. And that he looked younger than that because his and Sorel's neural regeneration system had healed him years ago with the side effect of shaving decades off his appearance. More importantly, it had saved Corrigan's life, and with that second chance, this balding, round little man found out that Sorel's little girl, the same one he had first met when she tormented the family sehlat that was babysitting her, was a woman all of a sudden. A very desirable woman who, miracle of miracles, had picked him out as her husband back when she was a teenager.
But Daniel was right; that miracle didn't change the hard fact that sometimes patients died, and doctors and nurses couldn't do anything about it.
"I hate it as much you do, Daniel, and I wish to God I knew the answer. I only have a few more days here and then Starfleet will pull me out."
Corrigan put the picture back in its honored place amongst the others. "Tell them you need more time."
"I tried. Things are a mess, and it's hard getting anyone to listen to anything. Besides, what good have I done here?"
Deep frown lines folded Daniel's brow. "Don't even think like that, Len. You're a good doctor, you know it. We need you here."
McCoy mumbled a thank you, but inside, he keenly felt his helplessness. "As for what do we do, I think it's in the hands of Jim, Spock, and Sarek. We need them to find out who's behind this! If we find them, we can get the cure out of them."
"If they made one. That's a big if."
"They created a trigger, they can tell us what it is and we'll remove it. I got to believe that, Daniel."
The desk chair creaked as Corrigan pushed back in it, an arm flung over his forehead. "Yeah, I know. Ignore me." He put his feet on the desk, settling in for a longer discussion. "I hope they find whoever it is soon. I'm betting it's some pack of bigots in the Federation. The Romulans abandoned the hybrids. Why should they care now?"
McCoy swished the ice cubes in his glass. They banged together before whipping around in a vortex with the dregs of his drink. "I'm actually thinking the opposite. I can't give you the reason why the Romulans care now -- maybe they just want to remove the last signs of what they did years ago. But I can't settle on it being a hate group for one reason. If some group is wiping them out because they hate half-Romulans running around the Federation, why hasn't that hate spread to the team that brought them here? But no one's attacked Spock or Sarek or Salok... none of them."
Corrigan's head faced him, and he got suddenly more excited. "That's a damn good point, Len. A bigot doesn't just attack the people they hate. They attack anyone who helps their victims or, in this case, the people who brought the hybrids here instead of letting them die in the Empire."
McCoy nodded. "And how does this pack of bigots know how the hybrids died on Hellguard anyway? That's classified information." He felt a sudden, sharp stab of worry about revealing too much, and then remembered Daniel had clearance.
Corrigan crunched on an ice cube. "You got something there. Have you told Sarek or Jim this?"
"No, I haven't really thought about it in the front of my head until now. But I will. They can see if it means something." He rubbed his stiff neck. "What do you think, Daniel? One more drink and I let you go home?"
"While you what? Go back to the ward until you're so annoying that the nurses throw you out again?"
McCoy snorted. "You know, I'm beginning to envy Vulcan disciplines. You don't see them here moping and drinking."
Corrigan sat up in his chair, smiling. "No, that's true. They talk theories and data until they even get tired of themselves." The door opened and Daniel winked at McCoy. "S'ad, Tu'ong, come in. Can I get you something?"
They each replied no and took the offered seats. S'ad joined McCoy on the couch, as always sitting straight and proper on the edge of it while Tu'ong settled into the full comfort of a chair. McCoy took advantage of their silence to ask if the geneticist had found anything. "Sorel and Rrelthiz mentioned something of the sort."
"Of the sort is a proper way to word it," she said. Being Vulcan, her unwavering expression told him nothing, not even with all he knew about reading Spock. "We discovered the genetic coding behind a glandular release of an extreme amount of a natural chemical stimulus."
He eagerly sat forward. "What chemical stimulus?" In the next second, her answer made him slump back in the couch. Nothing more than the Vulcan -- and supposedly Romulan -- equivalent of adrenaline. S'ad, with a healer's curiosity not offset with something as emotional as disappointment, asked what Tu'ong's finding meant.
"We hypothesize that an increased capacity for hostility is keyed into each hybrid's genetics to be released under extreme provocation."
They can get angry, really angry, McCoy silently translated. Blind berserker kind of angry. His depression deepened. The only thing they found in a long time, and it was that the hybrids could be triggered into a tremendous sense of rage or hyper predatory state.
Just great.
S'ad spoke to him in the same methodical voice as before. McCoy knew what the question was going to be and wished the Vulcan wouldn't ask it. "Doctor, you have experience with the hybrids before this medical crisis. Have you seen evidence of this?"
He had experience with Saavik and he had Spock's memories in his head. He'd rather choke on his tongue before telling what he knew.
"Most of the hybrids live here. All of you can better answer that question than me."
Thankfully, neither S'ad or Tu'ong saw through his deception, but the way Daniel was looking, McCoy knew the other human understood what he just did.
Corrigan changed the subject. "The important point is that we still have nothing that shows us a cause or a cure. I'd give everything I own if somebody would give me even a half-baked suggestion."
In the following expected questions from the Vulcans on what half-baked meant and why Corrigan would want such a thing, McCoy saw Sorel coming up the hall with Srre tagging along.
The medical team's leader stopped in the doorway as he caught sight of everyone. "Did we have a meeting scheduled?"
"No," Corrigan answered. "All roads just led to my doorstop. C'min, Sorel. Give us some good news."
The Vulcan was long used to his partner's mannerisms, so he said nothing about them as he took the chair directly across from Corrigan's. He too refused a drink, which McCoy instantly wished had turned out otherwise. He wanted to refill his glass but wasn't going to be the only one.
Srre still stood in the doorway and glanced around the assembly. "I believe we better serve our purpose by other means than sitting here."
McCoy wasn't the only one to look up at the medical student -- even the more experienced Vulcans gave their younger colleague a stare -- but he was the one to speak up first. "Son, you got to learn when your patients need see you, when you're driving them crazy, and when you're driving all of the staff crazy."
"I do not understand."
Sorel spoke in Vulcan, obviously giving the same advice, while McCoy told himself he had to stop thinking of Srre as a boy; he wasn't. In fact, he was older than McCoy had been when he signed up for Starfleet and met Jim Kirk. Actually, Srre was older than any med student he had ever come across. He wondered why.
"I started at a later age," Srre answered. "I took my preliminary studies at the same time others in my age group did, but I left before starting my residency to study Kolinahr."
"Kolinahr?" McCoy repeated surprised. Srre wore no symbol of even a student of Gol.
He nodded. "I schooled there for 5.62 years, taking part in the most evolved disciplines. I found them--"
McCoy braced himself.
"--fascinating."
"And you left that for med school?" McCoy saw the subtle shift in the other Vulcans. "Now it's my turn to apologize. I didn't mean to invade your privacy, Srre."
"You did not, Doctor. You asked a normal question. I did not leave my Kolinahr studies. I failed them." He paused and McCoy swore silently not to ask, but Srre explained anyway. "I failed because I discovered my prejudice against my half-brother and those like him. I blamed him for my father's ordeal that involved Mal'Shik's conception and birth, ending in my father's death. The violation of my parent's bonding violently injured my mother. She almost did not survive it. And yet, she and my sister never held my brother responsible as I did."
Srre stopped again, and McCoy mentally kicked himself down the hall and out to Sarek's house for ever starting the subject. Sorel, S'ad, and Tu'ong calmly let the med student talk. Had they heard the story before? Or was this just a Vulcan way of letting Srre heal by refusing to bury the problem?
"Mal'Shik was almost dead in Phase III when we spoke and managed to bring some semblance of peace between us. I went to Sorel that night and asked to be reinstated into the medical program."
Carrying on for your brother, McCoy thought, and remembered the half-Romulan had actually been the more talented of the two. That was saying something because Srre was good.
As Sorel was saying now. "Srre has done well in advancing. His studies in the mental disciplines on Gol have helped him."
"And patients do not have the hesitation with me that they did with my brother," Srre said. A shadow passed over his expression. "But then, I am not a half-Romulan trying to touch them with the possibility of having to enter their minds."
That shadow now passed over the others as they remembered Mal'Shik, a talented associate stifled in his career and now dead from a disease they couldn't cure.
"I will check on the transfusions' progress," Srre announced. No one reminded him that it was too early to learn anything.
"I will go with you," Sorel said as he and S'ad stood up.
No one made it out the door as T'Par came in. She was one of the healers taking some of Sorel's and Corrigan's patients so they could work on the hybrids. McCoy met her years ago at the same time he met Daniel.
"T'Paevana asked me to bring this to your attention," T'Par said. "Saavik has left the hospital grounds. She was signed out by Healer Rrelthiz and will return tonight."
Not stress, not tension, but apprehension perhaps wafted through the group summed up by S'ad. "Saavik is in Phase II, is she not?"
He really didn't need to ask. Everyone on the medical team knew each patient's general status.
And now everyone's chanting to themselves, "It's not really pon farr, it's not really pon farr." McCoy's thoughts might poke fun at it, but he knew it was a real concern. Saavik was in the equivalent of plak tow, coupled with the predatory drive Tu'ong had discovered in the Hellguard surivors.
"How deep into the phase is she?" Sorel asked.
"Early," McCoy answered. "She just started showing signs yesterday." Where the hell did she go? And how fast is that phony plak tow going to progress?
Corrigan held his hands out. "Rrelthiz is with her. Hold on a second! I know she's not experienced with the condition, but everyone here has approved her to work with all phases of the disease. Besides, we have good people on staff. If Saavik was at risk to herself or anyone else, she'd never have made it out the door."
McCoy told himself he should be relieved. "And she wouldn't want to be outside the hospital anyway if she was bad off." Right? Nothing could make her budge.
Everyone exchanged glances, but unless they wanted to send people charging after Saavik for most likely no reason, looking at each other was about all they would do.
"We were checking the transfusions," Sorel said. As if it was an order, everyone started going back to his or her business.
The comm signaled sounded, and Daniel answered as he got up to get his shower. "Corrigan."
McCoy hurried over to the desk when he heard Jim's voice. "Daniel, is Bones there? They told me this was the place to track him down."
"You got me, Jim. What is it?"
"Can you come to Sarek and Amanda's? I need to discuss something with you."
"Can't it wait, Jim? We're going to check a few things here."
"I need your input on something, Bones. It's about Spock."
McCoy felt every single muscle in his back stiffen as icy fear crawled up his spine vertebrae by vertebrae. The disease only affects Romulan hybrids, he reminded himself. But the disease had claimed victims supposedly free of its grip before.
Behind him, Corrigan must have heard the same words, because his breathing caught like a rattle in his throat. McCoy turned and saw the other man staring at his family photos...
...at his Vulcan hybrid daughters.
McCoy pushed down the lump blocking his throat. "What is it?"
Maybe Kirk saw something in his face or maybe he just realized the impression he gave. "Not medical, but it's important."
"We're about to check the transfusion progress, and --" He almost said Saavik's gone and I'm worried but he had already resigned himself to wait. "I'm pretty gross, Jim. Let me stop first--"
The tones of a starship captain sounded. "Get home, Bones."
He nodded, not arguing over the word 'home'. He knew what it meant. "I'm on my way."