Chapter fourteen
Coming Back
Blackness swarmed, almost palpable. He could reach out and touch it if he wanted to. He didn't want to.
Warmth. Delicious, pain-free warmth. There was cold. Not far away. No. No. Warm was good. Falling, falling…
Touch. Hurt. Feel. Cold. NO. Warm was good! Cold. No, no, no, no…hear. Pain. Sound. Beep. Hurt. Push. Warm. Warm…
Soft touch. Warmth. From the touch…? Pain. Breath. Sounds. Feeling! There was a body. My body! The thought gripped the mind. My body. Me. I am… information was supplied instantaneously. Pavel. I am Pavel. I am 24. I am Pavel, I am 24. Hearing returned.
"I don't know." He knew that voice. He knew he should respond. He couldn't.
"This isn't fair on him, if he didn't want to live like this, supported by a machine!" He knew that voice too.
"Okay." Pause. "It's here." Pause. There was a rustle.
"He doesn't want this." Couldn't respond.
"Okay." Click. He could feel it slip away. No!
There was a beep. It was long and low.
Focus on the beep!
The beep stopped.
"My god!"
"He's…"
Suddenly, hands touching. Cold. Even colder. Hiss.
A bright light entered his head and cleared the fogginess. "Can you hear me?" That voice! He knew it! "Can you hear me, Pavel?" it sounded urgent and insistent. If only he knew how to respond. Pavel could feel something moving. Trying to move. He couldn't tell if the movement was voluntary or not. He focused on making the movement happen.
Light pierced his eyes and, despite the pain it caused, Pavel tried to shut them again. "No, no!" The voice of Dr McCoy reached him. "Pavel, stay awake! Look at me if you can hear me!" The light dimmed. A shadow appeared above him and Pavel could vaguely make out the doctor's head. He slowly unscrewed his eyes until a solid but blurry image of the doctor filled his view. He was grinning.
"Bones, is he…?" The other voice asked from a distance. Chekov could name it now. It was Jim. He sounded dreadful.
"He's alive, Jim." The doctor smiled. "And he's awake." Jim's outline appeared next to the doctor's.
"Pavel," He murmured gently. He let out a sigh of relief. "You're okay."
"Что случилось (*)?" Then he frowned. "Ah… wha-"
"What do you remember?" Jim asked. Either he had anticipated Pavel's question or he had found time to learn Russian.
"I… is difficult…"
"Pavel, we have a translator. Go ahead and speak in Russian." Jim smiled fondly.
"One of the guards… sent you a message…" Pavel paused as the memory came back to him. "He beamed me…out of Moscow." He met Jim's gaze from where he lay. "It was raining."
His captain's eyes closed and his shoulders shook in silent laughter. The corner of Pavel's mouth twitched upwards. Doctor McCoy suddenly twisted behind him. When he turned back around, there was a tube connected to a hypo spray.
"This should ease the pain a little." He explained as he uncovered the top part of Chekov's arm. He gently pressed the spray and the tube shot into Pavel's arm.
"Morphine?" He identified. "How bad am I?"
Bones looked down at his patient whilst trying to decide what to tell him. Those soulful brown eyes stared back up at him, waiting.
"Well, let's say that until a few minutes ago, I didn't think you were going to pull through." Bones finally answered.
"A few minutes ago?" Pavel asked.
Before Bones could reply, Jim burst in, "We'd just turned off life-support. And then about two seconds after, you started breathing again." He gave Pavel a weak smile.
"That was the sound?" Pavel asked quietly.
"What sound?" Bones replied.
"The beeping. I was trying to focus on the beeping." He murmured.
"Has the morphine taken effect yet?" Bones asked. He was trying to ignore the fact that his patient had been subconsciously aware of the lack of his heartbeat. It had been heard of before, people who heard or watched themselves dying and were able to make their heart restart from that, but it was horrible to think that if Pavel hadn't been aware, Bones would've ended a life that had been trying to go on.
Pavel nodded. "Can't feel a thing." Bones looked across at Jim. He was frowning.
"Pavel," Jim started. His navigator turned to look at him. "What-"
"He needs to sleep, Jim." Bones cut in. He knew where Jim was headed, and he instinctively knew that Chekov wouldn't be able to handle the news now. Well, at least not in a good way.
"No, I'm-"
"You need to sleep!" McCoy insisted to his patient. The doctor watched as Chekov's eyes closed silently. He knew the morphine flowing into the man's body was helping to make him so compliant. It only took a minute for Chekov's breathing to become deep and regular. Bones leaned forward and pressed a button in silence. Satisfied at last, he turned and followed Jim out of the room.
(* The Russian here means "what happened?" Jim hears the translated version and then asks what Chekov remembers, so that he can fill him in. The rest of Chekov's speech is Russian.)
Scotty paced the space behind the captain's chair, trying not to think about Chekov. The navigator had been in a pretty bad way when they had last been allowed in sickbay to see him. He had been there for almost three weeks now. Scotty shuddered. They had picked up transporter residue and had found the pinpoint location of the young, horribly wounded man. The captain had ordered an immediate rescue mission and of course, he hadn't been short of volunteers. Scotty had been among the group that went down to get him and now the engineer regretted wanting to have done so. The image of the ravaged body lying face down in a deserted alleyway was all he could see. It was burned onto the backs of his eyelids. Lacerations, blood, lumps of flesh, the pure look of lifelessness… Scotty blinked to clear his head.
There had been a lot of people wanting to see him, mainly his friends, Sulu, Uhura and himself. Chekov had been immediately taken into an isolation unit and had been treated by doctors and nurses wearing bio-suits. Doctor McCoy had declared the Russian so weak that the slightest virus or bacteria could kill him. Five times they had lost his heartbeat. Five times the medical staff had worked almost around the clock to get it back. As the days had gone by, there had been a growing crowd of silent supporters outside the ensign's room. Eventually, the doctors had put a stop to it and only the captain or Mr Spock were allowed to see Chekov. Flowers, cards and gifts had been left outside the room for him. Scotty knew that some of the religious members of the crew were praying for his recovery and a round-the-clock vigil was being held in the chapel. People were lighting candles for him!
A smile stretched over the engineer's face. Rumours had spread snippets of truth –as they do- and word had spread round the ship that their chief navigator thought himself worthless and that he had walked away from freedom from his abductors twice to save their lives. The entirety of the crew seemed to feel that they had to prove their thankfulness. Scotty couldn't even begin to imagine how Chekov would react.
With that thought, he winced. The rest of the crew may have been under the pretence that Chekov was getting better, but the bridge crew could tell that that was not necessarily so. Scotty couldn't remember ever seeing Jim so horribly distracted by the thoughts consuming him. Of course, he knew how Chekov really was, but the last news he had given to anybody concerning Chekov was that he was on total life-support. Jim had tried to convince the people around him that this was good, that it meant that Chekov's body could heal and rest while he was blissfully unaware of the pain. Scotty and a few others suspected that what the news actually meant was that soon, doctor McCoy would have to look at Chekov's file and turn off the life-support if that's what the ensign had wanted. He knew that 'total life-support' meant that medical staff didn't think he would live.
He hoped that Chekov would prove them wrong.
"Bones, why did you cut me off?" Jim asked as he accepted a glass of Saurian brandy. "He's going to have to be told." He watched the doctor intently as he sipped his drink.
"I know, Jim. But the man's just woken up, he's in pain, he's probably confused about a lot of stuff and I'm still not even-" Bones cut himself off and turned away from his friend.
"Still not what?" Jim asked, stepping back into his line of vision. Bones sat down at his desk with a heavy sigh. He couldn't meet the captain's gaze.
"I've turned life-support back on. Jim, the only reason he is alive is because his subconscious was awake." Bones paused and lifted his steely blue eyes to meet Jim's hazel ones. "It's not rare, Jim, for people to be awake just long enough so that they're not killed. That's not to say he definitely won't die." He muttered.
"You're saying…" Jim paused. "That he's not out of danger?" Before Bones could reply, the shrill sound of a patient alarm split the air around them. With a frown, McCoy glanced at the monitor. Chekov's vitals were all fine. That meant that he had pressed the alarm. The doctor stood and left the office, knowing Jim would follow him.
The young Russian was barely conscious when Bones entered the room. "Doctor," he began. His voice was weak, weaker than it had been five minutes ago.
"Don't fight the morphine, Pavel. You need to rest." He said as he walked back towards the bedside. He could see Jim leaning on the doorway out of the corner of his eye.
"Where…" Chekov's eyes slipped shut and then fluttered. It was taking all of his energy to stay awake. "Is Koloth?" His voice cracked and he turned his depthless eyes onto Bones'. "Can he stay with me?" It was a barely audible whisper. The doctor's face twitched.
"Not right now, Pavel. He can't come." He replied softly. He wasn't sure if Chekov had heard him, the man was already unconscious again. Bones looked across the room at his captain.
"Next time he wakes up?" Jim asked, his arms folding across his chest.
"Fine." McCoy scowled.
Uhura walked up to the door of Dr McCoy's office tentatively. She tapped gently and the doors slid open in response. As she walked in, she once again wondered why the doctor could possibly want to see her. If it was something to do with Chekov, he would probably have told all his friends at once and as far as she knew, no-one else had been called to see him.
"Nyota," Bones smiled briefly. Kirk was also there, pacing up and down with his chin resting gently in his hand.
"Is everything alright, doctor?" she asked as she accepted a glass of wine. She took a sip and her eyebrows rose. It was quite strong. Bones sighed and indicated a seat to her.
Nyota sat down quietly. Bones continued to stand with his arms folded across his chest. He looked back to Jim.
"Everything is not alright." Jim answered. He stopped pacing and walked towards Nyota. "As you know, Koloth… well, you know." Uhura nodded in silence.
"So the problem is?" She prompted after Jim remained silent.
"Pavel doesn't know." Jim caught her gaze.
Nyota took another drink to avoid having to answer while she thought about what Jim had said. As she swallowed, she realised what this meant.
"You want me to tell him?" She asked incredulously, placing her wineglass on the table. "No! He's going to be-"
"Really upset, I know," Jim interrupted smoothly. "So wouldn't it be better coming from a friend?" Nyota considered her captain's words in silence. It did made sense, she supposed, but he would probably react better if he was in front of someone he considered senior. Pavel knew he could let go of formalities in front of her.
"Captain, while I may be more able to give him some comfort, it will look like you were scared to tell him, or you couldn't care. I don't really think you want to enforce either of those impressions onto him." She paused. Jim was frowning worriedly as he reconsidered the choices he was making. "Perhaps you should tell him, while I'm there."
Bones sighed and unfolded his arms. "Nyota, we've agreed we should tell him next time he wakes up." Uhura nodded. "Now, at the minute, I'm keeping him under with morphine. If I cut the feed, he'll wake up in his own time. Do you want to be there when he wakes up, or would you rather I come and get you?"
"I'll be there." She said immediately. While Nyota didn't particularly want to tell Pavel about his brother, there was no way that she was going to miss a chance to see him. The doctor simply nodded.
"Shall we?" He asked and indicated the door leading to the private room Chekov was in.
Spock waited silently for the reports to start. He wasn't quite sure why he was doing this. The Vulcan thought over his actions again, trying to figure out why it was logical to do this. Whatever happened today would only serve to anger the crew and probably frighten Chekov, and he didn't need that.
"The Klingon ambassador - who had, we have been informed, been involved in an attempt to kill a Starfleet officer - …" Spock stopped focussing on what the reporter was saying as he wondered how they had found out about all this. The entire incident had been covered up by the fleet, so who had told them? Possibly it was mentioned in the court.
"… Described him as an honourless creature before sentencing him to 15 years of labour on Rura Penthe. According to our resources-"
Spock terminated the report. While he knew that the Klingons would only have charged him with treason – and possibly the murder of his son – 15 years still didn't sound like enough. He knew it certainly wouldn't sound enough to his peers, who had all become obsessed with any news about this case. Very few of the crew aboard the Enterprise were actually friends with Chekov, but they had all wanted to rescue him when he had gone missing. They had all decided to pray for his recovery and even non-religious members of the crew had found ways to show their respect to the young man who had almost given his life to protect them – or so they thought.
Only the few people who had been at Koloth's questioning knew that there had never been a threat to the ship. Everyone else still believed that there had been a bomb on the Enterprise that would've detonated if Pavel hadn't cooperated with his captors. The captain had simply let them continue thinking that and Spock trusted him enough to follow his lead without question.
With a feeling of utter dread in his stomach, Spock swept out of the room to tell the captain what he now knew.
Nyota had sat by Pavel's bedside for two hours, holding his small, pale hand in hers and talking to him. Her mind wandered and she simply uttered anything and everything that came into her head to the sleeping form in front of her. It wasn't like he was listening, anyway.
Eventually, she sighed. "Oh, honey," she crooned and reached to stroke stray hair away from his face. "Why did this happen to you? Of all the people the world could pick on, it had to be you." She gave a sad smile and gently stroked Chekov's dark hair out of his eyes again. It was a complete five seconds before she realised he was watching her.
Uhura's hand shot back to her side and she straightened. "Oh, you're awake." She smiled.
"It's you," he murmured back to her. "I was beginning to think none of you cared."
"We've been waiting to see you since the day you got back sweetheart; doctor McCoy said you weren't well enough."
"And now I am?" Pavel's voice was barely above a whisper and Nyota could see the flickers of pain crossing his face every time he spoke or moved. She stared down at him for a long time before answering him.
"Well, Bones checked on you. And the captain visited every day. I think they didn't want to overwhelm you by having everyone here when you woke up." The young Russian's dark eyes slipped shut again and for a moment, Nyota thought he'd gone back to sleep.
"They're hiding something from me." He croaked. "Something to do with-" Pavel was interrupted by the swish of the doors as the doctor and Jim entered the room.
"You feelin' a little more human, son?" McCoy asked as he leaned over to check the readings on the biobed.
"A little." Pavel whispered back. Bones gave him a wry grin as he stepped away and took a seat next to Uhura. "Where's the rest of them?" he added in Russian.
Nyota smiled as she translated. Of course, he meant Sulu and Scotty. "They're not allowed yet." She replied with a smug grin. Pavel watched her and his lips twitched into a smile.
Jim watched the scene play out in front of him. The young navigator had already been through so much. It felt cruel to give him yet another burden. He sighed and crossed his arms. Being a captain certainly wasn't how it was made out to be Jim thought ruefully as he frowned at the floor. A wave of sickness swept over him as deep brown eyes met his across the room.
"Captain?" he asked. The Russian accent lacing his words had thickened over the period that he had been away. Hesitantly, Jim met his gaze.
He forced a small smile onto his features and moved closer to the three.