Chapter 14

Kirk groaned and collapsed against the turbo lift wall, his eyes closed tightly. McCoy grabbed him in the middle of his slid to the floor. "Dimmit, I'm taking you to sickbay right now." McCoy said with alarm.

Kirk shook his head, "No…I'll go myself … go to Spock." "You sure you can make it there?" Kirk nodded. He closed his eyes tighter against the pain. His wheezy breathing disturbed the doctor. He coughed painfully and sputtered some blood.

With the recede of the adrenaline, the severity of his condition was showing itself.

McCoy was relieved when the doors opened and he saw three novice and very nervous paramedics waiting for the lift.

"You! Take him to sick bay," he shouted to the first one, pointing to the unsteady captain, "Start routine checkups and first aid. Monitor his vitals. The rest of you, with me. move!"

Three anxious 'yessirs' could be heard. Jim would be where he belongs, the doctor assured himself. The captain didn't even protest as he was helped out of the lift, and that worried McCoy even more. He just turned back and said, with his eyes only, 'save him.' And then was carried out. He nodded back, as reassuringly as he could.

The lift doors closed. Two apprehensive, and he guessed, inexperience paramedics, stood with him in the lift. He was more than concerned for Jim but he couldn't afford to dwell in it. 'He's gonna be fine,' he repeated to himself like a mantra. 'But now I have to go save the hobgoblin.'

Leonard McCoy could not remember another time when he had been this much happy to see Spock. But that pleasure turned sour with his first medical scan.

Spock was flat on the transporter pad, unconscious and bleeding from a number of visible gushes. He was a mass of green blood and bruises.

McCoy knelt beside him. Broken ribs and internal bleeding. How the hell did he survive all those injuries?

With the help of his new found assistants, he loaded the Vulcan onto a stretcher and moved him out.

"Collapsed left lung… bruised liver…severe trauma to the right kidney…" One of them was listing as he moved the device over Spock's body. But McCoy already knew them all and didn't really want to hear them again. That just unnerved him even more.

They laid the unconscious Vulcan on one of the bio-beds. The first priority was to keep him alive and going. "He is critical. Start blood transfusion now. Vulcan T negative. Bring in oxygen, I want to repair that blasted lung of his." The doctor yelled.

His two aids scrambled to prepare his ordered instruments. He glanced to the other bed where Jim lay unconscious, a mask placed on his pale face. "How is he?" he asked the paramedic assessing his knee. "He lost consciousness just as I got him here. His vitals are low but not critical. The bleeding has stopped. Contusion in left lung. Three broken ribs. But the pleural cavity is uncompromised. We are ready for operation."

McCoy nodded, in full doctor mood now. He glanced at the monitor over Kirk's bed. In shock. Low blood pressure, tachycardia, hyperventilating.

Both of his patients needed immediate operation. But Spock's collapsed lung was his priority.

He didn't waste time and started to work his miracle. Stopping internal bleedings, reflating the collapsed lung, closing off the gushing wounds.

Spock was going to survive. He had to. McCoy thought about a hundred ways of killing the Vulcan if he did not. He was fuming the whole time under his breath, damning Vulcan anatomy and physiology and their general pig-headedness. The operation was too tricky, and his frayed nerves were already on edges without any added stress. The indicators showed that Spock's body went into its healing trance. Good sign. But not out of the woods yet. More medical observation and intervention was in order, but he didn't want to think about them right now.

All the while he checked on Kirk's condition closely and gave instructions to the paramedics to tend to him.

One full hour passed before the doctor was satisfied and let his assistants do the rest of the job on Spock.

Without a moment of rest, he started his next operation. Kirk's knee was a mess of blood and torn, swollen flesh.

McCoy had given him drugs to clear his lung tissue of the bruises and to reduce the inflammation to keep the injured lung as clear as possible. But he knew that his kind of injury took a long time to heal. 'God, if Jim had a Vulcan self-healing mechanism, life would have been too easy for me, right?' He was more concerned about the complications that was sure to follow.

He was at first reluctant to use the endotracheal tube. It was invasive and caused even more complications. But with Jim unconscious and his critically low blood oxygen saturation, he was forced to intubate him.

The knee was another matter. Bone and tissue regenerator only prompt the body's natural healing process and shorten the time to recover from the injury. There was no magical healing.

The doctor was amazed that Kirk had stayed conscious at all on the bridge. Any other man and he would have crumbled in no time, whining and screaming.

He looked at his friend again. His drawn face was marred with angry bruises and the oxygen tube protruding from his mouth. The lips split, swollen. The sight tore at his heart. This should not have happened.

He had been in his own reveries for some time when he sensed the paramedics' concerned eyes on him. He pretended to do another quick check and then left the room.