Chapter 4: A Shameful Secret

Isara

No one had ordered me back down to the med bay, so I stood straight-backed behind the captain's chair while Bones tried to dissuade Kirk from taking a shuttle down to the planet.

"You don't rob a bank when the getaway car has a flat tire!" Bones followed Kirk around the bridge, gesturing wildly. I had never really seen the two of them together before, but it was obvious that they were really close. I felt a stab of jealously, followed by a jolt of happiness that I was apparently allowed to be possessive now, followed by a wave of guilt. I had no right to begrudge Bones and Kirk their friendship, and anyway, it was obvious that, however much he trusted Bones, Kirk was still going to be stubborn and do what he believed to be right.

I took a moment to observe the others on the bridge, trying to clear my head from swirling emotions. First there was Commander Spock, his back bent and head lowered intently over the viewscreen at his station. Next was Lieutenant Uhura. She was gathering herself in preparation for the trip down to the surface of the planet, but her head was always slightly angled towards the Commander. I knew that they were dating, but it seemed like they were avoiding each other now. I wondered vaguely if the incident on Nibiru might have had something to do with their disagreement.

Finally was Mr. Sulu, trying not to look too pleased as he settled into the captain's chair. From what I had seen he was a good officer, but very professional. I couldn't decipher much of anything from his actions.

My observations were interrupted by Bones stage whispering at Kirk again. "You just sent that man in there with no cards and told him to bluff!" Despite the seriousness of the situation, his drawn eyebrows and strange speech made him appear almost comical.

I couldn't help but giggle at Kirk's response, ending with an annoyed "Enough with the metaphors!" Bones sulked back over to keep me company behind Mr. Sulu's new chair as Kirk, Spock and Uhura exited the bridge.

Mr. Sulu made a ship-wide announcement telling the crew of the shuttle's immediate departure, then another which would be broadcasted down to the planet for John Harrison's ears only. A shiver passed down my spine as I stood at attention behind the acting captain of the most powerful ship in the fleet, listening to a threat involving the six dozen missiles that we had on board. My entrance into the world of the Enterprise had been rushed and confusing and distressing, and I suddenly remembered the hundreds of lives at stake on this mission. There was power and professionalism in the stance of everyone around me, and I felt like an outsider more than ever. This world was not mine; it belonged to the larger-than-life versions of the people I knew from the Academy.

"Remind me to never piss you off, Mr. Sulu." Bones's voice once again jolted me out of my reverie. I couldn't see Sulu's smile, but I could feel it.

Before I could start to wonder whether I should remain on the bridge, Bones turned to leave and gestured me to follow him. We stepped into the elevator and the doors slid shut with a whisper.

The ride down to the med bay wasn't very long, but it felt like eons. Bones and I kept gravitating towards each other, realizing our close proximity, and edging back apart. Once our hands brushed, and we both jumped as if electrocuted. We were very careful to avoid eye contact. This was getting ridiculous.

I was going to say something to break the tension, but I didn't get the opportunity to as the door glided back open and we marched down the corridor into the med bay. At this point in the journey, the med bay was a swarm of activity. Nurses and lower level medical officers bustled around, performing checks, organizing equipment, and dealing with minor medical problems.

Bones turned to me. "There obviously haven't been any major incidents- yet, anyway." He sighed. "Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that we don't have any patients. There are a few new crewmen on this trip, and they sometimes get space sick." He gestured towards a very green-looking man perched on the end of a bed and holding a bucket. "There's an injection for that, he should be getting it any second." No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a nurse shuffled over and administered a shot to the man's upper arm. Within mere seconds the green tinge was receding from his face.

"We get a lot of patients at the beginning of each trip with illnesses, minor injuries," here he gestured towards an embarrassed-looking woman who had already broken her toe working in engineering, "and anxiety."

"Really? Do you get many people anxious enough to have to come here?"

"Yeah, a few. Anyway, I need you to just help the nurses for now while I do a little paperwork and check to see if Starfleet had okayed our request to have you on board." He gestured me towards an official looking woman with a clipboard. I flashed a quick smile and wandered over.

The woman seemed to take me in in one brief glance- from my sensible but shiny black shoes, up my long blue tunic to my Starfleet medical officer pin, to my earnest expression and functional ponytail.

"New?" She asked.

"Yes. Doctor Isara Jones, reporting for duty aboard the USS Enterprise."

It seemed like the woman had forgotten about me. She went back to scanning her clipboard, flipping pages back and forth and frowning. After about thirty seconds I cleared my throat softly.

"All right dear, don't rush me." The woman finally tugged a sheet of paper from her clipboard and handed it to me. "Ensign Chancey is the one with a broken toe. Scan it and deal with it however seems reasonable. Regeneration machine is there in the corner. Here's your tricorder." Then she bustled off, leaving me standing, slightly dazed, with a slip of paper and a tricorder.

After a moment to collect myself, I slipped on my best relaxed smile and walked over to the bed where Ensign Chancey sat. She looked absolutely mortified through the pain of her toe.

"Good morning, Ensign Chancey!" I double checked the paper in my hand and kept my trained smile fixed on my face. "It says here that you were running a routine maintenance operation on one of the consoles and dropped the interface onto your foot. Is that correct?" The woman blushed and nodded. "And one of the nurses has removed your shoes and wrapped your toe in gauze, I see. Have you been given any medicine at all?" I scanned her with my eyes as I spoke and started listing things to check.

The woman shook her head. "I've just been sitting here waiting for a few minutes, no one has really had time to fix me up yet."

I nodded briskly. "Right, let's start with something to dull the pain while we take a look." I checked the paper for drug allergies and rifled through the cabinet opposite the bed, finally pulling out an inhaler. I held this out to her.

"Please put this into your mouth, press the top and breathe in. Hold the breath for as long as you comfortably can, then exhale slowly." I watched Chancey's grimace as the bitter medicine entered her trachea, and then she relaxed as the drug began to take immediate effect. "Can you feel the pain beginning to lessen?"

"Yes, it's much better." Chancey smiled at me, but I hardly saw because I was already bent over the offending digit. Now that the toe was numb, I was free to prod it. I knew that the tricorder would make short work of the diagnosis, but I always liked to make my own first. The toe had been crushed pretty badly, and, in addition to the shattered phalanges, the skin was already purple and stretched with internal bleeding. This injury was quite a bit nastier than first appearances would suggest, and I was thankful that I hadn't simply stuck Chancey's foot into the regeneration machine. Growing back bone was one thing, but rearranging bone fragments without exacerbating the already serious internal damage was beyond that medical miracle.

Just to verify, I took out the tricorder and set it to send all of the information it gathered directly to the medical database for the ship. I had always liked the noise that they made, sort of a soothing whirring with beeping overtones, and I was momentarily lost in memories of my days at the academy as I scanned Chancey's entire foot. The readout showed that the damage was localized to the one toe, though the rest would be a little sore from spreading bruises. The bone itself was not as badly splintered as I had worried, and it would be fine to regenerate as soon as the swelling went down. I called a nurse over.

"I'm Dr. Jones, I'm a bit new here. Can you get me a cold pack and some anti-inflammatories that won't act as blood thinners? Thanks." I decided against naming a specific drug since I didn't know what supplies were on board, and I trusted the woman to get me what I needed. When the nurse hurried back a moment later, I wrapped the toe back up in clean gauze. I applied the cold pack, settled the blankets around Chancey's feet, and had her take the drugs. With a bright smile, I stood back to admire my handiwork.

"I'm afraid there's nothing that we can do until the swelling goes down, but then it will be quick work to regenerate the bones. You'll have to stay here for a few more hours, and I'll leave a record for the nurses telling them when to give you pain medicine and change your icepack, and what to do when the bruising has subsided. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Chancey shook her head, smiling. "Thanks, Doctor!" Her face fell. "I can't believe I managed to do this on the first day of the mission, though."

I seriously considered hugging her, then decided that I had to draw the line somewhere. I didn't want my patients to think I was creepy or overly-emotional. Keeping my hugs to myself, I stepped away from the bed and pulled out an information screen to make a note of her medical arrangements. With one last smile, I pushed the screen back into the wall and turned away.

The first thing I saw was Bones leaning against the wall. He was smiling lightly at me, but the instant our eyes met he whipped around and headed back around the corner. I followed, wondering what he had thought of how I handled my first patient.

Bones had stepped into his office, so I waited to follow him in until I had finished filling out the slip and returned to the nurse. Then I knocked and entered when I heard Bones say "Come in."

I was already talking as I went through the door, aiming my speech in the general direction of the figure seated behind the desk. "You run an old-fashioned med bay, don't you? I mean, paper? Really? All the information is on the PADDs, but you still use paper. And tricorders don't seem to be the main tool here, unlike… on other… ships…"

I trailed off as I saw the glimpse of silver that Bones was hiding under his desk, his expression guilty. Completely forgetting that he was my superior officer, I marched over and snatched the flask out of his grasp. I didn't say anything. We both stared at the solitary amber drop trailing down the side of the miniature bottle. I looked at him. He looked at the floor.

"Bones?" my voice was soft, as though I was coaxing a shy bird and didn't want to frighten it away. He sighed deeply. "You lied in your letter, didn't you." It wasn't a question. "Your aviophobia isn't getting any better." That wasn't a question either.

When we were at the academy together, I knew that Bones used drink as a coping mechanism. It didn't interfere with our friendship or his classes, so I never really said anything about it. What I hadn't known was that his problem was severe enough for him to risk demotion, possibly even expulsion, to drink on the job.

I opened my mouth, fully prepared to launch into a lecture full of moral condemnation and medical jargon, when Bones looked up. His eyes were large and he looked like a begging puppy, whether intentionally or not I didn't know. My resolve weakened and warped before failing a moment later. I sighed and slammed the flask down onto his desk hard enough to make him jump.

"Damn it, Bones!" He shrank away from me, obviously expecting reproach, but I leaned forward and wrapped him into a hug. This hug was full of comfort and companionship, as well as warning and support. My fists pressed into his back in a way that I was sure couldn't have been entirely comfortable. Despite this, Bones melted into the hug. His nose pressed into the hollow where my neck met my shoulder, and his lips unintentionally brushed my collarbone. I shivered at the light contact.

Bones took a shaky breath and laughed bitterly into my tunic. "I don't know what you think of me now, but I deserve it. I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm terrified of space and flying but I certainly can't go back to my old life. I'm… I'm…" he trailed off and took another shaky breath, then for a moment the only sound was our breathing.

"No you're not," I said quietly. "Most of the time you're just fine. Yeah, maybe you drink a little. But you're still the best doctor in the fleet, and you've saved more lives than anyone can count." I gestured around me as I spoke. "That's why you're here: you love helping people, and, deep down, you love the adventure."

Bones chuckled darkly. "You don't know how many people I've saved. You don't know how many people I couldn'tsave."

I sighed, a little annoyed that he couldn't see his worth. "Okay, sure. I don't know. But every doctor has failures, I know that more than anyone." Bones, you've barely been on-edge for this entire thing so far, even when the engines failed. The old you would have had a complete breakdown in that situation." He sighed but I didn't let him interject. "As a medical professional, like you," I looked at him pointedly, "my theory is that something just made you a little more emotionally unstable than usual. That's why you're shaken now, but you'll be fine again in a bit."

I pulled away and his hands slid reluctantly from my back. I could see in his eyes that he was still ashamed and unsure. As I poured the contents of the flask down the drain in the small sink on the other side of the room, I asked, "What is this stuff, anyway?"

He mumbled something unintelligible. "What?"

"Mbbmgmbrrmbm."

I looked at Bones, trying to gauge his thoughts. I decided to take a wild risk and act on my instinct- after all, it had served me well in the past. I walked back over to Bones and crouched in front of him, tipping his chin upwards with the tips of my fingers. His eyes widened in surprise as I leaned forward and delicately brushed my lips against his. When I stepped back, his eyes were shut and an expression of extreme confusion was spread across his face. I waited until his eyes had opened again before I very obviously licked my lips.

"Jack Daniels? Really, if you're going to take the risk, Bones, make it something better than that." I turned and walked lightly out of the room.

When I was back into the main area of the med bay, I had to lean against the wall for a minute to steady my soaringly light head. Wow. Just, wow. I couldn't believe that I had just done that.

After seeing the look on Bones's face, I was pretty curious what he had thought of my daring little move.

Bones

Seconds earlier

He couldn't believe that she had caught him drinking. She was his friend, sure, but she would still probably report him to a superior officer. She would be right to do so. More than that, she was obviously ashamed of him. The disappointed look in her eyes was harder to bear than any threat of demotion.

She had asked him what he was drinking, hadn't she? He muttered something noncommittal in response.

She was coming back over. What was she doing? Why was she- oh no. She was going to kiss him. She was going to kiss him. She was going to-

...Wow...