"No sir, the only relevant item we found in the dumpster was a jacket with a Starfleet logo." the officer said, handing said jacket over to Christopher Pike. It was undamaged, no blood stains or anything out of the ordinary. "The communicator was in one of the pockets. The manager said the jacket was left here yesterday afternoon by a blonde boy in his late teens, and they threw the jacket out after closing. They didn't check the pockets."

Chris knew this was good news considering the terror that had been coursing through him for the last hour, but it did little to calm the dark-haired doctor standing at his shoulder. Leonard McCoy was literally bouncing on his heels in agitation. Pike handed him the jacket, thanking the officer and leading the way back to the 'fleet car they'd driven here in. The local police had responded quickly and efficiently for once, and now had a photo of Jim and an alert for the entire county.

"Look, it's early in the game here." Chris said to McCoy, who had begun to go through the pockets of Jim's jacket. He pulled out a comm unit, an ID badge, an electronic cigarette ("dammit, Jim!") and some credit chips. "There's no evidence of foul play, and he hasn't been gone for more than 24 hours. He probably just forgot his jacket, went home with some chick and overslept."

McCoy did not look convinced, but he said nothing, opening Jim's communicator and flipping through the messages. Chris was surprised at how alarmed the man still was over what was probably just a teenager doing what teenagers do.

"Look, maybe you've seen him on his best behavior for the last few months," he began, "But Jim never has walked the straight and narrow. He's got six arrests on his record. He ever tell you about his past?"

"He ain't old enough to have a past," McCoy drawled, but then shook he head. "All I know is that his parents were 'fleet, he's from Iowa, and he don't wanna talk about it."

"Well that's his business, but I'll go ahead and tell you that he was a world-class hooligan. To the point where his parents sent him away for a few years, even." Pike patted the man's shoulder. "The first time I met him he was drunk off his ass and he'd just been in a fight."

"Yeah, me too."

"Then you already know what his favorite hobbies are-"

"Dammit man, I know what you're thinkin', but he doesn't do this." McCoy's voice was fierce, "I've seen him go out, I've seen him come back with black eyes, but he doesn't do it on school nights and he always comes back before curfew." He continued digging through the jacket while he talked. "I get the impression that he thinks this is his last chance for... hell, for something, and he's not screwing it up... He got allergies you know of?"

Chris's eyes narrowed at the white stick in McCoy's hand. "What makes you say that?"

"This is an epi-pen." McCoy's eyebrows were drawn together in a furious v-shape. "People don't carry these things for fun, and they don't fuck around and stay out all night if they've lost one. They go home and get a spare. This is proof, dammit! Jim had no intention of staying out all night!"

Chris felt a tendril of dread crawl up his spine, though he tried not to show it. That was pretty compelling evidence. Chris was no doctor but he had access to Jim's partly-classified medical files and he'd seen the long ridiculous list of stuff the kid was allergic to. Something to do with the radiation burst he'd been exposed to when the Kelvin's warp core blew, causing all sorts of weird anomalies with his immune and endocrine systems. For an adult a single treatment for radiation sickness would have sufficed, but for a newborn who'd been dependent upon his mother's immune system until mere minutes earlier it was a recipe for permanent damage.

The endocrine stuff had been largely fixable, but even in the 23rd century allergies were tricky and dangerous to deal with. Surely Jim would have come back for his jacket once he realized he'd left his epi-pen in it? Or he'd have gone home last night, not gone roaming around the city. Yeah, he was kind of reckless but he wasn't outright stupid.

"Yeah, ok, he's got allergies. Weird ones." Chris motioned for the doctor to get back in the 'fleet car they'd left campus in. McCoy had come bursting into his office minutes after sunrise and they'd screeched away from the Academy in time to pull up in front of the coffee house at the same moment the cops did. "He might be a hoodlum but he's not dumb. Thing is, I don't even know where to start looking."

McCoy was strapping himself into the passenger seat as Chris climbed in and gripped the steering wheel hard. It was early, not even eight hundred yet. There were a million places the kid could be, and with less than 24 hours on the clock since he'd last been seen Chris couldn't call in Starfleet security to start searching everywhere.

McCoy was holding the pen, twirling it nervously in his fingers. "I know he goes drinking on the weekends, but I usually don't go with him so I can't say where. On school nights he goes to coffee shops with his homework, he loves coffee a little too much..."

There was a sharp tap on the passenger side window, and McCoy rolled it down for the officer standing there. She was holding her radio up as if she'd been listening, leaning down so she could see both McCoy and Chris.

"Captain," she informed them, "Grady Ross Memorial reports admitting a young man, blonde, in Starfleet blacks. Yesterday evening, respiratory distress."

"Fucking shit," spat McCoy, one fist pounding his knee. The officer raised her eyebrows.

"Thank you, officer, you've been excellent," Chris said, cranking the car and pulling out into traffic. He almost called for a police escort so they could get there faster, but if Jim was already in the hospital he was safe, and their taking five minutes longer to get there wouldn't hurt anything. The tension in Chris's chest eased somewhat when the hospital came into view. McCoy did not appear to relax whatsoever.

The Orion nurse at the front, apparently oblivious to Chris's uniform and McCoy's white lab coat, informed them that Jim (John Doe, as it were, since his ID had been in his jacket too) wasn't able to receive visitors. Without hesitation McCoy pulled his own ID out and held it up before her eyes.

"Starfleet Medical. He's ours, and you're going to release him to me. Now."

Two minutes later they were standing in an ICU where Jim was actually strapped down to a biobed by his wrists, intubated and sedated, and McCoy was reading over the kid's chart in a state of almost apoplectic rage. Chris pulled out his comm and called for an ambulance to transport them to the Starfleet Hospital, getting an ETA of about fifteen minutes. It really wasn't clear to him what as wrong with Jim. There were no signs of injury, but his face was somewhat swollen and there were bruises up and down his forearms. In a fight, maybe? Hit by a car?

He was opening his mouth to ask what the chart said when the doctor on duty entered the ward. McCoy nearly thrust the chart right into the poor man's face.

"What the fuck is this supposed to be?"

Chris wondered vaguely if McCoy ought to prescribe himself some Xanax. The other doctor, a human older than McCoy but younger than Chris, peered at the chart before him while his expression shifted from neutral to confused to pissed in the space of about two seconds.

"A drug overdose, it says." Chris frowned. Jim had to know that was exactly the kind of thing that would get him removed from the Academy.

"But the tox screen is clean," McCoy countered, pointing again at the chart.

"And who knows what kind of alien stuff these kids get up to these days?"

"Have you even looked at him?"

"I just got here this morning, but the EMT that picked him up called it."

"Is your EMT a dirty hobo?" McCoy shrieked, apparently having reached his breaking point. "What the fuck, am I drunk right now? How drunk am I? Because this kind of incompetence just doesn't happen in real life! And even if it looked like a drug overdose, WHICH IT FUCKING DOESN'T, why is he tied to the goddamned bed?"

Chris reached out and took ahold of the back of McCoy's coat. He didn't know this man very well, had heard of him from Jim of course, but just met him today and had no idea if he might become violent or not. If he did, these assholes would probably deserve it, but they couldn't afford for McCoy to be arrested right this minute.

The other doctor had backed away, but answered in a small voice, "Because he woke up twice and pulled his IV out, fought the nurses, and told the attending that he didn't want any drugs."

"And when a patient tells you that they don't want any drugs, your ER keeps giving them drugs?"

"Of course, we needed to flush his system and get his breathing under control-"

"Just shut the fuck up. I don't even want to fucking hear it." McCoy pulled the epi-pen out of his pocket, and, pulling out of Chris's grip, pressed it to the side of Jim's neck. "I want tri-ox and something to counteract the sedatives, we're taking him as soon as the 'fleet ambulance gets here."

McCoy eyed the other doctor, who hadn't moved.

"Like yesterday, dipshit!"

The doctor was gone. Chris, however, wasn't watching him. His eyes were on Jim, who looked miraculously better even in the few seconds since McCoy had administered the dose of epinephrine. The deep flush of his skin had faded, the swelling in his face was receding almost visibly. An alarm went off above the bed, but McCoy reached out and shut it off. Chris raised an eyebrow.

"Heart monitor," McCoy answered his unasked question. He was still trembling with anger, but his hands were steady. He held up the pen. "This stuff is adrenalin, literally, so when you get a dose your body reacts no differently than if you're being chased by a tiger. Your heart races, you sweat, you hyperventilate, the whole bit. It's inconvenient, but the stuff works like magic. He'll be fine when he gets out of this shithole."

"So, what does the chart say? Was it an allergic reaction?"

"Clearly it was, and clearly whoever picked him up is a fucking moron." On the monitor, Jim's heartbeat was beginning to slow to a more normal rate. "The chart says that he collapsed on the sidewalk a couple blocks from that coffee shop and somebody called an ambulance. The idiot EMTs decided it was an overdose, administered drugs to counteract it, and he promptly coded. Christ on a crutch, how do you mistake anaphylaxis for an overdose? He was dead for two minutes."

Hell, Chris thought, and he shuddered involuntarily. "Only Jim would go the whole semester with no problems and then have his throat close up on the one day he's left his medicine somewhere."

McCoy laughed nervously, not sounding amused at all, and released the restraints on Jim's wrists. Chris watched in silence and let the man do his job, wondering how paramedics, ER and ICU doctors and a whole staff of nurses hadn't picked up on the mistake. Maybe the had too much faith in the people running their ambulances, or maybe it was a case of apathy. Either way, an allergic reaction shouldn't have resulted in Jim spending a night tied to a hospital bed with tubes down his throat. Too bad the ambulance hadn't taken him to the 'fleet hospital, but probably their policy was to take any given patient to the nearest hospital from where they were picked up.

McCoy disconnected the oxygen and pulled the flexible plastic tubing out of Jim's throat. Chris almost gagged at the sight; good thing the kid was asleep. When it was gone he kept breathing normally, with a faint wheeze, and McCoy pressed a control that raised the bed into a reclining position, so that Jim wasn't flat on his back. A nurse appeared with two old-fashioned hypos, the kind with exposed needles, and small tray of various supplies. She took her leave quickly, no doubt having been warned by the doctor of McCoy's foul temper.

McCoy dispensed both hypos into the IV line attached to the back of Jim's right hand—it was only this that made Chris frown at the inside of the kid's elbows, both of which were taped. The IV lines that he'd pulled out, then. Brave kid. Chris wouldn't have had the balls to do it, himself. Jim stirred almost immediately as the sedation lifted, and then began to cough. McCoy stood quietly and let him for a moment, but them Jim's left hand reached for the IV on his right and the doctor snatched both wrists lightning-quick.

"I'm gettin' it, I'm gettin' it, damn you," he said, and Jim's eyes finally focused on him.

"Bones?" he croaked hoarsely, looking incredulous, but he twisted his wrist away from McCoy's grip and latched onto a fistful of the doctor's coat.

"Shush," McCoy leaned down over him, "Look, me and Pike are gettin' ya outta here, but you gotta cooperate with me, understand?" Jim nodded weakly, mouth slightly open in wonder. "Do you know how you got here?" Jim shook his head, then looked like he regretted it. "Feel bad?"

"Like I been hit by a feckin' train," Jim slurred a little, eyes fluttering shut again. "Musta' been the CPR train, right?"

"Damn straight, kid. Hold still."

"Hey, Jim." Chris came forward to distract him, patting the kid on the arm while McCoy pressed a cotton ball to the back of Jim's other hand, which was still clutching his coat, and pulled the IV needle away. "You scared the crap out of us, you know that? McCoy here was convinced you were lying in a ditch somewhere."

"He mighta' been better off in a ditch, than in here with all these incompetent assholes," grumbled McCoy. "Let go for a sec, kid, let me fix your hand." He smashed the cotton ball and wrapped it down with bright green athletic bandage, then let go, whereupon Jim's hand curled back into the fabric of the white coat. The older man made no move to stop this, just gathered up the bandage wrappers and tubes and tossed them in a nearby bin while taking care to stay within Jim's reach.

Chris only had to wonder for a second before his brain clicked into gear: McCoy was a damn psychiatrist. When Jim had chosen a roommate Chris had made it his business to look the guy up. He'd been surprised to find that the kid's first choice was a divorced MD from Georgia a decade older than the average recruits. McCoy had grown up working as a nurse at his father's practice, entering med school at a precocious sixteen and currently holding two Ph.D's and a Master's degree. There were older doctors at the Starfleet hospital, but none more qualified. He must be letting Jim hang onto him because he knew that's what Jim needed to do—

The door opened softly, interrupting his train of thought. Two Starfleet paramedics stood there in crisp white uniforms, one with a lightweight aluminum wheelchair tucked under one arm.

"Sir," said one, "the ambulance is ready in the back parking lot."

McCoy shook Jim's shoulder gently, rousing him from a kind of drowsy trance. "Come on, kid, let's blow this joint."