Chapter Five
McCoy was reviewing the PT scan and blood results when the sounds of Kirk's distress drew his attention. Flat on his back and immobilized in the brace, Kirk still managed to move enough to cause the monitor alarms to sound. In the throes of a nightmare, Kirk struggled to escape the images in his mind.
"No!" A strangled cry.
McCoy put a hand on Kirk's shoulder, as much to restrain as to comfort. Kirk's arms flung out clumsily to bat away the restraining hand, to free himself from whatever horror held him.
"Jim! You're all right."
Kirk's fingers twisted into the sleeve of McCoy's uniform. As ill as Kirk was, he was surprisingly strong.
"Jim!"
The alarms brought a nurse into the room. She quickly managed the display.
McCoy couldn't tell if Kirk had heard him or had simply become exhausted, but Jim stopped struggling. McCoy watched as clarity slowly came to the blue eyes that focused sharply on him.
"It was just a dream," McCoy said gently.
The nurse had silenced the alarm.
Kirk closed his eyes. His fingers loosened their hold. McCoy took the opportunity to gently pull away from his patient. He rested Kirk's arms on the bed, then craned his head around to see the nurse who stood behind him.
"Just a vitals alarm, Doctor," Ryan said in a low voice. "He's stabilizing, but his pain indicator is high."
McCoy looked down at his patient. Kirk had opened his eyes, now fully aware of his surroundings and clearly feeling the pain his movements had caused.
"Give me 5cc's of norinephrine," he ordered without taking his eyes from Kirk.
"I'm fine," Kirk said thinly.
"Sure you are." He skillfully shot the hypo home. Within seconds Kirk relaxed. "That should ease the pain."
Kirk closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again. "Now I have a headache."
"There's no pleasing some people." He noted that Kirk was squinting at the lights. "Reduce lights thirty percent."
The lights dimmed enough to reduce the glare, but it seemed not to comfort Kirk.
"It's cold," Kirk complained and tried to shift in the bed.
"You're running a slight fever," McCoy said, noting the flush of Kirk's cheeks.
Ryan appeared with an extra blanket and laid it over Kirk.
"Why isn't this working?" Kirk made the question sound like an accusation.
"Why isn't what working?"
"You said Khan's blood heals quickly."
McCoy raised both eyebrows. "It brought you back from the dead. I'd say that it worked pretty damn well."
"Then why am I flat on my back?"
McCoy took a breath. "Look, Jim, you can't rush your recovery. Your body has been through severe trauma. You rejected Khan's blood from the beginning. Between that, the radiation and the amount of medications we pumped you fu—"
"There are things I need to do," Kirk interrupted forcefully.
"The only thing you need to do now is recover." McCoy's tone matched that of his patient. He caught the sound of irritation and made a conscious effort to adjust his tone. Arguing got him nowhere with Jim. "Jim, you can't fight this. You'll only slow down the recovery process."
Kirk's respiration had increased to match his irritation. Agitated, he pushed the newly placed blanket away and turned his head away from McCoy, dismissing him.
With a sigh, McCoy stepped away. It couldn't be easy, he thought, being flat on your back, weak as a newborn kitten and mad as hell. There was nothing he could do to offer solace to his friend. He couldn't imagine what it was like to die a painful death from radiation then resurrect from it…to face the irrefutable fact that he wasn't infallible after all.
Kirk didn't make a cooperative patient under any circumstances, but he'd been through a lot those last twenty-four hours on the ship, not to mention Khan's attack on Starfleet HQ and the sudden tragic loss of Pike. McCoy imagined there were a hundred places Kirk would rather be than confined to a bed to face his own thoughts.
It was in the stillness that the demons surfaced, that the doubt crept in to taunt. It could chip away at a man.
McCoy had become a bit of an expert on that himself. He turned his attention back to the PT scans and blood results. The vertebrae were healing nicely, but the nerves were raw and spread out the pain into Kirk's lower abdomen. Nothing unusual given the extensive injury, and the pain would diminish as the vertebrae and nerves healed. As for the fever….
Ryan had remained in the room, unobtrusive as ever. She inspected Kirk's IV catheters and the settings on the medications.
"Is there anything I can get you, Captain?" she asked.
McCoy didn't hear a response. He studied the blood results, frowning. A low grade fever meant the body was fighting off some type of infection and the blood results showed a below normal white-blood cell count, which was a change. Was it possible Kirk had picked up a virus? Or was this just a lingering effect of the radiation?
Kirk's body had been over taxed during the transfusion, his heart stressed, and McCoy had kept a close eye on the EKG for signs of damage. There were none, but stress was still evident in other areas. At the most it could compromise Kirk's immune system; at the least it would slow the recovery process.
Ryan appeared at his side. "My shift is over. Do you need anything before I go, Doctor?"
"Run a sterile field on the room. And I'm going to restrict visitors."
"Yes, Doctor." She hesitated. "Is there anything wrong?"
"I just want to be cautious. I don't like this persistent fever."
McCoy glanced at his now sleeping patient. What had it been like in that chamber to lay hurt and dying…and alone? Was it enough to know that his ship was safe? McCoy didn't think so. Kirk was barely twenty-six years old. There were a million things he still wanted to do, to experience.
The question that McCoy had pondered a hundred times in the last two weeks rose again: Why did Kirk go into the warp core knowing that certain death was imminent?
The door opened and Spock walked in. In the past few weeks the Vulcan had earned certain privileges in the ward, and entering Kirk's room without permission was one of them.
Spock noticed Kirk sleeping and turned his attention to McCoy. "He is more comfortable?"
"He's sleeping," McCoy said flatly. "I don't know about comfortable."
Spock stared…waiting.
"His fever isn't going down and his newly regenerated nerves are causing him some pain."
"Perhaps you should increase the analgesics?"
On any other day, McCoy might have found the comment amusing, but today he found it annoying. "Did you get a medical degree when I wasn't looking, Spock?"
"I did not."
"Then keep to science and I'll do the doctoring."
"I did not mean to offend. I was merely…."
"Concerned?" McCoy supplied with a challenge.
"Offering an opinion."
McCoy shook his head. The Vulcan was hopeless. He took the time to record his orders for the nurse.
"Mister Scott has asked to see the captain. Perhaps a visit from a companion will distract him."
"He doesn't need any more distractions," McCoy said in a surly tone, finishing his recording. "And no visitors until I get this fever under control."
"I understand," Spock said slowly. "I believe the crew only want the captain to recover to be able to take command of the Enterprise again."
McCoy's shoulders were tight with tension and the back of his neck ached with the beginning of a killer headache. He wanted to go back to his apartment, take a hot shower and make intimate friends with a bottle of bourbon.
When did my life get so complicated?
But he knew the answer: The day he met Jim Kirk.
He looked at Spock. "That's what we all want. But it's not just his physical well-being I have to be concerned about. Jim doesn't convalesce well under the best of circumstances. Given everything that's happened.…"
"You are speaking of his emotional state."
"Look, it's been two weeks for us, but to Jim it's only been a day. He needs time."
Spock digested the information. "You are saying that he needs time to reflect on the events that transpired prior to his…injuries?"
"He lost a man who was very important to him, and ten hours later he's crossing into Klingon territory after a madman and fighting off the head of Starfleet to save his ship and avoid a war." He paused. "That's a hell of a lot for anyone to absorb."
"Events did transpire rapidly."
"That's putting it mildly." McCoy made a few additional notes on the PADD and set it down. "We've all been de-briefed. We've reviewed events so many times we're reviewing them in our sleep. We've asked ourselves how this happened and what we could have done differently. Hell, we even had a chance to mourn those we lost. Jim hasn't."
Spock walked up to the bed and watched the sleeping man. "I had not considered this."
"Jim lost a lot of crew he doesn't even know about yet."
"For every crewmember that died, four were saved."
"Do me a favor, Spock," he said, walking toward the door. "Don't say that to Jim when he wakes up."
The door slid shut with a soft hiss, leaving Spock to keep his vigil in silence.
Kirk stared out the window, watching the rain trail down the glass pane.
"They scheduled rain today," he said quietly.
"No, it is a natural occurrence, though unexpected."
Kirk rolled his head along the pillow and looked at Spock. "Can't count on anything these days."
Spock sat straight-backed and relaxed in the chair by the side of the bed. The brace had been removed from Kirk and he was able to have the bed inclined enough to be able to see his visitor. This change, which McCoy viewed as positive, had no impact on Kirk's mood.
"Don't take this the wrong way, Spock, but why are you my only visitor?"
A single brow lifted. "Doctor McCoy has restricted visitors."
Kirk scowled. "So Scotty's been banned."
"Not precisely. Doctor McCoy believes you need more time to recover before entertaining visitors. The crew is eager to see you and to know that you are well."
"Are they?"
"Of course."
Kirk lay unnervingly still, his thoughts drifting. "The last thing I remember is lying in the exit chamber. I don't even remember how I got there," he said reflectively. "I remember speaking to you, but I don't remember… dying."
Spock regarded him silently.
"Was it that way for Pike?" Kirk asked.
Spock didn't like speaking on this subject. Having melded with Pike, the emotions and thoughts of the dying Admiral were still very raw and fresh within him. He had not reconciled with that experience. It brought up strong emotions regarding his mother's death – a subject upon which he chose not to reflect.
But the man in the bed had also been through what Pike and his mother had experienced, and Spock was curious as well if his friend had gone gently into that eternal darkness.
"It was different for Admiral Pike," he said slowly. "His death was unexpected and violent."
"Why should that matter? Isn't death the great equalizer?"
"Perhaps it is," he said. "But it is also a unique personal experience, as are most things, subject to the interpretation of the individual."
"I thought it would be different," Kirk said, pressing back into the mattress and wincing slightly as he did so. He looked again out the window and at the rain pouring down. "I'm supposed to be asking the big questions: Did I live to the fullest? Did anything I do make a difference? Would anyone really care when I was gone or would I just be a name on the wall at Starfleet Command that people would point to and wonder what might have been?"
"That is more than most."
"That's not very comforting," Kirk said without looking at him.
"I regret I do not have the words to comfort," he said sincerely. "I also have sought comfort on this matter. What I know is that all sentient beings strive to find purpose in death, as if that final occurrence somehow reveals the meaning of life. But I have discovered that there is nothing meaningful in death – it is simply an ending. It is what we do with our time while we are living that has meaning."
"Also subject to interpretation," Kirk said, returning his gaze to Spock.
"Yes, but it is not the interpretation of the individual, but that of those whose lives have been touched by him." Spock looked closely at Kirk. "I would have missed you."
Kirk smiled ever so slightly. "Thank you."
Ryan entered. The hiss of the door opening and her presence seemed to stir the stagnant air, rousing them from their solemn thoughts. Ryan smiled pleasantly at Kirk as she approached the bed with a small device.
Kirk eyed the narrow stylus. "Don't you have enough of my blood?"
"Sorry," she said reaching for his arm. "Doctor McCoy has ordered blood draws twice a day."
Kirk remained silent and cooperative during the process. As she finished, she took the time to check the IVs and settings.
"How is the pain?" she asked, studying the monitor.
"Fine, thanks for asking," he said.
If she heard the sarcasm in his tone she did not show it. "Is there anything I can get for you?"
"A key to the front door would be great."
She smiled. "That one is going to have to wait. But if it makes you feel any better, Dr. McCoy has scheduled physical therapy for tomorrow."
It did not make him feel better. As much as he wanted out of the bed and the room and the whole damned hospital, the thought of standing and putting pressure on his throbbing back made him cringe.
He sighed and turned his attention back to Spock. "I feel like a recluse. What's happened during the last two weeks, Spock? What have I missed?"
"Mister Scott has been busy overseeing the repairs of Enterprise. The ship sustained significant structural damage, but the warp core remained surprisingly undamaged." Spock studied Kirk's pale face and flushed cheeks, the tiny lines between the eyebrows indicating stress. "Perhaps we can conclude this when you are more rested."
"No. Continue. I want it all."
Spock hesitated only a few seconds before complying. Kirk sat quietly for the next twenty minutes as Spock briefed him on the damage. The report was long and detailed, recounting not only the external damage, but internal, as well. As Spock spoke in a neutral tone, succinctly relaying the information, he noticed that Kirk seemed to gradually withdraw, to stare blindly at a point beyond Spock's head.
Spock stopped. "Captain?"
It took a moment for Kirk's eyes to focus and to bring himself back to the present. He looked at Spock, his eyes bright and intensely blue. "How many crew did we lose?"
Silence.
"Spock, how many?"
"Fifty-eight."
Shock registered on Kirk's face. He lost a little color. "Fifty-eight?" he said faintly. "I killed fifty-eight crew."
"That is incorrect," Spock said. "The risk associated with any space travel is considerable. With a mission involving potential great hazard, the risks increase exponentially. Every Starfleet officer knows this and must willingly accept it when they take assignment aboard a starship."
Kirk said nothing, but turned his head to stare out the window. "What was it all for, Spock?" His voice was barely a whisper.
It was a question Spock could not fully answer.
"Jim, you saved hundreds of lives…perhaps thousands. The future is before us. For now, this is all we can know."