A/N (4/23/12): Whew, finally done with the revised version of Chapter Two! Yay! Apart from a few little things that were really bugging me, the only major change was the re-working if the party scene to involve more discussion of Nicole's last mission and also to include the fact that she and Kirk have met previously. Still not perfectly happy with how the changes turned out, but I was feeling a bit lazy and didn't want to have to scrap most of what I had already written. Anyway, count on seeing a revised version of Chapter 3 soon (I only plan of fixing some horrible spelling/grammar mistakes in that, though, serves me write for typing half of it in the fanfiction doc manager), but I absolutely wanted to be sure I got this chapter re-uploaded before (FINALLY) posting Chapter 4. Sooooo, enjoy! And please leave some kind reviews/suggestions/questions!

Chapter 2: Doctors Know Best

For a party that I had originally not wanted to go to, the two weeks leading up to it seemed to go by extremely slowly. But at last I found myself back in my apartment after a long day of being on-call in the medical center primping in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom. My roommate, Monica, was away for the weekend visiting her sister in Texas for the weekend, so I had the whole apartment to myself.

A slight feeling of nervous impatience came over me as I fidgeted in my dress uniform and tugged futilely at its tight collar. Regular uniforms might have been a bit sexist in their form-fitting, mini-skirted design (although "sexist" wasn't really my own preferred term for them, I actually happened to quite like the current uniforms, thank you very much), but at least they were reasonably comfortable to wear. Despite its more modest longer skirt, the dress I now wore was every bit just as form-fitting as a regular uniform, but the fact that the powder-blue satin fabric had much less stretch and give to it made it seem nearly twice as tight; it pinched and pulled so much around the hips and shoulders that I was afraid that one wrong move might lead to an embarrassing ripped seam. All in all, though, the design was attractive enough; the shiny blue material was complimented by gold trim at the hem and around the high, asymmetrical collar, going down off the side to outline the closing flap on my right shoulder. On the left side over my heart were the Starfleet rank pins, and black pantyhose paired with highly-polished black high heels completed the look, rather than my everyday black boots.

A hidden zipper ran up the front of the dress covered by the flap secured by a concealed button near my shoulder, which I was currently attempting to fasten. I looked up at the mirror as I closed the top one, and time seemed to slow down for a moment; I felt a sense of déjà vu at seeing myself just as I was in the mirror. Against my will, I was caught up in the memory, and my face appeared to change just slightly in the mirror; a few years younger, my hair and makeup slightly different. I was also not alone.

My ex-fiancé, Brian, stood behind me, my back pressing into his chest, the ghost of the weight and warmth of his hands on my waist, his breath hot and heavy on my neck as he placed an imaginary kiss there. I shivered, caught between the sheer heat of passion in that moment in the past and the barren, stark reality of where I stood in the present. On their own volition, my hands detached themselves from my neck and began to slowly travel down the length of my body, passing over where his invisible hands once were. My eyes closed, my breathing heavier now and my heart pounding in my chest.

"We don't have to go to the party," I heard him say in a throaty voice. "I know you don't want to. We could always just stay here tonight..."

There was a familiar soft giggle and a slight moan of pleasure as I heard my memory-self reply. "Brian, stop it, you know I have to go..."

My hands continued on down my thighs, stopping when my fingertips met the barrier between the skirt of my dress and almost-bare skin. For a moment my fingers curled themselves talon-like around the hem of my skirt and gripped it tightly, but before I could control them, my palms opened up again and began to slowly creep back up my thighs, this time the fabric moving along with them.

My eyes jerked open again and I inhaled sharply, remembering where and when I was. I blinked rapidly, and was suddenly very aware of where my hands were; I snatched them out from under my dress and smoothed the skirt back into place. The image and sensation of my ex-fiancé was gone from my mind, the strange and sudden surge of desire fading as quickly as the memory had. I shook my head and went back to primping in the mirror, trying to ignore the shame I felt at what I had almost done, as well as supreme gratitude that my roommate had not been at home after all; I can't possibly fathom how embarrassing it would've been had Monica walked in on me very nearly pleasuring myself to the memory of a man who I considered to be dead to me. Even worse, not appearing to be pleasuring myself to any particular image, but simply doing it standing in from of the mirror. The fact that this random thought of Him had occurred in the first place disturbed me somewhat, but I tried not to concern myself with it; true, it had all happened four years ago, I no longer loved him at all, and had completely accepted the fact that it was over, but despite that fact that I considered myself to be "Over it" random memories of Him still crept up on me unexpectedly. Of course, this wasn't the first time that these random thoughts had been blatantly erotic, but ones like those were really rare, usually they just caught me off-guard and put me in a grouchy mood for the rest of the day.

I sighed, then squared my shoulders and narrowed my eyes at myself in the mirror, determined not to let it bother me. I gave my reflection a quick once-over, pleased with what I saw; a reasonably attractive woman with perfectly coifed dark hair in science blue, tall, slender, and professional. The alarm on my watch beeped twice and I nodded at myself once before leaving.

The party turned out to be—for the most part—just as boring as I had initially expected, but I drank, laughed, and chatted along with everyone else, and generally did my best to avoid the depressing sight of Captain Carmichael in his chair. I made my rounds around the large reception hall, keeping a look-out for both my brother Mark and my friend, Dr. Paul Benke, who had promised to introduce me to Dr. McCoy. It was starting to really annoy me that I hadn't seen my brother yet; after all, he was the new captain of the Atlas, so it was almost as much his party as it was Carmichael's. Across the room, I saw a friend wave to me, and then start making weird hand gestures as if trying to tell me to turn around. Just then, I felt a light tap on my shoulder, and was greeted by a familiar laugh as I turned to face my brother.

"Mark!" I exclaimed, slapping his arm playfully before giving him a quick peck on the cheek. "You sneaky bastard, I've been hunting you down all night! Makes it even worse that I haven't seen you hardly at all since I got back, almost makes me think you've been avoiding me…"

He rolled his eyes in classic Zoellner form. "Oh please, you know me better than that, Nicole. With my track record? You know I try to avoid hospital settings as often as possible. I'm pretty sure there's a running bet going on between all the nurses in Starfleet to see what injury I'll turn up with next."

I snorted into the glass raised to my lips and almost choked on my drink. It was all too true; my brother had earned a bit of a reputation as being "most likely to be wounded on a mission or just by brushing his teeth." It was never anything serious or life-threatening, of course, just the fact as far as easily reparable injuries go, Mark was on the unluckier end of the spectrum. Nevertheless he was still a more than competent officer, but I highly doubted that his promotion to captain would do much to improve his chances of not ending up in sickbay following his next mission.

Another laughing voice joined our own, and I turned to see Natalie, Mark's chief science officer—and newly appointed first officer—and currently very pregnant wife. As he put his arm around her, Mark suddenly seemed slightly uncomfortable, and gave me that same brief, apologetic, pitying glance he always did whenever Natalie and I were near each other during her pregnancy. I suppressed an exasperated sigh. Sometimes I doubted he was even aware he was doing it, but I wished he wouldn't all the same; honestly, it really wasn't that big of a deal anymore… not that unnecessary pitying looks from one of the only people who knew about It still didn't bother me. Within a matter of seconds, though, my twin was back to his smiling self again.

"So, what are you two laughing about so much over here?" she asked. Her tone was casual as could be, but I wondered if she had noticed the uncomfortable moment between Mark and me; she could be unnervingly perceptive at times.

Mark was quick to roll his eyes again. "Well, apparently my sister's under the impression I've been avoiding her for the past two weeks…"

"Which is true, isn't it, Natalie?"

"… but it's not like I'm the one who totally blew my brother and his wife off for dinner last week when he invited me over, oh wait that was you. Seriously, where were you last week, Nicole? I told you Jim Kirk was gonna be there, you probably haven't even spoken to him since our wedding, and that was three years ago. Thought you might like a chance to impress your future captain, you know…"

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. "Oh, come on, I already apologized for that, you know I was busy filling in for—wait, what?" Realization struck me in what can only be described as a "record-scratch" moment. He had invited THE Captain Kirk over for dinner without telling me? "What'd you say about Jim Kirk? You invited him over for dinner, on the same night I was supposed to be there, and you didn't. Tell. Me."

"Sorry about that, we didn't know if either one of you would be able to come or not," Mark said, a bit sheepishly, "but it's been awhile since I've seen him and you know I've told him a good bit about you and your work."

"What exactly about my work, Mark?" This was, after all, my potential future captain we were talking about. I didn't need him to take my absence from dinner as free license to start passing judgment on me. True, he and I had both been in my brother's wedding, but that had been quite a while back, and the likelihood that he'd remember anything about me besides my area of work was highly unlikely. Now that I was about to be re-introduced to him in the hopes of leaving a favorable impression, I wished I'd kept in touch with him after all.

"Oh, relax, everything's fine!" Natalie offered, "Jim's a great guy and a great captain, I'm sure he remembers only good things about you. I'd be surprised if he hasn't talked to that Dr. McCoy already about having you aboard!"

I frowned. "Yeah, but it's really 'that Dr. McCoy' that I'm more worried about. You ever hear much about him?" Although I had probably passed him in the halls of the teaching hospital dozens of times without noticing, and had even sat in near the very back during a lecture he gave once, I myself had never met the man personally. What little information I had gleaned about him from my colleagues had been, at best, mixed messages: many of the nurses described him as charming, gentlemanly, and personable, while others still had called him gruff, cynical, and generally crusty in nature. One intern I had talked to sighed over his "dreamy blue eyes" and cited him as being "mysteriously sexy," while her friend scoffed and argued that he was "totally weird-looking."

This, of course, didn't help me at all; I didn't need sexy or weird-looking, I needed someone I could respect and be respected by. My brother, apparently, hadn't heard much more about this guy, either. "All I know is that he's smart, sarcastic, doesn't like to talk about his past, a famous curmudgeon but extremely likeable. Sounds like someone I know. I'm sure you two'll get along famously," he said with a smirk.

"Gee, Thanks." Still mentally kicking myself over the whole dinner thing, I was caught off guard when I heard someone calling my name. I spotted Paul Benke a short distance away near two other men, one in command gold, the other science blue, motioning for me to come over. I took a deep breath, realizing that the two men could only be Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy. As Paul began to walk over, I said a quick goodbye to Mark and Natalie before closing the distance between us.

"Don't worry about a thing, you're an excellent flirt," Mark said, making me laugh. "Flirting" was Starfleet slang for certain techniques of bargaining for things you wanted (a position on a research team, placement on a certain ship or starbase, research grants, etc.), at which I was highly adept.

As Mark and his wife moved back through the crowd, I found myself being led over my Paul to where the captain and his new CMO stood waiting. "Nicole, this Captain James Kirk of the Enterprise, and his Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Leonard, McCoy; Captain, Leonard, Dr. Nicole Zoellner," Paul said in way of greeting.

"Hello, I believe we've met before, captain," I shook his hand with a wide smile, which he returned.

"Yes, at your brother's wedding, if I remember, four years ago?" I felt my face flush slightly with annoyance.

"Three, actually," I corrected. He was every bit as friendly as I remembered, but clearly he, like me, seemed to have forgotten a lot else, and was at a loss as to how else to address our flimsy pre-established relationship, or if saying more was even necessary.

But it was McCoy that I was more interested in (after all, Kirk might potentially be my captain, but Dr. McCoy would be my direct superior, my boss). McCoy smiled back at me too; a small smile, but no less genuine. It was a lopsided, half-serious, slightly weary sort of grin, but his eyebrows went up as he greeted me, almost as if he were surprised. He didn't look to be much older than the captain or me, and was quite a handsome man himself, with a lean build and a wave of thick, dark hair falling across his forehead, which was actually the first thing I noticed about him. The second was his pair of striking blue eyes. Damn, and I'm such a sucker for blue eyes, too, I mused, thinking that the annoying intern might not have been quite so off the mark in calling them "dreamy" (although I myself would never use that word). If he turned out to have a completely terrible personality, then at least I could say I'd lucked out with him being nice to look at.

"Well, in any case it's been too long," Kirk said, "You were missed at dinner last Monday, by the way."

I gave an exaggerated sigh and shook my head. "I'm going to kill my brother. By the way, have you seen him yet?" He said he had earlier, so I diverted my attention to Dr. McCoy. "Oh, and congratulations to you, doctor, I'm glad to see you decided to accept the post as CMO. I'm sure the captain here couldn't have made a better choice for it. You're quite a well-renowned figure in Starfleet Med, you know." Maybe I was overdoing it a bit, but all the same, flattery didn't hurt. And it wasn't necessarily untrue, either.

The doctor chuckled a bit. "Oh, believe me, the choice was more biased than you think, Jim and I've known each other awhile." His voice had a hint of a pleasant southern drawl in it, no doubt brought out a bit by the drink in his hand. My God, a warm, personable, blue-eyed, southern gentleman for a CMO? It must be my birthday, I thought. He raised his glass to his lips, and from behind it I could see those eyes looking me over—he was obviously sizing me up, trying to get a read on me.

Fair enough; two could play at that game. The ring on his finger caught my attention. Married? Highly unlikely, his wife would be here, or he would have mentioned her by now. But it was without a doubt a wedding ring. Thant left either widowed or divorced. My mind began to make the connections between his potential marital status and his service in Starfleet. If widowed, I got the sense that it had probably happened a while ago, but he seemed too young for me to want to think of him as being a widower just yet. I wondered vaguely if his wife might have also served in the Fleet and killed in action—I was strongly reminded of my own father. If divorced, it left little doubt in my mind that the circumstances had either caused or greatly contributed to his enlisting. In either case, it made this Dr. McCoy seem just a bit less like a name and a face I was meeting for the first time and more like someone I could relate to, someone I could respect. I wondered if he had any children…

"Dr. Zoellner, Dr. McCoy, I think I'll leave the two of you to talk by yourselves for awhile," Captain, Kirk said, bringing me back to the present. "What are you drinking, I'll get you another."

"Old Fashioned, but no thanks, captain, I'll probably be leaving in a little while, anyway." He smiled and left, and suddenly I realized that Paul had left as well. McCoy pointed out two empty seats at a nearby table, motioning for me to sit down.

"So, apparently, your captain must have told you a fair amount about me, or you already knew who I was and showed some interest," I told him, "He wasn't exactly subtle just walking off like that and leaving us alone to talk. You'd think he was setting us up on a date."

He grimaced and made an impatient sound in the back of his throat, but his eyes twinkled in a smile. "I have heard some good things about you, Dr. Zoellner. I've had hints that you were interested in joining the medical staff for the five-year mission. And Jim's not the only once who suggested you for ACMO. Only problem is, I don't know you. And you're sure you know what you're getting into with this mission?" He seemed to hesitate, then continued in a softer tone, "I know about things that happened on your last mission, and I'm sure we both know from experience that things like that are never easy. From what I hear I've no doubt you more than proved yourself capable of handling the position being offered, but have you really asked yourself why you're throwing yourself into this now? And five years is a long time."

I sat back and considered him. He made a good point, but what he didn't know was that I was completely sure about what I wanted, even if I was still working on the more personal aspect of the why. "Look, doctor, let's just cut through all the bullshit and be honest with each other. I don't know you either, but I don't see what that should put me off from this mission. I would consider it an honor to be your Assistant Chief Medical Officer, because Lord knows you're going to need all the help you can get on a ship that size on a mission that long, and if you do know as much about me as I think you know—which obviously impressed you enough, or we wouldn't be talking right now—then you will know that I am more than qualified for the job. Believe me, I've had other offers. And I don't know about you, but I really don't think that we're going to get to know each other very well at this party. I think it would have been better had we met at the hospital or in a private meeting. I think you would've probably liked me a bit better in that case, too."

"Now wait a minute, I never said I didn't like you. I think I am starting to like you a bit more, now, though," he shook his head, "Couldn't agree more with you about this damn party business. Parties, cocktails, dress uniforms, what is all this? No way to meet your potential Assistant CMO, that what!"

"I know, right? I guess there goes Starfleet's pristine military tradition flying out the airlock, it all too political know. I mean, seriously, we're at a party 'celebrating' one of the most depressing things imaginable, and stuff like this only really serves the purposes of having an excuse to bump elbows with all the higher-ups. I'd say it makes me sick, but I guess that'd make me a pretty big hypocrite, then."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, just look at us doctor. I figured it'd be pretty obvious. I really do want this job, I'll admit it. I'm ambitious, and I guess… well, I guess I just figured that it was about time my life took a big leap forward and actually went somewhere. And maybe… there is a part of me that knows the only way I can prove myself as being more than just that one doctor whose career was made from being forced into a position of responsibility because of a tragedy is to actually take charge of my own career. I know this is going to sound really corny, but it just feels like the Enterprise is where I'm meant to be. This is my career, we're talking about, my entire life, and if it means giving up five whole years of time that could be spent elsewhere in the pursuit of the one thing that matters most to me, then so be it.

"I'm sorry I'm rambling on like this, you probably just want me to shut up already, but all I'm asking for is a chance to get to know you, and prove to you what I'm capable of. The mission itself is highly experimental in general, isn't it? We might make a great team, we might not, but I think we will. It's the finding out that really matters."

I could tell it was getting late; the reception hall was starting to clear out. I watched McCoy in the seat across from me as he thought about what I said, and began to miss my drink. The mysterious wedding ring glinted on his finger, my only clue to his personal life, and I realized that for having just met, we really knew each other better than we though we did. There was some sort of connection, and I think the other doctor realized this. He knew I was anticipating his answer, and I guessed what it might be before he spoke.

"You know what? This party's depressing me. Let's do lunch," he said suddenly, "Next week. I'll pay. Just contact me with a day and time and I'll be glad to sit down and talk."

"Sounds great. Thank you, Dr. McCoy, it was great to meet you."

"You too, Dr. Zoellner."

"Please, just call me Nicole."

"Well, then in that case I guess you can call me Leonard. I'll see you around—if you're as depressed by this party as I am right now, I assume you're leaving soon, too."

"You'd be right, Leonard. I'll contact you. Goodbye."

It was only a day after our "lunch date" that I received the official invitation. An enormous file with paperwork out the wazoo that I downloaded with the click of a button. The cover letter itself was less than half a page long:

Dr. Zoellner:

I am pleased to inform you that with the permission of Captain James T. Kirk, I have hereby selected you to serve as the Assistant Chief Medical Officer for the duration of the five-year mission of the USS Enterprise. I look forward to working with you and hope to meet with you again as soon as possible to discuss the appointment of additional medical staff. Attached are all necessary forms, which I am sure you are more than familiar with, so I will spare you a lecture. If you have any further questions or would like to decline this appointment please feel free to contact me at any time.

Sincerely,

Leonard H. McCoy

Chief Medical Officer, USS Enterprise

"Monica!" I shouted for my roommate, "Guess who's just been made ACMO of the USS Enterprise?"