Blood soaks through Spock's shirt. The fabric sticks across his chest and stomach in the gray light of the corridor and when McCoy presses his hand over Spock's collarbone, his hand comes away wet.
"I am fine," Spock says and McCoy's hand only steadies when Spock takes his arm.
Red. Red stains his palm, not green, and the world around him snaps back into focus.
"Keenser," Spock says and McCoy looks down at the bundle of Ops uniform in Spock's arms, crowned with a gray head covered in the same blood.
"Good God, get him into sickbay," McCoy says.
Spock deposits him on a biobed in a crumple of red fabric and a darker, tacky spread of blood. It's stickier than a human's and leaves Spock's hands stained, smeared like his shirt is as he backs away to make room for McCoy to press forward.
"Keenser? Ensign, can you hear me?" McCoy asks. Nothing. "Spock, get Uhura in here."
Carefully, McCoy rests his fingers on the top of Keenser's head and feels his way across it. Parietal ridge, lachrymal bone, occipital fontanelle- none of it broken as he walks his fingers over the ridges of his skull. No, it's firm when he presses, no shifting of bones grating against each other, and none of the softness that would make him wonder if he's about to be prepping for surgery.
"He'll be ok," McCoy says and Jim, his chest still rising and falling from his sprint inside, sags against the edge of the biobed. "Where the hell is Scotty?"
"The wall," Jim says. "It collapsed."
"Sulu and Hendorff have Mr. Scott," Spock says and behind him, Uhura crowds into sickbay.
"We're here," Sulu says. Between him and Hendroff, Scotty hangs limp, and arm draped over each of their shoulders. The tips of his boots squeak over tile as they drag him forward and his head lolls at an ugly angle.
"Lay him down," McCoy snaps. In two steps, he's there with them, a hand bracing Scotty's chest and the other stabilizing his neck. McCoy's leg cramps. He ignores it. "You carried him like that? Watch his neck- get his head Jim."
"He was awake," Sulu says. His shirt is streaked red too and McCoy hopes the blood is Scotty's. He doesn't have time for this, not when he's feeling up the length of Scotty's neck and snapping his fingers in front of closed eyelids.
"Scotty," he says loudly. "Can you hear me?"
There's no answering stir. McCoy grits his molars together and feels up Scotty's arm to his wrist and presses his fingers there.
A pulse. A weak flutter of a pulse, but it's there.
He pats at his hip for his tricorder, but his hand comes up empty. Of course. He twists around, searching.
"Here, Doctor," and Spock flicks open McCoy's tricorder and holds it out.
But McCoy doesn't grab it.
"Your face," McCoy says. He frowns. "You're cut."
"Inconsequential," Spock says.
There's a hairline of green across Spock's cheekbone and temple, and a bruise forming beneath it. Beads of blood appear as McCoy watches and when he looks down at Spock's hand, there's an answering smear across his shirt cuff.
He reaches towards Spock's face. "You all right?"
"A rock fell. I am not seriously injured."
"You lose consciousness?"
"No."
"You're sure?"
"Keenser," Spock says and holds the tricorder out to him.
McCoy takes it and turns away again. It's fine, that is, that cut on Spock's face. And this will be too, God willing- all of it. Flaring the shine of the tricorder into Scotty's face makes him twitch, and McCoy bends over him, patting at his cheek.
"Scotty," he says. "Scotty, it's Doctor McCoy. You're in sickbay, and we're going to fix you up, all right?"
McCoy gets a mumble in response. He grabs Scotty's hand and squeezes. A pause - a long one, far longer than McCoy'd like - and then there's a faint pressure in return.
"There was an accident," McCoy says slowly and loudly. "You got injured when the tunnel wall collapsed."
Scotty's eyes flutter open, glazed and too wide.
"Follow my finger," McCoy says, but Scotty's eyes slip shut again. McCoy pats his cheek again. "Scotty!"
But there's nothing and finally, McCoy straightens again. A fierce sort of silence fills sickbay. Too many bodies are packed into the space and even when McCoy raises his voice and barks "Out, all of you," there's only a slight shifting in the crowd.
"Bones?" he hears.
"Make yourself useful," he says and grabs a strip of gauze and Jim's hand. "Steady pressure on that cut on Scotty's head. Don't let up, now."
"Are they alright?"
"Sure as hell hope so," McCoy says. He tosses his tricorder next to Keenser's feet, and rifles through the instruments stashed inside the drawer set in the base of the biobed. Another tricorder, empty hyposprays, a dermal regenerator that by the looks of it ran out of charge while McCoy was the one knocked out, and an empty package of emergency bandages. He slams the drawer shut.
Everyone's watching him. Jim, with his fingers pressed to gauze that's growing red, Spock standing next to him, Uhura there with them, Sulu and Hendorff and those two guards McCoy's sure good and tired of, and-
"Aw hell," McCoy mutters, crossing the room. "Lavigne, how is she?"
One crisis at a time would be nice. He cups Chapel's chin and tilts her face up.
"Nurse?" he asks.
She's sitting up, he doesn't need Lavigne to tell him that. And blinking at him, which is a hell of a something, considering. He'd shake himself to make sure he's seeing what he's seeing, if he thought he had half a second to do so, not a sickbay full of patients and Jim breathing down his neck to hurry.
Her lips press together and her chest shakes in a shallow cough.
"Easy," he says. "I might just need you around here, you know."
"I gave her twenty cc's of inaprovaline like you said, sir," Lavigne says. She's rubbing Chapel's back. McCoy nods. That at least sounds like something he'd prescribe, though now he can't remember more than passing Lavigne in the corridor at as close to a run as he could manage, let alone ordering medication. He shifts his weight to his other leg. A mistake that was, to go careening around the ship like that.
"Bones?" Jim asks again.
McCoy sighs. What a hell of a day.
"Keenser'll be fine," he says, still staring down at Chapel. Beneath his hand, he can feel another weak cough rise through her. "He'll come around soon enough. Head's like, well like a rock."
"And Scotty?"
"Blood loss, head injury, possible internal injuries from blunt force trauma… Hell if I know without a real sickbay, Jim."
"When did Chapel wake up?" Jim asks.
"Just before your engineering team crushed themselves under an avalanche and tried to take your XO with them." McCoy tips Chapels face to one side and then the other. Her eyes narrow. Good on her then, she always did hate being examined. Her check ups tended to be a special sort of hell.
He lets her go. He needs two of himself, or for his head nurse to be on her feet and working beside him, not a patient in her own right.
Scotty's pulse still beats a thready, weak tempo against McCoy's fingers when he checks it again, a fact born out by the readout on the biobed. Gently, McCoy palpates his stomach and across his ribs, feeling the shape of them rise with each of Scotty's shallow breaths. They're firm though and moving as they should and that at least is something.
"His cut?" Jim says.
"Uhura, second cupboard, no to your left, up- there. Three packs of that gauze, wash your hands, Jim, would you?" McCoy asks. "Lavigne, I need a hypo of neodextraline and another of midodrine."
One hiss and then two and he peers down into the eyes that slowly blink open. He gets a bleary look in response.
"Good man, Scotty, there you are. Hold still," he says and takes the gauze from Uhura, peeling away the wad that Jim stuck there. It's a hell of a cut, congealing over now and clotting in dark clumps. He presses the fresh gauze to it and scowls down into Scotty's slowly blinking eyes.
"What the hell were you two doing?" McCoy asks. "I don't want to know. Flex your toes. Good. Fingers? All ten of them. Good."
"I was trying to-" Scotty shakes his head against the biobed and thumps himself on the chest, coughing over a breath, wincing through it.
Trying to grab Keenser, by the look of things.
"Stay away from falling rocks," McCoy says. "I'm a doctor, not a goddamn excavator."
"Keenser? Is he-"
"-He'll be fine. Unlike you, he's keeping his bodily fluids exactly where they should be." McCoy adjusts his hold on the gauze. "Dizzy? Disoriented? Federation President?"
"President Shani zh'Vrosia." Scotty winces. "My throat hurts."
"Hurts how?" McCoy asks. "Jim, that tricorder."
Scotty sits up slowly, a hand braced on the bed beside him and McCoy yanks the tricorder from Jim's hand when he holds it out. Though running it over Scotty only turns up gibberish on the screen and no matter how he shakes it, it whirrs without spitting out a reading. Damn useless, it is, whatever wizardry Chekov worked on it clearly having worn off. In need of additional calibration, he can nearly hear Spock say.
"I'm going to scan you with the biobed," McCoy says. "Stay still, you hear?"
It's ancient, this sorry excuse for an interface. Poking at it twice yields nothing, and at a third the screen slowly winks on. He bends over and peers at it, frowning at the old controls. He stabs a button. It takes the screen too long to respond and he sighs. Another problem. Great.
Then, the lights wink out and the room goes black. McCoy stares around himself in the sudden dark.
"Just what we needed," he mutters.
"The flux modulator," Jim says from near to him. McCoy blinks against the blackness, squinting.
"What the hell is that?" McCoy asks into the dark.
"The starboard actuator," Scotty says. He coughs and McCoy feels for his arm, frowning and fumbling to find him. That's again now, a hacking echo of Chapel over there. "It's been a bit funny all day."
McCoy gropes for the tricorder and flares the shine of the screen across Scotty's face. He's rewarded with a flinch and he blinks again, like he can clear the inky blackness away if he just tries hard enough.
"Get the lights on, Jim," he says. His eyes aren't adjusted to the dark and he leans close to Scotty, squinting at him in the dim light of the tricorder.
"You'll have to reset the-" Scotty raises his hand to his mouth and clears his throat into it. "-The polarity matrix manually."
"Does your mouth feel dry?" McCoy asks. He pats at his own chest, his hand casting a deep shadow onto his shirt. "Or like you have an obstruction?"
Uselessly, he thumbs the scanner on the tricorder, but it's only benefit remains the light, milky blue over Scotty's face and throwing the room beyond into a shadowed twilight.
"Jaylah knows the one," Scotty says.
"Scotty, look at me," McCoy says. "Your throat."
"I'll get her," Jim says and puts a hand out, feeling along the nearest biobed for the way to the door.
"Good, the rest of you go on and get too," McCoy says and jerks his head towards the door closing behind Jim. He's soundly ignored. He lifts his eyes towards the ceiling, though hell if he can actually see anything. "Could someone, I don't know, maybe hold the damn light?"
"I've got it," Uhura says and slips it out of his hand. The only reasonable one of the lot of them.
"Sit up straight and stick out your tongue," McCoy says to Scotty. "We'll do this the old fashioned way."
"I'm dizzy," Scotty says as he swings his legs over the edge of the bed.
"That's what happens when you misplace your blood all over your commanding officers' shirts," McCoy says. He feels up Scotty's neck, frowning when no matter how he presses into the thin skin, all seems normal. It'd be better if he could see, too, now wouldn't it. "Try to keep the rest of it where it is, it might help you some."
Scotty grazes two fingertips over the cut above his ear and winces. "Ow."
"Don't poke at it, I'm short on regenerators."
"I can charge one if you-"
"-Don't," McCoy says and smacks his wrist away when Scotty makes to touch his wound again. Of course he wants to prod at it, of all of the goddamn idiot things to do. "Who the hell knows where your hand is been, the last thing I need is some type of xenovirus running rampant through this crew. Do you want a case of Menkalinan leprosy?"
"No?"
"Open your mouth. No, you don't," McCoy says. He peers down Scotty's throat, pointing his elbow to Uhura to shine the light as best she can. There's a reason tricorders exist, and it's so he doesn't have to try to squint past a patient's tongue like it's the middle ages all over again. "I'm sure you want your skin on you, not on the floor."
"Sounds lovely," Uhura from beyond the glow of the tricorder.
"Absolutely," Sulu says.
"I don't think I'd want that," Scotty says.
McCoy straightens. He can't see a damn thing. Maybe he can take Scotty outside. Hendorff could help again, and McCoy could get himself there too, in a fashion. Use sunlight to do this, if the ship's systems aren't going to do the trick. His leg… well, he'd be fine making his way there. More or less.
He rubs at his forehead. This will be all right. Somehow. Eventually.
He turns. "Hendorff-"
"-Montgomery Scotty!"
"Woah now," McCoy says as Jaylah sprints into the room, stopping at the edge of the tricorder's glow in a skid that has her throwing her hand out against the edge of Keenser's bed.
"What happened?" she asks.
"The lights?" McCoy asks. "Could we get them on?"
"Hey there lassie," Scotty says, "I'm alright."
"Your head," she says. "You are cut."
"Which I can clean up a hell of a lot better if I could see," McCoy says. "How's that flux compensator?"
"Polarity matrix," Spock says from somewhere in the dark.
"How about all of you get out of my sickbay and leave me some room for my patients?" McCoy asks.
"James T is adjusting the magnetic variance buffer," Jaylah says. "I told you, this planet is not good. It is not a good place to be."
"Would that we could leave," McCoy mutters and gives up on the crowd around Scotty's bed when Jaylah pushes herself into the mix. He throws a hand out to find the edge of a biobed and uses it to feel his way over Chapel, trying not to stumble. That's the last thing he needs today - pulling at his half healed leg and tripping over himself in his own sickbay, pitch black or not. "You still with me Nurse?"
"Can I have some more water?" she asks.
"What you can do is sit good and still while we see about getting you unhooked," McCoy says. "Fortunately, we have our entire engineering division here. Lavigne, go see about Keenser, would you?"
"Sir?"
"A hypo of methylxanthine and another of cocculin directly afterwards."
"Where do I-"
"-Second drawer down, on your left."
"-Sir, I'm not familiar with-"
"-In his foot," McCoy says. He searches blindly for Chapel's cup and then for a sink. What a treat this is, really. Maybe he can get the rest of the ship's tricorders in here too and ask for them to be strung up like holiday lights to give him a chance to get some damn work done. "Tried his palm once, and he didn't like that all that much. Not his neck, Nurse."
"Yes, sir."
"Sit up straight," he says to Chapel and pushes the cup into her hand. "Ok? Dizzy?"
"Might vomit."
"Turn your head if you do," he suggests. "I didn't exactly pack for an extended stay here. Uhura, that light?"
The points where the wires burrow into Chapel's skin are slightly inflamed, a harsh pink even in the glow of the tricorder. Maybe due to the relative grime of the cave, or maybe having her on her back in here where the Franklin's none too clean either, compared with what he had on the Enterprise. He has no way of knowing, which pricks at him as bad as the fact that he can't do anything to sterilize the area, not with what he has on hand. Gently, he touches where her flesh meets the black tubing.
"Hurts?" he asks when she pulls in a soft breath.
"It's all right."
"How all right?"
"All right." She looks up at him. "Take it out."
"I'm going to," he says. "But easy now, I don't want you conking out on me all over again."
"I'm fine, I-" Her cough hits him in the chest and he steadies her as she bows forward with it. Slowly, she gets her hand up to cover her mouth with her wrist, her shoulders shaking with each hack. When she's done, she winces. "That hurt."
"That's not right, coughing like that," he says. He snags the tricorder from Uhura and runs it over Chapel's chest, though of course the screen comes up blank except for its shine around the room. "You felt ok leaving Yorktown?"
"Yes."
"Scotty?" he calls over, squinting against the dark. He can see better now than he could, but Scotty's still just a mostly dim outline against the grays and blacks of the room. "You feel like you're coming down with something?"
"I'm fine," Scotty says. "And I have been."
"What is it?" Sulu asks from somewhere beyond the line of the tricorder's light. "Are they ok?"
"I'm not sure. A virus, maybe, or something bacterial. Or hell, nothing at all." McCoy turns, tapping his finger against his mouth. "Scotty, Keenser? How's that cold of his been?"
"Doing better than he was," Scotty says. "Until now, that is."
"Hmmm." McCoy dials up the tricorder's scanning frequency, tries again, and tosses it back to Uhura when it just glows with an error message. Keenser had been better, though McCoy hasn't exactly seen much of him in the last few days. And it's not the first time he's come down with something since they've shipped out. They needed that damn leave on Yorktown to rest, not another round of this.
"Sir? After the cocculin?" Lavigne asks from across the room.
McCoy frowns, turning towards her voice in the dark. "He's not up from it?"
"Didn't stir."
"Pulse?"
"I'm not sure-"
McCoy fumbles past Uhura through the gloom and limps his way over. Pressing Lavigne to the side, he can feel a beat just behind Keenser's ear, but faint and even slower than it should be, and that's saying something.
"Keenser," he says loudly. Blood still oozes from his shoulder, but slowly enough not to be the issue, not with how many pints the man has packed inside of him. "Nurse, another hypo."
"Yes, sir."
Carefully, he injects it, looking for any twitch, but Keenser's far stiller than he should be.
"Another," he says and Lavigne hands it to him. McCoy presses it into Keenser's foot and he can hear the hiss of it over the quiet of the darkness around him.
"C'mon," he says.
Sulu steps into the tricorder's shine, lit in grays and blues next to Keenser's shoulder. "I've actually heard of a botanical supplement that- oh, shit."
A clatter, followed by a thump. McCoy whirls around, staring into the dark.
"What the hell?" he asks.
"I'm all right," Sulu says. Then, he winces. "Though it did land on my toe."
"I'm not available for stubbed toes," McCoy snaps.
"It appears unbroken," Spock says and the light bounces around the room as Uhura holds the tricorder over him when he bends down to right the box of filters.
"Those are our last ones," Scotty says, "So I hope you're right, sir."
Spock pops the lid off and pulls out a filter, turning it to catch the shine of the light.
"Unfortunate," he says. "As it appears they are already in need of replacement."
"It's that bad in here?" McCoy asks. With a hand braced on Scotty's bed for support, he limps his way over to Spock, careful not to lean too close. His face heats up, so near to the crusted blood that's drying on Spock's shirt. He didn't need to have grabbed at Spock like that.
"It would appear to be," Spock says and draws one slim finger through the particles clinging to the filter. Even in the ghostly glow of the tricorder, the scattering of dust over the tip of Spock's finger has a shine to it. A tinge of blue that certainly looks more like the rocks outside than not.
McCoy frowns and turns towards Chapel, still sitting on her bed and half propped up on Lavigne's arm.
"Say-"
"-There's something wrong with the starboard generator," Jim says, jogging back into the room. He has a spare light in his hand and the beam bounces across the faces that turn towards him. "Scotty, you up and at 'em?"
"Nearly," Scotty says.
"No, he's not," McCoy says.
"I've got Chekov down there," Jim says and hooks a thumb over his shoulder. "But we could use you. Jaylah, you too, and Keenser."
"He's not going anywhere," McCoy says.
"Keenser's the only one who'll fit back in there," Scotty says and heaves himself to his feet.
"Oh, well, let me just wave my magic wand," McCoy says. "Scotty, sit down. Now."
"It's not the generator, Captain," Scotty says. He touches his cut again and rubs the blood that dots his fingers onto his uniform. "It's the power sequencer."
"It's on the fritz?" Jim asks.
"No," Scotty says. In the shine of Jim's light, Scotty straightens his shirt and wipes his palms off on his thighs. "It's out of power."
"Are there reserves left in the batteries?" Jim asks.
"I'm guessing if there were, the lights'd be on," McCoy says. "Scotty, you've got a serious head wound. Now I don't exactly love flying around in these ships, but all the less so for letting a walking concussion put this scrap heap back together."
"Bones, when will Keenser be up?" Jim asks.
"I don't know, Jim."
"Soon, though?"
"I don't know," McCoy says again.
"But today, or tomorrow, or-"
"-I don't know! And I don't know what the hell you expect me to do!" he snaps. They're all watching him in a silence sits as heavy as the darkness does beyond the beams of light. He rubs at his temples with his thumb and forefinger. "Would the lot of you get out? Please?"
But instead Spock steps forward. How damn normal that is of him, ignoring McCoy like that.
"Perhaps if we cannot scan Ensign Keenser, I can be of help."
McCoy presses his fingers to his forehead and doesn't even want to bother wondering at whatever it is that Spock means.
"Yeah," he says. He's out of energy. And feeling damn sympathetic with the Franklin, since he wouldn't half mind shutting down some essential systems too. "Sure. Go ahead and try."
When he finally drops his hand, Spock has his fingers splayed across Keenser's face. Spock's eyes are shut, his face perfectly still, with a tiny furrow cutting between those slanted eyebrows of his. His body hangs motionless too, hovering over Keenser like he is. Then, his eyes open, a clear, placid brown even in the glow of the tricorder and Jim's light.
McCoy clears his throat.
"Lung irritation," Spock says.
"Water's wet," McCoy says, spreading both hands out wide and suddenly annoyed all over again. "He never kicked his cold. And you saw what the air quality in here is like, let alone what the lot of you pulled down onto yourselves when you kicked that damn wall in."
"We did not-"
"-Hell, this entire place is probably lousy with that dirt, us cooped up in the ship here, and everyone else out in that cave."
He stops. Raises his hand to his mouth and presses his fingers to his lips. Maybe… maybe there's no mistake that Keenser's the one still out, and has been suffering respiratory distress. And that Chapel was in here for days now, the Franklin's air filters whirring… Goddamn.
And all at once, his thoughts jolts into action, a rapid tumble over themselves until his head is buzzing. His hands too, where he rubs at his mouth. His whole body, filled with a spark that so quickly snapped into being.
"Jaylah," McCoy says, spinning around. "That protoplaser. You had other equipment with it. Where is it?"
"You will fix him?" she asks.
"I need those supplies, all of them. Five minutes ago," he says. He levers himself past Scotty's bed and over to Chapel's, pointing a finger at Jaylah as he goes. "Hurry, would you?"
"What are you doing?" Jim asks.
"Montgomery Scotty?" she asks. "And Mr. Keenser too?"
"Go," McCoy says to her. "Now."
Jaylah goes, her ponytail disappearing into the dark through the door and the door sliding slowly shut behind her. McCoy glances into the dark that coats the edges of the room. The doors should have zipped closed, not edged towards each other like that. He grimaces at the ship around him.
"Doctor?" Spock asks. But McCoy doesn't look up from where he's once again running his hands over the wires stuck into Chapel's neck. Her skin is so swollen and puffed up he winces for her when he gives one of the tubes a gentle tug. But he's got it now, and pauses only to lean forward to get a look at her face.
"All right?" he asks. She nods, a hand fisted into the dirty, stained blue of her uniform. That damn dust really is everywhere, all over her hands, beneath her nails, and rubbed into the fabric she clutches. And all over her lungs too, probably packed in there in a way he doesn't quite want to know. "Bend your head forward."
"Is that safe?" Jim asks. "To take those out of her without knowing exactly what they're doing?"
"Doctor, the Captain is correct. Are you certain that-"
"-I, for one," McCoy says and begins to pull, gently and steadily, "would like to get off this goddamn planet."
Chapel's mouth opens silently. Her eyes close, and then crease at the corner and the light shifts when Uhura leans in to rub at her arm.
"Almost there," McCoy murmurs. Blood slicks the tube. He could really use a dermal regenerator or three, but the most he's got is pointing his chin at Jim and nodding towards the clean gauze. As the last millimeters slip free, he quickly trades out the tube for a wad of the bandaging, pressing firmly. Chapel gasps.
"Fuck," she whispers quietly.
"That's one," he says.
A muscle in her jaw flexes. "How many?"
"Sulu, behind you in that drawer is a roll of medical tape, and beside it is an analgesic cream," McCoy says. He folds the gauze back on itself and presses it to her neck again. "More than you'll like, and you'll definitely be feeling it."
Her eyes squeeze and her face folds up into a grimace, one that doesn't ease as he spreads the ointment over her skin.
"Keep going," she says.
"Scotty," he says and grips the next tube. "Those oxygen masks. Can you recalibrate them to adjust the mix of gases?"
"If I don't go with the Captain to fix the ship-"
"-I'll get your power back soon as I can get the Nurse here unhooked," McCoy says as he slowly works another wire free of Chapel's neck. There's pus there that oozes out with a drop of blood. He's likely to need more antiseptic than the Franklin carries, though maybe they can replicate some, given a working ship. "And your Ensign, but I need a mask that can produce air with half the oxygen and a hell of a lot more nitrogen than those put out."
"I don't see why not," Scotty says. "But can I ask what it's for?"
"You can ask if you're already working on it. Lavigne, more gauze."
"All right, all right, hold your horses," Scotty says. "Give it here, Hendorff, and your light, Captain, let me have a look now."
"You said it yourself," McCoy says and wipes at the wound he's opened up on Chapel's neck. She's sweating, the moisture darkening the roots of her hair just above where he works. "The Academy is on Earth because it's the most hospitable planet to the greatest number of species, but it sure as hell ain't home for anyone except humans."
Scotty frowns. "So the nitrogen?"
"It'd be the atmosphere Keenser's evolved for. Why do you think he's always coming down sick? He's not meant to live breathing our air for a sustained length of time any more than Commander Spock is comfortable at the ship's ambient temperature," McCoy says.
"You're ok?" Jim asks and when McCoy looks up, he has his hand on Spock's shoulder.
"He got hit on the head," McCoy says and turns back to Chapel. He frowns down at her neck. "He's fine."
Apparently. Though that cut across his face is scabbing over an angry green.
"It was not a substantial impact," Spock says.
"Hard headed," McCoy mutters. "Vulcans have extra cilia in their lungs that keep their air passages cleaner than ours, a happy adaptation when you grow up on a sand ball."
"Evolutionary traits are randomly occurring, they are hardly purposeful," Spock says.
McCoy looks up. "That's what I meant."
"It is not what you said."
"But I know that when-"
"-So you're saying that it's this- this dust?" Jim asks, stepping forward. "That's the problem here, keeping the crew knocked out?"
"Air quality contamination, likely of a rather special kind, though hell if I actually know what's in the dirt here. In all likelihood, it's no mistake that this planet could support Krall for so long, nor that it was abandoned," McCoy says. "Jaylah's right. This planet is no good, at least for us."
"Is it going to affect us?" Jim asks. He drops his hand from Spock and gestures around the room at the crew still packed in there, right in the middle of McCoy's sickbay. "Are we all right here?"
"How long are we planning to stay?" McCoy asks. He grips a third wire and begins working it out, as careful as he can. "I'm betting it creates a low lying amount of stress that the body can't overcome enough to regain consciousness, especially when already compromised, though frankly I have no real idea."
He could, though, with proper equipment and enough time. His teeth clench. A single tear leaks out of the corner of Chapel's screwed up eyes.
He's got two more out by the time Jaylah gets back, and when she does, he tips his head towards Lavigne.
"Finish Chapel up," he says to her. "Be gentle, would you? Jaylah, what do we have here."
"I do not know what they are," she says. "This one, you use on your Commander. These, broken. This makes funny sounds, is all."
"Huh," McCoy says and takes the tangle of piping from her. In the poor light, it takes him a minute to sort through and he squints down at the mess, frowning. "I've only ever seen a picture but…" He shrugs. "Might work."
"What is that?" Uhura asks.
"It's for auscultation," McCoy says.
"I don't actually know every word."
He nearly smiles at that, her tone and the look she gives him as she says it.
"Listening to internal sounds. A rudimentary scanner, if you will. They used to be as common as tricorders."
"That?" she asks, an eyebrow rising.
He fits the earpieces in and raises a shoulder. "I know."
It's archaic is what it is, and a sorry substitute to what he should have. But he's had to make due with worse, and at least he's not ankle deep in a river, cauterizing a wound with an alien phaser. He glances over at Spock, who has his head tipped to the side.
"Do you know how to use it?" Spock asks.
"I'm a doctor, of course I know how to use it. Bend forward," he tells Chapel and pulls her collar away from the back of her neck. He read his textbooks. Those for his History of Medicine courses, along with the rest. "This might be cold."
"Watch it," Chapel says and catches the front of her uniform with a hand pressed over her collarbone.
McCoy rolls his eyes. "Don't flatter yourself."
Across the room, Spock looks up.
"Sorry," McCoy mutters.
"It is cold," Chapel says.
"Not the worst you've been through," he says. His face is hot and he doesn't look up again, focusing instead on avoiding Lavigne's hands and elbows as she works, and listening to the dull drum of Chapel's heartbeat in his ears. "Deep breath in."
He can make out the quiet rush of air, both the low warble of it drawn in and the flow of it back out again as Chapel's back sags on her exhale. He adjusts the stethoscope lower on her back and listens again to the faint rustle of her breath through her chest. Like wind through leaves, it reminds him of, not the gentle push of air through a tube and he lets his forehead furrow as he concentrates on it, that whistle he's not sure should be there.
"If we know it's the dust," Jim says and McCoy curls his shoulder up, focusing. "Then we know what we need to do, right?"
"Yes, but I cannae filter out the air in that cave, Captain. The volume of the space is simply too great for the equipment we have, not to mention all of the dust that we just kicked up while we were in there, what with the rocks that came down," Scotty says.
"Can we bring oxygen masks out to them?" Uhura asks. "It'd be one by one, but it shouldn't take too long."
"Recalibrating between each crew member?" Scotty asks. "The Captain here is known for his diversity in hiring. I'm not sure the Franklin has that much time."
"We'll think of something," Jim says.
"Think of it somewhere else," McCoy says and pulls the earpieces down to hang around his neck. "All of you get out, I can't hear a damn thing."
He doesn't bother to be surprised when he's ignored again, just tugs Chapel's uniform back up and makes his way over to Keenser. Spock shifts to the side, getting out of his way, and McCoy angles his back towards him and the room, wishing for a quiet - and private - place to work that he's certain to not get. He slips the stethoscope beneath the ruin of Keenser's uniform and tips his head as if it'll help him listen better. Again, there's a crackle like static, and he's no expert on Keenser's lungs, not the way he likely should be, but he'd be willing to put money on the fact they shouldn't be sounding like someone's making popcorn in the rec room.
"I've got this here for you," Scotty says at his shoulder.
"A minute," McCoy says and shuts his eyes, concentrating on that crackle coming through each time Keenser breathes. It's the dust all right, though what he wouldn't give to figure out the exact interaction it's causing as it hits the bloodstream.
"The mask?" Scotty prompts.
"I will take it," Spock says. There's a squeak on the tile floor as Spock steps closer. McCoy focuses on Keenser's slow exhale. "Are you ready for it, Doctor?"
"Go ahead," he mutters and Spock fits it over Keenser's mouth. Still, he can hear Jim's chatter, and Scotty's mixed in with it. They're broken only by Uhura's more measured suggestions, and Sulu raising his voice to say, "I don't think so, Captain."
McCoy sighs. Spock is too close to him, the room is too loud, and Keenser's breaths are so spaced out and shallow that it's near useless to be bent over him doing this.
His leg still hurts, too. Which isn't helping any.
Keenser twitches. McCoy rips the stethoscope out of his ears and drops it by Keenser's feet.
"Steady there, Ensign," he says. "Spock, keep that over his mouth."
"I am."
"Well, don't stop," McCoy says. He pats at Keenser's leg. Spock's hand is spread wide over the mask, the plastic of it beginning to fog. "Ensign, you all right there?"
Suddenly, Keenser's eyes open. Then, he sneezes and Spock jerks backwards.
"Keenser," McCoy says, leaning into the space Spock vacated. "Hey, there. That was easy, now wasn't it?"
A grunt from Keenser, which all things being equal McCoy can be happy with.
"Uhura," he calls. "Scotty? What's he saying, is he all right? Spock, where'd you put- Good God."
A tangled mess of what was one of McCoy's very few oxygen masks rests between his and Spock's boots and beyond it, when McCoy raises his eyes, Spock is holding his wrist out. His sleeve is smoking.
"Get that off," McCoy snaps. "Lavigne, a level six decontamination sterilizer, Spock, your shirt, now. He has a cold, dammit, you couldn't have watched out for his nose?"
"I was not aware that-"
"-Take your damn shirt off, or I'm going to take it off for you." McCoy hauls at Spock's shoulder and shoves him towards Lavigne. "If you're not a nurse or a patient, I want you out of here five minutes ago. Jim, you're not the ranking officer in my sickbay. Get your crew and get them gone."
There's blessed silence after the echo of his shout fades.
"Thank you," he says to the door when it slides shut behind Sulu. He pushes the tricorder into Chapel's hand. Two wires left in her neck, which isn't half bad. "Make yourself useful and hold this. Lavigne, get him undressed."
Wide-eyed, Lavigne stares at Spock. "I'm not sure-"
"-I am quite all right, Doctor."
"Your wrist is going to be down to the bone in half a minute," McCoy says and yanks the hem of Spock's shirt up. Spock lifts his arms so it's not the struggle it might be, but McCoy is left with a handful of inside out, blue uniform that's stiff with dried blood, and Spock's arm still sheathed within. He grimaces and murmurs, "Easy now."
Carefully, he peels the fabric from Spock's skin, gentle with where it wants to stick to his arm. Keeping his hands well away from the charred fabric, and the blisters that rise across Spock's forearm, he slowly works it free, grimacing at the shiny green across Spock's wrist that reaches over the back of his hand.
"Jesus," he breathes.
"I admit it causes considerable pain."
"How surprising," McCoy mutters. He pushes Spock down onto a biobed with a firm press on his shoulder. "Sit."
He's still holding Spock's shirt. The fabric is as warm as Spock's skin is. He drops it and makes his way to Keenser, leaning over where he's curled up on his side.
"Lavigne, go ahead and get the Commander cleaned up," he says. "I'll take care of the Ensign."
But a couple breaths is all Keenser needs, and with a solid, thudding pound of his fist to his own chest, he jumps down from the bed.
"Good?" McCoy asks. "Your head?"
Keenser waves him off and McCoy watches him go, the door edging open in front of him.
"Tell your Mr. Scott that he's technically supposed to be in sickbay with a head wound of his own," McCoy calls after him, but Keenser keeps walking. McCoy shakes his head. How the lot of them stay standing is beyond him, an entire crew of walking medical disasters headed up by Jim Kirk, the worst of all of them.
"Can I go too?" Chapel asks.
"You got two more wires," McCoy says. "And, no, you can't."
"I want to shower."
"I'm sure you do," he says. "But you're under medical evaluation for at least-"
"-I'm perfectly capable of monitoring-"
"-No," he says firmly. "You're the only head nurse I've got, and we have a couple hundred patients waiting on us."
"Which is why with some rest and decent food, I'd be-"
"-This is not a democracy," McCoy says. "I'm your CMO."
"I can keep an eye on her," Lavigne says.
"Can none of you follow a damn order?" he asks, looking around sickbay only to find Spock on his feet as Lavigne finishes tying a bandage off on his wrist. "Goddammit, Spock, you too. Sit down."
"I am needed to assist with the starboard generator."
"If Jim can't fit in there, then you can't either, even if you don't share his potato chip habit," McCoy says. "And you're not discharged, last time I checked, so you're staying put right where you are."
"No," Spock says.
"I'll take these out," Lavigne says and edges past McCoy so that she can lean over Chapel's neck. He lets her, stalking over to Spock and putting a finger in his face.
"You've suffered a blow to the head and sucked down plenty of whatever it is Scotty and Keenser were breathing in that tunnel. Let's have a listen, and then I want to look at your hand."
"I am quite well."
"They give you a medical degree along with those ears?" McCoy says and snatches the stethoscope off of the foot of what was Keenser's biobed. "How convenient."
"One more," Lavigne says softly. "It's all right, Christine."
"I can assure you, Doctor, that I am not in need of-"
"-One of us is in charge of the health of the ship's personnel, and the other is in charge of sitting down and shutting their mouth," McCoy says. "Do you want to be halfway down the corridor and lights out, falling and hitting your head? Do you think I just revive people around here a dime a dozen? That I happen to like fighting alien dirt on an alien planet that's doing God knows what to my crew?"
"The lights are already out," Spock says.
"There you go," Lavigne says and slips the last tube free.
A flare of bright and McCoy grimaces as a glare like high noon fills sickbay.
"Dammit," he snaps and raises his hand to cover his eyes. They ache. Still, he squints through the smarting and scowls at Spock. "No, they're not."
"I'm going," Chapel says. "You can comm me when you need me."
"The draw on the ship's power," Spock says, looking around like it's not as if the sun didn't just come out at midnight. McCoy's head hurts with the brightness of the room. And to think of how dim everything on this ship seemed, compared with the gleam of white he was so used to. "Unhooking the nurse must have eased the load on the generators, raising their capacity to-"
"-Quiet," McCoy says and presses the stethoscope to the middle of Spock's back. "Enjoy your logical deductions in silence, some of us don't care."
"It will likely allow us to leave this planet," Spock says and McCoy can hear the rumble of his voice straight through, flaring up in his ears.
"Hush," he says to the back of Spock's neck.
The door slides shut behind Chapel and Lavigne and the silence is better than he's had all day. Best, really, for watching her walk out of here. He pulls at Spock's bare shoulder to straighten his back and satisfaction flares in his chest, warm and thick. A good thing finally, in all of this.
"I am certain you are glad to have Chapel back," Spock says softly and McCoy glances up at what he can see of him, the curve of his profile and the sharp angles of that haircut of his.
"What?" McCoy asks and lets his hand fall again. "Oh, yeah, 'course I am."
Uncanny, Spock is sometimes. Someday, McCoy might even get used to it, but for now, he lays a hand over Spock's side and feels over his ribs as he breathes. He needs to eat more. The fine lines of his ribcage are too close to that warm skin of his, buried beneath the thinnest slip of muscle.
"You get hit anywhere but your head?" he asks.
"No."
"Good," he says and shifts the stethoscope over his back again. His breathing sounds good. Clearer than Keenser's, and definitely more so than Chapel's. Now, if everyone could have the lungs of a damn Vulcan, they wouldn't be in this mess. No, McCoy would be on Yorktown with a glass of whiskey and his feet up, not bent over Spock and his leg aching from being on it all damn day.
He drapes the stethoscope around his neck and with two fingers on Spock's temple, tips his head to the side to better see that cut. It's scabbed over, but there's yellow and purple bruising around it, and when McCoy presses the pad of his index finger to the edge of it, Spock flinches.
"Sorry," he says softly, though he doesn't pull his hand back, just traces a touch over Spock's high cheekbone and around to his jaw, feeling for more damage.
The cut isn't deep at all, but Spock could have cleaned it better. McCoy rubs his thumb over the mark, and then the soft skin around it.
He's an attractive guy. Here in the silence of sickbay, alone just the two of them in this corner of the room, McCoy can't help but notice it. Horrible hairstyle, but he has that brown of his eyes and a nice mouth to match. It's been more than once that McCoy has caught sight of that stern profile, though he prefers to chalk up his attention snagging on Spock to the air the man has, that way of carrying himself.
Spock's eyes shift to catch his own.
"Hurts?" McCoy asks.
"No."
McCoy pushes at his cheek, feeling for a bruise on the ridge of Spock's jaw. Beneath his fingers is a hint of stubble and the firm line of bone.
"Doctor," Spock says.
"Hmmm?" He presses his thumb into the hollow beneath Spock's jaw. There's a give there, and the tension of a tendon beneath.
A warm hand covers his wrist and McCoy jerks to a stop. The shower, he remembers now. Spock's eyes on him the same as then, but now with none of the heat of that guardedness he'd wrapped himself in.
"Cease," Spock says softly. His throat works beneath McCoy's hand. "Please."
McCoy clears his throat.
"Your arm all right?" he asks.
Spock draws a breath in and McCoy watches the rise of his shoulders and the even way his ribs expand around the sides of his slim torso.
"Is your breathing ok?" Spock's hand is still on his. His neck is warm. McCoy shouldn't be touching him. "Because really, I'd like to-"
"-Leonard," Spock says.
McCoy frowns. "What?"
"If I had approached you differently," Spock says. "Would it have changed your decision?"
"Differently?" McCoy echoes. They're too close together. He steps back. Approached him? Oh. Good God. "You mean about…"
He doesn't say it. Just waves at the empty air between them and then lets his hand fall to his side.
No, he wants to say. And also tell Spock to shut it and let him continue his exam, like a logical patient should.
McCoy rubs his hand over his chin. Spock sits there, watching him. He's not blinking.
To let Spock get in under his skin. A slow creep to it, not the guns blazing, out of left field way that Spock so apparently tends to prefer. Given the chance for that difference…
"Haven't thought about it," he mutters. He's been so long used to the company of his right hand and the silence of his quarters that there's a stubborn burn that ignites in his chest at the thought that he'd give voice to the fact that considering it now, he's unsure. God, he just might have, faced with how far Spock has already inched into his life...
"Maybe," he says and Spock lowers his eyes.
McCoy fiddles with the bell of the stethoscope. It's still cool to the touch, even after being pressed to Spock's warm back. He pats his thumb against it and imagines he can hear the beat of those taps.
"Sorry," he says softly. "Spock, I-"
"-I respect your choice," Spock says. "I was simply curious."
"Yeah." He clears his throat. "Can I take a look at your hand?"
Spock eyes him. Horribly, intently so. Then he takes a deep breath and his expression shifts. Closes in on itself with that way Spock has of suddenly staring into some middle distance McCoy can't see.
"I would prefer that you wear gloves."
"Spock…"
"Furthermore, Nurse Lavigne did an adequate job. Do you have extra uniforms in sickbay?" Spock asks and stands. McCoy has to take a step back to make room for him and God does his leg hurt. He scrubs at his face with his palm.
"The top cupboard," he says into his wrist. "Can't we just-"
"-Thank you," Spock says crisply and that apparently is that. That tap of his boots on the linoleum and the finality to his tone.
McCoy's stomach twists. Hungry, he'd like to think. Dehydrated. Exhausted.
He watches the muscles play over Spock's back as he pulls out a shirt.
That Spock is so… regretful. The weight of it sits heavy in McCoy's gut. How long has Spock been, well, feeling this way, if he's standing here now with downcast eyes and too slow movements. They had so long together, before this mess out here. Three too long years, back on the Enterprise. And Spock had never let on. Reevaluate, Jim had said. Goddamn if Spock hadn't been doing some of that on his own apparently, and that computer he calls a brain had so suddenly spit out a course of action that he dove into head first.
Which is just somewhere beyond unhinged to even consider, all that time they had on the ship - their ship - when McCoy was blithely living his life, morning staff meetings, inventory requests, monthly vaccination records, the in and out of shifts and missions and the occasional odd shore leave. And meanwhile Spock was… Doing whatever it was that Spock did. Making a pros and cons list, for all that McCoy knows. Running a cost benefit analysis, or inputting variables into an algorithm that took until now to complete its calculations.
There's no way to get back to how it was between them, now is there. That affable friendliness they had, the one that had long since grown out of genuine irritation, mellowed over months and years into something entirely easier. Simpler, even, in its own way. And now… Whatever tectonic plates Spock shoved around in their lives, they've shifted but good and those aftershocks aren't likely to fade anytime soon.
McCoy sighs. This isn't the first time he's been pushed forward despite his ungainly attempts to cling to what was. Though he's always gone kicking and screaming, hasn't he. Across the room, Spock shakes the shirt out. There're no rank stripes on it, no insignia. He'll be walking around like some Ensign until he goes back to their room to find clothes of his own. A room that, God willing, they won't be sharing for too much longer. No, maybe they actually have a chance to get out of here and draw this mission to a close, Jim with his engineers and Chapel now back on her feet. Though something new will be waiting for them after they leave, he knows. There always is - and this time it'll be another round of these missions if that's what he wants. And if not… a life somewhere else. Away from all this, one that likely will fit all wrong for who knows how long, like the ill itch of anything that needs breaking in.
And well… That newness has always scared him stiff, hasn't it. But he can't go back, so he might as well go forward. Whatever that means, at least, since hell if McCoy knows. It's a nice thought, comforting especially now, to remember all that lays behind him, that life he had on the Enterprise that maybe wasn't so bad at all. Spock there in the background of his days, Jim happy and contented as captain, the crew hale and hearty, and the Enterprise too. Now, a wreck of what it formerly was and a new version waiting for them at Yorktown like a funhouse mirror of the ship they had made their home. It's not exactly lost on him that he wants to climb backwards in time and on board their old ship just for the sake of something that feels closer to a normal he knows. It might be crazy, to want that all over again when faced with the uncertainty of whatever might lay ahead of him, and yet he misses what was so ordinary with a pang that mixes in with the disquiet Spock stirs in him. Those quarters he'd made his, the mess hall with the table they always sat at, him and Spock, and Uhura and Jim, the rec room where pleasant enough nights had passed. And hell - lights that worked and environmental controls that ran like they were supposed to. They were always a backdrop to his days, they were, them and the warp drive, that welcome hum of white noise throughout the ship that more than once lulled him to sleep after a too-long shift. Hell, they were so ubiquitous they were probably still running the last time he was back on board, that ill fated trip with Spock that sent all of this into careening motion.
He straightens. They might have been, in all actuality. Environmental controls run on a priority system, so trust them to still be whirring away even when the ship is smashed onto the face of a planet.
And if not… even if not, the guts of them - the filters and particle dispensers and diffusion matrices, they were in the saucer. The Franklin might be the size of a shoebox, but the volume of the Enterprise…
"Spock," he says. "The other day when we went back to the ship-"
"-Doctor, in all honesty, I do not wish to speak of-"
"-Were the environmental controls on?"
"The environmental controls?" Spock blinks. "I do not remember."
"You don't remember?" McCoy stares at him. "Because of all the times for your pedantic, ridiculous memory-"
"-I was distracted." This, so shortly. Spock's mouth tightens and his eyebrow twitches. "Rather severely."
See, McCoy wants to say. A terrible idea this would be, the two of them. Not a shred of focus between them. But he doesn't have the heart for it, not now and not when he's halfway to the door, moving as fast as he can drag his leg.
"Jim!" he shouts down the corridor.
"Where are you going?" Spock asks.
"We need to get to the ship," McCoy says. "The Enterprise will get us out of here."
"The Enterprise is in no state to-"
"-She's not out of tricks yet," McCoy says. "And I, for one, am not giving up."