Chapter 13- The Doctors McCoy
Uhura and I spent hours trying to decide what to wear. This fell firmly into the girly category that I despised. I had always been a low maintenance kind of person that preferred substance over flash. As such, I hated overly dressy or sparkly styles that make you look like you had some serious compensation issues. I preferred simple and understated, but it seemed that the women that would be attending the dinner liked to make it a fashion competition and in the end I was forced into a red dress.
I hated wearing dresses. Simply hated it. I felt that it put all of the wrong parts of you on display and served to cheapen your perceived intellect by at least 20 points. Men couldn't take you seriously when they seemed to be conversing with your breasts. But it wasn't just the dress, it was the torture devices called heels that you had to wear with it. I was not a graceful person and I was certain I would end up with a broken ankle by the night's end. I was not accustomed to wearing them and I could count the number of times I had on one hand. I felt ridiculous in the getup although Uhura seemed pleased.
She helped me pack what scant few belongings I had and carry them to McCoy's quarters. It was sad, my entire life fit into one small box. I tripped a few times on the way, but I recovered each time before I fell down, cursing under my breath at the straps that dug into my feet and felt like barbed wire. "You'll be fine." Uhura encouraged as we reached his door. "You two have fun!" Her eyes danced with mischievousness as she smiled.
"It isn't like that!" I hissed quietly as though McCoy were listening on the other side. "It is bad enough as it is, don't make it any harder." I pleaded. She widened her smile as though she were innocent and kept walking down the hall. She was enjoying every minute of it and I found her lack of sympathy disheartening.
I stepped up close to his door to activate the chime and swallowed the panic that made my heart race. I felt like I was in high school passing a note to the boy in the back of the class. Do you like me Y or N?
This is ridiculous. You are both adults and this is nothing more than a meaningless requirement. It isn't some kind of date, it is just a formal function that neither of you really wants to go to…
The door slid open and we both looked at each other in shock. I was absolutely taken back by how different he looked from his everyday blue uniform and slightly messy hair. His dress uniform was also blue, but much more decorative and his hair was neatly styled. He was, dare I admit it, incredibly handsome. His eyes were wide as he looked me over and for the first time I took note of the unusual color of them. They were not like anything I had seen before, not hazel, not quite green…something more like olive but that didn't seem to do them justice either.
He cleared his throat and broke the spell that had been cast between us, resuming his usual scowl. "You look very nice." He mumbled gesturing for me to come in. "You can put your things down anywhere." His room was surprisingly immaculate save the desk which looked almost exactly like the one on deck 5- piled high with files. Apparently, he never really stopped working. He approached the desk and removed a bottle and two glasses from a drawer. "Whiskey?" He offered pouring himself a glass.
"No thanks." I declined. "I can barely walk in these things as it is, being drunk won't help." I said pointing at my shoes.
He looked them over thoughtfully as he downed his first glass in an almost continuous gulp. "Believe me," he said again reaching into the drawer to remove another bottle, "you will want to have a little in you to get through this thing. I take it whiskey isn't your style. How about this?" He turned the bottle to show me the label and I chuckled. Bailey's. "That's the spirit." He smiled as he poured some for me. I sat on the edge of his bed to take the pressure off my sore feet and he sat next to me to put his boots on.
"Well, Mr. McCoy. You look dashing." I teased while sipping my drink.
He glanced at me and smiled. "Only when I have to, darling." He drawled. I smiled at his emphasized accent. "Are you ready to be bored out of your skull, dear?" He asked standing up and extending his hand to me.
I quickly drank the rest of my beverage and took his hand to stand up. "I am ready for a battle of the wits in which I can assure you I have no plans on losing." I held on to his arm because suddenly I felt dizzy from the alcohol and my balance wasn't that great to begin with.
He graciously pretended not to notice and allowed me to hang on him while we walked to dinner. "Then this may not be so bad after all. I would love nothing more than to watch you carve up the arrogant blowhards without them even knowing it." He mockingly made a quick bow and added, "Ninja queen."
I laughed as we exited the room to see a welcoming committee comprised of Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura in the hall. They began to cheer and cat call while Pavel took a picture of us. We both turned red, but for very different reasons- I was terribly embarrassed and he was very angry. "Goddamn it!" He bellowed. "Don't you kids have anything better to do than stalk us? Isn't it past your bedtimes?"
The trio continued to laugh and Sulu said, "Man, there are times when it pays not to be an officer in Starfleet, but you two make a great couple!"
I took it gracefully, knowing they were just teasing in a good natured way, but McCoy wasn't so thrilled. "Take another picture, Ensign." He growled at Pavel. "I will shove that camera so far up your ass you will be puking polaroids." Chekov slowly lowered his camera, but smiled just the same.
Dinner wasn't so bad from my perspective. For the most part, I let McCoy come up with a backstory on how we met and tried not to laugh at how well he was playing it off even though he was lying like a dog. We met while he was in med school. I attended a nearby university where I studied psychology and we both used the same lab for experiments. We were just friends then and we lost touch after graduation, but lo and behold! We met again when the Enterprise encountered a Romulan ship in the neutral zone and I was on board after being captured from a scientific vessel! It really was a small universe after all.
Even Jim and Spock were paying close attention. Jim covered his mouth with his clasped hands, but I could tell he was smiling while Spock sat immobile, no doubt disapproving of such a spectacle of deceit. Scotty was, as predicted, hiding in the bathroom for long stretches of time. For the duration of the dinner, I artfully dodged personal questions either outright or by giving elaborate yet vague answers. But the others had not been exaggerating, the brass loved nothing more than to talk about themselves as though they were the center of the universe, so it was incredibly easy to pass the time by feigning interest and asking them to elaborate on whatever detail of minutiae they were stuck on at the moment.
By the end of the dinner, McCoy sat slouched in his chair, poking listlessly at his desert and Spock had already endured nearly an hour of the admiral's wife's prattling about her champion dogs that she bred and flew all over the star system showing in competitions. To anyone that knew him, it was clear that he had checked out long ago by his unfocused eyes but as long as he kept blinking, she kept talking.
It seemed as though there would be no end to the torture until I decided to put a stop to it. "Captain Kirk," I called down the table. He blinked as though he didn't recognize it as his name. "I apologize, but I am not feeling well. May Dr. McCoy and I be excused?"
He glanced at Scotty who looked betrayed, but McCoy just shrugged his shoulders and smiled- clearly laughing and pointing at him on the inside. "Yeah, sure." He reluctantly agreed. "See you tomorrow." Even Spock looked despondent, perhaps realizing that he had many hours to go and much more to learn about the intricacies of the galactic dog circuit before he could get away. I politely thanked everyone for their company as I rose from the table and sighed when the doors of the turbolift enclosed McCoy and I.
"Well done!" McCoy exclaimed. "You not only survived, but saved my ass as well. If I had to hear anything more about the rear admiral's suspicious rash I was going to leap across the table and strangle him with his napkin." He sighed and his head fell back with a thud. "I fucking hate these things."
The doors opened to deck 3, home to both McCoy and Spock. We entered his room and once again I felt uneasy. I paced in front of his desk, ignoring the searing pain that came with each step. My feet felt like the bones were broken, but I didn't dare look.
"Ok," he sighed throwing his hands up, "let's just get this over with and deal with the gorilla in the room, shall we? Neither of us are comfortable with this, but it is only for a few days and then everything will be back to normal. You can have the bed and I will sleep on the floor." He said opening the closet and removing an extra set of blankets and pillows.
"No, I will sleep on the floor." I suggested.
"Can't." He said shaking his head. "What kind of gentleman would make a lady sleep on the floor? My grandma would have my balls if she knew I did something like that. It's against the rules. But really, I don't mind." He said quietly spreading out the blankets on the floor.
"I appreciate your chivalry," I began, "but the thing is, I can't sleep in your bed. I know this is probably strange to you, but it is your intimately personal space and I just can't be in that." I smiled apologetically, but that was how I felt.
He frowned and looked at the bed. "It is where I sleep and sadly nothing else." He muttered. "Nothing really personal about being comatose."
I sighed and hung my head. I didn't want to argue with him anymore. "I think maybe it would be better if I just go somewhere else." I mumbled.
He kneeled on his makeshift bed and looked up at me intensely. "You have nowhere else to go, or were you planning on sleeping in a Jeffery tube?" His face softened a little. "Look, I can crash with Jim and you can have the whole place to yourself if it would make you feel better." I paced shaking my head. I didn't want to be alone in his room, it somehow seemed worse. After a minute or so, I stopped in my tracks when he suspiciously asked, "Do I somehow remind you of him? Is that why this is so difficult?"
I felt like he had sucker punched me in the gut. "Who are you talking about?" I asked in a shaky voice. It seemed like all of the air had been sucked out of the room.
"Your husband." He said softly. "Don't think I haven't noticed that you don't look at me very often. Do I look like him or something?" He wasn't being sarcastic for once.
I felt sick, but he deserved an answer. "Vaguely." I whispered. I wasn't angry with him for pointing it out, I was disappointed that I didn't figure it out for myself before then. There had always been something slightly unsettling about McCoy and I had always chalked it up to his temper, but truthfully he freaked me out because he reminded me of a ghost I once knew.
"Do you still love him?" He asked quietly.
I fought hard not to cry. I never cried in front of anyone ever in my life and I wasn't going to start now. "A part of me always will." I admitted. "It ended so strangely that I am not sure I will ever feel completely settled. You go along thinking that everything is fine and your happiness will last the rest of your life and then you get blindsided. Suddenly the world doesn't look the same and you can't figure out what went wrong. All you can do is try to pick up the pieces and go on, but you know deep down that you will never be whole again."
He nodded deep in thought. "I think I know exactly what you mean." He sighed. "I was married once and I thought we would have a storybook life. I was working hard and she seemed happy enough to spend my money on things we didn't need, but I never said anything to her if it made her happy. She was always bitching at me for some damn thing or another, but she was always that way. Then one day out of nowhere I was served with divorce papers at the hospital along with a note that my personal items had been packed up and placed in storage. I couldn't go home again. She took the whole damn planet in the divorce and left me with just my clothes. I even left those behind and joined Starfleet after I had too much to drink to know what I was getting into." He smirked. "It seems to be a problem I have. Anyway, that's where I met Jim and the rest they say is history. But I know how it feels to have your heart ripped out of your chest when all you can do is stand there bleeding and looking at the gaping hole wondering how the hell it all happened in the first place."
I sat next to him on the floor and smiled. "Does the bleeding ever stop?" I asked.
"It has been almost six years. It is amazing how you can bleed for all that time and not die, but I will keep you posted." He said quietly.