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A fist of sorrow, a grieved loneliness, closed tightly in Dr. McCoy’s chest as he eased himself down on the edge of his bed in his quarters, and it wouldn’t let go. He was tired and he ached mightily. It had been a wearying week, interminable days when they did not know whether the new serum would work at all, long days when they did not know that though it had saved his life, that it had not left Jim Kirk a mindless, brain-damaged shell. That the serum had prevented death at all was miraculous; Vegan choriomeningitis was, or had been, a virulent, invariably fatal disease. In those days of anguished waiting, of the not-knowing, McCoy had felt a new closeness grow be¬tween himself and the Vulcan First Officer, though it had remained unspoken and unexpressed. It had been Jim’s crisis that had drawn them together, generated by their different but equally dynamic attachments to the captain of their ship who had become their dearest friend.
McCoy stared down at his clenched fists, and deliberately flexed them. It was no use. He should shower and get some sleep, Lord knew he needed it. But the fist in his chest would not let go, and it made it hard to move. He frowned and pondered his open, sweaty hands.
The closeness, brief though it had been, had filled some empty place in his soul that he had not wanted to acknowledge before, and now it had dissipated in his grasp like water in the desert. The gushing flood of joy at Kirk’s first coherent words had filled him with an ecstacy of relief, but when the joy had peaked and subsided, the bond with Spock was gone.
Obnoxious, constipated Vulcan. It’s as though this week never happened for him, now that it’s all over. Damn him. And Jim’s resting, he’ll be flat on his back for at least another week before he’ll feel up to much of anything, let alone any palling around.
He shook himself mentally and yanked his tunic off over his head, not fussing with the closure. He wanted to get on with the shower, but found himself gazing down sightlessly at the crumpled blue shirt as though it contained some magical message or council that would sooth his inner strife.
It’s not fair to relate any of this to Jim. It’s not his fault.
Still, he could not forget that when Jim had awakened, his eyes had first sought Spock, had visually embraced the Vulcan, had delighted in the reunion. It was natural that he should remember Spock’s sacrifices and ministrations, for Jim had still been lucid when the Vulcan had risked his own life to get Kirk back to the ship in time to try the serum. It was impossible that in his week of coma, Jim could have known the effort and anguish that the doctor had expended. And so, when Jim had regained his senses, it was to be expected that his focus would be on Spock, and though he had also acknowledged McCoy in grateful tones and touches, there was a two-way tension between Kirk and the Vulcan that had left McCoy feeling awkward, abandoned, unneeded.
I’m the doctor, my concern is professional; they don’t expect me to let myself get involved, they don’t have time for a doctor with feelings.
Hold on a minute. I’m just feelin’ sorry for myself. I’m tired, and it’s been a devil of a long week, and things are all out of proportion.
They love each other, though. There’s no room in that for me. It’s between the two of them, and it’s none of my business. I’m used to bein’ alone by now, aren’t I?
Good God.
A part of him screamed. A part wept. A part smouldered.
Determinedly, he pushed up and strode into the bathroom, stripping for the shower. He turned up the ultrasonics all the way, wishing that the tiny tingling vibrations could scrub and massage him right through his skin down into his soul, wherever it was. He was weary. Weary. He leaned his head, resting it on the backs of his hands, against the stall’s partition and waited for the sonics to soothe him, but the blasted unit had been acting up lately, and he had put off reporting it to Maintenance, hating to have anyone poking around in his quarters, the few cubic meters he could call his own on the ship. Straightening, he banged the controls angrily. Blasted machine! You couldn’t depend on anything around here. The level stayed low, barely a tickle. He smashed it with a balled fist, and the level climbed. He felt chilled, so he turned up the infrared source, too, and sat back lethargically on the fold-down seat, trying to sort out and stow his feelings away.
The tingling lulled him. He closed his eyes and soaked in the silence like a sponge.
I’m tired, jus’ tired. Always buttin’ into things where I don’t belong, no wonder I end up disappointed. How long have I been on this tinplated taxi? Almost a year ’n’ a half. And I’ve known Jim almost six. And in one and a half years, Spock means more to Jim than I do. I don’t know what they have between them, how it can be anything like what two humans can have, like what Jim and I have. Or used to have. Damnation.
What can I do? I dunno if there’s room in me for Spock too. Threesomes never work anyway. You get pulled in too many directions.
The sonics were starting to sting a bit, but he ignored it. The turmoil in his soul consumed his attention.
It might be best if I backed off. Maybe even transferred, though that’d be harder in the long run. Spock needs someone like Jim more than I do, Lord knows. I can get along, always have, I don’t need much. Maybe Jim can help Spock. Some¬body’s got to drag him out of that shell, or his human half may be the death of him, Vulcan control or no Vulcan control. He won’t let me help him. The only time we can be close is when it’s over Jim, when Jim’s in trouble and needs both of us.
The stinging was becoming bothersome. Not opening his eyes, he fumbled for the controls again and turned them down, then settled back again, enthralled by his thought-flow.
The first time me ’n’ Spock ever had much of anything substantial to say to each other, it was the time the transporter split Jim into halves, and then we were opponents. On Miri’s world, Jim told me Spock was takin’ care of me while I out cold after testin’ the antitoxin, and I thought for a while that maybe there was hope for Spock, maybe we should try to be friends. But he held me off. He always holds me off. He gives me the crawling bejeebies the way he just turns people off like that. But I know there’s more than transistors in there somewhere -- he’s taken big risks for some folks -- for Captain Pike and for Jim, mostly. But he can’t relate to me except through Jim, and maybe only because of Jim, ‘cause maybe he thinks Jim expects it of him.
If that’s so, Jim-boy, you aren’t doing us any favors. I don’t want that from Spock, not that way. I don’t want charity, dammit.
Wait a minute. Charity from a Vulcan? -- my brains must be scrambled.
His nose was running, and he wiped it mindlessly, reaching for the shower controls again, since the thing didn’t seem to want to turn down. It was stuck again, and he gave it another impatient smack.
His teeth vibrated, and a sharp stab of pain skewered his head. He opened his eyes and saw blood on his hand where he had wiped his nose.
The sonics! He beat at the dials again, but suddenly his arms were quivering, with no strength at all.
He went to stand up, and his legs folded under him. The world reeled away dizzily.
Gotta get out! Cerebral hemorrhage. Vascular implosion.
He couldn’t see. Sudden clouds of blood flooded his eyes. He tasted salt, choked on the gushing fountain at the back of his throat. His arms, his legs, they fumbled distantly, reality contracted to violent pulsing agony that was exploding in his skull.
… crawl… door…
Time lost meaning. He crawled, or thought he crawled, toward the door. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move. Needles of piercing cold drove into his veins, and he shuddered and inched forward impossibly, hopelessly.
Confused motion invaded the pain, distant sensations, a jumbled rush that was bundling him away from agony. Somehow, the torture had stopped, been shut away, and garbled shouts about Engineering and Sick Bay thundered through his fading awareness. Haste was swaddling him in cloth and warmth. With shaking arms he snuggled around the spare shoulders of his rescuer, and gave in to the roiling clouds of unconsciousness.
“Easy does it,” a remote voice warned out of the darkness, and he couldn’t place the voice, it had a strange resonance in his ears. Who was that? M’Benga? McCoy opened his eyes, alarmed, and shut them instantly, blinded by the overhead glare.
“I told you not to do that,” Dr. M’Benga chastised. “I’ll turn the light lower in a moment, when I’m finished examining you. Can you hear me clearly?”
McCoy opened his lips and was chagrined to find them dry and stiff, his jaw and tongue a little numb and lazy.
“I hear ya,” he managed, and coughed, his throat dehydrated. “’M thirsty.”
“In a moment.”
M’Benga was poking around at his ears.
“That looks good. Your eardrums should function normally again, without scar tissue. I’ll conduct more thorough tests later, when you’re stronger. For now, I think we can expect your hearing and eyesight to return to normal in a few days. You’ll have some trouble speaking and using your right limbs for a while, as you sustained brain damage affecting locomotor control on your right side. The surgery went fine, though, and you’ll have full use again in a week or so.”
“Can I…open my eyes yet?”
“Yes, one second. All right. Get some rest now, someone will always be here monitoring you, and I’ll be back to see you later.”
McCoy blinked carefully, but the glare was down to a tolerable glow. Without looking around he knew he was in the intensive care ward in the back of Sick Bay.
A glass of water appeared by his shoulder, and he turned his head blearily to find himself looking into a long Vulcan face.
“Spock?” he whispered.
“Do not tax yourself, Doctor,” Spock said, and put a hand under McCoy’s neck to help him rise up enough to drink.
When he pushed up, McCoy found his left hand imprisoned under a warm weight he’d not noticed at first, and he gaped over at the hand wrapped around his fingers, at the tousled, sleeping form of Jim Kirk, lying on his own bed, which had been unbolted from the deck and pushed over to meet McCoy’s bed.
What’s going on here?
“He wished to be with you when you awoke,” Spock said. “As this room is private, there was no need to deny his request. However, he fell asleep. I shall wake him if you wish.”
McCoy shook his head, and was careful not to move his hand. He drank down the water Spock held, sputtering a bit as the harsh wetness shocked his parched throat. Spock let him back down, and McCoy shut his eyes, trying to wrestle his confusion into some order. It occurred to him that someone had gotten him out of the sonics, or he would surely be dead. And he knew with a shock who it had been.
“It was you,” he breathed, not opening his eyes to face the Vulcan. “You found me.”
“Affirmative,” Spock said, keeping his voice soft so as not to wake the captain. “Your shower facility was in disrepair, and showed some abuse. Apparently its safety device was rendered inoperative. Constitution-class starships are the Federation’s most efficient vehicular design, but the personnel-engineering has been shown to be flawed. Having a hygenic facility with a potential to cause damage to its users is dangerous and criminal, despite safety features, for as you have most graphically discovered, safety features do not always function reliably. Mister Scott has entered a full report in the Engineering log. Accidents like yours have occurred on other vessels, and the design of the shower facility should be altered to prevent future occurrences.”
He saved me. He saved my life, and he just brought me water, and he lifted my head to help me drink it, and he’s embarrassed. He’s hidin’ it behind that old logical professional facade, but Jesus Lord, he’s embarrassed!
Spock carried the drinking glass back to the ward’s bathroom, and McCoy turned his head to gaze over at Jim. Kirk’s hand on his was heavy and warm. It gave McCoy a new and welcome peacefulness, a delicious sense of recovered security. If they hadn’t been in a private ward, Jim wouldn’t -- couldn’t -- have done this, but it warmed McCoy that Jim would even have thought of it, had known how much that simple, innocent act of human intimacy would mean to McCoy, how it would comfort him.
Another image, an impression of warmth, nagged at McCoy’s memory, and he remembered the frantic embrace in which he had been carried, sick and dizzy with pain, out of the murderous tenacity of the sonics. Though the memory was muddled, there had been more than dispassionate concern in that embrace, he would swear to it.
Spock returned and busied himself lowering the lights to a yet more comfortable glow.
What on earth was he doing in my quarters in the first place?
The Vulcan wandered back to McCoy’s side.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Doctor? I must return to my watch shortly, but if I can be of assistance? Or get you a nurse?”
“Tell me why,” McCoy said softly, daring to look up into the dark eyes. Spock seemed confused.
“You were endangered,” he said. “I heard the abnormal ultrasonics from the corridor. It was my duty to render you aid.” The voice was fully Vulcan, fully emotionless, but something fled behind the eyes, a hesitant something that dreaded discovery.
No, I won’t press it. But I do want to know one more thing.
“I meant,” he said with difficulty, “why were you near my quarters?”
It couldn’t have been that he was there by chance, passing by. Spock’s quarters were in the other direction from the turbolifts. He’d come there deliberately.
The timid something behind Spock’s eyes cowered, and for a moment McCoy regretted having pressed the Vulcan that far, but then resolution steadied there, and
Spock spoke calmly, though he shifted his gaze. McCoy followed the gaze to its focus. It rested on his own and Kirk’s joined hands.
“I was…concerned at your state of mind following the Captain’s recovery. I noted your unusual silence, the ill humor with which you addressed Ms. Caffrey and Ms. Chapel, and that you had left an opened bottle of brandy on your desk in your office.”
“You were concerned?” McCoy mouthed.
“We have experienced difficulties in…appreciating…each other’s differences and similarities before. However,” he added, and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, “I wish to learn from thee.”
McCoy’s startled eyes locked with Spock’s. With an unaccustomed bewilderment, the doctor reached a hesitant hand toward the Vulcan. Hot dry fingers curled tightly around his.
His lips trembled, but he said it: “And I from thee.”
Spock nodded once, put McCoy’s hand down on the sheet gently, and strode out of the ward.
For a long time, McCoy gazed up at the dimmed lights, and concentrated on the lingering warmth of Spock’s touch. McCoy’s other hand was still enfolded in Jim’s unconscious grasp, and he pondered. He was tired, already, and his thoughts were jumbling, but he kept tumbling over in his mind his image of Spock’s gaze, so longing, riveted on Jim’s and McCoy’s own hands, and he thought with a deep, drowsy satisfaction:
Well, what d’ya know. It wasn’t charity at all.
Revised and reprinted from CONTACT 2.