Title: The Man and the Memory (5/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Sequel to The Boy and the Sea Dragon. McCoy wakes up and finds that his world has been turned upside down.
Previous Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Part Four

Leonard draws the line at hiding in Spock’s quarters. He is tired, not exactly confused and most definitely wary. The man named Leonard McCoy has an entire life that has gone missing and he isn’t sure where to look to find it. But his quarters become one of the first places to search.

He has spent time here, touching things and wishing they would act as a trigger. When he had finally demanded to be released from Sickbay and then given into the concession of a personal escort by M’Benga, he recalls the initial relief of being let free into the world again. Of course, walking into the place he lives (not even knowing your own passcode to get in) had still been a shock.

M’Benga had watched Leonard halt hesitantly just inside the door and said quietly, “It’s okay. Just take your time. Look around.”

How frustrating to see things and not know that they belong to you.

He was not neat in his housekeeping if the scattered footwear and towels were any indication. A thousand questions demanded answers. Did McCoy always keep his toothbrush on the right side of the sink? How many times had he read the dog-eared copy of that ancient medical text?

There were so many small details, Leonard realized then, that he simply did not know about himself. It was like looking in on the life of a stranger and being expected to step into that person’s shoes.

The man slips into his quarters now with that same unease hovering about him. In some ways, he might as well be an uninvited guest because nothing feels personal here. Even the holopic of his daughter that he has touched at least fifteen times, propped on the nightstand to gaze at, is utterly foreign.

She’s such a beautiful girl. Why is McCoy in space instead of raising her? Is he a bad father?

The worst of it is that these pieces of Leonard McCoy scattered haphazardly around the room are hard to interpret. For one thing, he isn’t sure what should stand out, which are signs of a personality or a habit; and more importantly, the obvious places to search tell him little. Leonard spent a night reading through a list of past correspondence and only discovered that he doesn’t mind expressing his strong opinions, whether to Starfleet officials or a starship captain. There are a series of vids under a folder labeled Jo and those McCoy cannot quite bring himself to watch.

There is not a journal to read or the most mundane of notes in his handwriting.

Leonard McCoy is a man of little attachment, it seems.

So he turns his mind to the events of yesterday. It occurs to McCoy, in the aftermath of Spock’s troubling explanation, that Leonard had ample time to pursue this creature attacking the ship. After all, didn’t Spock say that it was he who found the Vulcan and the Captain on the planet—like a one-man rescue team?

Where is the evidence of his search for Jim and Spock?

And how in the world did he manage to locate them on the planet when no one else could?

These are the questions that prick at McCoy. Lying on his back with a belly full of warm alcohol, Leonard stares at nothing in particular. After some time, he comes to the conclusion that there is only one possibility which makes sense.

He must have made a deal. That leads Leonard to wonder exactly what price he agreed to pay.

McCoy falls into a fitful, short sleep which ends when he catapults awake from a nightmare of a tight hold on his wrist and the words You are ill.

When Kirk walks the corridors, the first two ensigns and an unlucky lieutenant who greet him are treated to a silence and a razor-sharp assessment. The Captain’s cold response is unusual enough that word spreads quickly among personnel to steer clear of the man. For those who are closest to Jim, it incites a thoughtful consideration of his behavior.

“What do you think is bothering the Keptin?” asks Chekov as he swallows a forkful of his lunch.

Sulu glances around, not spying any others from the alpha bridge crew. “I heard him when Scotty reported in with the bad news. He was unusually,” The pilot pauses, as if weighing his next word, “harsh.”

“Yes,” mumbles Chekov. “I thought it wery strange.”

“The Captain or the engine malfunction?”

“Both.”

They concentrate on eating for a minute or two. Slowly, Sulu leans forward to comment in a low voice that won’t carry through the buzzing conversation in the mess hall. “I’ve never heard him speak to, well, anyone that way before—let alone Mr. Scott. I don’t know, Pavel. Something’s not right.”

Chekov nods vigorously. “In Russia, we know many things, see many things. The Keptin could be an erestun.”

“What is an… e-rest-un?” Sulu fails miserably at pronouncing the word. Chekov beams nevertheless at his friend’s attempt.

“‘Tis a man who makes a wery dark deal and once he dies, returns as an—how do you say?—em-bodee-ment of evil.“

Chekov’s lunch companion blinks and says the first thing that comes to mind. “But Kirk isn’t, um… dead.”

“No,” agrees the navigator, chewing a piece of apple thoughtfully.

“Then how can he be a zombie?”

“Vhat is a zombie?”

“The soulless undead that snacks on brain matter.”

Chekov glances down at his half-eaten meal, slides it with care to the far end of the table, and makes a furtive motion with one hand. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Sulu. “What was that?”

“Vhat?”

“That thing you just did. You do it on the bridge too. Every time the Captain walks by.”

Chekov’s eyes are wide. “Oh, but—”

“No worries,” assures his friend. “I only noticed because we sit next to each other.”

“It is an old family tradition, to ward off the attention of bad things.”

“You mean against the Evil Eye, right?”

“Yes! That is it!”

“So Kirk has the Evil Eye now?”

Chekov bits his bottom lip. “I do not know,” he says slowly. “But I don’t vant to find out.”

“Maybe we’re crazy and the Captain is having a bad week,” Hikaru Sulu offers.

They stare at each other and know that neither one of them believes that to be true. The question remains: What should they do now?

Christine finds Leonard McCoy secluded in his office. She peeks inside, frowns and walks in with a token tap.

McCoy’s greeting by way of a grunt is so familiar that she feels one layer of tension ease. There are the little signs of her boss and friend in this man, enough so that she holds hard to the belief that he will recover his memory soon.

Then she thinks of some things which would be terrible to remember and shudders.

Christine carefully steps around a pile of paperwork on the floor, past three carelessly discarded medical journals and says to McCoy, “Want to tell me why a mini hurricane visited your office this morning?”

It’s then that Leonard realizes he is, in fact, not alone and there is a nurse with her hands on her hips and a stern expression glaring at him.

“Uh…” manages the doctor as he glances around as if seeing the mess in his office for the first time.

She takes pity on his poor traumatized brain. It’s been through enough. “I’ll forgive you, Len. Now tell me what you are looking for.”

His brows do that bunching-thing that always amuses her. “What in tarnation do you mean you’ll forgive me?”

“Who do you think cleans your office?”

He opens his mouth like a fish. “Me?”

She laughs. She actually laughs, and it is very welcoming to her weary heart. “No, you old Southern goat. Me. It’s a pact we have. I keep your office in shape, including filing—which I despise,” she adds for good measure. “In return, you don’t live in here all day and all night.”

“That’s a pretty poor pact on your end,” the man replies slowly. “Why would you do that?”

She smiles again and shrugs. “We’re friends, Leonard, not simply colleagues. And, trust me, I call in the debt when there’s something I want.”

His mumble is so low that she pretends she doesn’t hear it and lets the subject drop. She does a survey of the scene, categorizing bits of the catastrophe. Chapel re-organizes a set of PADDs on the desk and as her hand rescues a teetering PADD at the edge, she happens to catch a glance of its contents.

Medical records.

The Starfleet Medical emblem blazes at the top of the screen and the lower half is occupied by a list of every logged medical examination of Doctor Leonard McCoy since his appointment aboard the Enterprise.

Her stomach does an unpleasant flop.

Leonard takes the PADD from her trembling hands with a frown. “There’s something not right,” he says as he stares at it. “I don’t know, Chris… But I feel like I’m missing a huge piece of the puzzle.”

“What could be a bigger puzzle piece than your memories?” she asks once her voice steadies.

Those eyes look up at her, uncertain at first and then critically sharp. “Are you a’right? Here—” He talks as he stands, clearing a chair for her after tossing more items to the floor. “—sit a minute.”

She sighs somewhat despondently at the rapidly amplifying state of chaos in the office. When McCoy grabs a tricorder from the inside of an abandoned shotglass, she shakes her head. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long week.” More than a week, she thinks.

“I’m the CMO, Nurse Chapel,” he explains as he ignores her and sets the tricorder to whirring with data. “I’ll thank you to let me do my job.”

Christine waits until he is done. “Well?”

He crosses his arms. “Get some real sleep” is the sage advice.

Her mouth curves but she doesn’t say I told you so.

Leonard’s mouth twitches with amusement. He leans against his desk and crosses his legs. “Can I ask you something?”

“I’ll try my best to answer you,” she tells him.

He begins, “The creature was first arrested after it attacked me…”

She interrupts with “It did more than that. It kidnapped and—”

“I know all that.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Spock told me.”

He didn’t tell you everything, did he? She nods for Leonard to continue.

He clears his throat. “Okay, it pulled a number on us and we managed to take it into custody. Am I right so far?” He raises his eyebrow.

She nods again.

“Then where is my medical report?”

Christine closes her eyes.

“Chris…”

“All parties were examined. We—”

“Chris.”

“—followed protocol, I assure you, Doctor.”

“Christine.“

She opens her eyes. “The log entry of your examination was never closed out. You asked for your results and I gave them to you. What you did with them beyond that, I didn’t ask.”

“Why?”

She can’t answer that.

Leonard looks at her, not understanding, and she now faces what she has dreaded all along, had been saved from that first time because Leonard already knew about his illness.

“Please. If there is a small chance this may help me figure out what’s going on…” McCoy takes her hand and squeezes. “You said we’re friends. Won’t you help me?”

She sees the face of a man who is desperate for answers and very much afraid of living without them. Christine knows then that to keep anything to herself won’t aid him in the end at all. “You’re sick, Leonard,” she says as gently as she can.

“I know that—”

“No, I mean you were sick before… and you still are.”

The impact of the words sinks in. His expression changes from bemused to blank. “What is the illness?” he asks after a short silence, with a facade of professionalism that she recognizes well.

“Xenopolycythemia.”

His second silence is longer and Leonard’s gaze fixes somewhere above Chapel’s head. Then, just when she thinks that she cannot stand the silence another moment, McCoy comes back to life. “That explains a few odd readings I came across.” He turns away. The next words are spoken so softly that Christine strains to hear them. “You are ill.“

“Leonard?”

The man sinks into his chair and runs a hand through his hair. “Christine,” he tells her, “I’m starting to paint a picture I don’t like.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The creature,” he says. “It knew, didn’t it?”

“You implied as much when I confronted you about it. The Captain—”

His full attention swings to her. “Jim?”

She nods. “You told the Captain and Mr. Spock.”

Leonard straightens in righteous indignation. “Spock knew? And that hobgoblin didn’t tell me!” His voice rises to a pitch that it usually does in association with Mr. Spock.

She replies with a bit of tartness, “What did you expect Mr. Spock to say? Welcome back, sorry about the amnesia and oh, by the way, you’ve got an incurable disease?”

Leonard’s laugh surprises her. “Lord, I doubt Spock would ever say that. And if he did, he’d be the one in dire need of a head examination!”

They let the relief of a few small chuckles break the miserable air of the room. Leonard rubs the back of his neck and sighs. She wants to know what he plans to do next so she asks.

The doctor, a long-time friend and a man with a good soul, simply shrugs. “Keeping waiting, I suppose.”

“For your memories to come back?”

“Not exactly.” The sheepish look on his face is fair warning.

Christine leans forward in her chair, the armrests gripped in her hands. “Len, why don’t I like the sound of that?”

“You shouldn’t,” McCoy advises.

She almost asks him to explain and then thinks better of it. With a determination that saw her through copious study-hours of medical school, Christine Chapel rises and manages to say succinctly, “And I’m sure that I don’t want to know. Just answer this one question, if you please, Doctor McCoy.”

He looks like a deer caught in headlights. “Okay.”

“Is the Captain aware of the situation?”

McCoy has a strange look in his eyes. “You could say he’s part of it.”

She isn’t sure what to make of that.

Then he adds, “But Spock’s one determined Vulcan.”

“Half-Vulcan,” she corrects.

He snorts. “Point in case.”

At that, Christine bids Leonard McCoy good evening.

So, she thinks once secure in the farthest reaches of Sickbay counting inventory for distraction. Spock doesn’t think that the Captain is Jim Kirk either.

She hopes that the imposter doesn’t realize the Enterprise crew is catching on. The element of surprise is quite possibly their only salvation.

Next Part

Related Posts:

• The Man and the Memory (8/8) – from January 7, 2011
• The Man and the Memory (7/?) – from January 6, 2011
• The Man and the Memory (6/?) – from January 4, 2011
• The Man and the Memory (4/?) – from December 30, 2010
• The Man and the Memory (3/?) – from December 29, 2010