ceres_libera | Switch 35/50

Title: "Switch" (35/50)
Author:

ceres_libera
Rating: R to NC-17
Summary: The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy's life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn't even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it's already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense.
Canon: Based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses.
Characters: McCoy/Kirk, with eventual appearances by all other ST:XI characters.
Notes: It's no trick -- it's the next part of Switch, in time for Halloween. More of the Battle of Vulcan hereabouts. I've taken a bit of a liberty with the identity of one of the survivors of Vulcan, or at least I think I have.

+

If he had known how things were going to turn out, maybe he’d have spent less time studying the regs, and more time working on crisis management techniques, but that was hindsight.

Right now, Leo was up to his ass in alligators, trying to treat patients in a Sickbay where supply carts were strewn everywhere, blocking access to cabinets that contained supplies they needed. More importantly, the chaos impeded efficiency, since they'd all been trained to expect supplies to be in certain places and a delay could mean the difference between life and death for a critically ill patient. But there was no time to reorganize in the middle of a crisis. They'd just have to wait for a breather and then sort things out. Until then, they'd have to improvise.

If they fucking lived that long.

"Incoming!" he yelled as the bay doors split open to reveal one wounded kid being supported by another. Behind them, he could see corpsmen and medics with stretchers, and he triaged and assigned teams as Chapel stood right next to him, barking out bed assignments.

"Chapel," he said quietly, when they had a minute. "Who are the weak links?" He had his own ideas, at least about the personnel that he'd worked with planetside, but there were folks here who were between assignments while they waited for the Enterprise to be ready to fly, like Chapel.

She looked up at him, narrowing her eyes before answering. "Beds 5 and 8," she said, and Leo glanced at the teams that were there. Because they were unknown to him, and hell, because one doc was more jittery than the next, he'd assigned them patients who would probably only requiring basic patching up, but he'd double-check their work just the same.

"I'll go make sure there are no head injuries being misdiagnosed," she said, and he found himself breaking into a smile despite the situation. Chapel looked startled.

"I like you, Chapel," he said.

She raised an elegant eyebrow, but her blue-green eyes were cool. Christine Chapel was exceptionally beautiful with what he assumed was long blonde hair piled into an elaborate style on her head. He was sure that she'd fended off her share of passes in the workplace, no matter what the regulations said about such untoward behavior, but that was certainly not what he meant.

"Don't go reading too much into that statement," Leo growled. "I'm not asking you to marry me." Reflexively, his right hand came up to touch the ring on his left minimus, and he noted that her eyes had caught the movement. "No offense."

"Divorced, right?" Chapel said.

Now it was Leo's eyebrows that drew down in a frown. She was right sassy, this Christine Chapel.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said tartly, starting to move past him. "Oh, and McCoy?"

Leo was already on his way to Bed 1, so only glanced over his shoulder. "M'Benga," she tilted her head toward Bed 3. "Your best." He smiled and kept moving. He already knew that, but he was glad to see that the Head Nurse's assessment matched his own.

He read the stats from the kid in biobed before he barked out the request, "Report!"

"McCoy?"

Leo glanced down at the familiar voice and startled. "Raji?"

"Jeez, am I glad to see you," the kid sighed, reaching out his hand, which Leo took.

"Report," he snapped again to the doctor at the bedside.

"Ensign Rajphanthongsy was in a Jefferies Tube above the Engineering deck repairing a circuit when the Enterprise took a hit."

Leo whistled. "I guess that explains the ladder-shaped dents on your head, Raji."

The kid smiled at him. "I'm OK," he said. "Fix me fast, though. We got a lot of work to do."

Leo studied the kid's readings. "You'll be here for a good half hour, Raji," he said, taking the hypo from the doctor standing next to him, and dosing the kid to ensure that there was no cranial swelling or bleeds. "You rest while we get you all fixed up, and we'll get you back to work as fast as is safe for all of us." He signaled for another hypo and dialed up a dose of painkiller for the kid, who was still small for his age. "You come aboard with Sen and Subie?" he asked casually, trying not to betray the anxiety he felt in asking the question.

Raji's face immediately fell. "No," he whispered. He squeezed Leo's hand reflexively and Leo squeezed back. "They're on the Farragut."

Leo had enough real life practice with tragedy to not overtly react, so he made his face stern, commanding, and more assured than he felt. "We don't know anything yet, Raji," he said. "Until we do, let's not borrow trouble."

Raji nodded, blinking rapidly a few times, but seemed to relax at Leo's words, and dropped his hand.

Inside, Leo was reciting the list of KFF names in his head, his heart sinking. Subie and Sen weren't on the Enterprise. What about Federova? That sweet kid had already been through so much. Jesus. It would break Jim's heart if those kids were dead.

Shit.

It would break his heart.

Raji broke into the dark spiral of his thoughts. "Hey," he said softly. "Did I hear our fearless leader's name on the comm?"

"You did," Leo said with a grimace. "He's off doing something entirely foolish and really dangerous – just how he likes it."

"He was top of the class in orbital diving, McCoy," Raji said. "You know that."

"That's right," he drawled. "The more ridiculous and potentially lethal the skill, the better he was at it."

Raji nodded with a smile. "Hey! Is that your class ring?" he pointed at Leo's hand where it was crossed over his chest. "They sized it wrong, huh?"

"Something like that," Leo said gruffly. He ran a hand over Raji's head. "I'll be back, kid, but I gotta check out everyone else."

Raji nodded, and Leo patted him one more time before he turned away, trying not to see how small and scared the kid seemed on the biobed.

Goddamnit.

+

"Fuck!"

"Damn it, Jim!" Leo hissed. "Keep it down! You want to announce our presence in here? Maybe I should get a sign that says 'Stowaway!!' with a big, flashing arrow?"

Leo had hovered by the door of the bay that they'd ducked into while Jim changed into the purloined clothes he'd bullshitted out of the Chief Supply Officer by telling him that he'd lost weight and needed another set of pants and an undershirt. He was still wearing his reds, and was planning to change into his blues after he'd dosed Jim to pass out on a biobed while the antidote worked its magic on his system.

He turned around to see Jim bobbing and weaving like a drunk as he fought to change his clothes while one-eyed and dizzy. He made quite the picture: his red tunic dropped on the floor, one boot off, his white undershirt rucked up and caught on a chain that he was struggling with and had clearly broken. Leo caught something as it fell from the chain toward the ground.

"What's this?" he asked, turning over the Academy ring curiously.

"My dad's ring," Jim said blearily. "Fuck."

"Never seen you wear it," Leo said, holding out the ring to him as Jim struggled to pull the shirt over his head and pull the chain out of it at the same time.

"I don't," Jim said. "My mom gave it me a long time ago and sometimes I – Fuck!" He caught the chain clumsily as it fell.

"Give me that!" Leo hissed. "I'll sort it out, you get dressed."

"Wore it for luck today," Jim's voice was muffled as he pulled the new black undershirt on over his head.

"You knew that the hearing was about you?" Leo asked angrily.

Jim shrugged and bent over to get his other boot off, narrowly missing taking a header to the floor as Leo caught him by the shoulders. "Thought it might be. Didn't think it was gonna be that bad," he muttered crossly.

Leo had sighed, fiddling with the cheap chain, which broke in another place as he tried to knot it back together. "Well, you'll have to wear it now," he announced, handing it back. "This chain's a goner."

Jim nodded absentmindedly, hopping into his pants, and then contradicted himself by saying, "No, I'll lose it. It's too big." He spun the ring on a finger to prove his point, then shoved his feet into his boots, bracing one hand on Leo's shoulder as he did so.

Leo stepped in to ensure his balance, and then startled when Jim straightened and grabbed his hand, sliding the ring onto the smallest finger of his left hand. "You keep it for me, Bones," he said seriously.

"Oh no, Jim," Leo said. "That's … It's your dad's ring."

"You keep it safe for me," Jim said surely. "I want you to." His blue eyes were earnest, despite the haze of fever in them.

Leo opened his mouth to protest one more time, but stopped when Jim simply said, "Please, Bones."

+

Leo found himself twisting the ring on his finger whenever his hands weren't otherwise occupied.

He wondered what the fuck was going on outside the Enterprise. He hadn't had time to stop and listen to the comm chatter coming from the Bridge -- between getting burned patients mending, regenerating broken bones and reinflating lungs or supervising the same, he was too busy. The ship occasionally jounced, but it seemed to Leo that these weren't weapons hits. He grimly supposed that the hits were the result of being pelted with debris from the ships that had held their classmates. The very idea made him queasy.

It wasn't that there was no comm chatter that was directed toward him -- damage reports and requests for aid were regularly called into him, and he mustered corpsmen and teams to go get the injured. Even so, the number of wounded and injured arriving at Sickbay had continued to decrease, allowing them to get the bay into some semblance of order and to inventory what they had. As time went on, though, he could not help but notice that they had yet to receive more than a few injured crew members from the other ships. Whatever weapons this Romulan ship had, they were goddamned powerful, and the damage they'd done had been utterly fucking lethal.

The ship jounced again and he swore and stalked to the comm, "McCoy to Bridge," he barked into it.

"Uhura here."

"Uhura? Darlin', do you have the conn now?" Leo couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. "Where the hell is Spock?"

"He's gone down to Vulcan," she said in an even tone, but there was an edge of strain in her voice that let him know that she was upset.

"I thought there was no – did Jim get that thingamagig shut off?"

"The plasma drill," Uhura said automatically, but he could still hear her worry. "And we have reason to believe that you'll be getting survivors from Vulcan any moment."

"What about the fleet, darlin'?" Leo asked quietly.

"I'm hailing anyone and everyone, Doctor," she snapped.

"I'm sure you are, Nyota," he said reassuringly. "The team is back from the drill then?"

"Jim and Sulu, yes," Uhura said, her voice quavering. "Not Olson."

"Fuck!" Leo covered the comm, and looked over to see that Chapel was listening. "Chief Engineer," he said.

She nodded grimly. "I know."

The ship shuddered suddenly, differently from the way it had other times and he heard Uhura inhale sharply.

"Uhura," he said. "What the hell was that?" He could hear her breathing over the line, heavy and harsh. "Uhura?"

"Wait," she said faintly. "Oh, God."

"Uhura, I'm coming up there," Leo said.

"No," she said, and he could hear the shock in her voice. "Vulcan," she breathed out.

"Vulcan what, Uhura?" he asked, raising his voice. Around him, the bay became quiet as the medical staff and patients alike strained to hear what was going on.

"Vulcan is gone," Uhura said.

"What?!"

"Vulcan … Vulcan is gone," Uhura repeated. "They – that ship – they've totally destroyed the planet."

He could hear the shocked inhales of everyone around him. "Uhura," he said firmly, "that's not possible."

There was absolute silence from the other end of the comm, and he could hear the noise from the bridge clearly, the shocked shouts and the calls for readings.

"Evidently it is, Dr. McCoy," Uhura said blankly.

And in the instant, as his mind tried to assimilate what he'd heard -- that a planet of billions of people, and hundreds of millennia of history and culture, was simply gone -- all he could think was that Nyota Uhura had sounded just like Spock.

+

The sound of one of the nurse's disconsolate weeping was suddenly loud in the utter quiet of the sickbay, after Leo let go of the button that had linked them to the sounds of chaos from the Bridge. He stood there staring at Chapel's shocked face, reasonably certain that he looked as stunned as she clearly was. They both twitched when the comm buzzed and said, "Transporter Room to Sickbay. Prepare to receive survivors from Vulcan immediately."

"Clear beds!" Leo barked. "Ambulatory should be moved out to Rec Room 6, as we discussed. And …" His order to send medics to the Transporter Bay was never issued, as the door whisked open and he saw Jim, walking slowly with his shoulders back, his bright head tilted toward the elegant older woman on his arm. Jim was murmuring to the woman in what Leo knew to be Vulcan, although it was a language that Leo had never learned. He felt his breath catch at the thought of that, of one of the most ancient languages of the known universe, one of the primary languages of diplomacy and negotiation, potentially being lost –- just another in an incalculable list of ways that the universe had been altered in an instant.

He tore his eyes away from the Vulcan elder to look at Jim, noting that he didn't look too banged up, but that he clearly needed attention, then looked behind him to assess those Vulcans that they'd brought in with them.

Jesus. There were so few of them.

"Bones?" Jim said, stopping in front of him. "I'd like you to meet Ambassador T'Pau." Jim's eyes were gleaming significantly at Leo, but it wasn't like he needed the emphasis on the name. He doubted there was a Terran who'd watched the news for the past fifty years who didn't know who T'Pau was, and if they didn't, they weren't worth knowing.

"Ma'am," Leo said. "I'm Dr. Leonard McCoy, Acting CMO of the Enterprise," Jim's eyes widened at his words. "Ready to aid you and your people however I may." He paused, deliberately trying to find the words, as he looked into T'Pau's dark eyes that gave him no hint of her emotions. "I cannot hope to express myself clearly enough, given the circumstances under which we meet, but I offer the condolences of everyone here in Sickbay over the destruction of your homeworld. It is an unfathomable loss."

T'Pau's eyes looked from one eye of his to another, searching for what he could not say. "We accept your condolences, doctor," she said finally.

"Ma'am," Leo said, "Please step this way." He directed her to one of the beds, and Leo noted Jim's moue of pain as he helped her step on a stool to get up to the high biobed.

He flicked his eyes over at Chapel. "I'm on it," she assured him.

He spoke to the other members of the Vulcan party, and saw them settled on biobeds. One of the most elderly was clearly reeling, as much from a blow to the head as from the grievous shock he'd suffered, and Leo spent some time with him, ensuring that he was appropriately treated and oriented to where he was.

When he looked up at one point, Chapel was herding both Jim and Sulu to biobeds despite their protests, and he was grateful for both her professionalism and intransigence as she refused to take no for an answer.

When he was assured that everyone that needed help was receiving it, he made his way to Jim's bed, taking in his hunched posture as the regen worked on his ribs. "Jim," he said quietly, "lay back down so that the cartilage will reform correctly."

Jim startled, but lay back after a second's hesitation. While he waited for the adjusted regen to beep, Leo read the PADD to see that Jim had had his glenohumeral joint realigned, fractured metacarpals in both hands regenerated once – although they'd need more treatment later on -- and various contusions treated. He had some cartilage damage to his rib cage from a blunt force or impact injury, and some truly spectacular bruising of his chest that Leo set two more regens on.

"Bones," Jim said, and his tone was bleak. "Do you know what happened?"

"That those Romulan bastards destroyed Vulcan?" Leo said acidly, keeping his voice pitched low. "Yes."

"When they beamed up the High Council," Jim said, "it was because Spock had gone down to the planet to get them."

"Damned irresponsible of him," Leo growled. "Leaving the conn in the hands of children during a crisis."

"Bones," Jim said quietly. "He went to get his mom."

Leo startled. He knew that Vulcans, no matter how emotionless they seemed, took their family bonds just as seriously or perhaps even more seriously than other cultures. He looked around the bay with open interest for a woman that he could identify as Spock's mother, but nobody looked at all appropriate. "Where …"

Jim laid a hand on his arm, and Leo turned back to him. "He had her," Jim said softly. "He had both his parents and the Council and then ... I don't know what happened, Bones, but she wasn't there when they beamed up."

"Jesus," Leo said with feeling.

"Yeah," Jim said, swallowing hard. "He was … Bones, he was still reaching for her like he could catch her when he rematerialized."

"Jesus, Jim," Leo said again. "That's just … Jesus, the poor kid."

Jim nodded, using his hand to scrub his face, looking weary and bothered. "We failed," he said harshly.

"Jim –" Leo began.

"No," he said. "We got the drill off, but it was too late. Maybe if Olson hadn't been such an …"

"Jim –" Leo said forcefully, crossing his arms across his chest. "We've still got to get ourselves out of this mess. Focus on what we can do, not what we can't change."

"Attention all hands," it was that Russian kid speaking again, and Leo noted that his voice had a tremor. "We are receiving escape pods and shuttles from the planet Vulcan. We have no word on casualties –- " his accent made that hard to decipher, "but Sickbay should prepare to receive."

"Corpsmen! 3 teams to the shuttle bay." Leo yelled. "M'Benga, go with them and assess."

"Simpson!" Chapel said from nearby, and one of the nurses turned from working on Sulu to join M'Benga.

"Nothing from the fleet," Jim said.

"Not yet," Leo said firmly.

"It's been too long," Jim said in a whisper.

"Don’t say that," Leo said, putting a hand on Jim's chest, looking around to see if Raji had been shipped out to Rec Room 6. He didn't think he could take Jim asking about the KFF just yet.

Jim wrapped his fingers around Leo's minimus, idly turning his father's ring. "Doesn't make it any less true for not being said, Bones," Jim said to him, looking up at him from under his long lashes.

"Jim …" Leo said helplessly, voice hushed.

"Bridge to Dr. McCoy," the voice from the comm was cool and affectless. Jim let go of his hand and sat up, dislodging the regenerators and following Leo to the wall unit.

"Captain Spock," Leo said into the speaker. "I'm so sorry."

"Yes," Spock said, and paused. "Thank you. Dr. McCoy, we are receiving troublesome transmissions from the Narada."

"The what now?" Leo asked.

"The Romulan ship," Spock said steadily. "We can see Captain Pike's life signs."

Leo activated the viewscreen above the comm.

"I believe that they indicate that he is under a significant amount of stress."

Leo read the signs grimly and had to concur. "Yes," he said shortly. "It's impossible to know what exactly is occurring, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd say that he was being tortured."

"My thoughts exactly," Spock said. "We will continue to monitor the situation while we formulate a strategy."

"I've got to get back to the Bridge," Jim said.

Leo didn't even bother to argue with him. "I'm going with you," he said, pressing a hand against the comm. "Sickbay to M'Benga," he said firmly.

"Yes, sir," M'Benga answered.

"Report back to the main Sickbay immediately," Leo said. "I'll be on the Bridge if there's anything that I need to attend to." Then he turned and followed Jim, who was already running to the turbolift.

+

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