I do not own these characters, in fact I own very little. Except maybe my shoes.
Amok Doc --
Part II
“Do I really heff to do this?” Chekov groaned as he lifted his arms. Spock wound a long piece of grey cloth around Chekov’s bare midriff.
Kirk stared at him. “Yes.” His tone brooked no disagreement.
“Just checking.” Chekov said, resigned. “Sir,” he added for good measure. He’d fantasized about being naked with senior officers, but this wasn’t quite the situation – or the officers – he’d had in mind.
Spock clipped a small mechanism to the end of the cloth, fixing it all together securely, then pulled out his tricorder. He adjusted a dial on the mechanism. Passing his tricorder over Chekov’s chest, he gave Kirk a cautious nod. “It seems to be working, Captain. The metal in this cloth is conducting the impulses from the device satisfactorily. Mr Chekov’s life signs cannot be detected by a normal tricorder.”
“Good.”
****
An ear-splitting shriek disturbed the serenity of Sickbay. Chapel looked up from her cataloguing. “Doctor!” she exclaimed, trying to inject the right note of believable distress into her voice. “What was that?”
“I’m not sure, Nurse,” McCoy replied, industriously scrubbing one of the biobeds. He dropped the sponge into the bucket. “There. That’s the last one. Now I know they’re really clean. Please stay here. I’ll go investigate that noise.” He gathered his medical tricorder and walked out.
Kirk met him halfway down the corridor, out of breath. “Doctor! Quickly, we need you – there’s been an accident.” Kirk led him back towards the turbolift. Spock knelt on the carpet next to the open hatchway to the Jeffries tube. Chekov’s limp body lay just inside.
McCoy passed his tricorder over Chekov, then inspected the readings. His eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. Kirk and Spock watched in anticipation. McCoy scanned Chekov again, then sighed.
“What’s the diagnosis, Doctor?” Kirk asked, trying not to mouth ‘He’s dead, Jim’.
“He appears to be deceased, Captain.” McCoy said placidly. Kirk’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll check his pulse manually, just to make sure.”
Kirk placed a hand on his chest. “No. . . no, that’s all right, Bones. He’s not really dead.”
Chekov opened his eyes suddenly, and heaved in a great gulp of air. He gasped, “Finally! Thenk you!”
“I see.” McCoy looked at Chekov, then Spock, then Kirk.
“I need to talk to you, Doctor,” Kirk said finally, accepting the inevitable.
McCoy noted, “I’m on duty, Captain.”
Spock offered, “I’ll inform Nurse Chapel.”
Kirk nodded in agreement. “Come on, Bones.”
****
“Now tell me what the hell is going on!”
McCoy sat on Kirk’s bed, legs crossed neatly at the ankles, hands clasped in his lap, watching Kirk pace.
“Captain-”
“Dammit, Bones, call me ‘Jim’!”
McCoy shrugged, a little bewildered. “All right. If you think it’s proper. Jim, I’m afraid I don’t understand exactly what you mean.”
Kirk threw up his hands. “Your *behaviour*, Bones. You’ve been pleasant and – God help me – logical, all day. You haven’t ranted at one person – not one! You haven’t been up on the bridge to gossip, or snark at Spock, or look over my shoulder. What’s going on?”
“Ah. I think I begin to see.” McCoy took a deep breath. “Jim, you don’t know what it’s like for my people. I’ve struggled against my heritage for all my life. Trying to keep that thin veneer of Southern over-emotional ranting over the inner core of polite, rational civilisation – it’s agonising.” McCoy tried to look frustrated, but failed. He said mildly, “Though even now, I can’t pretend to feel that. I can’t do it any longer.”
“So what’s happened? Why has this happened to you?”
“It… has to do with biology, Jim.”
“Biology? What sort of biology?”
“Mine. You see – I don’t have any.”
Kirk stopped and stared. “You what?!”
****
“Set course for the Omicron Delta region,” Kirk instructed as he exited the turbolift, face expressionless.
Sulu raised his eyebrows, but said, “Aye aye, Captain.”
Chekov exchanged glances with Sulu. “Aye aye, Keptin.”
Kirk prowled the deck, watching over everyone’s shoulders. He stopped when he reached Spock’s station. Spock stopped working, and waited.
“I know what happened,” Kirk hissed. “And I’m very. . . pissed. . . off.”
****
Lights twinkled and faded, leaving behind a chief medical officer, a first officer, and a highly annoyed captain.
Kirk yelled, “McCoy!”
Birds took flight from nearby bushes and trees, startled, but otherwise there was no answer.
“McCoy!”
A loud cough behind them. They spun around. A second McCoy stood there, unshaven, wearing a brown shirt and his Starfleet pants. “Hi,” he said weakly.
“Is it really you?” Kirk narrowed his eyes.
Spock examined his tricorder. “It appears to be him, Captain.”
“I’m not sure which one I want to take back, now,” Kirk said venomously. “This one,” he indicated the one he’d brought, “is certainly a lot easier to work with.”
“He ran out of oomph, eh?” the second McCoy asked. “Oh well, I knew it couldn’t last forever. Hard for him to maintain it away from the planet. And he must’ve done a good job of keeping you all away from him with a tricorder.”
The first McCoy nodded. “I performed excellently,” he said proudly.
The real McCoy patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, son.”
Spock called the ship. “Three to beam up.”
Kirk looked at the robot version. “I suppose this is goodbye.” He shot McCoy a ‘later for you’ glance. “The next time you want a holiday, you tell me first, okay, you pr-”
The transporter cut him off mid-word.
