Star Trek: Duty, Honor, Redemption (76 page)

“Admiral, his condition’s critical. They said…he isn’t expected to survive.”

Gillian reached out to Kirk, in sympathy with his distress. Spock, on the other hand, listened impassively to the report. Kirk squeezed Gillian’s hand gratefully. Another man hurried into the cargo bay.

“You’ve got to let me go after him!” he exclaimed without preliminaries, without even noticing Gillian. “Don’t leave him in the hands of twentieth-century medicine.”

“And this, Gillian, is Doctor McCoy,” Kirk said. “Bones—” He stopped and turned to Mister Spock instead. “What do you think, Spock?”

He raised one eyebrow. Now Gillian understood why she had never met anyone like him. She had a sudden, irrational urge to laugh. She was standing face to face with a being from another planet. An alien.

Probably,
she thought,
an illegal alien.

“Spock?” Kirk said again.

“As the admiral requested,” Spock said, “I am thinking.” He continued to think. His face showed no expression. “Commander Chekov is a perfectly normal human being of Earth stock. Only the most detailed autopsy imaginable might hint that he is not from this time. His death here would have only the slightest possible chance of affecting the present or the future.”

“You think we should find the whales, return home…and leave Pavel to die.”

“Now just a minute!” Doctor McCoy exclaimed.

“No, Admiral,” Spock said. “I suggest that Doctor McCoy is correct. We must help Commander Chekov.”

“Is that the logical thing to do, Spock?”

“No, Admiral,” Spock said. “But I believe you would call it the human thing to do.”

For a moment it seemed to Gillian that a gentler expression might soften his severe and ascetic face. This was practically the first thing Gillian had heard Mister Spock say that did not surprise her, yet Kirk looked surprised by his friend’s comment. He hesitated. Spock gazed at him, cool, collected.

“Right,” Kirk said abruptly. He turned to Gillian. “Will you help us?”

“Sure,” she said. “But how?”

“For one thing,” Doctor McCoy said, “we’ll need to look like physicians.”

This time Gillian paid attention to the transporter beam. The sensation of being lifted, stirred around, and placed somewhere else entirely filled her with astonishment and joy.

Maybe it’s just an adrenaline reaction,
she thought,
but early trials suggest it as a sure cure for depression.

When she had completely solidified, darkness surrounded her. She felt her way to the wall, the door, the light switch. She flipped it.

Bingo!
she thought.
She had asked Mister Scott to try to place them within a small, deserted cubicle. He had done her proud: not only had they come down in a closet, they had come down in a storage closet of linens, lab coats, and scrub suits.

“Damned Klingon transporter’s even worse than ours,” Doctor McCoy muttered.

“What does he mean?” Gillian said. She flipped through a stack of scrubs. Did these things have sizes, or were they one size fits all? Stolen hospital scrubs had enjoyed a minor fashion popularity when she was in graduate school, but she had never had much interest in them. Nor had she ever had a medical student boyfriend to steal one for her. All she knew was that you could wear them inside out or outside in.

“Oh—Doctor McCoy doesn’t like transporter beams.”

“You don’t? God, I think they’re great. But I meant why isn’t it
your
transporter beam?”

“Our ship—and our transporter—are from the Klingon empire,” Kirk said. “Not our…regular brand, you might say.”

“How come you’re flying a foreign ship?” Gillian dug through the stack of scrubs. They only came in three sizes, so she did not have to worry much about the fit.

“It’s a long story. The short version is, it was the only one available, so we stole it.”

“We don’t even have time for short versions of stories!” Doctor McCoy snapped. “Let’s find Chekov and get out of here.” He reached for the doorknob.

“Wait,” Gillian said. She handed McCoy the blue scrub suit. “Thought you wanted to look like a doctor.”

“I thought
you
said I would, with my bag,” he said grumpily. He hefted his medical kit, a leather satchel hardly different externally from the sort of bag doctors carried in the twentieth century.

“You do. But you won’t get into surgery in regular clothes.” She slipped the scrub on over her head. “Doctor Gillian Taylor, Ph.D., very recent M.D.,” she said.

Suddenly the doorknob turned. Instantly Gillian grabbed both Kirk and McCoy. She drew them toward her, one hand at the back of each man’s neck. She kissed Kirk full on the lips. He put his arms around her. Startled, McCoy at first pulled back, then hid his face against her neck.

The door swung open. Gillian pretended to be fully involved. She did not have to pretend too hard. Kirk smelled good. His breath tickled her cheek.

“
Pre
verts,” a voice said cheerfully,
tsked
twice, and chuckled. The door closed again.

Gillian let Kirk and McCoy go.

“Um,” she said. “Sorry.”

McCoy cleared his throat.

“No apologies necessary,” Kirk said, flustered.

A moment later, all attired in surgeons’ garb, they opened the door cautiously and peered out into the corridor.

“All clear,” Kirk said.

On the way out of the storage closet, Gillian snagged a handful of surgical masks in sterile paper packages.

“We’ll check this way, Bones,” Kirk said. “You try down there.”

McCoy strode down the hallway, doing his best to pretend he knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing. He nodded to the people he passed as if he knew them. They all nodded back as if they knew him.

A frail and elderly patient lay on a gurney just outside a room full of esoteric equipment that looked, to McCoy, like medieval instruments of torture. McCoy stopped beside the gurney, hoping to get his bearings.

“Doctor…” the frail patient said. She had poor color and her hands trembled. A large black bruise had spread around a vein cut-down on the back of her left hand.

“What’s the matter with you?” McCoy asked.

“Kidney,” she said. She stared with resignation into the room beyond. “Dialysis…”

“
Dialysis?
What is this,” McCoy said without thinking, “the dark ages?” He shook his head. To hell with not leaving traces of anachronistic technology. He took a lozenge from his bag and slipped it into the patient’s mouth. “Here. Swallow one of these.” He strolled away. “And call me if you have any problems,” he said over his shoulder.

McCoy looked for a comm terminal—surely the twentieth century must have comm terminals?—to query about the location of surgery. Instead he saw Jim gesturing to him from down the hall. McCoy hurried to join him and Gillian.

“They’re holding Chekov in a security corridor one flight up,” Jim said. “His condition’s still critical. Skull fracture—they’re about to operate.”

“Good Lord. Why don’t they just bore a hole in his head and let the evil spirits out?” A gurney stood empty nearby. McCoy grabbed it. “Come on.”

He pushed the gurney into a vacant room and threw back the sheet.

“Give us a couple of those masks,” he said to Gillian, “and jump up here.”

She handed him the masks, “Wait a minute,” she said. “How come I have to be the patient and you guys get to be the doctors?”

“What?” McCoy said, baffled.

“Good lord, Gillian, what difference does it make?” Jim said.

Gillian saw that he honestly did not understand why his suggestion might irritate her, and that gave her a view of his future that attracted her far more than all his descriptions of wonders and marvels. She jumped onto the gurney and covered herself with the sheet.

A moment later, McCoy and Kirk rolled the gurney onto the elevator. Gillian lay still. The two people already on the elevator, paying them not the least bit of attention, continued their discussion of a patient’s course of chemotherapy and the attending side effects.

Twentieth-century technology was so close to the breakthroughs that would spare people this sort of torture, and yet this world continued to expend its resources on weapons. “Unbelievable,” McCoy muttered.

Both the other elevator passengers turned toward him. “Do you have a different view, Doctor?” one asked.

The elevator doors opened. McCoy scowled. “Sounds like the goddamn Spanish Inquisition,” he said. He plunged out of the elevator, leaving startled silence behind him. He had to get Pavel Chekov out of here before these people did too much damage for even the twenty-third century to repair.

Jim followed, pushing the gurney.

Two police officers guarded the operating wing’s double doors.

“Out of the way,” McCoy said in a peremptory tone.

Neither officer moved. McCoy saw Gillian’s eyelids flicker. Suddenly she began to moan.

“Sorry, Doctor—” the police officer said.

Gillian moaned again.

“—we have strict orders—” The officer had to raise his voice to be heard above Gillian’s groaning. He glanced down at her, distressed.

“Dammit!” McCoy said. “This patient has immediate postprandial upper abdominal distension! Do you want an acute case on your hands?”

The two officers looked at each other uncertainly.

Gillian wailed loudly.

“Orderly!” McCoy nodded curtly to Jim, who pushed the gurney between the two officers.

The doors opened. Safe on the other side, Jim blew out his breath with relief.

“What did you say she was getting?” he asked McCoy.

“Cramps,” McCoy said.

Gillian sat up and threw off the sheet. “I beg your pardon!”

Jim tossed her a surgical mask. He pulled his own mask over his face and led his intrepid group into the operating room. Chekov lay unconscious on the operating table.

A young doctor looked up from examining him. He frowned. “Who are you? Doctor Adams is supposed to assist me.”

“We’re just—observing,” McCoy said.

“Nobody said anything to me about observers.”

Ignoring him, McCoy went to Chekov’s side, took out his tricorder, and passed it over Chekov’s still, pale form.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the young doctor said.

“Reading the patient’s vital signs.”

“It’s an experimental device, Doctor,” Jim said quickly.

“Experimental! You’re not doing any experiments on my patients—even one who’s in custody!”

“Tearing of the middle meningeal artery,” McCoy muttered.

“What’s your degree in?” the other doctor said angrily. “Dentistry?”

“How do
you
explain slowing pulse, low respiratory rate, and coma?”

“Funduscopic examination—”

“Funduscopic examination is unrevealing in these cases!”

The young doctor gave McCoy a condescending smile. “A simple evacuation of the expanding epidural hematoma will relieve the pressure.”

“My God, man!” McCoy exclaimed. “Drilling holes in his head is not the answer. The artery must be repaired, without delay, or he’ll die! So put away your butcher knives and let me save the patient!”

Their antagonist glowered. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but I’m going to have you removed.”

He headed for the door. Jim blocked his path.

“Doctors, doctors, this is highly unprofessional—”

The doctor snarled and tried to get around him.

Jim grabbed him at the juncture of neck and shoulder, and caught him as he collapsed.

“Kirk!” Gillian said.

“That never worked before,” Jim said, astonished. “And it probably never will again. Give me a hand, will you?”

Gillian helped him carry the unconscious doctor to the adjoining room. Jim closed the door and slagged the lock with his phaser. He and Gillian rejoined McCoy. McCoy had already induced tissue regeneration. He passed his tricorder over Chekov again.

“Chemotherapy!” McCoy growled. “Funduscopic examination! Medievalism!” He closed the vial of regenerator and shoved it back into his bag. Chekov took a deep, strong breath. He breathed out, moaning softly.

“Wake up, man, wake up!”

“Come on, Pavel,” Jim said.

Chekov’s eyelids flickered and his hands twitched.

“He’s coming around, Jim,” McCoy said.

“Pavel, can you hear me? Chekov! Give me your name and rank!”

“Chekov, Pavel A.,” he murmured. “Rank…” He smiled in his dreams. “Admiral…”

Jim grinned.

“Don’t you guys have any enlisted types?” Gillian said.

Chekov opened his eyes, sat up with Jim’s help, and looked around.