Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [100]
“That’s not how it seemed to me.” Nurse Chapel had appeared. “I may have gone into space to look for Roger, but with a degree in bioresearch, at least I know about space medicine.”
McCoy tried to turn around, but he was trapped within the glowing column of light. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t run from here. This was his safe haven, dammit! He’d fled to the Enterprise to be safe.
“Bones, you are safe.” Kirk smiled. “Within that column, nothing can touch you ever again.”
“I don’t want to stay here! I want to save my patients! They need me.” The beam contracted as he talked, getting smaller with every passing second.
“That cannot be the case, Doctor, otherwise you would not be here,” said Spock with an arch of his eyebrow. “If you are on the Enterprise, you must seek safety.”
The espers had been reaching out to him by making him feel pain. If he wanted to meet them, he needed to go toward the pain.
“Beam me back down there.”
“Are you sure, laddie?” Scotty was standing at the transporter console. “You want to go back to Capella IV?”
“Yes,” said McCoy. “No, wait.” He needed to go back to the pain’s original source. “Send me to Jocelyn. She’s at the center—”
“—of this whole mess.”
He found himself hunched over the computer in the office of the apartment he and Jocelyn shared in Atlanta. There was a stack of data slates, medical texts and articles and notes. His eyes hurt, reminding him that he’d been staring at this monitor for hours. He had an exam tomorrow and didn’t feel prepared. Damn, it looked like it was going to be another all-nighter.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Are you ready for bed?”
“Not yet,” he said, suppressing a yawn. “A few more minutes.”
“You always say that,” she said. “I’d rather you just be honest and admit that—”
“I am being honest!” He knew it wasn’t true. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“I want you to come now.”
“What does it matter?” he snapped, turning his chair around to face her for the first time. “We’ll be asleep.”
Jocelyn was wearing one of his old oversized T-shirts. This one bore the words “OLE MISS.” She stood there, arms crossed. “Leonard, if I wanted to spend every night alone, I wouldn’t have gotten married!”
“Maybe you wish you hadn’t!” he replied, astonished that he was shouting.
“That’s not what I want!” Her expression was one of anger bubbling dangerously close to the surface. “Is that what you want?”
“All I want to do is pass my exam tomorrow! Not all of us have an easy office job.”
“I like how you always make it about me.”
“I like how you just made it about me.”
They stared at each other, not saying anything for a moment.
With a start, McCoy remembered when he was. This was the first night he’d stormed out, a liberating move at first, establishing a pattern. The next day he’d come back, and the two of them acted like nothing had happened. Until the entire scene had repeated itself, again and again.
McCoy knew he needed to stay to make the pain worse.
“Maybe if you were supportive of what I do,” he said. “Med school is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It takes time.”
“It takes time?” Jocelyn’s eyes were angry. “The only time you spend is with her.”
“Nancy helps me,” said McCoy. “Which is more than I can say for you.”
“She ‘helps’ you, does she?”
“I didn’t mean it like that—”
“I know full well what you meant!”
They stared at each other for a moment. “If you’re just going to shout at me, why do you want me to come to bed with you?”
“Maybe if you did come to bed with me, I wouldn’t be shouting at you!”
“Well,” said McCoy, turning his chair back around, “I’m staying here and I’m studying. I have patients to save.” He looked at the text on the monitor—Harding-Cyzewski’s paper. He was getting somewhere!
“Leonard McCoy, you look at me when I’m talking to you!”
He sensed it coming before he saw it. A data slate went flying by his head, straight at the computer screen. It connected with a crack and threw