Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [105]
you can’t you can’t you don’t want to you’re scared you’re frightened stay here stay here
The voice was Joanna’s.
He’d spent his adult life on the move, escaping the past.
no no no no stay here stay here
The voice was everyone’s. Everyone he’d ever left behind, everyone he’d ever let down.
Suddenly, he was out of the darkness, tumbling through… through what?
Thoughts peppered his consciousness from a dozen different directions, worries and anxieties, joys and triumphs. The feel of sheets on the first night he’d spent with Nancy. The taste of Jocelyn’s lips. The grateful smile of a patient he’d saved on Dramia. His hand switching off the monitor over the first crew member he’d lost on the Republic.
McCoy had never been as hard on himself as he had been today. This wasn’t natural. It was because of the espers. It was because they had reached out to him. It was because they were desperate. It was because they needed his help.
How? The espers didn’t know what was happening. They didn’t know how to get him back to consciousness. He was trapped.
McCoy felt himself falling backward, sinking back into the blackness.
come back come back oh yes oh yes stay here stay here
He stayed.
Stardate 4758.3 (0708 hours)
Chapel watched the doctor’s readings. They’d gone up for a brief moment and then slid back down. They now matched the coma patients’.
She had decided against a neural stimulant. Administering a stimulant had caused this, but waking him was just as dangerous. His mind was hovering on the precipice, not able to pull itself out. He wasn’t dying, not yet.
“You can’t do anything for him?” Roger asked, unwilling to leave her alone. “Nothing at all?”
She looked at her fiancé. It was an entire lifetime ago that she’d loved this man.
“He’s beyond the abilities of our medicine to reach,” she said.
Roger knelt down in front of her. “Here’s the thing, Christine. It’s all about self-doubt, isn’t it? Yours, his. The constant thought that we’re faking it, or that we don’t do things for the right reason. We spend our lives ignoring our doubts because we want to accomplish something. But what do we do when we feel the worst?”
“We… I don’t know.” What was he getting at? How was he trying to undermine her this time?
Was he trying to undermine her this time? If Doctor McCoy was right, these visitors were the espers’ way of communicating. Maybe he wanted to tell her something. “Talk to someone else?” she ventured.
Roger nodded.
A bleep from McCoy’s monitor drew her attention. His life-signs were sinking. She turned to face Roger, but he was gone.
Chapel knew what she had to do. McCoy could be quick to criticize, but just as quick to praise. He was a caring, devoted physician who’d do anything to save a patient. Chapel wondered if he knew that.
“Doctor McCoy …” she began. That wasn’t right. “Leonard. I know you’re there somewhere, but you need to come back. Your patients need you. Only you can save them. You can’t give up. Come back to us, Leonard. Come back.”
Captain Kirk, Horr-Sav-Frerin, and Neff-Bironomaktio-Frerish—a Farrezzi with hunting experience—had taken the lead. With the element of surprise on their side, the fight against the slavers outside the interrogation room had been short. Several Farrezzi had been shot. Fortunately, several of the group knew first aid. The captain had been hit on the arm. He was keeping pressure on it as he watched the Farrezzi wrenching the door open with metal poles. Only a few minutes more, and the New Planets Cousins would have gotten in.
The heavily damaged door had been raised only halfway when Kirk slipped beneath it. The captain felt the heat coming from the lower edge and took care not to touch it.
Giotto was standing near the ensign, looking tired but relieved. Chekov was a mess but alive. At the back of the room, a pole reached to the ceiling, beside an unconscious Farrezzi slaver. There were dark red smears on the wall.