By Jane Seaton

McCoy glanced over his shoulder. The shuttle, lying on its back, was an unnerving sight. Still more unsettling was the occasional clatter of stones and mud breaking away from the cliff edge on which it teetered precariously.

"I need the medical kit," the doctor protested to the still, early morning air of Ceres, home of the ten tribes.

"It is not accessible," Spock repeated.

"Why the hell didn't one of you grab it..."

"I thought you already had it," Jim Kirk said. The captain was also injured. He'd taken off his tunic, with Spock's help, and used it to make a sling for his left arm. All three of them were bruised and bloody from small cuts and scratches suffered in the nightmare fairground ride through the unexpected ion storm, and in the unconventional landing.

It was almost unheard of for an ion storm to be so turbulent so near the surface of a planet, and McCoy hadn't thought it was possible to survive the kind of landing in which a Starfleet shuttle, with all its gyros and stabilisers, wound up upside down. Yet here they were, walking wounded apart from their pilot.

"How is he?" Kirk had wandered over to look at the injured man beside whom McCoy knelt, tricorder in hand.

"Haemorrhaging. If I could operate, I could stop it."

"The Enterprise will have heard our distress signal. They will already be on their way." Spock, for all his confidence in his colleagues, did not seem happy with the situation.

"I'm afraid he can't wait that long."

Kirk winced as the shuttle slid another centimetre closer to oblivion. "That cliff is around a hundred metres high..." he said thoughtfully.

"One hundred seventeen at this point," Spock corrected.

"If I could get down it..."

"With a broken arm? That has to be the stupidest idea I've heard from you yet, Jim Kirk."

McCoy's outburst startled his patient. Chekov's eyes flickered open. "Captain? Where are we?" His voice shook.

"Back on Ceres, son. Lie quiet now."

"Yes, Doctor." The navigator's head lolled back onto McCoy's folded tunic, but he remained awake, visibly fighting to breathe without moving his shattered ribs.

Kirk and Spock exchanged glances. "Do you think you can get down there, Spock?"

The Vulcan considered the idea. "The cliff appears uneven and unstable. It might be relatively easy, or completely impossible. If I had a rope..."

"Anyone think to grab a rope before we jumped ship?" McCoy interrupted. "What's the idea anyway? Do you think there'll be a first aid post at the bottom?"

"If we tipped the shuttle over," Kirk said, as if suggesting nothing more unusual than trying a new lock code on an obstinate door, "Spock could retrieve the medkit and bring it back up."

McCoy frowned. "I suppose he could at that. How long do you think it will take him?"

"Unknown," the Vulcan said. From his voice, McCoy could tell he'd moved nearer to the cliff edge. "Do you have any surgical thread, Doctor?"

"Well, of all the stupid… Oh, you mean in this thing?"

McCoy turned to the black box which Kirk, seeing the doctor struggling out of the inverted shuttle with it under his arm, had mistaken for a medical kit. It was about the same size, but made of lacquered wood. It contained Cerean midwifery equipment, and was a gift to McCoy, presented by the grateful tribespeople of Ceres on the occasion of their High Chief's first birthday. McCoy had delivered a spectacularly unwilling mother of the boy just one Cerean year previously.

"Yup. Here we are. I'd guess… there's about one fifty to two hundred metres here and..." he tugged at it, "...it should take the weight of the medical kit, but it won't help you much, Spock."

"Captain?" was all Spock said. He and Kirk moved to the shuttle and tried rocking it, keeping their distance as much as possible, for fear of being knocked over when it flipped. It remained stubbornly in place.

"Perhaps it would be safe to go inside after all..." Kirk suggested.

"Do you know where the medkit is, Captain?"

Kirk thought about it. "Most likely at the far end."

"We need a lever."

Without waiting for permission, Spock set off for a clump of bushes some way off along the cliff. He was limping, but only a little.

Kirk watched him for a moment, a worried frown on his face, then he squatted down next to McCoy. "How is he?"

"You're okay, aren't you, son?"

"Yes, sir." Chekov's voice was soft and strained. He didn't open his eyes.

"Ruptured spleen," McCoy reported in a whisper. "That's the immediate problem. The ship will probably get here soon enough for everything else."

Kirk frowned. "What would you do if you had the medkit?"

"A little field surgery, isolate it. Or if conditions weren't suitable, use drugs to slow the blood loss, keep him stable and comfortable. He's in a lot of pain."

"There's nothing in there, is there?" Kirk nodded towards the Cerean box.

"Midwifery in a culture like this is a matter of giving nature a helping hand. There might be some mild herbal analgesics, maybe something like raspberry leaf, to slow bleeding..." McCoy looked interested for a moment. "Trouble is, I can't risk an unforeseen reaction to something. I wouldn't be able to deal with him going into shock, or anything like that. How long do you think it will take Spock to get down there?"

Kirk shook his head. He took hold of the ensign's hand almost absent-mindedly. "Twenty minutes, if he doesn't have to work round an overhang, if there are as many hand holds all the way down as there are at the top."

He looked sharply at McCoy when the doctor didn't react to his estimate. "Is that any use?"

"Maybe. I can't tell. If he goes on like he is, that'll be soon enough."

"I don't..."

"What?"

"I don't want to send Spock down there if there's no point."

"Well, I can't give you an answer on that."

"Okay." Kirk moved his thumb round in circles on Chekov's palm. "I'd tackle it myself if I could, but I don't know how good Spock is on cliffs..."

"He's usually better than you expect. He's not a desk bound intellectual."

"If it was a matter of climbing up, he's got the strength and stamina..."

"And going down, he's got the discipline and self-control."

It was Kirk's turn to be silent. Eventually he nodded and got up to see what Spock had brought back from his explorations. The Vulcan had a couple of stout, straight branches, as thick as a man's wrist and around a metre in length, and another shorter piece. Kirk looked doubtful, but accepted one of the timbers and moved with Spock to the back of the shuttle. The smallest piece was positioned to act as a fulcrum. The two men scratched around to make room for the levers' ends under the shuttle's roof, then almost effortlessly tipped the four ton craft over the edge, jumping back at the last moment, in case the cliff crumbled. There was a rumbling impact a few seconds later, but no explosion. So far, so good, Kirk thought.

"I suggest you tie this to something, Captain," Spock said, calmly handing Kirk the little piece of leather on which the thread was spooled, and then, without waiting for any order, he lowered himself over the top of the cliff. For a moment, his head and shoulders were visible as he located toe holds. Then he was gone.

"Well, that settles that," McCoy said. He was standing a couple of metres away from the edge, looking down, as much as he could. Kirk held the thread in his hand and watched it paying out slowly but steadily. Then it stopped.

"Looking for the next hold..." he told McCoy. "Or backtracking because there aren't any..."

"Better get back to my patient," McCoy said shortly, leaving Kirk pulling the other end of the thread off the spool ready to tie it to his belt.

"Doctor!" Chekov sounded anxious.

"I told you I'd only be a moment. How are you feeling now?"

"The pain is sharper. And it is in more places..."

"Hm. That doesn't sound too good. Anything else?"

"I am cold now, a little."

McCoy frowned. He and Kirk were both in their undershirts, but the sun had risen high enough to take any chill out of the air. It was going to get really hot before too much longer. And that was another problem. Chekov was going to get dehydrated. He should have told Spock to look for a water bottle down there. They'd have to shout down before they brought the kit up.

The doctor stripped off his undershirt, folded it and slipped it under Chekov's head in place of his tunic, then used that garment to make an extra layer over the ensign.

"I don't want to move you, or I'd get you to cuddle up to the captain."

Chekov swallowed. "I would prefer one of those Cerean ladies who were at the feast..."

"Now, now. You know the local rules. No touching. If I was in trouble for just trying to help an expectant mother, think what they'd do to you for trying to keep warm in a lewd and suggestive manner."

"Maybe..." Chekov said shakily, "...maybe I will not live long enough for that to matter."

"But you will. That's why Commander Spock is climbing down to get the medkit out of the shuttle."

"Oh."

"Problem?" McCoy's chest tightened a little. Had Chekov seen something at the bottom of the cliff before the shuttle crashed? Not likely, but possible.

"I thought, perhaps, Mister Spock could help me. The pain..."

McCoy cursed himself. He should have asked the Vulcan. Although a mind link might be a little disorientating, not the thing to do just before a heroic rock climb.

"The nerve pinch..."

"Oh, that. No. It can lower your blood pressure severely. Not something to risk at a time like this. You'll just have to hang on."

Chekov tried to smile. "Yes, Doctor. I will try."

In response, all McCoy could do was take some more tricorder readings and rearrange the tunic.

"Don't you have any pain control techniques, hypnosis or something?"

McCoy jumped at Kirk's voice. "No. Well, yes, but they're better suited to long term, low level pain. And you need to concentrate to learn how to do it. I know, Pavel. The best I can suggest is relaxation. Let's paint some pictures..." He started describing a scene from a recent shore leave planet. Chekov's eyes drifted shut.

Kirk sat down and picked up Chekov's hand again.

"He's cold," McCoy said, before going back to his dreamy painting of word pictures.

Kirk frowned, then lay down, wincing as he knocked his injured elbow. He coughed at the dust the movement raised, then edged closer to Chekov, rolled onto his side and lay his good arm across the navigator's belly. "Better?"

"Uh… Yes, thank you, Captain."

"No problem."

"I think I want to cough now," Chekov said a moment later.

"Uh-huh," McCoy objected. "I really don't advise it."

"No. I know it's going to hurt."

"It might do worse than hurt. You really don't have to. It's like an itch, you can ignore it."

Chekov looked doubtful.

"And the position you're in, it won't even get rid of the feeling of wanting to cough. Don't." McCoy glanced worriedly at Kirk for backup.

"Imagine we're setting an ambush for someone. If you cough, you'll give us away." Kirk laid his face against Chekov's shoulder. "That's an order, Ensign," he said severely, directly into his ear.

Chekov lay there motionless for a long, silent moment. McCoy wondered whether to start talking again, but before he could decide, Chekov lifted his head and began a hacking, dry cough that turned into a scream of pain.

McCoy leaned forward and pushed down on the ensign's breastbone, trying to keep him still, but his chest was heaving, and every movement dragged another wail of agony from him.

Once the spasms had subsided, Chekov cleared his throat. "Are you going to court martial me now?"

"Jeez, Chekov, don't joke. You start laughing and I'll really have to get annoyed." McCoy was busy with his tricorder. He looked significantly at Kirk.

"What d'you want to know, Doctor?"

"How Spock's getting on."

"He's still moving, but it's slow."

"Oh."

"Is that a problem, Bones?"

"Could be. How you feeling, Chekov?"

"I should not have coughed."

"Well, I told you, but do you ever listen?"

McCoy tried to smile at his patient, but his heart wasn't in it.

"Tell the captain..."

"I'm right here, Pavel."

"Oh. I was cold again. I thought you had gone away."

"No, I'm still here. I don't need this sling, do I, Bones? I'm not doing anything useful..."

"Uh, you might need it in a moment, Captain."

"Why?"

McCoy had moved over to look at the Cerean medical equipment. He gave an embarrassed shrug. "I think he has a bone fragment piercing his spleen. Coughing like that probably moved it around. And… the blood loss has speeded up. He's in trouble."

"Let me see if I can see Spock..."

Kirk apologised as he pulled away from Chekov, but the Russian hardly seemed to notice. He moved to within a metre of the cliff edge, away from the lip gouged out by the shuttle. Then he lay down and wriggled up to the edge, favouring his broken arm.

"I can't see him," he called back, "but even if he's at the bottom, he'll have to clamber over some broken ground to the shuttle."

The shuttle was still in one piece, but it was lying on its side, with the open hatch out of sight underneath. It might not be easy to get inside, and for all they knew, the medkit might have fallen out on the way down.

"Is he still moving?"

Kirk nodded as another few centimetres of thread unwound themselves.

"There are scalpels in here… not as sharp as they could be… I guess this is more for show than anything."

"And no anaesthetics, and no boiling water?"

"You got a phaser, Jim?"

"No. It was in the shuttle."

"Oh."

Kirk went back to the ensign and began to manoeuvre into position to keep him warm again.

"Uh, you're going to have to hold him down for me."

"What?"

"Well, you can try ordering him to lie still, but I doubt it'll work any better than telling him not to cough. Any experience with wrassling wild animals?"

The captain took a deep breath, getting ready for an argument. "Is this worth it, Bones?"

"He's going to bleed to death before Spock gets the medkit, and long before the Enterprise gets here. Any damage I do in stopping that happening, leaving a few grains of this grit inside him, or these instruments being covered in Cerean nasties… Spock or the Enterprise will be back in time to put that right."

"What are you going to do?"

"Tie off the blood supply to his spleen, isolate it. It should only take a couple of minutes, tops. And the same again to stitch him back up."

"And… I have to hold him down while you do it?"

"He's only half-conscious already..."

"I am conscious, Doctor."

McCoy sighed hopelessly. "Who gave you permission to listen?"

"No one told me I couldn't."

"Well..."

"I'm going to die if you don't operate?"

"That's not what the captain's worrying about right now. We don't have any anaesthetic."

"Mister Spock could..."

"He's not here, Pavel. He went to try to recover the medkit, but he won't get it in time to..."

"So I am going to die if you don't operate."

The doctor grimaced resentfully. Clearly he preferred his patients not to ask that kind of question. "I guess it's possible that you might." He rested his hand on Chekov's brow for a moment. "Actually, it's very possible."

"Then you must operate."

McCoy looked at Kirk. "Guess that answers any objections you might have, Captain."

Kirk shook his head. "Let's just get on with it."

McCoy took a couple of minutes to sort through the Cerean equipment, testing blades and needle points on his thumb, putting them aside one after another, then picking up a previously rejected blade with a scowl. He pushed a second towards Kirk. "No swabs in here. Cut up the body of your tunic with that, into pieces five centimetres on a side. Can you do that one handed?"

"Probably."

It took Kirk a couple of minutes to produce thirty scraps of fabric. By then, the soft metal of the blade was dull. McCoy meanwhile, had cut down the front of the ensign's gold command tunic, and then repeated the assault on his black undershirt. He stopped and looked up at Kirk. "You can't believe how difficult it is to do this without any kind of scrubbing up. It feels… criminal. Jim… you're pretty white. Are you feeling okay?"

"Yes. I'm fine. Don't worry about me."

McCoy looked unconvinced. "Make sure you don't fall on him if you faint. But don't faint. Now there's just two things for you to worry about. Stay alert for the tug on the wire telling us Spock's ready to send up the medkit, and don't on any account let Chekov make any sudden movements." He looked at Kirk and frowned, as if he'd only just recalled the captain's own injuries. "You'll have to kneel on his shoulders, and lean across him with your good arm to pin his hips down. I think he has a cracked collar bone, so that's going to hurt like hell before we even start. With luck, he'll faint. You ready, Pavel?"

"Yes, Doctor. I am ready."

Both the older men looked at Chekov, then at each other.

"Shouldn't you give him something to bite on?" Kirk suggested.

"What? No. He could choke, unless… here." McCoy nodded toward something in the box. "I think it's been used before, so I don't want to touch it."

Kirk pulled out a piece of carved wood, thick as a finger and about twice as long. He realised immediately that it wasn't carved: it was chewed. "Here, you can bite on this, Pavel. Tell me when you want me to take it out."

"How am I supposed to tell you?"

Kirk frowned at him. "Look, don't try to be too damn brave about this. I'll be watching. I'll know."

"You'll have to keep an eye on it, Jim. If it's as old as it looks it might have gotten brittle. I don't want to put him through this and then have him choke on me."

Kirk retrieved the stick. "I can't break it."

"You're going to be surprised how much bite he can put on that thing. Just don't be tempted to let him use your fingers instead. Okay, I'm ready, if you two gentlemen can get into position."

Chekov giggled.

"Well, what the hell is funny about that?" McCoy snapped.

"Nothing. I'm sorry, Doctor. Something someone said, last time we had shore leave..."

"I don't want to know, and neither does the captain. Come on, let's do it."

Kirk gave McCoy a betrayed look, as if he blamed the doctor personally for this, and eased his knees onto Chekov's shoulders. He was forced to put his full weight on them as he leaned across and let his good arm take up some of that weight on the ensign's hip bone. Chekov was sobbing already.

McCoy briskly ignored him, palpating the ensign's abdomen and lower ribs with careful fingers. "Next time, Captain," he said, as he worked awkwardly around Kirk, "please check with me before you break your arm. The right would have been far more convenient."

"Well, if you'd realised this was all going to happen so fast, you'd have had Spock here to help too."

McCoy looked up, almost guiltily. "Don't listen to me, Jim. I'm just mouthing off. Okay, hold him fast. I'm ready to make the first incision. This should be the worst cut, Pavel. You don't have a lot of nerve endings on the inside."

Chekov tried to say something round the wooden gag in his mouth, but McCoy chose that moment to pierce his skin with the point of the scalpel, and whatever he wanted to say was swallowed up in a howl of angry pain. McCoy cursed as he struggled with the inadequate blade. "That's done. God, this thing's blunter than a butter knife. Now I have to cut through the abdominal wall. Can you try to just relax all your muscles for me… No, maybe you can't. Well, this is going to feel pretty alarming probably, so try not to worry."

Chekov was saying something, over and over, and digging his fingers into the parched crust of the desert. One nail was already torn and bleeding. Kirk would have given anything for a free hand to comfort him with, but it was pinned to his chest by the unwieldy sling. "It's okay, Pavel. This won't take long."

"I thought he'd pass out before now," McCoy said, still sounding far too matter-of-fact about it for Kirk's liking, although he imagined the doctor had to be that way. He couldn't make out what Chekov was mouthing so determinedly, but there was a rhythm to the chanted words that he felt he should recognise, even in Russian. Yeah, that was it. Holy father, Jesus something, holy spirit. Suddenly Chekov was fighting, twisting against Kirk's weight.

"Dammit. Keep still!" Kirk used every ounce of leverage he could find to force the ensign flat against the ground. "Bones, I thought you said we were over the worst of it."

Chekov was using English again, just decipherable English. "Stop, please. Please. Please. No more. No. Please." The words were mangled by the gag, but seemed to speak straight to Kirk's stomach all the same.

"I have to get access to the blood vessels that supply the spleen. That means… pushing things out of the way, and sometimes severing… a little connective tissue..." McCoy could have been lecturing an audience of medical students.

"Okay. We don't need a commentary. Lie still, Pavel. Don't fight it."

"Uh, Jim, there's too much blood in here. I can't see what I'm doing. I need you to..." McCoy fell silent for a moment as he concentrated on something.

Kirk swallowed. He wondered if he could do whatever McCoy required with his eyes shut. The warm smell of blood was like a blanket over his face.

"...The spleen lies between the ribs and the stomach, behind the stomach. I need you to reach in over here and hold his stomach clear..."

"No. Please. Mamushka, nyet. Mamushka..."

"I don't have a free hand, Bones."

"Oh, no. You don't. Well, this is going to take a little longer then..."

"Nyet..."

"For God's sake, I'm not sure how much more I can take..."

"You? What about Chekov?"

"I'm going to throw up any moment."

"Swallow."

"Thanks."

"My pleasure." McCoy grabbed a handful of the 'swabs' and Kirk let his eyes follow the motion, right into the battle zone.

"Oh, God," he said simply.

"Is Spock still moving?"

"What? Oh, yes. He is."

"Keep telling me when you feel the thread winding out."

"Why?"

"Never mind why! Just do it!"

Chekov was still half crying, half praying. More surprisingly, he was still fighting, trying to twist his shoulders and get away from McCoy's fingers and knife. The thread unspooled another miserly hand's breadth of hope.

"Spock's moving again."

"Good." McCoy straightened up and used his knife to help himself to a metre of the thread, retying the ends in a workmanlike hitch.

"I'm going to tie off the main artery to the spleen now."

"Hear that, Chekov? We're getting there." The Russian just shook his head. His face was wet, smeared with a paste of dust and tears.

"Just a little longer… There. Now, I have to wait a moment, make sure that's going to stay put..." McCoy picked up the tricorder. "Mm. So far so good. Keep hanging in there, Ensign..."

"For God's sake, Bones, I thought you said this was only going to take a couple of minutes?" The doctor glanced across at Kirk. The captain's face was wet too, sweat-shiny. He wasn't sure if Chekov was fighting that hard, or the morning was that hot, or if it was just the stress. "I started operating two and a half minutes ago, Captain. It just seems longer. Chekov..." He leaned over and touched the Russian's cheek. "I'm going to start putting you back together now. There'll be a couple of internal stitches, to hold things in place, and then ten or twelve to pull the muscles back together and close you up. Just keep breathing nice and steady for me, shallow breaths, not too fast." Kirk couldn't believe the ensign was still listening, but amazingly he nodded and his fast, desperate breathing steadied.

"That's great, Pavel, you're doing fine..."

The thread tautened across Kirk's hip. "That's Spock..." He started to turn away towards the cliff, but Chekov bucked against the lessened weight on his hip.

"Keep him still, dammit!"

"Sorry. I think Spock's ready." There was a second firm tug on the line, and then a third. "Yes, I'm sure."

"Typical. That's just goddamn typical. He'll just have to wait a moment. There. Five stitches done, five to go..."

"No, no, no, no, no, no..."

"Nearly there. Now relax, Pavel. You've got to lie still here. Okay, Jim..." McCoy dropped the needle into the dust and rested one knee on Chekov's thigh, nodding to Kirk that he could straighten up. The captain began to shuffle backwards, and McCoy leaned forward, laying his forearm across the Russian's throat to keep him flat on the floor. He took the blackened stick from between his patient's teeth, and the ensign's sobs were suddenly loud and clear. "Go, Jim. Get that kit."

"Oh, God. It hurts. It hurts. It's like fire. It's burning me..."

"Where?"

"Inside. Everywhere inside. I'm burning. Doctor… Please."

"I should have the medical kit in just a moment. Hang on a few more seconds, Pavel."

"Can't. I can't." Before McCoy could stop him, Chekov was clawing at the newly closed incision. His nails were catching on the raw edges between the stitches, as if he wanted to tear them open.

McCoy swatted his hands away. "Stop it, you little idiot! What good do you think that's going to do?"

"I have to get it out. Get it out. Now." Chekov took him completely by surprise, throwing the doctor clear and rolling right over onto his face. McCoy pulled him back and realised with a shock that the ensign had fainted, presumably from the pain caused by the sudden movement.

"Oh, shit. I hope that hasn't put us right back where we started."

"One medical kit, one water bottle." Kirk came back from the cliff edge and set the equipment down beside McCoy. "What happened?"

"He tried to get away from me and the pain knocked him out." McCoy looked at Kirk out of haunted eyes. His hands reached for the medkit and began opening it.

"Ouch."

"Something wrong?"

"Don't worry about me. Cut myself on the thread. It's burning like… I don't know. Chilli." Kirk was twisting the heel of one hand in the palm of the other. "I'll be okay," he said defiantly, aware of McCoy's worried scrutiny.

"I couldn't give a damn about you! Chekov's got half a metre of that thread inside him. Give me the spool!"

Kirk had loosely bundled the line as he hauled it up. He dropped it into McCoy's lap. "My whole hand's going numb," he said cautiously.

McCoy was assembling a hypo, muttering to himself all the while. Once he'd given Chekov a cocktail of drugs and waited to monitor the ensign's reaction, he turned the tricorder on the tangle of thread. "Well, this isn't catgut, that's for sure."

"What is it?"

McCoy had turned back to the black, Cerean box. He tipped out the entire contents and held up a spool which looked like it had been carved from a mammalian vertebra. It was tightly wound with thread. "This is the stuff I should have used. Some kind of silk."

Kirk's eyes travelled to their silent patient. "So what did you use?"

"I think it's a plant fibre, spun into thread, but I'd guess, only as a method of storing it, and maybe using it for local anaesthesia. It could be inserted into the area you needed to numb, using a needle..."

"Like you did with Chekov?"

McCoy glanced at Kirk. "Yeah, like I did with Chekov. Because I assumed it was what it looked like and didn't use the tricorder on it." He started cleaning up the drying blood on Chekov's skin with a medical wipe, his eyes dancing back and forth from the ensign's face to the tricorder readings. Once he'd finished, he slid the packaged thermal blanket out of the medkit case and unfolded it then tucked it solicitously round his patient.

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Bones..."

"That's easy to say. Jim. If I'd been careful, I wouldn't have risked using something that might have poisoned him, and I could have knocked him out safely right from the start."

"Knocked him out?" Kirk rubbed nervously at his forearm. "I thought..."

"In a small quantity, it numbs the immediate area. Use enough… although they must have another way of doing it besides embroidering the patient… it's a powerful knockout drug."

"He's okay, Bones. That's what's important."

"Yeah," McCoy said shortly. He turned his back on the captain.

Before Kirk could think of anything else to say, he felt the familiar tingle of a transporter beam, and when they rematerialised they were instantly surrounded by medical staff. Kirk let Chapel set his arm and deal with the rest of his bumps and bruises, half aware that his silence was unsettling her, but too drained to make small talk. Spock escaped with his bruised leg untreated, claiming that Scott might need his assistance in retrieving the shuttle.

Eventually McCoy turned away from the operating table and realised Kirk was still sitting on the biobed where Chapel had left him.

"He's okay, Captain."

"Good. How about you?"

"Me?" McCoy sighed wearily. "I'm annoyed with myself. I shouldn't have let it spill out. I'm sorry. And… thanks for helping."

Kirk frowned. He crossed over to the doctor and took hold of his hands. "You're shaking."

"Reaction. I often shake after surgery."

The captain wasn't sure whether to believe him or not.

"Ensign Chekov is coming round, Doctor," a nurse informed them, shattering the moment. McCoy turned back to his patient, Kirk close behind him.

"Chekov?"

The ensign grunted. He opened his eyes a little, blinked at the brightness of the sickbay lights and then focused on the faces of his superiors. He croaked something, cleared his throat and tried again.

"I survived?"

McCoy nodded seriously. "Yes, Mister Chekov. You're safely back in sickbay. And recovering nicely."

"Good."

"You don't sound as if you quite believe it," Kirk said teasingly.

The ensign shook his head. "No, Captain, I believe it. But..."

"But?" McCoy prompted.

Chekov smiled broadly at the doctor. "But next time you want to play doctors and nurses, it is Captain Kirk's turn to be the patient."

The End