Title:  My Happy Place
Author:  Ster Julie

Rating:  PG

Codes:  AOS (2013); S, Mc; h/c; written for Spiced Peaches XXIV (!)

Part 1 of 1

Summary:  Once Kirk was stabilized, McCoy found another crisis on his hands when he finds just how badly Khan has injured him.

—ooOoo—

All eyes were on Kirk, and that was how it should be, according to Spock.  Despite the pummeling he took at Khan's hands, Spock refused to let on to the medical staff just how badly injured he was.  Spock refused to distract the medical personnel from the all-consuming task at hand--the resurrection of one James Tiberius Kirk.

No one noticed when Spock tried to blink away his foggy vision or surreptitiously wipe the fluid leaking from his nose.  No one saw him move to a less brightly-lit area of Sickbay to spare his eyes.  No one observed how the Vulcan was clinging harder and harder to the furniture to help him remain upright while Kirk was stabilized.

It was not until Dr. McCoy turned to give a brief report to the First Officer that anyone noticed that something was wrong with Spock.  With one glance, McCoy took in the Vulcan's pallor, the fluid, the bruises that were starting to appear.  He lunged as Spock slid down the wall he was using for support.  The Vulcan's eyes rolled back in his head and he started seizing.

"SPOCK!" McCoy yelled.

The doctor turned Spock on his side as medical personnel rushed forward with scanners whirring and injected anticonvulsant drugs.   

"Dammit!" McCoy cursed.  "Multiple skull fractures!  All along the sutures, as if his bones were ground together.  Once he stops seizing, get him on a back board and move him to Trauma 2.  I want to see what else he's been hiding."

-

Spock's awareness shifted.  It was as if he had stepped away from his body as it slid down the wall and began shaking.  He could hear McCoy's shouts and the drone of the scanner.  He could feel McCoy's hands on him as the doctor turned him on his side to protect his airway.  He sensed the injection and the immediate sense of nausea it brought.  He felt his body being restrained on a board and lifted to an examination table.

McCoy spoke quietly to the First Officer.  

"I'm going to run some scans, Spock," the doctor said as he gently closed Spock's eyes.  "Just use your Vulcan mental mumbo-jumbo and rest.  We'll take good care of you.  Go to your happy place...if you have one."

My happy place, Spock thought.  Mother would say the same to me whenever I had to undergo some unpleasant experience—and it was usually at the hands of medical personnel!

The ghostly Spock turned from his prone form and studied the readouts of the scans.  He was no doctor, but he knew enough about his own physiology to see the skull fractures.  Spock could remember the appalling sound of his cranial bones grinding together as Khan tried—twice­—to crush his skull.    The super human nearly succeeded had Nyota not beamed in and stunned Khan when she did.

Spock caught some of the words McCoy recorded his findings.  “Multiple fractures along the sutures of the sphenoid bone, temporal bone and frontal bone.  Brain swelling.  Cerebrospinal fluid leak from ears and nose.  Extensive bruising.  No damage detected from the PTS.”  The ghostly Spock was curious with the unfamiliar acronym—PTS.  He placed a transparent hand on the doctor’s face and learned that it stood for post-traumatic seizure. 

The doctor turned to his staff. 

“I have to pull some bone fragments out of his dura mater,” he said.  “Somebody bring me the micro beam.”

Spock heard McCoy’s unspoken thoughts as the requested equipment was set up.

Thank God you are a green-blooded hobgoblin, Spock, or you’d be a goner right now.

The Vulcan continued observing McCoy.  Spock was impressed with the vast amounts of knowledge the doctor was calling up, the multiple steps he ran through mentally in preparation for the micro-surgery, the centering ritual he performed as expertly as a Gol adept before beginning.  McCoy admitted that he was at the end of his strength after the multiple injured crew he had already treated, especially with Kirk.  The doctor sought the strength and alertness he needed to give Spock a chance of a full recovery.

Please don’t let me lose him, McCoy prayed.

Ghostly Spock moved closer to the doctor.  He would lend McCoy the little strength he had left so that his task would be accomplished satisfactorily.

Go to your happy place, McCoy had told him.  Spock looked around.  His world had shrunk to himself and the doctor.  Is Leonard McCoy my happy place? Spock thought.

The doctor toiled over Spock with the micro beam.  McCoy tractored each bone fragment out of the dura and settled it back into its proper place before sealing it.  It was like assembling a three dimensional puzzle, all one color, from the inside out, in the dark.

Spock traced ghostly hands over McCoy’s spasming back muscles.  When the doctor grew weary, Spock poured more strength from his small reserve. 

Hour after hour Spock sat in McCoy’s skin.  It was a comforting place—and in his ghostly form he gave not one damn that comfort was an illogical emotion.  Spock’s regard for McCoy as a talented doctor, as a person grew exponentially.  Spock recognized that McCoy had a beautiful soul, and that the doctor would sacrifice everything for his patients, his crew, his family.

Is Leonard McCoy my happy place? Spock repeated.

Spock acknowledged his new-found regard for the doctor—his knowledge, his skill, his ethics, his concern for his crew.  He found something with McCoy that he never had with Nyota Uhura.  Spock was drawn to the doctor.

Spock remembered asking his mother when he was young, “What is a happy place?”

“Well, Spock,” Amanda had answered, “a happy place is where you are at peace, where you feel comfortable.  It’s a place you don’t want to leave.  You want to run back to it again and again, especially when you are experiencing something unpleasant.”

Spock observed McCoy laboring over him.  He was sure that, if he was fully conscious and drug-free, what he was experiencing would feel highly unpleasant.  Remaining by McCoy’s side was far more pleasant.  When he was once again fully conscious, Spock knew that he would have to examine these thoughts, examine where Nyota fit into this equation—if she fit at all!

Spock contemplated all that he had observed and discovered.  As the doctor leaned back and stretched when at last done, Spock found that he was reluctant to leave his place with McCoy and return to his body.  He thought about what his mother had told him long ago and came to a conclusion.

Leonard McCoy, I suspect that YOU are my happy place!

END