Star Trek - TOS 38 Idic Epidemic by Jean Lorrah

Author:Jean Lorrah [Lorrah, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-07-09T19:49:18+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

Dr. Leonard McCoy was already tired when he beamed down to Nisus. Within a day, he was exhausted. Every able-bodied physician was on call, for the hospital was flooded with plague victims. When he was not treating patients, he was in the computer room with Nisus medical staff and whoever of the experts they had brought along was also free at that moment.

He saw why more than half the doctors and nurses here had died; in the perpetual exhaustion caused by caring for such huge numbers of patients, they had no resistance.

Exposure was inevitable; no one could spend his life in mask, gloves, and protective clothing. Even in the contagion wards, stress brought mistakes. All it took, for example, was wiping one’s own bare forehead with the same gloved hand that had just touched the patient’s arm while administering a hypo. In his long career, McCoy had seen it many times before. Most would never even remember the slip that introduced the virus into their systems, nor would they ever know whether it was an error while on duty, or other exposure while off.

So far, the only hopeful discovery was the fact that the virus lived for less than an hour outside a living organism; any environment unoccupied for at least an hour was plague-free. But people could not stop interacting altogether. Families could not separate. Victims had to be cared for, and every day more succumbed than recovered.

Finally, after eighteen straight hours of physical labor interspersed with concentrated mental effort, McCoy fell asleep in his chair. When someone tried to lift him, he woke only enough to cooperate in transferring himself to a couch.

But he had slept hardly enough to take the edge off when someone shook him. “Sorry, Doctor— emergency priority from the Enterprise.”

He was led to a communications console. “Yeah,” he said groggily. “McCoy here.”

“Bones.” The gravity in Jim’s voice brought him wide awake.

“What’s happened?”

“We’ve got it aboard. Amanda. Spock and Sarek have both been exposed.”

“Beam me up,” was McCoy’s first thought.

“Wish I could—but you’re needed where you are.”

“Jim, it’s a shambles here! I’m working like a damn intern, and so are all the other doctors. We’re not getting anywhere on research because of patient crises. Half their doctors and nurses have died of this thing, and the rest are walking wounded with stress and exhaustion.”

“All the more reason to stay,” Kirk told him. “Your staff can handle sickbay. At least there’s one good thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We can’t go off and leave you now. The Enterprise is stuck here until you figure out a cure. So when we do leave, you can come with us.”

“Thanks,” McCoy said cynically. Then something the captain had said penetrated. “Jim! Remember the mutation pattern! If Spock’s been exposed—”

“He knows. He isolated himself immediately,” Kirk replied. “So I’m stuck without either of you. But then, I don’t have anything to do except stay in orbit.” McCoy heard the frustration in his captain’s voice; a virus was not the kind of enemy a man of action knew how to fight.

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