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Cold was not a word you would have used to describe Spock. The other crew members gossipped about how emotionless he was, but you knew better. You knew where to look. In soft touches in the hallway, meals sent to your lab when you forgot to leave for lunch. No, Spock wasn’t cold. He was the one spot of warmth on the whole damn ship.
When he asked you to marry him, you were over the moon. Literally. The ship had made an emergency stop at Derna after an influenza outbreak. Half the ship was bed-ridden, and you were working yourself to the bone trying to find a cure. Spock found you unconscious at your desk from a fever you’d neglected to mention to anyone, and, after a long, stern lecture he’d asked if you would be his wife.
That was almost two years ago now and it had been the best two years of your life. You didn’t even mind keeping it to yourself, because it made everything feel more special - and he more than made up for it when you spent nights together. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that Spock would move heaven and earth for you if you asked, and you knew he would be completely undone if anything happened to you.
That’s what made you hesitate on the shuttle down to the planet’s surface. You absentmindedly played with the ring hanging around your neck as the emergency transport descended to the next unknown planet. Well, not completely unknown. You knew one thing about the planet: the flora was poisonous to humans, which is why you were zipping up your decontamination suit and pulling your mobile lab down the ship’s loading dock. It whirred to life behind you as soon as you were clear, receding back into the ship as it prepared for take off.
This was your choice. You reminded yourself sternly. You told Jim not to beam them up. Not to send anyone down with you. The fewer people exposed the better. You rolled your shoulders and neck, easing some of the tension you could feel building there, and started walking toward the emergency triage station that was already set up.
There was a small boulder that had been outfitted as a desk for you to work on. Samples from the plant that caused all the trouble were already laid out. Your eyes scanned them quickly, looking for anything that signaled danger. There were no thorns, no pollen, no sap - even the colors were subdued. You lifted a flower to smell, expecting a nauseating rotting meat smell like some other carnivorous plants, but even the scent was beautiful.
“He’s arresting,” an ensign called. She was hunched over a man on the ground, another ensign. Matyas. He worked with the chemists. It was his first away mission.
Someone grabbed your elbow roughly. “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to help him?”
“I’m - I’m not a doctor. I’m a microbiologist I don’t-”
“Damn it I can’t find a pulse.” A doctor had joined the ensign and taken over. Going against warnings to avoid touching Matyas, the doctor was alternating compressions and mouth to mouth while an assistant dug through a bag for a hypo. The needle clicked and everyone held their breath but Matyas didn’t move. It almost felt like your heart was picking up the slack for him with the way it was pounding in your chest.
The doctor sighed. “Time of death, 15:02 Federation Standard Time.” The nurse immediately waved a tricorder over the doctor, scanning for any signs of infection.
You made your way over to Matyas, sample collection kit in hand. While the nurse checked the doctor, you checked the ensign for any obvious signs of disease. Despite only being sick for an hour at most, his face had lost all color and his eyes were dark. Even with gloves on, you could feel how brittle his hair had become. You cut off a few strands and dropped them in a sample bag. Next came the blood draw. You expected it to be the easiest part, but the blood came out much thicker than it should have, almost gelatinous. As if he’d been dead for hours and his blood had started clotting. You chanced a look at the doctor, whose worry was written across his face.
“Can I borrow your tricorder for a sec,” you asked. You accepted it gratefully from the nurse and ran it over Matyas. Each result seemed more concerning than the last: “Skin rash, cardiomegaly, ambient temperature, early signs of rigor mortis.”
The doctor grabbed the tricorder from your hands. “That’s not possible.” He scanned the corpse again, yielding the same results. “We scanned him twenty minutes ago and there was no evidence of cardiomegaly. The only symptoms were a rash, fever, and minor heart palpitations and now….”
“And now the scans show he should’ve been dead for hours, not minutes,” you finished. You wanted to comfort the doctor, who seemed to be getting more anxious by the second, but there was nothing you could say when he was sitting in front of the corpse of a man who might have just infected him. You couldn’t say how long the symptoms would take to start showing, because it was impossibly to know when Matyas was infected. You didn’t even know what caused it. It could be the flower or it could be something in the grass or the trees or even in the air. The only piece of good news you could give came from Bones calling to say the quarantine rooms had been set up.
You went straight to work when you were back on the ship, running the blood through every test you could think of and examining every inch of the plant under microscope. It was harder doing it by yourself, but you insisted your team stay away in case there was something poisonous in the plant. Of course, you hadn’t told Spock you were working alone or that you weren’t working in a decontamination suit, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. It was quicker without the burden of the suit anyway.
Bones kept you updated on the status of all the patients. Neither the doctor nor the ensign were starting to show signs but Commander Oni, a member of the security team of all people, was complaining about abdominal pain and facial swelling and the leader of the expedition, Lieutenant Mavek, had a severe fever. They were both being monitored closely.
You focused your attention back to your work. Sure they were stable now, but Matyas was stable when you were first called and not 30 minutes later he was dead. You just hoped half an hour was enough time for you to make some kind of headway with a cure.
Every minute that passed was torture. Ten minutes in and you had nothing. You were starting to sweat. From nerves, you told yourself. Not from disease. Fifteen minutes passed and Bones called to tell you Oni had blood in his lower intestine now, and his liver seemed to be shutting down. Twenty minutes. Mavek fell unconscious, heart beating erratically. Thirty minutes. His heart stopped. He was put on bypass. Forty minutes. Oni was experiencing multiple organ failure. 50 minutes. Dead.
You threw everything off your desk in anger. Nothing was adding up. The blood had been poisoned but there was nothing poisonous from the plant. The people in direct contact with Matyas were fine but the people who were nowhere near him are dead and dying and you had no more time to come up with a solution to save Mavek.
You scratched subconsciously at an itch on your arm until you realized your fingertips felt wet. When you looked down all you saw was blood. You could still make out the edges of what looked like the same rash Matyas had among the blood and skin that was hanging off your arm. It appeared necrotic, a symptom none of the others had presented. You poked at it lightly in horror, half expecting your entire arm to fall off, but you felt nothing. Aside from the skin falling off of your arm you felt fine.
Then there was a flash of heat so intense you had to sit down. Your vision was white and it felt like your temperature jumped from 98 to 103 with no warning. Waves of nausea hit you as you reached for the comm but you ended up knocking it to the floor in a daze. You fell to your knees to get it, trying desperately to call in a 911 to Bones. Your throat tightened as your heart sped up. You didn’t know what was anxiety and what was a symptom.
The tile flooring felt much cooler against your knees and arms and your nausea lifted briefly. You reached for the Comm and froze. There. Sitting on top of it. What looked like an insect. You forced yourself to concentrate on it, ignoring the white creeping into the edges of your vision. You fumbled for a sample jar, knocking several over before you managed to grab one large enough for the bug and the Comm.
The insect seemed to sense it’s freedom was being threatened, because it jumped from its perch on the Comm and started running towards the door. You threw yourself at it, clapping the cup down full force against the ground. It scuttled frantically around the cup, stabbing what looked like a small stinger against its plastic prison. You slipped the lid underneath and sealed the cup before making your way back to the desk. You grabbed your Comm on the way, dialing Bones as you picked up a pair of scissors.
“Please tell me you’ve got something.” You could tell he was tired.
You stabbed a small hole in the top of the jar for air. “Insect sting. Best guess is it’s essentially Chagas disease but sped up by a few years. Oh, and symptoms also include some kind of dermal necrosis.”
“None of the patients have exhibited signs of necrosis. There’s rashes but not…” You heard Bones curse.
“Yeah. If you could send a gurney my way it’d be much appreciated, doc. I’ll try to meet you halfway.” You hung up before Bones could say anything. There was only one voice you wanted to hear right now and it wasn’t his.
“Ashalik,” Spock said, “I thought you would be too busy to call.”
“Yes, but I found the cause of the illness,” you said, leaning against a wall to catch your breath. Your chest felt tight. “I’m heading to MedBay now to give the results to Dr. McCoy.”
“Are you all right? You sound a little breathless.”
You couldn’t help but smile. “Always am around you.” You slid down the wall, energy draining from you quickly. You could almost picture Spock sitting in the Captain’s chair while Jim dealt with the emergency in MedBay. His eyebrow quirking up, cheeks tinged green. You hummed softly at the thought. “Tell me you love me.”
“You know I do. Tal-kam, is there something wrong? Are you-”
“No, I want to hear you say it, Spock. It always sounds better when you say it.” You could hear a slur in your voice and you knew Spock would hear it too. There were a few seconds of silence before he spoke.
“I ayasha du.” Spock said something else, but you weren’t quite sure what. Your eyes had slipped shut by now and the only thing you could hear was a soft ringing in your ears. You felt yourself tipping over but couldn’t do anything to stop it, doomed to lie there until the medics found you unconscious, smile still playing around the corners of your mouth.
You woke up to a stinging pain in your arm and a scratching in your throat. You coughed lightly around a tube and it felt like your entire chest was on fire. You tried to ignore it, breath around it, but it felt like you were choking until you heard your door open and a nurse ran to your bedside to take it out. You smiled weakly at her as she moved to adjust your feeding tube.
“Gave us quite the scare,” she said with a smile. “Though I suppose not as much as you gave him.” She nodded to your left and you tilted your head as far as you could to see Spock curled up in a chair asleep. “Hasn’t left your side in days. Not since he and Dr. McCoy worked out a treatment.” You smiled.
Your gaze seemed to rouse him, because he began to stir. He was on his feet the second he saw your eyes on him. He clasped your hand in his and pressed a kiss to your temple before leaning his forehead against yours. He said nothing, but you didn’t need him to. You understood.
Of course, Bones didn’t understand the intimacy of the moment and barged in with a tricorder and a hypo. Most of the symptoms were gone, but the arrhythmia seemed permanent so far just as it had with Mavek. It would require some more testing and medication but would be manageable.
“Until we’re sure it’s arrhythmia and not an extension of the symptoms, I don’t want doing anything strenuous. You can go back to work as long as you stay in a wheelchair that someone else pushes. Outside that, we’ll run a few cardiac stress tests in the lab, but you shouldn’t do any running or fighting or basically anything that would raise your heart rate.” He said the last few words pointedly towards Spock.
“I’m not sure why you’re addressing me, Doctor. I have no control over what-”
“He’s talking about banging,” Jim said, all smiles. He was leaning against the doorway like he’d just won the lottery. “No more early nights or late mornings or quickies down in the lab. That is, where you went all those times, right?”
The tips of Spock’s ears turned soft green. “I’m sure I don’t know-”
“How long have you guys been married,” Jim turned his questioning to you. “I mean, come on. I didn’t even know you guys were together and now lover boy over here is pining at your bedside and you have a ring around your neck. What’s it been? A few months?”
“Give or take a couple years,” you said, still smiling.
Jim stepped into the room fully, smacking Bones on the arm as he passed. “A couple years? Did you know, Bones?”
“None of my damn business,” Bones grumbled, smacking Jim back.
“Well then,” Jim said, rubbing his arm lightly, “I say it’s high time to celebrate then.”
“You deserve congratulations for discovering a new species of insect, especially one so deadly,” Spock said. “The discovery will save countless lives if future voyages are ever attempted.”
Jim threw an arm around Spock’s shoulders. “Is he always this boring? Because I definitely meant I’m throwing you guys a bachelor and bachelorette party.”
You laughed, but, with your throat still raw from the breathing tube, it came out more like a croak which lead to a cough which lead to Bones shuffling everyone but Spock out of the room. He pulled his chair closer to your bedside again and dropped his face in his hands. It looked like he’d aged a decade in the past week.
“I’m sorry I scared you, ashayam.” You ran your fingers through Spock’s hair. His shoulders shook softly but he made no noise and you wanted so badly to hold him. “Come here.” You tugged gently on his hands until he looked at you. You scooted to the edge of the bed, and Spock took the hint, crawling onto the biobed with you until you were just a tangle of limbs and tubes and tears.
“I ashaya du, k’diwa,” you said, still stroking Spock’s hair as he laid against your chest. “In sickness and in health.