Rating: K+ for language

Characters: Scotty, McCoy, Chapel, random OCs

Summary: An ordinary day in Med-Bay... well, as ordinary it gets on the Enterprise

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or anything affiliated with it. I'm doing this for fun not money.

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An Ordinary Day

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Today has been a good day.

Comparatively speaking, of course. Nurse Becky Ameranth has a cousin working in the nursing staff on the USS Defiant and they trade comm vids as often as they can. She knows quite well that the sorts of things she sees in the Enterprise's Med-Bay are on another scale entirely from other Med-Bays in the Fleet. Danielle still doesn't believe half the things Becky tells her. Sometimes Becky wonders if she would be happier on another ship, less stressed definitely. She sometimes daydreams about what it would be like to work on a normal ship. To have a really calm, quiet, normal day.

But by Enterprise standards, today has been relatively calm. No explosions, no transporter malfunctions (Danielle says their's have only ever malfunctioned once, and even then the away team just materialized facing the wrong way. How pleasantly boring.) and no as-of-yet-undiscovered diseases that have them working at a breakneck pace to find a cure. And the Captain hasn't had to beam directly in from planet-side in two whole days, which makes Dr. McCoy a bit antsy but it's a nice break all the same.

Becky looks up from her cataloging to listen carefully. She could have sworn she'd heard some sort of scuffling out in the main hall. She holds still, head tilted, for a moment longer but still hears nothing. Shrugging, she returns to the storage rack.

All in all, it's been a good day. Though there was that Ensign earlier in the morning with a case of Andorian Shingles. But he'd come straight to Med-Bay before his eyes started bleeding too badly(Say what you like about his methods, Dr. McCoy knows how to ingrain the warning signs of the more unpleasant diseases right into your brain. Though it would be nice if the nursing staff didn't have to provide the crew with spiked warm milk and the 23rd century equivalent of smelling salts after his lectures) so things hadn't gotten too messy.

Shedding baby-blue skin flakes and perspiring banana scented sweat for a week are really very acceptable side effects considering the alternative.

There it is again! Just outside Med-Bay's main doors this time. It sounds like a hoard of men falling all over themselves. There's also a muffled voice, like someone yelling. Becky sets her PADD and scanner down on a shelf and makes her way towards the Med-Bay doors.

They slide open when she's about halfway there.

"Hey all you people!" The Chief Engineer sings (what could possibly be called singing, if singing involved slurred speech and hiccuping) while several of his subordinates half drag and half carry him into Med-Bay. "Hey all you people! Hey all you people won't you listen to me..."

"Oh dear," Says Nurse Donald, giggling from her tech station.

Becky gestures toward an available bio-bed when a lieutenant gazes imploringly at her from under Mr. Scott's left armpit. They shuffle their way over, hampered immensely by a collective level of inebriation at about 0.10 and Mr. Scott's attempts to dance in time with his tune.

"I just had a sandwich!" Mr. Scott belts out, flinging one arm out wide, beaning an ensign in the face. This adds a bloody nose to the list of ailments Becky and her fellow nurses will have to treat.

"No ordinary sandwich... unf!" He grunts as he lands face first on the bio-bed. The men manhandling their Chief Engineer having briefly lost track of which end of him was 'up'. Mr. Scott rolls over to serenade the ceiling. "A sandwich filled with jellyfish jelly!"

"What the hell have you been drinking, Scotty?" The CMO asks from his office doorway, sounding highly amused. He's got a large mug cradled in one hand and is using the other to ward off Nurse Chapel's attempts to get him to sign off on her daily report.

Mr. Scott chooses to ignore this question in favor of starting his song over from the beginning. The other engineers, having draped themselves over any nearby bio-beds and equipment, take it upon themselves to answer for him.

"Well, is Risa shir, sho they was mostly pink-" One crewman slurs.

"An blue!"

"And some that were kinda acid green..."

"With little... thingies. With the stick and the pretty paper-"

"Umbrellas!" This is contributed by the ensign with the bloody nose, so it comes out more like Umbwewathz.

"Yeah, that's right!"

"And funny names! Lots of funny names-"

"Screaming Organisms!" Mr. Scott shouts, joining the conversation with delight. At which point Doctor McCoy chokes on his drink and Nurse Donald laughs so hard she snorts.

"You don't say?" Dr. McCoy drawls when he regains his composure.

"You're taking this rather well, Sir." Says the baleful lieutenant, who's been to Med-Bay a fair number of times in the aftermath of Engineering experiments gone wrong (and occasionally, bombastically right).

"What can I say?" Dr. McCoy smiles around another sip of his drink. "I'm just a good humored kinda guy."

"You've been adding whiskey to your coffee again, haven't you?" Nurse Chapel says suspiciously, leaning into the doctor's personal space to get a whiff of his drink.

"Did we, or did we not, have a case of Andorien Shingles in here earlier?" He asks, giving his Head Nurse a sideways glare while keeping his mug out of her reach.

"Whiskey for everybody!" Mr. Scott yells, "And Jellyfish jelly sandwiches!"

Nurse Becky Ameranth wonders, as she gets the ensign to tip his head back and pinch his nose, if her cousin Danielle will believe this story when they next vid each other. Probably not.

She suspects that the CMO of the USS Defiant (or any other CMO) rarely drinks and never while on duty. She also suspects that other Head Nurses refrain from using their daily reports as tactical weaponry to get their CMOs to share the booze because everyone had to deal with the Andorian shingles, not just him thank-you-very-much. She doesn't think that other Chief Engineers ask nurses to dance after checking into Med-Bay with a likely case of alcohol poisoning, or give their engineers loud, wet kisses for helping to keep him upright while attempting a tricky spin. Or that the other nurses and engineers who could have been involved if their Chief Engineer did do so would find it highly amusing.

And if they don't, and if Danielle doesn't believe her and never does, if she just keeps giving Becky that incredulous expression after every single one of her best stories, who really cares?

I don't, Becky thinks as the tired, aching ball of stress and frustration in her chest condenses and then blazes into a fiery nova of pride. Who cares? Those ships are boring, with boring officers and boring crews and boring days without any twists or turns or heart stopping excitement that would bind them together – Becky thinks as Nurse Donald, Mary, hugs her tightly for support while watching their CMO reluctantly waltz their insistent CEO back towards his bio-bed – into a very odd but functional, crazy-insane sort of family.

"I like this ship." Becky whispers fiercely, in a voice she didn't think would carry but which seems to have been heard all the same.

"Tha's right, Lassy! It's excitin'!"

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End