Chekov woke up at 5:15 that morning and insisted that he be allowed to leave with no further ado. After several stern looks and mild threats, Bones managed to get the kid to rest until 10:00.

"Sir, I am fine. It was only a few scratches." Chekov began pulling his boots on and collecting the bloody t-shirt that Bones had bagged.

"Now hold on there, son. You got pretty banged up. Just let me make sure you're still alright. And don't call me sir." Bones managed to get the boy to lay down on the couch and sit still long enough for him to replace the bandages on his stomach and check out his head wound. Both of them were perfectly fine, and his ankle, while bruised, did not appear to be getting any worse.

"Are you a real doctor?" Chekov asked before Bones could even pronounce him well enough to go home.

"That's a loaded question. If you mean do I have the knowledge of a doctor, then the answer is yes. I don't practice medicine professionally anymore, but I do know enough to patch up knuckleheads like you and Jim." Bones replied straining at a smile. He missed being a legitimate doctor at times, but the group of thieves he'd fallen with needed a good doctor, and there he was.

"You're fine to go, but let me give you some advice. Get as far as you can from this line of work. It may look like it's fun and exciting, but you could die. Do you understand?" Chekov stood, flinching and clutching his stomach, but never taking his eyes away from Bones.

"I am not doing this because I think it is fun. I am helping my family. We are very poor and we do not yet have citizenship. The school I am going to is understanding, but my mother is finding it difficult to find a job. I need this." Chekov put on his second boot and began hobbling out the door before Bones could even begin to form a reply.

He grumbled about the blood on his sheets, but couldn't find it in his heart to put any malice behind the words. The boy was doing it for good reasons, but that didn't stop the concern from making its way to the front of his thoughts.

Bones brewed himself a strong cup of coffee before settling down with the morning paper. Any day when he was out with Jim and the rest of the crew was an exhausting one and he liked to relax as much as possible before the maelstrom hit.

"Looks like they're at it again." He mumbled to himself. A gang killing. 4 men dead and a child in critical after being caught in the crosshairs. Kid was expected to live at least. He wadded up the newspaper, willing the tears and memories away. He didn't have the time, the desire, or the temperament to break down ever, but there he was about to cry like a nitwit. His damn coffee was going to get cold.

It had been three years since his life was torn apart. Four desperately wounded men had come into the hospital. Stabbed nearly to death and beaten to within an inch of their lives. He did his best, but the youngest of them, a boy around 17 or 18, died on the operating table. He notified the kid's parents and prepared to break the news. It was chaos. Crying and screaming and general havoc as the kid's family, a well-known crime family, descended upon the hospital. They wanted heads to roll and Leonard McCoy was at the top of the list. He got paranoid and stopped leaving the house, started getting nightmares about them exacting revenge. His wife left him and took everything. Changed the locks on the house. The whole nine yards. The isolation made him dangerous. Made him darker and more cynical than he ever thought he was capable of being, and then came James Kirk.

Bones was pulled out of his mind by a loud crash as his front door knocked loudly against the wall, and then the squeaky sounds of several pairs of boots on his freshly cleaned floors. "Damn kids." he grumbled. They were nearly as bad as Jim. Jim, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov streamed in through the front door, laughing and tracking in god knows what.

"We found Chekov hobbling his way home this morning. What kind of ship are you running here, Mr. McCoy?" Jim teased, ruffling the Russian's curls before stealing an apple off of Bones's counter.

"It wasn't me that wanted him gone. Little blight wouldn't take no for an answer." Bones pulled his shoes and coat on before shooing everyone out of his kitchen. If his neighbors kept seeing people barging in through his door they might get the idea that he was sociable, and that was not something he would be able to live with.