Part VIII.

 

March 4th, 2248
Baltimore, Maryland

 

Poor Doc Pedersen got the surprise of his life.

Corry might have found it funny, if the situation was anything less awful than it was. The big Scandinavian walked in with a good-natured if tired smile, and Cor watched as the smile faded to confusion and then shattered on the floor. And he couldn't blame the man, because if he wasn't in the thick of it, if he hadn't followed Scotty across the line and then turned back to hold it, he would have probably felt the exact same way. He would have wondered what the hell his patient was doing awake and dressed for the door, and utterly despite himself, Corry offered a brief, kind of sheepish smile to the man who had put his brother back together. Gratitude. If nothing else.

He felt for the man. Even if he stopped feeling for the man later, he did now.

"What's going on?" Pedersen asked, and even with all of his thinking, the running litany in Cor's head was a prayer that Scotty keep his head together long enough to get out of here without landing himself into an involuntary commitment.

"We're leaving," Cor said, steadier than he felt, still with a little smile fixed and pinned on his face. "I mean, sure, AMA and that, but my leave was approved this morning and--"

And what? He had no idea.

Pedersen was starting to look edgy. And Corry knew security would be here soon, because the doc might have been a fine surgeon, but he wasn't very slick when he reached into his pocket to likely hit the emergency button on his communicator. "Explain?"

"Explain what?" Corry shrugged, nonchalant as he could possibly pretend to be. "We're out of here. There are doctors in Maine aplenty, and hey, you did a good job, but we--" he nodded back to Scotty without looking, "--both just really want to go home."

Pedersen raised an eyebrow, looking past him. And Corry didn't take his eyes off the man, no matter how much he wanted to. "We?" the doctor asked, confused and clearly growing frustrated and angry.

"Aye," was the answer, shaken but coherent enough, and Corry could have cried in relief, if he wasn't so busy setting fire to his career, reputation and maybe even freedom.

"I don't believe you're competent to make that decision, Ensign," Pedersen said, and Scotty didn't answer, but Corry sure did.

He smiled, a smile that was just as much a baring of teeth.

"Even if he isn't, I am. Sir." Cor offered his PADD over, at arm's length. "Anderson versus Starfleet, 2186. The High Court held in favor of the Anderson family when Starfleet Medical tried to override their civilian power of attorney. Lr'rough versus Starfleet, 2215. The High Court decided that Starfleet again had no power to override a civilian power of attorney."

"You're a Starfleet officer," Pedersen snapped back, even as he snatched the PADD, and even as half a dozen security officers and enlisted posing as orderlies stepped in.

Don't fight. Don't fight. Don't bolt, he prayed in his head, even knowing Scotty couldn't hear it. But outwardly, Cor just drew himself up to his full height, shoulders back, every bit ready to do the fighting for both of them and hoping to everything good in the universe that he wouldn't have to. "Yes, sir, I am. A Starfleet officer with a civilian power of attorney, which I've held for a year, which was given to me by Ensign Scott to guard his best interests in situations where he can't exercise that right himself. So, you can try to declare him medically and mentally unfit, Doctor, to guard his own interests. But good luck declaring me so. The courts will hold in my favor, whether I'm a Starfleet officer or not." Corry smiled sharp enough to cut, offering his communicator next. "Here. You can ask my attorney about that lawsuit we have all drawn up and ready to go."

It was a moment that could have gone any number of ways. Pedersen's face was flushed red, and Security looked like they were just itching to wipe Corry's smile off his face, and Corry didn't need to look back to know that Scotty was watching them with that look in his eyes like he could and would try to go through all of them to escape.

Something had to give. Corry just pleaded with God, the universe, and everything that it would be the right thing.

Something had to give, and something did.

Pedersen kept the PADD and turned for the door, leaving Corry his communicator. "Watch the door," he said to Security, walking out in a swish of his lab coat.

None of those security guys left outranked Cor, who had made lieutenant a few months before; after a moment of staring at one another, Corry pointed to the door. "Get out."

"With all due respect, Lieutenant--" the ranking officer, an ensign built like a linebacker, started.

Corry tipped his chin up, reaching out to set his communicator on the counter, still open and connected to his attorney. "Get out, Ensign. You can guard the door from outside."

He still had his rank, at least for now. They left, though not without shooting steely looks back at Corry.

The moment the door closed, Corry doubled over, buried his face in both of his again-shaking hands, and tried to remember how to breathe.

 

 

 

Scotty was in and out of it as time wore on, the half-drugged dazed giving way to the mind-numbing pain, and if he wasn't so hurt, Cor knew he would have been pacing. And Corry haggled with his attorney, who had the JAG office on another comm line, and thus far, no one had dared cross the line Cor had drawn.

He knew he wasn't getting out of this unscathed, that even if everything went perfectly -- and he had looked at every possible variable -- he would still pay for this somehow.

But that was never really the point.

More than once he almost panicked and tried to figure out a way to do some kind of damage control that was less extreme, but every time he looked Scotty in the eyes, he knew there was no way out but the way they were going. Because Scotty was keeping himself together enough not to bolt by sheer force of will, but Corry could see the flashes of panic and somewhere else, and he knew it was a war, if a silent one, every breath, and it was a war his brother would eventually lose.

And that right now, Corry standing guard and standing ready to fight was the single only reason that Scotty wasn't.

It took over an hour.

A long time, to fight that kind of war.

"Your records will be sent to the hospital in Boothbay Harbor, Maine," Pedersen said, obviously chewing tacks while he did it, not looking at Corry and addressing Scotty himself.

Scotty didn't answer, so Corry did it for him. "Thanks. Anything else?"

"An assessment upon arrival. Prescriptions. Physical therapy." Pedersen looked back at Cor, finally, something cold and angry in his eyes, handing Corry's PADD back to him. "Unless you believe you're the best judge of that, as well, Lieutenant Corrigan."

Better than anyone here, Corry thought back, even though he didn't actually mean it, but he just held one hand up, the hand with the communicator, in surrender. "Thank you, sir."

Pedersen didn't acknowledge that, just turned around and left again, this time taking Security with him.

"Ready to go home?" Corry asked after a moment, after he thanked his attorney and closed his communicator, too tired by now to even tremble, even if everything in him still wanted to and in some way, still did.

"No," Scotty answered, with a mournful huff that could have been a laugh or could have been a sigh, or maybe could have been a sob, dragging his forearm across his eyes, then gathering himself as well as he possibly could.

And Corry had no idea how to take that, but he grabbed their stuff and grabbed the crutches and got ready to take them there anyway.

 

 

 

He didn’t know how far they drove before he stopped crying. Because even relieved, even coming down off of the adrenaline, Corry couldn't help it. The minute they left Starfleet Medical HQ far enough behind them that he couldn't see it anymore, the tears started again and just wouldn't stop.

He was waiting, at any moment, for Starfleet to swoop down on them; for them to decide that no, actually, they weren’t going to let a barely-lieutenant make off with one of their patients, that he needed to be arrested and his brother dragged back into custody.

He was glad as hell he was driving his own skimmer, the one Scotty had rigged years ago so the sensor nets could be shut down with a flip of a switch, because that was the first thing he did.  He knew he was being reactive and paranoid, but he didn't care. He was scared out of his mind. There wasn't any point to pretending otherwise.

If Cor let himself think of the billion and one possible complications of bolting with someone who had just undergone major surgery after spending a month in a drug-and-hypothermia induced coma, he'd probably lose his mind. Or scream. Or both.

It was snowing in Maryland, and it was snowing when they cut across the corner of Pennsylvania, and it was still snowing into New Jersey, and it only tapered when they were somewhere just southeast of Trenton.

Scotty had been quiet the entire drive; he kept dozing off and then startling back awake again, swinging between the inevitable consequences of everything he’d been put through -- and everything he’d put himself through on top of it -- and his own unexplained terror in reaction to it. But he never said a word about it.  Just darted a look around, fists closed, until he managed to orient himself again.

Then he would bury his face in his hands, shaking, and when the shaking calmed down again, he'd rake back through his hair a few times, and then he’d retreat back into dazed stillness and eventually doze and then repeat the whole wrenching cycle again.

The really damn lousy part was how little Corry could actually do to help.  He had a bottle of water to offer.  He had his voice, offering reassurances even through his tears.  Somewhere just before Philadelphia, he pulled over and managed to get out of his coat without getting out of the skimmer, laying it over Scotty like a blanket, as if somehow synthesized goose down and L.L.Bean could offer a kind of protection against every possible threat, seen or unseen.

That, at least, seemed to do some good.  Corry didn't know if it was for the extra warmth -- even though he had the skimmer's heat turned up and even though Scotty had his own coat on -- or the weight, but at least Scotty spent a fair bit more time dozing than jumping awake after.

It was such a small thing.  But Corry was at such a loss that even that seemed like a triumph, however tiny, amidst the ongoing devastation.

He had never intended to drive them all the way back home.  Hell, despite that lawsuit he had ready, he hadn’t anticipated it being anything but a last resort.  He had known going into it that it wasn’t going to be easy or neat, he’d known from the moment Starfleet had called him that they were in dangerous water, but even he hadn’t foreseen just how dangerous.

No one had ever warned him, when he was younger, that the more you loved someone, the more impossible it became to untangle yourself from their wreckage.

No one had ever warned him that the more you loved someone, the less you wanted to, too.

Now, it was just down to keeping them both from drowning, and Corry wasn’t so sure he was going to be able to do that.  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

He parked the skimmer outside of a decent-looking motel -- the kind that would accept physical credit chips in lieu of a biometrically linked account, the kind that had first-floor rooms and didn’t require long walks through hallways -- and looked over at his still-sleeping brother, wreckage and all, and settled in to ache, fear, love and wait.