"C'mon, it has to have been a week by now," you groaned, jabbing ruefully at a PADD in front of you.
You had been permitted to continue your duties from sick bay, but there was only so much you could get done while sitting in a bed with about a dozen medical personnel constantly checking in on you and taking your readings and injecting you with various compounds at the slightest hint of an anomaly in said readings.
"You've only been here for three days," McCoy grinned, glancing over at you as he prepared your daily dose of hyronalin. "Stick out your arm."
"Well, it feels like a week," you sighed, thrusting your arm at him without looking up and consequently catching him in the chest. "Whoops! Sorry."
"You're fine," he assured you, injecting the hyronalin just below your elbow. "In fact, you're better than I thought you would be at this point. I guess I forgot to take into account your determination to never stay here as long as you should."
You smiled slightly. "That's me. The stubbornest ensign in Starfleet."
"And the strangest medical miracle I've ever seen," McCoy declared, marking something on his own PADD. "You just might get out of here a couple days sooner than I thought."
You gave him a sideways glance, narrowing your eyes suspiciously. "I might?"
"You might," he repeated, grinning at you again. "If you stay right there until you're healed, that is."
"Blackmailer," you accused, picking your PADD back up.
"You bet I am," he agreed emphatically. "It's the only way I can get most of my patients to stay here long enough to actually heal. You should see how hard it is with Spock! He's almost as stubborn as you!"
"Isn't stubbornness a human thing?" you teased.
McCoy snorted. "Don't you let that Vulcan façade of his fool you. He's more human than he likes to admit."
You remained silent for a moment, and your hand went to your ribs, or rather the single rib Emilie Pollack had broken all that time ago. "Yes," you said quietly. "I've noticed that too."
