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Of course, it was just their luck that a small earthquake had to occur right when they were exploring a cave, causing the entrance to collapse and trapping them inside.
They had escaped with minimal injuries, except for the junior ensign, Erica Beaumont. Her arm had been badly broken in the cave-in, a displaced, open fracture of both radius and ulna, which left her with significant blood loss staining the red of her sleeve a deeper crimson.
In the initial aftermath of the cave-in, Leonard had been too busy treating his patient to give much thought to their situation. He had given her painkillers and antibiotics right away. The fracture was too complex to set in the field without risking further injury and blood loss. So instead he simply stabilized it and did what he could to stop the bleeding.
By the time he had done what he could for Beaumont, Jim and Spock had examined the cave and determined that they were, indeed, trapped. Communication to the Enterprise was blocked by the layers of stone over their heads.
The first day passed with more annoyance at their situation than fear. It wasn’t the first time an away team had gotten stranded somewhere and needed to be rescued–it wasn’t even the tenth.
If there was one silver lining in this situation, at least it wasn’t claustrophobic.
The cave was a decent size, stretching more than 50 feet in length and a little less in width. The ceiling arched upward like a cathedral, the whole thing peppered with stalagmites and stalactites. At the very top, there was a small hole open to the outside. It was hard to judge size from that distance, but Spock had estimated it to be around 10 inches in diameter.
It was too small to squeeze through, even if they somehow managed to climb up the sheer walls, but it did provide a small shaft of light and allowed them to track the day cycles.
Leonard swayed back and forth on whether that small glimpse of sunlight provided hope in the darkness or was merely taunting them about the freedom which was just out of reach.
They passed the time by bickering and joking and sharing facts about the planet. Spock primarily participated in the latter. They did their best to keep Beaumont’s spirits up. This was her first away mission and she was already having the worst time out of all of them.
They ate their rations for dinner. Each away team always carried a week's worth of food for situations like this.
Overall, that first night, Leonard ranked a four out of ten: not pleasant, but far from the worst away mission he had been a part of.
The dread started to set in on day three.
There had been no signs of a rescue group nor any communication from the Enterprise. That was…concerning.
Their away mission wasn’t supposed to last more than a few hours, so there was no way the Enterprise crew didn’t know they were missing. They had also been broadcasting their location right up until they entered the cave, so it shouldn’t be hard to go to their last location, see the obviously caved in entrance, and realize what had happened.
Even if it took a rescue crew a while to dig through, they should have still heard something by now.
But there was nothing. No sounds of engines or voices promising rescue coming from the hole in the ceiling. No sounds of digging from the entrance. Just silence broken only by their voices, which became less frequent as the mood of the away team gradually worsened.
Jim ordered them to start half-rations that day.
A few days later, quarter-rations.
Leonard also had to start rationing his medications. He gave Beaumont smaller and smaller doses of painkillers, even though it broke his heart to see her sobbing with pain.
He soon ran out of antibiotics. Now all he could do was try to keep her arm clean, a difficult task in a literal cave, and pray for the best.
At least they didn’t have to worry about water.
There was a small spring, a trickle really, coming out from a small crack in the rock on one end of the cave. Their scanners showed it to be safe-ish. There was the expected assortment of bacteria and other organisms, which they combated by using their limited phaser power to boil it before drinking.
There was also a concerningly high amount of copper in the water, something which they did not have the means to filter out. It was not enough to cause acute toxicity, but certainly enough to build up into chronic issues. Still, in Leonard’s medical opinion, a bit of liver and kidney damage was survivable and treatable, while dying of dehydration was not.
So, they drank the water. It had an unpleasant, metallic aftertaste.
It had been…weeks.
Leonard wasn’t counting the exact days. Frankly he didn’t want to know. Knowing wouldn’t help anything except to count down the days until they all died of starvation.
The last of the food had run out days ago, though they had been down to a single bite a day for some time before that.
Leonard had thought he had known what hunger was. He hadn’t. Not even close.
It wasn’t just his stomach. It was his whole body, aching, cramping, sapping away his strength until even blinking took effort. His body felt like it was digesting itself, and it technically was.
His fat stores had been raided, sucked dry and leaving him thin, almost skeletal. He didn’t have a mirror to know what he looked like, but seeing how sunken-cheeked the others were, he could make a guess.
The escape attempts had gotten steadily less frequent but more frantic. They hadn’t had the strength to unblock the tunnel before, and they certainly didn’t now.
Jim had been quiet. They all had, but it was especially unlike the Captain. He spent much of his time staring at the wall with an unreadable expression. Leonard couldn’t blame him a bit. This situation had to be drawing up a lot of old ghosts.
There wasn’t much Leonard could do for his friend, and so he focused what was left of his attention on his patient.
Despite his best efforts, Beaumont had developed a fever. Frankly, it was a miracle she had lasted this long. Between the meager medical supplies, dirty environment, and starvation tanking her body’s ability to fight off infection, she honestly should have succumbed to her injury days ago.
He sat next to her, holding her hand. She was unconscious–a blessing with the amount of pain she had to be in–but Leonard hoped that the friendly contact might offer her even the slightest amount of comfort.
The next time he checked on her, she was dead.
Leonard sat on the ground and placed his head into his hands. He knew it was going to happen, but it didn’t make it any easier. Losing a patient was never easy, regardless of the circumstances.
He should tell the others.
They should figure out the most out of the way corner of the cave to place her in. They didn’t have the resources or strength for any proper burial, but they had to put as much distance between themselves and her body as they could within the confined space.
They were already dying of starvation, they didn’t need to torture themselves more with the stench of rot and the multitude of microbes that would soon begin growing and could easily make them sick.
He should tell the others, but he didn’t have the strength to get up right now.
He’d sit a little longer, then he’d tell them.
Unbidden, a thought entered his mind.
It was reprehensible to even consider, an absolutely disgusting reversal of not only his oath as a doctor to do no harm, but also his basic morals as a human being.
And yet…
Beaumont was already dead. What more harm could be done?
No.
Just no.
There was a reason that it was illegal to harvest organs from a non-organ donor, even if doing so would save lives. Even after death, it was important to respect the decisions of bodily autonomy a person had made when they were alive.
But what decision would she have made if given the chance? Would she have been as disgusted by the idea as him? Or upon realizing that she, herself wasn’t going to make it, would she have decided to give them permission to use her body to survive?
He would never know, because he never asked her. Why the hell would he have thought to ask her that?
And now they were left with a sort of Schroedinger’s cat situation. Except Beaumont was already, irrefutably dead and the lives hanging in limbo were himself, Jim, and Spock.
His mouth was watering. The horrible idea, no matter how quickly shut down, was enough to make his body respond like–well, like a starving man. He hadn’t thought his stomach had anything left to give, empty and shrivelled as it had been for weeks, yet it managed to prove him wrong with a cramping grumble.
He felt sick at his body’s reaction, and yet he also felt the instinctual, powerful temptation to survive, to live another day, by any means necessary.
The flesh on her body, emaciated though it was, would be enough to feed the three of them for days, drawing out their survival for possible weeks.
He should tell the others. This was the sort of decision that they all needed to make together.
But what if they said no?
He hadn’t even decided yet, but the thought of the others saying no–keeping him from his one chance of survival, sitting back and letting them all starve to death when they could do something to prevent it–was almost too much to bear.
It wasn’t like he had a choice to not tell them.
Even if he somehow managed to… harvest it quietly so they didn’t notice, he could hardly walk up to the others and offer them a piece of meat without them knowing exactly where it came from.
But would doing so make them less likely to say no?
Maybe as a theoretical, their morals would win. But if the damage had already been done? Leonard was already experiencing first hand how strong the survival portion of his brain and body were responding to even the thought. Surely having the actual smells and sight of food, no matter how horrible the source, would be enough to overpower any moral debate.
The utility knife from his pack was in his hand. He didn’t remember picking it up.
He stared down at Beaumont. At her face and body, slack in a way that only came from death.
Could he really do this?
She was a person .
But he was so hungry .
He raised the knife.