The Ghosts Between Us:
Chapter 1
He didn't want to move. He felt heavy and fixed as if he was a part of the substrate beneath. Subtle colors of wakefulness teased for his eyes to open, but gravity was still too strong. He lay on the edge of his twilight blade for a short time, hearing confused thoughts gibber and fade until finally giving way to his basic wants. 'If I could only sleep a little longer, it's so cold; the blanket... must have slipped off. Must be somewhere….' He tried to turn over but something was in his way. 'Not fair! It's not! That damned alarm! Why now? If there's a God, and I highly doubt it, make it stop!' Drifting closer to the surface of his dream, he pushed out with his arms, still meeting resistance. 'Make it stop!'He groaned. His hands reached up to his head.The stark ear splitting tone kept screeching on without wavering.
Rodney usually slept with abandon, sprawled out over the entire bed. It was the only time he could really let go of being self conscious of his personal space. He loved to sleep but his work always took precedent and often robbed him of the pleasure.
He pushed out again, struggling against his unseen foe. "Whhaat! Move!" He yelled out, thrashing his body back and forth. Frustrated, he blindly kicked out at the obstacle in a determined jerk. His foot smacked hard up against his unknown nemesis, still refusing to yield. 'Aoowww!...What's burning…smells… that smell! He set the city on fire! That's the last time…last time I let Zelenka anywhere near an electrical panel...That's it! Why should I try to sleep when?'
His eyes flew open to a cross hatch of black netting above him. It took a moment to register … 'Whhat the? Where am ...' His bleary gaze filtered down to his feet. Focusing clearer now, he saw the familiar bronze metal paneling diffused through a haze of smoke that could only be the inside of a puddle jumper. The rubber mat under him came away from his face with an adhesive smack as he slowly tried to lift his head. "Uh...oh no..." He said as he realized the jumper was on its side ever so slightly with its nose tipped down. He was half wedged under a bench seat, surrounded by various objects that once were stowed away tight. The light was dim, shining from above: two, stark halogen beams. His eyes squinted as he tried to adjust.
"Emergency…lights…Alarm….What the hell" He whispered, feeling the air knocked out of his center. Within seconds, he realized that his head was aching. A sharp throb of pain kept pace with his heart, pulsing faster as he sat all the way up. The caustic scent of what seemed to be charred plastic and god knows what made him cough. Irritated by the bleak sensations assailing him he focused on the closest source. He punched the utility panel next to his side and squelched the alarm. Looking around the rear compartment he tried to recall what it all meant, images falling into place…'We crashed?!...Am I hurt? Can't remember…'
Rodney's jumbled thoughts picked up the pace as his eyes quickly moved over his stiff body searching for evidence of injury… 'We were heading somewhere…to the moon by M378…? An old outpost…energy readings were good…' His thought immediately sheared off course as his eyes processed the new information before him. "Oh, GOD! I'm bleeding!" He blurted out into the small space. The sound echoed briefly. Rodney's hand came back from his ankle wet with congealing blood. Holding it up to his face, the panic was about to force a cry out of him when he realized it was cold. He quickly pulled up his leg only to find his trouser cuff wet with the ominous sign. 'I'm ok, but who's …' He thought. Looking down again, he could see the deep red slick fingering a narrow line toward the dark cockpit. Rodney stopped breathing as he remembered he had not been alone. The fore shield that normally protected them had been violently shattered from its frame. A twisted tree trunk of some kind jutted half way into the jumper on the co-pilot side, littering the cabin with mossy debris... Blood, now seemingly black in the evening light, glistened like dirty motor oil as it tipped and streaked the pilot's seat and controls. The chair was empty save for a scrap of dark fabric, wet and impaled on a jagged barb of metal. The atmosphere crushed in suddenly, strangling the last bit of air in Rodney's lungs as the horrific reality became clear,"Sheppard! "
Rodney threw himself forward to the dash, now covered in sanguine spattered fragments. He ignored the pain of the crystal shards cutting into his palms as he pulled himself up to look out. Just below, he could see the crumpled outline of a man in the translucent fog. "Oh No, No…Sheppard! Sheppard! Can you hear me?"He yelled, his words unheard in the damp air. No response. Rodney began to tremble with terror, his thoughts choking him...'God No! He looks dead…He can't be dead! NO!' He bolted for the back of the jumper and pulled the emergency release. The door cracked open, but fell forward with the pitch of the vessel. Adrenaline surging, Rodney fought back with both hands, pushing out with all his might…"Open! Open you piece of crap!"He screamed, straining his throat. The door gave way and fell from its hinge, crashing with a boggy splash. Rodney scrambled out and through the shallow sludge that surrounded the jumper, fighting the pull of the mud with each step.
Rodney arrived so fast, he nearly fell on top of the quiet form that lay face down before him. Sheppard rested silently in an unnatural repose upon the slimy bank, his lower torso and legs splayed awkwardly in the frigid water. The unforgiving metallic smell of blood mixing with the stench of decaying plant matter seemed to permeate his broken body. Rodney couldn't tell in the dim light if he was breathing but reached out, gagging down his fear. "He's dead…he looks dead…this isn't happening…can't be real..." He said with a disembodied voice of shock.
Rodney's hands were unprepared for the actuality of what touching this nightmare might be like…his fingers were almost hot against the skin of his friend, strange and as cold like the descending darkness. He touched Sheppard's forearm, bare and caked with mud. His skin felt firm and cold like stone…."Sheppard! " Rodney cried, frantically fearing the worst. No response. 'I'm not ready for this John, I'm not! Don't leave me alone. Please…' He wailed out in his mind.
Rodney felt the panic engulfing him as he remembered Carson lecturing him on basic first aid. 'If I had only paid more attention! I am not a doctor doctor! For God's sake, I don't know how…please John…come back…'He thought, shaking as he fought on. 'Focus McKay! If you have ever made anything important in your life count, this is it!' He tried to go through what he remembered...'Ok, I need a pulse! 'He felt Sheppard's neck, searching…'There has to be a pulse! Damn it John! Where is it?!...nothing…' He pressed deeper under his jaw. 'Wait, maybe….' A very weak back beat met his fingers, so fast it was barely there. "Oh, thank you God! Thank you John!" He whispered to himself as tears of gratitude ran down his fearful face . Desperation made his thoughts more coherent and his mind locked onto the challenge. 'Now what? I have to move him, turn him over? Crap! I'm not supposed to move him! But I have too! Damn you Carson!'
Rodney remembered his head set and gave it a try… "Atlantis, this is McKay, Come in! Mayday! Atlantis, Come in!" His plea was met with static feedback from the damaged jumper. "This is not ok! I need some help! Atlantis, come in! Mayday! Any one!!" He could see the emergency transponder light flickering in the open cockpit. 'The transponder…it's sending a signal. At least we have that.' He thoughtas he furiously wiped the tears and sweat from his face. Looking at Sheppard, he knew he had to do something quickly if they were to survive. The light was almost gone and a icy wind started to pick up.
His feet were numb and saturated as he heard Carson in his head, rolling out his Scottish syllables; "Rodney, pay attention! You need to check for an airway! Remember, ABC? "
'Oh, God! ' Rodney snapped back to the moment. 'I got it wrong! Airway, breathing, circulation! Not Pulse first! Crap! He's face down! I have to turn him! THINK! Carson said if you have to move someone, move them in one piece.' Angry but too freaked out to berate himself, Rodney climbed up the slippery bank. He crouched by his friend's immobile head, noticing his striking black hair, now wet and matted down. He bravely held Sheppard by the shoulders and turned him on his side in one clean, slow motion. As Rodney's knee supported his head, he sighed as Sheppard's face became visible. Eyes closed, blood and algae graphically coated his slack, traumatized face.
With an honest grimace, Rodney hesitantly put his finger in his friend's mouth, making sure it was clear. 'God damn it John! I am so sorry…' A small amount of blood and saliva trickled out but that's all. 'Oh God, I can't…believe I am doing this…please breathe...' With no evidence of further imagined horrors, he completed the turn and gingerly put him on his back. He carefully opened John's mouth and leaned in, hoping for something. Shallow and faint, it was there. He was breathing. To convince himself, Rodney put his hand on John's chest, feeling the fragile rise and fall that would shutter every so often. "This is good….your alive, and that's really good….it's a start…"Rodney said with a shaky voice. "John, can you hear me? Its McKay...John, wake up!" Rodney tried again with more volume, tapping his face…"John…." Nothing. Rodney exhaled with a whimper, realizing he had to get him under cover somehow. Frightened, Rodney stood up and pulled his arms tight around himself as he tried to reason the next step. His body was still thrumming with adrenaline. The wilderness seamed to stretch out with a blackening hostility. Scared but not defeated, Rodney visually plotted his path to safety then bent back down.
'Forgive me Sheppard.' He thought as he tried not to recall the dire complications that Carson had drilled into him when he had asked about moving the injured. Regret on his face, he carefully pulled John up under his arms, buckling slightly as he moved him onto his shoulders. Rodney's legs, braced with life and death determination, pushed forward as he followed the bank the few treacherous yards back to the jumper. The hatch had fallen just so to make an acceptable bridge over the water. With great effort, he slowly entered and painstakingly placed John down softly onto the metal deck. He placed a small seat cushion under John's head and rechecked his breathing. "Still breathing. Small miracles… " He pulled the rear hatch up onto its hinge catch and managed to fight it closed again. He was feeling the wet and cold now too, his skin ridging with goose bumps. He needed to get them both warm. Sheppard's blood now coated Rodney's tee shirt and hands. The awareness of this grim fact made him nauseated but he tried to block it out. 'Mc Kay! You have to focus! Supplies! What do we have?'
Rummaging around, he found three military wool blankets, a towel and a canteen of water. Strapped under the pilot seat, he spied the first-aid kit and broke it open. There was an ample supply of gauze, a bundle of field dressings, saline, antiseptic, various small tools and a few bottles. Setting them aside, he focused on the next task. His friend's wet clothing wasn't helping matters and he knew they had to go. His now manic trepidation rambled it's self out between his ears… 'Why is this happening? Now I have to strip him? Great! Fucking great! Shut up McKay! I don't want to see him naked...hell, I don't like to see myself naked…The one horrible time I get to strip someone… it's a guy, nearly dead...I am so screwed..Yeah, screwed up! You're doing this to help him! God, there's so much blood...Does he have any left? Deal with it! '
Rodney was deeply ashamed that he was feeling so petty but on a more honest level, he knew it was his way of coping. He wasn't proud of this, but he had never really learned how to respond to people without feeling like an outsider. Living in his head seemed to be the only solution he could relate to. Computers and physics made sense. People didn't. Any intimacy scared the hell out of him, but not as much as the present moment. 'If you were a bunch of wires or circuit relays I could deal, really…I am afraid, so afraid I am going to screw this up...I don't want to do this, damn it. Please don't die on me…God, what would John say…Snap out of it McKay! This isn't about you! Get your whiney ass in gear and just do this! Stay positive McKay! Yeah, he would say that…I have always hated that…He'd better not have any weird tattoos…' He thought, trying to distract himself from the carnage..."OK, what next Carson?" Rodney asked aloud and numbly waited for an answer…
"Rodney! Get those wet things off!" Carson barked in his mind's eye…
He took a deep breath, afraid of what he was going to find. Meticulously, he worked the buttons on Sheppard's shirt with fearful hands, and slowly peeled off the acrid remnant, sticky with his life force... He let out a small sound as he saw a deep red contusion engulfing the entire right side of John's chest. Each rib left a mark on the skin from the inside. "Rodney! Keep it up lad! Don't stop now…" Carson whispered…
"God, Carson. How do you do this? "He said in disbelief. Cuts and abrasions were scattered along his neck and along his purple and very broken collar bone. The open wounds continued to rake down the full length of his abdomen, stopping short of his belt. Rodney winced as he attempted to tell how deep they were. It was blatantly apparent that they had bled profusely. Moving his dog tags aside, he noticed how John's right shoulder hung strangely. Rodney wiped him as clean as water and antiseptic would allow, patted him dry then wrapped his bare torso in a blanket and a foil emergency sheet. He started in on his boots, digging away the anaerobic clay to get to the laces. Rodney wrinkled his face at the stench... Once his feet were free, He removed his gun from his leg and slipped off his pants, being extra careful to leave his boxers on. There was an angry wet gash in his right lower leg which he rinsed out and placed a field dressing on. Some smaller bruises spread out around his knees.
Carson popped in again…"Good job Rodney! See, that wasn't so bad, was it lad?"
'Bad for me or Sheppard? ' He wondered. Who knows what damage he had inflicted upon his unconscious friend… 'This is horrible! John is probably going to die and I'll be drug off by God knows what! Stop it! How many times has Sheppard saved your brilliant ass? Huh? Suck it up! 'Rodney tried not to hear them, but thoughts of death and the unknown kept knocking….Rodney finished by wrapping John's long legs with the second blanket and hung the dank clothes over the passenger seat. Not knowing quite what to do, he still surmised that Sheppard's face was going to need more work. He sat down next to him and with his meager medical arsenal and began to wipe away the mire, starting with John's temple.
"Gentle son, don't rush it. Nice and easy now..."
"I know Carson!" Rodney snapped out loud, then ducked back into his head… 'Yeah, I am screwed. No apparent head injury and I am the one talking to myself, or someone...Carson,…man how I really wish you were here…' Rodney refocused, wiping a little at a time, the pale skin beneath the filth revealed it's self and so did the injuries. Sheppard's right eye had turned dark and was sealed shut. His cheek was scraped and red down to his lips, the lower one split, blood still seeping down his chin. What worried Rodney was the wicked gash in his hairline that started to bleed all too quickly as he cleaned away the dirty crust that covered it. Nearly panicking, he grabbed a wad of gauze and hastily braced it to the wound, lashing it with a bandage around his forehead and through his blood smeared hair.
At this point, the headache and nausea he had been trying to ignore, threatened him with bodily harm. He turned away for a moment; opening his mouth just in case, but gained a last second reprieve. He moved away and stripped off his own shirt, damp and cold and replaced it with a spare he found in the storage locker. His blood sugar was in the toilet. Wrapping the last blanket around himself, he scrounged around for his data pad. It lay under a pile of odds and ends, and thankfully, a few Power bars. He cracked open a chocolate one and desperately finished it off in four distracted bites.
He looked back with uneasiness at Sheppard, who although was breathing quietly, still could pass for a dead man. He wished there was something more he could do for John, but he was already way out of his depth. Rodney was having a hard time trying to figure out how long they had been on the surface since the crash. They had some meager food and water, and a few impressive weapons, but that was it. Their radios were useless. He set up a few portable lights and killed the emergency ones to make things more tolerable. He needed to keep the jumper warm, but between his readings of the ship's damaged systems and the blown open cockpit, he knew that was not going to happen. Instead, he worked on adjusting the emergency beacon's signal strength. The night was enormous and foreign outside. This was a completely uncharted world save for a fractional mention in the database of a surface gate. Unfamiliar sounds chirped and buzzed in the distance. He couldn't bring himself to think about the locals…what ever they were, or if this was a Wraith vacation spot. He made sure he had a clear path to his weapons. The new environment had a very primordial feel to it, Rodney thought. Hopefully, not the Jurassic kind. He already had enough frightening things to stare down in the jumper.
He knew Atlantis could triangulate their position from their last transmission, but rescue would be a few days off at least. He also knew that Sheppard didn't have that kind of time. Then there was the issue of where in hell on this forsaken orb were they? He couldn't quite remember yet…They had been flying among a group of small moons near some kind of ancient outpost. Nothing else was coming to him. 'Maybe I do have a head wound.' He thought. A few cuts and scrapes on his face and hands were the only physical signs of his dilemma. That and an empty stomach. Sighing with exhaustion, he moved close to Sheppard, attempting not to disturb him, but trying to give him some body heat. Holding Sheppard's 9mil tight, he focused on his flickering data pad for any possibilities. There weren't many.
The sound was slow and feeble….making its way into his mind like a child tip toeing into a room at night…someone calling out. Someone needing help….Rodney opened his eyes and looked around the dark jumper. An odd frost was settling on the dash upfront and sparkled in the faint light. His watch noted he had been asleep for a few hours. With a flinch ready, he reluctantly looked over at John, lying still. 'I hope you're still with me….' He thought as he reached over and felt his chest. 'Still breathing.' Relief spread through him like a wave of warm water. Lying there like that, battered and barely alive, he looked smaller, less like a military leader and more like a boy… Sadness welled up within him as he watched his friend's breath go in and out. He had saved so many without personal gain. He had held Atlantis in the face of all odds, the Wraith, the Replicators, hell, the entire Pegasus galaxy. 'To die like this would be such a waste…You don't deserve this'… Rodney thought quietly. He began to close his eyes, when he heard it again…a groaning...'Crap! It's John! ' He was saying something…Rodney lunged at his head, hovering close to hear…
"Lzz...bthhha…." The word came out from between his bruised lips in a shallow breath. Rodney froze, trying to make sense and then it came to him. John was calling for Elizabeth. John's eyes were still closed, but he could see his hand slightly extending…
'Oh God, this is either very good or very bad….What if he's dying and she is calling out to him! Oh, shut up! No, what if he's just dreaming….What do I do?'Rodney thought, his body tensing. It had been months since Elizabeth had finally passed through the gate and John had silently said his goodbyes. He had never really been the same since. He was more focused on his duties now and stayed away from most social situations. "John, can you hear me? It's McKay. John, are you with me buddy? John?"Rodney insisted. Overwhelmed with the desire to keep John in the moment, he broke character by putting his hand on Sheppard's.
John weakly turned his head to Rodney with eyes closed. In a labored breath he attempted to speak, "Rohhdeny? "
"Yeah, right here buddy, right here! Can you hear me? "Rodney asked urgently.
John took another breath in and expelled it weakly, "Yeahh, …huurrts….."
"I know. You're going to be alright. You have been hurt, help is on the way and I am here with you, so stay with me John, please…" Rodney squeezed John's hand. John gave a nod that was barely perceptible and fell quiet for a moment. Sweat beaded up on Rodney's forehead as he tried to think of what came next. "Carson! Help me! What do I do now?"He whispered.
"Keep him quiet Rodney. It is the only remedy you have right now…"
'OK, I can do that! I can!' He thought, answering himself. Several minutes passed in the dark jumper without a human sound. Rodney was afraid to move, wondering if John had fallen back to sleep.
As if sensing his attention, John shifted slightly and whispered, "Lizbeth…is shhhe here?"
Rodney felt his stomach drop as he swallowed. "Yeah John, she's with you. Try to sleep now…its ok." Feeling cruel and conflicted, Rodney felt the tears backing up in his eyes as he saw John go back under.
Rodney put his hand over his mouth, trying to ground himself. He felt a slight hysteria beginning to expand inside his head as the walls closed in. 'What am I going to do? John…we have to get out of here…somehow…' He slammed his eyes shut and focused on trying to not hyperventilate. The jumper was too small for his fears in the moment. His breathing relaxed eventually and he unconsciously moved closer to John. Still holding tight to John's side arm and his data pad, he started to run math equations in his head, disassociating from the hell of the moment. Hours passed, and although Rodney tried to sleep, he couldn't. Strange sounds bounced him in and out of the alien ethers for the rest of the night. John stayed still, almost too still for Rodney's comfort. There were too many ghosts around to sleep.