Falling
A loud yell echoed through the hallway as Colonel John Sheppard fell down the metal stairs.
"Sheppard!" Ronon shouted after him, jumping a few stairs at a time to get to his teammate. Moaning came from a few metres down where John lay with his eyes closed. "Sheppard!" Ronon shouted again. "Stay with me!"
"Hurts," was all John could let out. He breathed short breaths, as Ronon came level with him. "Doctor Beckett, we got a situation. Colonel Sheppard is injured, and needs…"
"No, I'm fine," John whispered, shortly followed by "Ow."
"Obviously you are." Ronon was getting quite good at sarcasm. " Doc, we need a gurney. He doesn't look good… Yes, he's conscious… Understood." Ronon hopped to the other side of John, and wanted to take a better look at his Colonel. "I gotta move you. You need to lay straight, not in a bend on two stairs." He watched his friend lying with his head on the last step, and his body on the floor.
John knew Ronon was right, but he wasn't looking forward to it. His neck and back hurt like hell, and his one ankle seemed to be placed in a strange angle.
"Might take a while till the doc gets here. We did run quite a few miles from the transporter." John knew what Ronon was trying to do. Distract him just before he was going to do something painful. He'd seen that tactic before. Ah, there it was, as a loud moan escaped John's throat. "What the hell was that? And don't say it's just a scrape!"
"A piece of glass. Nothing serious." Ronon grinned to John's comment. He remembered that one afternoon, stuck in the rubble on Michael's hide out planet. It hadn't been fun for John.
"Glass? I didn't know we had glass stairs in Atlantis." John was amazed he could still let out some sort of speech-related utterances as he felt the muscles in his back tighten and release, and felt blood flowing from the glass-wound.
"It wasn't a piece of stairs. Dunno what it was. Looks like glass anyway." He showed John the glass fragment.
"Is that a pair of glasses?" John wondered.
"Didn't Zelenka loose his glasses last week?" Ronon examined them.
"Yeah. Rodney had to enjoy glassless-Zelenka for a few days till we could dial earth again." Now it was Ronon who let out some sort of noise resembling laughter.
"I still have to move you."
"You know, I'm quite comfortable. Can't we wait till Beckett gets here with the gurney? Then I can get that over with in one go." John closed his eyes again. He obviously was far from comfortable.
"Come on, buddy. It's for your own good. One, two…" Again the loud moaning, as John's muscles tightened and his body was slightly lifted.
"On earth we wait till three you know!"
Ronon laid John down on the floor beneath the stairs and examined the wound from which he had pulled the glass.
"We're not on earth, are we." Ronon only just now spotted the ankle. That did not look good. In his mind he already knew that would mean a few weeks on missions without Sheppard. He wasn't looking forward to it, no matter how well-fitted he thought Lorne was.
From afar, John and Ronon heard footsteps come closer. John let out another moan. His back was now really hurting him, felt like every bone in his back was broken, and his neck seriously strained. The blood kept on flowing down his belly to his right side.
"Oh Colonel, how did that happen?" Carson came running around the corner with a gurney and two other medics.
"Fell down the stairs I think." He tried to feel his wound with his left hand, but his back muscles were protesting too much, so his arm fell back down to his left side.
"Alright, let's get you on here."
The medics did their thing, while Ronon stood next to them, seeing his friend in pain. John's face kept its grimace, as Beckett was examining the damage.
Ronon touched John's arm. "Hang in there buddy. You're going to be okay."