Shattered
I had not really intended to break the coffee mug. At least, I don't think I did. Still, there was something satisfying about seeing a thousand shattered pieces of ceramic on the linoleum floor of the small office off the infirmary. It was a perfect representation of how I felt. I could match my frustrations to each of the shattered shards that lay on the floor, wet with pooled coffee. It had slipped, but maybe I had helped it. I am still not sure. I cleaned up the mess as quietly as I could.
The triage area was finally under control and quiet. I had assisted in two involved surgeries and treated seven lesser injuries. Two SG teams had come under fire, jumped by waiting Jaffa patrols who had lit the units up, nearly capturing or killing all of them. Somehow, whether due to superior training or just the will to prevail, they had made it back to the gate and stepped onto the ramp in the SGC completely accounted for and alive, for the most part. They had gotten their wounded – each other – to the safe confines of the base.
I looked out into the infirmary afraid I had awakened patients with my accident and the cleanup. Everyone seemed undisturbed. Then I remembered I had loaded quite a few of them with morphine to relieve the immense pain that staff wounds caused. A bomb could have gone off and none of them would have been the wiser. A broken coffee cup was not going to come close.
I took respite in that until I saw Master Sergeant Arbogast in the corner, looking in my direction. I remembered seeing him come through the gate as one of the last ones to leave the scene of the confrontation. From what I had been able to gather, the wounded bodies we kept seeing hurtled onto the gate ramp were because of this man. The sergeant kept retrieving wounded and getting them to the gate amid chaotic Jaffa return fire. There was already a rumor floating around that he was going to be recommended for a commendation.
I looked at him, his eyes older and wiser than the team he lead. I remembered triaging him, deciding his leg wound was not the most serious problem we had going at the moment. He voiced the same opinion, putting his airmen before his own welfare. His treatment was put on the back burner so that the more seriously injured he had thrown through the gate to safety could be treated.
His eyebrow rose in what I could only call amusement at the destruction of my coffee mug. The corner of his mouth curled up slightly. I went to check on him, instantly sorry I had disturbed any rest he had been getting to that point. His hair was cut to the quick, evidence of previous scrapes and cuts showing through on his scalp in the form of white scars that penetrated his military haircut. His broad shoulders filled the hospital pajamas he wore handsomely, making it obvious he kept himself toned in his down time. Those wise eyes I had viewed from across the room exploded into an extraordinary shade of pale blue as I approached him.
"Sorry," I said, wincing as I neared his bed.
That little curl of a smile developed into a full grin. "Kind of feels like this whole day has been, doesn't it, Doc?"
"You might say that," I admitted. "You should be sleeping."
He shook his head. "I'm on watch." His stole a glance at the myriad of filled beds in my infirmary.
"That's my job, Sergeant," I admonished, smiling at him.
"I had it first," he argued quietly. "So," he said, slowly, "any chance I can get my own cup of coffee to break?"
I looked at him skeptically.
He shrugged. "You have to get a replacement anyway, ma'am," he said, trying to convince me.
"One cup," I said, pointing at him and relenting.
I went back to the alcove and poured two more cups, choosing the heavy white ceramic cups over the industrial plastic kind. I shoved sugar packets and creamers into the pocket of my lab coat. Arbogast waited patiently as I set the steaming brew in front of him, putting the preparations next to the cup on his tray.
"I forgot to ask how you take it," I confessed.
"When you live in the field, you learn to like it plain," he said. "Less weight in your pack, and you're not nearly as disappointed when you finally get that cup if you don't have the fixings."
He brought the cup to his lips and drank. If I had not been sure that it was only coffee, I would have sworn he was a junkie getting high. His eyes fluttered slightly in satisfaction, his shoulders relaxing as his need was satisfied. He gave a sigh of satisfaction and looked at me, almost as if embarrassed.
"They sent us out without coffee this last time," he said, justifying his reaction. He pointed to a chair near the bed. "Take a load off, Doc. No offense, ma'am, but you look like hell."
"That's the pot calling the kettle black," I said, accepting the offer.
I sank down into the chair, feeling the blood pulse in my feet from having been on them all day. My blue scrubs were about the only thing I could consider comforting at the moment, next to the sergeant's sense of hospitality in spite of the circumstances.
"I hear it was quite a day for you," I said, knowing I was completely understating the events that had transpired.
"You'd know it more than I would," Arbogast said with a slight roll of his eyes. "I wouldn't want any part of putting all this back together."
"I wouldn't want any part of dismantling it in the first place."
He shrugged. "That's what they pay us to do."
"You're a little farther away from home, though."
"Better to do it out there than on Earth, I always say."
I couldn't help but notice the years of experience in Arbogast's face. He had been around the block more than once. I could tell by the stride he was taking that he was a calculating leader, deliberate in the way he led his people.
"You're a little old to be running around the galaxy with these younger kids, aren't you?" I asked in curiosity, meaning no offense.
He took none. "Someone has to show them how it's done, ma'am," he said. "Someone has to teach these kids a thing or two about surviving against the enemy. Might as well be me."
I sipped at my coffee, taking comfort in its familiar taste, though not with as much gusto as the sergeant's love. "From what I'm hearing, you earned your paycheck today."
"We all have our jobs," he said, again dismissing my hint.
"So, that wasn't you throwing all those wounded through the gate to us?"
"Never said it wasn't, but I believe any of my people would have done the same. I was just in the right place at the right time, and I didn't have any holes in me yet."
"No?"
"Nope," Arbogast said proudly. "One damned lucky shot they got off at me just as I was pushing my own butt back to the SGC. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while, I suppose."
"You in any pain?" I asked, liking the sergeant's affable attitude and wanting to care for him to the best of my ability.
"Oh, just my pride," he said dismissively. "I don't like to lose."
"Me either," I said in agreement.
He looked at me pensively, suddenly serious. "No, I don't suppose you do. So, how about you? Any pain?"
The forwardness of his question startled me. He wasn't talking about physical pain.
"I didn't lose anyone, if that's what you mean," I said, trying not to sound defensive.
"This time," he said gently. "I know that's not always true, though."
I smiled at him, though sadly. He had put it so politely. "No, it isn't. But we were lucky today," I said, trying to sound optimistic.
"Day's not over yet," he said, stealing a look five beds down the infirmary where one patient lay in critical condition.
"His chances are good for recovery," I encouraged.
"Wable's career is over," he said of the senior airman.
"Probably," I conceded. "We did everything we could to save his arm."
Arbogast continued looking at the soldier with the bandaged stump. "I know you did, Doc. I heard one of the nurses saying you worked on him for six hours."
That surgery session had been one of the most intense I had even been a part of in my career. I knew the arm was a loss when I triaged Wable. It was a matter of saving his life when we got him into the O.R., not about reattaching a jigsaw puzzle that was missing too many pieces. In fact, the missing parts were the icing on the cake. The limb had become completely detached upon Wable's reentry from the wormhole. It beat the rest of his body to the ramp, thumping on to the metal grate with a sickening thud, as though a scene from a horror movie. The stump looked shredded, like the flesh had been rendered. I had seen that before with staff wounds. Some looked like massive burns. Others looked like Wable's. It all depends on how it hits.
"Right now, we just have to worry about him not throwing a clot or infection," I said, taking my turn at observing Wable on the other side of the infirmary. "We're using some of the best drug therapies to make sure that doesn't happen."
He looked back at me. "I always wonder how an airman goes home and explains an injury like that to a husband or wife."
"The Air Force has its stories," I supplied.
He smiled. "The Air Force can't control nightmares, where you say things in your sleep you're not supposed to."
I sipped at my coffee again, seeing a door opening with Sergeant Arbogast. Not only do we take care of the physical wounds of a patient – we're concerned with the psychological ones, too.
"You have nightmares?"
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Oh," he said, slipping in a taste of his coffee, "every now and again." He smiled quaintly. "Just like you do," he said, as though it were a known fact.
"And how do you know I have nightmares, Sergeant?"
He looked at me directly. "Because no one could work in a grinder like this and not have them."
I wasn't about to admit it. "It's not always like this," I said.
It was as though he saw the images flashing through my mind. I had the nightmares, the utter feeling of helplessness as I pronounced good people dead, giving their last breaths in this world an official time of passing for a record that would probably never become public knowledge until long after anyone cared. Those jarring moments when I realized I had lost the battle were nothing more than numb events when they occurred. It is in the realm of deep sleep when their full meanings become a tangible object of the mind, and my heart and soul realize that I let a life slip through my hands. There is no miracle, no inexplicable reprieve from fate. It is death, and its inevitable victory over all of us in this life is buffered in a war against the Goa'uld, an enemy who manages to cheat it with machines.
There is a part of me that could be easily swayed to use such a machine to save lives. I can't deny my relief that those close to me are still on this earth because of something like a sarcophagus. There are days I wish I had one for my infirmary. Stick a body in it, and everything is back as it should be. There is that little nagging side effect of diminished mental stability, but we can't have everything in life, can we? But, then there's that equally nagging side effect that it's possible to live forever with one of those things. That's not right, either.
"You're a good liar, Doc," Arbogast said, actually laughing quietly as he said it. He knew better, part of that having been around the block thing.
He had me. "They send you to a liar academy in your last year of medical school," I jested.
Arbogast again laughed quietly, his grin full now and handsome. "You're the first to admit it."
I joined him in the lighthearted tone of the moment. "I just broke the oath. Don't tell anyone."
Someone entered the room. As I turned, I saw David Warner - my replacement - arrive. David had performed like a trooper when the casualties started arriving. He and I shared six hours of Wable's better half under a scalpel and O.R. lights. He, too, looked like he had been hit with a freight train. With the base under lockdown, though, there was nowhere for him to go but back to work once his body caught some rest.
"There's my relief," I informed Sergeant Arbogast.
He calmed and became a little more serious, though his face still showed a thread of a smile. He looked at me with those piercing ice blue eyes. "Go get some rest, Doc. You really do look like hell."
"You do the same, Sergeant – doctor's orders. We'll see what we can do about more coffee in the morning."
"Yes, ma'am," he said solidly. He nodded at me and gave me a flick of a salute.
I stood from his bedside. I gave David the rundown of patient statuses and known worries before finally shuffling off toward the staff quarters a few doors down from the infirmary. We had too many patients still lost in the woods for me to feel comfortable in my own quarters.
My mind stayed on Sergeant Arbogast as I walked the abandoned hall toward the bunk waiting for me. He gave me something to look forward to for the next shift. Perhaps we'd talk about lighter topics. Maybe I'd learn about his family or listen to better stories of his experiences.
I lay down on the bed, not even bothering to change. My body was exhausted beyond its limit. My shoes were still on my feet as I closed my eyes and sank into oblivion.
I don't remember dreaming anything. Fatigue ruled every muscle fiber in my body. My sleep was a solid black wall of inactivity until my mind registered hurried commotion in the hallway. I instantly awakened, aware that something was happening. The door to the room was open. I saw a response team running toward the infirmary. I jumped out of bed and joined in the race, my mind instantly going to Wable and his severed arm. There was so much that could go wrong, and it probably had, as I feared it would.
I rounded the corner to the infirmary and headed straight for Wable's bed.
There was no one there. I stood there, confused for a moment.
The team was on the other side of the room. David Warner was leaning over another patient, directing the response team, telling them to stand down. He turned in time to see me and shook his head to tell me another was gone. We had lost another patient to the war with the Goa'uld.
He inadvertently stood in the way of me seeing the victim, but it didn't stop me from identifying who it was that had caused the alarm.
On the bed tray stood an empty coffee cup, right where Sergeant Arbogast had placed it when I left him just hours earlier.
I stayed there, in shock at the scene. I should have been more in control of my feelings. I'm the Chief Medical Officer for Stargate Command. It's my job to be in control. Normally, I'm the one keeping my team in check, keeping them focused. Now, I was the one struggling to find meaning in the moment. There was no sense to it. Sergeant Arbogast looked as though he was sleeping, not extinguished from existence in this world.
Other patients in the infirmary had awakened to the scene. A curtain was drawn around Sergeant Arbogast's bed to block their view of the death registration process. I watched as the technicians carefully disconnected monitor leads and resuscitation equipment. David approached me from the side, watching with me, silent for a moment. He, too, took such events personally.
"What happened?" I asked quietly, my jaw clenching tightly as I finished the words.
David shook his head. "Nurse came to get his vitals, but he was already gone. I'd say at least thirty minutes before we even started on him."
I ran my hand through my hair in frustration and shock. Things like this happen in such a blink of an eye that it is sometimes hard to process it all at once. It can be bewildering, no matter how much training you've had to deal with such realities.
"We'll know more with a post," David added, though his voice was flat and business-like. "Looks like PE to me, but it's hard to say for sure."
Pulmonary embolisms are a fact of life, and sometimes death, when it comes to staff wounds. A clot starts deep in the leg and travels to the lung, cutting off the flow of blood to the lung. No blood flow means no oxygen exchange, and the body begins to die. The properties of the weapon do a wide range of damage to human tissue that leaves a legacy in its wake. We treat the wound, but the residual effects can be just as deadly. My medical staff is brutally aware of what can happen and has to be truthful to itself when it does.
That is David's control, his strength. He does the job and appears on the outside to deal with things like this mechanically and methodically, but I know him better than most. We've had our moments where the business of what we do cuts loose, and it all catches up to us. Nevertheless, I could see the weariness in his eyes and a spark of anger deep within them at having lost the battle. The day had simply gotten too rotted to reconcile.
I stepped forward and picked up the coffee cup off the tray that had been pushed away from the bed. It was dry. Sergeant Argobast had consumed every conceivable drop of the serving, savoring it much like I suspected he savored life, despite his experiences.
I held it in my hand, understanding how fragile it was. Its cold surface matched the moment of harsh reality in my infirmary. I turned away from where Sergeant Arbogast lay dead and headed for the hall leading to my office. A biohazard bin sat by the wall. As I passed it, I threw the cup into the bin, probably harder than I should have. I didn't realize the bin was empty.
The cup hit the bottom and shattered into a thousand pieces.