Title: Walkers, Bingo Balls, and Teddy Bears
Pairing: None, McKay/Sheppard friendship
Rating: PG
Summary: John and Rodney are fed on by the wraith and end up back on Earth in a nursing home.
Sunny Manor Nursing Home. It's a quaint little place in the suburbs of Washington DC, filled with mostly elderly folks who can't take care of themselves. Rodney and John don't quite fit in. They are after all only in their 40s, even if they look twice that age.
John is spry and active still, having been in better physical condition than Rodney. He roams around the facility all day with his walker, and knows every nurse and every patient by name and personality quirk.
Rodney in comparison is pretty anti-social. The Nurses and Nursing Assistants all think his cantankerous attitude and grouchiness are a result of his advanced age. Really it's just Rodney being Rodney. He spends most of his day sitting in his room surrounded by computers and his entertainment system. He bitches about the food, his room, the people, and even the noise of a facility where there is always someone up and roaming the halls. He often refuses to leave his room, which is a single because no one was willing to put up with him for very long.
John spends his time sitting outside and visiting with residents and staff. He also periodically drags Rodney into his wheelchair, and hooking his walker on the back, walks him around the facility, dragging him outside to sit in the sun "Skin cancer! Radiation! Allergies!" before bringing him inside most afternoons to sit in the dining hall and play Bingo for two hours. Rodney insists on Sam sending over chips and cards for them to use, not trusting the slightly wet poker chips they are provided each afternoon (it's disinfectant sir, they're perfectly safe.) When Rodney wins, he selects prizes that he thinks Madison or Torren would like, and stockpiles them in a box in his closet. Stuffed animals, figurines, hand-held games, and cheap-dollar store cosmetics. Every other week or so, he carefully labels each item, and sends them to Sam with notes to forward them to his sister in Vancouver or to send them through the Stargate to Teyla and her son. Teyla sends emails, asking about the dog figurines, and teddy bears, inquiring about them so that she can answer her son's questions. In response to his presents he gets craft projects and pictures from Canada, and videotapes from Atlantis. A small blonde girl holding up her first math test – an A of course, and a small dark haired boy with his mother's smile standing wobbly on a mat in the gym, holding up two small thin sticks in an imitation of his proud mother, moving slowly if erratically through a basic sequence of warm-up exercises.
Each painted picture or photograph gets tacked on the wall in an ever-growing collage of family and friends and home. It outgrows the bulletin board provided by the center in just a week or two, and begins to spread out across the wall. Taking over the space held by schedules, pain charts, and lunch menus. The third week in the nursing home a package arrives stamped with the USAF logo, and bares a painting for each of them. There is a note attached from Lorne, who has taken over John's position as Commander of the Atlantis military. It's polite and encouraging and sarcastic. But it gets his point across. Each is a painting of a futuristic place that can't possibly exist. Lorne is not stupid enough to paint all of Atlantis. Instead he paints Rodney a view of the ocean, a single spire of Atlantis visible like a futuristic lighthouse popping up into the view. John's painting shows more sky and more spire than it does ocean. It takes Rodney only a few hours to realize Lorne's painted them the views from their perspective balconies. He absolutely does not cry, no matter what the CNA whispers to her colleagues by the nurse's station.
Maintenance comes to take down the dime store painting of a country cottage surrounded by roses and daffodils and hangs the painting on Rodney's wall. He stares at it for hours and won't get out of bed the next morning, to depressed to move. The staff are concerned. On the second morning John stomps into his room, walker clanking against the floor with each angry step. He slams the heavy door in a CNAs face and a moment later she scurries away from the shouting going on inside. 1 hour later Rodney emerges in his chair, hair slightly damp and sticking up all over, his face twisted into a grimace and freshly scrubbed. John pushes him from behind, grin triumphant and cheerful as he wheels Rodney past the nurse's station and down to the activities center.
"We're going crafting!" he tells the Nurses, with a grin, as they watch them pass by.
"Sheppard.." Rodney growled.
"Shut up, Rodney. You're going to paint a nice votive and be a good boy or I'll take away your remote control later."
"You wouldn't!" Rodney snapped. John's braying laughter carried down the hall to the nurse's station long after they had turned the corner.
The older ladies of the facility all think John and Rodney are adorable, but none of them can figure out why John puts up with his cranky friend. One particular woman seemed to hate him for unknown reasons. Rodney had never been unreasonably mean to her. He had never even personally insulted her. But for some reason Ms. Gloria dislikes him greatly. Things only escalate between them when Rodney accuses her of cheating at Bingo.
"CHEATING?" she screams from her wheelchair two tables over. "How can you cheat at Bingo!" she snarls. The activities director Sally tries to calm her and is ignored. Rodney sneers at her.
"I'm a genius. You think I can't do a simple mathematical equation? I've been at this damned facility for 4 months. I've played 64 sessions of bingo. And YOU have won 43 times. That's statistically impossible unless you are A) the luckiest woman in the entire UNIVERSE or B) you're cheating!" he hollers back. John watches them fight with a slack jaw. Sally is beside herself trying to calm them down as Gloria wheels herself closer.
"Now, Dr. McKay, I don't think we should be using such harsh language. You better than anyone should know she can't possibly be cheating! I call the balls as they come out of the bingo mixer." Sally's reasoning is sound, but Rodney has thought this through. He's ready for this argument.
"You're right Sally." A collective gasp fills the cafeteria as everyone reacts to those words coming from Rodney's mouth. "However cheating she is. Gloria and only Gloria keeps her cards after every game, bringing them back the next time we have bingo. Those cards are statistically more likely to get a bingo than the others, and her hogging them is cheating!" Rodney is practically jumping out of his chair in his indignation. John's amusement has only grown as he watches, and despite Sally's pleading looks he refuses to intervene on her behalf. He sits back to watch Rodney continue. "The bingo balls you use are wood! That means they are not all perfectly the same like plastic or metal balls would be. Instead some are heavier than others, denser or even smaller than others, increasing their likelihood to fall to the bottom of the chamber and be called out each game. Gloria keeps the cards which has the numbers which come up more often than the others. Cheating!" he hollers at Gloria. Sally steps between Rodney and Gloria, before their argument can come to blows.
"Enough!" she yells. She's glaring at Rodney, but both Rodney and John can see the knowledge in her eyes. "No more accusations of cheating. No more yelling." She turned to Gloria. "You can no longer take your cards with you when you leave. I'm sorry but fair is fair. The cards will be shuffled before each game and handed out randomly." She turned back to Rodney. "You might be right about the certain balls falling more often than others, but unfortunately with my limited activities budget, there's nothing I can do about that. Whoever is lucky enough to get the good cards gets a higher likelihood of winning. Happy now?" she asked. Rodney smiles, looking smug.
"Very," he responds, turning back to stack up his bingo chips and clear his card for the next game. John scoots his dining chair closer to him.
"Rodney?" he whispers. "Did you have to do that? The bingo prizes are only worth a buck a piece. Was that really necessary?" he asked. Rodney smiles at him, and it's so devious and happy that John's breath catches in response.
"Yes, it was John. I haven't had that much fun since they kicked us out of Atlantis and sent us to this hellhole. It was the principal of the thing," he explained. "Besides it's not so much for my benefit as for the rest of the residents. Poor Mr. Bennett hasn't won but one prize the entire time we've been here and he plays practically every time." John carefully hides his answering smile behind a cough. He's sort of strangely proud of Rodney in that moment.
They're kept at the facility for nearly 8 months before word comes from Atlantis, and they're transferred out in the middle of the night. For the residents and day staff it's like they disappear into thin air. The day after they go their rooms are packed up, their belongings boxed up and taken away by men in civilian clothes, and military haircuts. Rumors run rampant. Inquiries to the hospital where they were supposedly transferred are met with confusion, and MIA file folders.
One month after they leave, a package arrives addressed to the activities director. It's a brand new Executive Deluxe Bingo Cage complete with weighted plastic ping pong balls, and a set of 70 bingo cards.
The simple note inside read:
To prevent cheating.
Rodney & John