Be happy, chapter 4
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. I just write about them.
Author: Pajus
The world slowly changed for her from a collection of greyish shapes to faces and figures. "Good morning my dear. You almost gave me a heart attack. Are you alright?" said the scottish voice full of concern. She could remember all that happened and sadness exploded fom her heart to the rest of her body. "Yes. How's Radek?" her voice asked a question she was afraid to ask. "He's fine for the moment. But I'll have to send him back to Earth. I don't have the means to keep him alive here in his current condition. I'm sorry". Theis heads turned as they saw Rodney entering the infirmary saying "Carson? I need to talk to you in private". Elizabeth saw carson walk away and turned her head so see Radek. He looked so calm and peaceful as if he was only asleep. If it wasn't for the various medical instrunemts and IV's, Elizabeth would never guess what was going on with him.
"OK, Rodney. What d'ye have for me?" Carson's voice sounded more stressed than ever before. "Ive been looking in the Atlantis database and found this" Rodney pointed to a small room in the city's floor plans. "It's an Ancient medical lab. They tried to perfect a healing device of some sort" Rodney showed Carson a picture of a small cube-shaped device. "According to the research data this thing is a variant of a device found by dr. Lee and br. Jackson on Earth. It's capable of healing pretty much any physical damage on a human body, but originally it was too powerful to work on humans withous sideeffects. The Ancients found a way to remove these sideeffects. They eventually succeeded, but evacuated Atlantis before a prototype could be built. We can't build this thing on our own, but we can load the Earth device on the Daedalus and get it here. Once here I can tweak the device. I'm pretty certain it would heal Radek". Carson knew this whole thing was a longshot, but it was still better than the alternative. "The Daedalus will leave Earth in six hours. I'll need your evaluation of the plan by then". Rodney's speech returned hope into Carson's mind "OK, Rodney. Send the request in two hours. I should have the evaluation written by then. Now excuse me. I have a patient who needs to hear the good news right now".
Carson released Elizabeth the very same day. Carson's words filled her with hope and improved her condition. There was no more need for her to be in the infirmary, but Elizabeth didn't leave. She was sitting next to Radek's bed saying quietly "Eighteen days for the Daedalus to get here, one day to modify the device and one more week for the treatment. Then we'll be together again, my love. John made the mistake of telling Rodney about us. Anyone in Atlantis knows by now. I'm sure Kavanaugh is filing a nice report about us and Caldwell will be out for my blood for this, but I don't care. I'm happy so long as I'm with you".
Elizabeth was right about on thing. Kavanaugh filed a really nice long report about dr's Weir and Zelenka and sent it with the next week's data burst to Earth. Fortunately generals O'Neill and Landry backed Elizabeth during the IOA session consulting this report. The fallout from this was minimal, but the IOA assured both generals to watch dr. Weir's actions even closer in the future.
Atlantis was a sad place without Radek. People started complaining about Rodney's behaviour even more than before. Radek always took care of Rodney's "I'm the best so shut up and listen" attitude. As days passed by, Elizabeth realized the true importance of the czech scientist not only to her, but to the entire expedition. No one could operate the still Radek was running in the city. Obviously he invented some improvements to it and even Rodney didn't dare to figure out what they actually do - not mentioning the possibility of methanol poisoning as a result of poor operation.
Rodney had the Ancient healing-cube beamed down to his lab immediately after the Daedalus appeared in orbit around Atlantis. He and dr. Kusanagi began to modify it right away.
