Author note: This isn't the last chapter either. The infirmary bit is taking longer than I thought, and there's still more to do in that regard. So, it's a little longer than the previous chapters, and a little different, but I hope it's still enjoyable. If you're liking the story enough to read it, please do consider leaving a review. Thanks!

CHAPTER 7

Sheppard drifts. He still feels weak, and there's still pain in his ribcage, especially low on the left hand side, but it's all a bit distant now. He struggles to keep his eyes open as much as he can. Even through the drug-induced fog, when he closes his eyes he is visited by images of blood and death, with a clarity that's in sharp contrast to the fuzzy feeling of the real world around him. It's unpleasantly like the out-of-body feeling he experienced when he was being revived after the Iratus Bug incident. He doesn't want to see himself dead. Ever again.

He shifts, uncomfortably, trying to keep awake even as his body demands rest. Dimly, he's aware of the stead beeping next to his bed picking up the pace a little. Keller is quick on the uptake, and is beside him in an instant.

"Don't you have any other patients," he slurs, trying for humour.

"Not right now," she replies, and now he looks properly, he notices something.

"What happened to your face?" he asks, concerned. There's a ripening shadow of a bruise on her cheekbone.

She lifts a hand to her cheek in surprise. "It's nothing. Happened early on. Face meets floor. You know."

Sheppard's brow furrows for a moment, and then works out when it would be. He'd forgotten that the first of the duplicates had knocked her to the ground. And he'd never thought to ask her if she was OK.

"Should get some ice on that," he says, finally, and she actually laughs.

"I'm good. But thank you. What I really should do is properly sort out the cuts and whatnot on your face, Colonel. It'll sting a fair bit, so I can do it while you're still a little out of it."

Sheppard looks back, thinking. She looks like hell.

"You look like hell, Doc. Why don't you get a nurse to do that, and get some rest?"

"Because… " she hesitates, and then something seems to shift subtly in her body language. "Because today I watched you die, Colonel,' she says, voice wavering with tears that she's valiantly trying to quash. "I watched you die four times and I couldn't do a damned thing about it. And here you are, alive, and …I guess I want to keep hold of that."

Sheppard looks at her again, for a long moment, trying to make his foggy brain come up with the right thing to say.

"Crap, this is messed up, isn't it?" he finally says.

She nods, and sniffs, and then apologises, turning away in embarrassment.

"Wait. Doc." He owes this to her. "If it helps then, yeah, it would be good to sort out this." A hand gestures clumsily at his face.

She turns back, and there's a genuine smile in there somewhere.

"I'll be a moment," she says, and he can hear her gathering the supplies she'll need. He blinks, owlishly, as she returns, snapping on another fresh pair of gloves. There's a momentary flashback to her hands covered in his blood, and he can feel his heart pick up, and then he's back in the present.

She focuses on his face, all professional concentration, occasionally murmuring softly, telling him what she's doing. There's some discomfort, especially when she's pulling the tiny bits of debris from the deeper cuts, and washing them out with saline. But she's right, he's a little too out of it to really feel it as pain. He finds himself staring back at her face through half-lidded eyes, strangely fascinated by the darkening bruise across her cheek. The human body is a fragile thing.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, in response to his own thoughts, and she quirks and eyebrow at him, but says nothing.

Keller finishes by putting tiny, neat butterfly stitches into a longer cut on his jawline, and then clears away the used dressings and paraphernalia, and the now-red-flecked gloves. He watches her, blinking slowly. The good drugs are wearing off, and the infirmary seems more real, more able to balance out the brutal clarity of the images in his mind.

Keller looks at him again, and then at the beeping machines by the bedside.

"Do you need top-up to take the edge off the pain?" she asks, gesturing at the IV.

He moistens his lips. "In a bit," he concedes. He wants the clarity to last, but his body is exhausted, and with the returning clarity comes the pain and tension of his injuries.

She puts the call button in his hand, giving him a last, meaningful look, and eventually turns away to check on the rest of the infirmary. He follows her with his eyes, drinking in the reality of everything, until the third time she comes back to check on him and offer him more painkillers. By now he's exhausted, and finding it harder and harder to compartmentalise the stabbing pain in his side and at the same time keep his eyes open to stave off the flashbacks.

"You know you need to rest, Colonel," says Keller, sitting down beside the bed again. "I've been watching you for the last two hours, and you've hardly closed your eyes."

Sheppard looks away. He's on the edge of his tolerance, and he's almost desperate enough to ask for something that will knock him out so he can't dream.

"I wish Kate were still here," Keller says, finally. "I think we'll all need someone to talk to about what's happened."

It's an invitation to share something of what he's feeling, but he's not sure how to put it into words. 'I'm afraid to go to sleep in case I don't wake up' is about the closest he can come up with, but there's no way he'll admit to that. Not to anyone. He can feel his own heartbeat thudding in his chest, and he knows it's a little fast. The thought of sleep, on top of the pain, is pushing his anxiety levels up, and Keller's not oblivious to the effect it's having on his body.

"Colonel, if you won't relax on your own, I can give you something. I mean, something stronger," she clarifies, with a glance at the numbers on the heart monitor. "I can make it a 'Doctor's order' if that's easier?"

Somehow she knows. She pauses for a moment, then takes his silence as consent, and preps a syringe. The tug on IV port on his hand is followed swiftly by merciful oblivion.

Keller takes much longer than she actually needs to check all his vitals and write up the medication on his chart. It's going to be a long night for her.

o0o

Rodney McKay sips his sixth - or is it seventh – scalding hot cup of coffee. He has been working on the gate all night with what would even for him count as frenzied intensity. Zelenka crashed out about an hour ago. McKay looks over at him, sprawled across one of the inactive consoles, glasses askew, and hair still full of dust. There are security and technical personnel on duty, as there always are, but when he's aware of them at all they seem to be getting on with the task of clearing up the rubble, dust and debris from the gateroom floor.

The poor person trying to clean up the bottom steps is scrubbing at something. It's been going on for the last half hour. The sound is irritating, and Rodney is about to shout at her to stop when he remembers what is that she's trying clean up. In his mind there's a sudden clear picture of Sheppard's still form, and the growing puddle of red around him.

Abruptly, Rodney snaps back to the present and deliberately unclenches his hands. A clattering sound and a sudden awareness of pain makes him glance down, and he stares in fascination at the blood slowly welling up from a cut in the palm of his hand, and dripping down on the discarded cutting tool that he must have been holding when he had his flashback.

Deliberately, he bends to pick it up, and sways every so slightly as he puts it on the console. Without thinking, he cradles his injured hand in the other, and sets of in a purposeful daze to the infirmary.

He doesn't really feel anything in his hand, and by the time Jennifer greets him wearily at the infirmary door, he's quite forgotten what he came here for.

"Um, how's Colonel Sheppard?" he asks, vaguely?

"Rodney?" Keller questions, guiding him by the arm to sit down on the nearest chair. He looks up and her and blinks.

"What?"

"The Colonel's fine. He's resting. Can I have a look at that?" She gently takes his hand in hers, and unfolds the fingers. Rodney looks down in surprise.

"I …um dropped my cutting tool," he explains.

"Right," Jennifer says, slowly. "Can you straighten your fingers for me?" He does so, wincing, and with the pain, reality seems to come into clearer focus.

"Ow," he says, a bit more of his characteristic whine creeping in. Keller smiles.

"What? Why are you laughing?"

"Nothing. Sorry," she says, still smiling. "It doesn't look deep, but I'll need to clean and stitch it." She potters about, gathering equipment. "What were you working on?"

"The Gate," Rodney answers, wondering why that matters.

"OK, well we'd better start a course of antibiotics, too, then,"

"I mean, the gate control console, not the actual gate," he clarifies, glancing at the syringe in her hand.

"Even so," she smiles, reading his mind. "And anyway, this is lidocaine. Local anaesthetic. I thought you might appreciate it when I stitch up your hand."

Rodney looks away when she warns him he'll feel a slight pinch, and stays looking away, and talking nervously to himself about all the things that were wrong with the gate, as she cleans away the blood, checks the wound again, and adds a neat little row of stitches.

"You can look now," she says, not unkindly, as she completes her work with a bandage that covers most of his hand and wrist.

"Um, thanks," he says, quickly, and moves to leave.

"Not so fast," Keller warns. "While you're here I want to check you out properly. Today was at least as eventful as one of your off world missions, and anyway I still owe you post-mission check from earlier."

Rodney sits back, secretly relieved. His hand is throbbing now, the lidocaine definitely wearing off, and a jittery sense of unwellness is starting to make itself known. As always, his mind races to worst case scenarios.

Keller is taking his BP and pulse. She's frowning, so he glances over at the numbers.

"So, how much coffee have you drunk tonight?" She asks, pointedly. She shakes her head. "Your blood pressure's too high, and your heart rate too. I know it's probably just caffeine, but I'd like to take some bloods and keep you here a while, just to be sure." She looks disapproving all the way through the process of taking the blood sample, but then softens as she tapes the pad of gauze over the puncture mark. "Why don't you go over and take the bed next to the Colonel's. He's been out for a while, and when he wakes up I know he'll appreciate a friendly face."

She settles him in the bed, and as she heads back to her office she feels easier knowing that the Colonel won't be alone when he awakes.

Keller won't go to her quarters tonight, but she's willing to risk a catnap sitting in her office chair.

She's woken by a bleeping of alarms, and Rodney's frantic shouting. She lurches to her feet and is at the Colonel's bedside in minutes.

Rodney's out of bed, using his good hand to steady Sheppard by the shoulder and is trying to push the call button with his bandaged hand. The Colonel himself is white as a sheet, and breathing hard, his body rigid with tension and his eyes staring at nothing.

The leads to the heart monitor have got disconnected, and she quickly reconnects them, grimacing at the too-quick heart rate on the screen. His skin is cold and clammy as she brushes against it. Fearing the worst, she quickly pulls down the blanket and sheet and palpates the left side of Sheppard's lower chest. There's still no sign of a major bleed, and she lets out the breath she's been holding. But still, he's shocky again, and she tries to reassure him that everything's OK as she puts the pillows back under his legs to raise them and tucks the blanket in to warm him up, and turns up the oxygen just a touch. Rodney's hovering, so she sends him to find a nurse who can bring the portable scanner again. She'll do a scan, just to be sure, but she think she has a fair idea of what the problem is.

"Colonel," she says, taking his hand in hers and tilting his face gently towards her. "Look at me. Can you hear me?" She speaks clearly and calmly, and is eventually rewarded by a blink, and her hand being gripped in return.

"Welcome back," she smiles, and keeps holding his hand as she sits down on the stool she left by the bed earlier. A quick glance at the monitor shows that his heart rate, while still high, is no longer dangerous, and there's the tiniest bit of colour back in his skin.

"Crap," he mutters, eventually, swallowing convulsively, and turning his face away. He snatches his hand away to rub at his gritty eyes. "What the hell was that about?"

"Well, I'm getting the scanner back to be sure you don't have a problem with the spleen starting to bleed again," Keller says, "but I'm pretty sure that what you just experienced was a night terror."

He turns back to look at her. "Like what little kids get," he says, flatly. "Great."

"It's actually a very normal response to a traumatic event," Keller points out, "and I'm afraid that Night Terrors can go hand in hand with the sort of flashback that I guess was making you reluctant to close your eyes in the first place."

When he says nothing in response she knows she's right.

"Look, Colonel," she begins, not knowing how to reassure him. "What happened was… well, I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for you. So it's OK if you need a bit of help coming to terms with it." She sighs, wondering whether to say what she'd planned to say. "I know I'm not Kate, and nobody can replace her, but, well, I'm here if you want to talk. About it. Or anything."

Sheppard takes a long sniff of the oxygen from the cannula and is saved from having to reply by the arrival of the portable scanner. It only takes moments to confirm that the displaced rib is still where it should be, and that the damaged spleen is also looking good. Keller's relived, although she's aware that the Colonel would probably rather go into shock from internal bleeding than from a panic attack.

She lets Rodney stay long enough to see that his friend is recovered, and then sends him on his way on the pretext that he can report to Colonel Carter and to the rest of Sheppard's team how he's doing. It's 6am by now, and she's slightly surprised that they're not beating down the door of the infirmary to sit with him. Perhaps they just don't know what to say.

A quick call to the kitchen is in order – both she and her most regular patient could do with some carbohydrate. And although she's no Rodney McKay, she could murder a decent cup of coffee.