Previously: Sheppard does nasty things to Jumper 4, but the two people most likely to yell at him for it are the same two he's trying to rescue.
Now: Lorne is out of the water, but not out of the woods.

Two weeks later

~o~o~o~

Sheppard scrubbed a hand over his face. He was tired and hungry, but mostly just terrified that he would be stuck doing all this paperwork by himself forever if Lorne didn't wake up soon.

Incidents like these generated a lot of paperwork.

Paperwork that Lorne usually handled.

The crazy bad-ass alien-ship-destroying enemy-weakness-identifying life-saving Major had been successfully resuscitated in the Jumper bay, and then again a short while later in the infirmary. Unfortunately, the hypothermia, oxygen deprivation, twice-fractured leg, abundance of earlier inhaled saltwater, and some internal injuries (including multiple cracked ribs, partly courtesy of Sanchez's life-sustaining CPR), coupled with a slow internal bleed had all combined forces to lock Lorne down into a coma. It had taken them nearly two days to get the Major's core body temperature back up to normal levels.

Lorne had been on a ventilator for 11 days, mostly for precautionary reasons, and had been extubated three days before. Beckett was pretty happy with his lung function, and he seemed to be breathing just fine on his own now. He still had supplemental oxygen. Two surgeries, one to deal with the leg, and the other to find and repair the internal bleeding, had been successful.

Beckett had said that his vitals were improving, slowly, and that it was to be expected because of the hypothermia, but had also cautioned that the longer Lorne was comatose, the lower the chances were of him ever waking up. It was simply a waiting game at this point. If nothing changed by the time the Daedalus arrived in another two weeks' time, they would have to seriously consider sending him back to Earth for long-term care.

That, or cut off the life support completely.

Lorne was showing minimal signs of brain activity, consistent with someone in a deep coma, but also not unheard of for someone who had been practically frozen to death. Sheppard had refused to even consider the possibility of willful termination. Lorne was getting better.

He had to get better.

The longer he had life support, the more chance his body had to heal; to get proper rest and to get stronger. Sheppard wouldn't accept that Lorne had survived everything he had been through so far, just to be killed by the Air Force themselves. Under normal circumstances, his next of kin would have been called in to make the decision, but when it came to the SGC things worked a little differently. Weird things happened all the time, and new tech was constantly being discovered.

Lorne had instructions in his medical file that gave Carson (or Keller, in Carson's absence) free reign to do whatever he thought would keep him alive, including the testing of new medical tech; if he felt that life was no longer possible he had to get sign-off from a triumvirate consisting of Sheppard, Teyla and (strangely enough) Dr Zelenka before he could terminate. Even then, Lorne had left instructions for his body to be put to use in the Atlantis labs. Zelenka had been a little gobsmacked to hear that he was one-third of Lorne's medical proxy. He had stammered and fidgeted, yelled at Sheppard for the damage he had caused to Jumper 4, and had said something probably rude in Czech before waving vaguely and announcing that "Major is fighter, let him fight" before disappearing back to his repair tasks.

Teyla had simply nodded her assent, so it had been left to Sheppard to glare at Carson in a manner that said "fix him" until the Scot had kicked him out of the infirmary and gone back to "doing his voodoo science" on McKay. Sheppard hated the waiting that came with having someone in the infirmary, but he couldn't complain too much. The infirmary was better than dead.

If Lorne hadn't been wearing that breathing mask, he would have been dead. Despite running out of air, the mask had protected his lungs from being flooded with (more) seawater during his final submergence. Beckett's analysis had revealed that while it was mostly a compressed air mix, there were higher levels of other trace gases than was Earth-normal. Still, it had been close enough to regular air to sustain them both well enough.

McKay's mask had prevented him from drowning too. The physicist had still been stunned, so his oxygen consumption had been less than the Major's by virtue of being unconscious. His cylinder had far more oxygen left in it than Lorne's had. There didn't appear to be any sort of indicator on the unit of the oxygen level, so it was likely blind luck that Lorne's unit held less air.

McKay's time in the cold water had also been far less than that of the Major, and he had bounced back from the stunning and the minor hypothermia within two days and was back in his lab berating his minions about shoddy city repairs on the third. Sanchez had simply taken a warm shower, downed a hot cup of coffee and had promptly joined one of the cleanup teams (with Beckett's approval). "Marines don't get cold" had been his only comment. Sheppard had written up a commendation for him, as well as a glowing report for his and Griffiths' conduct. Sheppard had encouraged Beckett to write one up for the medic, Zia, as well. The Naval unit had patrolled the ocean for another hour before Sheppard had remembered to call them back in.

McKay had no recollection of anything beyond turning around to see a suited figure standing at the entrance of his lab, and being stunned. He woke up in the infirmary about four hours after his return to discover that he'd been for 'a lovely little joyride in an alien ship, and an unexpected little swim' in the meantime, and had no explanation for the stash of particle magnums and energy cells found stuffed into both his and Lorne's shirts. That had been quite a mystery for them all.

Not that it had stopped McKay from trying to lay claim to the items found on his person, mind you.

Sheppard had confiscated all of the weapons except Ronon's and had them sent off to Radek for inspection at a later date. The repairs to the control room and the jumper bay access door would come first. There had been some damage to at least three other towers, one of which had resulted in a rather large fire. The labs on those three levels had been empty at the time because of a combination of the lunch hour and a prompt evacuation by the few remaining scientists.

It was obvious that Lorne had encountered the stash on the alien vessel. When Sanchez had tried to start compressions he had encountered Lorne's sub-shirt stash, and they'd had to remove them before he could continue. Sheppard had already begun putting together a plan for a jumper salvage operation down to the alien vessel to see what else could be retrieved. McKay was less enthusiastic about the idea of going back down. It was his second underwater jaunt in a sinking spacecraft, and despite having been unconscious for the entirety of the second he wasted no time in declaring it to have been a horrific experience and one that he had no intention of repeating, jumper or alien craft.

He was also tired of being abducted right out the city by armoured shield-piercing aliens.

When the dust had settled and they'd had a chance to breathe, Sheppard had ordered the rebuilt Midway station be dialled. They had transmitted through a report about the attack and it had been forwarded to Earth immediately. Woolsey had wrapped up the IOA meetings in record time. Even with the 24 hour waiting period at Midway, he had been back in the city by the third day. Woolsey (and Sheppard too, although he hid it behind his casual slouching and optimistic comments) was mostly concerned about retrieving intelligence about the attackers that would help identify their origins and reasons for attacking Atlantis.

Everyone wanted to know who the hell these guys were.

They had flown right through the city's shield without any problem, had known exactly where they were going, and had specifically tried to kidnap Atlantis scientists. The general consensus in the after-action analysis was that they had been aiming for the Engineering and Physics labs. They had targeted McKay and his team. The assault on the control room was likely a decoy strategy, intended to keep the command team focused on protecting the gate room. They hadn't even bothered with the ZPM.

It was somewhat reminiscent of the attack by the rogue Asgard faction, except this time inspection of the various dead bodies littered around the city had revealed completely normal Pegasus-type human occupants. Beckett and Biro had put together a team and autopsied all of the aliens (thankfully with less exploding of suits), and had found nothing out of the ordinary. Typical Pegasus foodstuffs were found in their diet and their physical characteristics were completely ordinary... for planet-dwellers. Unlike the Travellers who had some deficiencies stemming from extended space-based life, these guys appeared to live planetside. They looked, lived, and clearly ate exactly the same as your average Pegasus inhabitants.

Except they were very clearly not average Pegasus inhabitants.

Where the hell had they come from?

I have little to no medical training whatsoever beyond CPR and basic first aid. I made all the medical things up in the time-honoured tradition of bad television, and I apologise profusely to anyone in the medical profession who URGHs or GAHs because of my excessive Lorne Whumpage