A/N: Thanks, once again, to my betas, Inkling, Aslowhite and Pranksta!
Part, 2, Chapter Three
The nurse lays a damp cloth on McKay's forehead. This is both annoying and motherly—which makes it even more annoying. He threw up, again. And, now, even though he's not saying anything about it, he's having more trouble catching his breath.
The wetted cloth is very cold, which matches the nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. Beckett gives him pills and injects various substances into his IV line. People come by with food, which sits on the tray uneaten. The nagging feeling is his powerful brain explaining the obvious: Safe is safe. Sound is another thing entirely.
He takes several slow, deep breaths, which only serve to remind him that his lungs are still broken.
Sheppard sighs lightly behind the curtain that separates his bed from the rest of the room. McKay has spent a lot of hours staring at the curtain. It is grey and plain.
"I want to visit the Colonel," he says. The nurse helps him up and moves the curtain aside. A chair has been placed next to John's bed, so McKay sits himself down.
"Is there any change?" he asks, as he does every day. The nurse shakes her head.
The Colonel, rail thin and still bearing bruises in places, lies in the relaxed posture of someone deeply under, unreachably gone. He is missing the tip of his right pinky and bears scars on his wrists. Mostly, John is just this body, now. He sighs from time to time, jerks a limb on occasion. Other than that, he does nothing but breathe in and out, in and out.
When McKay puts his hand on John's arm and feels the bones there, he asks, "What purpose did this serve?"
When he looks very closely, McKay sees Sheppard's eyes moving around under their lids. Then they stop. Then they begin moving again and, all the while, the EEG screen shows the peculiar sleeping-dead-sleeping-dead brain activity of which Beckett spoke.
Ronon is awake. He and Rodney regard each other. Neither questions nor answers pass between them.
Seeing that Rodney is tiring, the nurse helps him back to bed. John is alone, again, so she pulls the curtain shut around him.
Ronon watches McKay from the next bed over.
"You aren't sleeping as much as you should," he says.
McKay replies, "Pistoule wrote, 'As long as one man lives under tyranny, my bed will be as stone.'"
"I agree." Radek Zelenka approaches. McKay hasn't seen him since before leaving for Kali. The Czech looks as changed from his normal self as Sheppard does, but in completely opposite ways.
"Radek," Rodney says, surprised at how happy he is to see him. He moves to shake his colleague's hand and is astonished when he gets hauled in for an unexpected hug. Radek's arms feel incredibly strong. Disturbed, McKay pulls away.
"What happened to you?"
"Pardon?"
Rodney pats his own bicep. "All of this."
"An order from Elizabeth. I can shoot, now, too."
Rodney knows that Radek could gloat, but that he is by nature a modest man. McKay has taken advantage of this personality trait many a time. He doesn't like it that Radek looks so different, though. It's complicated, and complications make Rodney feel like throwing up, again.
"How is Colonel Sheppard?" Radek motions towards the curtain.
McKay shakes his head. "Still unconscious. Or whatever. It changes." He sighs and clears his throat. Zelenka pours him some water from a pitcher at bedside. This small act of kindness touches him.
"I thought that Ronon was dead," McKay says, trying to be kind to someone in return. He speaks softly, determined to tell the story without suffocating in the process. "He fell five hundred feet out of a moving jumper. Can you imagine that? He was dead but he came and got me. Then he went back and got Teyla." He grins unabashedly at Ronon, who smiles back uncertainly.
"Yes," Radek says. "I heard about that."
"I wasn't really dead," Ronon clarifies.
"Well, of course you weren't dead," McKay says, annoyed that Ronon is arguing this minutia with him. "Haven't you ever heard of a paradox? You were dead enough."
"And you, Ronon and Teyla rescued Colonel Sheppard," Radek says, in a way that is surely meant to be encouraging but instead throws a bucket of cold water on McKay's mood.
"No, we didn't," he snaps, unable to help himself. "He's not rescued at all."
The grey curtain around the Colonel's bed moves a little when a nurse walks by. No sound comes from behind it.
Zelenka sits very straight and folds his arms across his chest. "Dr. Beckett will find a way to help him."
Rodney responds with a scowl that almost covers his despair.
"It is not like you, Rodney, to give up so quickly."
McKay almost wilts under Zelenka's determined stare.
Radek continues, "Ronon rose from the dead to save you, so how can you embrace defeat now?"
"That was different."
Zelenka looks almost angry, as if he's listened to enough dreary predictions to last a lifetime.
"Ronon fell to his death but he did not die. You are here, all of you, pulled alive from space. Do not waste my time with faithless prattle!" Radek stops, looking surprised at having raised his voice. He says, more quietly, "I did not believe for a moment that you would not return."
Rodney remembers when the doctor in the moon prison pronounced him dying and then walked away. He wanted to see Teyla and Sheppard to tell them to keep going and never give up. That is what Sheppard burned into him every time they stood in death's doorway. That is what Sheppard would expect from him now.
Recalling that terrible day ties a knot in McKay's chest. He raises his chin and says, "It pains me to say it, but you're right."
"I wasn't trying to…"
"Pistoule wrote, 'By healing others we heal ourselves.'"
Zelenka cocks his head curiously.
"Don't ask," Ronon says. "Unless you want to be here all day listening to McKay recite poetry."
"It's prose," McKay corrects.
"Who is Pis…"
"You'd better get out while you have the chance, Doc."
With a suspicious glance at Rodney, Zelenka rises to leave. McKay holds his tongue and willingly submits to another hug, which this time includes an unexpected back slap. Then Radek holds him at arm's length and looks him straight in the eye.
"We will work together, Rodney. It will be okay."
And McKay believes him.
OoOoO
"Good afternoon, Ronon, Rodney," Teyla says, as she pulls aside the curtain around John's bed, leans over and kisses his forehead.
"Hello, John." She keeps her voice gentle, like a breeze.
The EEG shows that John is brain dead, right now. Ronon and Rodney listen as Teyla describes the day for John's benefit. The weather is sunny and warm. Pancakes were served at breakfast. Teyla says that she is waiting for Ronon to recover so that she can spar with them.
"Perhaps Rodney will decide to train, as well," she says, hoping that John hears the smile in her voice.
"Me? That is so totally unlikely. I…" McKay stops when he realizes that Teyla's joking. "Oh, ha, ha. Does everyone in this galaxy have such a dry sense of humor?"
"Would anyone care for a push?"
They look at her blankly.
"In the chair, I mean. I thought that I would take one of you outside for some air."
She looks directly at Ronon, who slowly rises and seats himself in the wheelchair as Teyla rolls it close and holds it for him. In a short time, they are outside, on an empty balcony a few minutes' stroll from the infirmary. The ocean is calm this day.
Teyla and Ronon are far away from Kali, from the ruined jumper with a gaping hole in it, and from the moon prison and from where their transport was blown up in space. They are far from the few Kalians who cared about them and from the many who tried to destroy them.
"I'm still there," says Ronon, gazing out over the ocean and seeing nothing of Atlantis at all.
"So am I," Teyla replies. "I fear I will never be able to leave it."
She sits next to the chair and lets Ronon stroke her hair. Since his dreadlocks were taken away from him, he enjoys the feel of Teyla's hair in their place.
"That mind doctor says I should talk about my feelings," Ronon says. "I'm not gonna."
"Dr. Heightmeyer says it will make us feel better to do so."
He shakes his head. "Nope." But his nose is getting red, and Teyla sees that his eyes are shining.
"We did what was necessary, Ronon."
"Nevillus was a good man, a good friend. I toyed with his feelings. Now he's dead."
Teyla pulls Ronon's hand from her hair and clasps it tightly. She sees John on his knees with a gun pointed at his head and McKay shivering out in the Play Yard.
"'No love exists without sacrifice,'" she says.
Her teammate blinks as if coming out of a dream and looks at her.
"It is something Rodney once quoted from Pistoule."
Ronon nods, understanding. He says "Sacrifice," as if it were both holy and profane.
They watch the ocean for a while longer. Teyla then wheels Ronon to the cafeteria. There she finds two cupcakes and some juice, which she brings over to a table that they are sharing. She gives one of the cakes and a cup of juice to Ronon.
"I'm not hungry," he says.
"Please. I have been looking forward to this."
She begins to eat and sees him staring at the cake in his hand. "What is wrong?"
Ronon shakes his head stubbornly.
"Would Nevillus not want you to enjoy this?"
It takes him a while to think this through. Teyla has never seen Ronon so contemplative. Finally, he eats the cake in two bites without savoring it, and washes it down with the juice.
"Probably would," he says.
OoOoO
Carson's taken x-rays and performed pulmonary function tests on McKay. He's even done a lung biopsy. The news is a little better than awful.
"Your lungs are a mess," he says.
"That's a medical term? 'A mess'?"
Beckett looks at McKay with enough sympathy to scare the crap out of him.
"A great number of the spores are still in your lungs, severely affecting your alveoli and bronchi. Looks like you've developed a progressive condition similar to emphysema. I can prescribe steroids and albuterol, which might help."
"I was better on Kali. Their treatment was working!" He can't keep from whining. After all, how could a socially backwards place like Kali have better medical care than bright, shining Atlantis?
"Perhaps you weren't completely cured or stopped it too soon. Do you remember the name of the medication that they gave you?
"How should I know? It was something that smelled bad and dissolved in my mouth."
Carson writes this information in Rodney's chart. Then he sets down the papers and sighs heavily.
"You will need to use a portable oxygen unit once you're discharged…"
McKay puts up his hand and closes his eyes to all of this. "You're telling me I need a little tank to wheel around with me?"
"Rodney…"
"Is that it?"
When Carson doesn't respond, McKay turns in his bed and pulls the blanket over his head. In short order, he feels himself suffocating, so he removes the blanket and sits up, gasping.
"Here," Carson says, placing the mask over his nose and mouth.
Rodney nods but not in acquiescence. It's a mere 'thank you' nod and nothing more.
A week later, McKay walks to his lab for the first time since returning to Atlantis. He takes careful steps and stops whenever he feels winded.
McKay has been extremely conscientious about taking his meds and using the O2 tank, but he is still sick and, if he's perfectly honest with himself, he knows that he is not getting better. Sometimes he hears the prison doctor, "I am tracking your decline," and shivers and feels his stomach drop just as it did that terrible day. Sometimes he feels a little better and hope fills him like a good meal. Day by day, though, he is worse, so he takes extra puffs on his inhaler and turns up the tank as far as it will go.
Sheppard lies in the infirmary somewhere between alive and dead. A machine did this to him. McKay has made a silent promise to honor John's unshakable determination, a promise that he intends to keep.
Covering the seemingly insurmountable distance from his quarters to the lab takes McKay a very long time. He finally gets there and tries to appear typically energetic and alert. After a few minutes of catch-up with Radek, McKay opens his laptop and then has his first dizzy spell of the day. He grips the side of his work table and takes a long, slow breath.
The day goes on like this: work, dizzy, work, tired, work, can't breathe, work, dizzy, work, dizzy and tired, work, dizzy, work, can't breathe, work, can't breathe.
In the afternoon, McKay excuses himself to the cafeteria. His appetite is nothing compared to how it used to be and Carson's told him to take in high-calorie foods for a while. They don't agree with him, so he eats some Jell-o and half of a bowl of rice. On his way back to the lab, McKay stops in the hallway, needing to rest. He pretends to study the datapad he has with him while he tries to regain some strength.
"Rodney?" Zelenka approaches, wearing shorts and a long-sleeved t-shirt damp with sweat.
"Oh. Radek. Someone chasing you?" he asks, covering.
"Today is a light day. I ran a little."
"A little?"
"Three, four miles on the treadmill. Nothing special."
Radek takes a swig from a large, pull-top water bottle. He lifts his shoulders, as if gathering courage. "I have been off world many times since you were…gone. One time these brutish people chased us. Everyone on my team was running except me. I was mostly falling down and waiting for both of my lungs to collapse." He puts his hands to his chest as he tells his story.
Rodney feels a little more short of breath.
"They managed to get in a couple of good smacks before I made it through the gate." With that, he pushes up his sleeve. A long, silvery scar runs down his left forearm. Radek looks around to ensure no one is about and lifts his shirt to reveal marks on his flank that resemble through-and-through bullet holes. Zelenka doesn't talk about the injuries, but his expression darkens in a way that Rodney's never seen before.
"Smacks?" Rodney asks, amazed at Radek's talent for understatement.
Zelenka shrugs. "Elizabeth was quite unhappy. She insisted I begin physical training."
Rodney can't catch his breath much at all, now. He is dizzy and tired and leans a hand against the wall for support.
Radek notices Rodney's distress and starts to take his arm. Rodney pulls away.
"It's nothing. Just a little…" and he rolls his hands around because he really doesn't know what to call it as his lungs hitch up and refuse to operate. Before he knows it, he's down on his ass, holding his hands to the floor in a terrifying battle for his life. He hears Radek calling for medical assistance.
Rodney feels the drinking straw that is his trachea become so narrow that soon it won't begrudge him so much as a sip of air. Carson gave him an inhaler, but McKay's left it in his quarters, along with the oxygen tank. McKay closes his eyes and thinks of air and open spaces and more air.
A line from The Known World comes unbidden to his mind: "I took my first true Breath of Life at the same moment that my newborn son took his, for my existence as a complete being began when he came into the world."
McKay passes out, thinking. 'Breath of Life. Breath of Life. Breath of Life…'
TBC…