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Chapter 21
Physically and emotionally exhausted, Jennifer left the infirmary and took a detour to the mess hall to get coffee. She was very grateful that despite the brief time they had to prepare before their hasty departure from Earth, the Atlantis military and nonmilitary factions had cooperated to stash a huge, assorted supply of coffee beans and pre-ground blends. The brew of the day depended on the whims of the kitchen staff member assigned to the chore. On several occasions, she had witnessed the comically pathetic spectacle of Rodney unsuccessfully try to cajole said persons to make coffee to his specifications. While he had grown to be so sweet to her, he still remained clueless in the art of charming anyone else. She hoped that he was somehow managing not to completely piss off his Wraith handlers.
The hall was sparsely populated, not a surprise given the early morning hours. The unmistakable scent of freshly baked goods reminded her that she was starving. Understanding the scope of what had happened to John during his captivity had made her lose her appetite for dinner the evening before. Now her stomach protested loudly, emotional turmoil could only subdue it for so long before the physiological needs took over.
After filling her mug, she snatched a couple of muffins and retreated back to her office. She desperately needed a caffeine and sugar jolt. The previous night she had only managed a few broken hours of sleep. First in Teyla's quarters, where she fell asleep on the couch while she stayed with Torren for two hours before Amelia came to relieve her. And then in her quarters where, despite the luxury of being in her own bed, she struggled to fall back asleep. It had felt as if she had just closed her eyes when Carson called her back to the infirmary to help with John's unexpected and alarming temperature spike.
Her thoughts inexorably drifted to the detailed map of torture and sexual abuse they had uncovered the day before during the cleaning and surgical debridement of his wounds. She rubbed her eyes trying to obliterate the images that seemed to have been permanently seared on her retinas. The multiple whip marks, knife cuts, bites and bruises had been bad enough; the contusions, scrapes and small tears in intimate places were too much. She still felt embarrassed by how befuddled she acted when she first recognized the causes of some of John's injuries.
Doogie Howser jokes aside, she had amassed the equivalent of decades of experience in her nearly three years here in Atlantis, two years at Stargate Command on Earth, six years of fellowship and surgical residency at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor (including a couple of month-long overseas stints with Doctors Without Borders), and four years of medical school at the University of Chicago. She had seen much more gruesome injuries, including plenty that were the result of people intentionally harming or even torturing others. And while admittedly there hadn't been many, she definitely had treated victims of brutal rapes. Until now, she felt confident that these experiences had prepared her to unflinchingly face anything her patients might have suffered.
She never expected to see one of their own be subjected to this type of assault. In Atlantis their primary worries had been to fight off the Wraith, the Replicators and the Genii—the latter two had been taken care of (one destroyed, the other transformed into an ally of sorts), the former remained their formidable foe. None of these enemies had ever used sexual rape as a weapon (admittedly, mental rape seemed par for the course for the Replicators and the Wraith). Uncovering the evidence of how the military commander of Atlantis, a six foot tall, hardened soldier and friend, had been victimized in such a way (and she was fully cognizant of how John would object to that "v" word) had truly shocked her.
Carson had been very patient and understanding. He gave her a few moments of silence to recover, while he continued with the work that had to be done. As she took deep breaths to calm herself, she noticed the sorrow and understanding in the hooded eyes that peaked over the surgical mask he wore. Maybe being Michael's prisoner for two years, forced to do and witness atrocious things, had immunized him against reacting to the evidence of anyone's cruelty against those they considered beneath them. Or, more likely, he had learned a much finer command of his poker face.
Despite the wide scope of the damage they uncovered, most of it seemed superficial, so they thought they had things nicely under control. Thanks to their judicious combination of state-of-the-art Earth skin-grafting expertise and Ancient cloning and wound repair techniques, they were expecting to do the skin grafts today. If things had proceeded according to their plan, John would soon have been nicely on his way to a speedy healing process—at least for the physical aspect of his injuries. In retrospect, they had been prematurely confident that they had managed to deal with all the infected sites early enough to prevent such complications.
The pain-staking surgical debridement they performed, along with the administration of intravenous broad spectrum antibiotics should have stopped any incipient infection. "Should have" being the operative phrase. Luck mocked them as usual. Some of the microorganisms that John's abusers had inadvertently infected him with, probably by digging their fingers into his wounds (plenty of evidence indicated that had happened), turned out to be deviously immune to the drugs that should have very efficiently killed them off.
By the time she arrived in the infirmary in the middle of the night, Carson, Marie and Fernando, the new Spanish nurse, had managed to bring down John's temperature below forty degrees Celsius—still quite high, but not as life-threatening as it had been. Visual re-inspection of every wound site revealed puss oozing from three lacerations in his upper back and signs of tissue necrosis. Full-body imaging with the powerful Ancient medical scanner found an abscess deep within the arrow wound in his arm. Despite the danger of having to operate on someone who was so sick, they wheeled John back to surgery. They had no other option.
They removed the infected tissue and drained the abscess. John pulled through the procedure without going into seizures or cardiac arrest—that was quite an achievement. They were now keeping him stable with mechanical ventilation, intravenous fluids and a drug cocktail to control his otherwise plummeting vital signs. His temperature was still uncomfortably high. If things didn't improve soon, they might have to hook him up to a dialysis machine. The bitter irony that after successfully escaping his torturer, John might succumb to an insidious organism, too small to be seen without a powerful microscope, was too much. They could not let that happened.
Jennifer examined the results from John's latest blood test. The CBC differentials, chemistry panels and truly wacky electrolyte balances were indicative of many things, including an escalating septic infection—not good news but not a surprise either. These results confirmed their diagnosis. The high-through-put polymerase chain reaction analyses of the blood and tissue samples, and the antimicrobial resistance assays would not be completed for another hour. They needed those results to pinpoint the identity of the infectious organism and to precisely determine which anti-microbial agents to use to combat the infection. In the meantime, the much needed skin grafts were on hold.
She drank the last dregs of coffee to shake off the sleepy tendrils that were enveloping her brain. No time for a nap, she needed to finish this analysis. The laboratory finding that really puzzled her were traces of unusual chemicals circulating in John's system. One had a familiar structure.
It took her longer to type in the query than for the computer to regurgitate the answer. Discounting a couple of ingenious modifications, this drug was almost identical to the prescription medication sildenafil citrate. The compound floating around in John's blood was essentially a much more potent and faster-acting form Viagra. According to calculations based on the drug's half-life, Jennifer estimated that John had received a heavy dose within the past thirty hours. One more clue to how he had been forced to "perform" against his will. She quickly filed that revelation away in the don't-go-there-right-now part of her brain.
She wondered if the residual levels of this drug were contributing to his continued dangerously low blood pressure or if that was solely due to the infection. She resolved to discuss it with Carson. Whichever the cause, the medications they were currently giving him appeared to have stabilized his crashing vital signs—hopefully they would begin to normalize as they brought the fever under control.
"Hey, how's Sheppard?"
The unexpected voice made her jump in her chair, "Jesus, are you trying to give me a heart attack?"
"Sorry, I thought you saw me," Ronon leaned against the open doorway with an expression flickering between amusement and remorse.
"I didn't. I was checking on the Colonel's lab results," she said.
"Beckett let me look at him for only a minute before he kicked me out," Ronon stepped into the office. He turned one of the two chairs facing her desk and sat astride it, his arms folded on top of the backrest. All traces of humor disappeared from his face. "Is Sheppard going to be okay?"
Jennifer noticed the telltale marks of fatigue around his eyes. Like many others in Atlantis, he hadn't had much sleep lately—too much crap going on.
"The infection is definitely in his blood stream and that along with a drug his captors gave him are messing up his system. I'm still waiting for the …"
"Yeah, Beckett told me about that. I know you'll fix him. I meant about the other stuff Alkamade did to him."
That was the big elephant or, better yet, one of Rodney's gargantuan whale friends in the room, Jennifer thought. Leave it to Ronon to ask the question that they were all too prudish to ponder aloud. How does sexual torture affect a person like John? A man who has already been through all kinds of hell, just not this particular type.
Prior history suggested that he would try to brush this off with one of his famous "I'm fine" understatements. She hoped that this would not be the case this time because the inner turmoil that would remain dangerously hidden below the controlled surface veneer might be too much for even cool-hand John to handle. Carson had described to her a more truthful and shaken John than either of them had ever seen before. Maybe that was a good sign.
"Without going into specifics, I can tell you that physically there is no permanent damage. Once we beat down infection, he will recover, uhm, all his functions quickly." She paused, trying to find some other helpful or at least informative nugget to share. There was nothing. "Honestly, Ronon, I don't really know how John will deal with what happened to him. Your guess would probably be better than mine, given that you have known him longer and in many ways you two are so alike. What do you think?"
"Uh?" Ronon looked honestly confused.
Maybe if she hadn't been so tired, she would have beaten around the bush a little longer before asking the question she really wanted answered. "Come on Ronon, you know what I mean. You are both the manly, silent-warrior type. How would you feel if this had happened to you?"
As part of her medical training, Jennifer had learned the basics principles about the care and psychology of rape victims. Almost all the literature she had read on the subject dealt with victimized adult women and children of either sex. She remembered reading some passing references to men raped by other men, but nothing about men sexually assulated by women.
In a highly unscientific way, she wanted Ronon to help shed some light on how a man might react to this type of abuse. He was one of the few men she felt comfortable enough asking such a question—she imagined that Carson would be someone who would also provide a thoughtful answer, unlike Rodney (but watching Rodney squirm around some sort of sarcastic answer would be very entertaining—well, at least, she still had a sense of humor).
Ronon remained immersed in thought for a few minutes. She imagined him rummaging through all his awful experiences to find a possible parallel that would help put himself in John's shoes. Hopefully, she hadn't offended him with this question. She knew that he had been through a lot in his seven years as a runner and she was almost sure that this was one type of experience that he had not had to suffer through. But it's not as if this topic had come up in their prior conversations.
He surprised her with his eloquence, "I think that I would be angry at the people who did this and at myself for letting it happen."
"But it's not your … I mean his fault. Even without knowing the full story, you can be sure that he fought all the way. The rope burns and …"
"I know that it wasn't his fault," Ronon interrupted her in a gruff tone. "You asked me how I would feel."
"Yes, I did. Sorry," she said.
She thought that Ronon was done talking. The conversation had already lasted longer than usual. But he continued, "Killing her like Sheppard did would feel right. But, I don't know if it's enough."
She waited a little, hoping that he would elaborate more, before she broke the uncomfortable silence.
"Well, we are just going to have to play it by ear and be there for him," she tried not to cringe at her own trite words of wisdom. "One thing for sure is that he will have to talk to Dr. Robinson, quite a bit I imagine. He is not going to get out of that one. And now he has Teyla too. She is not going to let him shut himself down."
That comment made Ronon's face brighten up a little, "Yeah, you are right about that." Then, just as quickly as it had appeared, his smile vanished.
Jennifer examined him carefully. For some reason she could not fathom, he had a guilty look about him. "Are you okay?"
Ronon rubbed his bearded chin. "I should have had his six."
"Ronon, there was no way any of you could have predicted that this was going to happen," Jennifer said.
"We lost him just like when Koyla snatched him. He got grabbed behind our backs—watching our backs while no one had his. That time he ended up being fed to a Wraith and this time to that Alkamade bitch."
Normally, Jennifer would have objected to the use of that derogatory term against a woman, but in this situation she could not think of a better word to use. Ronon's mastery of English colloquialisms never failed to impress her. Team movie nights and hanging out with the Marines were really paying off.
As part of her briefings to join the Atlantis expedition, she had read all the reports about John being fed to the Wraith and had watched the stomach-churning video recordings (not by choice, it was part of the obligatory briefing). Sometimes she still wondered why she had stuck to her decision to go to Atlantis after seeing what the Wraith did for their meals. Other times, she knew that witnessing such acts cemented her resolve to help humans in Pegasus overcome these beings who treated them like food.
She was suddenly struck by the commonality between John's past experience with the Wraith and what he had just gone through. In a way, they were both forms of rape.
"Ronon, how did the Colonel react to what happened to him at the hands of Koyla and the Wraith? Do you remember how he seemed to you afterwards?"
"I dunno … He was just Sheppard. He didn't talk about it. Maybe he was a little quieter for a couple of days. He snapped a few times at Rodney, when he kept on whining that he looked younger than before," Ronon stopped, realizing what he had just said. "Oh, sorry."
People tended to react that way around her. As if the very mention of Rodney would somehow hurt her more than she already was. It had really annoyed her for the first few weeks, but now she was used to it. She recognized that these were honest, but misguided, attempts to spare her feelings. In reality, she liked to hear people talk about Rodney, even if they were making fun of something he had done; all remembrances made her feel that he was still here and a part of her life. Not just a ghost.
"It's okay Ronon. I can easily imagine Rodney thoughtlessly blurting out all sorts of insensitive stuff."
"Yeah. I … I said some stupid stuff too to Sheppard. I was mad at him for letting the Wraith go free," he said. "I didn't understand his hyper sense of honor. I get it now, even if I don't always agree with it."
"I think that there is an epidemic of honor and duty floating around here," she said.
While she thought about the best approach to lead the conversation back to what they could do to help John, her computer beeped. She clicked on an icon and quickly scanned the reams of data displayed on the screen.
"Sorry Ronon, I have to go. I just got John's test results." They both stood up at the same time. She could see the unspoken question in Ronon's face. "This is good. We now have the information we need to select the best way to fight off the infection."
For some strange reason, as she rushed out of her office she thought about how her high school girlfriends would have called her insane for having picked as the love of her life geeky, endearingly balding Rodney over studly, exotic Ronon. She had no regrets about this particular choice. She was very happy that Ronon and Amelia were together. And she had no doubt that she picked the right man for herself. That's why she missed him so much. Was she being selfish for needing John to return to fighting form STAT not just for his own sake but also to get Rodney back? Oh, heck, right now she had no more time to waste thinking about stuff like that.
Note: Coming up in the next chapter: John. Please click on Review this Chapter and send me a comment.