Ophidia
A Stargate Atlantis Fanfic
Friday, 21 September 2007
A/N: And here we are. Hey, did you know you're only supposed to have one set of wisdom teeth? Yeah… well, I can tell you two things: part of the reason this is up late is because I spent a good deal of the morning at my dentist's office, and I have six wisdom teeth instead of four. Goodie…
I'm afraid I don't speak Czech, I just want to throw out there— and I'm kinda hoping none of you do either. 'Cause otherwise… you'll be grimacing for a bit, there.
And… we just broke 150 reviews, and have just about broken 15,000 hits (under a hundred away). So I suppose I wanted to take this moment to say… thank you. :) All of you, for coming this far with me. We don't have long to go now…
Chapter 35: Broken
There was, of course, the expected anxiety— the nervousness, the hope that was almost too much to have, the snappishness that came from it— Carson seemed to be doing well, but then, he understood everything that was going on much better than she or any of John's team did… Elizabeth wondered if that was more of a blessing or burden for the man.
It had to be better than it was for Rodney, though. Clichéd as it sounded, he looked as though he might wear a hole in the floor if he kept pacing like that.
Apparently, Elizabeth wasn't the only one who thought so. "Would you please stop?" Teyla asked pointedly.
"I'm sorry, am I distracting you from something?" The edge in his voice wasn't for her, they all knew, but Teyla bristled just the same.
"Rodney," Carson admonished, not bothering to look back over his shoulder while he removed the Colonel's current IV drip, and handed it to a nurse. "Don't make me throw you out," he warned.
He was met with disparaging sound. "Big deal." Despite Rodney's sullenness, Carson said nothing, even when the other man began to complain. "He's not even waking up."
"Yes, well, I warned you it wouldn't be immediate. He may not regain consciousness for another few days."
Elizabeth took an idle step forward, surreptitiously placing herself between the two men before they could start anything.
A glance around the room told her the feelings were mutual… Ronon was predictably silent, but he leaned against the wall with his eyes narrowed. Teyla still looked angry with Rodney— they were all on edge. Secretly, she knew, they'd all been hoping for some kind of miraculous display of health— twitching of the fingers or fluttering of the eyelids… something. Some kind of response to being taken off of the coma-sustaining sedatives.
Teyla glanced away all of a sudden. Elizabeth took the other woman's hand and squeezed it gently, prompting the Athosian to turn back and face her. It was a very muted smile that Teyla gave Elizabeth, though. They were all feeling the strain of the past several days, and taking it out on each other. It didn't help that the small room was crowded by a few extra figures, though.
As the Scottish doctor finished up, he came to stand on Elizabeth's other side. "Are the armed guards really necessary?" Carson glanced almost scathingly across one of the new fixtures of the infirmary— the marine in question shifted uncomfortably.
"Sir…" he said, stiffly. "There have been cases of a Goa'uld being removed, but their mind—"
"Has superceded the host's, and remains in the body, I know. As I understand, that hasn't happened for years," he shot back, although inwardly, he couldn't help the fear that accompanied the suggestion. Just another horrible possibility, another possible outcome that could end up being reality.
"I'm not thrilled about it either," Elizabeth cut in. "But General Landry requested it personally in our last conversation."
The marine looked flushed with either embarrassment or shame, but he didn't move. "The General doesn't want to take any chances, sir. If it ends up that the colonel's the Goa'uld now…" His hand tightened on his sidearm unconsciously. "He wants enough force present to take him down. Quickly."
The Scot just made a disparaging noise. "He's got three gunshot wounds to the chest, and lost half the blood in his body. A well timed slap could take him down."
A movement from the corner drew all of their attentions, and the marine paled a little as Ronon pulled away from the wall. Standing fully upright, he towered over the younger man, who unconsciously leaned back.
Ronon didn't say or do anything, though. He simply turned and walked out of the room, presumably leaving the infirmary as well.
Elizabeth found she had turned to watch him go, and this time it was Teyla who offered the reassuring grip of her hand to steady the other woman. Carson had returned himself to attending to the colonel, with the help of his nurse, and Rodney checked his watch. Elizabeth watched him out of the corner of her eye, raising one eyebrow delicately as he let out a sound of exasperation.
"Missed something?"
At her careful question, Rodney eyed the diplomat, who composed her face into an unreadable mask. "I've got an appointment soon."
Teyla offered him a tiny smile. "You should go then. It will help," she stated simply.
The scientist regarded her for a moment, before he nodded once, somewhat appreciatively. Then his expression turned suspicious again as he looked back and forth between Carson and Elizabeth.
"Neither of you would happen to know anything about Heightmeyer moving my session up to this morning, would you?"
"No," Carson replied flatly, once more not even turning around. Elizabeth said nothing, and if he thought her silence gave something away, at least her expression didn't.
"Hm." Rodney's lips pinched together with displeasure. "Well… I think Ronon had the right idea," he quipped dryly, and pointed towards the door. A moment later, he was gone as well.
The expedition leader let her head hang— she felt Teyla take her other hand, and gently rest her forehead against hers; it was strangely comforting. When she opened her eyes, though, she saw a distinct sadness in the woman's smile, and was pretty sure hers mirrored it. Thinking that made her smile widen just a hint, but the pain-lines around the edges of her eyes seemed to deepen as well.
Surprising herself a little, Elizabeth released Teyla's hands and wrapped her arms around the woman. She wasn't the only one, it seemed, but it took only a moment before both eased into the hug.
They stood there for what seemed like a long time, embracing one another; each trying to lend the other as much strength and support as they had to give.
Kate Heightmeyer rubbed at one of her temples with her thumb, the other fingers of her hand cradling her forehead.
Dr. McKay was one of the few members of the expedition who didn't outright refuse to attend psychiatric sessions. Most people rejected the idea of letting someone 'in their head' and fought tooth and nail to stay out of her office, even at the expense of their own health. Rodney, on the other hand, was quite familiar with therapy and psychologists. One might say he was comfortable with them, even.
That by no means meant he was cooperative, though. Oh, no.
"So, what do you think, Kate, normal or not normal to be capable of shooting one of your best friends?" he asked in a mock conversational tone, barely concealing self-deprecation.
Apparently, the man's hypochondria didn't just limit itself to physical medicine. He was ready to diagnose himself here, too. So much so that Rodney biased his own opinions of himself, and then related all of his answers in a skewed fashion— and it was not making this go any easier for Heightmeyer.
Kate took a deep breath, trying to steel up her patience for one more go. "Did you see it as shooting the Goa'uld, or shooting Colonel Sheppard?"
Rodney let out a high pitched laugh. "Doesn't much matter now, does it?"
"It does, Rodney," she assured him. "You were trying to stop an enemy that was attacking the City and trying to hurt the people in it."
"Mm, yes." He smiled at her, and it was an unpleasant thing. "Pity Sheppard got in the way. Oh well!" he added in an almost sing-song voice.
Ignoring this remark, which Kate knew full well was untrue— if it was, Rodney wouldn't be beating himself up over it— "If you had the chance to ask John," she said, continuing as though she hadn't heard him, "what do you think he would have wanted you to do? Save him or save everyone else?"
Rodney rolled his eyes, wearing that cynical, I-know-everything-you-idiot smile. "Oh, I think it probably would've been something to the effect of, 'please don't shoot me… repeatedly'."
"Rodney." The sudden sharpness of Kate's tone caught him off guard, and for a moment, the scientist's expression became startled, and unguarded. "You can't do this thinking you already have all the answers! That's why I'm here, to help you, to help you figure this out and sort through what you're feeling. But I can't do a thing if you've already judged yourself guilty!"
Shifting uncomfortably under her intense stare, Rodney suddenly found a very interesting piece of fuzz on the carpeting. He heard Kate sigh, and it was no longer an expression of frustration, but a tired, quiet sound.
"Why don't we talk about something else for a while," she suggested, when he said nothing.
"All right," Rodney remarked, still not quite meeting her gaze. "Sounds good."
The woman nodded slowly. "You haven't talked much about how John is now."
"I haven't?" he asked, somewhat innocently.
"No," Kate replied, not losing stride.
He gave half a shrug. "Huh."
She said nothing for a while, and he saw her pen scrawl across the notebook in front of her. While still writing, she asked, "Tell me about his condition."
Blinking a couple times; "What, you don't know?"
Kate glanced up with a smile. "I do. I want to hear what you think, though."
"Oh. Right. Well, uh… he's not in very good shape."
"Do you think he can make it?"
"Of course he can!" Rodney sounded almost offended, perhaps on John's behalf. It would have been amusing, if Kate hadn't been so concerned. "He's been through worse… I'm sure… at some point in his life, anyways."
Fighting the urge to shake her head, Kate jotted down a few more notes. "What do you feel about the decision to bring him out of his coma?"
Rodney fumbled for words for several long moments. Leaning forward, Kate tried to be encouraging.
"Does it make you… upset? Relieved?"
He seized upon that one. "Relieved! Yes, relieved." His tone was not convincing in the slightest. She gave him a disbelieving look. "What? Come on, Sheppard's going to wake up and be okay, and… of course I'm relieved."
She continued to watch him warily. "This will be an opportunity to talk to Colonel Sheppard."
"What?" It wasn't that surprising a revelation, so his reaction made one of Kate's eyebrows disappear into her bangs. "I mean… yes… I suppose it will." Rodney's attempts to compose himself were failing as Kate effectively hounded him.
"What do you think he'd say?" This time, Rodney didn't answer, instead resolving his expression into a featureless tableau. Kate thought she could see where this was going, and it was with a hint of resignation that she asked, "…Do you want to talk to John?"
"…Of course."
"I see." There seemed to be a weariness in her voice. "I wonder… are you more afraid he might not wake up… or that he might?"
Rodney looked livid all of a sudden, and stated hotly, "Of course I want him to wake up, why the hell wouldn't I?"
Kate held up one hand to calm the man. "I never said you didn't. That doesn't mean," she added with one raised eyebrow, "that you can't also be afraid of it."
With his mouth hanging open like it was, Rodney was able to pull of a fairly good imitation of a nutcracker, especially as he snapped his jaw shut a second later. Suddenly trying to brush the whole thing off, he asked, in a not-entirely-convincing way, "Why would I be afraid of Sheppard waking up?"
Why indeed… Kate bowed her head, using the notebook in her lap as the excuse, but inwardly, she felt like she was just… fumbling about blindly. She could see what was wrong, but what could she do if he wouldn't let her help him? Who do you think you're kidding, Rodney?
"Can't you get one of the marines to do this?"
Radek began humming to himself, looking over the figures on the tablet he was holding. "Marines cannot assist with repairs."
"Then one of the other scientists!"
A steady stream of complaining and whining had been coming from behind the Czech for the past five minutes, and he suspected it would continue until they got to the infirmary. Glancing up over his shoulder, he saw Rodney McKay making a face, and turned back to the front, feeling a wonderful sense of content.
"If were not for you, I would not need pushing. Now quit bleating and push faster. Are not getting paid by the hour."
Rodney shook his head, muttering, "Fascist tyrant. What do they teach children behind the Iron Curtain?" Still, he was behind the wheelchair, and Radek had to admit, for someone who was perpetually out of shape, they were making good time.
And to be fair, he was perfectly capable of wheeling the thing himself, even with his wrist in a cast— the cast that kept him off of crutches— but he wasn't going to ignore a chance to press Rodney into temporary servitude.
In fact, the stop at the infirmary only took a few minutes. Radek quickly wheeled himself off to double check the systems and equipment, which all turned out to be in working order. But had any of it been malfunctioning, he was sure he would have needed the other man's help, which justified bringing him along. Well, that and getting Rodney back for much of the hassle he'd given Radek over the past years. More than justified.
Smiling smugly, Radek rolled back into the main infirmary, only to have the grin disappear from his face. Rodney wasn't where he had left him… for a moment, Zelenka wondered if perhaps Rodney had just up and left out of irritation, before something occurred to him. Turning around and heading for the back of the infirmary again, Radek caught sight of an open door, beyond which the lights were dimmed. He wheeled in, pausing to let his eyes adjust, watching the lights of the many machines set up here. Unavoidably, he found his attention shifting to the sole occupant of this room, entirely forgetting what had brought him here in the first place.
Suddenly, the sound of Rodney calling his name out in the main infirmary caught his attention. Before he had time to reply, the other scientist had stuck his head in the door, frowning. "Ah. There you are."
Radek spun the chair. "I was looking for you. Thought you might have left."
The physicist grimaced. "I had to use the bathroom. What are you doing?"
"Trying to make this trip up here for something."
Rodney made an indeterminate sound, neither approval or rejection, but he did step all the way in. He glanced around the room, as though trying to find something else to focus on besides the bed at its center, but his eyes kept being drawn back to the colonel.
The other scientist followed his glance, then shook his head and made a clucking sound with his tongue. "Sad."
"Yeah." The short, clipped answer made his brow furrow, and he turned to look at Rodney.
The Canadian scientist was practically fidgeting… Radek felt a deep seated desire to mock the man for it, but something was telling him all was not right. Instead of finding Rodney's antics to be childish and amusing, his lips pressed into a thin frown, and he pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, regarding his colleague.
"What is the matter with you? Small insects have invaded your clothing?" The remark, when it finally came, was dry and unamused. "Infestation of alien lice, maybe… Should call for bio-containment team?"
"No," Rodney replied, rather waspishly. "Look, can we just get out of here?"
Radek blinked once, unable to do anything else for a moment out of surprise. Rodney sounded almost… petulant. Not all that unusual, actually, but it generally came up when he was doing something he viewed as unpleasant or potentially harmful to his person. Baffled by the sudden change in attitude, Radek's reply was a little clipped; "We just got here," he pointed out. When Rodney rolled his eyes and looked as though he were about to snark back, he added, "Why do you want to leave so badly?"
"I… it's none of your business!" The pitch of his voice went up a little as he got defensive.
Zelenka frowned at him; "I'd think you at least would want to see Colonel Sheppard," he muttered.
"We did see Colonel Sheppard," Rodney shot back. "We came, we saw him, he's not awake, let's go." And he gestured to the door expectantly.
There was a long silence between the two of them, all the while, Rodney was standing there impatiently by the door to the room. At length, he asked, "Why don't you?"
"Why don't I what?"
"Want to see Sheppard." He watched the other scientist carefully, gauging his reaction. "Too disturbing?"
Growing defensive again; "I never said I didn't want to see Sheppard!" Then his brain caught up with what he had just heard. "Disturbing? Who said anything about me being disturbed?"
"A tobě ar ne?" Radek muttered under his breath.
Continuing as though he had missed Zelenka's comment entirely; "This is starting to sound like that psych session all over again. Can you believe Heightmeyer said I was afraid of Sheppard waking up?" he demanded all of a sudden.
Afraid…? Not how he'd have put it, but it explained a lot, actually. Instead of voicing this, Radek just raised his eyebrows. "Imagine that."
Rodney let out a derisive snort. "Yeah, I know. Some crap about latent guilt or something."
The other man gave half a shrug. "You are avoiding him."
"I am not." Practically glaring daggers at Radek, Rodney huffed once. "Maybe I just don't get off on seeing one of my friends half-dead on life support," he snapped, before he seemed to realize what he had just said and a bit of the furor in his expression died.
"That is what this is all about?" Zelenka made a noise of disbelief.
Rodney started a bit, before staring at Radek incredulously, like he had just danced on top of someone's grave or something equally unabashed.
The engineer seemed unimpressed. "You expect me to believe you want to leave because you are squeamish?" It would make some sense, if Radek didn't know the other scientist better. For all he was a hypochondriac, Rodney wasn't skittish about being around people who were hurt. In fact, they were all remarkably well-adjusted to it after these past few years, a fact which was a bit frightening in and of itself.
Besides, if what Rodney was saying was true, why hadn't he shown any aversion to being around Radek?
For a moment, Rodney's mouth was gaping open, before he snapped it shut with an audible click. Then; "Some of us want to give the injured their peace." It was a lie, and a pathetic one at that, but Rodney lifted his chin defiantly all the same. It very nearly made the other man laugh.
"I am half crippled; you have no problem terrorizing me," Radek pointed out instead.
Rodney leaned back, rolling his eyes, his expression cynical. "Please. That is entirely different."
"It is the same." Radek leaned forward in his wheel chair. "None of this bothers you?"
"No!"
The Czech threw his hands up in the air, before he started into a stream of frustrated English and Czech; somewhere in there, Rodney thought he caught "stubborn, arrogant man—" then something he was pretty sure was an insult to his intelligence.
"All right! I'll admit, it's disturbing," Rodney said, cutting off Radek's rant, and the other man relaxed a bit. "Seeing you like this, and remembering actually doing that to you—" he waved one hand vaguely at the wheelchair— "and then trying to convince myself it wasn't really me." He seemed actually… upset…
"It wasn't you," Radek reminded him, a bit more patiently.
Rodney appeared not to have heard, or maybe he just ignored the comment. "It's really, really disturbing. But, I mean, it's not like I won't have to live with the memory of… of this, too," he added, staring at Sheppard in an almost enthralled way, macabre though it was. He let out a long breath, hanging his head.
Drumming his fingers silently across the tablet in his lap, the Czech watched Rodney to see if he would be any more forthcoming about what was bothering him. "You should perhaps talk to Dr. Heightmeyer again," he suggested, when the man wasn't.
"Yeah," Rodney replied, not looking up, his tone acerbic. "I should."
"…You're not going to, are you?"
It seemed the other man had had enough, both of Radek pressing him, and the presence of the Sheppard, technically out of his coma but still so lifeless. "Good night, Radek." And with that, he jammed his hands into his pockets and stalked out.
Radek just watched him go, before he mumbled something to himself in his native language. Be that way, if you must. He reached out and spun the left wheel of his chair, turning in the same direction. It's only going to get harder when he awakens. A moment after, though, as he rolled silently out into the hall, Radek had to wonder if he shouldn't have said 'if', instead.
"Well, he's showing some improvement," the nurse provided.
Carson knew she was trying to cheer him, for what it was worth, and forced a smile. "A small improvement was to be expected— one less set of drugs in his system." Unspoken was the fact that it hardly mattered, what with everything else the poor man was on.
But a small improvement seemed to come at cost— they were given a half second's warning, a squealing alert that Carson wasn't even able to identify before John Sheppard began to have a seizure, something the doctor had half expected and feared.
The team was already swarming around the bed, and for the moment, Carson stepped back to observe. There wasn't much they could do, except sedate him again. There wasn't much he could do. Not now… not period.
It seemed that while the colonel's mind was trying to awaken, it simply couldn't handle the dysfunction of the man's body…
Suddenly, Carson's eyes went wide as he watched the contorting figure on the bed— "Stop!" In an instant, his hand was on the arm of the nurse injecting the contents of a syringe into the port in Sheppard's IV. His eyes were on the man's face, though, and suddenly, the nurse and both techs had paused, watching as well, and shortly after, the seizure stopped of its own accord. The med staff's focus never shifted, though.
Because for just a second, Sheppard had opened his eyes.