Tricking out the Jumper took less time than John had expected - it wasn't wholly different from the mods he had given the Jumper that went down to save Rodney when he'd been trapped in the sinking Jumper. If there was one thing John knew by this point, it was how Jumpers worked, and that base of knowledge made modifying them much easier.
Granted, he wasn't sure if this would work. Last time, he'd had multiple hours and a team of engineers. This time, he was working by himself, and he'd done the whole job in about a half hour. But people weren't exactly lining up with backup plans, so he had no choice but to try.
Before long, he was flying outside Atlantis. He had to stay low, in order to keep the tubing intact. But that was fine - he had to stay low in order to see the fires, too. Good thing Atlantis had all those big, gorgeous windows, for looking out over the ocean. John was probably about to break a lot of them.
John giggled, then frowned. "Hey. Stop that, Sheppard," he told himself. "Not funny. Woolsey's gonna be mad."
After the walk to the Jumper had left John gasping for breath and on the brink of passing out several times, he'd cranked the oxygen levels in the recycled airstream higher in an effort to combat the smoke inhalation. Now, he was beginning to suspect that he'd set them a little too high. Unfortunately, whenever he turned them back down, he began to get dizzy again. He figured giggling a little was probably better than passing out at the controls, so he left them where they were. Selecting the first fire he saw, a rather large one outside what looked like his favorite perch on the East Pier, he lowered the Jumper over the water.
"Okay, baby, let's see what you can do," John told his Jumper-slash-fire engine, held his breath, and pressed a button. There was a deafening roar of air, a wet slurping sound, and John's makeshift water-tank gauge wobbled and began to fill. That was a good sign. John flew a little closer, positioned the water cannons he'd cobbled together from a second set of tubing and a shaky, college-based understanding of partial pressure, and squeezed his eyes shut. One button press later, there was a hollow oomph, and John opened his eyes to find a hell of a lot of steam, and significantly less fire.
John cheered and emptied the rest of the water tanks onto the fire, waiting until the smoke cleared to confirm that he'd actually put it out. But he couldn't see anything that was actually on fire anymore, which meant he'd succeeded.
"Yes," John shouted, then punched the comms button.
"I fucking did it," he yelled into the radio, then realized that he hadn't bothered to check the channel, and Zelenka very well might not be on comms anyway. Oxygen again.
"Probably for the best," he admitted to himself, then dropped back over the ocean for his next pass of the city. One success was great, but there was a lot of work left to be done. He could wait until the end to show off just how well his idea had worked.
Zelenka hurried back towards the gateroom, having received a vaguely confused comms summons from a breathless-sounding Sheppard. The gist of it seemed to be that Ronon had been hurt, and John was working on a plan, and when Zelenka was done working on shutting off Rodney's inane protocol, he should check on Ronon.
It had taken quite a while - the better part of an hour - to undo Rodney's incredibly thorough fire unsafety protocol, but he'd managed it, and he was beginning to feel bad about leaving Ronon as long as he had. For one thing, Ronon was rather worrying. Zelenka never knew what slight might result in being punched, but he assumed that ignoring Ronon to do work on a computer was not a good start.
Zelenka skidded into the gateroom, placing his tablet on the nearest convenient stair. The tablet was almost out of charge, and didn't connect to anything without power, but it made Zelenka feel more in control.
Ronon was sitting on the Gateroom stairs, looking burned and rather out of it. He looked up blearily when Radek came in.
"Hey," he said. "You get the...thing turned off?"
Zelenka nodded. "It was rather difficult, with only auxiliary power. But the fires are no longer trapped inside the walls. They should either go out on their own, or exit the walls at key points, and we'll be able to put them out. Either way, they'll no longer be spreading."
Ronon nodded, and Zelenka realized that was probably a bit too much explanation for Ronon. He was injured. He needed help.
"Where is John?" Zelenka asked, carefully picking his way through the mess of rubble to get to Ronon.
"He's putting the fires out," Ronon said.
Zelenka froze. "He's...what?"
Zelenka would have assumed that after...whatever happened with Ronon, they would have given up on trying to put the fires out. Clearly, they couldn't handle it.
"Yeah," Ronon said. "He went up in the Jumper."
"The Jumper?" Zelenka asked skeptically, easing his way around chunks of fallen metal and shards of glass.
"Yeah. It can put out fires now."
"Can it?"
"Yeah," Ronon said confidently. "Something with tubes."
Zelenka frowned. When the stakes were so high, he was not about to take Ronon at his word. Ronon might think that John could rig the Jumper into some sort of...fire engine, but Zelenka highly doubted this was true.
However, one comm call with the slightly breathless-sounding pilot had put Zelenka's fears to rest. Ronon was right - he had managed to set the Jumper up with some tubing, and turn it into a fire hose. Better yet, from his aerial position he could actually see where all the fires were, and put them out without getting near them. Since Zelenka had also managed to remove Rodney's protocol, things were starting to look back in hand for the first time all day. John just had to finish putting out the fires, and then they had a week or so to clean up the mess, and then no one would ever know anything had been wrong.
"I'm going to take a look at your arm now," Zelenka said, settling himself next to Ronon. The Satedan grunted and shrugged with his good arm. Radek froze, eyeing him a bit warily. Did that mean that he had accepted that plan, or would Ronon punch him as soon as he got too close? He was never sure with Ronon.
"Go on if you're gonna," Ronon said impatiently, after about ten seconds or so. Zelenka took that as an invitation, and hesitantly stepped close enough to begin his examination.
Zelenka had seen plenty of burns - growing up in Czechoslovakia hadn't exactly been the most stable experience - and while Ronon's looked truly dreadful, he knew it wasn't actually that bad. As painful as the large blisters were, blackened skin would have been worse. If Ronon could refrain from popping them - which, knowing Ronon, was a big "if" - the burns should heal well. Zelenka had seen far worse.
"Do not pop the blisters," Zelenka led with. He knew Ronon.
Sure enough, the Satedan frowned. "But-"
"Just...do not," Zelenka instructed. "It will hurt, and it will make everything heal slower. And...and Dr. Beckett and Dr. Keller will yell at you when they come back."
The last threat seemed to sink in better than the others had, and Ronon scowled and stopped eying the blisters.
"Good," Zelenka muttered, peering at Ronon's arm and shoulder. "Yes, this will need to be bandaged."
"Everyone keeps sayin' that," Ronon said impatiently.
"Well, that is because it needs to be bandaged," Zelenka informed him, looking around for the first aid kit Chuck had started keeping in the gateroom (mainly due to SGA-1). He located the kit and the bandages and began the process of trying to figure out how to bandage a very large portion of Ronon's chest and shoulder. Ronon didn't flinch or cry out, but Zelenka was almost equally unnerved by the stony silence. It was a far cry indeed from Rodney's temper tantrums over splinters, and Zelenka knew how painful the burns had to be. Sometimes he wondered if people like Ronon, Teyla, and Colonel Sheppard were entirely human.
He had gotten most of the surface area of Ronon's burns covered by the time John made his reappearance. Ronon hadn't spoken at all during Zelenka's first aid, but at John's entrance he perked up, pulled away, and some of the pained tension left his expression.
"Hey guys!" John said, sounding far more energetic than Zelenka felt he had any right to be.
"Someone is feeling enthusiastic," Zelenka said darkly. "Are the fires out?"
"I might be a little, tiny bit high," John replied, then apparently felt no need to elaborate. "Yep, all the fires are out. So are most of the windows."
"High?" Zelenka asked, a lot of worrying scenarios running through his mind.
"I had to turn the oxygen up in the Jumper," John said, not sounding concerned at all. "Think my lungs got a little burned by the smoke."
Zelenka frowned, but decided not to question this further. John had gotten the fires out, and that was really the only thing that mattered.
"Speaking of high-" John mused quietly, and then pointed at Ronon. "You probably need drugs. For the pain."
"Sheppard, I already looked through the first-aid kit we have on hand here, and it contains nothing stronger than Advil…."
John gestured grandly around the room, the motion clearly meant to encompass all of Atlantis. "The fires are out. It's time to start putting everything back together. Do you think you can get the power back on?"
Radek grimaced - he hadn't even started thinking about that yet. "I would assume so, but I am unsure how long it would take. I have not had time to look at why it is even down, or to figure out if any of the systems have sustained further damage."
"Right, well, we really need power," John said, rubbing one of his eyes with the heel of his hand. 'Heat, water, the Gate, all that stuff. So you start taking a look at the power, and see if it's an easy fix, and I'm going to take Ronon to the infirmary. Shouldn't be that hard to manage, now that the fire is out."
Ronon stood up with a grunt, holding his injured arm gingerly against his side. "Come on, buddy," John said encouragingly. "Let's go get you some pain pills."
Zelenka felt that there were some problems with this plan, but he was so overwhelmed he wasn't even sure what they were. So he allowed John to slowly lead Ronon away, and then nervously turned his attention to the power.
"What the fuck was that?" John exclaimed. He had startled a little, and he knew he had accidentally jostled Ronon, who he was partially supporting. But he thought it was justified. Something greyish white had just fluttered up in front of him, too fast for him to get a good look at it.
Ronon shrugged slightly, and then winced. "Dunno, looked like some sort of bird," he said.
"There aren't any birds in Atlantis."
"Looks like a bird," Ronon said shortly, then hesitated for a moment. "Or a ghost."
John eyed him skeptically. He could almost always tell when Ronon was joking - he and Teyla seemed to be the only ones who could. But this time, he had absolutely no idea whether Ronon actually thought there might be a ghost loose in the hallways of Atlantis.
Come to think of it, that wouldn't be the weirdest thing that had happened in the Ancient city. Maybe he shouldn't rule out ghosts just yet.
He caught another flash of motion out of the corner of his eye, but this time managed not to react sharply enough to hurt Ronon. "Fuck. There it goes again," he whispered hoarsely, coughing as the effort hurt his throat.
"I saw it," Ronon said, also dropping his voice. "Or I saw somethin'. Looked like it went around the corner."
John felt Ronon tense, very slightly, and he was sure he was doing the same. It couldn't really be a ghost, could it? John had been prepared for fires, and for a meteor in the Gateroom. He had not been expecting anything remotely supernatural.
Carefully, they peered around the corner, both holding their breath.
"Oh," John said softly, unsure if he was disappointed or relieved.
"Huh. Did you know we had pigeons?" Ronon asked.
John shook his head, frowning at the small group of birds, then at Ronon. "I didn't even know there were pigeons in Pegasus. They're kinda city birds on Earth."
Ronon rolled his eyes. "Sheppard, you've been to Sateda. It was a city. We had pigeons."
There was a small pause, then Ronon nodded to himself. "Good eating, too."
John made a face. "They eat trash, I don't wanna eat anything that eats trash-" He broke off as Ronon grimaced, suddenly remembering that his friend was badly injured. "Sorry, buddy. The pigeons can wait. Let's get you the good stuff."
It didn't take them much longer to get to the infirmary. They saw a few more pigeons along the way, which was starting to really confuse John. They were in the middle of the ocean, how had the birds even gotten here?
John had still not managed to solve this puzzle by the time they made it through the fire-damaged hallways to the infirmary, and he reluctantly pushed it away for the time being. He helped Ronon through the door and managed to get him to perch on top of one of the cots, and John looked at him a little more closely. He looked bad, his face pale and drawn with pain. His arm was mostly bandaged at this point, but John remembered what it had looked like underneath. All in all, Ronon definitely looked like someone who could use both pain meds and distraction.
"Alright, laddie, I'll be your doctor today," John said in his best impression of Carson's accent. "Aye."
Ronon froze. He eyed John with wide, shocked eyes.
"What?" John said, not dropping the accent.
"That was...such a bad accent," Ronon said.
"Hey." John frowned.
"You don't sound like Beckett at all."
John considered.
"Bloody hell, what are you doing out of bed?" he tried. "You were just burned, for chrissakes. Sit yourself back down on that bed, and stay there! And I don't want to hear a mite of complaining."
Ronon shrugged. "That was a little better."
"I'm serious," John said, still refusing to drop the accent. "Do you know what burns to do to your body, son? You should definitely be lying down."
Ronon looked angry, but apparently, he was unable to resist Doctor Beckett. He reluctantly lowered himself onto the bed, glowering at John the whole time.
Okay, so step one was taken care of. Steps one and two, really - Ronon was lying on a bed, and he was thoroughly distracted. But now came a much more difficult part. John had mastered a bad Scottish accent, and saying the types of things Beckett might say in this situation. But that didn't mean he'd mastered actual medicine. In fact, he knew very little about medicine, especially something as overwhelming and potentially serious as a burn.
He wished Teyla were there. She could take care of Ronon, and John and Rodney could go blow something up. Maybe a pigeon.
Except Rodney wasn't there either.
John missed his team.
"Alright," John said, turning away from Ronon and beginning to rummage through the cabinet of drugs. "I'm afraid I have to diagnose you with very severe burns. My prognosis is bed rest. I'm afraid you must remain here in the infirmary for a stay of no less than two weeks. Otherwise you risk...complications."
Ronon looked upset. John couldn't keep up the ruse anymore.
"I'm just kidding!" he said happily. "I'm just gonna bandage you up and give you some drugs."
Ronon snorted. John found the bottle of pills he wanted, and palmed them.
"Now," he said. "These are very strong, so I'm afraid you can't take more than a quarter at once. If that leaves you in some pain still, well, I'm afraid that's just a hazard of your job. Taking over a quarter of one of these pills is absolutely forbidden."
Ronon now looked utterly confused, and John giggled. "Kidding again! Take, umm, it looks like two. Three. Two or three."
Ronon nodded, looking a bit happier as he dry-swallowed the pills John handed him. John yelped.
"SON! Always take pills with water, or something in your stomach might explode! And you can't talk loud, or breathe too funny, or even think the word 'fighting', or eat anything aside from stupid oatmeal."
Ronon chuckled, staying still enough for John to finish the bandages that Zelenka had started on. "And...and don't take drink alcohol with painkillers, even if it helps. And don't pop the blisters, or pick at the scabs."
John froze mid-bandage and dropped the accent. "Uhhh, maybe actually don't do those things, big guy. The ones you said just now. The other stuff is fine."
Ronon frowned, and John patted his uninjured shoulder. "Trust me on this one, huh? It's still better than anything Carson's gonna tell you. How's it feeling?"
"Better," Ronon said, sitting up as John released him. "Painkillers are helping. Why the hell do we even need a medical team? This is way better."
"Dr. Sheppard and Dr. Dex," John mused. "Could work, as long as no one ever needs surgery again. Or needs medical help that can't be solved with duct tape and painkillers."
"I'm just sayin', I could get used to this," Ronon said, swinging himself off the cot. There was less wincing this time, which John considered to be a win. "Let's go. Maybe we can get started clearing out the Gateroom."