When Carson Beckett had left the infirmary, all the chairs surrounding John had been filled. Yet when he returned a little while later after enduring numerous blood draws and a full body scan, Carrie was the only one left in the room. She had fallen asleep curled up on the bed beside John. She seemed like such a wee little thing and hardly took up much room and Carson was careful to stay quiet as he transferred himself from gurney to wheelchair under the scrupulous gaze of the tech that had helped him back to his room.
"D'ya not have somewhere else you need to be right now, laddie?" he snapped, batting the young man's hand away even as he tried to help him with a tangled IV line. The fact that he still had to have the damn thing at all was driving him mad and he knew he was just taking his frustrations out on everyone around him. Truth was, he was worried, more worried than he'd ever been in his entire life, and he didn't have any defense against it except for stubbornness and sarcasm. They were traits better suited to the man fighting for his life in the bed over there than a seasoned physician, but Carson just couldn't help it.
Giving up on him with a sigh, the orderly left Carson alone in his wheelchair with the sleeping Carrie and disappeared past the thin curtain that cordoned off this space from the rest of the infirmary. Carson wheeled himself over to the other side of John, engaged the break on the chair with his heel then sat back with a dissatisfied sigh.
This was the one time where his skills as a physician were a curse, not the cure. He was well aware of the gravity of the situation. He'd seen John's charts and could read the signs in the falling oxygen levels and low blood pressure readings that the monitors above John's bed had started to squawk about. He could see it on the faces of the staff he'd handpicked himself as well, though they tried to tiptoe around the issue like they were afraid of upsetting him or something. They didn't want him to think that this idea of his had somehow killed John... but he honestly didn't look at it that way. The idea to bring him here to Atlantis had always been a shot in the dark, a Hail Mary play as they said, and it wouldn't be anyone's fault if it didn't end up helping.
Well no, that wasn't quite true. The blame would fall to someone, not that it would matter much. The man who was truly to blame was dead and gone now. Lying on some cold morgue table and mourned by no one.
Carson cast tired eyes over to the stats broadcasted out across the room by John's state-of-the-art monitor (a new addition to the infirmary courtesy of the USSF) and tried not to worry about what he saw there. Each issue was being dealt with either by drug or by time and he knew there was nothing he, or any of them, could do for John now.
So many countless years of study, so many long hours honing his skills till his fingers bled, and for what? All he could do now was sit around and wait. Wait to see if John Sheppard would live. Wait to see if he would die. Wait to see if an impractical idea born from fevered dreams would somehow be enough to help his friend survive. It was a shaky hope Carson clung to, but he grabbed hold of it with both hands and refused to let it go.
"I've been a doctor for a long time now," he said quietly, white-knuckling the sides of his chair like they could give support to him somehow, "and I've seen things you probably wouldn't even believe." Carson shook his head with a laugh. "I've watched men, some nowhere near as strong as you and twice as bad off, come back from the very brink of death. I've watched that happen with my own two eyes, laddie."
He sat forward and set a gentle hand onto one of John's blanketed calves. "But you? You're something special, aren't you? And I cannot help but think that if you were to leave us now, this place would not survive long without you. As soon as we brought you here, I could feel her come back to life, you ken? And you did that. It was like she could feel that you had come home again and I think now she realizes that you are not doing very well.
"They're never going to understand it, are they my friend? What it feels like to be called by this place. I know you feel it more keenly than the rest of us do, lad, but I want you to know that I feel it, too.
Rodney and I have a theory that your lassie here might have the ATA gene. Did he tell you that yet? He tells me I should test her first just to make sure, but I've seen this place light up for her, John and we both know what that means, don't we?"
Carson took a breath. "I guess what I'm tryin' to say is that you can't give up on us just yet. We all need for you to try and fight. I know you've led a hard life, and that it would be so easy just to let go and get to that place where Ronon and Teyla are waiting for you, but if you've got any fight left in ya yet, laddie, use it now, would you please?
"But, if you have to leave us, John..." Carson let his head fall, "just know that we'll all take good care of her for you. We'll watch over her and make sure she's safe. And I don't just mean your city, John. You have my word on that, laddie."
"What are you doing?" a strangled voice asked from behind and Carson stiffened.
"What does it look like I'm doin', Rodney?" he replied. The weight of everything seemed to be pressing down in on him and he felt his shoulders slump further. He had no energy for Rodney at the moment.
Oblivious, the scientist in question walked over to dump an armful of junk food onto the foot of John's bed. Carson braced himself, expecting some kind of argument to erupt, but Rodney stayed silent as he rounded the edge of John's bed to shake Carrie awake gently.
"We're back," he said with a soft smile when the sleeping woman finally roused. "Why don't you go join TJ in the mess and take a break for a while."
Carrie, sleep disheveled and bleary-eyed, nodded after a deep stretch that audibly popped her joints. She made no comment to either of them, just shuffled out of the room a few moments later looking more weary than she'd looked before she fell asleep. Carson watched her leave, deciding in that moment that he genuinely liked her, and pretended not to notice when Rodney turned his way with angry hands on his hips.
"What's going on?" the astrophysicist demanded. "Why are you saying goodbye to him? Did something happen while I was gone?"
"Dinnea be daft, Rodney," Carson admonished him, folding his hands in his lap and scraping the bottom of the barrel of his strength so he could get through this conversation with Rodney.
"Well it sure sounded to me like you were saying goodbye," Rodney retorted. "Now, what's going on? What are they not telling us?"
Carson was used to this. As a physician, he dealt with his fair share of irate families, though with Rodney it was a bit different. The scientist had to be handled with kid gloves at times and Carson knew what losing John again was going to do to him.
"Rodney, John's been shot..."
"I know that!" his friend interrupted angrily.
Carson slammed an open palm down onto the armrest of his chair. "Damn it man, do ya want ta hear this or not?"
It shut Rodney up and the man had the good sense to look away.
"John has been shot. His body has suffered massive trauma that someone even half his age would have a hard time comin' back from. Now, I brought him here in the hopes that Atlantis might help, and maybe she is in her own way, but right now he isn't doing very well and we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that he might die."
"And what, just say goodbye? Give him permission to go?" Rodney lost his battle with calm and let his voice rise. "Cause I'm pretty sure that's what I just walked in on you doing."
"Aye laddie, I was." Rodney threw his arms up in a huff and stalked away to the other end of the room. "But only after I practically begged him to keep fighting! It's out of our hands now. Whether we like it or not."
"Well, I refuse to accept that." Rodney was facing the wall, shoulders heaving, and he didn't turn around as he said it.
"I know you do, lad."
"Then why do you? It's a crock of shit, Carson, and you know it!" Rodney finally turned around, his face a mixed bag of emotion.
"You are not responsible for any of this, Rodney. You know that, right?" Carson asked carefully, feeling the familiar pull of déjà vu. He'd had this same conversation with John a week or so ago.
"How can you say that?"
Carson sighed, realization washing over him. Rodney was shouldering the blame. Of course he was. "Because it's the truth."
"It was my plan, Carson. I'm the one who dragged him back to the Atlantis project in the first place!"
"Bloody hell, Rodney. Where do you think Lorne is right now, hmm? He's probably off hiding somewhere in the city blaming himself for everything that has happened as well. And do you not think that I don't blame myself? I missed all the signs that Fitzpatrick was a fake. He fooled everyone, John included. So no one person gets to shoulder all the blame for this alone! We're all responsible for what's happened here and I'll not sit idly by while Sean Fitzpatrick destroys us all from beyond the grave. I won't have it, Rodney! I just won't!"
He coughed then, oxygen unable to get in around his boiling emotions as Rodney rushed back over.
"I'm sorry," he muttered as Carson continued to struggle for breath. Rodney ran back over to the bed to retrieve the oxygen mask Carson had left sitting there. He held it out to him with shaking hands and Carson grabbed for it eagerly, pulling at the cold and steady flow of air until his lungs remembered how to work again.
"I'm so sorry," Rodney repeated a few minutes later when Carson had regained his composure.
"There's nothing to be sorry for," he said genuinely, pulling off the mask and setting it in his lap.
Rodney offered a weak smile back before collapsing onto the edge of Carson's empty bed. There was no fight left in him now. "I just don't think I'm ready to say goodbye to him yet."
"None of us are, laddie," Carson said quietly. "I think that's what maybe makes this part so difficult. We all get so wrapped up in our worries about how his death will affect our own lives, that we forget to think about what's best for him." Carson inclined his head towards John. "This isn't about us, Rodney, it never was, though I know it's hard to remember that at times."
"So you're saying I should let him go?" Rodney's eyes were wide and lost but they held no hint of anger now. "Just like that?"
"No, Rodney. That isn't what I'm telling you at all," Carson replied. "All I'm suggesting is that you make your peace with the fact that he might not pull through this, then let the chips fall where they may."
"So you want me to have faith then?" Rodney looked as though the word had left a bad taste in his mouth.
"Aye, in a way."
"You're not making any sense, my old friend," Rodney said with a shake of his head and a tired laugh.
"Maybe, I'm not. But I can promise you that they're doing everything they can for him medically. So maybe now it's time to just sit by his side and be there with him through whatever comes next. And if me telling him that I'll protect what he's leavin' behind helps him in those last few moments, then so be it."
Rodney lifted his chin defiantly but his eyes did not follow suit.
"I'm still not ready," he said quietly.
"I know, laddie," Carson replied, just as soft. "I know."
Far away from the Atlantis infirmary and the two men who sat grieving there beside John Sheppard's bed, a crescent moon had risen to the apex of the sky above the San Francisco Bay. Its ghostly shape lay reflected in the agitated surf beneath her balcony as Carrie watched it try to mingle with city lights in the water below. They reached out from the shore with luminescent fingers that raced across the rolling surface of the water like the lights of a passing party boat. The current tried to bring them in even closer. Waves broke against the side of Atlantis in a futile attempt, but they just didn't reach that far.
Carrie stood on the uppermost level of the tallest tower she could find and let the California wind mess her hair. Every so often a gust of it would whip up around her tower and lift the hair framing her face, strands of it getting caught in the wet tracks left behind by her tears.
No particular plan in mind, but desperate to feel anything other than her grief, Carrie placed two trembling hands against the cool metal of the balcony railing to try and connect with the energy that thrummed there beneath her palms. Everything around her thrummed and she didn't know if it was something that came from within Atlantis herself, or if it was just some interesting effect created by the water lapping up against the submerged sides of the city. Whatever caused the strange vibrations, the hum was sad, and she let it make a mournful circuit throughout her body. It carried off little bits of her in the process, but always left something behind in return.
"I miss him too," she whispered out into the wind, running a hand lightly along the railing. Maybe it was stupid and maybe it was all just a figment of her imagination, but it felt like Atlantis was
listening.
Carrie closed her eyes and a fresh wave of tears crested her lids and slid down her cheeks, turning icy in the wind.
"He's not doing very well and they say it won't be long now. So help him if you can, okay?" she pleaded quietly, sending out through her hands what she felt in her heart.
Atlantis seemed to still beneath her palms.
"Please, don't let him die."