Written for the Writers Anonymous Night Owl Flash Challenge.
This has 1205 words without the AN according to my word processor.
Jennifer leans against the railing of her balcony. Silently watching the first stars illuminate the Pegasus sky and sprinkle the ocean with dots. The city lights grow darker but the main tower is always illuminated. Teams come back from various planets that have a different day and night schedule, even on earth you could call someone on the other side of the planet and have them have daytime, but for her it was night.
A glance at her watch tells her, she is going to be on shift in a little bit under 10 minutes. She hopes for a quiet shift. A night she can spend finally catching up on the paperwork that has piled up on her desk after being named the Chief Medical Officer of the Atlantis Expedition.
Walking through the slightly less busy corridors she remembers her first night on Atlantis. She had been scared as hell but also very much excited to work under Carson. The Scott who had taken her under his wing so quickly and still had treated her as an equal all at the same time. Their shift together had been spent getting acquainted with the wide variety of ancient technology they had at their disposal and how to work them. She had her first dose of the gene therapy, he had pioneered, on earth, and on that occasion, it had been especially obvious, and devastating, that the therapy had failed in her.
Carson had had a natural connection with the machines and worked them almost effortlessly. Some of the screens just showed him what he wanted to see without him even moving a muscle. He simply had to think about it.
Jennifer softly shakes her head at herself. She still hears his voice talking her through the harder parts of some surgeries. The ones she failed especially. Nights that she debated going home when she didn't think she'd make it another day in this job where you could lose a patient any second.
A tear slowly makes its way down her cheek, and she swallows thickly.
She failed him.
Carson died and she got his job.
Even now it still feels wrong to be addressed as the Chief Medical Officer of Atlantis, a position that will always be Doctor Carson Beckett's to her, but here she is walking into her infirmary, getting the updates on the overnight patients and a quick rundown on the expected teams returning, including their scheduled times.
Sitting down at her desk Jennifer lets her gaze wander around the dimly lit infirmary. Four beds are occupied by patients that need to be under observation. But from the charts and the updates, she heard none of them should require her immediate attention.
It's going to be a quiet shift. Pops into her mind for a quick second before she wipes that thought away. Eyes wide open inwardly praying she hadn't just jinxed it.
Jennifer grabs her tablet and starts going over the open case files that still need her notes or other attention. Ever since the long nights in college she takes notes by hand.
Her fingers trace the silver letters on her notebook's cover, it just says notes, but it had been a welcome gift from Carson, and she will always treasure this one even if it is almost filled.
With a jerk of her head, she opens the pages she needs and goes over her notes, and separates out what has to go into the patient files and what will have to go into the research pile. The other part of her job. Overseeing all the research projects. All the scientists trying to figure out how to, maybe one day, use what they learn in Pegasus to help the people of Earth.
Jennifer works diligently and is almost finished when the Gate alarm sounds. There is an immediate hustle and bustle around her, not unlike the one that is normal by day, but at night it can only mean one thing: unscheduled Gate activation.
Jennifer springs into action glances at her watch and then waits for the control room to patch through whichever team leader had just dialed in.
When there is no static bustling in her earpiece after 30 seconds, she shares a glance with the nurse on shift who shakes her head. She hadn't heard anything either. Did that mean, that although it was unscheduled nothing had happened?
Worried she sits down again and reaches for her notebook one more time. She remembers another night back on earth.
She had still been in university and the fire alarm in her dorm had gone off, startling her out of her studies. It had been the catalyst for Jennifer to learn a technique to get back to her notes in whichever impossible situation she was in.
Taking notes, revising notes, it didn't matter as long as she had pen and paper, and right now in the almost deserted infirmary of Atlantis, she would try to do the same thing.
She turns back to the stack of new research and a molecule sketch throws her back to when she first saw the drafts for Carson's gene therapy. She had been working a night shift at the DOD research facility and just a few days later she had been invited to meet with Dr. Carson Beckett. A man she had simply admired for his work at that point, but one who had grown into her mentor and friend.
A small smile forms on her lips. Even if she missed him still terribly. Like any other, it felt good to remember the good times.
A small commotion from outside the infirmary brings Jennifer back into work mode. She knew those voices and the high pitch almost squeal was none other than Dr. Rodney McKay.
What has happened now?
She has reached the main room of the infirmary when the team rushes in Rodney is flailing his arms and complaining.
"Those stupid kids. Can't they just sleep at night? And who even gave them lemons to grow?" the irate doctor rants on.
Hearing lemon sends Jennifer and her nurse immediately to the allergy medications, but McKay doesn't actually seem to be in or on his way to anaphylaxis.
Marie instructs Rodney to take a seat on one of the beds and Teyla, in all her grace hands over a yellow lemon-shaped fruit "This is what Rodney fell in. We call those aphrades. A bittersweet fruit used to treat all sort of mild sicknesses, much like your flu."
"Thank you, Teyla. I will test it for the allergens, and" she turns to John Sheppard who looks more annoyed than worried, "we'll keep Rodney here under observation."
"Sorry, for the commotion," Sheppard offers meekly before grinning "but this means we can push debrief until morning and I get a good night's sleep."
Jennifer smiles to herself while walking to the research terminal, and surely just one look at the date on aphrades and she can see Carson already made a note: Not everything that looks like a lemon is a lemon. No citrus allergens.
This time she can laugh. And she realizes the feelings will always be there and the memory but maybe her grief would lessen over time.