Over the Edge
Disclaimer, Spoilers, Summary: See first chapter
Thank you for all the lovely reviews, I was really, really happy with the response to the first chapter.
Also, thank you to Eliabrith for bringing my attention to retracting 'balcony/railing' error!
Chapter Two: Shattered Dreams
"A man in my shoes runs a light,
All the papers lie tonight,
But falling over you
is the news of the day"
'Concentrate, John, concentrate!' He mentally berated himself for not paying enough attention to what McKay had originally told him to do. He thought it would just be the normal 'activate A, and B happens'. Instead, it was more like going through a long row of Christmas tree lights, testing every single light to find the broken one.
He felt as if he'd been here for hours. Days even. And then he found something. It was something new, a mental switch he hadn't activated before. He called out to Dr. McKay as he activated it, sure that he had found what they were looking for.
And then he heard McKay's voice shouting back to him.
"That's it Major, the auxiliary relays, we may yet get back in time for lunch."
He peered around the control panel, out onto the grounding station and there was McKay, his back to him, fiddling around with wires and computers, within seconds becoming completely absorbed in his work.
And he knew that if he walked around him and caught sight of his face, he wouldn't be able to help smiling at the intense look of concentration he would see on the scientists face.
And suddenly it was raining, and he was cold and wet. He reached out to catch the rain, and he stared in horror and astonishment as, instead of rain, red drops of blood splattered on to his hands.
Raising his head to see Rodney, his voice caught in his throat at the sight in front of him. McKay was now lying on his back, blood on his face and pooling around his head. Still, so still.
Shepherd let out a strangled cry and moved towards him.
The scene dissolved before his eyes and he awoke, sitting up in bed in the infirmary, a concerned nurse at his side, shushing him and gently pressing him back down onto the pillows.
The memories of what had happened flooded into him as he woke up and he spoke the first word that came into his head, "Rodney?"
The nurse only patted him on the shoulder and reassured him again that Dr. Beckett would be in to talk to him soon. He didn't know what time it was, or how long he'd been there. In fact, he could barely remember coming to the infirmary from the Jumper bay. Probably the combined shock and exhaustion, and hypothermia from the freezing cold ocean he had been flailing around in.
He should have gone in after him straight away. He shouldn't have waited, leaving McKay to fend for himself like that. What the hell was he thinking?
The Athosian children had called him a hero because he'd been brave enough to take on the Wraith. Some hero he was now, not even brave enough to jump into the water to save someone.
Somewhere in the back of his fatigued mind he knew it wasn't true, that the fact that he hadn't dived in to the water immediately had nothing to do with bravery, but he was too exhausted to process these new thoughts and too overwhelmed by guilt to rationalise anything.
He must have drifted off again, and he woke this time to the sound of Beckett's voice and a gentle shaking of his shoulder.
He opened his eyes and saw the doctor peering down at him in concern.
"How is he, Doc?" His voice was raspy, and quieter than he'd intended. Beckett's reply was quiet, his voice gentle and even toned. Reassuring, like the way a parent talks to an ill child.
"We've stopped the bleeding from his head wound but he's on a ventilator, he hasn't started breathing for himself yet. He being monitored in the Intensive Care room. We're hopeful he'll make a full recovery"
Shepherd could tell that there was something that Beckett is not telling him. He stared at him questioningly until the doctor broke eye contact. The something was bad, very bad.
"What is it? What's wrong?" His voice sounded panicked and high pitched, strange to his own ears. Doctor Beckett's hand had moved to his mouth as he contemplated whatever it was he was about to tell Shepherd.
"There might be brain damage."
The world stood still. Just for a second, a moment, a blink of an eye. The time it takes for someone to fall head over heels in love. Or for someone to die.
When Shepherd didn't react to his first statement, Beckett continued.
"There was possible oxygen deprivation, between being in the water and the resuscitation attempts in the puddle jumper. We had to restart his heart. He also seems to have suffered head injuries while he was in the water. His head must have hit the outer wall fairly hard. Luckily we haven't seen any swelling on the MRI scan, so there's no immediate life-threatening risk. We have to wait for him to wake up and start breathing independently before we know what damage was done."
The Major was shocked into silence, still reeling from the doctors first statement. He couldn't quite get his head around it. Brain. Damage. They were two ordinary words really, but put them together and suddenly they brought up all kinds of frightening possibilities. And each of these possibilities, in some way or another, meant that the McKay lying in the next room was not the McKay who'd saved all their lives just two days ago.
He barely registered Beckett's words as he suggested that Shepherd get some rest and that if he needed anything to ask the nurse. He stared into space for a while, trying not to contemplate all the horrible realities behind the words 'brain damage'.
He didn't even notice Weir's presence until she moved directly into his line of sight. She gave him a small joyless smile, and enquired how he was. He could feel the worry she exuded. Like a magnetic field surrounding her. Or an aura the colour of a grey, thunderous sky, identical to his own.
She didn't stay long, squeezing his hand in reassurance, giving him a few meaningless words of comfort. He was surprised not to see any blame in her eyes but, then again, he wasn't sure that she knew it was his fault.
He couldn't remember if he had managed to explain what had happened when they had brought him into the infirmary. He vaguely remembered babbling something about the balcony, and McKay falling into the water, but not the specifics. For all he knew, he had told them that Rodney had swum off with pink dolphins holding green polka dotted umbrellas and singing 'glory, glory, hallelujah'.
After Weir left, he settled back down to sleep, figuring that it was the quickest way to pass the time until Rodney woke up. He tried not to think 'if'. There was no 'if'. Rodney would wake up, he wouldn't miss a chance to spend forever and a day guilt tripping Shepherd for almost killing him.
It was only a matter of when.
As the Major drifted off to sleep, Dr. Beckett was in the next room, sitting on a stool next to McKay's bed. The hissing sound of the ventilator filled the room. At this moment it was keeping Rodney alive, keeping up the gaseous exchange in his blood.
But it wasn't enough. Rodney needed to wake up, to breathe for himself. Though the ventilator could keep him alive indefinitely, Beckett knew that it wouldn't. McKay had a 'no extraordinary means' note in his medical file, which meant that eventually, if he didn't recover, life support would have to be turned off.
"Come on Rodney, you're more stubborn than this, fight it man, fight it!"
Even in his unconscious state, some of Beckett's word filtered into McKay's brain, adding to the already present chaos. Neurons were firing, talking to other neurons, trying to make sense of the confusion.
The medulla, the part of Rodney's brain that usually controlled his breathing, had stopped when Rodney drowned, but was now attempting to restart. Other parts of his brain were in trouble, his hippocampus no longer able to retrieve all the information it needed.
Rodney himself, his consciousness, was somewhere deep and dark, smothered, drowning. He was caught in what seemed like a never-ending nightmare with no light at the end of such a long tunnel.
Authors brief note: I hope you enjoyed it this chapter, constructive criticism is always welcome!
The repetition of 'And' during Shepherd's dream was intentional and the quotes at the beginning of the chapter were from the song "The Ghost in You" originally by the Psychedelic Furs, though the Counting Crows version is more what I had in mind.