I believe in magical medical fanfiction pixie dust and all. The ending to the story got lost. Its gone, kawoosh. Don't know where it went. It saddens me.
Part 2
"Oh no," McKay muttered quietly. He desperately leaned over and grabbed for Carson's black canvas bag that lay just out of his reach. His fingers curled around the coarse material and he jerked it closer.
Beckett's medical rucksack scoured a thin trail in the loose red dirt floor.
"Shit," Sheppard reaffirmed as he glanced quickly back over his shoulder to see Beckett once again start tossing and turning.
Rodney twisted and quickly opened the medical bag ruffling through its contents.
"What are you doing?" The Colonel asked, skirting his attention between the forest and the building movement in the back of the cave.
"Looking for something to knock him out, or make him sleep, or something," McKay stated with a touch of fear colored by the frustration of always having to explain his actions.
"You can't give him anything. Hell, he's already been drugged by God knows what."
"Are you serious?" McKay asked incredulously. "Conan, there already shot him once. He seemed to have survived that!"
Sheppard tried to keep his calm, wishing that he could be in two places at once. "Just make him comfortable and if anything, try and keep him quiet." Sheppard said as he turned his attention back to the outside and searched the surrounding area for any hint of the Wraith.
"We've got to do something," McKay exclaimed. His eyes darted back to Beckett who showed increasing signs of coming too, and snapped his panicked gaze back to the shadowed contents within the medical bag.
"Yes, he is becoming more irritable again," Teyla noted calmly from behind McKay.
What was it with the Pegasus Galaxy and stating the obvious?
As if on cue, Beckett shoved the blanket away from himself, kicking it off with quick frustrated movements and groaned. He rolled onto his side facing the interior wall of the cave, turning his back to the others.
"Come on Carson, keep quiet," McKay muttered glancing quickly over his shoulder fearing that Wraith would descend upon them at any moment.
"Perhaps he'll continue to sleep." Teyla hoped. She rubbed at her jaw feeling the growing lump and bruise. It was tender. Dr. Beckett should not go through 'Cleansing Ceremonies'.
"He will not sleep," Dex stated in his matter of fact way. He swiveled in his squatted stance at the cave entrance to watch the three behind him. His left eye was swollen shut and a flap of skin had been hurriedly taped back in place over his cheek.
Dr. Beckett packed a powerful punch.
Carson shifted a leg uneasily and then swatted a hand irritably at his head. In the next moment he rolled over, groaning again as muscles protested and joints ached. He arched his back and scrubbed furiously at his head almost growling.
"McKay, keep him quiet," Sheppard hissed. The Colonel hunkered down behind a giant boulder that stood just off center of the cave entrance. He brought his P-90 up to his shoulder and concentrated on something that moved just behind the tree line. Rodney watched as Sheppard tracked the movement with the barrel of his gun.
McKay felt his heart race and turned desperately back around to stare at Carson. He found the medical doctor staring back at him with red-rimmed, blue glazed eyes that did not express any hint of recognition. His pupils were almost nonexistent.
"Oh, um, Carson. Hi. You with us?" Rodney offered a small wave. "Your good friend Rodney, here. Good friends---why don't you just go back to sleep…You should sleep…Okay? Carson?" McKay's uneasy forced smile dipped a little as he backed away.
"Dr. Beckett, do not be alarmed," Teyla smiled kindly and insinuated herself between the two doctors. "You have been drugged and are sick. The Wraith are near. You must be quiet." She kept her smile in place as she tried to keep the Colonel and Ronon within her peripheral vision, "We are trying to get back to Atlantis."
Beckett stared at Teyla furrowing his brow, "Who 'r you?...I don't know you." His voice was soft but hoarse and his words were only partially articulated. He shivered. Sore muscles tightened and trembled forcing him to close heated eyes and groan. He rolled onto his side facing them, drawing his knees up to his abdomen and tucking his chin closer to his chest as he squeezed his eyes closed.
"We are friends, Dr. Beckett." Teyla maintained her smile and rested a gentle hand on the side of his head. The heat of a building fever worried her. "Let us help you."
"Och, Mum, it hurts," he whispered despondently, closing his eyes and wrapping his arms around his midsection. Beckett moaned as he rolled into her touch.
Teyla glanced quickly over her shoulder to McKay and then Sheppard who had turned his head with raised eyebrows. "He is reacting badly to their cleansing drugs."
"God, he's not even in there," Rodney stated worriedly. "What are we going to do?"
"Nothing we can do," Dex whispered. "They are close."
"Teyla, get up here," Sheppard ordered. "McKay, you've got Beckett."
"What?" Rodney's eyes widened in disbelief. "What do you mean, 'I've got Beckett'?"
The Athosian rubbed her thumb against the side of Carson's heated temple and mumbled something softly under her breath. She paused for only a moment and then quickly and silently stood, scooping up her weapon and clipping it to her vest in one seamless, deadly motion. She crossed the distance without noticeably disturbing a grain of sand and joined the Colonel and Dex at the entrance of the cave.
McKay watched her go, quietly relieved that they had made friends with the Athosian people.
Beckett groaned at the loss of the touch and rubbed furiously at the side of his head scratching his feet irritably in the dirt. He moaned and quickly cinched back into himself turning over to face the cave wall again.
"McKay, keep him quiet," Sheppard whispered harshly, realizing he gave Rodney an almost impossible order.
"What am I suppose to do? Smother him with a pillow if he gets too loud?"
"No," Sheppard answered with a touch of a warning in his voice.
"Keep him safe, Little Man," Dex ordered.
"Oh, thanks, that really clarified things," McKay muttered. His attention was pulled from Ronon when Beckett wrapped his arms around his stomach and groaned, drawing his knees tighter into his abdomen.
Carson quickly rolled again onto his back, pulling at his shirt, trying to tear it away from his hypersensitive skin. "It hurts," he mumbled tugging restlessly at the cloth trying to twist away from it. Taut muscles in his forearms strained under heated skin. Triceps bulged and tapered toward his bent elbows. His wrists flexed and extended, rolling his scuffed fists to and fro. With no relief, he irritably rolled onto his side once again facing the inner craggy wall of the cave. The blanket trailed haphazardly behind him.
"We're so screwed," McKay whispered to himself. He pulled his own bag of gear closer to himself and blindly searched for one of his scanners. His holstered .9mm banged against his leg giving him a mixed sense of comfort.
The silence in the cave thickened as tension rose. The crunch of heavy footfalls just outside their little hideout became increasingly louder as the Wraith drew near.
The small group held their fire. There was no way they could make this a running firefight. There would be no dash for the gate. At least not yet. Not until the Wraith left or disengaged the stargate.
Sheppard ignored the two men behind him, trusting McKay to keep Beckett safe at all possible costs and hopefully quiet.
The colonel watched crouched low behind the boulder as a bone faced Wraith strode by.
He could have reached out and pushed it.
Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla held their breath. Where ever a drone walked a black coated overseer was normally close behind.
The Wraith paused at the entrance of the cave and stared at the boulders as if trying to decide something. The bright sunlight blinded it to the dark recesses of the cave's interior.
The sudden, unexpected cry of pain from within the cave made whatever decision the Wraith drone contemplated that much easier. No leather coated, green skin, brain was needed for decision making in this situation.
"Damn it, McKay," Sheppard hissed and stood up, his finger closing around the trigger of the P-90.
Ronon's pistol blasted first. The drone Wraith was flung backward, arms flailing, with a charcoal singed gaping wound to its chest.
"No, Carson! No!" McKay's panicked shouts had Sheppard pivoting around just in time to see Beckett bowl into and then over McKay, knocking the astrophysicist flying backward.
Beckett bolted for the entrance of the cave a wild terrorized, look brightened his eyes.
"Doc! No!" Sheppard hollered in warning.
He released his grip on his P-90, letting it slap against his chest and abdomen, and dove at the rushing physician. He clipped Beckett around the knees. Both toppled to the ground.
Beckett fought in a drugged haze. He struck blindly and with a liberating force that felt no reciprocal pain. Sheppard was fighting a losing battle.
Teyla took up the Colonel's defensive position keeping an eye out for more Wraith.
Beckett rolled free of Sheppard and tried to jump to his feet. A solid flashing knee accidentally slammed squarely into the underside of the Colonel's jaw, smashing Sheppard upward and backward into the dirt.
The Scot scrambled to his feet and once again rushed the cave entrance.
The solid red energy burst from Ronon's gun hit him square in the chest. It stopped Beckett's blind charge and staggered him back a step. Remarkably, Carson remained on his feet and took a faltering, stammering step forward, determined on reaching the outside world and the sun.
Ronon fired a second time.
The red energy blast struck the physician again mid chest. Beckett lurched back a second step, his arms jerked and twitched at his side. He weaved drunkenly on his feet for a moment and then slowly sank to his knees. He paused there, staring straight ahead with glistening blue eyes surrounded by small spidery lines of scleral blood vessels.
In a moment of clarity, he looked pleadingly to Ronon.
"Help me," he whispered, just before falling forward onto his chest and face with his arms limply at his side.
McKay scrambled to his feet and rushed to Beckett, "Obviously on stun. Right?" He spared Ronon a worried glance.
The big Satedan merely nodded.
"Easy, Rodney," Sheppard mumbled struggling to his own feet and staggering his way unsteadily to the pair. He spit a wad of fresh blood to the ground and ran his tongue over his teeth. No telltale gaps were present. Sheppard knelt on the other side of Beckett. "Ronon, didn't have a choice."
"Yeah, well, multiple stunner blasts can't be good for him," Rodney grumbled searching clumsily for a jugular pulse.
"Better than getting sucked dry; I'd think." The colonel turned his attention to Ronon. "Drag that life sucker in here out of the open…no reason to further advertising where we are."
"Probably," Rodney muttered. "Help me roll him over." McKay groaned as he tried to move Beckett. "Well, I know where all the food's been disappearing to on Atlantis."
Sheppard quirked an eyebrow and helped McKay.
Together Sheppard and McKay rolled Beckett onto his back. The physician's nose bled freely. Blood streamed from his left nostril, tracking immediately to the left and cutting through the fine dust and dirt that clung to his face.
"Hold his head up a bit," Sheppard ordered. McKay complied without comment. The colonel quickly brushed some of the dirt of Carson's face searching for any cuts or bruises. "Alright let's get him further toward the back."
The two dragged Carson back to the rear of the cave and dropped him unceremoniously on his twisted blanket. Sheppard nudged the half full canteens nearby with the back of his fist. They wouldn't be able to stay here for long, not with their supplies dwindling.
The colonel unvelcroed one of his vest's upper pockets and pulled out a pair of plastic restraints.
"What? What are you doing?" McKay leaned backed away from Sheppard, distancing himself from the colonel and his intentions.
"Listen, McKay," Sheppard spoke wearily, not liking what he was about to do but realizing it was necessary. "He's out of his mind right now. He's got no idea who we are or where we are." The Colonel lashed the plastic restraints around Beckett's dirty wrists, securing them tightly in front. "We can't risk him attacking anyone or trying to take off again." Sheppard moved to Beckett's ankles and secured those as well. "It's for his own good. He's a hell of a lot stronger than he looks."
"I can watch him," McKay argued, "He just took me by surprise." Panic and revulsion brightened his eyes.
Having been held captive by Koyla and his men on Atlantis had put a bitter and frightened taste in McKay's mouth. He had no stomach for personal violence. He was not a physical man, not if he could help it. Physical violence and restraint directed toward himself or one of his associates, let alone a friend, was horrifically revolting. Koyla and his little sadistic troop of Genii had turned Rodney's slight hesitancy into a full blown, conscious loathing.
Yes, McKay grudgingly understood the need for restraints on an intellectual level however it did not negate the physical sickening turn that gripped his gut whenever someone threatened violence or restraints on another. Earthling or not. There was something wrong about it, having lived through it and survived it; he found it to be more of an emotional/ raw reaction than a rational one and he despised Koyla and the Genii for exposing it and laying it bare.
"I know, Rodney," Sheppard agreed softly, understanding on more levels than he thought Rodney might have realized, "but he didn't take me by surprise and damn near took my head off." Sheppard tugged on the plastic cuffs that cinched Beckett's ankles together and then finally looked up into the unsure visage of McKay.
The necessity of this precaution was not Rodney's fault. Sheppard had to make that clear. "And earlier today he damn near laid out Ronon. If he does it again with a whole contingent of Wraith out there none of us stands a chance." He kept his gaze on Rodney hoping to see a spark of understanding, hoping to see the self-induced weight of blame get shifted.
The moment was interrupted by the Runner.
Ronon dragged the dead Wraith by one of its arms into the middle of the cave. He stared silently at the restraints which tightly secured Beckett's wrists and ankles. "He will be angry with you when he comes too."
"Yeah," Sheppard breathed, "but at least if it happens then it means we're alive."
Ronon nodded his head in acquiescence.
Sheppard and McKay slowly stood and joined the other two at the mouth of the cave. McKay looked back over his shoulder to Carson, who lay on his side in the thick shadows, alone, bound hand and foot. "It might not keep him quiet, you know."
"I know." Sheppard responded quietly. He let his sharp gaze glance the surrounding forest, not allowing his eyes to rest on any one spot.
He wouldn't risk placing a proper gag on Carson; suffocation and choking were too much of a real hazard. He'd rather take down another Wraith than risk killing a friend for their safety.
