Part 2 – Back from the dead
The present
It was not until Sora was out of surgery and resting quietly in the infirmary that Rodney would leave her. He had looked at Carson with an uncharacteristic plea in his blue eyes as a nurse had patched up the abrasions on his hands and knees and cleaned the cut on his cheek bone. "I have to be there when she wakes," he said.
Carson had just nodded. "She'll be under for the next few hours Rodney. I wouldn't want to keep her out for much longer than that so if you're back by six-ish you'll be fine laddie." Carson gave Rodney an appraising look. "I don't suppose you can stay here can you? I'd like to give you a good check out and you look like you could use a good few hours of sleep."
McKay shook his head. "I have to check in and give my report," he said.
"Aye, I thought as much." Carson gave a quick smile and placed his had gently on McKay's arm. "It's good to have you back Rodney."
Six months earlier
A very drunk Lieutenant Colonel sat with an equally drunk Chief Surgeon trying to forget the events of the past 12 hours. Dr Weir looked at the drunken pair and almost smiled. At least they had been able to drown their sorrows. She couldn't afford that luxury herself. She thought back to this morning. She remembered how she had sat at her desk, breathing deeply and trying to compose herself. She had addressed many memorial services but somehow never thought that she would ever speak at McKay's. The man was a survivor. He had seemed somehow invincible and had cheated death so many times it seemed perverse that he could die like this – in an accident. She could remember feeling the constriction in her throat and the fear that she would never get through the service without crying. She remembered steeling herself as she pushed back her chair and walked to the mess room where the memorial was to be held.
Sheppard had sat at the front of the room, the marks of the accident that had taken Rodney's life all to clear on his pale face. Teyla and Ronnan stood behind him, Teyla's hands resting protectively on his wheel chair. Elizabeth walked through the waiting crowd and took her place at the podium and, clearing her throat she began to speak.
"We have gathered here today to pay our respects to, and to honour the life and memory of, Rodney McKay." She paused and then continued with a smile on her face. "Speaking personally, I found him to be the most irritating man I ever knew. He was arrogant, petty and bad tempered. He was also one of the brilliant scientists of our generation; he was caring, compassionate, an appalling cook and, I am proud to say it, my friend."
She broke off and looked around the room making mental note of the people there and, with the habit of a lifetime of diplomacy, trying to assess their response to her words. She saw Zalenka, arms folded defensively across his chest with tears openly running down his face, Katie Brown, her face buried in her hands, sobbing on Cadman's shoulder, Beckett, pale and impassive holding Cadman's hand. She glanced down at Sheppard and saw his hands gripping the arms of his wheelchair until the knuckles were white. Please stop blaming yourself – it was an accident, she willed him to listen, to absolve himself from the guilt she could feel was consuming him but knew that it would take more than the week it had been before John would come to terms with the loss of his friend and favourite protagonist. Elizabeth carried on speaking, trying to pay a fitting tribute to a brilliant man who had, despite himself and all his defence mechanisms, had managed to become one of her closet friends.
"And now I ask you all, please raise your glasses to toast Rodney McKay's life and legacy."
A murmured chorus of, "Rodney McKay," echoed around the mess hall.
"And please, help yourselves to food, and rest assured none of it contains lemon…"
A low chuckle came from the man sitting beside her in the wheel chair, "He would have liked that – damn hypochondriac."
She squeezed his shoulder and said, "I know." She just wished that they had found his body….
The present
Elizabeth Weir, John Sheppard and Steven Caldwell sat in the main conference room in the Atlantis control tower waiting for McKay to tell them what had happened to him and where he had been for the past six months. McKay came in accompanied by a security officer and sat down in his usual chair as if he had never been gone. However, instead of his usual stance, leant back in the chair, he sat with his head bent and stared intently at the backs of his hands as he searched for the right words. He decided that he should just jump straight in, drew a deep breath and started to speak his words tumbling over one another in his haste to tell his story.
"I don't remember the accident. Not really. Just that we were packing up and we were in the jumper. It suddenly started moving, there was a jolt and," he shrugged and grimaced, "then I woke up and I was with them and she was there and boy was I mad with you guys." He didn't need to explain who he meant by she. "Then I realised I was in trouble, deep trouble. A doctor came to see me and he told me I had been there for eight days and had been more or less out of it for most of that time. I have no idea if that is true or not, they could have told me anything – I had no frame of reference, they took everything. Hey, what's the day today?" He looked up expectantly.
Six months earlier
For days he had drifted in and out of consciousness making no effort to hold any thought – he just existed in a mist of pain, cold and nausea. Floods of hot and cold swept over him and he alternately shivered with cold and raved in the delirium of fever. He existed and suffered, an overall dull ache punctuated with sharp pains. Intermittently he was aware of activity around him, of low voices, of periods of light and darkness and a voice, insistent, asking him questions, a soft, feminine, persistent voice; and gentle hands sponging down his face. He lost the thread of his thoughts again and drifted off into fevered dreams. Delirium gave way to lucidity and he lay there trying to make sense of what was going on around him. He struggled to move his head and open his eyes but failed. Pain stabbed at his temples and coursed down his neck and into his chest – a low moan escaped him. The quiet whispers that had filled his ears broke off and he heard footsteps coming towards him. The nausea returned and, trying to ignore what he could hear around him, he concentrated instead on a return to oblivion.
His next lucid thought was, Christ this hurt. He focussed on his breathing; it didn't seem so easy any more. His head hurt, his lungs felt as if they were filled with water, there were stabbing pains in his side and that idiot woman was still talking, her words an irritation; an incomprehensible buzzing in his head. He opened his eyes and struggled to focus on the face in front of him, the face that he had seen every time he had returned, however briefly, to consciousness. No, not time to wake up he decided then closed his eyes and tried to will himself back to sleep.
"Can you hear me? Come up, wake up, please, I just saw you open your eyes – please tell me you are awake. Wake up – show me a sign that you can hear me. Wake up, can you hear me?" It was the voice again, the soft and feminine voice. Soft and feminine was usually a plus point, but this voice was relentless which was not as all he wanted to do was to sleep. He knew he would have to acknowledge her before she would go away and let him sleep.
"Shurrup an' g'way," he slurred.
"What did you say? Did you just try to say something?"
Great, he was not only dealing with a jabbering idiot, they were deaf too. Of course he tried to say something but his mouth didn't seem to work at the moment – couldn't they see that? His tongue felt thick and dry. He opened his eyes and focussed on the face in front of him. "Ah crap." He closed his eyes again and concentrated on waking up from this nightmare.
"Can you hear me? What is your name? I need to hear you say something… Speak to me; I need to hear you." The voice was persistent, nagging. McKay faced the fact that maybe this nightmare was real, he was already awake and there was going to be no happy awakening in the Atlantis infirmary. "What did you say to me?" Cool water was dribbled over his dry lips and he licked at it greedily. More water followed and then gentle hands sponged down his face. All the time the questions continued. He now knew she was not going to leave him alone until he responded. Summoning his will power he licked his lips and managed to speak.
"I said, shut up and go away," he enunciated carefully but even so the words were slurred and nearly incomprehensible. "Please," he added as an afterthought.
The gentle sponging down of his face stopped for a moment and he opened his eyes. The face in front of him came into sharp focus – it was a pretty face, young and not someone he had ever expected to see again. He groaned, closed his eyes and mumbled softly, "I am so screwed."
"Do you know who you are? Tell me your name. Do you know who I am?" More questions.
He tried desperately to think of the best thing to say or do but his thoughts moved at the speed of cold treacle. He swallowed and grimaced at the pain this caused and spoke again, "I am Rodney McKay, you are Sora of the Genii and I am so screwed." His voice was the merest whisper but Sora had definitely heard him.
She smiled and then turned away to speak to the medic standing beside her, "Go and tell Dr Felitt that our patient is awake and alert." She turned back to him and resumed sponging down his face. Under normal circumstances a pretty blonde doing this would have classified as an A1 fantasy (although he did prefer shorter hair) but somehow this was not a moment to savour. Normally the blondes in his fantasies were not pale with exhaustion and didn't have deep rings under their eyes.
Sora looked at him again and smiled. "Would you like some more water?" she asked. He gave the slightest of nods and stared at her wondering how the hell he had got into this situation and trying (and failing) to force some sort of order on his mind. She moistened his lips with the sponge and gently dribbled water into his mouth. "I know this must be very confusing you but be assured that I am pleased to see you are awake and lucid, Dr McKay. I have been very worried about you." She smiled again.
He had been savouring the water in his mouth but suddenly swallowed and then inhaled sharply at the pain this caused. "How did I get here?" he demanded. "I can't remember…." He began to panic. "Where are my friends? What have you done to them?" He tried to push himself up to one elbow and succeeded in awakening the dull ache that was his body into a million different searing, stabbing pains. He swore under his breathe, "and what the hell's wrong with me?"
Sora put one hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him back supine. She laid a finger on his lips. "Hush," she said, "don't worry about them – they are fine. Now the doctor is coming to see you."
The present
"Today is the 18th June," said Sheppard.
"Well, what do you know, they told the truth about that," McKay said. He frowned and picked up the glass of water on the table in front of him and his eyes grew distant again. "I don't remember much, just that whenever I woke up, Sora was there. When I came to for a bit longer, she called the doctor; he told me what had happened and where I was," he sighed. "I was in pretty bad shape and it er, kinda, er freaked me out," he confessed.
"The Elians thought you were dead Rodney. You must have been in pretty bad shape for them to think that," Elizabeth's voice was calm and quiet.
"Yeah, well I was," he replied and didn't elaborate further just waved his left hand vaguely towards his right temple where they could see the scar that tracked up into his hair. He knew he would have to go back to see Carson at some stage and the full catalogue could wait until then. He knew that the Elians were not a sophisticated people and, considering his injuries, mistaking him for a corpse was an understandable error although it had caused him to rage in impotent fury for the first few weeks he was with the Genii.
