Part 4 – Integration
Atlantis conference room - the present
They had sat in uncomfortable silence for five minutes until Elizabeth decided that enough was enough. "I think that you need some rest Rodney. I'd like you to go to the infirmary and have Carson check you over thoroughly. You should spend the night there and we can start again in the morning." He turned to look at her, squinting against the light that shone in through the stained glass of the windows.
"Is that an order?" he asked quietly.
"It's a suggestion," she replied.
Caldwell's scowl deepened. "I agree with Dr Weir. The rest can wait until the morning. We're glad to have you back, Dr McKay."
McKay looked over at Sheppard who, with a troubled frown on his face, nodded and said, "I'm with them on this Rodney. Go get some sleep." McKay sighed and then accepted their decision realising that they probably wanted some time to talk amongst themselves about what he had told them and its implications.
He stood and walked slowly to the door. With one hand on the doorpost he stopped and looked back over his shoulder towards them, "What time?"
"Make it 10.00 unless you would prefer later?" He shook his head and, followed by an S.O. carried on his way back to the infirmary.
When he got there, rather than going straight to see Carson, he made his way to the small room at the far end of the infirmary. He went in, pushed aside the curtains around the bed to stand next to where Sora lay and looked down at her sleeping quietly. He heard Carson coming in behind him. Without taking his eyes off her he asked, "How is she doing?"
"Amazingly well considering I just took a bullet out of her lung. Doesn't look like she has that kind of strength in her does she?" Carson's right hand unconsciously moved up to rub his nose that Sora had broken during the hurricane.
McKay smiled as he saw that gesture. "She certainly is one tough sonofabitch," he muttered.
Carson turned his professional eye to look at Rodney. "So, how are you laddie?" he asked. "Come on, let me have a good look at you whilst she's still asleep. Follow me." McKay followed Carson as he left the room. He sat down on the examination table and obediently did as Carson bade him without the complaints and snarking he would have usually produced.
"So not only was there the head injury, fracture of the humerus, puncture wound in the solar plexus, there was a dislocated shoulder, multiple lacerations, bruising and broken ribs?" McKay nodded. "Anything else you ought to tell me about laddie?"
"Broken leg. But that wasn't in the accident. That was later - about 4 months ago."
Carson looked up at McKay with one eyebrow raised. "And how did that happen?"
McKay swallowed and said, "Impact. It's OK now." His manner discouraged any further questions. "Can we stop?" he asked. "Shouldn't she be waking up soon?"
Carson looked at him and worried about the subdued Rodney McKay he saw before him. "OK that's it for this evening, except that I'd just like to take a wee bit of blood. Tomorrow it's an MRI for you and I'd like to run some neuropsychological testing to make sure there are no leftovers from that head trauma and take a few x-rays of that leg."
Carson reached for his instrument tray and nodded to McKay indicating that he wanted access to his right arm. "Sadist." muttered McKay as he rolled up his sleeve. Carson smiled. That was more the McKay he knew.
Fifteen minutes later McKay was sitting next to Sora waiting for her to wake up.
Six months ago, the Genii home world
McKay lay staring at the wall. He'd been staring at the same wall for three days now and knew it intimately. He hadn't said a word to anyone since his conversation with Cowen three days earlier. He'd responded to the medical staff's questions with minute nods or shakes of his head and had flatly refused to respond to Sora's overtures at conversation.
He knew which of the two options Cowen had presented him with he would choose and, in his heart of hearts, he knew that it was the right one, but it still felt like a betrayal of his friends. As he thought about them he felt the anger build up again. How could they have let this happen to him?
We don't leave our people behind.
How could they have done this? He wanted to scream, to shout at someone, to hit out, to make someone suffer.
He had never felt more alone in his life.
He heard someone walking towards his bed. "Do you want to talk Dr McKay?" Sora was back. She perched on the edge of McKay's bed and laid a hand on his wrist. He moved his arm away breaking the contact and carried on staring at the wall.
She persisted. "Dr McKay, I know that this is not easy for you but it is better that you make your choice, accept it and start building a life for yourself here." McKay grunted and carried on staring at the wall. Sora sighed and then tried again. "Dr McKay, the Genii are very experienced in this. Integrating people into our society is part of our culture and history. It is one of the ways we acquire knowledge and new ideas. We have always welcomed worthy refugees from other worlds that have culled and have provided them with a safe haven here."
"I'm not a refugee. I am a prisoner," he said through clenched teeth.
Encouraged by the fact he had responded at all she carried on, putting her hand on his wrist again. "Our experience has shown us that there is a standard pattern of behaviour for those being assimilated into our society."
McKay snorted and turned to her. "Assimilated? As in resistance is futile?" he snapped.
Sora frowned. "I don't understand."
McKay sighed, of course she wouldn't. He shook off her hand again and went back to staring at the wall. He wondered abstractly if the discolouration at the bottom of the wall was due to rising damp or some sort of problem with condensation running down the walls and how there came to be a splodge of brown paint halfway up the wall.
Sora looked down at the man lying in the bed and decided to persist. His body language showed resignation and defeat. She could feel the anger and despair emanating from him. "As I said, there is a standard pattern of behaviour for those being assimilated when they have not joined us…" she hesitated looking for the right word, "when they have not joined us willingly. There are several weeks or months of denial, anger and defiance and then there is acceptance, co-operation and integration. Those who are fully integrated lead happy and purposeful lives. You are in the first stage and you must find a way to reach the second stage so that you can…"
McKay couldn't contain himself. He turned over, propped himself up on one elbow, ignoring the protests from his broken ribs, and launched into a tirade cutting her off. "Oh this is such twaddle. I'm fed up of your amateur psycho-babble. I can tell you exactly what you're talking about - we call it Stockholm Syndrome and, I hate to disappoint you, it isn't going to happen to me. I will never live a happy or purposeful life as I define it here with you. I am a prisoner. You are holding me here against my will and you are threatening to kill me if I don't comply. I've made up my mind to co-operate with you as the alternative is not exactly appealing but don't expect me to enjoy it." He gingerly lowered himself back down onto the bed again wincing at the pain his manoeuvres had caused him and then turned to face the wall.
Sora felt relief that McKay would co-operate although from what she knew of him she doubted that his co-operation would be either full or genuine. However, to state that he would co-operate at all was an unexpected boon and she decided to push home the advantage his admission gave her.
"Can I just ask you a question, Dr McKay? Where would you be if we hadn't saved you? Your friends left you for dead. They abandoned you. If we hadn't have found you, you would have either died from hypothermia, loss of blood or you would have drowned when your ship went through the ice into the water. You would have died without us. Don't you think you owe us something?" Sora decided that was enough for now and stood up to leave.
McKay closed his eyes. "They would have come for me," he said.
