Thanks to all who read and enjoyed the first chapter – and for all the lovely reviews. The whumpage continues apace in chapter two… and, I'm sorry, it's that evil cliffie again… evil grin
Please review and let me know what you think…
As a scientist Rodney McKay believed in rationality above all else. He knew for a fact that, in the normal course of events, barring black holes, subspace compression, temporal mechanics, quantum physics and other such fascinating subjects, the passage of time was a universal constant. Time didn't speed up or slow down, only the observer's perception of time altered.
Yet somehow this cold, rational knowledge was poor comfort as he knelt in the smoke-filled gloom, his hands covered in the blood of a man who was probably the closest thing to a best friend he'd ever had, trying to stop that friend from bleeding to death right there in front of him. Despite everything he knew to the contrary, time in his own dark corner of Atlantis had slowed down to a crawl.
He wanted to scream in frustration – John needed help, right now. And where the hell was Carson anyway? He had never felt so helpless, so… ignorant. What use was all his great knowledge right now, huh? None of it was enough to fix this. Astrophysics? Will that stop the bleeding? Quantum mechanics? Will that bring the colour back to his friend's greying cheeks?
He knelt helplessly in the dark with his hands pressed to John's abdomen and cursed himself for his ineptitude. Cursed the lab for blowing up in the first place. Cursed John for his goddamn hero complex that made him shove Rodney out of the way and take the full force of the blast himself.
He could feel the panic rising in him just as surely as he could feel the sluggish pump of blood beneath his fingers. In the light of the nearby flashlight he could see it oozing thickly through his fingers, no matter how hard he pressed. He couldn't bring himself to look down at the floor; he didn't need to. The sticky dampness soaking into his pants where he knelt beside John told him more than he wanted to know about the spreading pool of blood. He pressed down harder, ignoring the ache in his arms, ignoring the terrifying stillness of the body beneath his hands; more scared than ever by the fact that John didn't even react to the painful pressure on the wound.
It felt like hours since he'd finally gotten in touch with the control tower and screamed at Elizabeth to send help. Where the hell was Carson? He didn't dare lift a hand from the wound to toggle the radio on and demand to know what was taking so long.
Sheppard's face was ghostly white in the glare of the flashlight, his eyes closed and his lips bloodless. Rodney stifled a inappropriate giggle, feeling the edges of hysteria crowding in on him. Bloodless was the word alright. Bloodless indeed. Because all of Sheppard's blood was leaking out between his fingers, spreading across the floor, making the skin on his legs want to cringe away from the slowly cooling dampness of his pants. His eyes began to burn with hot, angry tears; tears he refused to let fall.
Where the hell was Carson?
He'd done everything he could think of to help John and it just wasn't enough. It wasn't going to be enough. Sheppard had insisted that all the members of his gate team had basic first aid training but Rodney had never thought he'd be struggling to put that training to use in a dark and debris-filled corridor of the city they called home rather than on some distant hostile planet. And basic first-aid just wasn't going to cut it in this situation. There was nothing Rodney could do but put pressure on the wound and try to slow the bleeding until Carson got there.
He'd never in his life felt such fear and despair as when he'd finally fumbled the flashlight from John's tac vest and flicked the switch with fingers trembling and slick with… oh god, in the glaring light from the flashlight his hands were glistening red, confirming the dreadful suspicion that had leaped into his mind the moment he'd stumbled across damp, sticky.. something… and heard John's agonised intake of breath. In a panic he'd almost dropped the flashlight, the smooth, round barrel slipping and sliding through his blood-slick hands, sending shadows racing up and down the walls, before he managed to steady it and direct the beam across John's supine body.
When he'd reached the abdomen it had taken all his willpower not to throw up and fear and nausea had constricted his throat to the point that his voice had shrivelled to little more than a whisper. "Oh god," he'd said and a part of him had wanted to keep saying it, panic welling up inside him in a hot, sick wave that made him want to rock back and forth in the dark, to scream and cry "Oh god, oh god, oh god.." because he had no idea how to fix this. Dammit, he was a scientist, he was not cut out for field work – not this kind of field work!
The field dressing stashed in Sheppard's tac vest was worse than useless, soaked through in mere minutes. Rodney had done the only thing possible and pressed both his hands as best he could to the ragged wound, pressing down hard to try and stem the flow of blood, kneeling over John as he used his weight to put as much pressure as he could onto the injury. It didn't matter that his arms ached, didn't matter that his head was pounding from where he'd collided with an unforgiving wall. He didn't dare to ease up on the pressure even for a second to search for any other injuries, to even check for a pulse. The only thing that told him that the cold, still body beneath his hands was still clinging to life was the slow pulse of warm blood through his tightly clenched fingers.
Rodney swallowed down a moan of despair and asked the empty corridor helplessly, "Carson, where are you?"
He was beginning to despair of anyone getting to them in time.. how long could a man bleed like this and survive anyway? His oh-so-prized analytical mind immediately provided him with an answer, relentlessly calculating the probable flow rate of blood versus the amount of blood in the average human body, factoring in shock and hypotension, probable infection from the…. He groaned and screwed his eyes shut, whispering "Shut up. Shut up. Shut UP!" Though he'd never admit it under pain of torture, there were times when Rodney wished he could just switch his brain off. Just not think about things, not know the answer, not instinctively calculate the worst possible case scenario. Panicked or not, he'd been telling the bare truth in that stranded jumper, stuck half way through a damned event horizon in space, when he'd stated that he was the only one who truly comprehended how screwed they were. They said a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. Well, sometimes a lot of knowledge was downright terrifying. And his relentless intellect was telling him that time was fast running out for his friend.
"This is all your damned fault, you know" he told Sheppard raggedly. "Acting the self-sacrificing hero again."
John was silent. Still.
Rodney coughed harshly, his throat dry from the lingering acrid smoke of fried electrical systems. "Despite what you seem to think," he lectured his unconscious friend, "I am quite capable of looking after myself. I don't need you to fling me into a wall every time something blows up."
Even in the stillness of unconsciousness, John's face seemed to deride that last statement and, realising the ridiculousness of what he'd just said, Rodney let out a sound that was half way between a laugh and a sob, startling himself at the barely controlled hysteria evident in his voice.
Calm. Calm. Need to stay calm. In his mind Rodney could almost hear Sheppard's voice telling him to stop using his mouth and start using his head. He swallowed thickly.
"I can't help it," he stuttered rapidly. "I talk when I'm nervous. Always have done."
He looked down at his friend, lying so still and so white, the harsh glare of the flashlight leeching colour from his skin and casting dark shadows across his face.
"Don't you dare give up on me, Sheppard." His voice sounded small and lost and alone in the darkness.
"Please?"
A faint noise somewhere off to the right raised his head and hope rushed through him dizzyingly, adrenalin surging, pushing aside the trembling in his arms. More noises; clanging of metal, the grinding noise of a door being forced open, footsteps? And… oh thank god, flashlights, beams of light cutting into the darkness.
"Carson!" It was more of a scream than a yell.
"Rodney?" The doctor's lilting voice echoed down the darkened corridor.
"Over here! It's about time!"
Carson's voice was as calm as ever, unperturbed by McKay's peremptory tone. "We got here as quickly as we could Rodney. The power is out to this whole section.."
The flashlights were coming closer and Rodney almost sagged with relief.
"You made it, John," he muttered, "Carson's here. You'll be fine now."
He let the pressure on the wound ease just a fraction, the aches and pains in his whole body rushing in with a vengeance as he began to relax. His hands felt wet and sticky, clammy with John's blood. His heart stuttered in his chest as he realised with horror that something was different, something was wrong. No blood oozed between his tightly clenched fingers; he could no longer feel the slow, sluggish pump of blood under his hands. Panic seized him and froze him in place as realisation hit him hard. Oh no, oh no, oh no. Not now, dammit, not now!
"Carson!" he screamed. "Get here, NOW!"
TBC…