Chapter 3

Carson Beckett was worried, and he was alarmed, and he was pissed off. Simultaneously. That wasn't an easy emotional state to be in. He'd come out of the meeting with Biro wondering what the Pegasus galaxy was going to dish up next. Here he was thinking he'd seen just about everything and then up popped the likelihood of Asgard related kidnappers.

He'd been heading back to sickbay, Rodney tagging along and clutching his ever present laptop, seemingly unable to understand the words, "No visitors allowed."

"I'm not exactly a visitor; I'm part of his team. He might want a mission debriefing or something."

"There isn't anything to debrief him about."

"I could tell him that we kept looking for him. That we didn't give up."

Beckett stuck his hands in his coat pockets. The man had a point.

"Right. You can see him. But I'm warning you Rodney, don't agitate him. He's had a hard time and the last thing he needs is a long and one sided conversation from yourself."

"I'm quite capable of playing nice when I need to."

"Of course you are." Beckett said it in a tone that stated he'd never actually witnessed the stated feat.

They rounded the corridor, headed into the infirmary. Carson made Rodney wait outside while he walked into the private room.

He'd left Richard and Marcy in charge of getting the bed set up. They used standard hospital mattresses but considering the health problems of Sheppard they'd pulled in a higher specification foam mattress that would distribute the pressure more evenly. Beckett was also a personal fan of medical grade sheepskins, and he was going to use them even if it did result in ribbing from his coworkers. Besides, the stats and results didn't lie.

Carson checked that Sheppard was settled. Between the two nurses they'd propped a foam cushion behind his back, a foam cushion under his ankles to raise his heels and he was sitting on wool pile and for the most part he seemed comfortable. They'd also removed the blood pressure cuff and the IV catheter but left the cardiac monitor hooked up for the time being. Beckett had rechecked his stitches before being called to the meeting, and nothing had been pulled in Sheppard's truncated attempt at walking around.

Carson waited until Richard pulled the blanket up over Sheppard, straightened it out, tucked it in, and put up the guard rails.

"Are you up for a visitor, Colonel?"

Sheppard perked up considerably at the question. "Teyla, Ronon or Rodney?"

"You'd better not have listed those names in descending order of preference," said a muffled voice from behind Carson.

"Guess," said Carson.

Sheppard rolled his eyes. "Come on in McKay. But I'm warning you – step foot into this room and you've volunteered to be my lackey for the entire time I'm here."

Rodney stepped around Carson and strode over to the bed. "You don't scare me and you can't order me around anyway."

"Just watch me try."

Richard and Marcy didn't have much choice but to get out of the way as Rodney grabbed a chair and settled himself in for the long haul. The two startled nurses looked to Carson for some guidance but he just shrugged.

"I think it's safe to leave the children unsupervised."

"I resent that," quipped back Sheppard.

"No, you resemble it," said McKay.

Beckett just shook his head, and walked out, followed by the nurses. He wasn't ever going to admit it to Rodney's face, but for once he was glad the man was in the infirmary. Sheppard would have a chance to wind down but would still be supervised by someone, even if that someone was the world's biggest hypochondriac. Even that had its merits. Rodney wasn't the sort of person who was going to take, "I'm good" as an adequate answer.

As he left the room, Richard and Marcy pulled up beside him.

"We're going to have to keep an eye on the Colonel," said Richard. He was stating what they all felt.

"I know, lad. I don't want this to get any worse than it is. Come on into my office and let's discuss the care routine. He's going to keep us busy for the next few weeks."

((--))

Rodney thought Sheppard looked pretty good for a guy who'd been missing and presumed kidnapped for two weeks. Yeah, his hair could do with a wash, he needed a shave but on the whole, pretty good. Mind you, he also thought he recognized a vaguely familiar expression on Sheppard's face. Forced cheerfulness. The kind used after having been confronted by certain situations that seemed embarrassing. Like the time Rodney had found an enormous spider in his shower. Not that he was a wimp or anything but honestly, it was fairly freaking big. After realizing it was too large to fit down the drain, and knowing he'd never be able to convince himself to have to pick it up – alive or dead – nor scoop it into some handy container, he had hit upon the emasculating decision to pay a visit to his neighbor. The one that liked his cat but thought he was a pig. He knocked on the door, she answered, he made up some lie about his cat being in trouble (which he was, since Rodney had dumped him in the shower with the spider and his cat had been even less impressed with the arachnid than Rodney) and his neighbor had rushed to the aid of the cat. She'd even felt sorry for the spider. She'd guided it into a plastic container and put it outside.

Of course, he'd acted concerned about the cat. Not very well, but acted he had and then he'd forced a smile on his face to cover up the fact that he'd instinctively backed up against a wall as she'd been walking through his living room with a container full of spider.

Yeah, it was that expression, he decided. Don't look too closely, you might see that I'm acting my socks off.

"You'd better tell me what's involved in these lackey duties because I'm a very busy man."

Sheppard started counting off on his fingers. "One, I need my laptop. Two, I need my football DVDs and your Aliens Trilogy set. Three, I need my copy of War and Peace-"

"-Optimist." McKay butted into the conversation. He said it because he felt it needed to be said. Really, Sheppard just had to accept he was never going to get past page thirty.

"I thought I might get bored enough to try and read another page or two."

"Do you even know what it's about?"

"There were some princesses at a party. Some chit-chat with some princes. Apparently they're very pretty people. That's as far as I got."

"Remind me never to invite you to an Atlantis book discussion group. Anything else?"

"Nope, that's it at the moment."

"I think I can manage to squeeze that task into my busy schedule."

"That's good. 'Cause I wouldn't want to think I was putting you out or anything."

Rodney opened his laptop, retrieved some documents from a file. "To change the subject… Do you want to read the mission reports?"

"What mission reports?"

"The reports I wrote about your little disappearing act. It's a real page turner. Ronon and Teyla got stunned or something. I think I did too."

He watched as Sheppard seemed to get a slightly panicked expression on his face before he managed to hide it behind a pained expression of boredom. "I don't like writing them, and I hate reading them unless I have to. Do I have to read this one?"

"Only if you're interested."

"Not at the moment. Maybe later." Sheppard affected an air of nonchalance.

Rodney nodded, putting on his own air of indifference. "I can always e-mail it to you. You can read it at your own leisure if you ever get curious." Then, because Rodney had never been known for tact or for patience, he asked the question Carson had been avoiding. "Do you remember anything about what happened?"

Sheppard shook his head adamantly, and Rodney wondered whether to accept the denial at face value. He wasn't great at this sort of stuff. Better at it since seeing Kate, but still - there was a reason certain personalities went into science, and not into politics. Or the service industry.

"Right, fair enough." He couldn't think of anything else to say to Sheppard's response. "I can go and get your laptop if you like."

"Yeah, that'd be great. It's too early to sleep."

Rodney glanced at his watch. "Yeah. It's sixteen hundred."

"Like I said, way too early."

Rodney stood up.

"Can you leave your laptop here?" Sheppard pointed at the device.

"I'm not leaving you my laptop. Besides, it's password protected and I'm not telling you my password."

"Why? You got porn on there or something?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny that statement."

Sheppard gave him a wry smile and it was at that moment, when he was about to respond that Rodney noticed the first trickle of blood starting to flow from both of Sheppard's nostrils and down his upper lip.

"Oh, shit. Your nose is bleeding."

Sheppard looked surprised. "Really?" He put a hand to his nose, wiped, looked at his finger. Blood. "Just get me some tissues. It'll be fine."

McKay cast his eyes around the room. Nope, couldn't see any tissues. He could see gauze and bandages and other things designed for wrapping around cuts and gaping holes in the flesh but no tissues. What sort of place was Beckett running when there weren't any tissues? Rodney made a grab for the nearest absorbable material to hand – a roll of bandage - stuck it under Sheppard's nose.

"Hold this, I'm going to get Carson. Pinch the bridge of your nose or something!"

"It's a nose bleed, Rodney. It'll stop."

Sheppard was saying something else but Rodney wasn't listening. Instead, he hightailed it out of the room and ran towards the office.

((--))

They'd been hunched over their notes, running through the routine when Rodney had barged into the office without even bothering to knock. Carson had been tempted to give him a lecture but Rodney had just wildly gesticulated to the far end of the infirmary and said, "Nose bleed!"

Carson had stood up, Richard in tow. Marcy stayed behind to keep working on the notes. It was probably not a matter of urgency but Rodney wasn't about to be calmed down.

"Don't worry, they usually stop by themselves."

Rodney wasn't about to be placated. Neither was Carson when he entered and saw how much blood was soaking into the roll of bandages. Even Sheppard looked alarmed. He was pinching his nose, sitting forward, trying to get it to stop. He was also swallowing convulsively, and that meant he was swallowing blood on top of everything else.

"That's quite a gusher you've got here," he said in a calm voice, like the whole thing was no big deal. He grabbed a basin, and positioned it under Sheppard's chin, getting him to hold the basin with one hand so he could get a better idea of the volume.

"You want me to get some ice?" It was Richard.

"Yeah, and also get me the portable nasal endoscope that SGC sent in the last supply run, pledgets, and an epistaxis balloon just to play it safe."

"You don't want to pack?"

"No, we'll just go straight to cauterization or the balloon if we need it."

Richard bustled out and Rodney stood in the background, looking anxious and out of place. "Do you want me to do anything?"

Carson was amazed that Rodney was even asking. "You can hold the basin, but only if you aren't going to faint on me."

He could see McKay eyeballing the basin and weighing up his aversion to blood. "Uh, no. Um. Sorry."

"In that case just stay out of the way."

Carson turned his attention back to Sheppard. "Keep pinching your nose, Colonel."

Richard was bustling back and Carson kept an eye on his watch, hoping the bleeding would stop of its own accord. But it wasn't showing any signs of slowing and Carson had seen enough nose bleeds in his time to start getting a tad concerned. Richard put the supplies down, handed over the ice pack to Carson, who placed it on Sheppard's nose.

"Richard, can you soak the pledgets in four percent lidocaine and topical epinephrine please." Richard hustled to the supply cabinet, unlocked it, grabbed out the appropriate drugs and mixed them in a small basin before soaking a number of pads into the solution.

In the interim, it seemed the ice was beginning to constrict the blood vessels to slow the bleeding. Not enough for Carson's liking but it was hopeful. He checked his watch. They were coming up to the ten minute mark. The first priority in the drama was to stop the bleeding. He'd worry about where it originated from later, although it wasn't a tough guess to know that the bleeding was probably originating from the upper septum.

The basin with the soaked pads arrived on the bed table and Carson used nasal forceps to pick one up.

"Colonel, I'm just going to try and stop the bleeding with a vasoconstrictor and local anesthetic. This is going to feel a tad odd, and uncomfortable but it shouldn't be painful."

From the way that Sheppard's eyes were bugging out of head at the sight of the extra long and thin forceps, it seemed that he wasn't in agreement but was liking the bleeding less. Without asking Richard was getting ready to put in a peripheral IV line if it was needed, going for a 14-gauge needle. Carson briefly thought it was a shame that they'd only just removed the last one.

Carson got to work, getting Sheppard to sit up straight and tilt his head back a fraction, inserted the forceps, working the pad into the nostril and holding it against the sides of the nasal cavity. He picked up another one and inserted it, before going for a third and a fourth.

"Oh, this is just gross ." He'd forgotten about Rodney.

"I could do without comments from the cheap seats at this point in time," snapped back Carson. He eyeballed Sheppard, who was looking distinctly off color. "Are you okay?"

Sheppard didn't nod, mainly because he had forceps stuck up his nostril and he was now breathing through his mouth. Instead, he opted to hold up a free hand and give the thumbs up sign.

"A likely story. Just spit out any blood instead of swallowing if you can and if you're going to vomit or think you're going to faint, just hold up a hand and we can stop."

Carson grabbed another pad, got that firmly wedged, then held the forceps in place, making sure the pads weren't accidentally inhaled. Hopefully this was going to do the trick.

"We just have to wait ten minutes and see if this slows it down for us."

Rodney had backed so far into a corner that the wall was the only thing propping him up. "Uh. If it's okay with you, I think I'll go and do some work. And pick up those items Sheppard wanted."

Carson dismissed him with a wave. "Yes, Rodney. That's good. Off you go."

Sheppard gave him the thumbs up and Rodney scowled. "If that's supposed to be a joke, it's pathetic."

The scientist left the room with undue speed. In fact Carson wasn't sure if he'd ever seen Rodney move that fast in his life.

Carson went for some reassuring small talk to wile away the time. "Not much longer," he said. Even though it was seven minutes and counting.

Sheppard gave him a slight nod. Carson noted that at least he'd stopped swallowing so much, and he took that as a good sign.

Sheppard spoke around the five minute mark, when the blood flow had almost appeared to stop "Carson, this day just might get onto my top ten list of Most Fucked Up Days."

"Aye, I imagine it would," replied Carson.

What Carson didn't ask was just how bad all the other days had been if Sheppard only qualified the past twenty-four hours as 'might' getting on his list.

((--))

Rodney was rifling around in Sheppard's quarters, trying to make up for his wimping out in the infirmary. There was bleeding and then there was bleeding. He could cope with paper cuts, scratches, grazes, oozing, weeping and seeping. As long as the oozing, weeping and seeping was at a slow pace. He wasn't good with flowing, rushing, gushing or spurting or anything else blood did when excessive amounts were released from the body under pressure. He'd had the unfortunate experience of seeing himself leak a good deal of blood when he'd been cut by Koyla in an attempt to get him to talk. On a more positive note, the blood had mostly been hidden by the jacket. He also had the unfortunate experience of watching a marine bleed out from a shot to the leg that clipped the femoral artery. He'd watched Sheppard, under instruction from Carson, stick his finger in the wound in an attempt to plug the bleeding and just about thrown up where he stood.

Nope, he wasn't good with medical dramas.

Having blown it in the infirmary as far as he was concerned, he was going to try and make up for it by ensuring he fulfilled his duties as nominated lackey. He grabbed a sports bag and put in the DVDs, and book as ordered. Then he got a bright idea and added whatever else he could find. Sheppard's quarters were spartan to say the least but he figured the guitar picks, the sheet music, the headphones, a couple of PC games, socks, underwear, t-shirts, sweatpants, sweater, toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss would just about make up for it. He also stuck in the laptop, using a bunch of clothing to wrap it up.

At the end of it all, it looked like Sheppard's quarters had been ransacked.

He picked up the sports bag, just about gave himself a hernia, picked up his own laptop and trotted back to the infirmary. Hopefully by the time he got back, that whole bleeding crisis would be over, they'd have cleaned up and he could pretend nothing had happened.

((--))

Ronon Dex was trained to be a solider by the military on his planet. Then he'd been captured by Wraith and forced to run for his life. As a result, he figured he'd long moved past the petty jealousies that seemed to keep the majority of humanoid life occupied across two galaxies. He'd moved past back stabbing, gossip, power plays, pissing contests, manipulation, emotional blackmail, passive aggressiveness, and politics and a hundred and one other things people did when they felt their precious sense of identify and self were being threatened by someone else. His life had been pared down to the essentials. If he was hungry, he ate. If he was thirsty, he drank. If he was sleepy, he slept. If he was horny, he fucked when presented with the opportunity. He was all instinct and animal passions and that served him well. No need to analyze the situation too much, it was just a matter of going with the flow.

But that was before he'd been informed by Carson that Rodney McKay had been the first one to visit Sheppard. He'd been the one sent away to fetch Sheppard's stuff.

McKay. That annoying, whining, endlessly self involved, overly talkative, flabby excuse of a man. With a surprised detachment, he had come to the conclusion that this news had actually pissed him off.

He'd been allowed to see Sheppard under the strict demand that he keep his visit short due to some unnamed health crisis. No problems there, since he wasn't much for idle chit-chat anyway. Talking for the sake of talking seemed like a colossal waste of energy. Probably explained why McKay spent his free time eating.

Sheppard was propped up in bed, trying to convey an air of confidence that wasn't working. There was an IV dangling from a pole, connected to an IV lock on the back of his hand.

"Hey Ronon. How's things?" The man sounded like his nose was blocked.

"Same as they always are."

"Nothing to report."

"Nope."

"You're good then."

"Yeah."

"Do you know if Teyla is planning on visiting?"

"Yeah, she's coming in after me. Beckett's got some leegja bug in his hair about you having more than one visitor at a time. Doesn't want you getting all excited or something."

"That's because he's still freaked out."

"About what?"

"Nose bleed. Big one. Blood everywhere."

"Sorry I missed it. I like free entertainment."

Sheppard burst out laughing. "Ronon, don't ever change."

Ronon chuckled himself, something he rarely did. "Wasn't planning on it."

With that, he was kind of done. He'd seen Sheppard, Sheppard was conscious, seemed okay, for the most part. That was enough for him these days. Nothing more to say really. Except for the thing that had his brain acting like it has its very own leegja bug running around over the top of his grey matter.

"How come you got Rodney to collect your stuff?" Ronon tried to say it like he didn't care, which he didn't, but still, Sheppard could have asked. Out of politeness or more to the point from one soldier to another. Soldiers understood that the few items one possessed were precious. Like Ronon's blaster. It had got him out of many scrapes.

Sheppard shrugged. "Rodney was the first in the room and I needed a willing slave."

"Fair enough."

"You're not upset are you?" Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "'Cause that would be weird."

Ronon relaxed. Well, as much as Ronon was capable of relaxing. Sheppard was right. He was being a moron. So what if pasty faced McKay had been the one that was at the top of the list for helping out. It meant Ronon could do other things. Like running, and target practice.

"I'll come by tomorrow, see how you're doing."

"Excellent. My man, I'm looking forward to it."

Ronon nodded once, turned and left the room. He passed Teyla on the way out.

"His majesty will see you now."

((--))

Carson took the opportunity to update his notes. A nasal endoscopy confirmed the bleed from the higher portion of the septum. As Sheppard didn't have high blood pressure or hardening of the arteries, or any other diseases that would normally account for the bleeding, that narrowed it down to other explanations. Like the insertion and prolonged use of an NG tube. Presumably not done with any great care or skill and removed recently, leaving a fresh and tenuous clot. The combination of stress, exertion, the change in humidity, the rise in air temperature – any number of factors – had caused the clot to dislodge. Presumably Sheppard's captors had made an attempt at staunching the bleeding themselves before sending him back, because there was no evidence of blood loss on the Colonel's shirt when they'd conducted the forensic exam.

The pledgets had done a good job of slowing the flow to a trickle and then staunching it entirely and with any luck the clot would hold. If not, it was cauterization or trying the balloon.

Then there was the result of the bacterial swab from the ulcers. The count was low. Far lower than he expected.

The evidence was beginning to paint a grim picture. Sheppard's captors had taken enough care to ensure he didn't die of infection, or dehydration. They had taken care of nutritional support and basic hygiene. But they hadn't particularly cared how they accomplished their task.

Not good, not good at all.

((--))

Teyla had been around sickness and death too many times to count. She had learnt to cope as nearly everyone coped. She gave comfort when it counted, she celebrated life, she mourned and eventually, she moved on.

John Sheppard was alive. The relief was overwhelming. Even better, he wasn't injured to any extent that mattered. Theoretically.

She'd read a quote from the library the Earthers had taken with them to Atlantis when they thought they'd never see their home world again. "Where there's life, there's hope."

Yes. A universal truth. As long as you were breathing, there was still a chance.

She walked through the room, smiling broadly, relieved to see him in the flesh. He smiled back at her.

"I'd get up but I've been ordered to stay put." He did what he did best. Started with a joke to put her at ease. Always more concerned for her than he was ever concerned for himself.

She fought the urge to hug him and check that he was real.

"It is good to see you again, Colonel Sheppard." She reached out, grabbed his hand, and gripped it tightly. She was one of the few he allowed such familiarities from. Teyla wondered if he felt safe enough around her to drop his guard on occasions, or that he simply understood that the Athosians were a tactile people.

"My sentiments exactly," he replied. For some reason seemed hesitant to keep contact with her. He squeezed her hand back quickly, dropped it. She ignored the stuffy quality to his voice.

"You were greatly missed."

"Yeah. Ronon was ecstatic." He grinned again. She patted the back of his hand.

"You know as well as I do that Ronon has his own ways of showing his concerns."

"Then Atlantis is missing some bullet holes."

She was staring at him and suddenly felt overwhelmed. She understood at that moment that although her people were used to death, they were not used to rescue. She could accept it if Sheppard simply disappeared and never came back, but all too frequently he was delivered to them through some form of miracle.

Athosians weren't used to miracles.

For some reason, tears were starting to well up in her eyes. She did not cry. She didn't have the time for such indulgences.

"Hey. Teyla. Hey, it's okay." He took her hand back, held onto it.

"I am sorry."

"Don't apologize."

"You are the one who is sick. I am the one who should be comforting you."

He squeezed her hand again. "I'm not sick. Just got too many cuts and bruises to count and orders to quit running around and screwing up Beckett's hard work. Next week I'm probably going to be up and about and then I'm going to kick your butt with the sticks."

She sniffed, recomposed herself. "I doubt it. Your butt is the only thing that has been kicked in all the time we have been practicing. Besides, I doubt Dr. Beckett is going to agree for you to go into practice so soon."

"Scared?"

She shook her head. "When it comes to sparring with you, the only thing I have ever feared is that you would trip and poke your own eye out."

"Oh. Nice. Let's insult the team leader." He let go of her hand, squirmed in the bed. He'd never been good at sitting still for long. "You okay?"

"Yes, Colonel. I am fine. I should let you get some rest."

"You sound like Carson."

"Dr. Beckett is a very wise man. I will check in tomorrow." She turned to go, hesitated. "Please do not vanish again."

He shook his head. "Wasn't planning on it."

She left, feeling better, but shamefaced because she had let her guard down so much, let her emotions show through and in the end indulged in her own needs.

It was the height of Athosian society rudeness.

((--))

The visitors had distracted him slightly and at least he had other things to concentrate on, rather than the blood clot in his nose that felt exactly like the plastic solider he'd managed to wedge up his nose at aged two. An achievement that had not impressed his mother, or the base physician.

"Don't sniff, don't blow and don't pick." That had been Carson's exact words after he'd taken out the pledgets and sighed with relief that the bleeding had stopped. Carson could be blunt when he wanted to. He'd done a check with the nasal endoscope, being very careful not to set the whole thing off again.

"Right, like I'm so bored I'm going to entertain myself with a little booger excavation."

"I'm serious. Don't even touch it. The clot needs time to settle."

"Aye, aye Captain." He'd even given him a mock salute. Then they'd all spent a merry time together cleaning up. A change of bed clothes, a new gown, some scrubbing to get rid of the dried blood on his chin and upper lip. Marcy had come in to help bag the swabs lying around, the forceps went for a trip to the autoclave.

Once settled, therein followed his quick parade of visitors. Both Ronon and Teyla were short and sweet. Rodney had taken longer because there was all the gear to unpack. Sheppard had reluctantly pointed out that although it was nice of Rodney to bring his guitar picks, the string tuner and sheet music, he'd forgotten to bring the actual guitar.

Rodney had smacked himself on the forehead and looked like he couldn't believe he'd forgotten something so obvious. Wanting to cheer him up, Sheppard had pointed out that he had remembered to bring the laptop, as he'd asked, and the DVDs. The toothbrush and toothpaste were an odd but welcome bonus. Rodney, wanting to return the favor, retrieved the last item from the bag. A radio set.

"Don't let Carson catch you with this or he'll kill me."

Sheppard nodded, snuck it under his pillow just before the man in question made his appearance and shooed McKay out with the admonishment, "This isn't Grand Central bloody station."

Abruptly, he was alone, but this time around at least he had the laptop and that meant he could try to distract himself. He felt cold, his skin was goose bumped, the area behind his neck tingled. He knew if he paid attention to the sensations, he would only intensify them. Diversion was the order of the day. Or at least, what was left of the day.

He signed on, connected to the wireless network.

He may have been missing for two weeks but it hadn't stopped the requisition forms and leave requests and quarter reassignments and training plans and After Action Reports and research papers and joke Power Point presentations from arriving in his inbox like clockwork. Seemed everyone had been fairly confident he was going to make it back, or maybe they just automatically CCed him on everything and hoped some other poor bastard would eventually take care of it. Five hundred and forty eight e-mails that needed reading. Or he could just delete them all. Or, he could spend some quality time building a filter. Create some different folders, shift everything not directly related to him to the folders, based on the subject line and the sender and then add color coding. Red for anything from Elizabeth for a start.

That would take an hour. But first, he would watch his football DVDs all over again. Even though he knew every line, every play by heart. It was for that precise reason he loved watching them. They were familiar and the outcome never changed.

He put the DVD in and shuffled himself down into the bed a little more, pulling the blankets up. Somewhere around the ninth spectacular touch down, he drifted off to sleep…

-And woke with a start. The lighting in the room had been turned down. A shape loomed in front of him, hard and square, and he didn't have a clue where the fuck he was. He stared at the shape for seconds, his disoriented brain trying to work it all out, failing miserably, connecting the dots taking a long, long time.

There was the sounds of squeaking. Shoes or feet crossing the floor. His heart rate went through the roof. The cardiac monitor's output briefly picked up.

"Are you awake?" Male voice. Sounded like Richard. Maybe. The square shape of unknown identity resolved itself into a medical supply cabinet.

His brain kicked his vocal cords. Say something. Idiot.

"Um. Yeah. What's the time?"

"Twenty-one-hundred. You dozed off around nineteen-hundred."

Crap, it wasn't actually even technically his normal beddy-bye time yet. He went to bed late, got up early, the military long ago training him to suffice on minimal sleep.

"I must have been tired."

The figure that owned the squeaky shoes turned up the lights a fraction more, and came around to the side of his bed. It was definitely Richard.

"It's a good thing you're awake anyway. We have to make sure you change position every two hours. Dr Beckett wants to avoid any more skin problems. On the good side, I'm going to take out the IV."

Okay, so that was good news. It didn't even take much; Richard just took the needle out of the lock, then carefully removed the lock itself. Completely painless.

Rolling over took longer. Richard had to help him and it took some doing, but he managed to get over onto his left side. He faced a blank wall.

"Where's my laptop?"

"Still on the bed table. I closed the lid when we found you'd dozed off."

"Oh. Can you open it for me?"

Richard pulled the bed table up further, swung it around to face Sheppard. Opened the lid. The screensaver kicked in after a short delay, the soft light from the laptop casting a glow over the immediate area. The light was comforting and warm and made the strange shadows recede.

Richard asked, "You sure you want to sleep with this on?"

"I think I'm going to maybe watch some more of the DVD."

"Sounds like a good idea to me. By the way, you missed dinner. Do you want me to drop anything off?"

"No. Just bring me an extra big breakfast."

"I think we can swing that. I'm going off duty in about two minutes. Anything you want me to pass onto the night staff?"

"Yeah. Could you tell them to leave the laptop on? Sometimes if I can't sleep I like to do some work."

He waited for Richard to probe him further on his decision but he didn't and seemed to find the request perfectly normal. "Sure. No problems."

Richard left him, dimmed the lights again. Sheppard kept his eyes focused on the screen of the laptop but didn't do any work. His waited for his screensaver to kick in. Photos from his life. Planes. Helicopters. Fast cars. The classic Fender and Gibson guitars he coveted. Johnny Cash. Gumball, the dog he had owned when he was nine. The family cat, Scamp, last seen exiting the kitchen in 1971. The photo of his friends from High School at their graduation party. The photo of Checkpoint Charlie taken when his father had been stationed in West Germany and Berlin was cut in two. Teyla, and McKay waving at Zelenka's camera at last year's Christmas party. Ronon in the background desperately trying to appear unaffected by the festivities.

His life, scrolling across the screen. He was never in the photos of course, because he was more of an observer when it came to a social life. He liked to participate but was strangely reticent about being seen to participate. Finding a photo of John Sheppard would be a tough assignment for anyone.

He watched the screen for a long time, concentrated on breathing, reminded himself that he was alive, that everything would be okay, was okay.

Even so, he was going to keep the laptop on. Just in case he forgot. Just in case a lack of light encouraged the monsters under his bed to make their appearance.

((--))