Chapter 4

Carson usually started early at the infirmary. Around six in the morning most days. If it was a good day and nothing much happened, he'd wander back to his quarters at eighteen hundred. If it was a bad day, or an unending series of bad days, he was unlikely to see his quarters for a week.

That's why he had a cot in his office.

Where today stood in terms of urgency was a matter of debate. He anxiously wanted to check his one and only patient but for a change, there wasn't any immediate health crisis or any additional patients. He wondered if he might have a slow day. He hoped.

He'd compromised and allowed himself to come in an hour late so he could talk to the night shift before they went off duty at eight and he was there for the handover.

First things first. He went to his office, checked over the previous night's notes and charts, logged onto his e-mail, crossed off another day on his Scenic Scotland calendar. This month the picture featured Loch Ness. For a guy from Scotland, it was almost as boring as the sheep. He loved his mum but dear God, the woman had terrible taste. She was the sort of woman who'd knit him a v-neck sweater and use pink wool.

Grabbing a freshly laundered white coat from the hook in his office, he went to talk to Marcy, who'd volunteered to move to the night shift. Who'd seen him from the small room they reserved for staff conferences and drinking coffee. Beckett entered, Marcy got another mug out and poured a cup from the coffee machine. Handed it over to Carson, who gratefully took his legally sanctioned wake up drug.

"How is Colonel Sheppard?"

"Awake."

"Did he get any sleep?"

Marcy grimaced. "Not really. Disturbing him every two hours made it hard for him to settle down for any length of time."

"Not surprising. Hopefully when he gets used to the routine he'll sleep better. Anything else?"

"No. That's it. I'm just waiting for Richard to come in and I can't wait. Every time I went into Sheppard's room he talked my ear off."

Carson raised an eyebrow. "The Colonel?"

"Yeah. He wouldn't shut up. I barely got any work done last night. Every time I went to wake him, I got stuck for at least forty minutes."

"What did he talk about?"

"Nothing much. Just trivia really. I didn't mind the big discussion about Jack Bauer's character arc in 24, because I'm a fan, but when he started telling me about Johnny Cash I got a little bored. Did you know that he had his own TV show from 1969 until 1971?"

Carson shook his head.

Marcy took a sip of her coffee. "Neither did I until last night. I also know, against my will, that Johnny Cash was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980, that he joined the Air Force, that his brother Jack was killed in a saw mill accident in 1944 and that his custom made guitar sold for $131,200 in 2004."

Carson followed her lead and took another mouthful of coffee. "You think he's bored or there's something else going on?"

"At this stage, I think it's boredom. Maybe a touch of anxiety."

"I'll go and check on him."

"Just don't let him start on Johnny Cash or you won't make it out until after breakfast."

"Thanks for the warning."

"Oh, and by the way, I think he's been bugging McKay."

"Really? How?"

"You'll see."

He left her to finish her coffee, and still clutching his own mug, headed for Sheppard's room. Opened the door, poked his head in, got a look at Sheppard concentrating on the screen, earpiece inserted, frantically cursing over the microphone. The lights were on full.

"Don't you dare! Don't you dare shoot me. God damn it! McKay. You're a sneaky fucker when you want to be. Just you wait… " Some frantic clicking, and mouse scrolling later he let out a yell of triumph. "Hah! Take that." He listened to the other end of the conversation for a moment. Grinned. "Oh, sure, now you have to go and take a shower and get ready for work."

Carson cleared his throat. "Colonel Sheppard?"

Sheppard looked up at him, smiled. "You're lucky McKay. Carson just turned up, so you're safe for the moment. Talk to you later."

"Can I ask where you got the radio from?"

Sheppard turned contrite, realized he'd been caught out. "From no one."

"By no one, do you mean Rodney?"

"Okay, it was Rodney. Don't blame him. He was just trying to help. Besides, I'm more likely to stay in bed if I'm playing video games on the network."

Carson sighed, but didn't start in on a lecture. "Fair enough. I'm the one who said you could play with Rodney in the first place."

"When you say it like that, it sounds so dirty."

Carson ignored him. "Would you say that you're overly perky for such an early time of the morning?" Carson got his stethoscope ready by rubbing it briskly on his lab coat.

"Sorry. Didn't get much sleep last night. I tend to get wired when I don't sleep. Military thing."

Carson loosened the back of Sheppard's gown, pulled it down a fraction. "Do me a favor and take a deep breath."

Sheppard did as he was told and Carson moved the stethoscope around his back, listening intently.

"Completely normal."

"Makes a change. Usually when I wind up in here, it's all downhill."

"Do me a favor and try not to jinx yourself."

"Spoken like someone who's been left trying to undo the jinx."

Sheppard leaned back in the bed, pulled his gown back into position, then shut down Half Life 2. "McKay promised another round over lunch."

"He's not going to get any work done, is he?"

"Not if I can help it. I plan to aggravate him as payback."

Carson could completely understand. "Just don't torment him too much."

Sheppard put a hand over his heart in mock innocence. "As if I would ever do that."

"To change the subject, Richard's going to be here in a couple of hours to help you get organized and change the dressings. As a bonus, I think we can dispense with the cardiac monitor. I can also go and get you some breakfast if you like."

Sheppard looked like Carson had just announced Christmas had been moved forward by six months. "Yeah. That'd be great. I'm getting hungry."

"You could have asked Marcy, she could have got you something."

"I thought I'd give her a break. I think she's kind of displeased with me."

"She did mention something along those lines."

"I was bored."

"She mentioned that as well. Anything you've got a craving for?"

"No. Surprise me. But not in an oatmeal kind of way."

"Noted. I'll be back as soon as I can. Remember to use the call button and Marcy will come running."

"Really?" He picked up the call button, a wicked gleam in his eye, thumb hovering like he was a contestant on a game show.

"Don't get any ideas. If I see that woman running in here for no other reason than your own entertainment, I'll sedate you."

Sheppard put the call button down. "You never let me do anything fun."

Carson strolled out of the infirmary and didn't know whether he should be relaxed and happy, or concerned and tense. Sheppard was like his usual self with an extra helping of Sheppard piled on top. Joking, wide awake and alert. He thought he should go and talk to Kate but wasn't sure what he was going to say. When he rehearsed the lines in his head, it sounded strange, even coming from a doctor. "Colonel Sheppard is conscious, oriented, lucid and adapting to the situation better than expected."

Yes. Sounded awful. Quite dismal. Not. Still, better safe than sorry. He hoped.

((--))

Rodney was late to work, late starting on his project and just all around late. It was his own fault of course. He was the one who decided to include the radio in the giant gift basket of Sheppard's personal belongings; naturally he was the one that Sheppard had decided to call. At four in the morning. He'd tried ignoring him but Sheppard just kept calling and military two-ways didn't come with Caller ID. Just an off button and the last thing anyone on Atlantis would do is turn their radios off. Never knew when the call would come to help hold off a ravaging horde of insane aliens.

He'd eventually conceded, staggered out of his bed, fired up the laptop, plugged into the network and tried his best to discourage the man by shooting him at every opportunity he had. Problem was, he was tired and his reflexes weren't good when he was tired.

He usually hit the labs around seven, usually arriving before anyone else and he could usually clear some paperwork. Besides, it scared the crap out of the underlings. He made sure he left after they did and got there before they did, just to prove who the alpha male amongst the scientists was. That would be him. Rodney McKay: team leader.

Unfortunately by the time he'd showered, dressed, got himself reasonably presentable, went and stood in the queue for breakfast, ate, attempted to engage in idle chit-chat with the woman who was forced to share his table due to crowding, left, and walked to the labs, someone else had arrived first.

A startled Asian woman, whose name he could never remember, greeted him. He suspected she had the hots for him, but could never be sure. He'd asked her where she came from once, after encouragement from Heightmeyer, who said he should get to know his team better. He'd said, "Are you from Japan?" She'd nodded, giggled, and used one finger to push her glasses back to the top of her nose. Then he said, "I'm from Canada." Then they'd stared past each other for ten seconds at the walls before she'd rushed off muttering something about leaving an experiment running.

She pushed her glasses back up again, and stared at him like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. "Dr McKay, I was worried."

"Nothing to worry about. Had to attend to a bit of an emergency."

"Emergency?" She'd straightened up, a look of terror on her face.

God, he had to make a point of remembering that the word 'emergency' on Atlantis had a different connotation to the word on Earth. Most people back home used 'emergency' in the terms of losing their babysitter, or the car breaking down. On Atlantis 'emergency' tended to mean a lack of oxygen, shootings, stunnings, flooding, lethal viruses, super hurricanes, and a wide and varying assortment of the psychotic.

"No, no, calm down. It was nothing serious. Just helping someone out."

Her eyes appeared to be the size of saucers, compliments of the thick lenses in her frames.

"Seriously," he continued. "Just helping a friend. Nothing to worry about."

She seemed to relax, handed over a sheet of paper. "Dr. Biro said I should print this off and give it to you and then ask if you wanted a meeting. She said she has also sent a copy of the report to Dr. Beckett and Dr. Weir. Also, Dr. Cooper from the communications lab wanted you to check an anomalous reading in the background noise."

"What kind of reading?"

"He did not say. Just that you should take a look at it and it was probably nothing but that you had insisted all new signals in the background noise must be checked through you."

"Right. Fine. Give me that." He took the paper from her.

Turned out Biro had completed sequencing Sheppard's DNA. No additions, deletions or alterations, which meant the Sheppard sitting in the infirmary was one hundred percent, guaranteed John Sheppard. Good. Finding out the guy was a clone would have put a serious dampener on the entire day. Still, why Biro couldn't have commed him directly… Oh yeah. That's right. His radio channel was tied up with gaming chatter from the guy who wasn't a clone.

He went over to his work bench with his laptop, opened it up, and accessed the communication traffic logs on the server. Sometimes Cooper was a pain in the – as those from the Commonwealth countries liked to say - arse. Cooper ran every single log through Rodney if it had so much as a single new blip in the data. Was it his fault if Cooper had proven himself less than trustworthy in the first week when he'd decided to set up an easily detectable communication network on UHF?

The problem was that no matter how careful they were Atlantis leaked. They hadn't been able to run cable, and most of the traffic was over wireless, or low powered dishes. The radio signals and video signals across the bandwidth leaked out into the atmosphere and into space. Jumpers leaked their own noise when communicating with Atlantis. Of course, it was all based on Ancient technology but even the Ancients didn't seem to have all the answers for completely shielding their communications. Encrypting it, yes. Hiding it? No. Any aliens hell bent on destruction were going to have to be within spitting distance of the planet to have their curiosity piqued but that still left a small chance of being detected - and that meant injecting enough artificial background noise into the mix to obscure any sign of the signals being produced by intelligent life.

The new quirk in the noise was a puzzle though. It looked random. A strange blip that had popped up a few times during the day and then stopped. Theoretically their algorithms could have been generating it, after all, the algorithms were supposed to generate random signals.

He scratched his head, wondered if he should investigate the blip further. It had made him curious but it could also be a colossal waste of time. The week hadn't been nearly slow enough to warrant wasting hours ferreting through algorithms to confirm that a random peak in a frequency was actually a random peak in the frequency.

His hand hovered over the keyboard, and he was just about to consider setting up a logging program that would capture any occurrence of the signal, when a name flashed up in the messenger window on his screen. Zoomie.

Sheppard's gaming alias and real life profession.

Text appeared in the messenger window. "u wnt anthr gm?"

Christ, it looked like it had been typed by a gerbil running across the keyboard. He used his touch typing skills to enter, "No, I said I would play during lunch."

"plz?"

He did some angry typing. "No. Go away and leave me alone for the next four hours."

"OK. cu l8r."

Zoomie left the messenger window and Rodney thought that whoever taught Sheppard text messaging abbreviations needed to die. About two seconds later, for reasons unknown to him, he started feeling guilt-ridden again.

Son of a bitch.

((--))

Carson decided he was feeling cheerful. Yes, after the report from Biro he was feeling distinctly cheerful. She'd commed him directly and the clean DNA result meant that one potential problem had been officially cleared up.

He'd swung by Elizabeth's office. She'd received the same report and she was as relieved as he was. They'd had to consider the possibility of a replacement or duplicate of some type. That's how paranoid they'd become. Even with Sheppard back, they had to worry about whether he was the real one.

That just left all of the standard problems. After paying a visit to Elizabeth he swung by Kate's quarters on the way to pick up Sheppard's breakfast. Good excuse to drop by casually, and sound her out about his suspicions.

She walked down the corridor with him, their voices low.

"You think he's showing signs of manic behavior?"

"Good Lord, no. Nothing that dramatic."

"What then?"

"He just seems a little too cheerful for a man that's been missing and held captive for two weeks."

"What were you expecting Carson? Wailing and gnashing of teeth?"

He shrugged. "To be honest love, I don't know what I was expecting. I treated victims when I worked in Accident and Emergency in Edinburgh but this is different."

"I don't think it's time to panic just yet. He's a guy. He's US Air Force trained. He's resilient. You have to clobber him pretty hard before he shows signs of strain."

"Any recommendations?"

"Elizabeth still wants me to talk to him and ascertain how much he remembers. I could always try and work in a visit today – that is, if a certain Scottish physician will let me. I seem to recall you had me banned yesterday."

"I overreacted. That damn security protocol rattled me."

"Why don't I come back with you and schedule something with our favorite Colonel?"

"Thanks Kate. That would be grand."

((--))

He was discovering that as per usual, being stuck in an infirmary bed was a huge inconvenience. Just getting organized enough in the morning to prepare for a long day of doing not-much-at-all needed to be conducted like a military training exercise.

Carson had wandered off to get breakfast, and Marcy had handed over to Richard, who arrived early and between the Marcy and Richard, they'd decided to get through the work faster by tag teaming him. There had been the usual queries regarding any urgent need for the bedpan, and thankfully there wasn't. One minor indignity temporarily avoided for a while longer.

Then, to balance out the potential indignity, the cardiac monitor leads came off, and he was officially free of the problems of trying to sleep while hooked up via wiring to the latest in technology. It was less problematic for him to roll over once freed, but it was still awkward due to the twinges of pain.

Marcy unwrapped his feet, checked the stitches, checked that the abrasions on his wrists and ankles were good and carefully pulled the gauze, tape and gel pads off the back of his heels. Carefully removed the packing. Richard went for the gel on his back and repeated the action. He was pleasantly surprised to find that the pain was minimal. Now, if only they'd stop touching him. It was hard to keep still.

Richard explained. "Your wound isn't infected, so we'll continue using autolytic debridement. It's slower, but a lot less painful and more selective."

They went through the same motions. They irrigated the wounds with saline, packed it with special gauze, covered it with a gel and then taped the wounds up again.

That only left getting cleaned up. Marcy declared herself off duty and left Sheppard alone with Richard. He passed a packet over to Sheppard.

"I grabbed some bath wipes. They're like big washcloths. It means you can avoid the whole sponge bath routine."

"Really? Excellent." Sheppard thought it was the best news he'd heard since waking up. He pulled open the packet and found a moist toilette on steroids. It had definitely been designed by someone who thought that if they made a big disposable washcloth, the person would need to only use one. He could have used it for a picnic blanket. As to the migration from a sponge bath featuring water, somebody, presumably one of the nurses, had been paying attention to the excessive bitching from the marines. Not that getting a sponge bath from a hot female nurse wasn't generally regarded as the highlight of the infirmary stay but it wasn't so much of a highlight when done by a male nurse.

"I thought we'd try cleaning up your hair first and then you can take care of the rest yourself."

Sheppard nodded. Clean hair would be great because he imagined it wasn't looking too good just at this point in time. The last thing they'd worried about yesterday was his newly acquired greasy and limp style. Richard hauled out a spray bottle, shook it.

"Since we can't get you into a shower just yet, I'm using a dry shampoo. They're a little messy, but it's definitely going to clean you right up. Close your eyes."

He did as he was told, heard the spray. Strange sound. More of a hissing really. Like a machine. A machine that did something. But he didn't know what. Nothing good.

"Are you planning on finishing any time soon?" He thought he asked the question in a jovial tone of voice but maybe it came out more terse than he planned because as soon as he asked, the spraying stopped.

He opened his eyes. Richard was putting the spray can down on the cabinet, seemingly unperturbed by his abrupt skewing of mood. Sheppard tried for a cover.

"I was having visions of you spraying my hair into a cute bouffant."

Richard chuckled, picked up a hair brush and hand held mirror. "No such luck. However, I do appear to have aged you prematurely."

Sheppard took the mirror, got a look at his head. The hair had been covered by a fine white powder that mimicked the makeup techniques of every High School drama production that wanted to make their sixteen-year-olds look like eighty-year-olds.

"You have to brush it out. I'll leave you to do that, get yourself cleaned up with the wipes, and change." He passed over a clean hospital gown. "Just hit the call button when you're ready and I'll strip the sheets."

"Will the excitement never end?" He was all ready opening up the wash cloth, more than happy to get rid of the grimy, sticky feeling he'd had since arriving back.

"Just wait until we have to clip your toenails. It's a laugh riot." Richard gave him a grin, made it clear he was joking.

"You must be a fun date," Sheppard joked back.

"You'd think wouldn't you? But, no. Women get unhappy out when their boyfriend is a bigger neat freak than they are."

"That's what happens when you spend your life cleaning up after sick people."

"It was either this or McDonalds."

Sheppard smiled. Okay, Richard seemed like a decent person and he was also a guy who was respecting Sheppard's 'guy space' and leaving him to get on with the business of washing up.

He watched Richard depart from the room, set up an impromptu guard at the doorway, so any unintended visitors were prevented from entering.

Undoing the hospital gown, he experimentally wiped at an arm. Brown gunk instantly appeared on the formally white cloth.

He screwed up his face. It was going to take more than one of these suckers to remove this much dirt. He found himself wondering again just what in the hell he'd been doing for two weeks.

((--))

Teyla found herself wandering the corridors of Atlantis much as she had the previous two weeks. She'd been reassigned to Lorne's team, along with Ronon and she found the change of team leader to be strangely disconcerting. She didn't realize how much herself, Rodney and Ronon had bonded, and to a relative degree, adjusted themselves to function together even though it would seem a team made up of such wildly divergent personalities was never going to work. That was all down to Sheppard. His laid back leadership style basically said that he accepted them as they were and they'd pretty much better return the compliment to everyone else.

That didn't mean he would ignore bad behavior or sloppy work and he didn't tolerate anyone getting too out of control. He had no hesitation in bawling out anyone he felt had crossed the line. That frequently meant Rodney McKay was in the firing line but again, because Sheppard wasn't one to hold a grudge, as soon as he'd put his point across – as loudly as possible – it was over.

She admired that. All too often a leader would take offence and hold onto it, nursing that feeling of betrayal, or whatever else had sparked the problem. It wasn't a good way to inspire trust from anyone.

Lorne was a good leader, but he didn't seem to know what to do with McKay, or Ronon for that matter. Ronon was prone to hot headed decisions and he didn't seem inclined to check in with Lorne. Rodney just ranted on about everything and anything.

Their two weeks down on the planet trying to dig up clues had frayed everyone's nerves. Trying to adjust to a new team leader, trying to find Sheppard. Ronon had kept offering the suggestion they should just find someone to threaten and Rodney had called everyone a liar.

The villagers were frightened but they weren't lying and seemed unable to clearly articulate their fear. The reason offered for Sheppard going missing was murky and mixed up with what appeared to be a local legend. The owner of the bar had pointed to the dusty Ancient device and muttered, "The Old Ones are displeased. They take the ones that go against their wishes."

That was as far as they could get.

Ronon fell into step beside her.

"You going to get something to eat?" When he walked with Teyla, he shortened his pace so that she wasn't running to keep up with him.

"I am sorry Ronon but I do not feel like eating at this time."

"Then where're you going?"

He had a good point.

"I am not sure." She didn't finish the sentence because she didn't know what she was trying to say. That everything seemed too convenient, unexplained – wrong?

Ronon stopped. She drew to a halt beside him, waited for him to start talking.

"He's gone two weeks and he just walks back through the 'gate. Don't seem right to me. The whole reason for kidnapping, and taking hostages is that you want something and you're gonna use that person to bargain with. You don't let an asset just go wandering off."

"I would agree with you, Ronon. But I am sure that Dr. Beckett is doing everything he can to make sure that nothing is amiss."

"Don't get me wrong. It's Sheppard. I know that. You know that. I just want to know that's the end of it."

"You fear that they have done something to Colonel Sheppard?"

"Don't know that either. But I've seen enough strange stuff in my time to be weary. One minute he's Sheppard and the next minute he's trying to kill us. No thanks."

Teyla broke her gaze to look down at the floor. She'd had exactly the same thoughts of late but hadn't wanted to acknowledge them. "Perhaps later, we could visit Dr. Beckett and tell him our concerns."

Ronon stopped short of rolling his eyeballs. "Yeah, like that'll make it all better."

((--))

Carson delayed heading back to the infirmary because he knew that Richard would be getting Sheppard through the morning routine and didn't want to disturb them, even though Sheppard was hungry. He'd pick up the breakfast order on the way back. Instead, he decided to treat himself because it had been a long time since he'd had a chance to just hang out in the cafeteria and share a cup of coffee with anyone.

"So Kate, how's business?"

She took a sip of coffee to wash down her mouthful of toast. Looked around to make sure no one was in earshot. "The same as always. Bad dreams, stress, eating disorders, and mother and/or father issues. Although I do have a client who has an interesting body dysmorphic order in response to stress. Thinks the left foot is bigger than the right foot. Swears its true even though the shoe size for both feet is the same."

"A wee bit of a challenge for you then."

"A wee bit. How's life treating you, Carson? Got a personal life yet?"

"Yes, thank you. I have a personal life. It's not that exciting but it's all mine."

"Does Cadman know she's not that exciting?"

Carson tried to look outraged. "Kate, the poor love has enough excitement in her job. She positively dotes on my many boring qualities including my reluctance to go off-world."

"Many boring qualities? They can't be that bad."

"I like to read novels, go to dinner, watch the occasional movie, and take long moonlight strolls around Atlantis. I think that qualifies as boring."

"Or maybe you're like everyone else on Earth. Still, you are in the middle of a top secret government funded expedition to another galaxy. That's not boring." Kate said it with a twinkle in her eye and a hint of amusement.

"So is Cadman. I think that means we just cancel each other out."

Kate took another sip of her coffee, put the mug down on the empty tray. "To change the subject, do you think it's time we paid a visit to the Lieutenant Colonel?"

Carson glanced at his watch. "Sure. Richard should have had enough time to get everything done by now. Let me pick up something to take back."

((--))

Getting out of bed when under strict instructions not to actually walk was an exercise in imitating a deranged pelican. There was standing and a bit of mild hopping and some swiveling until Richard got him lined up with a wheelchair, padded with foam and sheepskin, and he could sit down. Where he remained until Richard had changed the sheets, plumped the pillows, rearranged the foam and sheepskin in the bed and then more shuffling, hopping, and swiveling until he was back on the mattress.

"If we have to go through this every morning, I quit," said Sheppard in a bout of whining.

"But think of the good times and how it means you're not bored."

Sheppard pulled a face. "I think you seriously need to reassess your idea of entertainment."

"If it's any consolation it's only until the cuts on your feet heal up. After that you can try walking around, depending on those ulcers."

"That makes me feel much less cranky," he shot back.

He was interrupted from saying anything else by the arrival of Carson and Kate. Carson bearing a tray, Kate bearing a smallish paper cup. Lid on. Familiar smell.

"Is that what I think it is?"

Kate nodded. "One regular, black coffee in all its glory."

She put the cup down on the bed table, Carson followed with the tray. Sheppard lifted the lid on the tray – turned out to be another round of eggs, a couple of sausages, toast and orange juice.

"Carson, you keep feeding me like this and I'm going to get fat."

"On you, that'd take months."

"Hah hah."

Richard gathered up his supplies, stuffing the linens in a bag ready for removal. Carson went over and grabbed a few items.

"Anyway Colonel, I'll just help Richard here and give you and Kate a couple of minutes to talk."

"So subtle Carson. So, so, subtle." Sometimes Sheppard wondered if Carson realized he was blindingly obvious. He watched both men exit and Kate make herself comfy on a stool.

"Carson said you were banned." Might as well fire the first opening round, thought Sheppard.

"He changed his mind. Actually, I made him change his mind because I missed you." She smiled.

"Like hell. You haven't seen me to miss me."

"I know. I lied. Why is that anyway?"

"Because I don't need to see you." And he didn't. Well, not as yet anyway.

"Fair enough. Which leads me to the next point of my conversation. I think events probably warrant that we get to know each other."

"If you're asking me out on a date Heightmeyer, I think that's highly unprofessional."

"Ah, the conceit of fly boys. You always think every woman in the immediate area wants to date you."

He put his hand on his chest, faked looking hurt. "They don't? Why, oh why, didn't someone tell me that when they were writing their phone numbers on the back of my hand."

"Maybe they were fake phone numbers."

"I tried them Heightmeyer. They were real." He pointed at the coffee and the plate. "Do you mind if I eat this while we bond? " Not that he was planning on waiting for her approval. He took a sip of coffee and then started hacking away at a sausage. Noted that despite Carson's best efforts someone had been remiss and not included any ketchup.

"I'm sure your answers will be just as intelligible when you're speaking with a mouthful of breakfast."

He didn't bother to reply because he'd already started tucking in and after his first taste, judged it to his liking, especially the sausages, and kept on going with a single minded determination that did not include taking any notice of Kate.

"Colonel, let's make a time to have a proper chat and get to know each other. By the way, Elizabeth said your participation is mandatory. Do not pass go. Do not have a get out of jail free card."

He replied through a mouthful of processed meat product. "You win. How about this afternoon? That'll give me something to look forward to." The last line was delivered with a certain amount of cynicism. It wasn't that he hated her or anything, and in fact he thought she did an excellent job at taking care of people. She'd helped Teyla enormously. It's just that he thought she was excellent when it came to other people. When it came to himself, he wasn't very sure and he was a lot more cautious. He was a private person. He had to have down time away from the hustle and bustle of people and he certainly didn't unwind or relax when forced to recount any details of his life.

Still, the modern military took a dim view of any commander who didn't follow combat stress control protocols or was at least aware of them. Making sure his team could cope was not open for debate, nor did he want it to be. He didn't hesitate in letting Kate know of anyone who needed help. Making sure he could cope was a whole different matter mainly because he always thought he coped just fine.

He watched Kate using her stylus to set an appointment in her PDA and went back to swirl the last piece of sausage around in the egg. That's when he was astonished to find that ketchup had mysteriously appeared on his plate after all.

Then he knew it wasn't ketchup because he heard Kate mutter, "Oh hell." Then she reached for the call button.

The fluid mimicking a cheap runny version of ketchup was pooling all over his toast.

"Fuck," he said.

Another nosebleed, and another ruined meal. At least it wasn't all over the sheets this time around. He gawked at the plate and the steady drip of blood and really, it was kind of fascinating.

Carson was running into the room about a minute later, probably breaking the world land speed record for an emergency response by an infirmary physician. He didn't bother looking up but he winced when he heard Carson talking over his radio.

"Richard? Yeah, we're going to have to try cauterization. Bring in the silver nitrate sticks, pledgets, ice, and mix up the lidocaine and epinephrine solution for me."

That was just great.

Unfortunately it was at that moment Kate decided to get up from her stool and approach the bed. He only saw her out of the corner of his eye, his peripheral vision projecting an image of movement, of something unexpectedly sneaking up on him. The next instinct was automatic and it was done before he could stop.

He punched Kate right in the face. Hard.

((--))