Wow. Two chapters in two days. This plot bunny won't leave me alone :)
Lots more Rodney introspection in this chappy and just a bit more action too.. we're starting to see some progress in the infirmary.
Please do review and give me your thoughts...
It's been three days.
He's still unconscious. Still drugged. Three whole days and Carson is keeping him in the equivalent of a medically-induced coma. Not for much longer though. Beckett says he's going to let him wake up. Check on his progress. Specifically his cognitive process.
Physically he's improving. Slowly, but definitely improving. The skin on his face is gradually softening, turning back to a more normal colour. The freaky little ridges and bumps are smoothing out. He's still blue. But not as blue. From a scientific point of view – in as much as medicine can ever be considered a science – it's rather fascinating how his recovery seems to be proceeding in a precise reversal of his original metamorphosis. The scary, self-healing wound on his right arm that started this whole mess was ground zero for his transformation and the ever-increasing physical changes had seemed to spread outwards from that point, his right hand turning blue and ridged even as the cellular alteration had crept upwards, spreading blue colouration up the right side of his neck. And now I sit here and watch the entire transformation in reverse, the blue, hardening skin fading slowly from his forehead, his cheekbones, from his lips.
His eyes were one of the last things to change, turning yellow and slitted. By rights, based on the evidence before me, they should have been one of the first things to reverse their alteration. But he's been unconscious for three days. So I can't see his eyes. And I'm afraid to lift his lids and check for myself. I'm afraid to find out I'm wrong. Carson says he'll wake up soon. How is it that I'm both terrified and desperate to see his eyes open? To see if they're still yellow.
He is motionless in the infirmary bed, his muscles relaxed, his breathing slow and even. His head is propped up on two pillows, his perennially messy shock of hair dark against the pristine white of the infirmary cotton. He looks.. peaceful. I wonder absently what would have happened to that tousled hair if we hadn't saved him, hadn't been able to reverse his transformation. How would the virus have progressed? What would he have become, in the end?
My imagination is far too good and it throws up all sorts of scenarios for me to consider. I'm starting to freak myself out and I try to switch those thoughts off, turn my mind to some other subject. My gaze falls on Sheppard's hands and provides me with an immediate distraction. Sheppard is restrained. Thick fabric cuffs wrapped around his thin wrists, lashing them firmly to the sturdy metal frame of the bed. Just in case, Carson says. Just in case. The sight brings to mind a vivid image of Sheppard lying fully-dressed on an infirmary bed, wires from a heart monitor snaking under the open collar of his shirt, these same thick, black restraints – or some just like them – pinning his arms to the guard rails. Was that really just a few days ago? Just a matter of a mere 70-odd hours since he had attacked Elizabeth, run amok through the city and taken out an entire security detail?
Carson had drugged him then too, keeping him in a medically-induced coma for fear he would tear through the restraints if he awoke. By that point it was all we could do. All we could do to protect him from himself.. and protect ourselves from him. The John Sheppard we knew had been all but gone.. and if we hadn't have found a solution, found the way to cure him, he would have been lost to us forever. He never would have awoken from that coma. He would have simply continued to change, to become something else.. a creature, something to be feared. Destroyed. I feel physically sick as I think about the fact that we would have had to kill him. It wouldn't have been Sheppard anymore, intellectually I know that. But how do you switch off emotion? How do you try and forget that the dangerous, vicious creature before you used to be someone you knew. Used to be a friend. How do you put that friend down like a rabid dog? I whisper a prayer of thanks to a god I don't believe in that it didn't come to that. That we got him back.
I've been sitting here for hours. I've lost track of how long. I've spent a lot of time in the infirmary over the past couple of days. Ronon and Teyla have too. And Elizabeth. Even Caldwell. Probably most of the expedition has popped in here at least once or twice to say hi to the Colonel. Doesn't matter that he doesn't know we're there. We seem to have established a kind of unwritten schedule so that Sheppard is never alone. Ronon or Teyla or me. Or Elizabeth. Someone is always here with him. And Carson. I don't think Carson has left the infirmary for more than a couple of hours at a time over the past three days. I think he's taken to sleeping in his office. What little sleep he gets. He worked himself into the ground trying to find a cure for Sheppard. And when we finally did get the all-important eggs, he and his team worked flat-out to create their gene therapy, huddling over their cauldrons in a race against time to brew up their magic potion before it was too late. Before Sheppard was too far gone to be brought back. Since then he's been a constant presence, monitoring the Colonel's slow recovery, making sure the treatment is working. He doesn't say it but I can see in his eyes that he feels guilty. This retrovirus was his baby, his little Frankenstein's monster. Granted, it was never meant to be used, was certainly never meant to end up in Colonel Sheppard's bloodstream. But things have an unsettling tendency to go wrong here in the Pegasus galaxy.
Doesn't matter that it wasn't Carson's fault, doesn't matter that we don't blame him, that the Colonel doesn't blame him. Carson still feels guilty. See? Self-absorbed as I may seem at times, I'm not entirely without some understanding of the human condition.
I'm distracted from my wandering thoughts by the smallest of sounds from the bed. A faint rustle. I jerk upright from my uncomfortable slouch, my attention focused now on John's unmoving form. Was I imagining it? Had he moved? I turn my head to look for Carson. It's been a few hours since he tapered off the sedation. He'd said Sheppard should be waking up soon. I turn back to the bed in time to see definite movement. Sheppard's hand twitches in its restraint.
"Carson!"
He's there beside me within seconds, leaning over the bed to check on circulation, breathing, god knows what else. Sheppard's breathing changes, his lips parting slightly to suck in a deep breath as he turns his head restlessly on the pillow. Beneath his eyelids, his eyes are moving rapidly.
"Colonel?"
Beckett's voice is soft, almost reluctant to disturb Sheppard. I share his ambivalence. We need him to wake up. Need to know that the treatment is working, that the Sheppard we know is still in there. But what if it isn't? What if we were too late? What if there's nothing left of Sheppard in that blue-skinned body? What if..?
"Colonel Sheppard? Can you hear me, son?"
He shifts restlessly, mumbling something indistinct. Carson looks up at me and I see in his face a reflection of the same hope I feel welling up inside me. That's gotta be a good sign, right? Speech. Higher brain function. That means he's gonna be okay, right?
Sheppard is rousing slowly, his throat working as he swallows convulsively. He twists under the starched white sheets and the motion tugs at the restraints. I see his arms tense, pulling instinctively against the restraints. The muscles bunch under the blue, scaly skin and Carson and I can't help a nervous glance at each other as he strains to break free. The fact that his arms are tied down seems to suddenly register, consciousness returning in a flood as his eyes snap open. I hold my breath for a moment before I force myself to look.
His eyes are unfocused, not really registering Carson's or my presence, but they are normal again. Well, mostly. Well okay, one of them is. But that's okay. That's okay because that makes sense. That's how the virus progressed, his right eye affected first and then the left, and now it's reversing itself. The right eye is still oddly slitted, yellow and reptilian. His left eye is gloriously human, back to it's usual brownish colour, the pupil round and black, exactly as it should be. I can feel a stupid, inane grin spreading across my face. It's working. It's going to work. We're going to get him back.
"Colonel Sheppard?"
He reacts sluggishly to Carson's voice, turning his head towards the sound. His arms still tug reflexively against the restraints, confusion showing on his face as he realises he can't move his arms. He is awake but woozy.
Carson does his doctor thing, shining lights into John's eyes – and I can't help but notice how Shepard cringes away when the light is shone in his right eye, as though that freakish reptilian eye is more sensitive to the light – and keeping up a reassuring murmured commentary, soothing his patient, grounding him in reality.
"It's alright, Colonel. You're in the infirmary. You're going to be just fine..."
He hasn't spoken yet and I'm starting to worry again. Sheppard's infectious optimism aside, I am by nature a pessimist. He doesn't seem to be responsive. My spirits sink again as I begin to fear the worst.
"Colonel? Are you with us, lad?"
Sheppard's eyes blink heavily. That one yellow eye still freaks me out. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. A ridiculous superstition with absolutely no basis in any kind of scientific fact. So why does that cold, reptilian eye makes me feel so uncomfortable? It's no reflection of the soul inside. Assuming Sheppard is still in there. He rolls his head again and those mismatched eyes finally seem to focus.
"Carson?" His voice is weak and raspy, dry and frail and brittle. Three days in a medically-induced coma will do that for you.
It's the most marvellous sound I've heard in ages.
TBC...
