This one has been a bit overdue for an update of late. I struggled a bit with where to take this story but I started working on it tonight and the muse was with me and it all just kinda flowed out and here it is.

Hope you enjoy, as ever please do read and review.


Colonel Sheppard is getting bored.

It's been a week now. A week since Carson started treatment, since the effects of the retrovirus began to be reversed. Sheppard has slept through most of it, loaded up to the gills with the very best Atlantis has to offer in the way of analgesics, sedatives, immuno-suppressants, benzodiazepines and anti-emetics. You name it, it's been shoved down an IV tube into Colonel John Sheppard's blood stream. He was a model patient while he was doped up to the eyeballs. Now his sedation has been dialled down it's a whole different story.

Colonel John Sheppard, as it turns out, doesn't like being cooped up in the infirmary. He doesn't like having nothing to do, he doesn't like not feeling well, and he doesn't like wearing scrubs. He doesn't like IVs, catheters, painkillers, medication in general, doctors, nursing staff, being told what to do, infirmary food or me. He especially doesn't like catheters.

You would have thought Sheppard would have come to accept this sort of thing by now, the amount of time he's spent in this infirmary, but no. When it comes to being ill, Colonel Sheppard is a five year old child. A sulky five year old child. I hate kids.

Okay, so perhaps I have not been the most supportive of friends. Certainly answering his complaints by telling him how he very nearly died and that he should think himself lucky didn't go down so well. Neither did my observation that he should be glad of the opportunity to laze about and flirt with the nurses. Actually, that one was overheard by the head of Carson's nursing team and got me banned from the infirmary for several hours. Well, I can't help it. I'm no good in these kinds of situations. I get nervous. I say the wrong thing. I missed the classes on sympathetic support and hand-holding at friendship school, okay? Anyway, he mocks me when I'm sick.

Truth be told, Sheppard's a little hard to be around right now. Wanna know how crappy a friend I really am? I was kinda glad when Nurse Tellerman bounced me. Nice, huh? I've spent the better part of a week sitting by my friend's bedside, hoping against hope that he would wake up and be fine and be back to normal – and, now that he is awake, I'm finding excuses not to be around him. Certainly I have work to do; that's not an excuse. Well, okay, it is an excuse but it's a good one. The work doesn't stop piling up just because your friend is sick. The wraith threat doesn't just go away because the ranking military officer has turned into a bug. But somehow it was okay to let the work wait, to let it pile up, while Sheppard was blue-skinned and comatose. So how come suddenly now I'm making such a big deal about having to tend to my other responsibilities?

Of course, he's not back to normal yet. Maybe that's part of the problem. Sure, yeah, there's the physical thing.. he's still got blue patches, not so many of them visible anymore, though he keeps his right hand under the blankets most of the time. It's more than that though. Sheppard has been an infirmary patient plenty of times before and yeah, he's always eager to get out of there as soon as he can. But this is different. He's different. He's… moody. He snaps at the nurses, at Carson, at me. He complains. Yes, Colonel John Sheppard, the man who has "I'm fine" tattooed on his eyelids, complains.

I just wanted my friend back. It was a simple enough request. And now I've got him back but he's wrong, he's different. He's… changed.

I guess we all kinda got so focused on the physical changes, on what the retrovirus did to his body, that we never stopped to think about what other effects it might have… the effects this experience would have on Sheppard. From things he's said I know he remembers a lot of what went on, even the stuff while he wasn't really lucid. He remembered Ronon shooting him. I think he remembers a lot more than that and I think it's eating him up inside. And I have no idea what to do about that. Sheppard's not one for talking. Actually, let's be more specific. He's not one for talking about himself. Any other subject and yeah, you can't get him to shut up. Especially when you're trying to work and he's bored and thinks it's amusing to bug you. Okay, poor choice of words, considering..

But talking about himself? No. Not Colonel Sheppard. I think I can confidently say I'm his best friend on this expedition and I really don't know any more about him than a raw recruit fresh off the Daedalus. Well, maybe a little bit, some inklings of information that I've picked up along the way from random comments, little hints here and there. But nothing concrete. I've never really stopped to think about it before but I don't even know where he's from. It's a sobering thought. I've told him probably my whole life story by now – everything from my cat's name to why I wasn't allowed to have a dog and why I gave up piano lessons. I've even mentioned Jeannie to him once or twice. And I was so damn wrapped up in talking about my favourite subject – me – that I never even noticed that he didn't reciprocate, didn't tell me about his pets or his family or where he grew up. Dammit, sometimes McKay, for a genius you're real darn stupid.

The thing is, I don't know what to do about any of this. I don't know if there's anything I can do about this. If Sheppard is bottling things up then I'm probably not the best person to talk to anyway. Did I mention the not good at hand-holding stuff?

But he needs to talk to someone. Because something is definitely wrong. And because I want my friend back – 100 percent back, the way he was. Even down to never telling me anything about himself, if that's the way he wants it.

When I finally pluck up courage to return to the infirmary, I'm greeted by a scene of absolute chaos. The action is all centred around Sheppard's little corner of the infirmary where his bed is suspiciously empty and a small knot of people is clustered around it. Actually no, what they are gathered around is not the bed but something beside the bed… something on the floor beside the bed.

Ah. Escape attempt.

I get close enough to see through the collection of nurses and doctors – what is the collective noun for medical staff anyway? A diagnosis of doctors? A naughty of nurses? I'm gonna get kicked out again.. – and find Sheppard slumped on the floor, managing the impressive feat of looking at once somewhat dazed and incredibly pissed off. It would appear I've arrived within mere moments of the attempted jailbreak. To my professional eye, it looks like he got ooh, all of half a metre from the bed before his legs gave out on him. He's lying on his side on the floor, looking like he's trying to work up the strength to get back up again on his own. I wouldn't give him great odds but you never know.. the man can out-stubborn a mule.

His collection of medical professionals is trying to get him back into bed but Sheppard is not playing ball. A nurse reaches for his right arm to try and help lift him up and he snatches it from her grasp, pulling it behind his back and holding it there. His scrubs top has ridden up a little during his adventure and I catch a glimpse of blue tinted skin across his midriff. It occurs to me that he's not just fighting off the unwanted help here; he's hiding. He doesn't want them to see, to look at his blue, scaly hand.

"What's going on here?"

I know that tone of voice well enough to stand clear as Carson comes striding out of his office, cutting a path through the hovering group of his staff to gaze down upon his recalcitrant patient.

"Colonel, what are you doing out of bed?"

"Leave me alone." Sheppard's face bears an unaccustomed scowl, one I've gotten to know quite well over the last couple of days, and he's struggling to get a hand under him and lift his torso from the floor. He ignores the helpful hands trying to offer him support. Carson, give him his due, assesses the situation instantly, taking in the Colonel's obvious discomfort and the milling group of staff all getting in each other's way.

"Alright, that's enough. Can we clear everybody out of here now, please. Thank you for your help, ladies and gents. I'll deal with this."

I've often wondered how Carson commands such immediate, devoted obedience from his staff. To the best of my experience, he never even yells at them and yet they jump to his slightest command. Why can't I get my teams to show the proper respect like that? It's gotta be drugs. Yeah, he's got them all on something to keep them in line.

"Rodney."

"Yes?" Carson's voice interrupts my train of thought and I can't help being a little startled, my voice cracking like a naughty schoolboy who's been caught out doing something he shouldn't. Dammit. I favour Carson with a glare, just in case he's thinking of commenting, but he's not looking at me, his attention is on the Colonel.

Oh right, Colonel Sheppard. On the floor. Another glorious bid for freedom ended in failure.

"Can you help me out here, please?"

"What? Why me?"

It was an instinctive response really, I didn't actually mean it and Carson's look says more than words ever could. Sometimes being a friend is a pain in the ass.

Sheppard's not by any means happy but he's slightly more willing to accept help from two friends than from an army of concerned nurses and doctors. A sharp word or two from Carson puts an end to him flinching away when we try to grab hold of him and, between the two of us, we get him onto his feet. He's pale and sweating by the time we get him upright, his legs trembling as we bear his weight between us and guide him back to the bed. He lets us lift him enough to get his butt onto the mattress and then shakes off our hands, settling back onto the bed with a shaky sigh and a mutinous expression. He knows he's in for a lecture from Beckett.

Carson doesn't waste any time. "Colonel, I agreed to remove your catheter on the condition that you would wait for a nurse and a wheelchair when you wanted to use the bathroom!"

I fight the temptation to put my hands over my ears. I really don't want to be involved in any conversation about catheters and the Colonel's urinary habits. I can already feel a queasy grimace spreading across my face. To distract myself from this new level of friendship hell, I pick up Sheppard's chart from the end of the bed and glance over it. As well as having his staff drugged to obedience, Carson seems to have developed psychic powers because without even looking, without breaking stride in his lecture to Sheppard on respecting medical instructions because they're given for a reason, he reaches out and snatches the chart from my hands.

But not before I've seen the Colonel's meds chart. I look up in surprise but Carson's psychic powers apparently don't extend to detecting that sort of thing because he blithely ignores me in favour of examining Sheppard's left arm, tutting his disapproval over the trickle of blood where the Colonel has pulled out his IV.

Sertraline. Carson's giving him Sertraline. He's got him on anti-depressants.

For a moment I feel a ridiculous sense of possessiveness, a fit of pique that borders on childishness – he's my friend and I'm the one who's supposed to notice he's not happy! – but that's quickly smothered by a sense of overwhelming relief that Carson knows. Well, thinking about it, how could he not? No matter my opinion of medicine as a science, Carson is a damn good doctor. He'd have to be an idiot not to have noticed the changes in Sheppard's behaviour.

I watch the two of them, Carson talking, Sheppard pretending to ignore him, and I can see the concern under Carson's frustration. Sheppard looks tired and ill. He's too thin, the scrubs hanging from his skinny frame. He'd pretty much stopped eating as the retrovirus took hold – and that thought brings all sorts of other awful considerations to mind, such as what he would have started doing for sustenance as the disease progressed, considering what the iratus bugs think of as a tasty meal – and spending the better part of a week essentially comatose hadn't done much to improve things in that area. He hadn't had the weight to lose and whereas before he had looked thin but healthy, he now looks gaunt.

Sheppard is refusing to look at Carson by the time he winds up his lecture, the Colonel sporting a brand new IV and apparently settling in for a full-blown sulk, and Carson sighs as he replaces Sheppard's chart at the end of the bed. The look he gives me before he heads back to his office states quite clearly that he knows what I saw and I am forced revise my opinion of his psychic abilities. That look also says what he expects me to do about it and I can't help but give a bit of a sigh as I pull up the uncomfortable, visitors' chair where I've spent so much of the past week. Sheppard won't look at me either, keeping his head averted and his eyes stubbornly shut even though it's obvious he's not asleep, but that's okay. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just gonna stick around and keep him company whether he wants me to or not.

That's what friends are for, right?


TBC…