Chapter Nine

"Hey, Doc, are you busy?"

Carson looked up to see Sheppard standing uneasily in the doorway into the infirmary. He was alone and stood leaning against the inside of the door. But where he usually appeared very casual, he now looked as if at any minute he would be ready to sprint down the hall. Carson wasn't used to seeing the Colonel so edgy and immediately warning bells were going off inside his head. He tried to stay calm, though, and play innocent so as not to worry the military man.

"No, son, come in. How can I help ye?"

Sheppard pushed away from the door and slowly walked into the ward. Carson recognized that walk: that was the walk of a man unwilling to say something but knowing he had to say it. He had his hands tucked into his pockets and was slumped slightly, making the tall man seem just a few inches smaller—as if that would save him. The warning bells were clanging loudly now and Carson had to fight to keep himself from grabbing Sheppard by the collar and shaking him, demanding what the hell was wrong and who he had to patch up now.

"It's… uh, have you heard from Elizabeth lately?" he asked, his voice catching as he tried to sound casual and failing miserably at it.

"No." Carson said, but was quick to add, "but I also didn't ask her to keep tabs with me. She knows how to take care of herself and I know she would come to see me if there was a problem."

"Oh." Sheppard was suddenly very interested in his boots and Carson swallowed the urge once again to grab the Colonel and shake him violently.

"Why?" he asked, his tone coming out a bit more sharply than he meant it to. But apparently, it worked because Sheppard looked up and Carson realized what he had the look of a lad caught with his hand in the cookie jar. What in the bleeding hell was going on?

"Well, Zelenka called me up on a private line to tell me that Elizabeth had been in the lab, except it had been Rodney in possession of her body."

Carson nodded.

"Aye, Heightmeyer told me they were tryin' it out."

Sheppard looked up sharply.

"She told you? When? Goddammit, I should have known it was Rodney in the mess ha—"

"Colonel!" Carson said shortly and Sheppard's eyes snapped back up to meet his. "Focus, please."

"Oh, right. Er… right. Any way, Zelenka told me that apparently Elizabeth and Rodney had gotten into a bit of a… um… argument and that when Elizabeth—actual Elizabeth—left, she seemed distracted."

"Aye…" Carson nodded expectantly.

"Well, he asked if I could go check on her and I did. I went to her door and knocked and didn't get an answer so I figured she was just tired and had decided to get some shut-eye—you know, Rodney can be annoying at the best of times but twenty-four-seven has got to be a handful."

"Aye." Carson chuckled, though the noise sounded forced even to him.

"Well, I let it slide for a few hours but the next morning we didn't see her in the mess—or at all the day before, and I went to talk to her a little after noon. So I asked Teyla to go check up on her and she did, but there was still no answer. And that was around noon of that day, too, so about twenty-four hours."

Carson was a little annoyed by how precise Sheppard had to be with time, for it was only delaying the inevitable, but he knew he was only doing it for Carson's benefit—which made the Scot all the more nervous.

"Anyway, after no answer we figured, okay, that big of a fight, Weir and McKay are probably still duking it out, so we let it drop. Well, I went back there this morning… and she still hasn't answered her door, Doc. I even had someone in the control room find her in the city, just in case she had left, but it said she was still in her quarters."

Carson blinked.

"Today—dammit, son, it's nearly three in the afternoon and you still haven't seen her?"

Sheppard shook his head and Carson realized why he was feeling so uncomfortable—he felt he had waited too long and now if it turned out anything had happened it would be on his head. Or so he would have convinced himself.

"I've even asked around and got records of her whereabouts for the past three days. According to the life signs detector, she hasn't left her room since leaving Zelenka's lab and that was nearly two days ago…"

"Bloody hell." Carson sighed. "Okay, well don't fret, son. It's probably nothin'. Maybe fatigue is jus' a side effect of havin' two personalities in one—and as ye said, Rodney's more personality than most can handle."

"Maybe… in any case, Doc, I'm worried. This isn't like Elizabeth. Or Rodney for that matter. One of them should have shown up by now."

"Aye." Carson nodded. "Especially Rodney. Even in another body he'd probably still worry about his hypoglycemia which means he should 'ave left at least once t' get food. No, Colonel, I see why ye're worried. I'll come with ye t' her room. Get Teyla, Dr. Heightmeyer and Lieutenant Cadman as well."

Sheppard nodded.

"Why?" he asked, suddenly realizing he didn't know what he was agreeing to.

"Teyla for feminine support, if ye want t' call it that. Kate because she might 'ave a better idea as t' what we're dealin' with and Laura because she was there when they were taken by th' Wraith. It might jus' be a good idea t' 'ave her around."

Sheppard nodded again and took off running. Carson could already hear him on his radio with Teyla, telling her where to meet them. Carson took a deep breath to steady himself before he started collecting a small medical kit. As he did so, he shook his head.

Normally it was Rodney or Sheppard getting into some scrape or another, but Carson had noticed that Elizabeth wasn't too bad at getting herself into trouble, either. She worked late into the night, even though she berated Rodney for it, drank way more coffee than was healthy for a human being, and stressed out over everything in the city—especially the safety of her off-world teams. She was most often concerned, then, about her flagship team—informally known as A-1—and thus Rodney, who now happened to be trapped inside her head. Carson couldn't imagine what this was doing to the poor woman; the two most jittery, stressed out people—though Elizabeth hid it much better than Rodney—trapped in the same brain together for… oh, it was three or four days by now. Carson knew he would have had a nervous breakdown by now. He just hoped that hadn't been the case with Elizabeth.

Twenty minutes after leaving Carson, Sheppard was waiting outside Elizabeth's door with Teyla, Heightmeyer and Cadman. The latter smiled at Carson when he approached, though the motion didn't reach her eyes. Carson didn't hold it against her though—they were all pretty worried at this point. And Cadman was feeling just as bad as Sheppard because even though he had been the one to shoot down the dart, Cadman was berating herself for letting the people in her charge be abducted in the first place.

Not that she could have helped it. Hell, if she hadn't been there, Carson would probably be the one in Elizabeth's head and not Rodney. Or, worse, it could have been Rodney and Carson trapped together.

A disconcerting thought that Carson was quick to push away.

"I rang again." Sheppard said, looking worse off then when he had left the infirmary. "Still no answer."

"I'm afraid I could be responsible for this." Kate said softly. "I was the one to suggest that Elizabeth try sharing her mind with Rodney and because of that—"

"Ach, now don't go blamin' yerself, too, Doctor." Carson said shortly. "I don't know a one of us tha' isn't feelin' wretched about what is goin' on here, but the truth of it is, none of us could 'ave done a thing differently without havin' gotten the both of them killed. What we 'ave t' worry about now is how we are goin' t' fix this, not how we could 'ave stopped it."

"Well said, Doctor Beckett." Teyla said, her voice once again filled with the soothing sound of calm trust. Trust in her own abilities and those of the people around her. As a woman who had grown up needing that trust to survive, she was always the first one to share it and Carson appreciated it more now than ever. Hopefully Teyla would be able to help Elizabeth with whatever she needed help with right now. Hopefully they all would.

Beside the other women, Cadman nodded and smiled at Carson again—this time it did reach her eyes and the doctor felt a warm calm fill him. They trusted him and he trusted them. That was the perfect place to be in a situation like this and that was what was going to fix it, too. He sighed and nodded to the door.

"So, if she's not answering, 'ave we got a way to open th' door?"

"I've got people working on it." Sheppard said immediately. "Zelenka's in the control room helping them get past Elizabeth's code. He shouldn't be much—"

"Colonel Sheppard," Zelenka's voice sounded over all of their comms and they all jumped in surprise. "I have bypassed Elizabeth's personal code and am opening the doors now."

Sheppard nodded.

"Understood. Thanks, Zelenka."

"You are welcome. Opening doors now." He repeated.

Good to his word, a moment later the Ancient doors slid open with a soft sigh, revealing the darkened room inside. Sheppard walked in first with Teyla close behind him, Carson entering with Kate and Cadman. As they had feared, they were not happy when they found Elizabeth.