Solace on Sunday

A/N: Hehe! Got ya! This Sunday has absolutely nothing to do with the episode "Sunday". Now, PLEASE REVIEW!!!
Mairghread grit her teeth as the MRI kicked into gear. Even with 40-decibel-rated earplugs, the machine was painfully loud to her—it was as though someone were trying to drill through her skull.

The machine was uncomfortably warm. She liked the closeness of the MRI tube, but it was too hot. Between the heat, the noise and the isotope injection they had given her, she was feeling rather sick to her stomach.

"Uncle Carson," she whimpered as her breakfast rose in her throat and threatened to make reappearance.

"Dammit!" she heard him mutter as she was slid out of the machine in time to vomit into a waiting trashcan. "Sorry luv, I forgot the MRI bothers you so much."

"'s okay," she whispered hoarsely as she spat into the wastebasket. "/Just don't feel so good./"

"Bloody hell," the Scotsman muttered as he noticed for the first time her face was flushed and a sheen of sweat covered her. He felt her forehead and cursed when he felt the burning heat.

"Kathy! Bring me a thermometer and some ibuprofen!"

"/'s matter?/"

"/You've got a bit of a fever, love, that's all,/" he answered as he took her temperature, and found it several degrees too high. "Bloody hell. /Mairghread? I'm going to need to use the scanner./"

Mairghread whimpered and tried to hide under the blanket. She hated the scanner. To the humans, it was pleasant, just a soft humming, unnoticeable light beams. But it seemed to know she was wraith, and it hated her. It made her insides burn, it screamed in her ears.

Beckett picked her up gently and carried her over to a bed. "/No worries. I'll give you something to make you sleep. You won't even know it's happening./"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Mairghread!" Ronon burst into the infirmary like a nor'easter hits Maine. "Where is she, Doc?"

"Over here," called Beckett tiredly. What had started as a nice, quiet morning to do paper work in had deteriorated rapidly. Scans had shown signs of a massive and virulent infection in the wraithling's body, as well as signs of an auto-immune disease. But it was difficult to treat the latter—ibuprofen wasn't working well enough to reduce the inflammation, which Beckett was worried would spread to her internal organs, but regular steroids would suppress her ability to fight the infection. And it was becoming painfully apparent that her accelerated growth was making matters infinitely worse.

"What's wrong with her?!" the former Runner demanded.

"Ronon," said Teyla quietly, as she appeared at his side. "Please remain calm."

Ronon huffed, and then walked over to stand by his daughter while Beckett explained his finds to Teyla.

She looked so tiny, Ronon mused. He knew she was small, especially compared to him, but lying on the infirmary bed in a too-large scrub top, with wires and tubes running in and out of the blankets, her hair stringy with sweat, she seemed doubly small and fragile.

"How'd this happen?" he growled to anyone who would answer. Beckett sighed and Dr. Biro, who had come by to lend a hand as things went downhill, stepped in to explain.

"It seems that one of the labs they were exploring a few days ago contained a few broken test tubes that held samples of a prototype biological weapon against the wraith, which is why the city didn't immediately go into lockdown—it's not a threat to humans. But it got distributed through the ventilation system, probably, and Mairghread picked it up," she said. "It's actually a very strange disease—it's neither virus, bacteria nor fungus, but rather a combination of all three. And it provokes an autoimmune response within the body. Instead of attacking only the infection, the body attacks both the microbes and itself."

Ronon stared at Dr. Beckett, waiting for a translation of what the tiny pathologist had told him.

"It's touch and go, lad," he replied. "We're doin' all we can. We're tryin' to cum up with something to help her fight it, and we have her on broad spectrum antibiotics and antivirals and the strongest NSAIDs we have."

"Ronon!" shouted Sheppard as he ran into the infirmary. "Just heard. How's she doing?"

"Not well, John," Teyla said when Ronon didn't answer, instead sitting on the edge of his daughter's bed and bathing her face in cool water.

Ronon couldn't let her die. He wouldn't. Whatever it took.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The next morning, she was no better. None of the drugs they were giving her were having any effect. Her fever continued to rise, barely abated by drugs and ice packs. She was being given oxygen because her lungs were inflamed. She drifted in and out of consciousness, crying and moaning. Her joints were swollen, hot and immobile.

Her head rolled from side to side in a terribly unnatural fashion. Sheppard supposed it was the closest she could come to tossing and turning with fever.

"Daddy?" she moaned as only an eight-year-old can—the kind of sound that exactly dissects your heart, fillets it, sears it, and serves it with garden-fresh peas and a nice Pinot Noir. "Fuachd."

Ronon squeezed her hand gently and looked to Beckett, who was checking her vitals, for a translation. The higher her fever rose, the harder a time she seemed to have speaking English and the more she used Gaelic.

"Fuachd. Cold," muttered Beckett as he listened to her lungs.

"Plaide?" she asked, staring glassy-eyed at Scotsman.

He shook his head. "Nae lass, Ah cannae gi'e ye a blanket. You're fever's too high."

"Fuachd, robh teth."

"Ah ken tha' ye dunnae feel hot, lass," Beckett told her sadly.

"I always hated being sick on a Saturday," announced Sheppard out of the blue as he leaned on the foot of her bed. "Didn't miss school, couldn't play…"

Beckett cast him a weary "why are you doing this to me?" look before turning back to marking Mairghread's chart. "Try and keep her cool," he murmured to the nurse standing by. "Let me know if anythin' changes."

"Where's McKay?" asked Sheppard, rather too loudly for Mairghread's liking. She whimpered and buried her head against Ronon's hand, which brushing wayward, sweat-soaked hair out of her face before it could become entangled in the oxygen mask.

"I believe he went to his lab to 'see what those idiotic, self-righteous, half-cocked Ancients were doing when they voodoo-ed this sorry attempt at a biological weapon'," quoted Teyla as she wrung out a cloth to lay on Mairghread's forehead.

"Oh."

The hours passed too slowly for all concerned. Lunch and dinner came and went. Night crept over the city, but it brought no rest to the infirmary. Beckett's chiming laptop brought stark reminders of the time as midnight edged ever closer and Mairghread grew ever more restless and her fever ever higher.

"Goirtich!" screamed Mairghread suddenly and thrashed stiffly amidst the tangle of wires, IVs and catheters. That word, heard sufficiently over the past day and a half, needed no translation at this point for anyone. "Hurts!" is made clear by tone alone.

"Get Beckett!" shouted Ronon to the nurses on the graveyard shift as he tried to hold his daughter down without hurting her further.

"Bloody hell! Ali! Ice bath!" yelled Beckett as he came over and monitors began to scream around him. "Keech" he muttered as he glanced at the numbers flashing on the dark screen. "Ronon, help me get her over here," he told the Satedan. "Watch it now!"

Beckett unhooked her from the wires (water and electricity being a very unhealthy mix) and took care of the tubing as Ronon carried the wraithling over to the small room to the side, where a bathtub stood in the middle already half-filled with ice and water.

"Let's get her in there. Aye, tha's it," Carson muttered as the tiny, stiff body was lowered into the Atlantis infirmary's lovely recreation of the seas around the northern pole.

"Chan eil! Sguir! Chan eil!" she screamed over and over, even as Beckett murmured his apologize tried to sooth the little girl, who in her delirium seemed unable to understand what was happening.

"Geez, Carson what are you doing?" shouted McKay as he burst into the room. "Enough of your voodoo! I've found a cure!"

TBC

Next: Cake or Casket?

Translations:

Fuachd--cold

robh teth--not hot

plaide--blanket

Goirtich-- hurt, pain

keech-- s--- in Lowland Scots slang