Rodney could feel panic starting to build. They were no closer to a way out of here and it was obvious no help was going to be forthcoming from above. The knowledge that he was trapped in this precarious box of a room, with no way out, was weighing more and more heavily on his mind. He swallowed, his throat feeling tight. "I'm warning you," he announced abruptly. "I mean, I can go crazy down here. Look, ever since the Jumper thing a couple of years ago, I've been very bad with tight spaces."
Sheppard snorted dismissively. "Well, at least you had the jumper to yourself. I was stuck with Zelenka the whole time we were looking for you."
Rodney was about to make a scathing reply pointing out just how entirely facile that comment was, given that he had been trapped, alone and injured, in a damaged jumper on the bottom of the ocean, when his brain ran through Sheppard's comment a second time and he stopped himself abruptly. "Wait a sec. What are you saying?" he demanded. "You don't like Zelenka?"
"No!" Sheppard denied quickly. "I just... I'm just saying, two people stuck in a small space is more claustrophobic than one..."
Rodney wasn't fooled for a second. "Yeah, but that's not what you said. You emphasised "Zelenka". You said you were stuck with Zelenka in the jumper – like that was the hard part."
"It did kinda sound that way," Carson pointed out apologetically.
"Look..." Sheppard tried to explain but Rodney cut him off gleefully.
"You can say you don't like him. It's fine! I don't like him!"
"He helped save your ass that time, McKay!" Sheppard said pointedly. He shrugged a little, his mouth twisting as he admitted, "He just kinda… well, we wasn't too comfortable with being underwater, that's all…"
"He wasn't too comfortable being off-world when we Rodney and Laura were trapped in that dart either," Carson added thoughtfully.
"And he saved your ass that time too, McKay," Sheppard argued.
"Oh, sure-sure-sure-sure! He's the best! You just don't like him," Rodney smirked.
"I didn't say that!" Sheppard protested.
"No, you didn't have to," Rodney smiled aggravatingly, before adding snidely, "And it was my idea that fixed things after the Wraith dart fiasco." He jabbed a finger at his chest pointedly. And really, the least said about that whole experience, the better.
"It's not a contest!" Sheppard argued disbelievingly.
"Everything is a contest," Rodney declared.
Sheppard favoured Rodney with a long look, his lips pursing in exasperation. "Don't you have some reading to do?" he asked pointedly, gesturing at the abandoned file of Genii documents.
Rodney looked at the folder with disgust. "There's nothing in there," he complained. "I mean, there's certainly nothing about the door code."
Sheppard grimaced, hands on his hips. "So."
"So?" Rodney echoed.
Carson sighed. "Back to knotting."
With nothing else to occupy him, Rodney leaned himself against a stack of crates as Sheppard and Carson went back to working on the rope, joining in as they made desultory conversation.
"So what's happening with you and Katie now?" Carson suddenly asked.
Rodney grimaced. "Oh. Uh, well, it's kind of messed up now."
"Why?" Carson seemed surprised. "What happened?"
"Well, I was gonna propose..."
"You were?!" Okay, that was definitely surprised. Rodney fought a brief surge of irritation that everyone seemed to find it so surprising that he might one day get married. The he remembered what a mess he'd made of everything and had to admit that maybe everyone else had it right; maybe he wasn't cut out for marriage.
"Yeah," he sighed. "Bought her a ring and everything, you know, was gonna ask her… and then the quarantine error happened."
Carson's expression was bemused. "What does that have to do with anything?" he asked.
Rodney struggled to find the words to explain how everything had so suddenly and spectacularly fallen apart. "Well, I don't particularly want to go into the details but, you know, I just, I told her that I needed some time for me… You know, it had nothing to do with her, I just… I just needed to figure some stuff out. And now she doesn't wanna speak to me. She's filed for a transfer back to Earth…"
"You broke up with her," Carson stated. "That's a break-up."
"No, it isn't," Rodney argued.
Sheppard, who Rodney had actually told rather more about exactly what had happened, kept his attention on the rope he was tying a knot into as he agreed quietly, "Yeah, you did." Carson nodded.
"No," Rodney tried to explain. "I said I needed some time for me…"
"Which translates as "I'm not that into you any more." Carson told him.
"But I meant it!" Rodney protested.
"It doesn't matter!" Carson shook his head. "You can't almost propose to someone and then take it back. It's a relationship-killer."
Somewhere deep inside, Rodney knew that was true. He sighed. He really was just no good at this relationship stuff. He'd thought things might be different with Katie; she'd been sweet and gentle and he'd found he could even relax a little around her, just be himself. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe she'd finally seen a little too much of what Rodney was really like.
"Oh, well," he tried to make light of things. "I suppose it's for the best. I mean, you know, she deserves to be with someone who would have known that."
"Rodney…" Carson's voice was exasperated but the smile on his face was genuine and warm. "What she deserves is to be with a nice guy, like you."
"Hey…" Sheppard looked up from his rope-knotting and Rodney was glad of the interruption.
"What?"
"We're finished." Sheppard held up the grappling hook, a good 30+ metres of knotted rope tied firmly to it.
"Finally!" he huffed, all but snatching the hook from Sheppard's hand.
"Rodney…"
He ignored Sheppard's exasperated protest. He was getting out of here, right now, this instant, before he went stir crazy…or before another tremor collapsed the weakened struts that were all between him and certain death.
Stalking away from Sheppard, he positioned himself under the hole in the ceiling and let the coil of rope drop to the floor, shaking it out a little to make sure it wasn't tangled. He was dangling the hook from his right hand, playing out the rope a little to get enough length for a decent swing, when he heard voices coming from up above. Children's voices, a boy crying, "Here! Over here!"
Rodney looked around at Sheppard and Carson, a disbelieving smile on his face. "You guys hear that?"
"It's the kids!" Carson realised. "They've come back for us!"
Relief flooded through him. "Oh, I knew they were good kids! I knew it!" Rodney grinned. He turned his face up to the hole far above and raised his voice to yell, "Down here! I knew you'd come back! Guys?!"
The ceiling creaked a little as two familiar faces appeared over the lip of the hole, the two boys standing clear of the edge and leaning forward to peer down at the people below. A moment later two more boys also leant into view.
"Woah!" One of the new arrivals breathed, obviously impressed.
"See?" The taller of the boys gloated to his friend. "I told you they were down there!"
Rodney's heart began to sink, the brief moment of hope slipping through his fingers like so much sand.
"Are your parents up there?" Sheppard asked uncertainly. "Did you bring help?"
"No." One of the boys gestured at the two new additions. "Our friends didn't believe us. We bet them a week's supply of taffa that we were telling the truth." The little monster was actually smiling, pleased with himself.
One of the other two threw a dark look at his friend. "See? I told you not to!" he complained ungraciously.
"Where are the adults?" Rodney demanded, still clinging to a miniscule crumb of hope that the kids had seen sense, that they weren't going to do what he thought they were going to…
"We can't tell them!" the boys exclaimed. "We'll get in trouble!"
"Trouble?!" Rodney's frustration bubbled over into furious anger. "You wait 'til I get out of here, you little brats! I'll show you what trouble is!"
Startled by his outburst, the kids scattered, disappearing from view, and before anyone could say a word a dreadful rumble started up and the room began to shake horribly.
"Tremor!" Carson cried desperately. "We're moving!"
The floor shook and trembled under Rodney's feet as he staggered to the far wall, clinging to its support. He was aware of a horrible moving sensation and his sense of balance was thrown off as the floor seemed to move under him.
"We're tilting over!" Sheppard yelled. He and Carson were trying to steady themselves against the piled up crates as the entire room leaned over to one side. Rodney's imagination all too readily supplied a picture of the metal struts supporting the room twisting and bending until they snapped and he scrunched his eyes closed and waited for the inevitable.
And then it stopped. The noise faded away, the shaking ceased and the tremor was over. And they weren't dead.
"It's stopped," Carson breathed hesitantly.
Rodney opened his eyes to find the room tilted significantly to one side, the floor now sloping downwards towards the red door. The door that led out to the gaping chasm.
"The super-structure under this room must have buckled," Sheppard murmured. He straightened slowly from a wide-footed, braced position, letting outspread arms drop to his sides.
McKay couldn't even bring himself to comment on Sheppard's astounding talent for stating the obvious. "One more tremor and this whole chamber's gonna fall into the chasm," he moaned hollowly.
For a moment or two, Rodney was reluctant to move, unable to escape the fear that any shift in the weight in the room would destabilise them completely and send them crashing to the chasm floor. But if he didn't move, they'd never get out of here and he wanted very much to get out of here. After a tentative step or two, during which they didn't die and there was no further ominous creaking or trembling from below, he hurried back to the hole in the ceiling, where a scattering of fresh dirt had poured into the room during the tremor, and picked up where he left off, straightening out the coil of rope and giving the grappling hook an experimental swing or two.
"Rodney."
The room had gotten noticeably gloomier as the day wore on and Sheppard had lit a couple of lanterns he'd dug out of the lockers and Carson was hanging them about the room, giving them all a little more light to work by. Sheppard was now watching Rodney's preparations with a slightly uncomfortable look. "Why don't you let me do that?" he suggested mildly.
"No, I can do it." Rodney's determination was fuelled by a desperate desire not to die. He was getting out of here.
Sheppard's face scrunched up, his expression reluctant. "C'mon, Rodney. Have you ever even done anything like this before?"
"Yes, actually, I have," Rodney lied, feeling a little affronted. "Lots of times."
Before Sheppard could press him on exactly when, Rodney started swinging the hook in a determined circle, building up some momentum, and Sheppard shrugged and stepped back out of the way. Not far enough out of the way as it happened; Rodney got a decent amount of speed and let fly, hurling the hook up at the opening as hard as he could… only his aim was off and the hook missed the opening by a good metre or more, bouncing off the ceiling with a reverberating clang and ricocheting back down into the room to smack against the wall inches from Sheppard's head. It hit the metal wall hard enough to draw sparks even as Sheppard ducked instinctively to the side.
"McKay!"
"Sorry! Sorry!"
"You just about took my head off!" Sheppard's expression would have been almost comical if Rodney hadn't been a little freaked out by the fact that he'd just nearly scalped his friend with a grappling hook. That and the whole imminent plunge to the death thing.
"I didn't mean to," he apologised. "It ... slipped." He looked around for the hook, finding it across the room where it had actually embedded itself into one of the rusting, corroded pipes running along the wall. He had to jiggle it to work the prong free of the crumbling metal.
Sheppard was waiting under the hole, holding out his hand peremptorily. "Let me do it."
Rodney refused to hand over the hook. This was a matter of pride now and he was going to do this, was going to get them out of here. "I can do it," he insisted.
"Apparently you can't," Sheppard disagreed pointedly.
"I can do it. I was almost there..."
He took up his stance again, letting the rope play through his hands until the hook was swinging the way he wanted it. Sheppard gave him a last long look, his hands on his hips, and then stalked away to join Carson who, Rodney noticed with a sting of pride, had taken cover behind one of the larger crates.
Rodney was determined to get it right this time. He swung the hook around three times, building up just enough momentum, but not too much, and hurled it up at the opening. This time his aim was much better… but he hadn't given it enough power and the hook didn't quite reach as far as the hole before falling back into the room. Rodney stepped quickly out of the way of the falling hook and the next thing he knew there was a sudden blast of heat and light and he was thrown to the side.
For a panicked moment, he thought this was it, the room was falling. But the room wasn't shaking, wasn't falling, and the roar that filled his ears wasn't the thunder of another tremor. And the heat prickling at his skin was… he scrambled to his hands and knees and was stunned to see a plume of flame spurting from the corroded metal pipe… the one he'd pulled the hook free from. Dammit. Who would have thought after all this time the pipe would still be sound, would still contain what was obviously flammable gas? The hook must have hit the pipe a second time, he realised, and struck sparks. He cursed the Genii one more time for their cavalier attitude, for taking what they wanted from this planet and then leaving, without even taking the time to properly shut down their operation and make sure it was safe.
The heat from the flame was intense, roaring over his head like a furnace, and he was far too close to it, could feel the scorched air already pressing against the fabric of his uniform, tingling the skin on his face and hands. Carson had scrambled away from the fire and was sheltering behind one of the larger crates, trying to block out the searing heat. Sheppard on the other hand, was moving towards the flame.
"What are you doing?!" cried Carson, echoing Rodney's stunned disbelief.
"Stay there!" Sheppard inched around the roaring inferno, raising his arms to shield his face from the intense heat, and got around behind the pipe. He reached for a large metal wheel and McKay realised what he was doing; there was a shut-off valve. Sheppard grabbed hold of the wheel and immediately jerked back, snatching his hands away from the obviously hot metal. Rodney watched helplessly through a shimmering heat haze as Sheppard rolled down his sleeves and hunched his arms up to pull the ends of the sleeves down over his hands before reaching again for the wheel. With a grimace of effort he turned the wheel roughly once and twice to the right and suddenly the flames died as the gas supply was cut off.
Rodney breathed a sigh of relief, goosebumps springing up on his flesh as the intense heat receded. He rose unsteadily to his feet to find Carson at his side, looking him over with an appraising eye. "Anything hurt?" Carson asked.
"Just my pride," Rodney mumbled shakily.
Carson smiled in relief. "That'll heal," he teased, not unkindly.
Sheppard had picked up the hook and, even as Rodney recovered his equilibrium, was swinging the rope through two short, swift circuits before tossing the hook upwards in a perfect trajectory that carried it smoothly out through the hole.
"You did it!" Carson crowed.
Rodney couldn't help but feel a little piqued at Carson's obvious admiration. "Oh, great!" he agreed, not quite managing to sound entirely sincere.
Sheppard wrapped the rope around his wrist and gave a firm tug, taking up the slack. "Alright," he murmured, "here goes nothing…"
Carefully, he pulled downwards, slowly transferring his body weight to the rope. Almost immediately soil began to rain down into the room and the rope quickly went slack, the hook sliding back over the lip of the hole to fall back into the room, dragging clumps of soil and grass with it. Sheppard danced back out of the way as the loose earth poured into the room. When it stopped, he moved back under the hole, regarding the new pile of soil with a grimace of distaste.
"Dammit," he cursed.
Retrieving the hook, Sheppard swung it again, spinning it smoothly a few times before letting it fly. Once again, it sailed easily out of the hole above and Rodney found himself fighting a flush of resentment at how easy Sheppard made it all look.
The results, however, where the same; as soon as Sheppard tried to put his weight on the rope, the hook tore free of the loose soil up above, dragging dirt and grass with it as it fell back into the room.
Sheppard shook his head in frustration. "There's no way the hook can grab onto that soil."
Carson regarded the length of rope morosely. "All those knots," he commented.
"Well, we had to try," Sheppard shrugged. He looked around at the two of them. "Any other ideas?"
Rodney looked quickly around the room, trying to think of other options; stacking the crates hadn't worked, climbing a rope out hadn't worked… there had to be some other way they could bridge the distance from the floor up to the hole in the ceiling above… bridge! That was it! He snapped his fingers excitedly as he stared up at the broad ceiling beams crossing the room, a plan forming rapidly.
"See those beams up there?" he pointed to the solid metal beams. "We use the rope to get up there. That buys us at least ten feet, then we build a bridge. A bridge using…"
He looked around quickly and zeroed in on a couple of long, wide planks. "Using these!" he finished, grabbing hold of the topmost plank and dragging it over to the centre of the room.
"Stack a couple of crates, we're gold," he enthused, "and we got that high before."
Sheppard's expression was thoughtful as he considered Rodney's idea. "Yeah, but I don't think these are long enough to span the distance between these two beams," he mused, eyeing the planks.
Rodney was not to be deterred. "So we find a hammer and nails."
"Sure," Sheppard waved a hand expansively. "Why not just add a jet pack and a trampoline to that list?"
Rodney pulled open a locker. "It is possible to find a hammer and nails," he maintained.
Carson's voice was dubious as he pointed out, "We've been over the room pretty thoroughly."
But dammit, this was a good idea. It could work, Rodney knew it. He pulled open another locker. "But there's gotta be hammer and nails," he insisted despairingly.
"Well, even if we found them..." Sheppard began.
"Look, we just have to build a bridge." Rodney was getting frustrated. This idea would work, he knew it. All they needed to make it work was a goddamn hammer and nails – was that so much to ask? Couldn't the stupid Genii have left them just one useful thing?!
"Wait a second, wait a second!" Carson had a look of dawning excitement on his face. "What about that trick?"
Sheppard looked nonplussed. "What?"
"That stupid trick you can do with beer glasses!"
Sheppard looked to Rodney with a frown and a shrug of confusion. Rodney was equally lost.
"We don't know what you're talking about," he told Carson.
"It's one of those lateral thinking things…" Carson was suddenly rummaging around in the lockers himself, pulling out odds and ends as he explained. "You know? The kind of stupid thing you do to win money off your mates in the pub after a few pints…"
Rodney watched in bemusement as Carson tipped an armful of junk onto the top of a crate and set about arranging three metal cups in a rough triangle before holding up a handful of fairly blunt looking dinner knives.
"The idea is this," Carson explained. "Using these three knives and without moving these three cups, you need to build a bridge that can support another cup's weight."
"We don't have another cup," Rodney pointed out pedantically, failing to see what possible use this was going to be.
"Well, whatever." Carson scouted around and picked up a small plastic cylinder. "We'll use this. OK, now, see..." He used one knife to demonstrate that the cups were too far apart for the knives to bridge the spaces between them.
"Just like our boards, just a little too short to span the space between the two beams there." He gestured upwards, and Rodney looked up at the beams overhead… and just at that moment a loud, distinctly worrying creak sounded from underneath them. They all froze in place and Rodney abruptly ran out of patience with Carson's long-winded explanation.
"OK, you know what? I'm a genius, I can probably figure it out, but a little under the gun, so..." He waved his hand in a vague "hurry it up" motion.
"Okay." Carson looked as freaked out as Rodney felt and he rushed to demonstrate his idea, resting one end of each knife on a cup and swivelling the other ends together in the centre of the triangle, pushing them together so that the ends overlapped and, as they were pushed more tightly together, locked in place, each knife held firmly by the other two knives. With a triumphant smile, Carson placed the plastic cylinder on top of the interlocked knives, where it sat securely.
Rodney had realised what Carson was showing them before he had finished pushing the overlapping knives into place. His mind racing, calculating distance and length and weight and a million other variables, he turned away from the demonstration, gazing up at the beams overhead. He was vaguely aware of Sheppard moving past him toward the planks.
"This could work…" Rodney muttered to himself.
"Of course it'll work." Carson was beaming, impressed with himself. "Even after several single malts it works!"
"If this gets us out of here, I'll buy you a bottle of single malt," Rodney promised fervently.
It took some time to put the plan into action. The first stage was to get up to the beams themselves, Sheppard shimmying up a rope at a speed that made it look easy. Rodney stayed on the floor, dealing with the mathematical end of the process – mass and force, weight and counterweight. With Carson's help, he used their packs as counterweight, tying them to the end of the rope slung over the beam, adding the weight to their own to pull down on the rope and lift the heavy planks attached to the other end.
Once the first plank was raised high enough and loosely tied into place, it was Carson's turn to climb the rope, rather more slowly and nervously than Sheppard. With Rodney and the counterweight pulling from below and Sheppard or Carson pulling from above, they slowly got all the last two planks raised up to the beam and lashed loosely in place. It was an arduous process, made awkward, and dangerous, by the difficulty of moving about on the, to Rodney's mind, far too narrow surface of the beams.
The height and precariousness of their perch didn't seem to bother Sheppard; he moved about confidently, keeping his balance easily, sometimes looping a casual hand around the dangling wire of a light fitting. As if that would bear his weight if he slipped, Rodney fretted. Carson leant far more towards Rodney's way of thinking, moving about in a slow, unhappy crouch, hanging on to a large upright support with a death grip, his eyes determinedly averted from the long drop below.
Eventually, they were in position, each of them sitting on the end of a loosely tied plank and carefully, laboriously, using their own body weight to counter the weight of the planks as they swung them out over the gap between the beams, bringing the ends together until they met and, finally, interlocked. Once the basic structure was there, and they were no longer bearing the full weight of the planks, they could kick and shove them closer together, making sure they were locked tight in place. They let go gingerly and the structure held. Sheppard, hanging onto the electric cable again, leaned his weight onto the bridge and took a couple of years off of Rodney's lifespan by bouncing gently. It held. They'd done it. They'd made a bridge. Sheppard grinned and they hurried to tie the planks off firmly to the beams, lashing the structure in place.
Then came the really fun part – getting the remarkably heavy crates up to the bridge to be stacked. It took all three of then to achieve it, Sheppard taking point in the middle of the bridge to position and stack the crates, Carson balancing uneasily on the beam and Rodney on the floor below, the two of them working together to haul the crates up, inch by inch. They got one large crate in place, balanced in the centre of the bridge, and worked quickly to get a second, smaller crate lifted up. With the two crates stacked atop each other, the hole above looked easily within reach. Rodney watched from the ground, his heart in his mouth, as Sheppard climbed up to kneel carefully on the lower crate.
Something creaked loudly.
"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Carson muttered nervously, edging closer towards the solid upright support beam.
Sheppard's attention was focused on the hole above; he was looking up, judging distances. He was close, Rodney could see. Really close.
A horribly cracking sound echoed from somewhere amongst the precarious wooden structure.
Rodney swallowed, fear racing through him. "Listen. I know I have a reputation for being overly pessimistic," he gabbled, "but I really think you should come down right now before it all collapses."
Sheppard turned for a moment to look down at him and Rodney's heart sank at the familiar look of stubborn determination. Slowly, Sheppard began to straighten up, standing upright on the larger wooden crate. There was another ominous creaking noise.
"John! John, just head back!" Rodney begged.
"I'm almost there." Sheppard didn't look down, his gaze fixed on the hole just above him. He reached up, managing to get a hand to the lip of the hole, and put one knee on the topmost crate.
At that very moment, just as Sheppard began to transfer his weight up onto the final crate, the earth shuddered unhappily and the room began to judder and shake as another tremor hit.
"Oh no!" Carson grabbed for the support beam, hanging on for dear life as the tremor shook the beam under his feet. Balanced precariously atop the stacked crates, Sheppard had nowhere to go and nothing to grab hold of as one of the planks snapped with a sharp retort. The bridge collapsed with devastating suddenness and Sheppard and the crates plummeted to the floor.
Rodney watched in horror as Sheppard hit the ground hard, dust and splinters of wood thrown up by the impact.
"John!" Carson reached out instinctively, uselessly, as Sheppard fell. Rodney was already rushing to Sheppard's side as Carson struggled to climb down from his perch on the beam. Sheppard was already rolling onto his back, groaning painfully, as Rodney dropped to a crouch beside him.
"Don't move!" he snapped, glancing up anxiously in case anything else was about to drop on them. "Don't move!"
Rodney reached out a hand, trying to steady Sheppard as he grimaced in pain. He was clearly a little stunned by the fall, his arms moving restlessly as he panted through the pain.
Carson scrambled hurriedly down a rope with more agility than Rodney had ever seen the man display and dropped to his knees beside Sheppard.
"Let me see," he instructed gently, running his hands quickly over Sheppard's torso and legs. Carson's head jerked up in consternation as Sheppard yelped at the touch to his leg. Rodney could actually see the sweat spring up on Sheppard's face as his neck and jaw tensed.
Carson's expression was regretful, his voice muted, as he told Sheppard quietly, "Your leg is broken."
Sheppard was still breathing heavily, gritting his teeth tightly as he writhed against the pain. When he shuddered and let his head drop back to the dusty floor, his voice came out tight and breathless, "We're in trouble now, aren't we?"
"No, no. We'll be fine." Rodney offered reassurance he didn't feel. "We just, uh... we'll be fine." He wasn't even convincing himself.
"Rodney, can you get me my medical kit please?"
Sheppard was pale and breathless, the pain on his face obvious, and Rodney was more than a little worried. What the hell were they going to do now? How were they going to get out of here when one of them had a broken leg?
"Rodney?" Carson prompted gently and Rodney shook himself out of his stupor. They'd find a way out of this. They would. They had to. He stumbled to his feet and hurried over to retrieve Carson's pack. He flinched at the sound of Sheppard's pained grunt and looked over to see Carson carefully rolling up Sheppard's right pants leg. Grabbing the bag, he hurried back over to crouch beside his friend.
He watched helplessly as Carson opened up the medical kit, laying it within easy reach, and finished rolling up Sheppard's pants. Sheppard lay still, staring up at the ceiling, the tension in his muscles betraying his pain.
"Okay," Carson leaned over Sheppard's leg and gave Rodney a serious look. "Will you help me?" he asked calmly. Feeling anything but calm, Rodney nodded.
"Okay. One hand here, on his knee..."
Carson guided Rodney's uncertain hand into place and shifted his attention to Sheppard's ankle, pushing the topmost edge of a black sock out of the way. Sheppard tensed a little more, his leg muscles thrumming under Rodney's hand, and gave a muffled grunt.
"...one hand down here, near his ankle," Carson finished, indicating where he wanted Rodney to grip. "Keep it nice and straight."
Rodney did as he was told, pressing gently on Sheppard's knee and ankle, holding the lower leg immobile.
Carson's expression was apologetic as he told Sheppard, "You're not gonna like this, but I've got to take your boot off."
Sheppard swallowed, pain tightening his face. "Yeah, I thought you might," he muttered hoarsely. Rodney's stomach turned queasily as he watched Sheppard struggle with the pain as Carson carefully unlaced his right boot. He was uncomfortably reminded of the iratus bug incident, all those years ago, back when they'd only just arrived in Pegasus and he'd barely gotten to know John Sheppard.
Even then he'd been a stoic sonofabitch, gritting his teeth through the pain and keeping his head – and forcing Rodney to keep his – despite the ugly great damn bug clinging to his neck and slowly sucking the life of out him. Except the iratus bug's MO was pain followed by expanding numbness – a badly broken leg wasn't half so accommodating, offering nothing but pain, pain and more pain, and Sheppard's face was drawn with the effort of holding himself together. Rodney watched him quietly brace himself as Carson warned him, "Okay. Here it comes."
Carson was as gentle as he could be as he worked the loosened boot off Sheppard's foot but Sheppard gave a strangled cry nonetheless, his leg jerking minutely under Rodney's hands.
"Okay," Carson's expression was intent, focused on his work, as he quickly pulled Sheppard's sock off. "Tell me when you can feel my finger on the bottom of your foot."
Sheppard grimaced, his gaze still fixed on the ceiling. "Okay," he gasped.
Rodney held Sheppard's leg still while Carson gently pressed his finger against the sole of Sheppard's foot.
"Yep," Sheppard breathed. "Yeah."
Carson's finger moved up the foot and pressed again. "Here?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Okay." Carson sat back on his heels and looked around at the debris of shattered crates, picking out a longish, straight piece of wood. "We need to find another one of these," he told Rodney, "and make a splint."
"Okay." Rodney clambered awkwardly to his feet and looked around him; the floor was littered with remnants of the several crates that had been destroyed in their attempts to climb out of here. Carson took a few steps away from Sheppard to pick up a likely piece of wood and, with a quick glance at Sheppard's pale face, Rodney discretely followed.
He kept his voice quiet as he asked Carson seriously, "Look, how bad is he?"
Carson spoke quietly too, his expression serious. "Well, it's not so bad," he hedged. "He still has feeling in his foot, so there doesn't seem to be any nerve damage, but the break's pretty severe ... which means there may very well be internal bleeding."
Rodney swallowed. That didn't sound good at all. "Yeah, but that's... I mean, that's bad, isn't it?"
"Well, it's not really good, no," Carson agreed, his frustration evident. "I mean, I would need to get him under a scanner."
Rodney exhaled slowly, his mind working, trying to calculate options and probabilities. "Okay, worst case scenario," he asked, "he's bleeding internally. How long has he got before he... before it becomes very serious?"
Carson grimaced, clearly unhappy. "An hour," he admitted.
"Oh, boy."
"Come on." Carson waved the piece of wood he'd been examining and moved back over to where Sheppard lay tense and still. Rodney followed numbly, a terrible fear gnawing at his stomach.
Sheppard looked up at them, his face pale and drawn but with a familiar determined set, and asked bluntly, "So, what? An hour before internal bleeding becomes a problem?"
Rodney gaped. "How did you...?"
Sheppard grinned tightly. "It's not my first rodeo, Rodney."
Carson was rummaging through his medical kit; he pulled out a blister pack of pills and handed it to Sheppard. "Here's some ibuprofen."
Rodney was stunned. "Ibuprofen?!" Sheppard had a broken leg, for crying out loud. What good was ibuprofen going to do?! "That's the strongest thing you've got?!" he asked disbelievingly.
"It's all I have in this basic kit," Carson explained apologetically. He grimaced. "Although from this point on I think I'm making morphine mandatory." He glanced up at the ceiling, far above, and added sourly, "As well as maybe a grappling gun."
Sheppard had popped a couple of tablets out of the blister pack and, having no water to hand, he simply chewed on them as Carson began to splint his leg. "I wouldn't take the morphine," he admitted, pain tightening his voice, "gotta keep a clear head." He looked up at Rodney. "We still have to figure out a way out of here – at least, one of us does. Chances are pretty slim that I'm gonna climb out. Ow." He flinched, tensing painfully at Carson's careful touch.
Rodney sighed in frustration. "Yeah, well, the crates are out."
"Yeah," Sheppard agreed unhappily.
Rodney looked around the room, trying to think, to find a solution. He looked back at Sheppard, lying pale and injured on the floor, and could feel the edges of panic fluttering in his chest, making it hard to concentrate. Carson was preoccupied with wrapping a bandage around Sheppard's leg, strapping the splints firmly into place. "Hey, if you've got an idea, feel free," Rodney prompted.
Carson's expression was regretful as he glanced up. "Hey, I came up with the bar trick thing, okay?" he pointed out. "And that didn't work out so well, so I think I'll just leave it to the pros."
"Yeah," Rodney murmured morosely.
He cast a quick, hopeful glance at Sheppard who gave him a tight grin that verged on a grimace. "Sorry, " he grated dryly, "All my energy's focussed on not screaming right now."
Rodney could see the tension in Sheppard's jaw, his hands curled into fists, and knew that, despite the attempt at levity, Sheppard wasn't joking.
"Wonderful…" Rodney muttered heavily. He tilted his head up, looking at the hole in the ceiling, thinking aloud as he summed up their situation. "Okay. Well, the grappling hook didn't work because the hook wouldn't hold our weight in the soil. The crates didn't work because Sheppard was too heavy..."
Despite being laid out helpless on the floor, gritting his teeth as Carson splinted his broken leg, Sheppard still managed to give him an incredulous glare.
"Well, you were!" Rodney justified indignantly. "Which is not to say that Carson or I wouldn't have been but we'll never know will we because the crates are wrecked. All I'm saying is that you were the one climbing the crates and therefore the one whose weight made them break so logically…"
"McKay!" He stopped rambling, brought up short by Sheppard's impatient interruption. "Stay on topic," Sheppard ordered.
"Right, right, okay." Rodney gave himself a mental shake and tried to focus his thoughts, running through an inventory of what they had at their disposal. "Uh, where was I?" He looked around the room, formulating solutions and discarding them just as quickly, until he caught sight of a length of metal pole leaning against one wall. An idea sparked in his brain and this one he didn't discard.
"Uh, alright. Look." He moved over to grab the pole and brought it over to Carson and Sheppard, explaining, "If we can get this rod up there, attach the rope to it, it'll lay across the hole, support our weight. We don't have to worry about the soil."
Carson looked dubious, to say the least. "You were barely able to get the grappling hook up there," he pointed out.
"'Barely'?!" Rodney huffed indignantly. He'd almost had it when Sheppard had stepped in and taken over. "Were you not watching? It was..."
"It's just that it's a lot heavier than that," Sheppard interrupted hoarsely, the pained breathlessness in his voice effectively derailing Rodney's wounded pride. He looked around again, searching for a solution. Some way to get the metal piping up through the hole above.
"So, we..." His muttered words tailed off abruptly as his gaze fell on the gas pipe. The one that had ignited and nearly flambéed him. The one full of flammable gas. His mind raced, a vague idea becoming a fully-formed plan within seconds. "A detonator," he announced urgently. "I need a detonator!"
Carson regarded him blankly. Sheppard meanwhile, simply fumbled open one of the pockets on his tac vest and a moment later held out a small electronic detonator. At any other time Rodney would have probably had some smart comment to make about how Sheppard couldn't seem to go off-world without a stash of explosives in his tac vest but right now he could have kissed him. He grabbed the detonator from Sheppard's trembling hand and turned his attention to finding what else he needed; a decent sized length of pipe and enough cloth to stuff into any gaps and create a seal.
To be continued...