Thanks for such lovely reviews everyone! Chocolate for all!! And on to the aftermath…
--//--
"I don't want to roll him just yet." Beckett announced to the med team as they settled Sheppard on the Jumper floor. "Our first priority is to get his body temp up – slowly. Too fast and we'll have even more to worry about. Once we get him back to Atlantis, then we can assess the wounds. From what I've been able to determine, there are no exit wounds."
"I'll have Dr. Biro prep the OR, sir." The pilot responded from the front.
"Thank you, Lieutenant." Beckett replied hurriedly as he and the team worked on getting the Lt. Colonel stable.
Sheppard's team sat on the bench to either side of the action, looking on morosely. There was little they could do now: Sheppard's life was in Beckett's hands.
Beckett glanced up at them at that moment, as the med team took over for him.
"Look, I won't deny he's in a bad way. He's a strong lad. He made it this far."
"His lips are blue." Rodney stated this simple fact, his eyes cast upon the pilot. His hands were clenched to either side and he was shivering. Teyla laid a hand upon his knee but her expression was identical to his. Even Ronon looked uncharacteristically pale. They had all seen the stained red snow beneath the colonel when he had been moved. It was beyond any of them how he had managed to stay conscious as long as he had.
"Aye, Rodney. We're doing everything we can." Beckett replied in a compassionate voice. But a quiver in his lips told the team that Beckett was just as affected by this as they were. However, the doctor had to pull it together if he wanted to save the pilot's life.
The distant voice of the Jumper's pilot responding to Atlantis' hail as they activated the Stargate told the team that they were almost home.
"Is he going to die?" Ronon asked the question the others dared not voice. It was like saying it would make it a reality. One they just couldn't face. Not now. Not ever.
"Not if I have anything to say about it." Beckett replied fiercely, determination firing in his eyes.
--//--
They waited and waited.
The surgery took all night.
Beckett exited in the early morning hours, exhaustion threatening to do him in. He scrubbed his head, taking in a deep breath before meeting the eyes of the team gathered with Elizabeth. His eyes were expressionless as he struggled with emotions swirling within. He gestured for them all to sit.
The silence was deafening.
"Carson?" Elizabeth prompted, her heart in her throat.
He took a moment to gather himself.
"He's critical." He sighed.
The others blew out a breath they didn't realize they had been collectively holding. At least the colonel was still alive.
"One of the bullets is still lodged between the twelfth thoracicvertebra and the first lumbar vertebra and we're going to have to go back in to remove it. We won't know until then whether there will be permanent damage to his spinal cord. The other three bullets were removed successfully. We had to remove his left kidney, however, as the damage was too extensive. Another bullet just nicked the lower lobe of his left lung and the third came dangerously close to his heart. That one was a bugger to remove as it seemed to want to travel a bit before we could get a good hold of it. He was quite a mess and it doesn't help any that we're still struggling to get his body temperature back to where it should be."
Carson sighed again, rubbing his forehead tiredly. Elizabeth placed a hand on his shoulder. There were tears in her eyes that she didn't even bother to hide.
"Can we…." Rodney began to ask, but his voice trailed off. He just didn't want to get his hopes up.
"Aye, Rodney, you can see him but I want you all to keep to the side. There's a lot of equipment and the nurses are settling him in. Don't stay long…we need to keep the area clear in case…." Beckett didn't bother finishing, as he just didn't want to admit how critical the colonel really was.
They entered into the critical care section of the infirmary. Everything about the situation was wrong: the smell, the feel, the sight before them…none of this was supposed to have happened. Yet it had.
No one spoke. A life was still hanging by but a frayed thread. Even the tension in the air seemed threatening enough to sever that thread.
There was little they could see of him. Thermal blankets were wrapped snug around his body. Tubes and wires ran from and to his body. The unsettling clicks and hisses from a ventilator accompanied the slow beat of the heart monitor. His face was pale, from the little they could see of it. His chest barely rose up and down, painfully slow.
"He's up to 96.3 degrees now, Doctor Beckett." A nurse disrupted the silent vigil. Beckett nodded his approval.
There was nothing that could be said. No one wanted to voice what all were thinking: he already looked dead. After a minute, Beckett silently urged them out.
They reconvened in the waiting area. Elizabeth crossed her arms, hugging her body as she locked eyes with Carson.
"What are his chances?"
Rodney couldn't take it anymore. Anger that had been building since the frustration of being unable to reach the colonel because of the storm, reached its pinnacle.
"What's the point? He either lives or dies, Elizabeth. There's no in between. You can't put a percentage on the colonel's life. By all physical means, he should already be dead." His face grew rapidly redder as he spat out the words.
There wasn't much hope in the room to begin with. So when Rodney spoke what they had all feared, there came no immediate response.
"Hope. There's always hope. It's what keeps us as well as him fighting to the very end. Let's not give up on that, shall we? You know the colonel wouldn't." Beckett stared Rodney down. The scientist relented just as quickly as he had lashed out.
"Sorry. I'm just…sorry." Rodney mustered, his head hanging low.
By now, the team would usually be cracking jokes about how Sheppard would devise an escape plan once he got better. There was no light-hearted banter this time: nothing to make the situation any easier to handle. It had been too close this time. And Sheppard wasn't even out of the woods yet. Even if the colonel survived the night and his second surgery, his chances of becoming paralyzed were great.
"Look, let's all just get some rest. We'll be of no use to the colonel if we're spent." Beckett suggested.
"Easier said than done." Elizabeth surmised.
The team turned as one and headed out of the infirmary without so much as a single objection. It was a testament to the reality that there really wasn't much they could do now. They couldn't sit with the colonel and they couldn't sit around waiting for the inevitable. They needed to release their frustrations into what they did best. Rodney returned to his lab, Elizabeth to her office, Ronon to the gym, and Teyla to her room to meditate.
Beckett remained behind in their wake, the sadness of the situation weighing heavy on his heart. He turned finally, to check once more on the colonel before heading to his own office, to review the trajectory of the final bullet, still lodged in the colonel's spine. It was going to be a long track ahead.
--//--
Like successive claps of thunder, the ring of gunfire pounded against the mighty rocky peaks around him. Slowly, as if time had slid to a halt, his legs failed to carry his weight and he tipped backwards. He hit the ice in a painful exhale, the shocking blow reverberating throughout his body.
Then all was still.
He realized he had suddenly forgotten to breathe. As he tentatively inhaled the chilled air, his vision narrowed to the ice underneath his outstretched arm, fingers curled upward in a lazy offering to the sky. There was a rapid red stain gathering beneath it, tainting the ice. It did not register just then that it was his blood. He only noted that it was rather captivating, the smooth edges filling the minute scratches and dips in the flawed surface of the frozen lake beneath him. His labored breaths were loud in his ears, so loud it was the only thing he could hear.
He blinked. Then blinked again. He had been shot.
From the echoing sound of gunfire that still pounded in the distance of the roaring rush of blood in his ears, he had probably been hit more than once. Would explain why his body no longer seemed to want to respond to his commands for it to get up.
He blinked heavily, exhaling a visible puff of air. He couldn't move.
John Sheppard became convinced that death had finally won the game. It was only a matter of time before it claimed its prize.
Awareness faded quickly.
And then he woke up. The fading echo of gunfire left his ears yet still his heart raced.
He knew instantly that he was back on Atlantis. There was no other infirmary like it on Earth. Which meant he wasn't hallucinating or dead. Relief that normally consoled him was absent: he knew the aftermath of his ordeal would not leave him unscathed. The bullets had struck him the back. His chances of walking away from this one were as slim as McKay admitting he didn't know everything.
The numbness he felt now was different than before. It pulled at him, weighted him down against a feather-light surface that offered little comfort against it. And he was warm. Warmer than he could have ever imagined feeling again. His throat was achingly dry, his nose picking up the usual infirmary smells, and his ears catching faint squeaks of gurney wheels and sneakers upon a polished floor.
He was home.
His eyelids were heavy and slow in revealing the world around him. There was little to be seen as he laid flat on his back. A darkened infirmary welcomed him to awareness. Silence reigned. No ventilator yet intrusive tubes remained. He blinked a few times, chasing off the last vestiges of the sleep that had held him its grasp for so long.
A chill remained in the air, but this time it was not physical. Something wasn't right. Perhaps it would never be so again and he knew instantly why. He was paralyzed. He couldn't move anything below his waist…it was like a void…there simply wasn't anything there. He stubbornly commanded everything from muscle to tendon to bone to move. Nothing, not even a twitch. The only thing accomplished was initiating a spiking pain between his eyes.
Panic threatened to swallow him whole.
His heart rate quickened, perspiration beaded on his flush forehead.
Hurried footsteps headed his direction and he swallowed hard, hoping to get his throat working to ask one of the hardest questions he ever had to ask. Will I ever walk again?
Carson's exhausted face came into view, concern embedded deep in those caring blue eyes. The man was stretched thin and John knew he was the cause of it. He cracked his dry lips apart to speak but Carson only hushed him, glancing briefly at the monitors before bringing out the dreaded penlight. Several agonizing moments later, and vitals checked, Carson regained eye contact.
"Don't try to talk at the moment, Colonel. You've been on the ventilator up to an hour ago, when you first showed signs of waking. I suppose you'll be wanting to know what kinda mess you've managed to get yourself into this time." Carson replied in a soothing voice. He paused momentarily, grabbing a cup from somewhere nearby and sliding a heavenly ice chip between his cracked lips. "The good news is you're not paralyzed…if you have any numbness at all, it's due to swelling on your spine after the surgery we had to perform to remove the final bullet. The other three left quite a mess themselves, but it was the fourth we were most worried about. I won't lie to you: the surgery was challenging and you will be feeling the effects of it for quite some time. Once we get you healthy, you'll be doing physical therapy for a couple o' months to regain your strength. This whole ordeal was tough, colonel, but I know you'll recover in no time. You've proved it time again with that stubborn head of yours. We didn't give up on you, colonel. Never did and never will."
By the end of that long-winded speech, Sheppard found his eyelids drooping, the weight of sleep pushing down on him. A weak smile formed on his lips.
"Thank you." He whispered.
Peaceful sleep claimed him. His mind returned to a dark night sky sparkled with lights and dreams of flying amongst them once again.
--fin (for real)--
There you go, hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did in writing it! I didn't want to drag things out too much: sometimes saying things in less words is more powerful. Also, the title of this fic came from Kate Havenik's beautiful song of the same name.
OT A/N: For those of you who may be interested in a writing challenge, check out the Whump From a Hat Challenge at my LJ (link in bio - won't post here since ffnet won't seem to let me...)
Also, for those of you sticking with my other fic, Bitter, I just want you to know I haven't abandoned it. I have roughly six or seven chapters left to fill in bits and pieces, etc. Then I'm going to post each installment day by day as a treat to finish it up. :D