Chapter 9
Out of all the people Sheppard had lost, the worst had been his mother. He had been so young and her death so sudden, that he had never gotten to say goodbye. One day, she had been there, waking him with a sunny smile and a kiss on his forehead, and the next she was gone.
He remembered the smell of the hospital – astringent, like he'd stuck his nose in a full bottle of rubbing alcohol – and it frightened him more than the sight of the accident victims they had wheeled through the door as he sat with Dave in the waiting room. There were toys there, blocks and coloring books and stuffed animals, but he hadn't felt like playing. He was the older brother, the one in charge of Dave, so he had sat in the chair swinging his legs back and forth and trying not to cry.
He had known that Mom was sick, and sick people went to the hospital. But what he also knew was that sometimes, sick people didn't come home again. He learned that when they'd gone to Grandpa's funeral two months ago. Grandpa had been in the hospital, too, only he had been too sick for the doctors to help. Mom had tried to explain that Grandpa was old, and that it was his time to go, but even then John had been stubborn and refused to believe her.
John was scolding Dave for throwing a block across the waiting room when his father emerged from a doorway, with the doctor behind him. Seeing the devastating pain on his father's face, John sprang to his feet, grabbed Dave up in his small arms, and rushed over to him. He didn't need to ask any questions; the answer was written all over Patrick's eyes, in each tear that slipped down his tanned cheeks, and John suddenly understood everything.
Mom was gone.
He lost the fight with his tears. His six year old body shook so hard that he sank to his knees on the carpet of the waiting room, and his stomach felt like he would throw up. Dave, in his typical three-year-old fashion, saw that John was hurting and instantly flung his chubby arms around his big brother's neck. He smelled like the chocolate M&M's one of the nurses had given him to keep him quiet, and when he kissed John's cheek his lips were slightly sticky, but none of that mattered. John felt so lost; even in the middle of this busy hospital, with his little brother clinging to him, he was alone.
Suddenly, strong arms were around him, and Patrick's hands were cradling his and Dave's heads against his broad chest. All three Sheppard men huddled together, only two of them fully understanding that now, they were really and truly on their own.
From that day on, it seemed to John as if every person he knew who went to the hospital only left in a coffin, and so John began to see the hospital as a place where people go, not to get better, but to die.
He supposed that was why he hated the infirmary so much – not because of the sharp needles and such, but because each time he stepped inside, he worried that he would not step out again.
And now he was smelling alcohol again, or at least something fairly similar. Something about the smell was slightly off, as if something were trying to replicate it but without a proper frame of reference.
Kind of like the whales, when they were trying to warn us about the coronal mass, he thought, recalling with a grimace how his eardrums had been punctured by the whale's attempts at speech. They had tried to mimic the Ancient language, but years of teaching and re-teaching to their offspring had made it much like a game of telephone and the resulting speech was nothing more than garbled nonsense.
The sharp astringent scent pressed around him again, as if it was trying to draw him back to his memories, to lull him to sleep. He tested it, pushing back with the equivalent of his pinkie finger, and it swirled closer. When he tried again, harder, it seemed to retreat for a moment before nearly shoving itself against his senses. Even in his half-awake state, he realized that something was very wrong.
The hum was gone again.
He wasn't on Atlantis.
He had to get home.
He had to wake up.
As he began to break the surface of consciousness, he was hit by an intense pain in his chest, hot and fluid like molten lava filling his lungs.
Breathe.
The cold was still around him, numbing him. Though he could not feel his limbs, he knew that they must have been shivering terribly.
Come on, John, breathe! he commanded himself, but the pain was too much. He felt himself slipping back into unconsciousness.
No! Don't give up!
That hadn't been his voice, he realized then. Elizabeth? He asked. Where are you?
I'm here, John.
Where's here?
That's not important, now. You've got to wake up, before they come back.
Who? Before who comes back?
He could feel a sense of frustration then, almost strong enough to imagine her standing there, frowning deeply at him.
Just wake up! He heard her shout in his mind. Wake up NOW!
Sheppard gathered all his strength and then struggled to the surface, his eyes flying open as he sat up and sucked in a huge gulp of air. Coughing with the effort, he looked around and understood why he had felt so cold. His body had been submerged in a tank of icy blue fluid, kept unconscious by a drug being pumped into his veins through an IV. He wondered silently how long he had been like this, and who had done it to him.
No time! Elizabeth's voice cried at him. Help the others.
Confused, he gazed around the room. Sure enough, there were three more tanks lined up beside him. He could see Rodney in the one next to his, and further down was Ronon. The third tank was too far down to see who was inside, but he had a feeling that it was Teyla.
Ripping the IV from his arm, he climbed over the side of the tank and tried to stand. His legs were still numb however, and he started to fall. Luckily, his hands caught the edge of the tank and held him mostly upright, and after a few moments where he was sure someone would come in and catch him, the feeling slowly returned to the rest of his limbs. Still shivering as he was only clad in a soaking wet pair of boxers, he hurried over to Rodney's tank and stuck his hands into the blue liquid. Almost immediately his hands numbed, and he finally understood that it wasn't the drugs that had kept him immobile, but the liquid itself.
"Great," he hissed under his breath as he pulled his hands back out and stuck them under his arms to warm them. How was he going to get Rodney to wake up? If he pulled the IV now, Rodney would awaken underwater, and would likely inhale a lungful of the stuff. Sheppard had no idea of what that would do to him, but he was sure he didn't want to find out. Not only that, but as Elizabeth's voice was now incessantly reminding him, he was running out of time.
Sheppard looked around and saw a pair of shoulder-length black gloves sitting on a cart nearby. Whoever had put them here must have used them to protect themselves as they performed whatever weird experiment this was. They looked thick enough to keep the blue liquid from seeping through to skin, and were definitely long enough. Wasting no time, Sheppard grabbed them and pulled them on.
McKay's sputtering probably could've been heard throughout the entire building, but at least he was breathing again. When he opened his eyes and saw that he was now sitting on the floor of a strange room, in an even stranger building, and in nothing but his underwear, he gave Sheppard the most horrified look the colonel had ever seen.
"What...where...?" He stuttered, but Sheppard shook his head.
"No time. Here." He handed Rodney a pair of long black gloves, identical to the ones he was currently wearing. "Go wake up Teyla. And don't touch the blue stuff."
Rodney began to protest, but the dark look in Sheppard's eyes stopped him short. With a sigh, he suppressed a shiver and pulled on the gloves, then made his way over to the last tank in the row.
TBC...