A/N: First, thanks to all of you for sending such wonderful feedback after the last two chapters of this story. Your words have really propelled me into true obsession with this fic! Second, I know it's been a while since I've updated, and I've hated the delay since I was enjoying the momentum of the story. Real life has just left me an illness-filled, snotty, feverish, puking mess for the past month (yes, count 'em…four weeks of this crap!), and I haven't been physically able to update until now. Even this chapter was written between bouts of sickness, and because of it I'm reserving the right to revise what is to follow once I'm feeling myself again (if I could only remember what that was like!). I want to thank Titan5 for offering to send me to the infirmary in a bed next to John's…that idea certainly perked me right the hell up! Thirdly, just a reminder, there are spoilers for Conversion and Poisoning the Well here. Fourth, I'm not a doctor! So if my medical explanations are a mess, well, like I've said before, this is all just make-believe anyway. Finally, I hope that you all enjoy this chapter, and here's hoping it all makes sense! Emrys
The Weight of an Oath – Part 6Carson could only gape as he listened to McKay's slightly insane hypothesis of what he thought was wrong with Sheppard. But despite its flaws, Rodney's inventive explanation was a highly complicated diagnosis and one more than worthy of the convoluted workings of the physicist's agile mind. Carson was actually slightly intrigued by the level of imagination that McKay's theory expressed, and if the Colonel wasn't in dire straits he may have let Rodney continue to elaborate. But, having succumbed to unconsciousness only moments earlier, Sheppard was obviously in trouble and needed attention. And so when Rodney began to attribute his friend's high fever to an as of yet undiscovered Pegasus galaxy flu aggravated by poor eating habits and recent insulin injections, Beckett interrupted him.
"Rodney, please, you're giving me a headache…."
"No, but really, Carson, your own people, your own voodoo brethren have attributed low immune function to bad eating habits. And anyway, what kind of doctor are you that you don't know that! Never mind, I don't want to know. I mean, I know that Sheppard just got eaten by a Wraith, but he was always that scrawny, you know, and how could that possibly be healthy? And it's not as if the Wraith aged him any or that he's showing symptoms of the serum's side effects, so that can't be it. I'm telling you Carson, it's all of those candy bars that he's got stashed away. Sugar's just awful for the human body, but…."
"Sweet Jesus, man! I think you've finally cracked under the pressure!" Carson realized that Rodney really was at his wit's end and had obviously wandered far into denial. And the doctor couldn't really blame the man. He wasn't sure how well he would handle the stress of dealing with a gravely ill best friend away from his team and alone in an alien setting surrounded by strangers who were kidnappers and torturers. And Beckett wasn't naïve enough to believe that Rodney didn't blame himself for the Colonel's condition. It seemed to be an unhealthy pattern of behavior between the two men that when one was hurt, the other shouldered the blame. And as he placed a calming hand on Rodney's arm, Carson realized that he should have recommended more sessions with Kate after the Aurora fiasco than he had. That was something that would have to be rectified when they returned to Atlantis.
"Babbling on like my grandmother isn't going to help Colonel Sheppard," Carson said forcibly to McKay in an effort to get the man to focus. "Now come and help me with him!"
The worry in Rodney's face deepened, but at the same time the proud man managed to look affronted by Carson's tone. His jaw jutted out contentiously as he sullenly muttered, "Hey, I'm not the one who was kidnapped without even knowing it."
Realizing that Rodney was only worried about his friend and relieved to see the physicist edging his way to Sheppard's side, Carson bit back a tight response to the sarcastic comment. Besides, what Rodney said was true. When Teyla had walked through the Stargate with a Netharian escort beside her and had demanded Carson's presence, no one, not one of them had managed to pick up on the desperate hints that she had attempted to relay to them that something was terribly wrong. And, okay, so her words and gestures had been subtle, but the message should have been clear to them all.
In fact, Carson hadn't caught on that things were wrong until Rodney had explained it all to him only moments ago. Teyla had been briskly ushered away while he had been discussing the Colonel's condition with a lovely lass named Sandrina, and he had been so distracted that he hadn't noticed the Athosian's disappearance. It had been an utterly stupid lack of attention that had led him to this moment in time, and Carson couldn't help but blame himself for only making worse the situation that Sheppard's team was experiencing.
And so he restrained the retort that came to his mouth when Rodney chided him and instead pulled McKay closer to Sheppard's side. He grabbed John's right hand and pulled the sleeve of the tunic-like shirt that the now quiescent man was wearing to expose the flesh on his inner arm. What he observed didn't overly surprise him, but he was unhappy to see it anyway.
Rodney noticed Carson's forlorn look, and panic blossomed within him.
"What? What's wrong?" he asked anxiously.
Shaking his head despondently, Carson grimly showed Rodney the inflamed tissue on Sheppard's arm. "Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor, Rodney?" he asked quietly.
"Of course I have," McKay snapped, indignantly. "It's the idea that the simplest explanation is most often the right one. But I don't see what that has to do with…."
"Rodney, in medicine, Occam's Razor usually applies. The Netharians never should have exposed Colonel Sheppard to that serum," Carson said, grimly.
"What? What? Do you mean the retrovirus? No, that's not right. It's like I was saying before…."
"Rodney stop being purposefully dense," Carson scolded. "You must have at least an inkling of what's really happening here. I know that it's difficult to face, but pretending that his condition isn't as serious as it is won't help the Colonel."
"I just…it's just that…it's too much, Carson," Rodney stammered in a harsh whisper almost as if he were afraid that John would hear his admission. "He keeps getting hurt, and I'm always the one that's responsible for it. I can't take much more of this. I mean, we had to electrocute him the last time, and now…. Now this is bad, isn't it? Really, really bad."
Carson felt his eyes soften with the compassion he felt for Rodney. McKay tended to bottle up his emotions and hide them behind sarcasm and a biting wit. Consequently, Carson was glad that the scientist had communicated part of what he was feeling and hoped that the stress and pressure that was affecting McKay was somewhat alleviated in the telling. But it was revealing of the conflict with which Rodney was struggling that he had blurted out his strong fears in the first place.
"Aye, he's in trouble," Carson said softly while rifling through their supplies. "But hiding from that fact won't help him. And since we're in a bit of a tough spot, I need you to use that brain of yours to think up a way out of this muddle. Dwelling on the past and placing blame where it doesn't belong is only going to keep you from coming up with all of the answers. So I need you to do what you do best and figure out a brilliant way out of here," Carson forcibly brightened his voice and hoped that the attempt to boost McKay's ego wouldn't come back to haunt him later.
Rodney's slumped posture straightened with the physician's words, and he too forced a more positive response out of his mouth.
"That's right," he said, almost choking on the words. "I am the answer man after all. Thanks for reminding me, Carson." Rodney compelled himself to smile and puffed his chest in strained pride. "All I'll need is a minute. Just one minute and boundless, brilliant ideas will begin to flash within the synapses of my fabulous brain. This is a piece of cake." Rodney's posture straightened further as he seemed to become galvanized by his own false bravado. "Hey, I feel better already. What were you so worried about anyway, Carson? It's like you had no faith in me. No worries. I'll have us out of here in a jiffy."
Carson rolled his eyes and silently prayed for patience. "Of that, I have no doubt," he said dryly and then turned back to tackle his other patient's troubles.
888
John woke to the sounds of Carson and Rodney's bickering.
"Concentrate harder!" McKay's voice held a level of irritation that John recognized as the one he usually applied when something wasn't working according to one of the physicist's grandiose plans.
"Yelling at me won't help, Rodney!" Carson snapped back.
Despite there being a certain level of normalcy about the two men's arguing, there was an intensity of frustration resounding in both of their tones that was anything but normal. Curious, John curled up on his side to get a better look at what his friends were fighting about. The slight movement left him shaking with exhaustion, and he felt sweat begin to drench his back and chest. He had a moment to see Carson and Rodney hunched over an exposed door mechanism before a wave of dizziness assaulted him, and he was forced to close his eyes against it.
A firm hand clasped his shoulder, and alarmed at the sudden and unexpected contact, he opened his eyes. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he saw only Carson's blurry form in front of him and Rodney's less distinct form somewhere behind the doctor.
"What's…going…on?" he asked in a voice that was barely above the level of a whisper. The three words left him oddly out of breath, and he had to close his eyes against another wave of dizziness.
"Sheppard?" Rodney's voice was laced with a worry that he generally reserved for major equipment failures and imminent nuclear explosions. John suddenly didn't want to know what was happening, but he reopened his eyes anyway.
"Happening?" he breathed with less strength than he had before.
"We're still on Netharia, Colonel," Carson replied quickly. "We're trying to open the doors to this room, but Rodney's having a real go of it."
"Well, if your gene wasn't so puny, we may have been out of here by now!" Rodney exclaimed exasperatedly.
"Oh, fine! Blame it on my DNA if it makes you feel better, Rodney! But we need to get out of here, so why don't you go back to your tinkering and let me talk to the Colonel for a bit!" The increasing thickness of Carson's accent was an indication of the Scotsman's own level of exasperation.
The physicist responded by throwing up his hands, muttering something incomprehensible, and then staring carefully at John as if trying to assess something. John began to feel uncomfortable under McKay's intent gaze, and he was about to tell the man to quit it when Rodney simply stormed off and began snapping his fingers over the door panel again. Puzzled by McKay's bizarre behavior, John watched him for a while until Carson drew his attention away.
"How are you feeling, Colonel? Are you still in pain?"
"No…just…weak," John said. He felt a pull of bone-deep exhaustion, and his eyes blinked slowly as he fought against sleep. He needed to know what was happening, and Carson's expressive face was telling him that he had the answers.
Carson again squeezed his shoulder gently, but with enough strength to help John to focus on keeping his bleary eyes open.
"Okay, Colonel, I know you're not feeling well, so I'll make this quick. I think the initial pain you felt was from the Wraith feeding on you, but overall the Hoffan serum protected you from the trauma. I don't think you'll be experiencing that level of discomfort again."
John grimaced with the memory, but was grateful for the news. The pain had been…bad. He didn't want to go through that again.
"Okay, now I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news for you, Colonel. Do you remember me telling you, after the whole, well, retrovirus disaster, that a percentage of your body cells continue to express Iratus bug proteins on their surfaces?"
John's grimace deepened into an outright frown. He did remember. One hundred percent John Sheppard, with a little added bugginess to make things way too interesting. He also remembered being freaked out by that little piece of information despite Beckett's enthusiastic assurances that his initial, John Sheppard genome had been wholly reset and reactivated. Beckett had called the protein production an anomaly and nothing to worry about. He had insisted that the proteins did not inhibit any of his normal physical processes and had even suspected that the situation would resolve itself with time.
So why did John just get the idea that these supposedly anomalous, inactive, and unaggressive proteins were about to take an overly large chunk out of his ass?
"Yeah…I…remember," he said. Another wave of fatigue threatened to undo him, but he gasped his way through it and managed to hold onto his concentration.
"Colonel, the largest percent of those proteins are being expressed on the surface of your red blood cells. Fewer still are found on your skin cells and even less on the cells of your major organ systems. I still believe that the production of these proteins will cease with time, but until it does, your body recognizes them as part of who you are," Carson continued his explanation with another comforting squeeze to John's shoulder and a look of strong concern that, inanely, made John want to laugh.
"Great," he said, instead of laughing like he wanted.
"From what I've been told, the Netharians have changed the original Hoffan serum so that instead of entering all of the cells in a body, it only enters those responsible for stimulating an immune reaction. Upon doing so, a certain percentage of naïve immune cells are genetically reprogrammed to produce antibody against Wraith proteins. It's really an amazing feat of genetic manipulation, and I honestly don't understand how they managed it in the short amount of time they've had to work on it. But nevertheless…."
"Doc…bottom…line," Sheppard interrupted. He felt a familiar sense of fear and outrage at the recognition that his DNA had been fooled around with again, but the exhaustion he was feeling negated any outward demonstration of his feelings.
"Colonel, I believe that the antibodies that are being produced to attack Wraith proteins are also attacking the cells in your body that continue to express the innocuous Iratus bug proteins," Beckett said, hurriedly. "We know that the two species are at least distantly related, and an artificial autoimmune response seems like the best explanation for your current symptoms."
"Well, that…can't…be…good," John responded with a weak uplifting of his brows.
"It's not, Colonel. In fact, it's very, very bad. I need to get you back to Atlantis and depress your immune system until we can determine how to reverse the antibody production. The fatigue and shortness of breath that you're obviously experiencing are signs that your red blood cells have already been compromised. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible."
"How's that…going?" John was alarmed by the seriousness of Beckett's words, but he was slowly losing the fight against collapse. He briefly struggled with another surge of fear, but pushed his anxiety aside. He needed answers, and he needed them far too quickly to be distracted by panic.
"Like I said before, Rodney's having quite a go of it. Apparently my ATA gene isn't helping with the process of opening the door as much as he would have liked," Beckett said ruefully.
"It's a scrawny weakling of an ATA gene, Carson!" Rodney exclaimed from his position by the door.
"Well it's stronger than yours, isn't it Rodney? At least I got the mechanism to light up and squawk a bit. What were you able to do?" Carson countered loudly.
John smiled slightly when McKay began to mutter in an aggrieved tone again. He closed his eyes briefly and was surprised to see Rodney hovering over him when he reopened them. He must have drifted off briefly, because Carson had moved to the other side of his bed and was checking his pulse.
"Colonel, do you think you're strong enough to help with the door?" Rodney asked. "Your gene is the most robust," he added by way of explanation.
"I'll…give it…a shot," John said, wheezing badly. His body was screaming at him to lie still, but he ignored it. "Help…me up," he instructed and shifted his arms weakly.
"Rodney, I don't think that this is a good idea," Carson said in response to the course of action.
"We…have…to," John replied, precluding any argument that Rodney may have given.
"All right, but go slow," Beckett said, and John missed the meaningful look the doctor gave to McKay.
Rodney and Carson slowly hauled the Colonel to a sitting position. With the change in posture, John saw starbursts break over his vision, and sweat began to slick his skin again. Carson noted Sheppard's obvious discomfort and indicated to Rodney to stop moving the sick man.
"Colonel, are you okay?" Beckett asked, anxiously.
"Fine…I'm just…." John's claims were cut short when the starbursts became all that he could see until he was plunged back into darkness where he saw nothing at all.