A/N: Yeah, it's me. And, well, yeah, I suck. It's been so incredibly long since I've updated this, but you'll be happy to know that this story is COMPLETE! I just need to clean up the last eleven pages and then I'll be posting them…probably later tonight or tomorrow. Thanks be and hallelujah! I really appreciate y'all sticking with this monstrous fic, and I do apologize. My writing has been taking a transformative turn, which has complicated things for me a bit. Plus I've also been kept busy with various other writing projects. And if a character named Dean Winchester doesn't stop smirking coyly in the general direction of my mind, I may go insane.
Really, I'm very grateful for all of your kind words and feedback! And I promise that the next (and final) chapter will be up by tomorrow (Oh, yeah, that's right, in the last installment I had said that there would only be one chapter left, but for artistic reasons I split it in two).
I hope y'all enjoy this! Much love! Emrys
The Weight of an Oath – Part 17a
"Aye, well, it looks as if the bone marrow transplant is beginning to help a mite," Carson said with a tired sigh. "And the blood transfusions are working reasonably well. We were able to take him off the respirator early this morning, since his body is maintaining enough clean red blood cells to keep him fairly oxygenated."
"Thank God," Rodney muttered.
"Aye," Carson said, solemnly. "The initial intubation would have been easier on him if we could have sedated him, but his system was still having a hard time processing the Netharian drugs. I'm sure he's thankful to be off the respirator."
Elizabeth Weir allowed herself the small luxury of relief. This had been the first good news that Carson had been able to convey during the two weeks since her most senior team had returned from Netharia, and Elizabeth silently thanked the foresight the SGC had in commanding members of the expedition to self-donate specific cells in case of unforeseeable emergencies. The bone marrow transplant would never have been possible without the self-donation that had been required at the beginning of the expedition.
"It's not all good news, though," Carson said, and Elizabeth felt herself physically bracing for what was to come.
"That cold he caught is turning into pneumonia, there's no doubt about it now," Beckett reported. "It's not responding to the broad spectrum antibiotics, so I'm going to put him on antiviral medications. If we can't get the infection under control, he's probably going to have to go back on the respirator when his breathing becomes compromised by the illness."
Elizabeth felt cold dread settle into the pit of her stomach and not for the first time in these two weeks wondered if she shouldn't send John back to Earth. The resources of the SGC far outweighed those of Atlantis, but the lack of understanding that the SGC physicians would have for Sheppard's complex medical history had, thus far, forced her hand. She and Carson had mutually agreed that the Colonel's best hope lay in the Pegasus galaxy where Beckett had control over his treatment.
"How the hell did he catch a cold anyway?!" Rodney exclaimed, obviously distraught. "He's covered in plastic, you won't let anyone near him, and he's being pumped full of antibiotics!! What the hell use are you anyway, Carson? Nothing you do seems to help him!"
Rodney had insisted on being a part of these daily meetings, and Carson, normally one to protect the privacy of his patients from other members of the expedition, had seen fit to allow the access. After taking a hard look at the physicist and seeing the signs of increasing exhaustion darkening the hollows of his face, Elizabeth understood, and, not for the first time, silently applauded the doctor's wisdom. Although Sheppard's entire team had been through an ordeal on the planet, Rodney's role had been significant. In addition, there was no doubt that the physicist blamed himself for Sheppard's condition and probably thought that if he hadn't been so enthusiastic about visiting the Netharians, Sheppard would never have sustained such a grave physical state. And so, since Rodney's physical and emotional status had become closely tied to the Colonel's, she bowed to Carson's wisdom and allowed his presence.
Now, Carson simply turned his soothing and understanding gaze toward McKay and attempted to calm the man down.
"He's been on immuno-suppressants for two weeks, Rodney. This wasn't an unexpected complication."
"This whole situation is ridiculous!! You're supposed to be his doctor. You're supposed to be helping him! You're just making things worse!"
Carson was about to reply, but Elizabeth decided to reassert control.
"Calm down, Rodney. Getting excited isn't going to help anyone."
"How can you just sit there and listen to all of this?! Don't you understand what he's saying?" Rodney asked in an excitable tone. "He's saying that Sheppard is going to die."
"That's not what I'm saying, Rodney," Carson insisted. "I'm making progress on counter-acting the Hoffan serum. It's just going slower than I anticipated."
"And why is that?! On Hoff you put the damn thing together using inferior equipment! Why can't you find a way to reverse its effects now when you've got all of this fancy Ancient technology at your fingertips?"
Elizabeth watched as Carson's expression turned guilt-ridden and knew that Rodney was in danger of undermining the doctor's effectiveness.
"Rodney, need I remind you that you are a guest at these meetings? You need to calm down right now, or I will expel you from the conference room."
Her words were said placidly, but forcibly, and apparently Rodney recognized the warning behind them. He settled back into his chair, albeit with effort and muttered a subdued apology to Beckett.
"Carson, is there anything that could help speed up your research?" Elizabeth asked once she was sure that Rodney was back under control.
Carson immediately looked uncomfortable, and Elizabeth knew that he was going to bring up the Netharian again. It had been a source of contention between the two of them during the past two weeks. Carson trusted the small woman, and although Elizabeth understood why, she just could not go along with his estimation of Torca.
In fact, Elizabeth wasn't quite sure what to make of the alien scientist. She was torn between the security risk the woman posed and Carson's valid request to have her stationed in the medical bay to help him with his research. Up until this point, Torca had been placed under room arrest and given limited access to Carson's advancements through data tablets. But Carson had continuously argued that the woman only had the Colonel's well-being in mind, and that she deserved a chance to do some good. He had insisted that her knowledge was the key to saving Sheppard, but Elizabeth had been forced to weigh the decision carefully.
She knew that John would agree with her actions, despite the fact that they placed his life in further danger. He would not want to compromise the security of Atlantis for any reason. It was an argument that she took seriously, and it had been one that both she and Lorne had also agreed upon.
But now. Now with her military commander, her friend, so near death, Elizabeth was beginning to doubt her decision.
"Elizabeth, I need Torca's help. Colonel Sheppard won't last much longer in the state he's in, and I won't be able to puzzle this out in time to save him if I work on my own. I understand that your experience with the Netharians was unsavory during the time you were trying to get us all out of there. But Torca is different. She's not like them." Carson's words were earnest, and Elizabeth felt herself being swayed by them.
She paused to consider the options more closely, and shuddered at the memory of cold malice that she was subjected to in her dealings with Setarcos and the other members of the Netharian administration. They had communicated a level of arrogant entitlement towards John and his teammates that still caused the blood to flow through her body in an angry torrent. The audacity with which those people had acted had infuriated her, but what had been worse than all of that was the total impotency that she had felt during the entire ordeal. There had been no way to gain entry to the planet since the Stargate had been heavily guarded and since she had been notified in no uncertain terms that her people would be harmed if any rescue attempt was made. Added to these terrible conditions was the fact that the Daedelus had been entirely too far away to swiftly promote the rescue of the kidnapped members of Atlantis.
It had not been an easy or productive time for Elizabeth.
"Oh for Christ's sake, Elizabeth! He's going to die!" Elizabeth's uneasy reverie was interrupted by Rodney's frustrated outburst. "What's she going to do? Make it worse for him?"
"She's a security risk," Elizabeth said, almost absently and definitely without her usual level of assertion.
"Then put a guard on her! Or better yet, have Ronon follow her around. He makes her nervous. I can tell."
"Rodney! There's no need to be childish," Carson scolded, and then turned his attention back to Atlantis' highest ranking resident. "But he's right, Elizabeth. The Colonel's going to die if you don't allow Torca access to the medical bay and to my research lab. I understand that the situation is untenable, but I don't see that we have much choice in the matter."
Elizabeth sighed heavily and wiped a narrow hand over her face.
"I'll make the arrangements with Major Lorne," she said, tiredly.
888
John was conscious, but he couldn't seem to pry open his eyelids. He heard strange, muffled sounds along with the uneven lilting of a woman's voice, but couldn't make sense of them.
He really wished that he could just open his goddamned eyes.
His body began to react to being awoken by shivering violently and painfully. He wanted to yell out as pain blossomed across his side, but the only sound he was capable of making was an uneven gasping noise that was alarming in its weakness. Fear and pain lent him the ability to open his eyes a bit, but all he could make out was dim light broken by the blurred movement of a body hurriedly moving in his direction. Following the hazy figure as it advanced toward him made him feel nauseous, and he closed his eyes again while trying very hard to keep the queasiness at bay.
He felt the moderate weight of a warm blanket being pulled up and settled around his shoulders. He was too exhausted to try opening his eyes again, but at least the shivering diminished to a level where the pain was manageable. He wished that he could somehow communicate how grateful he was to whoever had adjusted the blanket, but consciousness was slowly leaving him.
The soothing, feminine tones returned, along with a heavy scuffing sound that almost, but not quite, startled him back to full awareness. Then as the sensation of a calming hand stroking through his hair began, he settled down and was unconscious once more.
888
Some unknown time later, a hard, heavy cough shocked him into immediate waking, because the pain that he felt deep in his chest and along his side was practically unmanageable. His vision was wonky, but he could see people reaching for him. The sensation of hands pressing him down into a supine position scared him almost as much as the feeling of suffocation he was experiencing. He swatted at his face, and the weight of something suddenly shifted. Breathing became exceptionally harder, and a pillow might as well have been placed over his face for all the good his exertions were doing.
He heard someone yell, and more hands pressed him down. The pressure started him panicking, but then the weight on his face shifted again, and suddenly breathing was a possibility. He drew in deep, cool bouts of dry air, and started to feel dizzy. His body relaxed despite the fact that he was still being held down and everything in him wanted to fight against the restraint.
"Sh…sh…," he whispered, without truly knowing he was doing it.
"It's all right, son." The words were startling in their clarity, but he couldn't quite bring himself to believe them.
"Sh…shit," he whispered, and then was gone again.
888
The next time, his eyes opened only enough to allow for a narrow field of vision fringed by his eyelashes. He blinked heavily, and his sight cleared, but just enough to determine that he was lying on his side. He reached his hand out, and it brushed against a thick veil that shimmered and appeared to be what was contributing to his out-of-focused vision.
Plastic. The bed was surrounded by plastic.
His hand fell lifelessly beside him, and he didn't understand what was going on. He heard the murmur of whispered voices surrounding him, but they made no sense. He felt himself becoming agitated, but he was so weak that there wasn't anyway for his body to really express the distress. So instead of fleeing like he wanted, he had to settle on rolling his eyes around in their sockets.
The pressure of a hand rested on his arm.
"Easy, lad. Easy. It's just us."
The words were a garbled mess to him, but he understood the general message. He attempted to calm down and focus enough to squint and try to make sense of the visual cues that surrounded him.
There was a big orange blob pushing its way through the plastic and leaning over him. He started to panic again, but then his breath stuttered weakly. Bright sparkles of sunbursts overtook his sight, and he felt dizzy to the point of nausea.
"…intuba…now!"
He couldn't make head or tail of the confusing half-words that he heard, but the excitement behind them heightened his fear. He batted uselessly at the plastic and at the orange blob that was still hovering over him. He just wanted to get away and make this all stop.
"John! You have to calm down!"
The words were clear, and the voice recognizable. With them, everything around him stilled. His vision sharpened, and another, smaller orange blob took the place of the first one. He saw a blue light behind blurry glass, and inside there was someone he knew. Someone important. Someone he trusted.
"Liz…beth," he whispered the word and then coughed and wheezed as air was pushed out of his lungs.
"Yes, John. It's me. It's us. You're safe on Atlantis."
He couldn't put together the meaning of each word, because he was in too much pain and because he was just too damn confused. But he understood the message anyway and allowed his body to fall back to the state of slackness that it was demanding.
"John, Carson has given you a stimulant to keep you conscious for a little while. It may make you feel uncomfortable, but he's trying to help you. You need to listen to him now. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
John blinked his eyes slowly and tried to make sense of the wall of sound that had just come out of Elizabeth's mouth. He didn't understand, not really, but he fought the lethargy he was experiencing and nodded anyway.
Elizabeth backed away, and John wondered where she was going. He made a soft sound of protest, because he trusted her and didn't want her to leave. But the other, larger orange blob took her place and he could see that it was Carson in there behind a glass mask and illuminated by the blue light. He hauled a weighted hand up and tapped once on the glass that was in front of the doctor's face.
Carson grabbed the hand and easily brought it back down to John's side.
"Aye, we're wearing the containment suits for your benefit, Colonel. You're immune system is severely compromised, and I want to keep you as far away from any virus or bacterium as possible. Hate these things though. Can't take proper life signs without using the computers," Carson said.
"Wha?" John asked in a choked whisper, because he didn't understand anything that Beckett was talking about.
"Carson, get to the point!" John turned his head slowly to his left, because that was where the harsh voice had come from. He didn't see anyone there and became confused all over again.
"Rodney, would you stop using the intercom!" Carson scolded. Garbled words that conveyed general unpleasantness issued forth from the space on John's left-hand side, but then the abrasive voice stopped. John allowed his head to drift back over to focus on Beckett's face again.
"Colonel," Carson said, suddenly all business. "To a certain extent, our treatments have been successful, otherwise you would already be dead. But your condition is slowly deteriorating. If we don't do something extreme, and I mean soon, well, then, uh—"
Words failed Carson, and although John really couldn't focus well enough to truly comprehend what the man was saying, he had enough presence of mind to make a plea of his own.
"E…end th..is," he stuttered out, and then his throat closed up and that was it; it was all over for the breathing thing. He felt his heart slamming fast and hard into his chest, and he thought, not with complete regret, that maybe it was all over. Maybe all of his pain and the slow suffocation was finally at an end.
People were shouting and scrambling, but everything was going in slow motion for John. Everything was quieting and slowing and fading.
And then, suddenly, everything stopped.