I'm sorry I haven't updated this for a little while; I have my real exams coming up this month and I've been revising like crazy (since I can only go to the Leaver's Ball if I have at least 20 certified revision sessions... darn society!)
Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter which I've tried to make as long as my previous chapter; I think I failed, but it's still pretty long.
KaseyKC
Twelve
"There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."- Oscar Levant.
T.J was silent as she sat and listened to the bumbling escape attempt taking place outside her office; though she should probably go out there and shout at them for making a racket and injuring themselves further she found that she was quite happy to simply sit there in her chair and listen to Eli tell Rush to shut-up and Rush tell Eli to stop walking into things. It was quite entertaining for her, especially since the duo had been trying to constantly escape from her 'clutches' for the past week and a half; she'd never known anyone to try and use the ventilation system as an escape route from an infirmary; it was tantamount to the stupid bygone idea of digging your way out of a concrete cell.
For a full ten minutes she listened to the laughable escape attempt before the sound of something falling to the ground echoed around the infirmary and her office, 'I think that's enough playing for them today' she thought as she sighed and stood up; listening to the sound of Rush cursing in Scottish and Eli laughing loudly, 'I hope they never try to rescue me... the bad guys'll know where they are just by the noise they make alone'.
She opened the door manually, not bothering herself with thinking all that much, and stopped-short as she took in the sight. Rush was lying on the infirmary ground with an inflatable... thing on top of him and Eli was damn-nearing having a fit as he leaned against the wall.
"Eli! Help me!" Rush ground out as he tried to push the thing off of him to no avail; whatever it was it was a whole lot heavier than it looked and Rush's shoulder couldn't support its weight, "Eli! It's heavy!"
Eli seemed to snap out of his laughing fit at that for he was over by Rush's side trying to shove the thing off of his father, 'now why doesn't that sound strange anymore?' T.J absently wondered as she said, "What on earth!"
They both stopped in their attempts to get the thing off of Rush and looked at her for a moment before Eli said, "Technically, it would be 'what on Destiny'."
She glared at him and resisted the urge to smack him upside the head, choosing instead to assist him in freeing Rush from the clutches of the inflatable thing. After a great deal of tugging, pulling and occasional pained curses from Rush, they managed to haul it off him and out of the way; the darn thing was a whole lot heavier than she'd realised. Rush lay there on the ground panting hard, trying to control the pain in his shoulder, and T.J belatedly realised that he had probably injured his shoulder again. She knelt next to him and said softly, "Let me check."
Alarm bells rang out in her head when Rush offered no verbal or physical resistance to her order; it was annoying when he refused to let her look at an injury or argued with her about a strap, but compared to his pliancy when he was in such as degree of pain as she figured he was now it was much preferable. At least when he was bitching she knew it wasn't that bad...
Eli leaned back against the wall as he watched nervously as T.J checked Rush's injured shoulder and then his mostly healed hand without him resisting in any way, 'oh God.... he must be really hurt... he got trapped under that... and I laughed... I laughed at him....' he closed his eyes as the suddenly appearing guilt made itself known with a vengeance, 'he protected me from that thing on the planet... he protected me from Greer.... and when he needed my help I laughed at him... oh God... what sort of son am I?'
T.J carefully rotated Rush's shoulder and felt bad when he winced and stifled a cry of pain, she was the only doctor on Destiny and she was meant to heal people not hurt them; even if it was so she could do her job better. She quickly checked Rush's hand and was pleased that the attempt to free himself from the thing hadn't done any damage to them, they were healing nicely and within a week or so he would be able to use them all again, 'and find something to tinker away with and maybe have his fingers demolecularised knowing his luck!' she thought as she looked at him and noted that he seemed to have most of the pain under control, 'which isn't a good thing really' she looked at Eli and said slowly, noticing how guilt-ridden Eli looked, "Eli? Could you help me get Rush back to his bed please?"
Eli's eyes snapped open and he looked at T.J with a surprised look before nodding mutely and slowly rising and lumbering over to T.J and Rush. Together the pair of them managed to get Rush standing, albeit with him leaning on Eli by a fair amount, and they slowly manoeuvred him over to his bed. T.J quickly tidied his pillow and blanket up before the pair of them helped him into bed and T.J took off to grab a needle full of happy-go-lucky morphine which would make Rush think he was floating up with the Ancients.
Eli sat down on a stool next to Rush's bed and held his father's hand as Rush winced and whimpered slightly from the almost unbearable pain in his shoulder; he made a mental note to never try and escape from the infirmary with a dislocated shoulder, it was too painful an experience for him. Eli's heart was beginning to become weighed-down by this guilt he was feeling, 'God... how many times has he saved my ass to date? Seven... eight? I don't know.... but it's a bigger amount than the number of times I've saved him... I shouldn't have laughed... I should've realised... I've got a brain haven't I? Should be able to use it too.... and I didn't even realise... God... if he hadn't had said it was so heavy I'd have never known... I'd have continued to laugh my head off whilst he was in agony... oh God!'
T.J quickly made her way back to Rush's bed and injected him with the morphine through the IV drip that she re-attached in the crook of his elbow. Within mere minutes Rush's eyes were fluttering closed and the evident pain he was feeling had been numbed and he was just slipping under when he slurred, "Not.... you're fault... accident.... son..."
T.J looked at Eli whose eyes had focused on Rush's now slack face with shock and guilt conflicting within the dark orbs, though she would never admit it she felt the sudden urge to hug him and tell him it was all going to be okay, and she probably would have done exactly that had her medical-professionalism hadn't have stopped her.
Instead she comforted him by placing a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently and saying softly, "He'll be fine, no lasting damage," he didn't respond to her and so she sighed and added, trying to sound kind but firm at the same time, "Come on, you need to get back in bed and get some rest."
Eli slowly shook his head slightly and said, his voice so quiet that T.J doubted she would've heard it if it weren't for the silence of the infirmary, "Can I just sit here for a little while?"
She recognised immediately that Eli needed a bit of time to sort-out his guilt and so decided to give him ten minutes, "Alright, but only for twenty minutes," 'okay so I added an extra ten minutes,' "you do need to get some rest Eli."
He nodded silently and she resisted the urge to sigh out loud as she turned away and made her way over to her office, fully intending on sitting in there for twenty minutes before she would have to drag Eli to his bed, but she stopped just on the threshold, out of Eli's sight, when she heard Eli's voice echo around the infirmary sounding for all the world like that of the most conflicted human being to ever have existed.
"I'm.... so, so sorry... you've saved my life... so many times.... you've fixed my messes... heck you decked a raptor to keep me breathing and went up against Greer when he was going to lynch me! And I repay you by laughing at you when you need help.... what kind of son am I?"
T.J's heart was breaking there and then and what Eli said next really made her want to turn around and embrace him, rocking him and humming to him, to reassure him that he was a brilliant son.
"I remember when my... well, I guess he'd be my step-dad wouldn't he really? Anyway... I remember when he left my mom and me... I used to stay up late at night, listening to my mom crying... and I used to wonder whether I was to blame... whether my dad left because he didn't want me for a son.... it was no secret that I didn't like sports or cars or anything he did, he hated the fact that I liked working, studying and technology.... I mean I was fourteen when he left; I wasn't even old enough to shave! I thought what any other fourteen year old would've thought when their dad left; I thought it was me, I thought I was the problem... I thought I'd screwed up my relationship with my dad and then... then I find out you're my actual dad and I have a chance to have a real father-son relationship again... I have the chance to do it right! And I messed up... like I always do... my teachers were right about me... I'm too much of a slacker... I don't try hard enough... I give up too easily... and when everyone's done fixing my mistakes I still expect them to talk to me and be there for when I mess up again!"
Eli rubbed a hand over his face and sighed dejectedly, God how much of a screw up was he! "When that explosion happened in the lab and you saved my skin all I could think about was how you'd nearly died trying to protect me... I remember saying to myself 'why? Why would he save you? You're nothing... you're worth less to the people on Destiny that he'll ever be'.... and it's taken me this long to figure it out.... I'm a screw up and everything I do will always need to be checked over, redone and fixed otherwise people will get hurt, people will die.... I really wish there was a planet somewhere that I could go to and just stay... be out of everyone's way, not do any harm to anyone... but then I realise that if I do end up on a planet somewhere then I'd have the bad luck of coming across aliens that might use me to get to Destiny and everyone on her and then I'd have screwed up again!"
Standing up slowly Eli looked up at the ceiling, as though he were searching for some sort of guidance, and muttered bitterly, "Jesus! I really can't do anything right!"
He moved away from Rush's bed, over towards his own and, before he climbed into his bed, he looked at Rush and said softly, "you'd best be alright... I can't handle all the scientists on my own."
T.J listened to the sound of Eli crawling into bed and as he made himself comfortable before slowly turning around and walking back into the infirmary, acting like she hadn't heard anything that Eli had just said, "I see you're getting yourself comfortable."
Eli gave her a half-hearted smile as she came over and quickly checked his IV port in the crook of his elbow, "well... these cardboard torture pieces of equipment are just too appealing for me to avoid for too long a time."
"Less of the cheek you," she scolded lightly with a teasing smirk on her face, "or I'll keep you in here for an extra week; see how all those science geeks handle their withdrawal from the weekly rounds of verbal torture with you two."
Eli glared at her, but it lacked any real strength, and said softly, "Destiny would have a meltdown; literally."
She laughed at that and patted him on the arm gently before saying, "Get some sleep okay?"
"Okay doctor," Eli responded as he lay his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes as T.J gave him a glare before disappearing into her office.
-SGU-FB-SGU-FB-
It had been over two weeks when Scott appeared in the infirmary with a grin on his face as he entered the infirmary to the sound of T.J reprimanding Rush and Eli for trying to escape again; on the day they were going to be realised in the first place.
"Rush! You cannot take off the sling! I don't care if you need to take it off so you can slip through the door quicker! You will not take it off! Understand?" T.J ordered sternly as she stood directly in front of a glaring Rush, hands on her hips and a glare that far surpassed Rush's own.
Eli was stood off to the side, not looking at the scene being made but it was quite obvious that he was barely retaining the straight-faced look he had; he swore Rush was only arguing with her just to annoy her, 'it wouldn't surprise me actually... especially after the last time we were in her... we made her cry by the end of it....' he sighed as Rush growled, actually growled, at T.J and Eli decided that might have to be when he interrupted their little I'm-going-to-glare-you-to-death dance before it got messy.
"Rush, I can do the manual labour, you can stand at your console all day and be a happy, if slightly pissed-off, genius whilst I'll be lugging pointless cables out of the way for hours on end. That sound good? Yes, okay then!" he grinned at Rush and looked at T.J, "thank you, yes I know I shouldn't be doing any manual labour with my injury, yes it's sort of painful still and no, I'm not going to let you check it one more time; I've already been discharged and I'm about to physically discharge him from your care. It'll give you some peace, so bye!"
Before T.J could say anything to the contrary Eli had grabbed Rush's unstrapped arm and hauled him towards the infirmary door and slipped past Scott who was standing by the threshold grinning like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. He watched Eli and Rush disappear down the corridor before saying to T.J, "you look like you've recently gone insane."
"I'm always going insane when those two are in here," T.J sighed as she threw herself onto one of the stools in the infirmary, "Do they do it on purpose or do they actually get that bored?"
"Maybe they like your mother-hen glare?" Scott suggested innocently before grinning at T.J's glare and saying, "Oh, yes, I can see why they like it mother-hen."
T.J shot up from the stool and literally threw herself after Scott who, laughing his head off, ran off down the corridor in the same direction that Eli and Rush had went; he made sure that T.J was always behind him, not disappearing round the corridors corners but still not close enough to take his head off.
He dove at the mess hall door thanking the heavens for the small, peep-hole like things on them which allowed for someone on the other side to see he was coming and open the door in time for him to not slam into it. He skidded to a halt and turned around jubilantly as T.J stormed into the mess hall, about to give him the most verbalised beating in his life, and he shouted, "Happy birthday!"
The mess hall, which had been silent, suddenly erupted into life; shouting and cheers could be heard probably on the other side of Destiny. T.J stood in front of the door into the mess with a look of absolute shock on her face, she couldn't believe it 'how did they? Who....' she turned her head slightly when she heard the sound of singing and was gob-smacked to see Rush and Eli leading a group of the scientists in an awfully out of tune rendition of Happy Birthday; how someone could see that song out of tune she didn't really know but she wasn't dwelling on that since she was so, so happy... she hadn't told anyone it was her birthday so how did they know?
"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!"
Scott sidled up next to her and said in her ear, "Why do you think they've been bugging you to discharge them so much?"
She looked at him in curiosity before realising, 'oh those-' she'd been wondering why they'd been in her office last Wednesday and hadn't really bought their excuse of searching for the best escape route, "I'm going to kill them..." she laughed as Scott grinned at her, "I'm really going to kill them!"
"You'll have to find them first, they've set-up hiding places throughout Destiny; guess they'll come in handy now," Scott laughed, "anyway, mother-hen have some ration-based cake... it's awful but it's the thought that counts; most of the time," he grimaced at the cake on centre-table in the mess hall and added, "although, the cooks did say something about finding a supply of sweeteners or something..."
T.J looked at him with a raised eyebrow and said, "I think I'll risk it; like you said, it's the thought that counts."
"Well... it is if the gift doesn't kill you first," he shrugged and smirked at her alarmed gaze, "only kidding."
"T.J! Come get some cake!" Eli shouted, as he hurried away from the scientists, deciding to leave Rush with their singing skills. He stopped beside her and said, "happy birthday T.J," he smiled at her and she finally gave him a hug which he duly returned with a great deal of enthusiasm as he bounced on the balls of his feet; feeling like he was on a sugar rush, which wasn't possible since they didn't have any sugar on Destiny beyond what they had in the supplies they'd brought from Icarus.
She laughed and nodded, "alright, I'll risk it," and was surprised when Eli glared at her, 'oh... have I hit a nerve?' but she needn't have been worried because he grinned at her and began to drag her across the mess.
"Oh come on! Do you think ration-cake will offend me? It might give me food-poisoning or something like that, but it would never offend me!" he grinned at her and stopped in front of the ration-cake before saying thoughtfully, "although... the cooks did say something about making it quite the surprise for us all.... hm."
"Eli, stop looking at my cake like you want to dissect it," T.J warned as she too looked at it. She took in the fact that it wasn't very decorated, which wasn't a surprise since they had limited supplies, and it didn't look all that appealing to eat.
"Well technically, you're meant to dissect a cake... you know, cutting it up into slices that you can eat?" Eli said slowly, ignoring T.J's glare at him, he grinned at Scott and T.J whacked him lightly on his arm.
"Oh shut up!" she muttered as she looked at Scott who had somehow managed to procure a knife, where from she wouldn't ask, and took it from him as he held it out for her, "otherwise I won't give you any cake."
"Oh... that'll break my heart," Eli joked, placing a hand over his heart, "no ration-cake for me."
She ignored him as she made the first cut and cut out a thin slice, which she placed on one of the plates that they'd found in Destiny's kitchens. Putting the knife down next to the cake she picked up the small fork and then the plate, she realised that the mess had gone awfully quiet, as though everyone was waiting for her to take a bite and give her verdict on it; it was sort of pressuring.
Slowly she cut into the slice and picked up a little segment with the fork which she lifted to her lips, trying to ignore the obvious apprehension in the air, and began to chew it slowly, checking the taste of it and trying not to smile. It was divine; which was shocking in itself, 'oh wow... how have they done this?' she thought as she swallowed and smiled widely, "delicious."
TBC...
I won't be updating this anytime soon; maybe a few weeks so... sorry in advance.
KaseyKC
