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CHAPTER 21: Avoidance Methods

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Rodney was all about someone watching him work with rapture at his brilliance, but with Sakar crowded in beside him watching every move he made, he couldn't set the lock on the naquadah generator. "Ok, now we need to make sure the base is still stable enough. You check that side. I'll check this side," he said as he dropped his fingers to dig around the dirt of that base. He waited until Sakar dropped his attention to inspect the ground around the base before he reached up and hit the sequences of keys to lockdown the generator.

Sakar's head flew up as the sound of the generator's hum shut down and its lights blinked out. "What's wrong with it? Is the base not stable enough?"

"Oh the base is fine," Rodney announced as he climbed to his feet, brushing off the dirt on the knees of his pants. He did a body stretch, arms reaching for the sky, because hunching over machines never did his back any favors. Not like anyone bothered to set up a massage station in Atlantis, no matter how many times he made the request to Dr. Weir.

Sakar was still kneeling on the ground looking up at McKay with something akin to stunned comprehension. "You shut it down."

Only after completing his stretch did Rodney meet the unhappy gaze of the leader of the clan who denied John medical aid. "I did," he curtly agreed with Sakar, a cruel satisfied smile adorning his features. "And it will not work without me putting in the unlock code. In fact, for a little bit of fun, I installed a destruct code if two wrong codes were inputted. So I wouldn't fiddle with it hoping to miraculously stumble on the right code."

Kannar, who stood back in a seemingly guard position, groaned. This was not his idea of how to build trust between his people and McKay's.

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Carson was about to object, strongly, with Sheppard's command to drag him through the stargate, even if it killed him, but the man employed a very effective avoidance method: he went into a seizure.

The female soldier who was seated nearby scrambled out of her chair and retreated back in fear. As if she thought John's seizure increased her odds of contracting the Atlantean's sickness. Or the sight of his thrashing body just terrified her. Carson didn't have time to think on it.

As the soldier retreated in fear, Ronon reacted the opposite. Dropping to his knees by John, he reached out, intending to grab his friend's shoulders, to stop the thrashing of the strongest man he'd ever met. Thinking he could stop John's horrific throes of pain if he could still his body. But Carson threw himself around Ronon's torso, pinning Ronon's arms to stall his reach for John.

"No! You'll do more damage trying to hold him down, Ronon!" Carson warned.

Ronon didn't break from the doctor's hold, though he easily could have, fearing the doctor was right. And the last thing he wanted was to hurt John worse than he already was. But this…this macabre sight of John not in control of his own body, of his body seemingly rebelling against itself, it was akin to sitting back and watching the Wraith burn his world to the ground. The inaction was soul decimating. "Make it stop!" he shouted at Carson, who had released him but sat on his hunches as much a grim spectator as Ronon.

"I can't," Carson choked out, hated this helplessness more than Ronon could know. But what he could do was prepare for when the seizure was over. So he began getting out the necessary items from his bag, felt cowardly to not watch John but one look at Ronon's transfixed expression of horror and he was ok with being distracted. Had to lay his coat down so he'd have somewhere somewhat sterile to put his instruments. Thought of John here on this ground instead of a bed. No water, no blankets, or pillows, just being in pain and misery without comfort. It made his throat thicken with emotion and his heart harden toward these people's callousness. Made him wish he had let them suffer longer with their stomach discomfort.

Finally, John's body thrashed its last but Ronon dreaded what that meant. He was instantly leaning over John, his fingers shaking as they pressed against his neck, seeking confirmation his friend was still alive. A pulse thrummed under his fingers but even he knew it wasn't strong or rhythmic beats. He shot an anxious look to Carson. "It's erratic."

"I know," Carson grimly acknowledged his earlier findings before the seizure. Then he was scanning John, scowling at the readings, wishing he had him back on Atlantis where he could do effective scans on brain waves. Outward appearances gave no insight into the damage any of this was wrecking on Sheppard's neural functions, though the seizures said a lot, none of it good.

"Can we move him? Get him to a bed?" Ronon needed to do something to provide John comfort, even if it were simply something softer for him to lay upon.

"Moving him can't hurt," Carson said, didn't know the dismal sounding of the words but Ronon's expression pointed that out. Turning to the woman in the room, he remembered this was the boy's aunt, who thought she needed a treatment because she had been in close proximity to John. "If you show me somewhere I can lay my friend down on a bed, I'll treat you, ensure you don't get what our general has."

Krata knew that wasn't her orders but with the Atlanteans here, things had changed, knew it the moment they'd entered and rushed to their ill leader's side. The balance of power was shifting, knew it was what Kannar had put into motion and that caused her to agree to the doctor's terms. "I can lead you to a spare bed. Our dead have no use for it. But I must come along and the guards assigned to you."

"Agreed," Ronon capitulated, wasn't worried about three soldiers. If he needed to protect John, they would be easily dealt with. Then he nudged Carson aside so he could slide his arms under John's legs and back. Lifting the man into his arms, he got to his feet, shifted so John's head rested on his shoulder instead of dangling back like one of the dead. Satisfied John was in no discomfort from his hold, he looked to the woman soldier and demanded, "Lead us."

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John was starting to find his way out of the darkness, his brain already trying to read the stimuli coming back at him. Light filtering into his opaque pupils, the sensation of his limbs again being attached to his body, the aridness of his mouth. But the other factors weren't there: the feel of dirt pressing into his face, the almost surety that he couldn't move, ever again, a stillness near corpse like. He wasn't still, far from it, though he was cognizant enough to know it wasn't by any action of his own.

Felt something smooth under his cheek and a sound under it, like thudding, not a blare of an alarm, of danger, but of life. A heartbeat. Movement. Back arched but legs and shoulder held. It was like some game show category: Moving but not of your own power for $100. Choices: Stretcher, Wheelchair, Being dragged, Being carried, Hallucinating.

With monumental effort, he moved his head, more like let it drop back and focused his blurry vision. Dreadlocks. Beard. Ronon. The charade answer was: Being carried. "Feel like…damsel…in distress," he quipped, his words more breath than sound.

It had Ronon's brown eyes snapping down to his, worried but a spark of joy in them. And his lips twisted up in his trademark smile. "Just you being your normal brand of laziness."

"Sounds..like me," John replied, licking his lips as the words came a bit easier. Didn't question where he was going, if Carson had already put the lie out there and he was being led to the Stargate. 'Led to the slaughter,' came to mind but it was of his own making so there was no judgement, couldn't be. He closed his eyes, trusted Carson and Ronon to do what they must for the best outcome for Atlantis.

But the journey didn't end with him being settled onto a ship to take him back to the stargate, instead he was gently released onto a cushy surface. He almost moaned in the pleasure of something which was not the packed hard dirt of the ground. When Ronon's hand cupped his face, he met his friend's look.

"Carson is going to get you well and then we'll get you home," Ronon vowed, would not accept anything but that outcome, wanted to give John the strength to hold out until they accomplished both.

John nodded, did no good to argue with Ronon on most days, especially useless attempting it when he couldn't pull off a commanding tone. It was enough to placate Ronon who pulled back and then Carson was sitting on the bed at his side, waving instruments over him. John read the small stress markers in his expression and knew the findings weren't in his favor.

Turning to Ronon standing over his shoulder like a guardian, Carson requested, "I need hot water, a thin broth, and a fire built in here to stave off the cold." Ronon nodded and left on his mission without question. When the doctor faced John again, his patient aptly saw through his diversion.

"Now that Ronon's not here," John began, had to take in another few breaths to say the rest, "tell me what you don't want him to hear."

Carson sighed. "You know bloody well what I've got to say. No way am I sacrificing your life or health by shoving you through the stargate. We'll stay here as long as we need to until we find a way to minimize the effects of the stargate on you."

John didn't retreat from asking, "If you can't?" Seeing the doctor's wavering expression, he ordered, "Don't sugarcoat things, Carson. There's a chance I might never be able to go through the stargate without shorting out what's left of my brain. Just…be honest with me."

Carson hated this part of his profession, the giving bad news aspect. "Ok, yes, there is a chance that any stargate travel would be detrimental to you from now on. But I'm not stating that as fact as I don't have the proper instruments to read and analyze the changes in your DNA. Certainly can't do it within five minutes of arriving here. I need time to formulate a treatment and you need time to recover."

"Time is not a commodity we might have. This window of peace is… volatile," thinking of how Kannar had to manipulate his people by making them sick, for them to even allow Carson to be there at all. "You have to be realistic, think of the big picture," he advised Beckett, who had every life in Atlantis to think of, just like he did.

"The big picture is, I'm here to save your life and I'd appreciate it if you'd get on board with that idea!" Carson shot back, ran a hand through his hair. Before calming down, hated he was yelling at John. In a gentler but no less strident voice, he instructed, "Now we will have no more talk of giving up. You would never allow any of us that ..that luxury and I'm not accepting it from you. But I..I do need to know how you're feeling? Honestly."

John gave a dry mirthless laugh that soon morphed into a cough that had Carson putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. When the cough dissipated, he met his friend's scrutinizing gaze. "I don't remember how to get to the jumpers from my living quarters."

"Well you just go right to.." Carson began to tell him before it stuck him how wrong it was that John didn't know that. His horror must have registered on his features because John's smirk was painfully sardonic.

"I know that I flew copters in Afghanistan, but I don't know if they were Black Hawks, or Chinooks. One of them is my favorite.." John's eyes darkened into self-loathing, "..but I don't know anymore which one."

Carson's response was measured, soothing, placating. "Memory loss is common when seizures occur."

But John wasn't naïve, or uninformed. "But not missing time from years ago or something I didn't even have to think about days ago, knew cold, instinctively. You and I both know normal seizure reactions effect memory just before the occurrence."

Grimly, Carson conceded, "True. This type of memory loss is more consistent with head trauma."

"TBIs," John put a name to it that Carson was shying away from. "Or the aftereffects of mind-altering drugs: LSD, crack, whatever the kids are shooting up or snorting these days. What category does my forgetfulness fall into?" a harsh demand in his tone.

Carson knew his patients had the right to know the worst of it, even when they were dear friends of his. But it made it harder to speak of because John's pain was his pain. "Your symptoms fall more under the traumatic brain injury."

Though he'd asked for the unvarnished truth, it still stole John's breath away, the little air he was capable of holding in his struggling lungs. He'd known friends, other soldiers in other units who had TBIs. "Contusions to the head. IED blasts, thrown down, knocked down: War 101 stuff." He had tried to be sympathetic to these injuries, but hadn't really known how to offer up support. Had thought he'd loosely understood what they were going through, but knew with new clarity, he hadn't. He was only starting to know now how debilitating such an injury could be. It felt like a wraith was again sucking his lifeforce from him, except it wouldn't lead to death but the destruction of any future he saw for himself.

Uncertain if Sheppard's knowledge on TBIs was helpful or hurtful in that moment, Carson gently prodded, "You're familiar with the causes. Can I assume you know the consequences?"

Sheppard gave a curt nod, couldn't manage any smart-aleck comebacks. Not when he thought of his friend, his whip smart friend, now wearing an ID bracelet with his address so he could ask for directions when he lost his way going home from the quicky mart two blocks from his apartment. Of other soldiers in the TBI ward who would rage, or cry out, who couldn't maintain a job, couldn't establish relationships.

Seeing the dread in Sheppard's eyes, it was like a knife to Carson's own heart. Sheppard who faced death with a grin, a 'see ya 'round' quirk and cold determination to die so others could live. But this was terrifying to the soldier in Sheppard. To be less than what he was. "They are making headway on more treatments. I even read some medical journals about how canine therapy is used with great success."

"Don't think they'll let a dog run around Atlantis," John quipped, trying to hide behind his humor.

Wanting to offer hope, Carson pointed out, "John, we don't know the full ramifications…."

"Right. I could be comatose after my next seizure." John's smile was all bleakness. "Upside: I wouldn't have to worry about getting a dog license."

"We're not going to let that happen," Carson vowed, even as he knew it might be out of his control. Life was fragile at the best of times and John had taken such an incalculable risk with the serum.

Carson should have known John wouldn't take the comfort. "Nice doctor bedside manner, Carson, but this is out of your hands…out of mine." Because John knew it wouldn't do any good to whitewash the truth. That you couldn't find viable solutions if you did that.

Carson, however, was far from giving up on Sheppard, not when the man beat any odds they'd ever laid against him. "If we can get the affected DNA cells isolated…."

"Say you do, say you extract or shutdown all the extra Ancient genes, do I stop having seizures?" John ruthlessly demanded, wanted plain speaking only. Had to mitigate his expectations. "Does my brain snap back to pre-serum-overload gold? Does the way to the jumpers come back to me? Will I remember which copters I love to fly?" Left unspoken the greater question of whether he'd ever pilot another jumper or copter, the answer more than he could handle.

It was said that most doctors made horrible poker players, and Carson was one of the worst. So he said the truth because it was beyond his ability to lie effectively, even to provide optimism. "I'm..I'm sorry. I can't promise what the long-term effects will be."

John looked away, swallowed hard, told himself 'Buck up. You did this to yourself, now you have to deal with the fallout like a man,' the words sounding so much like his father's that he winced. Clearing his throat, he turned back to Carson. "Well, that's enough sulking for right now. Tell me Elizabeth's plan?"

Carson paled, looked like he'd been asked to join an away team to a hostile planet. "Plan? Her plan is your plan."

"My plan is for her to have a plan in case this peace goes sideways," John hissed back before he calmed himself. "Ok, fine. Plan…plan..You know you're asking a lot for a mentally debilitated man."

But Carson smiled confidently. "Our faith in you hasn't been misplaced yet, not even when you were half wraith."

"Sure, bring that up," John groused but his mind was moving, slowly but still turning. When he looked back at Carson, there was that familiar holy glint in his eyes. "They still believe what I have is contagious, right?" Carson nodded and felt a tad sorry for the villagers when John smiled widely. "How's your acting, Carson?"

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TBC

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Thanks for your wonderful reviews and for all those giving me support for this story.

Have a great day! (SPOILER: Cheer up. I don't write death fics and am a sucker for happy endings)

Cheryl W.

On a serious note, if you or someone you love has a brain injury, I encourage you to join a support group. There are serval virtual choices online and VA hospitals have onsite programs. If there is one thing I want everyone suffering this injury to know, it's that you are loved, for all the ways you are different and all the ways you are the same. And God is there for you, has plans for your future.

Here's just a few websites I found:

Brain Injury Association of America: public-affairs/media/virtual-support-groups

Brainline: people-brain-injury/community-support

Caring for Veterans with TBI - VA Caregiver Support : .

Also there are two books I've read about canine treatments, for PTSD and TBI:

Craig & Fred by Craig Grossi

Until Tuesday by Luis Carlos Montalvan