Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.

Previously: Anna gave herself a concussion and a twisted ankle while mountain climbing. Radek is already stressed about Sheppard's missing team (since Chapter 74), so thanks for nothing, Anna. But now Radek might finally find the time to spend some bonding time with the team (since he was invited in chapter 70).

NOTICE important Author's Note at the bottom!

Chapter 78. Would it Kill You?

"Can I help you?"

Anna gave him a glare, which was incongruously cheering.

He'd been worried sick about her for the first two days, even though Carson told him not to. Just like Carson predicted, she was confused and glum. The tiniest things set her off. Late on the third day, she started crying because she couldn't concentrate on the book she was reading. Radek didn't know what to do, and ended up making tea because, well, it couldn't hurt anything. By the time the kettle whistled, she'd fallen asleep on the couch.

Carson said that the damage wasn't permanent. It was a one-in-a-thousand chance she'd been hurt more seriously. It was ridiculous to lose sleep over those kinds of numbers. They'd risked the city and the lives on it for worse odds than that.

But he did lose sleep over it. Somehow. He didn't sleep at all, wondering what he would do if Anna didn't get better.

Anna must have been blissfully unaware, because, unlike Radek, she slept a lot. She slept for what felt like days, waking up only for a few hours at a time. Carson did his best to assure Radek that sleep was the best method of treatment for almost any ailment. The body is good at putting itself back together, he'd said. Just give her a chance to do that. So Radek waited and worried.

It was the theme of the week and he was getting tired of it. Sheppard's team had been missing for eight days. Eight long days of wondering what happened to them. On the second day they were missing, Radek expected some sort of ransom demand to come through from the Genii or something. On the fourth day, he thought for sure they'd march through the 'gate, apologizing because they forgot to call. Day six, he was sure they were dead.

Now he was just hoping someone would find their bodies eventually.

Anna, on the other hand, seemed to be fairly normal by her sixth day of solid twelve-hour night's sleep.

Radek sighed. "Are you sure?"

"I sprained my ankle; I didn't lose a leg," Anna snapped.

She hopped from her room to the couch and sat down. She had to be getting tired of the same old routine, too. Sometimes it seemed like her life consisted of hobbling to the couch and napping. After spending her day mostly asleep, waking only for a few hours to limp to the kitchen and the bathroom, she would get up, hobble back to bed, and sleep some more.

Repeat.

"Any news on Colonel Sheppard's team?" Anna asked.

Repeat on that, too.

He heaved a sigh and shook his head. "I don't know… I don't want to think they aren't coming back but it's been a long time." He'd started to berate himself for his stupidity because Rodney wasn't here to do it. It was getting pathetic.

"Elizabeth hasn't declared them presumed dead or missing in action, has she?" Anna asked.

That was another matter entirely. "No… she won't."

Anna frowned.

He also really didn't want to talk about this. "Is your ankle any better? You said last night it was hurting…"

No answer was forthcoming. From either of them. He sat on the other side of the couch and waited for her to say something. Her ankle had been healing. She'd been good about icing it, keeping it elevated, and she put no pressure on it.

He knew that it probably wasn't supposed to hurt.

He used to think he'd enjoy his job much more without Rodney to insult him on a daily basis.

How did he somehow skip from thinking about Anna's ankle to McKay? He watched her pull her tablet up on her leg and flip through a science scenario. He'd given her this one. Everything was different now. Rodney wasn't here to come up with the scenarios. Collins wasn't here to grade them. Radek wrote the scenario in Czech.

Everything was different, and it wasn't supposed to hurt like this.

"I don't know why it hurts," Anna said finally, quietly. "I've done everything Doctor Beckett told me to. I barely step on it at all. I'm very careful."

Radek nodded. "Maybe we should take you to Doctor Beckett. At least, he can give you something for it."

"It's so far away…" Anna looked at him a bit hopefully. "But I am getting a little stir-crazy."

Radek could imagine. He went to the lab for a few hours a day, but for the most part he was here. He was always on call anyway, and it didn't make too much of a difference whether he worked here or in his lab. He told himself he was here for Anna. And he was. She couldn't go get her meals, and she was alone and lonely.

The lab was strangely lonely, too, though.

When the door announced someone was requesting entrance, Anna and Radek looked at one another in total confusion. This sort of thing simply… didn't happen. After Anna giggled at their reaction to a visitor, Radek smiled and rose to answer the door.

Major Lorne was there. They'd spent the last six days hopping from planet to planet looking for Colonel Sheppard and his team, and they hadn't even scratched the top off the list they'd compiled. It was such mundane work, and Radek was needed to sort out the rest of the data from the DHD, that he didn't go with them.

The major was carrying a bunch of flowers with him that looked like daisies, though. That was weird.

"Hey, Doc. Came to see how Anna's doing. With the ankle and everything." Lorne waved over Radek's shoulder toward the couch.

"Oh…" Radek had no idea that Lorne knew he had a daughter. "Come in, please."

Alright, everyone knew he had a daughter. But precious few acknowledged it. It was the kind of thing everyone mostly tried to ignore. Lorne, included. Except just now.

Lorne nodded in thanks and walked into the room. "We miss seeing you at the firing range," Lorne said, stopping beside the couch. "Doctor Weir told me that even numbers of flowers are for funerals. I didn't know that… but I have an explanation."

"Yeah?" Anna looked amused. That was good, if she was amused, then she wasn't likely to concentrate on the pain.

"This one is from me." Major Lorne picked a daisy from his bouquet and handed it to her.

"This one?" Anna clarified playfully. "Not that one?" She pointed at a different bloom. They all looked virtually identical.

"Yeah, that one. This one, though," Lorne picked out the flower Anna had indicated. He turned it in his fingers as though trying to remember the giver of this daisy. "This one is from Chuck. This one is from Reed and Coughlin. From Doctor Weir." He handed her twelve flowers that way. At a certain point, Radek was sure he was just making up who might have added to the bouquet, though the first four or five flowers seemed legitimate.

Anna looked at the bunch of flowers on her lap and smiled. "Well, thank you."

"Get well soon," Major Lorne said.

"Would you like some tea?" Radek asked. It occurred to him that the major wasn't a tea-drinking sort of person. Coffee, yes. "Coffee. Or, um…" He looked around, thinking it was a little early in the morning for alcohol. Although, it was supposed to be Major Lorne's day off. "I also have Fat Tire."

"Oh," Major Lorne sighed and shook his head enviously. "Colorado craft beers, huh? Get them to bring you some on the Daedalus runs?"

Radek shrugged. "Friends in high places." Friends in high places who lived in Fort Collins, Colorado, so it was even more convenient. And a hilarious pun, if he wanted to talk about altitude, even leaving the Daedalus in orbit. "Also, easier to get than Czech beer."

Lorne laughed and said, "Sure. I'd love some."

"Anna? You want tea?" Radek asked as he went to get the beer. She said no. She was quiet, looking at her daisies one at a time. Radek felt momentarily guilty he was putting off taking her to the infirmary. But what were they supposed to do? Take Lorne's daisies and shuffle him on his way?

"How long does Doctor Beckett say you gotta be off the foot?" Lorne asked. He went to sit in the single chair by the window, directly across from Anna so she could talk to him easily.

Anna shrugged. "He said not to walk on it for as long as I can, since I tore some ligaments. That usually takes six to eight weeks to heal completely."

"Six to eight weeks, damn." Lorne sighed and took the beer Radek handed him. He nodded in thanks, but turned his attention back on Anna immediately. "That sucks. What are you doing in the meantime?"

"Nothing." Anna sighed. "Not a lot to do."

"You into any art? Drawing or painting?" Lorne asked.

Anna shook her head. "Just homework. Sort of."

Lorne shrugged and leaned back in the chair.

"I'm afraid I'm not as good at writing science scenarios as Rodney is," Radek offered.

"No, it's not that, it's just…" Anna cut herself off and sighed. "I don't know. You don't really think they're dead, do you, Major Lorne?"

There it was. The fog in the room was given a name. Radek couldn't put any words to it, and he didn't know if Major Lorne could, either. There weren't words for this weight. The weight that their friends might be dead. At the very least missing—maybe forever. There were a lot of planets out there. People on Earth thought it was difficult to find bodies there, and they had only the one planet to go through.

The weight that he and Lorne might have to step up into shoes they hadn't bargained for and didn't want. Especially if they got them this way.

"I hope they aren't," Major Lorne said.

"Me, too, but…" Anna looked at Radek and then back at the major. "Shouldn't they have come back? If they were alive, I mean."

"Well," Major Lorne offered hopefully, "there are a hundred things that could be keeping them from getting back here. Their being dead is only one of those things."

That was a nice, optimistic way to frame it.

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Lorne added, taking a drink. "But I even miss McKay a little."

Radek chuckled, but didn't voice his agreement. Had to be very careful about that kind of thing. Rodney somehow had the uncanny ability to hear compliments by the most unlikely people even on other planets. And he already thought everyone secretly admired him, anyway. Hated him, probably. But secretly admired.

Major Lorne tried to divert the conversation, then. He talked to Anna about painting a little, and offered that she could borrow any of the books he brought with him if she got extremely bored. He warned her that he mostly read military sci-fi and war history, so it wasn't exactly what most people would consider captivating. Anna seemed oddly interested in both of them.

Radek contributed a slightly-related sentence on a science-fiction novel he'd borrowed from Elizabeth, but it had been so long since he'd read a novel, he had no idea what he was looking at. He'd never read a novel in English, either. He barely read novels, period, much less in English.

They were kind enough to treat it like it was connected.

After Major Lorne promised he would bring Anna one of his books, he thanked Radek for the beer and took his leave. Radek didn't quite know what to make of it. He knew that Major Lorne was probably just trying to be nice. Or perhaps this was a sideways attempt to remind him that he was still invited to the poker game tomorrow.

It was Tuesday, after all.

#

As soon as Lorne left, Anna breathed a sigh of relief. Not that she didn't like him or anything. She was actually getting used to him, since he seemed to be around. It seemed like he said hello to her whenever he saw her, and he saw her a lot. She wasn't exactly comfortable around him. Maybe because he always seemed sort-of on edge.

Maybe it was because Radek was on his team, and Anna never met two people more different in every way.

"Could you help me get to the infirmary, maybe?" Anna asked after a few seconds of silence.

Radek stood immediately. "Oh. Yes. I'm so sorry. I don't know what—"

"It's okay. I just want to make sure nothing is wrong. And that I'll be able to walk again eventually."

"Oh, you will. Torn ligaments just take a very long time to heal, like Carson said." Radek stood next to the couch and offered her a hand up. She managed to stand next to him, then he looked at her in confusion. "How…?"

He didn't finish, maybe because he decided Anna had no idea how she wanted to do this. She'd been brought here from the infirmary in a wheelchair. That was very convenient. But Doctor Keller took it back to the infirmary with her because no one anticipated any problems in Anna's recovery.

Anna finally negotiated the couch and slipped her hand into Radek's, leaning heavily on his arm. He put a strong grip on her hand that somehow made her feel better, even though she knew this trip was going to hurt no matter what she did.

"I'm ready," she said quietly.

She hobbled toward the door, leaning on Radek when she had to put weight on her sprained ankle. They made it out to the hallway, but it seemed to take forever. And this hallway from their quarters to the transporter had never looked so long.

"Are you okay?" he asked when Anna stopped to get her breath outside the door. "You know, I can go get you a wheelchair, probably."

Anna started walking again. She made it this far, so… "No, thanks."

He just nodded and they kept walking.

The agony of every step was surprising. Not as bad as the day she actually sprained her ankle, actually. Not as bad as that at all. Her ankle had been getting better every day. If she'd tried this three days ago, even with Radek's help, she would have melted into a puddle of painful tears. She knew that ligaments took a very long time to heal, but this seemed like an unusually long time.

She didn't want to make the whole trip to the infirmary for nothing, though.

"I wonder why the major visited," Anna said.

Radek shrugged. "I wonder if it has to do with that I haven't done anything… social with the team." He scowled as he spoke. "I hope not."

Anna smiled between steps. "Would it kill you to… um, you know, spend time with the team?"

Anna knew from copious amounts of time in the mess hall that Colonel Sheppard's team ate together at least once a week and watched movies in Sheppard's quarters. Major Rutherford's team all enjoyed automobile repair, but there were no cars on Atlantis. They made up for it by building a MALP together from spare parts in one of the lower levels of the central tower.

"Well, no, it obviously wouldn't kill me," Radek answered with a chuckle.

"I think all the teams do things together." She wanted to say they all seemed like friends. And she knew that Radek had friends in his lab. They played chess together, stumped each other with logic puzzles, and told the kind of jokes that only a physicist would understand.

But even McKay spent off-time with Ronon sometimes.

"I will go. I just haven't had time recently. The team plays poker on Wednesday nights. Well, the team and 'a few others' as the major said. But these past two Wednesdays have been very busy…"

They finally stepped into the transporter and Radek hit the dot to take them to the infirmary.

"I want to go. And I will, as soon as life allows me."

Anna had the feeling that life might never allow him. "But, you know, Major Lorne is looking at becoming the interim military commander of Atlantis with Sheppard missing so long. And you might be interim head of the entire science team."

"That's true…" he agreed hesitantly. "But what does that have to do with playing poker?"

If he didn't know, then maybe he wouldn't get it. "It's good if you can work together well. That's all." She'd never met two people so different. Never met two people so alike.

Radek seemed to consider that. They reached the infirmary eventually, apparently not long enough for him to offer an alternative to working well with Major Lorne.

Doctor Beckett looked just as tired and stressed as everyone else, but he was in good spirits nonetheless. Anna wished she could so often be in a good mood like he was. He did look concerned when he saw them approaching.

"Oh, dear, is it still that bad?" He shook his head in disappointment. "I thought for certain it would be at least a little better by now."

"It has gotten better…" Anna said as Radek helped her cross the floor and hop up onto the nearest gurney. "Just not much at all. Maybe not even a little."

"I can vouch for good behavior," Radek said. "She hasn't put any weight on it. Doesn't even move all day."

Doctor Beckett frowned, put his stethoscope around his neck and walked over. He patted the bed. "Put it up here and I'll take a look at it." Anna obeyed, and tried not to whimper when he started manipulating the joint and carefully pressed on the skin, still discolored from the bruise. "How's that feel?" he asked after a moment.

"Uh…" Anna regretted opening her mouth as she gasped to shove the pain away. "Not good."

"Sorry." Doctor Beckett sighed and rotated her ankle in the tiniest of circles. "That?"

"That's not bad," she said, feeling a little relieved that at least some movement didn't hurt so much.

"One second." Doctor Beckett carefully put Anna's ankle back on the gurney and tapped the radio in his ear. "Alright, what sort of emergency?"

Anna and Radek looked at each other. Emergency?

Despite the apparent emergency, Doctor Beckett smiled and glanced at Radek for half a second. "He is?"

Then he frowned. Anna had never seen anyone go so pale so fast. "He did? How much?" He paused, shook his head, and said, "Alright, alright, yeah. I understand. We'll be ready." Doctor Beckett drummed his fingers the gurney, like he was celebrating something. He glanced at Anna for a moment before looking at Radek. "That was Elizabeth. Rodney just came through the 'gate."

"What?" Radek half-laughed, half-shouted. "Where has he been?"

"Somewhere he's taken, and I quote, 'a lot' of Wraith enzyme. They're bringing him here. Excuse me." Doctor Beckett hurried away and started shouting instructions to the other doctors in the infirmary. Instructions including four-point restraints.

Anna felt only slightly neglected. She couldn't help her grin as she glanced at Radek. He looked just as pleased as she felt, maybe even more. Her ankle didn't hurt so much anymore.

Doctor McKay was back.

Next time: We're the basically the ones who save the day when they can't. Now, does that make us not as good, or does that make us better?

A/N: Sorry about the late post. I had a lot to do and stuff and... well, on that note, I do have to say something. I am sorry, but school is kicking my butt right now. I have to take a break from this and focus on other things. I'm also headed to Australia for two weeks over the new year as part of my studies and I need to prepare for that, too. In short... don't expect any updates until next year. Sorry about this, but I need to prioritize.

I'll be back in January regardless.