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They rolled the major away to the infirmary in a rattling rush.
I’m not sure why they’re in such a hurry; since they’ve started his heart again, it seems to me there’s no great urgency anymore. The time for rushing was when that…thing was wrapped around his neck and we were stuck in the ’gate. Now, this is just clean-up. Denouement. The time when five people’s lives plus, you know, my own, no longer depend on my working several miracles in a row. That’s the trouble with genius; it sets up certain expectations in others. I am often my own worst enemy.
I abruptly grab my kit, turn, and go back into the jumper.
Carson appears in the doorway, which surprises me briefly as I thought he’d gone with Sheppard. And for a moment, with that dour Scotsman’s face, I think he has bad news, that the gurney flipped over on the way to infirmary, that that ugly bug has a little brother somewhere—that despite the miracles I did manage to pull off, it hadn’t been enough. And my hand is shaking so badly, I tuck it behind me.
“Rodney, are you all right?”
Ah, that serious expression is supposed to be concern for me. That seems utterly ridiculous when I wasn’t the one who just died and got brought back to life, and that probably shows in my tone. “Shouldn’t you be down in the infirmary?”
He narrows his eyes at me, and I glimpse large needles and invasive tests in my future, but all he says is, “Come down when you’re finished. I’d like to have a look at you, too.”
I bark a laugh. “Of course, why not? I have all the time in the world now.” The way I say that scares even me a little.
But Carson only nods thoughtfully, and before I can ask him why, he disappears.
I uncurl my fisted hands, will them to steady, and start pulling things from my kit.
Elizabeth is next, taking Beckett’s place in the doorway. “Rodney?”
“I’m really busy right now, Elizabeth,” I say tightly. “I’m still not sure why the drive pods didn’t retract fully and I really think we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again, don’t you? Because maybe next time I’ll be the one stuck past the event horizon while Teyla or, God help us, Lieutenant Ford tries to fix the ship and that would be…bad.”
“I’m not arguing. But I think the problem can wait a little while, don’t you?”
Diplomats—gotta love them. Or, maybe, not so much today. I drag my attention away from my very important work for a moment even as I feel for the bunch of circuits under the jumper’s control panel, and give her a glare that would have my team cowering under their seats. “No, Elizabeth, I don’t think it can wait a while,” I say with extreme patience. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here working on it. The sooner we figure out what went wrong, the sooner we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Or, if it did, we’d actually have a solution that didn’t rely on my brilliance to save six lives, including one badly damaged one. I didn’t think that part needed saying.
She pursed her lips, which was her way of saying she didn’t completely approve, and I could have written a whole thesis on just how much I didn’t care, but she didn’t try to argue any more, merely nodding and walking away. Thank God. I’m not sure what all the pensive head-bobbing is about, but I might have been reduced to shouting if she’d kept going, and considering she has the authority to order me out of here, that probably wouldn’t be wise. Not that I wouldn’t have found a way to sneak back in, but still. It would have wasted valuable time.
Za—Zelenka? I’m never sure of his name—takes her place, and I’m starting to wonder if a line has formed outside of people waiting to distract and annoy me. But, thankfully for his own sake as well as mine, he doesn’t say a word, doesn’t ask how I’m feeling or what I’m doing or why now, just climbs in and opens up his own kit and gets to work beside me.
I immediately forget he’s there, ignore what’s going on in the infirmary upstairs, pretend my hands are rock solid again, and get to work.
The damage doesn’t take long to find, just a connection jarred loose probably when the Wraith were shooting at us, that gave way during retraction. A simple wire—well, the Atlantean equivalent, anyway—and I stare at it with wonder for a minute. I’m used to simple problems ruining complex set-ups, but this wasn’t a failed experiment that just sent us back to the drawing board. Six people nearly lost their lives because of that loose wire, the major dying because of it. Briefly, yes, yes, but somehow the heart-not-beating part is still a little hard for me to get past. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s a good thing for key organs to stop working like that, even for a minute.
“Doctor McKay?”
It’s Zelenka who snaps me out of my pointless reflection, and the wire becomes a wire again. It got loose; they do that, and no preventative maintenance on my part is going to make sure it never happens again. That I’m never stuck watching people dying because I can’t fix everything.
I think I’ve found a significant flaw in the universe.
I fix the connection, and just like that the jumper is fine again. Sure, it’ll probably need repainting or hammering out or something where it was wedged into the gate, but the important parts work. That’s really all you need. I wipe the back of my arm across my forehead, note my hands have almost stopped shaking, and crawl out from under the control panel to look at Zelenka.
“Now, we’re going to map all those circuits.”
“McKay, there is time to do this later with—”
“If you don’t want to help me, fine,” I snap, just about through the little patience I have left. “Just stay out of my way then,” and I push past him, heading for the access panel in the back. My God, doesn’t anyone see the importance of this? If we’d had a map of the circuits, I could have retracted the pods a half-hour earlier. Nothing else mattered nearly as much right now.
Zelenka was studying me from behind; I could feel those beady little Czech eyes on my back. It was the same thing Elizabeth and Carson had done, like they were having trouble understanding what I was saying. Good grief, it wasn’t like I was speaking Ancient or something. Personally, I thought it made a lot of sense that we should learn everything we could about a piece of machinery we were regularly entrusting our and others’ lives to.
There’s a lot of debris in the back of the jumper even after Aiden’s “vacuuming” job, most of it left over from the med team as they worked to revive the major. Revive—it sounds so much better than “bring back to life,” doesn’t it? Like he just fainted, or got knocked out. I pry my eyes away from the blood, stare with equally horrified fascination at the bug blood spatter on the seat, before deliberately turning my back on all of it to face the panel. My hands are shaking again and I mutter a curse as I get to work.
Zelenka finally gives up trying to read my mind and sits down at the controls, calling out readings to me as I manipulate each circuit. It’s a good thing he doesn’t know what I’m thinking, because I’d be embarrassed for him to know how many times my thoughts go back to the blood on the floor, and the last time I was standing here feverishly trying these circuits.
The very odd thing about all this, I realize as I work, is this wasn’t the first time lives had rested in my hands and on a deadline. I’d been on missions before where my technical expertise had been needed to get safely back home. For that matter, the fate of pretty much all of Earth had been at stake that time at the SGC, and I’d barely broken a sweat then. What is it about this time that makes me feel like I was playing poker with a pair of twos and everything that mattered to me was in the pot? It made no sense, and I don’t like things that don’t make sense.
Sweat drips into my eyes again, and I rub my sleeve over my forehead once more. It doesn’t even occur to me that there might be more than one reason for sweating and shaking until Zelenka stops talking and the next thing I know, he’s pushing me down into a seat—not the bug blood one—and pressing a power bar into my hand.
“I hear you must eat or get dizzy,” he says solemnly, and I gape, then frown at him. I’d just had a bar…well, a little while ago, when we were stuck in the jumper, but still. I don’t feel hypoglycemic, no dizziness or nausea, just a little…unsettled. Facing the certainty of exploding in the vacuum of space had a tendency to do that to you. But I automatically unwrap the bar and bite into it, not caring for once what flavor it is.
My eyes stray back to the blood on the floor while I chew, and besides immediately reducing the taste of the food in my mouth to that of old linoleum, it also sends an unexpected shiver up my spine. Major Sheppard had suffered and died there on that floor. The lives of I-don’t-know-how-many billion people on Earth, or some generic marine I’d passed maybe once in the hallways, were impersonal abstracts. Sheppard was someone I knew and liked. And I’d been responsible for his life.
Zelenka had settled next to me, idly glancing around the jumper while I stared at the floor and pretended the blood on it didn’t matter. I’d almost forgotten he was there until he spoke. “The major is your friend, yes?”
I stopped chewing and turned to stare at him, wondering momentarily if the same aberration that made his hair look like a Lhasa apso had also affected his mind. “Z—do you have a first name?” It was bound to be easier to remember.
“Radek,” he says cheerfully.
“Radek,” I repeat, far less cheerfully. “Does anything in my behavior suggest that I have a burning desire to discuss Major Sheppard or my feelings about him? Because I’d really like to know so I can make sure to completely get rid of it.”
Larger men have curled up into balls, weeping for their mothers, under my glare, but this strange little scientist just rolls his eyes at me. “Seeing a friend in danger is a hard thing.”
He says it sagely, like some Eastern European mystic granting great insight, and this time I’m the one rolling my eyes. “This may come as a complete shock to you, but watching anyone have the life sucked out of them by the spider from Hell is a ‘hard thing.’ In fact, on my list of favorite things to do, I’d say it comes in somewhere in the negative thirty-four thousands. So, Doctor Freud, if you’re through wondering if I saw my mother in danger when I was a child and developed a crush on her, I suggest we get back to what you do know and finish mapping these circuits.”
Even then, unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to take offense, just gives me a little smile that has me suspiciously analyzing it, then turns and goes back into the cockpit. I jam the rest of the power bar in my mouth and, feeling a little steadier, also return to work.
I don’t look at the blood on the floor again, but I don’t forget it’s there, either.
Friend—Radek must have more screws loose than I thought. I compartmentalize this annoyed rant in one part of my mind while another keeps running through the circuits. Scientists don’t become friends with soldiers. I don’t become friends with anybody. What’s the point? I never got that. Friends take time, patience, people skills, all things I didn’t have to spare, and give you only grief in return. It didn’t take a genius to see the inequality in that equation. Friends don’t win you a Nobel or buy you an extension on a grant. They aren’t practical.
They leave you nauseated by the thought of their death.
I swallow and test another circuit.
The rustle of movement behind me pulls me back out of my work, and I turn to see two of Carson’s people cleaning up the medical debris from the jumper floor. I open my mouth to ask them the obvious “what are you doing?”, then catch myself and change the words before they leave my mouth. Before I really think about them. “How’s Major Sheppard?”
Only one even bothers to glance up. “He’s not awake yet, but Doctor Beckett says he’s stable.”
I nod absently even though the man has already gone back to his menial labor. What does that mean, really, “stable”? His heart isn’t likely to stop again? He’s not going to die again provided he steers clear of really large alien webs? He’s no longer insane? The problem with medicine is they have a ten-syllable word for a tiny bone in your foot but for something important like, oh, I don’t know, whether you live or die, all they can offer is words like “stable” and “fair” and “he’ll make it.” Make what, for God’s sake—is that too difficult a question to ask?
Being the good scientist I am, I decide I need to research the answer immediately.
“Radek?” I don’t wait for him to turn. “I need to check on something. We can finish this mapping in—” I look fruitlessly for a watch I’m not wearing.
“Tomorrow?” he offers, and I pretend not to notice the hopefulness in his tone. I’m feeling generous, however, so I nod.
“Tomorrow.”
He grins, but I don’t stay to watch, already dropping my tools onto the bench and skirting the two orderlies on the floor, cleaning up the last remnants of a very unpleasant day.
I approach the infirmary cautiously, remembering Carson’s threat to look me over. In his case, that could mean anything from taking my pulse and blood pressure, to ordering a full external and internal exam. It’s a sad thing when you can’t trust your doctor. But one good thing about the stained glass doors the Ancients favored is you can see through them. I wait until the coast is clear, then slip inside the main ward.
The major is its sole occupant, lying just a few beds away, and I forget about Carson as I come closer. No, my caution now is for not waking probably the one person in the city who’s had a worse day than I have. He needs the sleep. I just…need to see him.
His neck is bandaged now, no blood in sight, and his color’s better. Instead of the pain-induced tension on the jumper, his hands lie loose on the covers now, and he shifts in his sleep with no sign of the earlier paralysis. I don’t know what any of the monitors behind him mean, but one pulses with a strong, steady beat even I can recognize. Sheppard is stable. I don’t know why they couldn’t have just said he’s a few blocks away from death’s door now, or that he’s almost back to what counts as normal for him; it would have been a lot more informative. I might have come up here anyway just to make certain they hadn’t missed anything, but I would’ve taken my time more. I’m sure Doctor Keogh will forgive me for knocking him down the stairs, but it will probably take some groveling that would have otherwise been completely unnecessary.
My heart didn’t need the exercise, either.
But there is this calm now that descends simply from being here in the quiet infirmary, both of us present, and neither of us bleeding or dying. I’m not one for pointless self-analysis, but even I can recognize this as a more potent form of the enjoyment I often find in John Sheppard’s company, which is strange considering he’s hardly at his most companionable at the moment. Although at least Carson’s efforts have smoothed that ridiculous pincushion the major calls hair. Some good has come out of all this, after all.
Even my twisted sense of humor chokes on that thought.
Like I said: grief. That’s all friendship brings. Either friends die, or they get mad at you for not remembering their birthday, or they turn around and stab you in the back. But something always happens and suddenly all those hours of effort and worry and “listening” are gone, wasted. It had to be one of the worst deals ever.
But…as much sense as all that made, it didn’t change what I’d felt watching Sheppard struggling to stay alive long enough for me to get us home.
Friend. I wince, dismayed to recognize the diagnosis all too clearly. Well, that’s just terrific. I didn’t ask for any of this. If I’d have realized it was contagious, I wouldn’t have gotten so close. Who would willingly put themselves out to feeling like they were the main course at a Wraith banquet just because someone else was suffering and maybe dying? Which, out here, wasn’t that unlikely.
The major murmurs something in his sleep and tries to roll onto his side, which would have been fine except he seems to want to take his arm with him and it’s strapped to an IV board. A frown draws his forehead together as he grapples with this subconscious obstacle. Amazing; even in sleep he gets into trouble. Shaking my head with exasperation, I gently roll his shoulder back flat on the bed and adjust the IV tubing so it’s not stretched taut. It’s not much of a solution, but John accepts it and relaxes back into sleep.
There’s that calm again, and I have to say, it’s pretty nice. Perhaps it belongs in the friendship equation, a little benefit to make the whole thing more balanced. It doesn’t cancel out the negatives, the time and the effort and the endless talking, but I can see it being a big plus.
Then the door opens and Carson appears, and I forget all about friendship equations and my own dismal forecast, and concentrate on keeping my body as unpunctured as possible.
It’s only hours later when I sneak back to test my hypothesis one more time that I finally concede the inevitable.
The out-of-proportion worry has lingered, and as soon as I reach the major’s bedside and convince myself yet again that, yes, he is still breathing, the contentment also returns. Less than one day of officially having a friend and already I’m turning into a paradox. I can’t imagine what joys future days will bring.
Really. I haven’t a clue.
And you know, maybe I should be but, for the first time, I’m not scared. This equation is turning out to have all kinds of variables I hadn’t even known about, and what kind of a scientist would I be not to be fascinated by the discovery process?
A few minutes later, I leave the major in Carson’s sadistic but competent care and go back to my room and crawl into bed. I have that circuit-mapping in the morning with Radek and it’s been a very long day.
But—and I realize this with surprisingly little surprise—not such a bad one, after all.
The End