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Secret Santa fic: Breathe (2 of 2)
Continued from Part One
Rodney woke up sobbing for air, his chest on fire. He gasped and coughed, curled around himself. Slowly he became aware of a whole world of discomfort: stabbing pain in his head, a sharp chemical taste in his mouth, his heart pounding against his ribs, nauseating dizziness even with his eyes closed. He was lying on a cold hard surface, with his hip pressed against something warm that yielded when he stirred.
He rolled over, and gasped as the world swung queasily around him. Pressing his face against the cool floor, he breathed slowly, in and out, until things settled down somewhat. Then he opened his eyes to the welcome sight of scruffy dark hair, so coated with dust that it looked almost blond.
"Sheppard," he croaked, and coughed to clear his throat. Pain stabbed sharply at his lungs and throat. He had a horrible mental image of his lungs eaten to rags by toxic chemicals, filling with blood, drowning him -- but rather than drowning, he just coughed again, and sat up, wavering dizzily. He raised a hand to his aching head, discovering that his face was inexplicably sticky, and also that one of Sheppard's hands held his jacket sleeve in a death grip. The fingers were locked in place so that he couldn't peel them off. The rest of Sheppard, though, was utterly limp.
"Colonel? Now is a good time to wake up." He prodded at Sheppard. There was no movement, and his stomach lurched in a way that had nothing to do with his vertigo. His fingers slipped down to Sheppard's neck, pressed and then dug into the skin of his throat.
Nothing ... then a faint flutter against his trembling fingertips.
"Oh God," he whispered, a thanks or a prayer to a deity he didn't believe in. He held the back of his hand over the still lips, then bent over to press his ear to Sheppard's chest, steadying himself through another wave of dizziness. Sheppard might have a pulse, faint though it was, but he wasn't breathing.
"Hell and damn and ... this is completely unacceptable, Colonel!" Sheppard's fingers still wouldn't detach from his sleeve as Rodney knelt next to the unmoving body of his friend, planting his palm on Sheppard's forehead and trying not to think too much about what he was about to do. Carson accepted no compromises when it came to first-aid training, and it had taken an hour of yelling at each other, and finally a no-nonsense threat to revoke his gate clearance, to get him to put his lips on the CPR dummy's germ-ridden mouth, even through a plastic barrier. This was about a thousand times worse. There is not enough therapy in the world to fix me after this.
His radio crackled as he began to breathe for his friend. "Rodney, Colonel -- Rodney, please respond." Zelenka sounded frantic. Rodney could relate.
"Medical team, Radek!" Rodney yelled between gasps for air. "Now!"
"Rodney, one of your life signs is flickering in and out --"
"I know!" He could only get out a few words between each breath. "Why do you -- think I -- need Carson? -- Now, Radek!"
There was a flurry of activity on the other side of the radio connection, which Rodney ignored. The fear that the fire might recur was a not-too-distant possibility in the back of his mind, but most of his attention was consumed by the coolness of Sheppard's skin under his palm, by the slackness of his mouth when Rodney breathed for him.
Through it all he kept up a breathless, running monologue, knowing that he should save his air for, well, not passing out, but unable to help himself. When he was scared, he talked. And right now he was about as scared as he'd ever been. Between breaths for Sheppard, he babbled, a few words at a time.
"... dragged me down here without backup, that's absolutely stupid, I don't know why I let you talk me into this. Peer pressure, it's got to be peer pressure, because I never did idiotic things like that back on Earth. If the building's on fire, you better believe I'd have been at the head of the crowd running for the door. Self-preservation, Sheppard. Common sense. Not that I'd expect you to know anything about that..."
He stopped to gasp for air for a moment or two, black spots dancing around the edge of his vision. His lungs hurt and a great hand seemed to be squeezing them, pressing the air out of his chest, freaking him out for just an instant until he managed to resume breathing. It wasn't enough to shut him up, though. He gave Sheppard a couple more breaths and resumed his system -- breathe for Sheppard, breathe for himself, babble for a moment and repeat, with intermittent checks to make sure there was still a faint flutter of heartbeat. "And speaking of self-preservation, what were you thinking, dragging me out like that? When things are on fire around you and the room's full of lethal gas, Sheppard, you run. You don't stop and drag the geek. That's just stupid, crazy and suicidal ..."
He paused to force a few more breaths into the unresponsive lungs, and realized to his shock that he was crying, without even being aware of it. Hot tears left burning trails through the filth on his face. That seriously pissed him off.
"You're not allowed to die just to get out of being yelled at, you know that? Because everyone's going to. I can just imagine what Carson will have to say about all of this, and I'm sure Elizabeth will throw her two cents in, and you'll never, ever hear the end of it from me. You'd better invest in a set of earplugs, Colonel, because --"
He had to stop, doubling over in a coughing fit that ended in a wheezing struggle for breath. The horribly familiar pressure in his chest finally managed to trump his panic, and he froze, for just an instant, in utter disbelief at the unfairness of it all.
I cannot be allergic to halon. That's just completely unfair.
But that was what it felt like -- the beginnings of an anaphylaxis attack. And who knew what the hell kinds of chemicals were in the air around him? He could be allergic to anything down here. Gasping, blood roaring in his ears, Rodney fumbled in his pocket for an epinephrine injector. Oh please oh please oh please have it with me today oh thank God ...
This was all because of that stupid conversation with Sheppard the other day and he'd stupidly mentioned that suffocation was the worst possible way to die -- well, it was! -- and clearly whatever capricious fate governed his life had been listening, because that was just how things went in the Pegasus Galaxy, wasn't it? His shaking fingers slipped on the injector as he tried to twist off the cap. This is all your fault, he thought balefully in Sheppard's direction, and when he fumbled the injector for the second time, he smacked Sheppard hard in the chest.
It may well have been coincidence, but at that point, the still chest under his fist bucked, and Sheppard started coughing.
The only thing worse than suffocating was waking up afterwards. Well, no ... waking up was a good thing, really. But it still sucked.
Sharp pain stabbed him in the lungs. He was suffocating still -- his body screamed for air, and when he tried to inhale, his throat closed up and he doubled over, fingers scrabbling on the floor.
"Sheppard, jeez, calm down, just calm down, okay?" Hands caught and held him, pushing him back against the floor.
He opened his eyes to darkness, lit only by a couple of flickering ceiling lights that barely penetrated the heavy haze of smoke. Relaxing did seem to help with the whole breathing thing, until he went off into another coughing fit.
As he began to recover, a hand appeared directly in his field of vision, about two inches from his nose. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Unable to get enough breath to respond, Sheppard irritably whacked it away. There was a petulant "Ow!" and then a choking sound and the next thing he knew, he was being gripped by both shoulders and Rodney was leaning over him, blocking out most of the light. His eyes were wide and terrified.
"I think I'm in anaphylaxis. I can't breathe. Sheppard, do I look like I'm swelling up?"
Sheppard stared at him for a moment, until he had to blink, his eyes stinging from the smoke in the hallway. "Rodney," he rasped, "you can't breathe because we're surrounded by smoke."
He was released and pushed down onto the floor again. Rodney's voice came from a little farther away with a screechy and breathless note of panic in it. "Trust you to make light of the fact that I'm dying after I saved your life!"
Sheppard decided that the path of least resistance was to just lie flat on his back until sparks stopped dancing around the edges of his vision and the elephant decided to get off his chest. He could still hear Rodney very vocally panicking off to the side somewhere, so apparently breathing wasn't that much of a problem. If the complaining stopped, he'd deal with it then. Meanwhile, dealing with his own inability to breathe was more of an issue.
As the unbearable stabbing pain in his lungs faded into more of a bearable stabbing pain, he realized that he was actually feeling a little better than he had been earlier ... which probably said a lot about how crappy he'd felt before. He had a splitting headache, and was vaguely nauseous from that and the smoke, but otherwise, he didn't feel that bad.
A fist hooked onto the jacket over his chest and yanked him upright. The sudden change in equilibrium nearly swamped him with dizziness and nausea. There was nothing left in his stomach, though, so he just gagged a little. Well, he'd been feeling better.
"Sheppard, I'm dying here and you don't care!"
Pushing him away, John muttered hoarsely, "I think you're all right, Rodney. Aside from the --" He paused. There was no way Rodney could possibly have not noticed he was bleeding; the scientist's entire face was covered with blood. Still, Sheppard raised a hand to his own forehead, gesturing. In the process he discovered that he was bleeding, too.
"What?" Rodney aped the gesture, and when he brought his hand away covered with blood, he went off into new, stratospheric realms of panic. "Oh my God, I'm bleeding to death!"
"You just got cut up a little when the wall blew out." Sheppard felt along his own hairline and winced when he located a few cuts. It wasn't bad, at least he didn't think so, but it was bleeding quite a bit. Considering that Rodney hadn't even noticed his own bleeding, it probably wasn't too bad with him, either.
Not that Rodney seemed to think so. Banging a fist against the wall, he bellowed into his radio, "Carson! Where the hell are you?"
"We're having to cut through emergency doors to reach you," came the voice in Sheppard's ear. "Zelenka says both your life signs have stabilized. How's the Colonel?"
"I'm fine," Sheppard said, then started coughing again.
"As you can hear, he's certainly not fine, and I'm in anaphylaxis, Carson!"
"You are?" Carson sounded, to Sheppard's ears, slightly skeptical. "What are your symptoms?"
"What do you think my symptoms are? I can't breathe!"
"Any swelling? Tingling? Itching?"
"I'm a little distracted by the not breathing, Carson!"
Carson -- showing remarkable forbearance, in Sheppard's opinion -- didn't point out that Rodney obviously wasn't having any problems getting enough air to talk. "Halon can cause bronchial spasms -- like with an asthma attack? Have you ever had one of those?"
"Of course I have," Rodney snapped.
"Of course you have," Carson sighed. "Rodney, did you inject yourself with epinephrine?"
"Yes, of course, I --" Rodney stopped, and his eyes got huge. "Carson, if I'm not -- and I did -- that's going to kill me, isn't it!"
There was a long sigh on the other end of the radio. "No, Rodney. It won't. Now, if you are experiencing a reaction, you've done everything you can do, so panicking isn't going to help, is it? Just sit down, try to calm your breathing down, and radio us if either of you experience any new symptoms."
"Like what? Is there anything we should expect to experience? Carson! I forgot to tell you I'm bleeding to death! Carson!" Rodney hammered on the activation button on his earpiece, then slumped down against the wall.
Sheppard propped himself up on his elbows, swallowing back a wave of vertigo. "They'll be here soon, Rodney; calm down."
"As if. Epinephrine makes me paranoid." Rodney jumped to his feet with a spastic movement and started pacing. "And restless," he added, unnecessarily. "Are you sure I'm not swelling? I feel like I'm swelling. I also feel like I'm having a heart attack. That's probably the epinephrine. I hope. What if it's not?" He staggered and clutched at the wall. "Oh crap, I think I'm hyperventilating," he said in a very small voice, and slid down the wall to put his head between his knees.
Sheppard sighed, and sat up the rest of the way, cautiously testing his head at each stage of altitude. He didn't throw up and the dizziness had begun to recede somewhat. He still didn't try standing up yet, though, but instead crawled over to Rodney. "You do realize that you can't hyperventilate and suffocate at the same time, right?" He laid a hand on Rodney's back, between the shoulder blades. "Although if anyone could manage it, I bet you probably could."
"Oh, ha ha," Rodney said in a small, miserable voice without raising his head. After a moment, in an equally small and miserable voice, he asked, "How are you? You okay?"
That was the thing about Rodney ... he'd make you never want to be in the same room with him again, and then turn right around and remind you a split second later why it was worth it, always worth it. "Yeah," Sheppard said, leaning his aching head back against the wall. "I'm okay."
Rodney shifted his weight against the wall, so that his shoulder tipped against Sheppard's. It might have been accidental. And they stayed that way until a team of Marines cut through the bulkhead door closing off the other end of the hallway, and Carson's people descended upon them.
"Fire..." Sheppard said, pushing away an oxygen mask that one of Carson's nurses kept trying to fix over his mouth as she settled him on a gurney. It was wonderful, blessedly clean air -- the first time since waking up in the hallway that he hadn't had to struggle to breathe. But there were a few things he needed to say. "Is it out?"
"Doc Zelenka tells us that nothing shows up on his sensors, sir," Lorne told him, leaning over him and helping the nurse push him back down. "We've got people out there right now checking for hot spots. So far, it all looks good."
Sheppard's eyes closed briefly; then, as the nurse tried to resettle the mask over his face, he pushed it away again. "How's Rodney?"
"Certainly not in anaphylaxis, I can tell you that," Carson said from the other side of the corridor.
"Which I had no way of knowing!" Rodney protested petulantly, followed by a small scuffling noise. From the sound of things, his nurse was having similar problems to Sheppard's. Neither patient would stop trying to talk.
"It's probably better safe than sorry, as my mum would say," Carson admitted. "The adrenaline won't kill you; anaphylaxis would. Though you may feel like hell for a while."
"I feel like I'm having a heart attack."
"So relax, settle down and let the nice nurse put the oxygen mask on you, Rodney," Sheppard called, pulling away his own mask to do so. Looking as if she were a few steps from jabbing him with a sedative, his nurse pushed the mask back over his mouth.
"Thank you for the medical advice, Colonel; now follow it yourself," Carson told him, bending over him. "And how are you feeling?"
Sheppard lifted the mask to say, "Surprisingly, better than earlier." Then he saw Carson's eyes narrow and thought, Oh crap.
"Didn't you tell me you felt fine in my infirmary, Colonel?"
Sheppard wordlessly pointed at the mask, giving Carson a wide-eyed helpless look that -- he hoped -- clearly indicated, Sorry, I'd love to answer your questions, but see, I can't at the moment. I've got an oxygen mask on.
"I don't know why I even bother with the two of you. The minute either of you walk through the infirmary door, I should just sedate you both on general principles." Sheppard could feel hands moving over his body, checking his limbs with speed and assurance.
There was a disgruntled noise from Rodney's nurse, followed by Rodney's petulant voice: "Carson, we saved the city!"
"Yes, at great risk to both of you!" Carson rotated Sheppard's arms; Sheppard put up with it. "Colonel, Rodney didn't perform CPR on you at all, did he?"
Sheppard felt his eyes go wide, and pulled the mask away, forgetting that he was using it for camouflage. "Did he what?"
"I just need to know if I should expect broken ribs as well." Hands moved up his rib cage. "Hold still."
"I did not," Rodney protested, emphatically.
"His pulse and breathing were stable when the two of you escaped from the fire?"
There was a slight, incriminating pause from Rodney's direction, then, "Yes."
"Rodney, it's very difficult to get an accurate medical history on either one of you when you lie to me."
"Well, his pulse was fine," Rodney muttered.
Sheppard raised his head, knocking away the nurse in the act of putting the mask back on him. "Wait, what? I wasn't breathing?"
"How long did it take him to start breathing on his own again, Rodney?"
"Does it matter? He's fine now, isn't he?"
"Oh, Rodney." Sheppard let his head fall back down against the pillow. "Please tell me you didn't --"
"No! I didn't! And I will swear to that until my dying day, and neither one of you will ever ask me about that again!"
Carson looked up at the nurse. "Just note that rescue breathing was performed for an unspecified length of time, but the patient's respiration resumed without apparent damage."
"I didn't!" Rodney said, at the same time as Sheppard's horrified, "He didn't!"
Much more firmly than the nurse, Carson slapped the oxygen mask back over Sheppard's mouth and nose. "Colonel, you're alive, so I wouldn't be second-guessing the manner in which you came to be that way. Just thank your lucky stars that Rodney pays more attention in my first-aid classes than he pretends. And Rodney ..." There were still incoherent protesting sounds coming from Rodney's direction, interspersed with scuffling with the nurse. "Stuff a sock in it."
As the gurney bore him away, Sheppard reached out and brushed a hand against the wall, trying to reach out to Atlantis. The agitation was gone; all he could feel was the usual quiet hum of the city, a warm pulse deep in the back of his brain. Closing his eyes, content that all was well with his city, he let himself drift with the movement, and finally fell asleep.
The prompt was: "Sheppard getting injured on Atlantis by something going wrong involving his ATA gene and Ancient technology." I really had trouble coming up with something that hadn't been done a million times before, but somewhere along the way the thought crossed my mind that the mention of halon fire suppression systems in "Long Goodbye" has all kinds of h/c potential that you'd think the fanficcers would long since have run with. I just couldn't help myself. I hope you like it, Alipeeps!
Edit to add: Giving credit where credit was due, the fake anaphylaxis attack was Derry's idea. :)
Rodney woke up sobbing for air, his chest on fire. He gasped and coughed, curled around himself. Slowly he became aware of a whole world of discomfort: stabbing pain in his head, a sharp chemical taste in his mouth, his heart pounding against his ribs, nauseating dizziness even with his eyes closed. He was lying on a cold hard surface, with his hip pressed against something warm that yielded when he stirred.
He rolled over, and gasped as the world swung queasily around him. Pressing his face against the cool floor, he breathed slowly, in and out, until things settled down somewhat. Then he opened his eyes to the welcome sight of scruffy dark hair, so coated with dust that it looked almost blond.
"Sheppard," he croaked, and coughed to clear his throat. Pain stabbed sharply at his lungs and throat. He had a horrible mental image of his lungs eaten to rags by toxic chemicals, filling with blood, drowning him -- but rather than drowning, he just coughed again, and sat up, wavering dizzily. He raised a hand to his aching head, discovering that his face was inexplicably sticky, and also that one of Sheppard's hands held his jacket sleeve in a death grip. The fingers were locked in place so that he couldn't peel them off. The rest of Sheppard, though, was utterly limp.
"Colonel? Now is a good time to wake up." He prodded at Sheppard. There was no movement, and his stomach lurched in a way that had nothing to do with his vertigo. His fingers slipped down to Sheppard's neck, pressed and then dug into the skin of his throat.
Nothing ... then a faint flutter against his trembling fingertips.
"Oh God," he whispered, a thanks or a prayer to a deity he didn't believe in. He held the back of his hand over the still lips, then bent over to press his ear to Sheppard's chest, steadying himself through another wave of dizziness. Sheppard might have a pulse, faint though it was, but he wasn't breathing.
"Hell and damn and ... this is completely unacceptable, Colonel!" Sheppard's fingers still wouldn't detach from his sleeve as Rodney knelt next to the unmoving body of his friend, planting his palm on Sheppard's forehead and trying not to think too much about what he was about to do. Carson accepted no compromises when it came to first-aid training, and it had taken an hour of yelling at each other, and finally a no-nonsense threat to revoke his gate clearance, to get him to put his lips on the CPR dummy's germ-ridden mouth, even through a plastic barrier. This was about a thousand times worse. There is not enough therapy in the world to fix me after this.
His radio crackled as he began to breathe for his friend. "Rodney, Colonel -- Rodney, please respond." Zelenka sounded frantic. Rodney could relate.
"Medical team, Radek!" Rodney yelled between gasps for air. "Now!"
"Rodney, one of your life signs is flickering in and out --"
"I know!" He could only get out a few words between each breath. "Why do you -- think I -- need Carson? -- Now, Radek!"
There was a flurry of activity on the other side of the radio connection, which Rodney ignored. The fear that the fire might recur was a not-too-distant possibility in the back of his mind, but most of his attention was consumed by the coolness of Sheppard's skin under his palm, by the slackness of his mouth when Rodney breathed for him.
Through it all he kept up a breathless, running monologue, knowing that he should save his air for, well, not passing out, but unable to help himself. When he was scared, he talked. And right now he was about as scared as he'd ever been. Between breaths for Sheppard, he babbled, a few words at a time.
"... dragged me down here without backup, that's absolutely stupid, I don't know why I let you talk me into this. Peer pressure, it's got to be peer pressure, because I never did idiotic things like that back on Earth. If the building's on fire, you better believe I'd have been at the head of the crowd running for the door. Self-preservation, Sheppard. Common sense. Not that I'd expect you to know anything about that..."
He stopped to gasp for air for a moment or two, black spots dancing around the edge of his vision. His lungs hurt and a great hand seemed to be squeezing them, pressing the air out of his chest, freaking him out for just an instant until he managed to resume breathing. It wasn't enough to shut him up, though. He gave Sheppard a couple more breaths and resumed his system -- breathe for Sheppard, breathe for himself, babble for a moment and repeat, with intermittent checks to make sure there was still a faint flutter of heartbeat. "And speaking of self-preservation, what were you thinking, dragging me out like that? When things are on fire around you and the room's full of lethal gas, Sheppard, you run. You don't stop and drag the geek. That's just stupid, crazy and suicidal ..."
He paused to force a few more breaths into the unresponsive lungs, and realized to his shock that he was crying, without even being aware of it. Hot tears left burning trails through the filth on his face. That seriously pissed him off.
"You're not allowed to die just to get out of being yelled at, you know that? Because everyone's going to. I can just imagine what Carson will have to say about all of this, and I'm sure Elizabeth will throw her two cents in, and you'll never, ever hear the end of it from me. You'd better invest in a set of earplugs, Colonel, because --"
He had to stop, doubling over in a coughing fit that ended in a wheezing struggle for breath. The horribly familiar pressure in his chest finally managed to trump his panic, and he froze, for just an instant, in utter disbelief at the unfairness of it all.
I cannot be allergic to halon. That's just completely unfair.
But that was what it felt like -- the beginnings of an anaphylaxis attack. And who knew what the hell kinds of chemicals were in the air around him? He could be allergic to anything down here. Gasping, blood roaring in his ears, Rodney fumbled in his pocket for an epinephrine injector. Oh please oh please oh please have it with me today oh thank God ...
This was all because of that stupid conversation with Sheppard the other day and he'd stupidly mentioned that suffocation was the worst possible way to die -- well, it was! -- and clearly whatever capricious fate governed his life had been listening, because that was just how things went in the Pegasus Galaxy, wasn't it? His shaking fingers slipped on the injector as he tried to twist off the cap. This is all your fault, he thought balefully in Sheppard's direction, and when he fumbled the injector for the second time, he smacked Sheppard hard in the chest.
It may well have been coincidence, but at that point, the still chest under his fist bucked, and Sheppard started coughing.
The only thing worse than suffocating was waking up afterwards. Well, no ... waking up was a good thing, really. But it still sucked.
Sharp pain stabbed him in the lungs. He was suffocating still -- his body screamed for air, and when he tried to inhale, his throat closed up and he doubled over, fingers scrabbling on the floor.
"Sheppard, jeez, calm down, just calm down, okay?" Hands caught and held him, pushing him back against the floor.
He opened his eyes to darkness, lit only by a couple of flickering ceiling lights that barely penetrated the heavy haze of smoke. Relaxing did seem to help with the whole breathing thing, until he went off into another coughing fit.
As he began to recover, a hand appeared directly in his field of vision, about two inches from his nose. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Unable to get enough breath to respond, Sheppard irritably whacked it away. There was a petulant "Ow!" and then a choking sound and the next thing he knew, he was being gripped by both shoulders and Rodney was leaning over him, blocking out most of the light. His eyes were wide and terrified.
"I think I'm in anaphylaxis. I can't breathe. Sheppard, do I look like I'm swelling up?"
Sheppard stared at him for a moment, until he had to blink, his eyes stinging from the smoke in the hallway. "Rodney," he rasped, "you can't breathe because we're surrounded by smoke."
He was released and pushed down onto the floor again. Rodney's voice came from a little farther away with a screechy and breathless note of panic in it. "Trust you to make light of the fact that I'm dying after I saved your life!"
Sheppard decided that the path of least resistance was to just lie flat on his back until sparks stopped dancing around the edges of his vision and the elephant decided to get off his chest. He could still hear Rodney very vocally panicking off to the side somewhere, so apparently breathing wasn't that much of a problem. If the complaining stopped, he'd deal with it then. Meanwhile, dealing with his own inability to breathe was more of an issue.
As the unbearable stabbing pain in his lungs faded into more of a bearable stabbing pain, he realized that he was actually feeling a little better than he had been earlier ... which probably said a lot about how crappy he'd felt before. He had a splitting headache, and was vaguely nauseous from that and the smoke, but otherwise, he didn't feel that bad.
A fist hooked onto the jacket over his chest and yanked him upright. The sudden change in equilibrium nearly swamped him with dizziness and nausea. There was nothing left in his stomach, though, so he just gagged a little. Well, he'd been feeling better.
"Sheppard, I'm dying here and you don't care!"
Pushing him away, John muttered hoarsely, "I think you're all right, Rodney. Aside from the --" He paused. There was no way Rodney could possibly have not noticed he was bleeding; the scientist's entire face was covered with blood. Still, Sheppard raised a hand to his own forehead, gesturing. In the process he discovered that he was bleeding, too.
"What?" Rodney aped the gesture, and when he brought his hand away covered with blood, he went off into new, stratospheric realms of panic. "Oh my God, I'm bleeding to death!"
"You just got cut up a little when the wall blew out." Sheppard felt along his own hairline and winced when he located a few cuts. It wasn't bad, at least he didn't think so, but it was bleeding quite a bit. Considering that Rodney hadn't even noticed his own bleeding, it probably wasn't too bad with him, either.
Not that Rodney seemed to think so. Banging a fist against the wall, he bellowed into his radio, "Carson! Where the hell are you?"
"We're having to cut through emergency doors to reach you," came the voice in Sheppard's ear. "Zelenka says both your life signs have stabilized. How's the Colonel?"
"I'm fine," Sheppard said, then started coughing again.
"As you can hear, he's certainly not fine, and I'm in anaphylaxis, Carson!"
"You are?" Carson sounded, to Sheppard's ears, slightly skeptical. "What are your symptoms?"
"What do you think my symptoms are? I can't breathe!"
"Any swelling? Tingling? Itching?"
"I'm a little distracted by the not breathing, Carson!"
Carson -- showing remarkable forbearance, in Sheppard's opinion -- didn't point out that Rodney obviously wasn't having any problems getting enough air to talk. "Halon can cause bronchial spasms -- like with an asthma attack? Have you ever had one of those?"
"Of course I have," Rodney snapped.
"Of course you have," Carson sighed. "Rodney, did you inject yourself with epinephrine?"
"Yes, of course, I --" Rodney stopped, and his eyes got huge. "Carson, if I'm not -- and I did -- that's going to kill me, isn't it!"
There was a long sigh on the other end of the radio. "No, Rodney. It won't. Now, if you are experiencing a reaction, you've done everything you can do, so panicking isn't going to help, is it? Just sit down, try to calm your breathing down, and radio us if either of you experience any new symptoms."
"Like what? Is there anything we should expect to experience? Carson! I forgot to tell you I'm bleeding to death! Carson!" Rodney hammered on the activation button on his earpiece, then slumped down against the wall.
Sheppard propped himself up on his elbows, swallowing back a wave of vertigo. "They'll be here soon, Rodney; calm down."
"As if. Epinephrine makes me paranoid." Rodney jumped to his feet with a spastic movement and started pacing. "And restless," he added, unnecessarily. "Are you sure I'm not swelling? I feel like I'm swelling. I also feel like I'm having a heart attack. That's probably the epinephrine. I hope. What if it's not?" He staggered and clutched at the wall. "Oh crap, I think I'm hyperventilating," he said in a very small voice, and slid down the wall to put his head between his knees.
Sheppard sighed, and sat up the rest of the way, cautiously testing his head at each stage of altitude. He didn't throw up and the dizziness had begun to recede somewhat. He still didn't try standing up yet, though, but instead crawled over to Rodney. "You do realize that you can't hyperventilate and suffocate at the same time, right?" He laid a hand on Rodney's back, between the shoulder blades. "Although if anyone could manage it, I bet you probably could."
"Oh, ha ha," Rodney said in a small, miserable voice without raising his head. After a moment, in an equally small and miserable voice, he asked, "How are you? You okay?"
That was the thing about Rodney ... he'd make you never want to be in the same room with him again, and then turn right around and remind you a split second later why it was worth it, always worth it. "Yeah," Sheppard said, leaning his aching head back against the wall. "I'm okay."
Rodney shifted his weight against the wall, so that his shoulder tipped against Sheppard's. It might have been accidental. And they stayed that way until a team of Marines cut through the bulkhead door closing off the other end of the hallway, and Carson's people descended upon them.
"Fire..." Sheppard said, pushing away an oxygen mask that one of Carson's nurses kept trying to fix over his mouth as she settled him on a gurney. It was wonderful, blessedly clean air -- the first time since waking up in the hallway that he hadn't had to struggle to breathe. But there were a few things he needed to say. "Is it out?"
"Doc Zelenka tells us that nothing shows up on his sensors, sir," Lorne told him, leaning over him and helping the nurse push him back down. "We've got people out there right now checking for hot spots. So far, it all looks good."
Sheppard's eyes closed briefly; then, as the nurse tried to resettle the mask over his face, he pushed it away again. "How's Rodney?"
"Certainly not in anaphylaxis, I can tell you that," Carson said from the other side of the corridor.
"Which I had no way of knowing!" Rodney protested petulantly, followed by a small scuffling noise. From the sound of things, his nurse was having similar problems to Sheppard's. Neither patient would stop trying to talk.
"It's probably better safe than sorry, as my mum would say," Carson admitted. "The adrenaline won't kill you; anaphylaxis would. Though you may feel like hell for a while."
"I feel like I'm having a heart attack."
"So relax, settle down and let the nice nurse put the oxygen mask on you, Rodney," Sheppard called, pulling away his own mask to do so. Looking as if she were a few steps from jabbing him with a sedative, his nurse pushed the mask back over his mouth.
"Thank you for the medical advice, Colonel; now follow it yourself," Carson told him, bending over him. "And how are you feeling?"
Sheppard lifted the mask to say, "Surprisingly, better than earlier." Then he saw Carson's eyes narrow and thought, Oh crap.
"Didn't you tell me you felt fine in my infirmary, Colonel?"
Sheppard wordlessly pointed at the mask, giving Carson a wide-eyed helpless look that -- he hoped -- clearly indicated, Sorry, I'd love to answer your questions, but see, I can't at the moment. I've got an oxygen mask on.
"I don't know why I even bother with the two of you. The minute either of you walk through the infirmary door, I should just sedate you both on general principles." Sheppard could feel hands moving over his body, checking his limbs with speed and assurance.
There was a disgruntled noise from Rodney's nurse, followed by Rodney's petulant voice: "Carson, we saved the city!"
"Yes, at great risk to both of you!" Carson rotated Sheppard's arms; Sheppard put up with it. "Colonel, Rodney didn't perform CPR on you at all, did he?"
Sheppard felt his eyes go wide, and pulled the mask away, forgetting that he was using it for camouflage. "Did he what?"
"I just need to know if I should expect broken ribs as well." Hands moved up his rib cage. "Hold still."
"I did not," Rodney protested, emphatically.
"His pulse and breathing were stable when the two of you escaped from the fire?"
There was a slight, incriminating pause from Rodney's direction, then, "Yes."
"Rodney, it's very difficult to get an accurate medical history on either one of you when you lie to me."
"Well, his pulse was fine," Rodney muttered.
Sheppard raised his head, knocking away the nurse in the act of putting the mask back on him. "Wait, what? I wasn't breathing?"
"How long did it take him to start breathing on his own again, Rodney?"
"Does it matter? He's fine now, isn't he?"
"Oh, Rodney." Sheppard let his head fall back down against the pillow. "Please tell me you didn't --"
"No! I didn't! And I will swear to that until my dying day, and neither one of you will ever ask me about that again!"
Carson looked up at the nurse. "Just note that rescue breathing was performed for an unspecified length of time, but the patient's respiration resumed without apparent damage."
"I didn't!" Rodney said, at the same time as Sheppard's horrified, "He didn't!"
Much more firmly than the nurse, Carson slapped the oxygen mask back over Sheppard's mouth and nose. "Colonel, you're alive, so I wouldn't be second-guessing the manner in which you came to be that way. Just thank your lucky stars that Rodney pays more attention in my first-aid classes than he pretends. And Rodney ..." There were still incoherent protesting sounds coming from Rodney's direction, interspersed with scuffling with the nurse. "Stuff a sock in it."
As the gurney bore him away, Sheppard reached out and brushed a hand against the wall, trying to reach out to Atlantis. The agitation was gone; all he could feel was the usual quiet hum of the city, a warm pulse deep in the back of his brain. Closing his eyes, content that all was well with his city, he let himself drift with the movement, and finally fell asleep.
The prompt was: "Sheppard getting injured on Atlantis by something going wrong involving his ATA gene and Ancient technology." I really had trouble coming up with something that hadn't been done a million times before, but somewhere along the way the thought crossed my mind that the mention of halon fire suppression systems in "Long Goodbye" has all kinds of h/c potential that you'd think the fanficcers would long since have run with. I just couldn't help myself. I hope you like it, Alipeeps!
Edit to add: Giving credit where credit was due, the fake anaphylaxis attack was Derry's idea. :)
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