sholio | Re-upload of chapters

This is a temporary post for

kheryn42, who is trying to read "Running on Empty" on ff.net and finding that two of the chapters don't load, and wants to read them. So here you go! Hopefully the site will quit screwing up soon. The chapters load OK for me ... I don't know why it's doing that.

Chapter Thirteen: Dealing with Medical Emergencies

The best way to deal with injuries and sicknesses is to take measures to prevent them from happening in the first place. Treat any injury or sickness that occurs as soon as possible to prevent it from worsening.

-U.S. Army Survival Manual

In a way, it was a relief when Rodney left the bunker, because Sheppard could relax and stop trying to keep the pain off his face. His leg was on fire, even after sitting and resting for the last hour or so. It scared him, scared him badly, how much worse it had gotten in the course of the day.

He looked up to see Jagan watching him. "You're hurtin'," the boy said.

"Yeah." Sheppard's mouth twisted in a half-grin. "Don't tell Rodney."

Jagan just nodded and leaned back against the wall, deftly tying pieces of rope together. Clearly accustomed to working with his hands, he'd picked up the knot on the first try and was probably better at it than Sheppard by now.

Just as they'd settled back into quiet, a sudden, hoarse yell from somewhere outside made them both bolt upright. In Sheppard's case, this turned out to be a very bad idea, as the sudden movement jarred his leg and sent a sheet of fire coursing through his veins. He doubled over, gasping. As the haze faded from his vision, he got hold of the wall and pulled himself upright.

Jagan, pale-faced, was looking from Sheppard to the doorway of the bunker, as if uncertain which he should be more concerned about. "I'm fine," Sheppard gasped, trying to ignore the lightheadedness that had come when he stood up. "Don't go out there. Wait for me."

He stooped to pick up his stunner in one hand and crutch in the other. Looking across the room, he grimaced to see Rodney's stunner lying where he'd left it, beside a pile of knotted rope. Damn the man.

"My sister --" Jagan began.

"Hush!" Sheppard listened intently, trying to tune out the sound of his own harsh breathing to determine what was happening in the woods. Wraith? Had Rodney actually gotten too close to the edge and fallen in? He couldn't possibly be that absent-minded ... could he?

"I'm not staying here," Jagan said shortly. As he started for the doorway, Sheppard heard a sudden patter of small, pounding feet, and Tekka skidded around the corner, running full tilt. As soon as she saw them, she began babbling so quickly that Sheppard couldn't make out any of the words except for an occasional, hurried Rodney.

"What happened? Slow down," Sheppard urged her.

The child gulped and got herself under control. "Rodney. Rodney's sick. I don't know why..." She trailed off, looking helpless and scared.

Sick? He hadn't been stupid enough to eat something poisonous in the woods, had he? Hooking the crutch under his arm, Sheppard hobbled after the kids as quickly as he could.

They found him under the pine trees, a couple dozen yards away from the bunker. "Sick" was obviously an understatement. When they came upon him, he was on his hands and knees, throwing up, and as Sheppard sank down next to him, Rodney rolled over onto his side, his hands curled to his chest. His face and arms were red, blotchy, and alarmingly swollen. Sheppard had no idea what was wrong with him.

"Rodney? McKay? You all right?" Stupid, stupid question -- he was very obviously not all right. Sheppard gripped his shoulder, shook at him, trying to get his attention. Rodney seemed completely unaware of his surroundings; his body convulsed, and he made a dreadful wheezing sound as he gasped for air. Sheppard realized, then, that Rodney was rapidly losing his ability to breathe. His tongue and throat seemed to be swelling like the rest of him -- cutting off his air supply.

What in ...?

"Rodney! What the hell happened to you?" He shook him again, then tried to get him upright in the hopes that it might help with his breathing a little, but Rodney just slumped against him, leaving him confused and terrified. And furious with himself. Because there was a horrible familiarity to all of this -- what was happening to Rodney, why it was happening -- he knew this, dammit, he knew it. And he knew what to do about it. He was positive of that. He simply couldn't remember.

The kids hovered around them, scared. Tekka was clinging to her brother's leg. And Sheppard gripped a double handful of Rodney's shirt, feeling Rodney's heart beating wildly, feeling his own heart pounding.

He had to remember. Rodney would die if he didn't remember.

Rodney would die.

And that, apparently, was what it took.

The floodgates opened.

For an instant he thought he'd drown in the dizzying cascade of memories. Atlantis and Elizabeth and puddlejumpers and the Stargate; Ferris wheels and girls he'd dated and Afghanistan and flying F-14s; Wraith and Ford and Ronon and Teyla and ... and ... and a desert planet, where Rodney had said he was allergic to bees, and after which Sheppard had learned everything he could about ... about ... anaphylactic shock, that was the word, because if one of his people had a medical condition, then he felt he had a responsibility to watch out for it. And now he knew what that naggingly familiar marker-shaped object in his pocket was for, and why he carried it. Epinephrine.

He fumbled out the auto-injector, sinking in memories and trying not to drown, well aware that Rodney's life depended on every second.

Someone ... a doctor ... Beckett, Carson Beckett, that was the man who had shown him how to use one of these things --

"Twist off the cap. Now swing back, and hit the thigh -- bugger it all, not like that, you aren't trying to stick a meat fork in him --"

He flicked off the cap, turned the black business end downward, and stabbed Rodney's thigh with a satisfying click. Carson had told him to hold it for ten seconds, and he counted aloud, every word ticked off by the sound of Rodney's choking efforts to breathe. Gasping for air himself, he dropped it and rubbed his thumb vigorously across the injection site, still following Carson's memorized directions.

Please. Please. Please work, please....

Looking up, seeing the kids still hovering, he snapped at them: "Go down the mountain, back to the hot springs. Get his vest. Bring it back here." Rodney surely carried an injector as well, and hopefully antihistamines, which Carson had said were necessary to keep the reaction under control once the immediate effects of the epinephrine wore off.

The kids took off running as if Wraith were on their heels -- oh damn, Wraith, he'd forgotten to warn them to watch out for Wraith. But they probably wouldn't have listened anyway, and he had more pressing things even than Wraith to worry about at the moment.

Not really by design, he had clamped Rodney against him with one hand splayed out across the man's chest -- it was the only way to hold him in a position where he could both monitor Rodney's breathing and use the auto-injector. He could feel McKay's heart racing against his palm, pounding like the beat of a runaway team of horses. And Carson had warned him about that, too: "Epinephrine is just another word for adrenaline, Colonel. Know what you feel like after a bad scare? Picture that, times ten. In a perfect world, you only do this if you have a medical team on the way..."

Well, obviously he didn't have a medical team coming. And the very definition of eternity, he found, was crouching in a sunlit forest, cradling his best friend against his chest, listening to him struggle for air, praying for the shot to take effect, praying for the shot not to make him worse or kill him, wishing for a miracle in the form of Carson Beckett to descend from the sky in a puddlejumper. Just one miracle. After everything they'd been through, it wasn't asking for much.

And maybe he had his miracle after all. Rodney's contorted body relaxed, and for just one instant Sheppard felt a surge of panic, but then he realized that Rodney's breathing, though still harsh, no longer had that horrible whistling sound. His body was hot, damp with sweat, trembling, but the terrible strain as he struggled to breathe had vanished.

"Rodney?"

No response, but a little bit at a time, he could feel the rigid body relaxing against him -- Rodney slowly sagging into his arms, no longer arching stiffly with the struggle for air. Sheppard felt his head falling forward as his own body relaxed as well. He let his forehead rest against Rodney's damp hair, shaking slightly himself. He'd be embarrassed as hell if anybody else saw this. But no one could; even Rodney himself didn't seem to be entirely conscious at the moment.

So he knelt on the forest floor, feeling the pine needles prickling his knees through his pants, the late afternoon sunlight warm on his shoulders, and held onto Rodney McKay for all he was worth. Just feeling him breathe ... all he wanted was to feel the rhythmic rise and fall of Rodney's chest. The pain in his injured leg -- cramped under him in his awkward kneeling position -- didn't matter next to this. It had worked, and Rodney was breathing, and he didn't really want to think past that, not right now.

His memories were a jumbled mess, still needing to be sorted out. But they were there, and as he knelt in the forest, the past couple of days began rearranging themselves, seen through a clearer lens.

And, strangely, he found himself grinning, remembering his own insistence that Rodney was lying about being his brother, and Rodney's huffy protests. "Sorry, McKay," he murmured to Rodney's sweat-damp hair. "I guess you weren't lying after all. Though at the same time, I think you doth protest too much."

Rodney twitched and Sheppard pulled his head back quickly. "Rodney?"

There was an unintelligible mumble and Rodney began, feebly, to struggle. Sheppard realized what he was trying to do, and why, just in time to hastily roll him over as he started retching. "That's nice, McKay. Just lovely." He supported Rodney by the shoulders until the spasms eased; the other man didn't seem to have the strength to hold himself up.

Relaxing, Rodney sank down until his head was resting on Sheppard's thigh. He breathed in rapid, desperate-sounding gasps, and what Sheppard could see of his face was still so blotchy and swollen as to be almost unrecognizable. His whole body trembled and occasionally flinched, a rapid convulsive movement. They'd bought some time, but, Sheppard thought, they really weren't out of the woods yet. Literally and figuratively.

"Rodney? Hey, McKay?" He lightly tapped Rodney's too-hot skin, getting an indistinct mumble. "I know you're probably feeling like hell right now, and I wouldn't blame you, but I'm thinking we ought to get inside. We're awfully exposed out here, and the last thing we need right now is a Wraith inviting itself to the party." Also, he was finally noticing the pain in his leg again, twisted under him. It hurt like an absolute mother. If he didn't get in a more comfortable position soon, he might be joining Rodney on the ground.

There was a long silence before a slurred, hoarse, unspeakably wonderful voice said slowly, "Go to hell, I'm staying right here, Colonel."

"I'll take that as a yes, then."

What followed would probably have been a highly amusing comedy of errors to an outside observer. Sheppard's efforts to get Rodney on his feet were severely hampered by the fact that he couldn't get himself up without outside help. He ended up dragging himself vertical on a tree trunk, while trying to drag Rodney along with him. This operation stopped in the middle when Rodney had to double over and throw up again. "Side effect ... epinephrine," he mumbled, knotting his fingers in Sheppard's sleeve to stop himself from falling over. "Sucks. Very much. I want to lie down."

"So do I," Sheppard admitted. "In the bunker. Arm over my shoulders. Okay. On three, we go up. Three."

"Cheating," Rodney complained, tilting into him as they got upright and very nearly sending them back to the ground again.

"I know. It worked, didn't it?"

At some point he'd lost his crutch and so he had to lean on Rodney, who was simultaneously leaning on him. The trip back to the bunker seemed about four miles long, and by the time Sheppard caught himself on the bunker's rough wall, his ears were buzzing and a swirl of vertigo let him know that walking on his injured leg was not turning out to be a good idea at all. He tried to put Rodney down gently through the bunker's doorway, but they ended up going over in a heap. His leg slammed into the floor and his vision blanked.

He came back to himself with his head pounding and a scratchy, worried voice saying, "-- not fair, I'm the one with the lethal allergies, you're not allowed to die. Damn it, Colonel, wake up now."

To his utter astonishment, five fingers sank into his hair and clenched down hard -- pulling out several hanks by the roots, from the feel of things. Sheppard's eyes snapped open with a pained gasp of "Jeez, McKay!"

"Sleeping on guard duty, had to wake you up somehow and I can't reach any other part of you."

Sheppard blinked up at a gray blur which eventually decided to become the ceiling of the bunker. Twisting his head to one side, he saw blue and gray -- Rodney's T-shirt and leg. He rolled his head back until he managed to meet Rodney's eyes, still half-swollen shut from the allergic reaction. They were lying at an angle to each other; Rodney had either slid or rolled a few feet away when they'd fallen, and he was right, Sheppard's hair was the only part he could reach. The hair in which his fingers were still entwined with painful tightness ...

"McKay, let go of my hair or I will shoot you."

The grip relaxed and his scalp stopped screaming at him, although he could still feel Rodney's half-curled hand resting against his head -- which would have been alarming and creepy in any other circumstance, but in this case was actually sort of ... comforting.

Getting up would be the thing to do. He would have to do it eventually. He just really, really didn't want to.

"I think I'm having a heart attack," Rodney rasped.

Sheppard thought about this for a minute and finally said, "Your body's full of adrenaline. It's probably that."

"So, you've suddenly remembered you have a medical degree, hmm?" There was a pause and then Rodney spoke again, his voice still sounding as if someone had tried to strangle him. "Er ... not that I don't appreciate lying here feeling like crap, but ... I should be dead. I really should."

"I carry an Epi-Pen with me," Sheppard said. "Beckett showed me how to use it."

There was an even longer pause and then: "Either I'm hallucinating or some of your memory really has come back."

Sheppard grinned. "Took you long enough to pick up on that. Genius, my ass."

"I'm ill," Rodney wheezed in protest. "Seriously, did it?"

"I remember a lot of things that I didn't before."

"Oh, how delightfully vague." Some of the familiar tetchiness was starting to reassert itself. "Do you remember everything? Or just some things?"

"How'm I supposed to know? If I didn't remember it, I wouldn't know ... jeez, Rodney."

"Okay, now who's being obtuse? I'm not asking if you remember the names of your childhood goldfish. Just the big things ... Atlantis, me, and so forth." His voice sounded stronger, less breathless. That was good, very good.

And this was also much too good an opening to pass by. "You're not as big as Atlantis, Rodney, in spite of all those cafeteria desserts. Not even half as big."

"Oh, har. Hey, you remember the cafeteria?"

"I said my memory's come back; weren't you listening?"

"And I asked if you had all of it, to which you didn't reply."

"I did reply; you just didn't like the answer." And it was a true answer: he really didn't know, had no way to know. Everything was still a giant, jumbled pile. There was a lot there, and he could access it, but the organization was still screwed all to hell.

A note of suspicion crept into Rodney's hoarse voice. "How long have you had it back?"

"Huh? Not long."

"Yeah, right. You've been messing with me, haven't you, Colonel? That's unfair."

"I have not. I've been perfectly honest with you, Rodney."

"Or maybe you're messing with me now."

"Rodney ..."

"What's Teyla's last name?"

Sheppard sighed. He had to think a minute before he remembered. "Emmagan."

"You had to think about it," Rodney accused.

As he opened his mouth to reply, sudden insight hit Sheppard and he understood what Rodney was really doing: trying to distract himself from being scared out of his mind. His glib reply died on his lips and he floundered for a moment. In the silence, over the sound of Rodney's harsh breathing, he heard a pounding of feet outside.

The kids, had to be the kids, but it was too soon and a sudden panicked scenario scrolled through his brain: Jagan and Tekka, ambushed halfway to the hot springs by Wraith, fleeing back to Sheppard for help. He sat up quickly, much too quickly. Spots danced in his vision and he reeled. Looking around for their other gun took a sudden backseat to simply keeping himself from passing out.

As his vision cleared, Jagan came sliding into the window of late afternoon sunlight in the bunker's doorway. Something heavy hit Sheppard in the chest, and he blinked at it: Rodney's vest and jacket.

Jagan bent over, hands on his knees, gasping to get his breath back. Sheppard just stared in amazement. Surely the kid had broken some kind of land speed record getting back here so fast.

"Nice work," he said finally. "Where's Tekka?"

"Back at ... hot springs," Jagan gasped. "I'm a faster runner. Left her there."

"Colonel." Rodney's panicked whisper cut through the lingering fog in Sheppard's head. "Not doing so good over here." His voice sounded strangled again, and Sheppard remembered what Beckett had said, about the effects of the epinephrine being very temporary.

He dragged himself over to Rodney while digging frantically through the pockets of the vest. When Carson had said that, in a hospital, antihistamines were used to control the reaction, Sheppard wasn't sure if he'd meant regular antihistamines or some sort of heavy-duty industrial dose. Probably the latter. But they'd have to make do with what they had. He found a packet of pills wrapped in a plastic bag, and held it up to the light. Bingo!

"Think you can swallow some pills, Rodney? And keep them down?"

"Don't know." The scratchy whisper was so slurred he could barely understand it, and a wheezing note had crept back into Rodney's breathing.

"Good, that'll do for 'yes'. Jagan, please hand me my canteen."

He was calm only because he had to be. He'd never had any trouble keeping his head when he was about to die, when others around him were about to die. But somehow it was easier when there was something to shoot at. This tentative back-and-forth with death ... he wasn't good at it. Getting an arm under Rodney's shoulders, Sheppard tilted him upright and helped him swallow two of the pills. When those seemed to stay down, he gave him two more and then scooted them both into a more comfortable position against the wall. The limited field first aid that he'd learned told him that sitting upright helped with difficult breathing, so he intended to keep Rodney as vertical as possible, but he wasn't going to stay up himself without something to lean against.

Jagan straightened up, his breathing returning to something close to normal. "I'm gonna go check on my sister," he said. "Don't trust her not to run off on her own."

Sheppard nodded over Rodney's head. "We'll probably spend the night up here. I can't really see us walking down the mountain at the moment."

"We can bring you food --" Jagan began.

Sheppard shook his head. "No. Not with the Wraith in the woods. I'd rather have you avoid unnecessary trips. We'll be fine."

Jagan pressed his lips together in the stubborn look that indicated he once again resented being told what to do. He turned and jogged out of sight.

Sheppard sighed and let his head roll back against the wall. "And I thought you were stubborn."

"Still here, you know. My ears still work just fine," Rodney grumbled.

Sheppard grinned, though he knew Rodney couldn't see him. "I know."

Neither of them spoke after that. There wasn't much to say. It had been too close, and they both knew it. For the first time, Sheppard found himself thinking about how high the odds really were against their ability to get themselves back to Atlantis. He hadn't realized just how imperfect was his amnesia-clouded picture of the overall situation. Now he could see that Rodney really did have cause for his ongoing pessimism. Even if they did manage to capture a dart, they were untold light-years from home, trapped on a planet that might or might not have a Stargate, and now to top it all off, both of them were in shaky health as well.

One thing at a time. What else could they do? The alternative was to resign themselves to spending the rest of their lives here, and the rest of their lives might well be quite short if the Wraith kept searching for them.

The shadow of the mountain peaks fell across their hut, although through the doorway Sheppard could still see the mountain peaks gleaming reddish in the light of the setting suns, as the shadow crept up them and the sky faded through shades of pink into dark blue. The wind grew colder, and darkness gathered under the trees and in the corners of the room. Sheppard could feel the chill of the stone wall behind his back, seeping into his body, making his bones ache and the line of fire along his lower leg burn brighter. McKay's solid body was a block of warmth against his chest. When Rodney moved suddenly, sliding away from him, it was the cold he noticed the most.

Rodney stood up shakily in the doorway, blocking the light. He clutched at the doorframe, steadying himself, and took some deep breaths.

"Feeling better?" Sheppard asked. He certainly wasn't, but it would be nice if one of them was.

"Compared to asphyxiating? The only way to go from there is up, Colonel." His voice was still hoarse, but not as choked and awful-sounding as it had been earlier. With the glow of the mountain peaks behind him, his face was hidden by shadows; Sheppard couldn't tell how much of the swelling had gone down.

"Where are you going?" Sheppard asked when Rodney turned his back and started to lurch out the door. For an instant he had the idea that Rodney was delirious and in danger of walking off the cliff.

There was an exasperated sigh. "Kindly don't make me draw you a picture, Colonel." And he was gone.

Sheppard took advantage of Rodney's absence to move himself into a more comfortable position without having to hide his grimaces of pain as his leg bumped on the floor. It was idiotic, macho pride, and he knew it; Rodney was far from stupid, and was well aware of the seriousness of Sheppard's injury. But at least if he didn't dwell on it, Rodney wouldn't obsess on it, and they could continue to move forward.

He still didn't have his crutch -- it had been dropped in the forest when he'd come upon Rodney in the throes of anaphylaxis. So he used the next best thing, the wall, and dragged himself over to the pile of rope, which was the only thing in the whole building that offered some sort of protection from the cold hard floor. Maybe he should have had the kids bring up some food and blankets, after all. But he wasn't about to have them risk themselves after dark, in woods infested with Wraith and God knew what else.

Come to think of it, Rodney was alone out there with all of that, too, in the growing darkness. This thought forced Sheppard from his comparatively comfortable position on the rope, to a much less stable tilt against the wall. Rodney, of course, picked that moment to come through the doorway in an unsteady jog. He crashed against the doorframe, rebounded off it, staggered, and used the object that he was carrying -- Sheppard's crutch -- to keep himself from falling over.

"Rodney! Is something chasing you?" Sheppard looked around wildly for a Wraith stunner, discovered that the one he hadn't dropped in the woods was just out of reach, and while he was debating whether or not he could take a step towards it without falling over, Rodney spoke in a voice that managed to be scornful, breathless and weak all at the same time.

"Of course not."

"Then why are you running in the goddamn dark?"

"Because I'm hyped up on adrenaline and I'm really freaking paranoid, that's why." Rodney held out the crutch impatiently; Sheppard took it. "It doesn't help that there's nothing irrational about being scared out there, considering that we're in the wilderness surrounded by Wraith and bears."

"We haven't seen any bears." Sheppard decided not to mention that predator's scream that he'd heard two nights ago. He wasn't being dishonest; they hadn't seen any bears. "Um, thanks," he added, resting some of his weight on the crutch.

"Sure, anytime." Rodney looked around the rapidly darkening interior of the bunker, and sighed. "This is not going to be a comfortable night, is it?"

"Depends on how much effort we want to expend." Sheppard nodded towards the door. "Those pine needles are soft. I spent my first night on this world in a pile of them. The trouble is ..." He trailed off. The trouble was he didn't think he could carrying an armload of anything right now, and he didn't like the idea of Rodney going out there alone.

"Right," Rodney sighed, apparently coming to the same conclusion. "I'll be the beast of burden, never mind the fact that I feel like crap and the world is impolitely spinning around me. But if I go out there, you are damn well going out there too, and you're bringing a gun."

Without much choice, they did exactly that. Sheppard stood in the doorway of the bunker, or rather, leaned against the wall, Wraith stunner at the ready. Rodney gathered armloads of the aromatic needles, and at Sheppard's instructions, broke off some of the lower branches of the pine trees as well. These would serve as a ground cover to help insulate them from the cold floor of the bunker. Rodney kept up a steady stream of complaints, but Sheppard noticed how his hands shook as he bent over to gather the armloads of needles.

Their final foray was a trip to the waterfall to fill their canteens. Sheppard limped doggedly along, teeth gritted and determined not to make a sound. Rodney dipped the canteens in the falling water and picked up the other Wraith stunner on the way back to the cave.

"Well, let's look on the bright side, at least," Rodney remarked as they, respectively, limped and shuffled through the doorway of the bunker. The walk, short though it was, had been hard on both of them. "The water seems to be fine. Neither one of us has picked up space dysentery ... yet."

"Thank you, McKay, for finding yet another way that this experience could become immeasurably worse." Sheppard sank down on the blessedly soft heap of needles. They'd stacked it next to the pile of rope so that they would be wedged between the rope and the wall, hopefully giving them a little bit more insulation to help conserve body heat.

"If you like that, wait until you hear my next one." He did not, however, speak immediately, but gathered up his flak vest and went through the pockets methodically. Sheppard was about to ask what he was searching for, when he felt a thick cylinder pressed into his hand. It was another Epi-Pen.

"Now what's this for? I thought you were getting better."

After a somewhat uncharacteristic hesitation, Rodney said, "Did Carson ever mention biphasic reactions to you?"

"No."

"Figures." The pile of needles and branches creaked as Rodney settled down next to him. It had grown so dark that Sheppard could barely make out his friend's shape in the faint light from the doorway. "Let's just say, sometimes it comes back. Usually a few hours later, if it's going to. You think you're fine, and then, bam, it's asphyxiation central again. I've never had it happen to me, but that doesn't mean it couldn't." He reached over and tapped the Epi-Pen. "That's what that's for. Keep it handy."

"Good Lord, McKay, it's a fun world you inhabit."

"Isn't it, though? One hardly needs the Wraith at all--"

His voice died at a barking scream from outside the bunker. It shivered on the night air and died away. It did not sound far off at all. Sheppard, disgruntled, wished he hadn't given that critter a passing thought earlier in the evening.

After a few moments of silence, Rodney's high, terrified whisper: "What was that?"

"Don't know. It sounds like some kind of mountain cat or something. I heard one a couple of days ago, too."

"And you didn't think to mention it, did you?"

"Slipped my mind."

"It's beginning to strike me, Sheppard, that this amnesia of yours is awfully convenient." Rodney began to worm his way into the pine needles. In such close quarters, this turned out to be impossible to do without bumping Sheppard on multiple occasions.

"Ow! Dammit, Rodney!" And he was bent over, breathing hard, one hand curling on his thigh -- as if touching his leg would help ease the pain. It had only been a light bump, but he was nearly paralyzed from it.

"Well, if someone would just move his fat ass, things like this wouldn't happen," Rodney's voice growled in the dark. But Sheppard felt a hand on his sleeve, moving down his arm to his leg, patting him down and presumably trying to ascertain if he was all right.

"Rodney, quit it." He shoved the hand back where it belonged, noticing in passing that it was ice cold and trembling. Sheppard then realized that Rodney, in his own way, was doing the stubborn macho pride thing as well. It didn't suit him at all, but that didn't mean he couldn't be good at it, as he was good at everything. When he wanted to be.

It also seemed unlikely that Sheppard himself would be sleeping much tonight, not with his leg hurting the way it was. "I'll take first watch."

Rustling next to him. "Oh, we're taking watches now? When did this happen?"

"Unless you want to wake up with whatever screamed just now sitting on your chest."

"Oh, that is a good point." Rodney sounded subdued.

"Also, I need to listen to your breathing just in case you get bipartial or whatever it was."

"Biphasic. You know perfectly well what I said. You're just trying to annoy me."

"Is it working?"

"Hell yeah, it's working." But he fell silent then, rather than continuing the argument. And it was Sheppard's turn to reach over hastily, placing his hand on Rodney's rib cage to make sure he was still breathing. He was rewarded for his troubles with a smack on the fingers.

"No groping, Colonel."

"You were groping me a minute ago."

"I'm glad no one's listening to this conversation." Rodney sighed and sank deeper into the pine needles. "Wake me up when it's my turn."

"I will," Sheppard lied, and settled himself against Rodney's warm back, propped up with a layer of branches between himself and the wall. Neither one of them mentioned dinner, which was particularly alarming in Rodney's case, but Sheppard really didn't think he could stomach the idea of food right now.

Rodney slipped rapidly into sleep, his breathing evening out. Sheppard listened to the rhythm, felt it against his side. Felt it lull him. After a few moments, he felt around in the pockets of his vest and got out a package of Tylenol. It was pathetically small against the pain he was experiencing -- morphine might have been too small. But he had to do something, or he wasn't going to be able to think. He swallowed two pills and washed them down with a drink of cold, slightly leathery water from the canteen.

While he waited for the Tylenol to kick in as much as it would, he pulled down a handful of rope on top of the Wraith stunner propped in his lap. It took him a few minutes to work out the technique of tying knots by feel, but soon he had it, and he worked quietly while Rodney slept next to him, warm and solid and alive.

The moonless night slipped by, and the cry of the alien predator did not come again.

Chapter Sixteen: Never Give Up

"The will to survive" can also be considered to be "the refusal to give up."

--U.S. Army Survival Manual

When the Wraith hiveship exploded, the resulting flash of light washed out the viewscreens of the Daedalus in a sudden, white-hot flare. As the light died away, the orbit above this nameless planet was clear save for scattered, drifting debris.

Steven Caldwell thought that the people of that world, if any existed, would have seen a spectacular sunset tonight.

"Report," he said.

Novak swiveled around from her station. "Sir, the hiveship has been destroyed."

"It appears that the darts were also caught in the blast," one of his helmsmen -- Bryant -- announced, eyes glued to the screens. "I'm not showing anything alive."

"Damage?"

Novak was running her eyes down lists of readouts. "Shields ... almost depleted. We've lost some communications arrays and one of the fighter bays is nearly destroyed, but otherwise we're intact." Relief evident in her voice, she added, "No casualties."

Caldwell let out a long breath, a sigh not only of relief, but regret as well. He swiveled his chair to meet the eyes of the only two people on the bridge who were not members of his crew.

He had no need to explain his actions to civilians, but somehow, in this case, he felt as if he owed them something. "I had to do it," he said. "You know that."

"We know," Ronon rumbled, staring at the main screen as if his eyes could discern what the Asgard instruments could not.

Teyla's eyes remained on Caldwell. "We were fighting for our lives," she said quietly. "Your actions saved the ship and everyone on it. I do not blame you."

Still staring at the screens, Ronon said, "Any chance they made it to the planet?"

There was no need to ask who he meant by they.

"I don't see how, sir," the helmsman said when Caldwell looked to him. "We didn't detect any darts leaving the area, and we're fairly sure the Wraith can't transport all the way from orbit."

"We should search that world," Teyla insisted. "If they were able to escape from the hiveship before it exploded, then they may well be there."

"Miss Emmagan ..." Caldwell stopped in the face of the naked conviction in her eyes. He wanted to tell her how feeble were the shreds of hope she clung to. How the odds of Sheppard and McKay's survival had been impossibly slim after a week in Wraith hands, and had just dropped to zero when the hiveship that had been carrying them exploded.

He wanted to tell her that. But she looked back at him, and he knew that she knew. And he could see, from the look in Ronon's eyes, that Ronon knew as well. Logic, probability and reason all said, beyond a doubt, that their teammates, their friends were dead. And they wouldn't believe it. Not until every avenue was exhausted, until the door to hope was closed beyond a reasonable doubt.

And Caldwell was a career soldier. He understood that kind of hope. Hell, he'd seen men given up for dead, only to walk out of the jungle, out of the desert, months later. He knew it could happen. And he nodded to his helmsman.

"Take us down."

They sank through the clouds and emerged over a blue-and-green, Earthlike world. The database said that it had no Stargate, but the scanners detected signs of habitation anyway -- faint traces of long-dead cities. And, really, there was no reason why there couldn't be inhabited worlds off the Stargate network, he thought. The Stargates weren't the only way to get from one world to another. The Wraith had hyperdrives and the Ancients had possessed them as well.

If there had once been people on this world, though, they did not seem to still live here. The Daedalus rolled over tiny dots of towns, thin strings of roads, and all the scanners showed the same story -- dead, empty. There was animal life in abundance, but of people, no trace. The world had been long since culled.

Besides, even if Sheppard and McKay had somehow survived and made it down here, the odds of being able to find them were impossible. Two men, on an entire planet ... Caldwell shook his head. He looked over at Teyla and Ronon, both staring at the screens with identically intent expressions. His bridge crew wore similar looks. They, too, wanted to believe. Most of them didn't know Sheppard or McKay except by reputation, maybe a chance meeting in passing, but all of them knew what it was like to lose friends -- in the war with the Goa'uld or the various wars on Earth. All soldiers knew how it felt.

"Sir." Novak's voice, tense and urgent. "Sir, I'm picking up a transmission from the planet. It's very faint. I'm trying to boost the signal."

Caldwell nodded. "Do it."

He didn't dare look at Teyla and Ronon, didn't want to see the hope flare in their eyes. It could be anything, hell, it could be Wraith for all they knew.

And then he saw an electric snap in Novak's eyes, and he knew it wasn't Wraith, a second before she touched the speaker and let them all hear what she was hearing.

The voice was so strained it was barely recognizable, and it was half obscured by the hissing of static. But they could hear enough:

"... Daedalus, this ... McKay. Daedalus ... Cald ... do ... read me?"

"Answer him," Caldwell said, unable to suppress his grin. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Teyla and Ronon meet each other's eyes, and he heard her laugh and saw the Satedan flash a smile so bright it lit his face like a solar flare.

------

Rodney hunched over his refitted scanner. After realizing the ship was far too high to see him, he'd made the changes faster than he thought possible -- reworking the thing from a signal jammer to a signal broadcasting device. He didn't have time to fine-tune it for a particular channel. He just had to hope that Caldwell's people scanned for a variety of frequencies, and that his signal was strong enough for them to pick up.

"Daedalus, this is McKay. Dr. Rodney McKay. Um, I guess you know that. Do you read me? Daedalus, this is McKay; do you copy?"

Of course, there was no way they could answer if they did -- his radio wasn't two-way. The children watched, silent and fascinated, as Rodney kept trying, kept hoping.

"Daedalus, if you're hearing this, I can't hear you back. I can only send, not receive. I'm on a riverbank in the mountains. Um, I'm right above a point where two rivers come together to form a sort of a V; I saw it when I was flying over. And I'm in the northern hemisphere. Unfortunately, I can't tell you any better than that. I was being chased by Wraith at the time. But, listen." He glanced around at the kids, their small faces turned up to him, trusting and hopeful. "I'm not alone. And Sheppard, Sheppard is ... Listen, the point is, don't beam me up. Send somebody down here instead, so I can explain. If you can hear --"

He broke off, head tilted back at the low rumble of engines. There it was, the Daedalus, huge and beautiful, gliding towards him over the trees. He'd never seen it fly so low -- it was only a few hundred meters off the ground.

"Caldwell, if you're hearing this, beam somebody down and I'll explain in more detail. I'm going to need a medical team standing by in order to get Sheppard out of the --"

He broke off at a flash of white light. Several of the children screamed and clustered close to him. The only beaming technology they'd ever seen, after all, was Wraith. But Rodney, for his part, very nearly collapsed with relief when the white light materialized into two very familiar shapes, one short and one extremely tall.

Teyla and Ronon.

Rodney's knees went weak. It was true. They'd come for him. He wasn't on his own anymore.

------

Despite her worry for her friends, Teyla could not resist a small surge of relief at the feeling of dirt under her feet and wind in her hair. It felt so good to be off that ship. She'd gotten used to living in Atlantis, away from the sun and trees, but the past week on the Daedalus had taxed her to the very limit.

Then she looked around and saw Rodney -- and the relief rose in a crescendo that nearly made her collapse.

He looked ... awful. He was thinner than she'd ever seen him, with a week's growth of beard, ragged and filthy and pale, looking as if only willpower held him upright. He was also surrounded by about a dozen dirty children, all of them clustering close to him, and under other circumstances Teyla would probably have been incredibly curious, but right now, she only had eyes for Rodney.

She crossed the distance between them in a few leaps, aware of Ronon close behind her. Rodney staggered slightly when she placed her hands on his shoulders in the Athosian way. Up close, he looked even worse -- there were dark circles under his eyes, and she could see he had been recently weeping. "Teyla," he said in a small, broken voice, and then she dispensed utterly with the Athosian way and greeted him in the way of his people instead, putting her arms around him and drawing him close to her body. She felt him stiffen, then relax except for a slight trembling. "Teyla," he whispered into her hair. "You're here. You're really here."

Wrapping her arms more tightly around his back, she felt him jerk, and quickly drew her hands away. "Are you hurt?"

"Wraith transmitter," he murmured, his head resting against her shoulder.

"Wraith transmitter?" she repeated, tipping back to look at him in astonishment. "Do you mean, such as a runner would have?" Behind her, she heard a rumble of surprise from Ronon.

Rodney drew his head back, regarded her with weary amusement. "Yes," he said, "exactly as a runner would have." He looked around her to the other man. "Hi there, Ronon."

The former runner nodded to him, and his eyes said all that he could not say with words. Rodney smiled a little, and Teyla felt more of his weight sag onto her. As far as she could tell, he wasn't hurt, at least not badly -- only exhausted.

"Hello," piped a small voice by her knees. Teyla looked down to meet the eyes of the bolder children -- the others were hiding shyly behind Rodney's back.

"Well, hello." She smiled at them and was rewarded with bashful smiles in return. "Rodney, are you going to introduce me to your friends?"

"Oh ... right." He seemed to remember the children for the first time. "Guys, this is Teyla. The big lunk is Ronon; he's less scary than he looks. Um, this is Jagan, and Tekka, and, uh, I think this one's called Mellie ... kids, tell Teyla and Ronon your names."

The children chirped up with a barrage of names. Teyla could tell there was quite an interesting story behind this, but she felt that now was not the time to ask. Something else concerned her far more at the moment. Except for the children, Rodney appeared to be alone.

"Rodney ..." She didn't want to say it, but she could see that he knew what she wanted to ask. And she could see his face change, the pallor and weariness growing deeper, and she thought, No, oh no.

"He's not ..." Rodney hesitated. "Maybe not as bad as you think, but he's ..." He swallowed convulsively, and pointed at the woods. Following his finger, Teyla noticed for the first time a Wraith dart half-hidden in the edge of the woods. "He's in there. Dematerialized."

Teyla was unable to understand his obvious agitation. "That is not so bad. We can get him out."

"No, you don't understand. I put him in there on purpose to keep him from ... Teyla, you remember when he had the Iratus bug on his neck? When we put him in the event horizon? It's that bad. At least. Probably worse."

"He is dying?" Teyla questioned softly.

"He is dead." Rodney's voice was harsh, but the anger seemed directed mostly at himself, not her. "He's not breathing, his heart's not beating. He's dead, Teyla. I put him in there to prevent brain death, but what we're going to need -- we need a medical team from the Daedalus down here when I bring him out of there, and then we'll need to send him straight to the Daedalus infirmary as soon as he re-materializes if he's going to have any chance at all."

He was starting to babble; she recognized the signs, and she wondered just how hard he had been fighting to hold himself together. She laid a hand on his arm. "I will call Colonel Caldwell and explain the situation."

After a brief radio conversation, they had arranged to transport the children first, so that Caldwell's people could get them out of the way and provide them with food and basic medical care. Teyla watched as Rodney, all business again, tersely explained to the kids that they about to beam aboard a spaceship, and yes it was very cool, but they were going to behave themselves and the first child who stepped out of line would be chucked out an airlock. Teyla would not have ever thought of saying such a thing to a child, but they seemed to take it in stride. Presumably they were used to him by now.

As the children winked out in flashes of light, she asked him, "Do they have parents?"

"Wraith orphans," he explained succinctly. After a moment he added, a bit diffidently, "I was sort of hoping the Athosians might maybe ... you know ..."

Teyla smiled. "I am sure that my people would be happy to take them in."

"They're good kids. I mean, really, they are. I know what you're thinking, and you're right -- That sounds kind of weird coming from me. But, for kids, they handled themselves very well down here."

His eyes kept straying to the Wraith dart in the bushes, and Teyla knew what he was really doing: putting off the inevitable. As long as Sheppard remained dematerialized in the dart, anything was possible. Once they brought him out, there would be only one of two possible outcomes -- life, or death -- and there was no going back.

Her radio crackled. "Colonel Caldwell says that a medical team is standing by."

Rodney swallowed, nodded. "Send 'em."

"You may send them down," Teyla relayed.

The familiar white light swelled and faded, leaving the Daedalus's doctor standing with a team of assistants and equipment. Teyla listened quietly as Rodney described Sheppard's injuries -- the infection in his leg and the sequence of events that had led to heart failure. She listened and was proud of him, for his voice didn't break once, even though she could see from his eyes that he was bleeding inside.

When he'd finished, the Daedalus doctor nodded. "Let's get this done. And then let's get you up there and take that transmitter out."

"Oh." Rodney looked startled as if this thought had not even occurred to him. "Okay."

He jogged over to the dart. Teyla glanced at Ronon, who looked as helpless as she felt, and the two of them followed him. "Is there anything we can do to help?" Teyla asked as Rodney clambered into the pilot's seat.

He shook his head. "Just stand back." He reached for the controls, then hesitated, and looked over the side at them. The raw hurt in his eyes staggered Teyla; she could see how hard he was trying to maintain control through his pain, fear and exhaustion. She wondered how long it had been since he'd slept. "Just so you know ... I mean, so you're prepared ... I don't know what this is going to do. I know how the Wraith beam reacts to living beings, but considering that he, technically, wasn't living at the time ... I don't know if what I'll get back will be -- Sheppard. So, just ... maybe you shouldn't look. When I do this."

"If you hadn't done anything, he'd be dead for sure," Ronon said roughly.

Teyla added quietly, "He is right. No matter what happens, you acted very quickly and did all you could -- more than most people would have been able to do."

Rodney took a slow, steadying breath. "I know. But, thanks."

With a quick motion, he hit the button. Despite herself, Teyla could not resist flinching as the familiar blue-white beam caused the trees beyond it to waver like water. She had lost too many people to that beam of light -- including, perhaps, John Sheppard.

The beam flicked away too quickly for the eye to follow, leaving a dark shape on the riverbank. Instantly the Daedalus medical team descended. Teyla helped Rodney climb out of the dart pilot's seat, listening to the Daedalus doctor barking orders to his people. At least, there definitely seemed to be something for the medical team to work on. As the medical team and Sheppard vanished in the flash of Asgard transportation technology, Teyla clung to that hope. She could feel Rodney's body shaking against her, and she closed her hands over his cold ones, gripping tightly as the white light took them both.

------

White.

Rodney blinked his eyes. For a confused instant he thought he was facedown in the snow. But it wasn't cold. And slowly he began to resolve the many familiar smells and sounds of a hospital. No, infirmary. Atlantis? No ... he could feel the rumble of powerful engines, bearing him homeward. Daedalus.

He was lying on his stomach, head twisted to one side. The white was a pillow in front of his nose. He stirred, trying to turn to a more comfortable position, and just had time to notice that his back felt weird -- strange, stiff and heavy -- before a hand on each of his arms stopped him. One was large and powerful, the other small and strong. "Rodney, do not move," Teyla's voice said. "You have been in surgery to remove the transmitter. You are still recovering from the sedation."

Teyla and Ronon were there. He focused on that. Thinking was difficult; his brain felt stuffed with cotton. But there was something, something important ... He tried to grab for the thought as it slithered elusively away. And he found it.

"Sheppard." His lips were thick and clumsy. "Sheppard ... is ...?"

Teyla's face came into his field of vision, her hair brushing his pillow. He could see the answer in her glowing eyes before she spoke. "He is alive."

Clinging to that, Rodney slept.

When he next awoke, it was in a slow, peaceful slide towards consciousness. He was lying on his back, but nothing hurt, and from the lazy, floating feeling he knew he must be drugged. He could think again, though -- it was a little difficult and hazy, but his brain was working. Before opening his eyes, he registered the low vibration of the Daedalus's engines, felt but not heard. He wondered how long it had been and how far away from Atlantis they were.

A soft sound beside him made him open his eyes and roll his head just enough to see Teyla sitting at his bedside, leaning her head in her open palm. She smiled sleepily at him.

"How long?" he asked, or tried to ask, but all that emerged was a croak. Teyla leaned for a cup of water at his bedside and held it to his lips, helped him drink.

"Thanks," he whispered. "How long was I asleep?"

"It has been about twenty-four hours since we picked you up, and Colonel Caldwell tells me that we are still two days away from Atlantis. We were quite far out in the galaxy."

"Far from home," Rodney whispered.

"Yes," she agreed with a smile. "Very far from home."

"Ronon ...?"

"Is sleeping. We are taking turns." Her grin turned impish. "He has also been spending much time in the weapons room of the Daedalus. After seeing the hiveship explode, I believe that he may be considering a new career."

Rodney felt a grin flicker at the idea of Ronon at the helm of the Daedalus's railguns. "Scary thought," he said, his voice growing stronger as his head cleared.

"Indeed." Teyla offered him the cup of water again; this time he took it with slightly shaky fingers. "Are you hungry? Would you like anything?"

"I wouldn't mind sitting up." She helped him with that; after an initial wave of dizziness, he steadied and looked around. The Daedalus sickbay was smaller and more cramped than the infirmary on Atlantis, but otherwise, not too different. His eyes roved over a short row of white-covered beds and stopped on the one that was occupied. He couldn't see much from here -- just a mass of unruly dark hair, and a lot of equipment and bags of various fluids. He didn't know what all of it was for, but he could see that Sheppard was on a ventilator.

Teyla followed his gaze. "He has been out of surgery for a while. The doctor says that they were able to save his leg, but he is still very weak. He will not wake up for a while."

"But he's going to be okay?" He hoped his voice didn't sound as pathetically hopeful as he felt.

"The doctor will not say."

"Quack. He's making it up as he goes along. I wish Carson was here ... someone who knows what he's doing. ... What's that look for?" he demanded, seeing her raised eyebrows.

The impish grin returned. "I will have to tell Dr. Beckett that you have admitted he is not a 'voodoo' doctor after all."

"I admit nothing of the kind," Rodney retorted huffily. "I'm just saying that he's better at his particular voodoo than most other people, that's all." Trying to distract himself, he looked around the sickbay and realized what it was about the overall silence that made him feel so odd. It had been a number of days since he hadn't heard the constant, annoying chatter of children. "Hey, where'd the kids get off to, anyway?"

Teyla smiled. "None of them are injured enough to require medical care, so Colonel Caldwell has found quarters for them. It is quite cramped, and they are -- what is that charming Earth expression he used? Oh yes ... 'bouncing off the walls'. He says that we cannot reach Atlantis too soon for him."

"Do you know what's going to happen to them, once we get there?" Rodney tried to rise from the bed; Teyla pushed him back down with a firm hand. "Hey! I need to call Weir, let her know to expect a bunch of guests."

"I have already done so," she assured him. "And my people have agreed to take in the children, as we discussed earlier, if it is all right with you."

"Why should it matter if I care?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"You appear to be the closest thing they have to a guardian at the moment." Amusement flickered in her eyes.

Rodney groaned. "Oh, please, kill me now."

"Someday you must tell me how you ended up in the company of so many children."

"Don't worry, you'll get the whole story. Right now, though, it's your turn. I'd really like to know how in the world you guys found us."

Teyla smiled. "It was a group effort," she said, leaning forward and lightly touching his knee under the sheet. "The one thing I regret is that Ronon and I could do so little to help. When we could not find you after being separated during the culling on PX2-394, we determined that you must have been taken. Your scientists and Colonel Caldwell determined the positions of various hive ships in the area and hypothesized, based on their trajectories, which one would have most likely been involved in the culling. Then it was just a matter of plotting out its estimated course of travel and tracking it down to this world." She frowned. "We attempted to stay out of its sensor range, but it became aware of us, and there was a battle. Colonel Caldwell was forced to destroy it. I do not blame him for that," she added quickly. "He had the welfare of his own ship to consider, and everyone aboard. But we were very glad to hear your transmission from the planet."

"You came looking for us," Rodney said softly. "Even after the hiveship was destroyed, you didn't give up. You were still looking for us."

"Of course we did not give up." Teyla leaned forward, her brown eyes intense. "You did not give up on Colonel Sheppard, did you? Even after you believed that he was dead, that there was no hope, you still did not give up."

Rodney sank back against his pillows. "You'll never know how close I came to giving up, how many times," he admitted. His hands moved restlessly, plucking at the sheet. "The Colonel ..." His eyes strayed to the other bed.

"Would you like to sit with him? I can help you."

He wanted it, and at the same time, he didn't. At least when he couldn't see Sheppard, he didn't have to think about how close it had been, how close it still was. On the other hand, Teyla and Ronon hadn't given up, Sheppard hadn't given up except right there at the end. "Sure," he said.

Teyla helped him out of bed with an arm under his shoulders, pushing along the IV stand. It surprised Rodney to discover how weak he was, the exhaustion and deprivation of the last few days catching up with him all at once. Teyla helped settle him into a chair beside Sheppard's bed and draped a blanket over his shoulders. "I need to go check on the children, and see about getting some food for you. I will be back soon."

"Hey, wait ...!" But she was already gone.

Rodney sighed, and turned his attention to the Colonel. He looked marginally better than he had the last time Rodney had seen him ... but, then, he'd been dead at the time. His face was as white as the sheet over him, the dark, tousled hair stark against the pallor of his forehead. His crackled lips were parted around a tube down his throat; IVs pierced both arms, and cables from various monitoring equipment snaked across his body and wound under the blankets, making Rodney think of parasitic worms burrowing into him.

"So," he said, lamely. "You're alive. Not very alive, from the look of it, but better than nothing."

Hmm. As bedside chats with a sick friend went, this one wasn't shaping up very well. But he'd never claimed to be good with people, sick or otherwise. Sheppard, of all people, should know that.

Well, talking wasn't working too well, so what else did you do when people were in hospital? Hold their hand maybe? After a surreptitious look around to make sure nobody was watching, he laid his hand over Sheppard's, feeling a bit awkward and silly. Sheppard's skin was cold and dry to the touch.

"You know, Colonel, you feel dead," Rodney said without thinking, then added a hasty, "Er, sorry. Didn't mean it the way it came out."

It seemed natural to curl his fingers around Sheppard's cold ones, so he did that. Maybe he could warm them up a little bit.

Having nothing else to look at, with Sheppard's fingers warming slowly in his palm, Rodney studied the Colonel's pale face in the dim light of the infirmary. He'd never really seen Sheppard look like this before. He appeared so ... fragile, as if a careless touch could break him. His skin was so pale it seemed translucent. The soft, rhythmic hissing of the ventilator provided a constant reminder that his life still hung by a thread, dependent upon the machines.

Rodney hesitated, leaning forward. Had he moved a little? The angle of Sheppard's head on the pillow was slightly different now, the shadows of his eyelashes at a minutely different angle. And ... he didn't think it was his imagination ... the cool fingers held loosely in his own twitched once, then again.

"Colonel?" he breathed.

Sheppard's face didn't change, but his fingers moved again, and this time Rodney knew it wasn't his imagination, as the Colonel's hand twisted and, very slowly, his fingers curled loosely around the edge of Rodney's palm.

Rodney looked wildly around for any sort of medical person. "Nurse! Hey, nurse!"

A male medic appeared from one end of the infirmary and made his way over to Rodney's end. He was only slightly smaller than Ronon, with treelike upper arms. Rodney stared up at him. "You're a nurse?"

"I'm a corpsman. Everything okay over here?"

Rodney looked back down at Sheppard, feeling suddenly a little bit foolish. "Could he be waking up? I think he knows I'm here."

The medic placed a sympathetic hand on Rodney's shoulder, causing him to tense up instantly -- he'd never liked unauthorized touching.

"That's not possible. He's heavily sedated, and anything you see is probably a reflexive movement. He's not aware of anything around him."

"And your advanced medical degree tells you this?" Rodney snapped. "Oh wait, you're not a doctor, are you? Maybe it's your psychic powers then?"

The hand withdrew. "Perhaps I'll just let you be alone, then," the medic said with thinly concealed hostility.

"Perhaps that would be best, yes."

Definitely not Carson's infirmary. Carson would never stand for incompetent people like that working for him. Rodney turned his attention back to Sheppard. He still appeared unconscious, and the fingers lightly wrapped around his own hand did not respond to a gentle squeeze. In all likelihood, Rodney knew, the corpsman was right: Sheppard wasn't awake, just twitching in reflexive response to stimuli. But ... this was Lt. Col. John Sheppard, the most obnoxiously stubborn person Rodney had ever had the misfortune to meet. If anyone could drag himself from death's doorstep towards the land of the living, even if just long enough to give the reassurance of a feeble hand squeeze ...

Rodney wrapped his hand more tightly around Sheppard's, and was rewarded with a light, returned pressure. Reflex or conscious response, he didn't really care. Dead men didn't spontaneously move, and at this point, he'd take what he could get.

When Teyla returned, she found that Rodney had fallen asleep sitting up, with Sheppard's fingers still curled loosely in his own.

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