The arrival to the infirmary occurred in a flurry of sound and motion. John kept his eyes closed to lessen the impact of the blurring ceiling tiles. Throwing up on top of his misery would not be ideal. In fact, he doubted his ability to roll over to his side if his belly did decide to rebel. He tried to let the gurney ride lull his foggy brain, hoping the blackness might finally take him under. It beat the hell out of listening to the voices that surrounded him in a maelstrom once he was out of the jumper.
Carson's weary, edgy tone as he ordered the people hovering around to give them space. Rodney's endless barrage of questions and snippy commentary that blended together with new voices, medical personnel feeding Carson information and even a quiet conversation in Elizabeth's voice that faded away as they wheeled him past.
Darkness beckoned but would not consume him and his body's thermostat contained to screw with him. Despite everyone's insistence that he was burning up, John felt a bone-numbing cold that had seeped into his very marrow.
His head swam in a sea of dizziness, chest heaving as if under the pressure of ocean water. His heart thundered, eyes snapping open fitfully as he struggled to take in longer, deeper breaths. The ultra stark whiteness of the lights above him hurt his eyes and he squeezed them shut as they watered.
"Easy now, lad. Hold on."
Carson's voice drifted through the tendrils of panic, and the plastic of a nasal cannula rubbed under his nose, but it wasn't enough.
"For crying out loud- is that thing even working?" he heard McKay demand from somewhere off to his right.
Someone turned the feed up on his oxygen and the weight lifted from his chest. He wanted to tell Rodney that yes, it's working, but he was too busy enjoying the ability to breathe easier.
"There you go, Colonel, that's it," Carson's voice soothed.
His ride moved again, then swung around until he was under more blinding lights, then another blood pressure cuff slipped around his bicep and began pumping. A nurse attached a clip to his finger but all he wanted to do was feel warm and none of this activity was getting him there. He shivered, clad only in his boxers, almost all of his skin covered in dried and drying mud.
"Want a shower," he whispered, the cost of talking a fire scorching the lining of his throat, followed by the encore of a coughing fit.
"In a little while," Carson's voice promised.
Sheppard was an intelligent man, more than he let on sometimes. While he knew that his brain understood that he was raging with a high fever, it still sent signals to the rest of his nervous system that he was cold.
"Doc, how about a blanket now?" His teeth chattered, his body a mass of trembling limbs. The worst part was that everyone else had a front row seat to whatever the mystery illness did to him.
Might as well offer popcorn, he mused darkly.
John felt vulnerable and so very exposed, not the best position for a military commander. While Ronon and Teyla were with him in the infirmary, they knew to stay far enough away to give him some space, waiting with Elizabeth. Rodney, on the other hand, didn't get the hint. Carson and his staff were too busy to usher the fretting scientist off to the balcony seats for the John Sheppard Show.
"I want enough for several samples, love, and be sure to get an arterial blood gas," Beckett instructed one of his staff.
One nurse began sponging his chest with soapy water to add to his humiliation, the tepid attempt to rid the muck and grime distracting him briefly before more hands tugged on his IV. A very sharp pain drilled a hole in the crook of his elbow and burrowed there for a long time.
"Ow," he complained, watching a very large vial fill with dark crimson.
A sheet was quickly draped over his middle and he clutched the end to draw over the rest of his exposed body, avoiding the new plethora of wires and leads attached to the freshly cleaned part of his chest. His ears filled with the rapid beeping noise of a monitor.
Carson turned to him, giving John something to focus on other then the whirlwind of activity all around his bed. He hated being the center of this much attention and tried unsuccessfully to snuggle under the paper thin sheet that held no sense of salvation. He knew his blood boiled from within, but still he trembled with cold.
"We're giving you some more Tylenol and I've added some broad spectrum antibiotics 'til we find the bug that's got a hold you, lad."
John fought off lethargy, the drowsiness that tried to keep his eyelids closed. "D-don't say b-b-ug. Can't you do something..? I'm so c-c-cold."
He was reduced to shaky syllables, the war wreaking havoc with his body, depleting his reserves.
"Actually, you're not," he heard Rodney butt in. "Just the opposite in fact. It's your hypothalamus. Apparently, it's the one part of your brain that still seems to function despite frying like an egg inside your skull. Seems the body and the brain play this who's on first with each other. Your brain signals your body it's cold when it's hot, then resets itself, telling the body it's hot as it cools down. Rather fascinating, actually--"
"Enough, Rodney! Go wait with the others while I take care of the colonel." Carson began to corral McKay who stubbornly refused to leave.
"I…I was just trying to explain to Sheppard the mechanism behind something he clearly has no understanding of since it has nothing to do with guns, flying or football..."
"Go. Now." Beckett tugged on the physicist's arm, dragging him away from John's side.
Lead weighed down his eyelids, and John cradled his arms around himself in a fitful attempt to quiet the shaking. It was odd, his hands brushed up and down his arms, the iciness of his fingertips melting into the fire of his skin. It was disconcerting to say the least. Where was unconsciousness when he wanted it most? He would probably sleep if he could just stop shaking for a second.
He felt a sensation in his ear then heard a muted curse. "Damn, it's up again."
He wondered who Carson was talking to and he felt someone shake his shoulder. "Sleeping," he mumbled, trying to ignore the insistent hand.
"Aye, I know, son. Just wanted you to know that we're going to cool you down with a bath."
"Shower," he replied with a half smile, knowing he had to at least try.
A bath would be nice; his hair was plastered onto his forehead, and mud still encrusted the majority of his body. It was starting to itch a little, too. His legs ached in myriad places, injuries he hadn't noticed while numbed with icy water and adrenaline were now popping up their heads to say 'hi' and his arm still stung from the laceration he'd gotten from a tree root. The sheet was removed and he moaned as a blast of arctic air prickled at his skin. The nurse bathing him was a phantom. He didn't even notice another tube being inserted until a dull pain in his lower region protested the intrusion.
The darkness that had filled in the edges of his vision was finally starting to close in. He pictured himself at McMurdo, flying high above the glaciers, the sun behind him casting a visible shadow on the expanse of white below. He closed his eyes and drifted off in Antarctica's snowy arms.
Rodney didn't like playing the waiting game, mainly because there were was only one rule. If the game couldn't be outsmarted, broken or worked around then it was pointless and a sheer waste of his time. It didn't help that this feeling was shared by present company; the collective humming vibe of discontent and worry was enough to crack already splintered nerves .
"You do John no good, pacing like that," Teyla reasoned.
He glared at her. "No one's doing him any good right now The quacks in white coats have no clue what's going on," he snapped.
"Rodney…" Elizabeth's voice warned him to calm down.
Teyla played with the ends of the blanket wrapped around her shoulders and Ronon sat silently at the end of one of the beds, after he'd 'informed' a nurse that he wasn't going to lay down. To a Satedan, busted ribs were as annoying as a hang nail, apparently. The runner's brooding silence was another source of annoyance, and Rodney briefly wished he could just sulk like that.
Instead he spun around to snarl at the team some more.
They let him rant but it did little to relieve the pressure building up inside him. For a change the planet wasn't filled with space vampires, rebel forces or things that wanted to eat or kill them all. Nope, just sticks, stones, fire and a bunch of peasant farmers and yet fate stuck its foot out to trip Colonel John Sheppard up once again.
He tapped on his keyboard trying to get some work done, but it was damn distracting trying to work out one of many projects and experiments while waiting around in Carson's lair. Dealing with an unknown illness had put a lockdown on all of their activities and sequestered them to an out of the way area. Two dinner trays sat on a table he'd confiscated; one empty the other holding a single bowl of blue jello. It didn't make him happy, knowing that he'd been offered Sheppard's uneaten meal.
Rodney stood looking at it, tempted by the offer of seconds, but then an annoying voice in his head whispered to him that it was wrong. Ronon, not dealing well with the whole cooped with no place to go, strode past him, staring at him staring at the dessert. Conan had occupied himself cleaning his guns, his blade, then Teyla's. When he'd begun target practice with his knife and part of a wall, he'd been kindly asked to stop by Elizabeth. She, of course, didn't fool anyone, filling out paperwork to one side.
Teyla wandered over to him. She'd long since showered and changed out of her uniform into a scrub top and a pair of sweats one of the nurses kept around in the infirmary. She held a bowl of blue jello in her hands and offered it to him.
"I did not want mine and I know it is your favorite."
He glanced uneasily over at the untouched bowl he already had and quibbled with himself over whether it was an insult to eat Sheppard's jello or to not eat his jello. Deciding Teyla's gift was the lesser of two evils to accept and would not leave him feeling anywhere near as guilty, he flashed her a tight smile and took the jello.
After finishing it he dropped the spoon onto the tray. The jello hadn't made him as happy as he'd hoped.
"This is stupid. Enough with waiting to see what the Haitian priests have sacrificed in the name of their voodoo ways," he huffed and stormed off, headed to Carson's inner sanctum.
He didn't look back because he heard the footsteps follow him as he found Carson talking animatedly with a short Asian man. Rodney couldn't tell if he was old enough to hold a doctorate because, frankly, it was hard to judge the man's age with the shaved head and glasses. He didn't recall the doctor's name nor did he care. "Carson, it's been eight hours. That's got to be plenty of time for you to have grown your little bugs. So tell me this is your garden variety flu because, thank goodness, I'm updated on my shots. Of course, I'm guessing that would be too good to be true and we're dealing with some mutant, alien germ warfare cooked up in the evil underground laboratories of a bunch of barely medieval farmers and ostrich herders."
The tiny Asian man folded his arms and Beckett adopted a similar posture. "We don't know anything yet, Rodney. Right now we're still running cultures and waiting on labs."
"How is he doing?" Elizabeth asked, cutting to the chase, eyes cast towards a part of the infirmary she couldn't see.
Rodney usually loved being right, longed to be the one with the final 'told you so', but not today. He clamped his hands together to keep them from fidgeting when Carson frowned.
"We're just trying to keep his temperature from rising and it's an uphill battle. He's gotten several sponge baths that haven't put a dint in anything and he's not yet respondin' to antibiotics we're administering."
Teyla moved forward. "What about immersion in more cold water?"
"That's not ideal, lass. Can be quite a shock to the system and was only a stop gap measure since we had nothing else. No, he's got an odd bug, that's for sure. It's acting much like influenza, but a particularly nasty one. His oxygen levels are dropping fast. There's fluid building in his lungs with pneumonia, I'm afraid." Beckett waved over a nurse to consult a chart and nodded at her wearily.
Elizabeth fixed her group with a calm look, then turned towards Beckett. "All right, so your broad treatment isn't working. How long before you narrow down the pathogen?"
The Asian with no name cleared his throat and Carson made quick work with the introductions. "This is Dr. Daigo Nobu, one of our virologists, and he's been helping me with the colonel's case."
Nobu nodded, speaking with confidence that overshadowed his size. "We've rushed the results and the first round from the blood samples should be ready any time. What we're most concerned with is the colonel's vulnerability to anything we find."
Rodney's brain was going a mile a minute. "That damn retrovirus," he muttered, almost missing Carson's wince.
Ronon's eyes looked down to the floor, Elizabeth's off on some spot of the wall, and Carson simply shook his head. "Aye, his immune system is still very weak. The lad's only now been illness free these last few weeks."
"Which may be the reason he chose to keep quiet about not feeling well," Teyla stated.
"That's what we call stating the obvious," Rodney said with a roll of his eyes. Everyone knew that Sheppard was sick of being, well... sick, from seemingly every germ that crossed his path the weeks after his recovery.
"Um, Dr Beckett," one the nurses said quietly as she approached with a clipboard. Her demeanor was skittish and Rodney fought the urge to snap the findings right out of her grasp.
Carson thanked her and read the lab printouts, eyes crinkling, then he flipped the pages back and forth as if confirming something he did not want to.
Rodney was getting antsy; bad news never expired, it just got stale and harder to swallow the longer you waited. "Oh, for crying out loud, just tell us!" he finally barked.
Nobu took the offered labs and Rodney couldn't help but glare at Beckett even though the man looked more downtrodden than before. The anxiety levels around him just skyrocketed and Rodney almost elbowed his way in to sneak a look.
"These results are not conclusive and, in fact, only point us in a direction, but it looks like this may be viral in nature." Carson drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the chart. "In fact, I need to get another sample, take a look at some files to double check, but I'd say our initial research finds a comparison with H5N1."
"Bird flu??? Oh my god, we're all dead," Rodney wailed, feeling his legs grow weak and checking his forehead for sign of fever.
Carson sighed, and turned to Elizabeth. "I need to quarantine all of us here to the infirmary now until I can determine the nature of this. I'm not sure of anything but I can't take any chances."
"Understood," Elizabeth said shortly, hand already riding to her ear radio to make arrangements.
Carson waved over a nurse, gave her instructions, and got an update on the colonel's condition. Rodney leaned in to hear what was being said, balancing precariously on his tiptoes. He almost fell over as he heard the word SARS.
"SARS? Carson, I'm Canadian and I know what SARS does. We had dozens of people die in Toronto alone."
"I told the nurse to adopt SARS prevention procedures, but I'm afraid the colonel's symptoms only mimic those of SARS. It's not the corona virus that causes that particular syndrome, Rodney. Truthfully, I'd almost rather it was, despite the morbidity rate of SARS. At least we'd know what we were dealing with and have a fighting chance."
"You've infected me, I can feel it," Rodney whined, wiping sweat from his brow. Seeing the moisture on his fingers he waved them in front of the man's face. "See? I'm sweating from some mysterious fever."
Sheppard's head barely budged on his pillow, only turning and blinking at the demonstration. "S-sorry didn't----". The rest of his words were cut short by more coughing that took too long to control.
The colonel's hands lay limply by his sides, the rest of his torso covered by a cooling blanket that barely battled back the fever that was currently broiling the pilot alive. Nurses came by every ten minutes to check vitals, the various machines, and the tubes that ran from various places on Sheppard's body.
"Yeah, well, I wanted to avoid that planet- told you it had nothing worth looking into, but no..." He let his words drift off, crossing his legs and arms at the same time. "Were you making out with the housewife when I wasn't looking?"
Sheppard didn't offer a witty comeback, just drifted off for a moment dragging oxygen off of the cannula. Rodney was beginning to worry about the time in between such long, painful breaths and one of the numbers blinking on a machine began to slowly fall.
"You've been breathing since you were born. Can't you get that right now?" he asked with a roll of his eyes, but it lacked the true taste of bitterness as he leaned forward to watch the rise and fall of the colonel's chest, making sure it was moving.
Rodney wrapped his arms around his body, "Starting to get the chills now...soon I'm going to be gasping like an old man just like you," he accused.
Glassy eyes peered up at him, lids closing then snapping back open in an effort to stay awake. Against his better judgment and lacking a pair of latex gloves, Rodney grabbed John's burning hand and squeezed it. "I am so not going to let you live this down. Why don't you...you know... buck up and just kick this virus' ass?"
"What about...the others?" the colonel inquired, sucking in another slow draw of his oxygen.
He bent closer so the ill man didn't have to fight so hard to speak. "Nothing so far. Everyone is stuck here, thanks a lot for that. The Marines you welcomed to the expedition now get a full taste of what they're in for in this galaxy thanks to their commanding officer."
Noting the raised eyebrows, he saved Sheppard from wasting energy. "They're isolated to their quarters since you had contact with them, just to be on the safe side."
"You...shouldn't...be here."
He released Sheppard's hand. "Well, you're right, but if I'm exposed, then I'm exposed. Might as well share in the misery."
"Japeth?" Sheppard wheezed and a raspy shrilling noise now coming from the man's throat made Rodney wince.
"He's going to be fine. Beckett had someone cast up his leg, no compound fracture." As he spoke he worried about how low the O2 readout was, the red lettering flashing 86.
The colonel's complexion paled to hues whiter than his bed sheet except for the pink in his cheeks. The harsh inhalations sounded painful and Sheppard began to cough uncontrollably, his hands flopping by his side.
"Calm down, you can do this. Breathing is fundamental." Rodney lifted the pilot awkwardly until he was sitting straighter, the frigid blanket falling off while he struggled to support Sheppard. "Carson!" Rodney screamed.
"Ca..n't...br..." Sheppard's chest hitched. "Feels...l-like...el..ephan---"
When the man's eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body went limp, Rodney's own lungs hurt from yelling, several nurses finally arriving to surround the bed. "Where the hell have you guys been? He can't breathe!"
He heard the accent before he saw the man, and Rodney muttered something about the speed of turtles as he continued to support the boneless colonel.
Carson removed the cannula and placed an oxygen mask over Sheppard's nose and mouth. "Hold on, son," the physician coaxed his patient.
Rodney was pushed out of the way though his eyes stay glued to the excitement or lack thereof on the bed. Slowly the dreaded low number began to climb back up and the commotion around the colonel began to die down. He didn't realize how fast he was breathing until the room swayed. Great, he was sick now, too.
Beckett swung his stethoscope around his neck after listening to Sheppard's chest while the nurses fixed the cooling blanket.
"His stats are falling and his fever isn't breaking."
"Then work harder," Rodney seethed, knowing that his outburst was uncalled for.
Beckett glared back at him. "We're doing the best we can, Rodney. We're still not even sure what it is or how he contracted the damn thing."
"What are you sure of, Carson?"
The doctor shook his head. "That the odds are stacked against us."
Ronon disliked hospitals. He hated standing around even more. He wanted, needed to do something. He was a man of action, always up for a fight. But fighting invisible diseases required restraint and patience.
He had neither.
Sheppard once tried to explain to him an Earther's theory behind the desires of the human mind. More invisible things that somehow influenced behavior. His CO explained that Ronon represented pure id, a part of the brain that told them all to act on things and think about them later. Impulses, instinct, drive- nothing clouded by analysis or evaluation - just full speed ahead and damn the consequences.
"You act on pure Id," John had told him. "It's my job to control it, and other times let you run free with it."
"What do you use then?"
"Around you? The ego."
Ronon had laughed. "I thought McKay was all ego."
Sheppard smirked. "That's another case entirely."
"I don't agree. You're like me- this id controls you more than you want to admit."
The colonel looked thoughtful. "Tell you what. You help me learn the balance and I'll try to do the same for you."
Ronon thought he understood a little about this war that raged in humans between their id and ego, but he wasn't sure which side won out as he headed towards his friend laying still under layers of tubes and wires.
"Hey, Ronon." At least that's what it sounded like, his voice muffled by the plastic of the oxygen mask.
He didn't take a seat, just stood over Sheppard, watching the man whose eyes moved but nothing else. "You still letting this thing win?"
He thought he saw a tiny smile under the mask.
"It's the fourth quarter of the game and you have the ball."
Sheppard's laugh was short-lived, quickly turning into a fit of coughing. By the time the jag was over, he was left panting. "Someone's... been... reading."
Ronon had to lean over the rail and bend down to catch the words. "Been stuck here almost two days. Got nothing better to do."
He was amazed that the colonel was even awake. Beckett and the nurses'd had to place him in some kind of bath several hours ago, much like they did on Mallomara when his temperature had risen to dangerous levels, and his lucidly was scattered at best.
"I think having a man who does nothing but score half points is stupid. Remind me when we play one of these games that I get to tackle a kicker. No one with balls would ever want to play that position."
Ronon wasn't sure what Sheppard had tried to explain from under the mask. It was pointless; field goals were pointless. He wouldn't let the colonel tire himself any further and just grabbed his shoulder to tell him to shut up. Watching a commanding officer suffer was even worse than standing around in another part of the room, and to see a friend be overtaken by disease was something Ronon wasn't able to deal with.
He stood up to leave, following the primal desire to save himself the pain of feeling useless, then paused. The part of his mind that had been more vocal of late, under the influence of his superior, won out, urging him to stay for once. Ronon looked around and found a seat, ignoring his internal struggle.
He looked over at Sheppard. "I'll allow my ego to keep me here, if you let loose this id of yours to fight."
He wasn't sure if it was another laugh or not, but Sheppard coughed so hard and long that the next thing he knew, an alarm was going off.
Ronon would not bear witness to a sponge bath. Sheppard's coughing fit only lasted long enough to trigger the warning but he had calmed since then. His fever was not going down and that required another cooling down which he would respect by leaving. He headed towards the sound of arguing and entered part of the infirmary where Beckett, McKay and Dr Weir were in conversation with Nobu. Rodney was just launching into another rant. He saw Teyla watching on the sidelines and stood next to her as the three talked loudly, the tiny Asian doctor from the other night having to shout over the people towering over him.
"Nothing acts like a virus and a bacteria, Carson. Stop trying to bend the rules of real science."
Beckett looked ready to drop from exhaustion, his hair a mess and his eyes bloodshot, and he uncharacteristically snapped back. "We're not dealing with Earth-based life, Rodney. Hell, it's not even like anythin' I've seen in the Pegasus galaxy 'til now. I told you it was the closest comparison I could make!"
Rodney began pacing and gesturing wildly. "First you say it's bird flu. Now you think he's contracted some parrot disease. Are you nuts? You have birds on the brain??"
"Excuse me."
Ronon noted the little doctor guy trying to get in the middle of the bickering duo.
"Excuse me."
"His cytokine levels are unbalanced but not to the degree we'd see in H5N1 on Earth." Then the Scotsman began messing with the papers near a piece of lab equipment.
Ronon turned to Teyla. "How long has this been going on?"
She sighed, pulling a strand of hair away. "Not long. Dr. Beckett thinks he made a breakthrough but Dr. McKay does not agree with it."
"Beckett's the doc right?"
Teyla cleared her throat, "Yes, though as usual Rodney has an opinion."
"Gentlemen!"
Ronon and Teyla both looked over at the little Asian man who had finally lost his temper.
"I use that term loosely," Nobu growled.
Elizabeth chastised Rodney, pulling him away to a corner where they exchanged a few words before she placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He nodded and then the both of them came back forward to listen to the virologist.
"What Dr. Beckett and I theorize is that Colonel Sheppard contracted something closer to psittacosis."
"A parrot disease," Rodney mocked under his breath.
"Something similar to it, aye." Carson rubbed at his eyes. "The earth version is a nasty bugger caused by Chlamydia psittaci, and yes, it occurs naturally in parrots primarily, but it's transferable to humans. It too has both a bacterial and a viral component."
Elizabeth held out her hand to hold off any more outbursts from the irritated man next to her. "Okay, so what does that mean?"
Leave it to Dr. Weir to get to the facts, Ronon mused.
"We're talking about part virus and part bacteria, which means it's hard to kill- the antibiotics only work on the bacterial component and we need an anti-viral for the other part. It also explains why it was hard to identify. The best determination we've come to is that it probably is avian in nature from the RNA we've extracted and normally isn't that deadly in humans ..."
"If we were talking about true psittacosis," Dr Nobu pointed out.
"Back to bird flu?" Elizabeth asked, confused as the rest of them.
"No, not really," Carson said with a sigh. It's an avian flu, not our avian flu. But the comparison to known avian genomes we have on file show it almost definitely came from an avian-type creature."
"You mean like that giant nawk," Teyla pointed, gaining everyone's attention.
"Of course," Rodney exclaimed, pacing in a circle. "That damn bird he wrestled with."
"Are you saying that pet bird was diseased? Did anyone else touch it?" Elizabeth asked of the group.
Ronon shook his head with the rest of them.
"I wonder how he came in contact with the contagion. It doesn't appear to be spread through aerosalization," Nobu muttered.
It was Carson's turn to get lively. "That cut. Bloody hell. He wouldn't even put a band aid on it. And the creature spit on him."
"Colonel Sheppard got infected by a bird illness because of a cut on his finger?" Teyla asked bewilderedly.
"Aye, with his immune system still weak from the retrovirus, it just went wild in his system."
"If only John was forthcoming with his illness," Elizabeth said in dismay.
"I knew he was sick," Ronon announced, all the people in the room turning to stare at him.
Ronon didn't feel guilt most of the time; anger, yes, rage, most definitely. Regret many times, but knowing that Sheppard was sick early on and letting the man walk around to keep his shield so to speak, well he was partially at fault. He would not keep quiet like a coward.
"You knew he was sick and didn't tell anyone?" Rodney got in his face which displayed a large amount of courage that the man was probably unaware he was showing.
"Yeah," he replied. "He didn't want anyone to know."
"And you're just now telling us?" Rodney seethed.
"It wouldn't change things. He'd still be sick."
"Aye, son, but you might have wanted to say something before we went back out to that planet," Carson said, sighing.
"What's done is done. I have to live with that, but I respected my friend's need to feel normal."
What was past was past; what they needed to do now was to provide the man the ammunition he needed to fight back.
"We know what he's fighting. So, let's help him now," Ronon stated and there was agreement all the way around.
He no longer felt laid out on a frozen tundra. The snows had melted, leaving him in the dry heat of desert. Hot, then cold, back to freaking hot again. John pushed away the sheet that clung to him, sticky with sweat and he pulled apart dry lips, unable to gather enough spit in his mouth.
"Looks like someone finally decided to awaken."
Only Rodney could sound so cheery at a time like this and he opened both lids, gummy with sleep. He settled for a low moan and accepted the measly ice chips Rodney offered, allowing them to melt in his mouth to rid the grit.
"Thanks," he said hoarsely.
"Yeah, well, you have a long time to think on the reasons why you should let people know when you're ill. You know, in case you're infected again with an alien STD."
He coughed and sputtered, looking at Rodney in disbelief. "W-what?"
"Attracting birds now, Colonel. You are a wonder of the universe."
John groaned, not in the mood for this. In fact, he just wanted a nice fan right now. "Hot."
"That's because your fever broke," Carson said as he came over to the bed.
Rodney just pointed to his head, reminding John of his earlier lecture.
"So…" he began slowly, trying to clear the cobwebs. "What's the verdict?"
"Guilty. On all charges, Colonel," Carson said, trying for sternness, but his face broke into a wide grin.
"Really, Carson, it's not fair to beat up on a man who can't fend for himself. Can't abide a bully," Rodney he continued in a mumble.
"It's one of the few times I can talk to the Colonel knowing he can't get out of it, Rodney," Carson said turning to arch an eyebrow at John. "But he has a point. I'll hold off on the lectures for now."
John squirmed uncomfortably in the bed, wishing he'd just kept his eyes and mouth shut.
"So what's wrong with me?"
"What was wrong with you was a nasty bu- pathogen you picked up on Mallomara," Carson said, folding his arms over his chest as he began his mini-lecture. "After Dr. Nobu and I figured out what it was, and where it came from, we took some blood from little Japeth and used his antibodies to engineer a cure. The natives have been livin' with the thing for so long they've developed a natural immunity to it."
"Japeth? How's --"
"He's fine. Already back with his mother. Lovely woman. She sent over some eggs you can try for breakfast when you're ready."
"But the rains--"
"Already passed, Colonel. You've been my guest for six days now."
John's brow crinkled. Six days… almost a week and he had so little recollection of it- nothing to show for it but for an overwhelming exhaustion and a sore spot on his butt from laying in bed for so long.
A sudden motion drew his eye to the side of the bed. Rodney was grinning like the cat that ate the canary, bouncing on his toes with barely hidden glee.
"What's up with him?"
"Och, he's just bein' silly."
"Silly? Carson- as a man of medicine, an alleged scientist, and I use the term loosely, you should know what a big deal this is."
"Aye, Rodney, I do. Why don't you go ahead and tell him before you burst, then we need to let the man get some rest."
"Colonel Sheppard, I am pleased to announce that I have submitted your pathogen to the ICSP for naming approval."
John knew he'd been out of it for a week but not a syllable of what Rodney said made any sense. "Rodney, I--"
"I know, I know. I surprised myself. Of course Carson and Nobu will have to get credit, and unfortunately, we can't credit Mallomara since no one can know we're out here but still. I think it… sings."
"Sings? Rodney, what the hell --"
"Chlamydia sheppardii, Beckett-Nobu strain. If the ICSP doesn't want to rule on it I can try the ICTVdB. I mean, it's part bacteria and part virus so really either one of them could do it and I'm sure they'd actually be falling all over themselves if they knew where it really came from and--"
"Rodney! I'm sure Colonel Sheppard is secretly pleased but I think it's time we left him alone." Carson grabbed the physicist's arm and began leading him away.
"I'll be back in a minute, Colonel," Carson whispered to him as Rodney continued prattling about how cool it was.
John pushed restlessly at the sheets and tried to remember what it felt like to be cold. His gaze wandered over to an empty chair parked next to the bed. On it sat a football and a piece of paper. He reached over to pluck it from the chair, pulling it in slowly, annoyed at how his hand shook from lifting the weight of a single sheet of paper.
The words were written in firm, dark print. When you're ready to play again, I'm game.
I still want to tackle the kicker.
That's all, folks. This was Kristen and I's first true foray into SGA and we had a blast. Thank you very much, those who took the time to leave a comment. It was especially fun seeing friends from CSI joining us over here. And special thanks to Titan5 - you appear on both our favorites lists and we were both tickled and gratified that you enjoyed it and let us know.
We both have SGA bunnies right now that we are feeding. They're small and can't leave their mommies yet, but we will load 'em up with fat juicy carrots while we each return to CSI for a bit. Kristen is working on a Season Seven based fic and I'm working with kimonkey on a Season Six fic based around A Bullet Runs Through It.
Thanks again for the warm welcome into the new genre. This fandom has the best authors, quite frankly. And I can only hope we made readers half as happy as I am reading the great stuff out there.
Take care, kristen and beth
enjoy the early post! gotta go watch my sister have her baby!!!