WARNING! SPOILERS FOR PLOT DETAILS OF DOPPELGANGER!!
So I couldn't resist writing an AU tag to this almost-whump scene... what would have happened if Ronon hadn't been quite quick enough with that stunner?
Ronon was a second too late. Not even that. Probably only a fraction of a second, the stunner blast hitting Lorne even as his finger was moving, tightening on the trigger. But it didn't matter. A second, a fraction of a second; too late was too late and even as Lorne's face twisted from the shock of the stunner, the gun went off.
The retort was shockingly loud in the echoing hallway.
Lorne and Sheppard hit the floor at the same time. The Major stiffened and collapsed as the bolt of energy overloaded his neural pathways and abruptly shut his consciousness down, like flicking a switch. The Lt Colonel staggered slightly, the impact spinning him to the side, then simply folded, hitting the floor heavily.
For a seemingly endless moment there was only stunned silence, and the ringing echo of gunfire, and then all was chaos; voices raised in shock and disbelief, marines snapping orders to each other, Ronon's snarl of fury from above. Colonel Carter was radioing for a medical team even as she turned to crouch quickly beside Colonel Sheppard.
He was still conscious as Teyla dropped to her knees beside him, his face slack with a kind of stunned disbelief, but even as she reached for him he was slipping away, his eyes drooping closed and his head rolling loosely to the side. Colonel Carter hurriedly pressed her fingers to his neck, checking for a pulse, and her voice was tight as she tried unsuccessfully to rouse him, "Colonel Sheppard? Colonel?!"
Teyla cast her eyes quickly over his limply sprawled body, searching for the entry wound. Lorne's aim had been knocked off by the stunner blast and the bullet seemed to have hit low and to the side. John's habitual black clothing camouflaged the damage but she quickly found a small hole in his shirt, the fabric around it already glistening wetly. She pulled up his shirt to find a neat hole in the left side of his abdomen, blood already welling thickly. Her instinctive reaction was to reach for the field bandage they each always carried… but they weren't off-world and she wasn't wearing her carefully stocked tac vest; hurriedly, she shrugged off her uniform jacket and wadded it up into a ball before pressing it carefully against John's blood-smeared abdomen and applying pressure. John gave a half-formed grunt of protest as she pushed down hard and she looked up to see a fleeting grimace of pain pass over his face; he didn't rouse but the fact that he was aware enough to react to pain made her release the breath she hadn't even realised she was holding.
"He gonna be okay?" Ronon's rough voice startled her and she looked around to find him hovering nearby, his stunner still in his hand. The tension of his posture betrayed the anxiety that he kept from his face.
"Medical team is en route," Carter answered shortly and Ronon's expression grew more closed at the ambiguous response.
There was nothing more they could do until the medical team arrived and Teyla, her attention until recently focused solely on John, took a moment to look around. The atrium was awash with people, more onlookers having been drawn by the sound of the gunshot. Major Lorne lay where he had fallen, watched over by a still cautious party of marines, his 9mm safely removed.
The pounding of feet sounded from down the corridor and Dr Keller burst into the room, sprinting ahead of a gurney and accompanying medics. Her expression was shocked as she skidded to a halt in the atrium and took in the scene before her but she responded with the calm yet decisive composure that Teyla had come to expect from the young doctor. Teyla was busy keeping pressure on the wound and Colonel Carter quickly pushed to her feet and moved aside to let Keller kneel and assess her patient. John was unconscious, a sheen of sweat on his pale skin. He didn't stir as Keller checked his vitals.
The medical team clustered around John, their movements practised and coordinated, and Teyla was gently moved aside, Dr Williams' hands replacing hers on the balled-up jacket, keeping steady pressure on the wound as a blood pressure cuff was slipped around John's arm, IVs were set up and a needle slid skilfully under his skin.
Dr Keller's face was serious, focused, as she gently lifted the blood-soaked coat to get a look at the entry wound and Teyla found she could not read the doctor's reaction. John's face was obscured from her view as the medical team clustered around him, and she found herself staring abstractedly at the haphazard sprawl of John's legs, his booted feet seeming somehow incongruous in the relaxation of unconsciousness.
There was movement beside her and she jumped, startled to find Ronon standing close behind her, his eyes fixed firmly on the drama playing out before them. His face was an impassive mask but she knew him well enough to see past the stoic exterior, to read in the set of his face, the tension of his body, the fear and anger that roiled within him. She knew he was blaming himself for this, for not being quick enough, for not being able to protect his commanding officer. Though the situation was not of his making, though no-one present, John included, would think to blame him for the outcome, she knew Ronon would not be so quick to forgive himself.
"Okay, carefully now…"
Dr Keller's voice drew her attention back to John as two of the medics carefully lifted John's body, half rolling him onto his side to expose the back of his torso. Dr Keller had come around to John's left side and was kneeling close beside him. Her body mostly blocked Teyla's view but as the doctor leaned forward for a closer look, Teyla caught a glimpse of bloody, ragged flesh; an angry gaping wound. She heard Ronon bite out a curse under his breath and she felt a shiver run through her. The Earth people's guns were an effective weapon, far more advanced than most societies in the Pegasus galaxy could dream of possessing, but they were also deceptively deadly; the small projectiles entered the body almost cleanly, leaving just a small hole, but the damage they caused as they exited could be devastating.
"One, two, three…" The action around John seemed to increase in intensity, Dr Keller calmly issuing commands as John's limp body was carefully swung across to the waiting gurney, medics fussing around him, holding up bags of IV fluid, tightening straps to hold him in place. The collapsed gurney was quickly raised up, the legs locking into place with a metallic rattle, and without a backward glance Dr Keller turned towards the infirmary, her attention focused solely on John as she hurried alongside the swiftly moving gurney. Within the space of a heartbeat, they were gone from view, leaving a palpable vacuum in the atrium, the only remnants of the drama the still unconscious Major Lorne, the shocked witnesses and a smeared pool of blood on the floor.
Colonel Carter was the first to shake herself into action, taking charge of the situation with calm authority. On her instructions, a couple of burly marines hoisted Major Lorne up between them and their colleagues formed up to escort them.
"Put him in isolation for now," Colonel Carter advised. "We need to find out exactly what happened here…"
Ronon didn't care to wait to find out what had happened; without a word he turned and headed for the infirmary and, with a nod of acknowledgement to Colonel Carter, Teyla hurried after him. Colonel Carter had not been in Atlantis long but she was an experienced officer in the Earth military and had been a member of an SG team herself for many years; Teyla knew that the Colonel understood the bonds that built a team, that she knew without asking that Teyla would be in the infirmary if she was needed, that they would all be there, all of John's team, for as long as was necessary…
Ancestors. Rodney. Her stomach twisted and she hesitated for a moment, regretting the need to share this burden with him, to lay upon him the fear and dreadful worry that squeezed like a fist around her heart. What was the Earth saying John had taught her? Ah yes. Ignorance is bliss. He'd been talking about the millions of people on Earth, living their everyday lives in utter ignorance of the dangers that threatened their planet, of the Go'auld, of replicators… of the Wraith. She had tried to imagine at the time what it would be like to grow up, to live one's life, without the cullings, without the fear and the destruction. She could not conceive of it. A part of her had envied the people of Earth their carefree existence, been jealous of their ignorance. But she had not truly understood the phrase until now. Not until she was the one poised to take that ignorance away from someone, to change their world between one second and the next. Now she really understood that ignorance was bliss. With a heavy sigh she tapped her radio.
"What?! I'm kind of busy at the moment so…"
"Rodney."
He must have heard something in her voice. Despite her carefully calm and neutral tone, just one word was enough to stop him in his tracks, and his voice was already tinged with a current of panic as he demanded, "What? What is it?"
She sighed softly. "It is John. There has been… an incident."
"Incident?" Rodney's voice was rising in pitch with every word. "What the hell does that mean? What kind of incident?!"
"Rodney…" she couldn't hold back the hint of exasperation that bled through into her voice as she tried to stem the tirade; this was a difficult enough task and Rodney was not making it easier. She struggled to find the words before realising that there simply was no good way to say this.
"He has been shot. Dr Keller has taken him into surgery…"
"What?!" In her mind's eye she could clearly picture Rodney's face, his expression of disbelief. "What in god's name happened?! Is he… is it serious?"
"I do not know, Rodney. Ronon and I are on our way to the infirmary now."
There was a brief pause, a moment of silence as Rodney processed the implications of that statement, and then his voice came back over the radio, brusque and tightly controlled.
"I'll meet you there." The radio clicked into silence.
TBC...