Knowing You
a tag for the episode
“38 Minutes”
by Setcheti
Disclaimer: Atlantis belongs to SciFi
Channel, and although it’s really very good right now I’m sure they’ll screw it
up somewhere on down the road. After
all, rumor has it they’re already planning to get rid of Ford in Season 2. L
Author’s Note: Please keep in mind that Dr. Carson Beckett,
whose POV this is written in, is Scottish, and I’ve tried my best to capture his accent.
Oh yes, that’s where I thought I’d find him.
Just holdin’ back and watchin’ seems my best bet at present. It’s late, what I really want is to be in my bed…but there are certain responsibilities that come with bein’ a medical doctor, you know. Stayin’ up with patients is one of them.
Not that Dr. McKay would appreciate me callin’ him a patient, of course. But he’s my responsibility, and I would have come lookin’ for him anyway. Even if Dr. Weir hadn’t asked me to find him and see if he was all right.
I knew he wasn’t, but it wasn’t my place to tell her that. I also didn’t tell her that I knew where he was, or what I knew he was doin’ – had been doin’, most likely for hours now. I watch him pick up a tool and use it, for what I can’t be sure. But somethin’ lights up on the open panel in front of him and he frowns over it and makes a note. Then it’s a different tool in the same place; no lights and more notes, scatterin’ back through the pages he’s already got.
Doin’ it by hand, no less, not a computer in sight. He’s more scared than I thought.
I wait. And then I wait some more, and finally he drops the tool he’s usin’ and quick as a flash I’m right there to pick it up and hand it back to him. The way his eyes are all bugged-out right now might be funny some other time…but not now. I’d not have let Weir see him like this, she wouldn’t understand and she’d be like to make it worse. He takes the tool from me and lifts it slowly back toward the circuits he’s been testin’ – slow like he’s afraid I’m here to stop him.
The thought never crossed my mind. I pick up a different tool and hold it ready, and after a minute he starts to breathe again and turns back to what he was doin’. It takes about half an hour of him watchin’ me out of the corner of his eye, but finally he goes back to the pace he’d set himself before and a little after that he starts askin’ me to hand him this and that. I’m still waitin’, I know he’ll start to talk sooner or later.
I wait about a quarter of an hour, and then he starts to crack. First it’s askin’ me how the major is doin’, and then he answers himself before I can and says Sheppard is fine, of course, or I wouldn’t be here. He asks for another tool, I give it to him, and then he mutters, “No thanks to me, of course.”
“Feelin’ a wee bit ignored, are we?” I ask him, even though I know that’s not what this is. Sometimes you have to goad Rodney into sayin’ what’s really on his mind. “He wasn’t awake for enough of it to know what you were doin’, you realize. Eventually someone will tell him, then he’ll thank you.”
“Thank me?” He snorts. “I need that other sensor…no, the orange one. Oh yeah, right, I expect him to thank me. That’s a good one, Carson, really funny. I’ll be surprised if after all the reports get in he doesn’t try to kick me back through the wormhole – after he kicks me off his team for being a worthless panicky pain-in-the-ass idiot who almost got him killed, of course.” I let some confusion show and, true to form, it irritates him. Which is good since I’d wanted it to. “You wouldn’t understand, you weren’t there,” he tells me in his very best acidicly patient voice. “I panicked, I said we were all going to die. Even me getting the engines to retract was pure luck. And I didn’t do a damn thing for him except try to ignore what was going on.”
Oh bloody hell. I drop the tool before he can take it from me, grab his arm and shake him. “Bloody idiot, you were givin’ him CPR when I got to him!” I snap. “He’d’ve been brain damaged for sure and all if you hadn’t. You figured out how to get the jumper through the Gate, Ford told me that much. And you can’t be blamin’ yourself for that great bloody bug he’d picked up, since he was alone when it happened.”
“I can blame myself for not being there to watch his back!” he snaps back. Och, here it comes; I can see the shimmer in his eyes. That’s right, Rodney, let it out. ““I can blame myself for not being able to fix the jumper in the first place, for being a self-proclaimed genius that doesn’t know a god…damned…thing!”
“I’ll be sure to tell God that you’re takin’ over his province,” I tell him, givin’ him another shake. “You saved the man’s life, Rodney. Surely even with you that counts for somethin’.” I let some of the sympathy leach out of my voice so dry speculation can creep in. “Or maybe this is just catchin’ – you catchin’ it from him, I mean; he’s been down in the infirmary kickin’ himself because he wasn’t able to do anythin’ when the lot of you got into trouble.”
He stares at me like I’d just turned into his Auntie Mary – have to admit, I kind of like seein’ him bewildered a bit, it does him good. “What do you mean, he’s kicking himself…you can’t tell me that stupid bastard is laying down there with a…with a great big bandage on his neck and wires sticking all over him thinking he could have done something to fix the ship while some giant bug was sucking the life out of him?!”
Oh good, he’s wavin’ his arms now; means I’ve got him engaged, he’s startin’ to react with more than just his mouth. “What I mean,” I enunciate very clearly. “Is that our major takes his responsibilities very seriously. He’s not only in charge of everythin’ military we’ve got, he’s also the only person in the whole bloody city with a fully workin’ ATA gene.” I fold my arms across my chest and raise an eyebrow at him. “I think that’s enough responsibility to drive most men bloody mad in a pinch, don’t you?”
He staggers back a bit – I’d bet he hasn’t eaten anythin’ since he came down here – and he’s lookin’ right through me. I know what he’s lookin’ at, though; right behind me is where they had the major when I got on board. Not an easy thing, rememberin’ what it feels like to be tryin’ to push life back into someone’s body with your bare hands. Not too easy for him especially, since he had to choose between goin’ back to see if the lieutenant had made it or tryin’ to save the major layin’ there dead right at his feet. Not an easy thing at all. I let some of the sympathy come back. “First time you’d ever done it?”
I’m surprised when he shakes his head. “No,” he says, to the spot on the floor and not to me. “No, I’d done it before – tried to, anyway.” He swallows, and I’m gettin’ a bad feelin’. “When I was…when I was ten. My mother had a heart condition, she’d had…rheumatic fever when she was young and her heart…her heart was weak. I tried so hard to save her, but I didn’t…I didn’t do it right and she died.” That’s when he looks up at me, and god that’s a look I hadn’t wanted to see on the man. “The doctor at the emergency room said I didn’t do it right or she would have…would have come back. My father was there, he…he wouldn’t talk to me for…for a long time. It was never the same after that. I tried…I tried to do everything right, to learn everything…but I could never make up for not knowing how to save her.”
Oh bloody hell, wouldn’t you just know it; I try to open the can to pull out one little worm and get a bloody shark instead. And the CPR hadn’t been bringin’ Sheppard back when I got to him – it wouldn’t have, but Rodney isn’t to know that, he’s the wrong kind of doctor. And he for damned sure wouldn’t have known it as a wee boy of ten, no matter how smart he happened to be. “CPR doesn’t always bring them back, Dr. McKay,” I tell him firmly. Got to correct for that doctor from all those years ago, and wouldn’t I like to get my hands on him right about now. “What part of ‘saved him from havin’ brain damage did you not understand? If you hadn’t done it right the major’d be about as lively as a boiled carrot in there right now, if I’d even been able to get his heart goin’ again at all.”
He looks at me again, and I can see the boy and the man tryin’ to make sense of everythin’ between them. It’s the boy who asks me, “I did the right thing?”
“More than once, the way I understand it.” Oh please don’t let me get anythin’ wrong, he’ll be on it in a heartbeat. I tick off points for him on my fingers. “You helped get him back on the jumper, you helped the others take care of him, you got the ship through the gate, and you kept his blood circulatin’ until I could get to him with my equipment – and let me tell you, Rodney, those three or four minutes before the ship docked were critical. And I believe you went over the ship lookin’ for the missin’ bug, and now you’re here tryin’ to make sure none of this ever happens again, am I right?” I wave my hand at the sheaf of handwritten notes. “Someone should have done this weeks ago, we’ve been fools to keep goin’ out when we didn’t know how to fix her if she broke.”
“Yeah, I…I thought of that myself. Earlier.” He looks more than a bit sick, which is how I’d imagine he felt earlier when he realized they’d been runnin’ on a wing and a prayer all this time. “Or I guess you could say too late.”
“There you go again.” I resist the urge to shake my finger at him the way my mother would have done, and instead I wave my hand at the open panel. “Are you plannin’ to keep goin’ with this, or are we callin’ it a mornin’?”
“Morning?” He checks his watch and makes a face, then rubs his hand through his hair. “I didn’t realize.” Blue eyes blink a sheepish sort of apology at me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you up.”
I shrug. “You didn’t.” Really he did, but I know that tellin’ him it’s part of my job wouldn’t be any too good for him right now – he needs a friend, not a doctor. I’m about to redirect him to another subject…when my beeper goes off. Or at least, I think of it as a beeper; it’s actually a fairly sophisticated communication device.
Whatever, it works. “Dr. Beckett,” comes tinnily out of the tiny speaker. “You need to get back down here, his fever is going up again.”
“I’m comin’.” I’ve only taken three steps toward the open hatch when I realize that McKay is right behind me. Right behind me. “Rodney…”
His eyes are buggin’ again. “Fever?”
“He’s still fightin’ off the effects of that creature’s saliva.” It hadn’t had venom, thank all that’s holy. I don’t want to think what might have happened if it had. “And it had a dirty mouth, it’s the bite that’s infected. Listen, I’ve got to…”
“I’m coming too.” I don’t have time to argue with him; if it’s bad enough for them to call me then I have to get back down there. He falls into step with me. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
I’m hearin’ the boy again, so that’s who I answer. “No, not at all. He’s on antibiotics and they’re workin’ just like they’re supposed to. It’s just that the whole process takes time.” I shoot a glance over at him and address the man who just spent half the night tryin’ to atone for not bein’ able to know everythin’. Wouldn’t mind gettin’ my hands on his father, either. “I can use you, if you’re willin’ to stay and help. I gave him a mild sedative to help him sleep but he’s still restless, he keeps wakin’ part-way up thinkin’ the bug is still there and all of you are dead.”
The boy vanishes right before my eyes, and he picks up the
pace, his jaw settin’ in a way I’ve been learnin’ means business.
“I’ll help. You didn’t see the
thing,
Ah, yet another reason he’d been in there workin’ and not asleep in his room; I file that one away for later too, with a note that I’ll be needin’ to watch Lieutenant Ford as well. “You’d most likely be more of a comfort to him than myself or any of my people, then,” I tell him. “I’d welcome your help, I’m sure he would too.”
Nothin’ else is said until we get there. Sheppard is tossin’ in his bed, not enough that he’s in danger of fallin’ out of it but enough that one of my assistants is standin’ there tryin’ to keep him still. I can tell McKay doesn’t like that, the way she’s holdin’ him down. “He keeps goin’ for the bandage,” I explain. “We don’t want him to hurt himself.”
His jaw sets again, he mutters somethin’ under his breath regardin’ killin’ the patient to cure the disease…and I have to hold my assistant back when he pushes her out of the way and just rips that bandage off the major’s neck with a mutter of somethin’ else that sounds like ‘stupid’ and ‘idiot’ before puttin’ his hand flat over the nice neat stitches closin’ up the wound. That surprises me; McKay’s more than a bit squeamish, even when the blood’s his own, but this time he didn’t turn even a hair.
What surprises me even more is that none of us thought the bandage might be Sheppard’s problem – that, and we kept stoppin’ him from touchin’ it. No wonder he thought the bloody bug was still there.
McKay is talkin’ to him now, right down close by the ear on that side. “John, listen to me,” he says. “Listen, the bug’s gone, we got it off. Do you understand? We got it off.” Sheppard’s head tosses back and forth against the pillow, and he mumbles somethin’. I should’ve thought of that too, the fact that he might need to wake up and the sedative would keep him from doin’ it. McKay’s response is to grab one of his hands and put it on the spot where the gauze bandage had been taped, then to put one of his own hands over that to hold Sheppard’s hand in place.
Sheppard’s eyes open. It’s takin’ him more than a little effort to focus, but focus he does – right on McKay. Movin’ a little closer, I can see his fingers flex under the grip McKay has on him. “No…no bug? You got it?”
“We got it. It’s gone, John. Gone. All right?”
“Yeah.” Another flex. Good god, I am an idiot for not realizin’ he needed to feel that the bug wasn’t there. “Rodney? What if it…”
“It won’t come back, it got sucked out into space. On the other side of the Gate. Hard vacuum, it’s gone for good.” I push a stool up behind him and McKay sits down without takin’ his eyes off the major – sits down a little heavier than I’d like, everythin’ might be catchin’ up with him. I wonder again if he’s eaten at all since they got back; I’ll have to be seein’ that he gets somethin’ soon, just in case. But now he’s usin’ his other hand to touch Sheppard’s hair, strokin’ his fingers through it. “It’s okay, John. Just go to sleep, I’ll keep watch.”
“Know you will.” Sheppard pulls his hand out from under McKay’s and pats the back of it before lettin’ it settle on his chest. “You’re a good man. Wake me up for my watch, ‘kay?”
“I can do that. Just go to sleep.” McKay keeps strokin’ his hair, and in only a couple of minutes Sheppard is back to sleep. Which is how he needs to be, of course.
I watch McKay’s hands, one still layin’ on the place where the bandage was, the other tanglin’ in Sheppard’s hair…and I find myself wonderin’ what it is that he needs. Or if maybe this was it. And I’ve also got to wonder how I managed to work beside the man for over a year and then travel across the galaxy with him without knowin’ him at all.