Battle Scars (3/3)
Here you go! The final part...
Part 3
Tayven was awake when John returned to the room, with Hesh sitting next to him and trying to coax him into drinking a glass of water. Thugs One and Two supported John about three feet into the room then let him go and retreated, leaving John to hobble the rest of the way to the armchair at the foot of the bed.
His head was pounding, and flames licked up and down his leg with every ounce of weight he was forced to put on it. By the time he reached the chair, he was panting. He eased himself into the chair, forcing shaking arms to lower himself in a controlled collapse. He used his hands to lift the dead weight of his leg and straighten it out as much as possible.
“He won’t drink the water.” Hesh’s voice cut through the thrumming roar in John’s head, but John refused to look up at him. He hunched over, holding his head in his hands and breathing slowly through the pain bursting from his knee.
“I said he won’t drink,” Hesh snarled, standing and slamming his glass on the dresser next to the bed.
“Just a second,” John whispered. He really needed to lie down for a few minutes. No, he needed to drink some water and eat a full meal. Then he needed to lie down.
He also needed to be rescued. He’d take that before the eating, drinking, and lying down-
“You’re here to fix my brother!”
John looked up, intent on screaming back at the gang leader as his patience finally snapped out of existence, but instead he caught a blur of movement as Hesh swung his leg backward then forward, the toe of his boot catching John directly on his injured knee.
John screamed, throwing his head back into the chair. The pain was all encompassing, spreading up his leg to wrap around his chest and stomach, squeezing the air out of him. He gasped and leaned forward, reaching out instinctively for the raw, throbbing burn, the center of the pain. As his lungs refilled, he wanted to scream again, but he clenched his jaw shut to cut it off. A moaning whimper deep in the back of his throat finally clawed its way out, and he pushed back into the chair again, straightening out.
He wanted to curl up around the injured knee, protect it from any more of Hesh’s abuse, but he couldn’t do that and keep the leg straight-the least painful position. He was reduced to squirming and writhing in the armchair. He bent forward again, banging his forehead against the armrest as another cry of pain whimpered out of him. He realized tears were now streaking down his cheeks, and he rubbed a hand over his face to wipe them away.
Breathe, just breathe. You can do this, John. Breathe through the pain. His heart pounded in his chest, but gradually, the fireball in his knee pulled back into a more manageable, raw screaming agony.
You are in serious shit here, my friend.
“Stop crying!”
John pushed himself up slowly, feeling wrung out and sick, and was surprised to see the ‘stop crying’ comment was not directed at him, but at Tayven.
The boy was still lying limp on the bed, still pale and sickly. He was staring up at Hesh with wide eyes though, and tears were leaking out of the corners of his eyes and into his clipped hair. John saw the boy bite his lip and screw up his face, maybe in an attempt to stop, but the tears continued to flow.
Hesh opened his mouth to say something else, but John beat him to it.
“Back off, Hesh,” he growled.
Hesh spun around, raising his fist. Anger warred across the young man’s face, carving deep lines into his brow and around his mouth. The scar near his eye blanched into a stark, jagged white line. John raised his chin, maintaining eye contact and trying to look as tough and intimidating as possible confined to the armchair.
“Don’t tell me what to do, giver.”
“That’s right, Hesh. I’m the giver. You brought me here to help your brother. That’s what I’m doing. You want me to help him, you leave. Right now.”
Hesh’s face had flushed red, almost purple, and John could see the muscles in his cheeks twitching. His arm was shaking as well, like the thread of control holding back his fist was stretched almost to breaking point. Any second now, Hesh would lose the minute handle he had on his emotions and unleash his fury on John, and there would be little John could do to protect himself sitting in the chair with a screwed-up knee.
Tayven sniffed, the sound just barely audible in the dead silence of the room, but Hesh blinked in response. He held John’s gaze for another second, but John saw the red of his face pull back, the skin returning to a more normal tone. He lowered his arm slowly, but kept his hand curled into a fist.
“Fix him,” he hissed, then he spun on his heel and stomped out of the room. Thug Two had dropped John’s medical bag near the door, and Hesh stopped in front of it. He scooped down and picked it up, then hurled it at John’s head.
John caught the bag, wincing when the edge hit him in the cheek. He’d almost forgotten the collapsible stretcher was in the bottom pocket, but he was painfully reminded of it now. Hesh slammed the door shut, rattling the lamp and the dresser on which it sat, and John heaved the bag across his body to set it down on the mattress, at Tayven’s feet.
Tayven was watching him now, and he hadn’t lost the wide-eyed look of panic. He was shaking as well. With a groan, John pushed himself up out of the chair and slid over to the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress. He moved his leg again, straightening it out and wincing at the bite of pain that caused.
The water bucket was still sitting next to the bed. John looked around for the washcloth and saw it wadded up in a ball above Tayven’s head. He scooted closer to the boy, but froze when the kid flinched and tried to squirm away from him.
“Hey, it’s okay, kid-Tayven,” John said, keeping his voice low and calm. “I’m not going to hurt you. Your brother, Hesh, brought me in to help you. He said you’ve been very sick.”
Tayven continued to stare at John, but his face gradually drooped into one of sickly exhaustion as the panicked fear ran its course and oozed out of him. He had stopped crying, but his cheeks and temples were still wet where the tears had tracked back into his hair.
John leaned forward and grabbed the washcloth, then dropped it into the bucket next to him. Tayven tracked him with his eyes the entire time, wrapping his arms around his small chest. When John pressed his fingers against Tayven’s forehead and cheek, the boy tensed but didn’t cry out or try to move out of the way.
His skin was still hot, his cheeks still flushed red. John wrung out the washcloth and wiped Tayven’s face and neck, including the tear tracks. Tayven moaned and turned into the cloth, letting his eyes drift closed. John dipped the cloth in the bucket again then folded it into thirds and spread it out over the kid’s forehead. He twisted around, digging through the bag until he found the thermometer and stethoscope. The IV bag still had plenty of fluid left, and he pulled his makeshift chart out of his pocket, scanning it and glancing at his watch as he mentally calculated when he’d last given the kid an antibiotic shot. He could wait a little longer on that, he decided. The fever was the thing worrying him the most now.
“Tayven? My name is John. I’m a…” his voice faltered. A giver. That’s what he’d been about to say, but it was a lie. It was one thing to tell Hesh he was a giver, especially when Hesh was standing over him with a gun or bashing his knee in. His choice had been lie or be killed. But Tayven… The kid was innocent in all of this.
He shook his head. Maybe Tayven needed to believe he was a giver, too. There was a mental component to healing that John had experienced enough times in the past.
“I’m…” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t do it-couldn’t tell this boy he was something he was not. He watched the boy for any kind of reaction, but Tayven merely blinked at him. John held up the thermometer. “I need to take your temperature with this. It won’t hurt at all.”
Tayven jerked a little as John pressed the end of the thermometer into his ear, but he grew still quickly when nothing else happened. A second later, the thermometer beeped and John held it up, scowling at the numbers. The kid’s high temperature had remained the same since he’d arrived, and it was showing no signs of letting up. He tossed it back into the bag and then fitted the stethoscope to his ears. He rubbed the chest piece again with his palm, this time expecting the brushing sound that traveled up the eartubes.
“Don’t worry, kid,” he said as he pressed the end of the chestpiece against Tayven’s chest. He listened to the heart first, then the lungs. He still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be listening for, but the sound had definitely changed. He frowned at the wheezing, congested crackling sound around the bottom of Tayven’s ribcage.
“Dammit,” he snapped.
Tayven squirmed, looking suddenly scared and John bit his lip. He glanced down at the stethoscope then back to the boy, latching onto the idea suddenly flitting through his mind. “Hey, would you like to hear your heart?”
Tayven stopped moving, and John pulled the stethoscope off. He moved slowly, holding it out to Tayven and fitting the eartubes into the boy’s ears. “You can hear your heartbeat with this,” he explained. “Have you ever heard your heartbeat?”
Tayven watched as John moved the chestpiece and pressed it against his ribs. A second later, he blinked, jerking his eyes up to John.
“Can you hear it?”
Tayven gave a small nod, and John moved the chestpiece to his own ribs, directly over his heart. “How about that? Can you hear my heart, too?”
Tayven smiled, and John felt relief flush through him at the kid’s expression. It was followed a second later by biting guilt. He was playing doctor with Tayven’s life. He didn’t have much choice in the matter, but now the kid was looking at him with total trust.
He pulled the stethoscope away and shoved it into the bag. Fever-he had to concentrate on the fever. He pulled out the other two washcloths and dropped them into the bucket of water, but as he reached down to grab them, he winced at the sharp lance of pain that shot up his leg. He should grab the new chemical ice pack and some Ibuprofen for himself, and he still hadn’t eaten or drank anything. It would be easy to lose himself in caring for Tayven, then collapse from dehydration or hunger.
“Ibuprofen!” he said out loud. “Why didn’t I think of that sooner?” He had the sudden urge to smack himself in the forehead. “Focus, John. Use your head,” he muttered. He dug through the bag again, pulling out the different packets of medication. One of them was a syringe of Ibuprofen, and he injected roughly half of it into Tayven’s IV.
“This should help, kiddo,” he said.
Tayven was blinking again, close to falling back asleep. John downed two Ibuprofen pills and half of a water bottle, then went through the painful process of loosening the knee brace. He was about to fit the new ice pack against his knee when he glanced over at Tayven. His knee hurt like hell and was still swollen, but it wasn’t life-threatening. The kid’s fever was. With a sigh, he covered it in bandages to mitigate the ice cold now burning through the thin plastic cover and slid it under Tayven’s upper back. He then set to work on cooling the kid down, wiping his chest down and hoping the moisture evaporating off his skin would take some of the heat with it.
Tayven moaned and grabbed on to one of John’s hands.
“I know this doesn’t feel great. Just hang in there.”
Tayven’s grip relaxed a few minutes later, his hand falling to the bed as he sank back into a deep sleep. John continued to wipe him down, pausing once to inhale a powerbar. After an hour, he checked his temperature again, and almost whooped for joy at the readout. Tayven still had a fever, but it was lower than it had been for the first time since John had arrived.
It was mid-morning now, and John was exhausted. He inched his way back along the bed and slumped into the chair. It wouldn’t be that much longer until his people found him. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. If the kids he’d treated that morning were back on the street, they were bound to talk, and one of the recon team members would pick up on the chatter, then figure out they were talking about John. Tayven just had to hold on for a few more hours, and then a real doctor could step in and give him the care he needed.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
John woke up abruptly to the sound of someone coughing. He sat up in the chair, stretching his neck and back and looking around. Tayven coughed again, and John launched himself out of the chair as quickly as his busted knee would allow. He rested a hand on the boy’s chest, feeling heat burning the skin.
“Shit,” he whispered. Tayven’s fever had shot up again. John glanced at his watch and saw that he’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. He injected the rest of the Ibuprofen syringe, then switched the empty IV bag to a new one. That left one bag of saline left, and then he was out of supplies. The washcloths were still wet, but warm to the touch. John rinsed them out and began the process of wiping the kid down again.
Tayven coughed and writhed as he worked, and no prodding on John’s part could draw him out of the fitful sleep. His breathing was worse as well. John could hear the wheeze now without the need for a stethoscope. He unfolded the chart from his pocket and took meticulous notes at the change in the boy’s condition, all the time wondering if it was an exercise in futility.
By mid-afternoon, Tayven’s face had grown sallow and his breaths rattled through his chest. The circles around his eyes had grown darker as well, and the fever hung on, burying itself into the boy’s body. No amount of prodding and shaking would wake the child either. John’s headache was back, a pulsing throb directly behind his eyes that almost washed out the persistent pain in his knee. John gave Tayven as much medicine as he dared, hoping that would stem the tide of the disease ravaging him, but it felt a little too much like using a piece of chewing gum to plug a hole in the Hoover Dam.
When Tayven began coughing almost continuously, John broke out the collapsible stretcher and used it to prop the boy up, but even sitting up at an angle seemed to bring little relief. Between coughing fits, his breathing became deep and slow, and his ribs rose and sank as if every square inch of his lungs were struggling to pull in oxygen.
John had done everything he knew how to do. He flipped through the first aid manual for the seven hundredth time, looking for anything that might help him, but slammed it shut in frustration and tossed it across the room. The book slammed against the wall next to the door and slid to the ground.
“Sorry, kid,” John whispered, grabbing Tayven’s limp hand. He had never felt so completely helpless in his life.
The door flipped open, and Water Boy popped his head in.
“What’s going on?”
John sighed pinching the bridge of his nose, then looking up at the guard with resignation. “Get Hesh down here. Tell him to hurry.”
Water Boy’s eyes drifted over to Tayven and widened in surprise. He nodded once, then shut the door.
This was it. When the gang leader came, and John told him there was nothing else he could do for his brother, it was over. Hesh would finally lose it completely and do to John what he’d apparently wanted to do all along. John turned suddenly to the medical bag and dug out the scalpels, slipping two of them into his pocket. He was hurt and hungry and tired, but he would not go down without a fight.
Hesh arrived within minutes with his entourage-Ulam, Biggie, and Thugs One and Two. John pushed himself out of the chair, carefully balancing on his good leg and knowing all hell was about to break loose. Tayven’s breathing was deeper, growing ever slower.
“What?” Hesh spat out as he strode into the room, and then his eyes shifted to his brother. For a moment, the years of war and survival stripped away, and John saw a desperate, scared young man about to lose his only remaining family, but then the hardness set in, his expression turning to granite.
“I’m sorry,” John started, holding his hands out. “I’ve done everything I can but I don’t know…”
Hesh spun suddenly, lashing an arm out. He caught John on the side of the head. It wasn’t a hard hit, but John’s balance was already precarious. He swayed backward, flailing as he fell over the side of the chair and crashed to the ground. His knee exploded in agony and he screamed.
“Get him out of here.”
Through the haze of pain in his leg, John heard the order and felt hands grab him and drag him roughly from the room. Thug One and Two heaved him to his feet once they were in the corridor, holding him upright as John panted against the throb in his knee. Biggie paced around them, his face pale as he glanced between John and what was happening in Tayven’s room. Ulam stood in the door frame, almost protectively, giving Hesh a moment of privacy.
The moment came quietly, what was happening in the room reflected in the corridor when Ulam flinched and Biggie froze. The thugs holding on to John’s arms tightened their grips. There was no scream from inside, no cry of pain or wail of grief from Hesh. Just silence-a vacuum after the rattling breaths and desperate coughs from before. John felt a deep pain rip across his chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs.
He’d failed. He’d claimed to be a giver to save himself, and now a child was dead. The throbbing in his knee shifted to his head and he sagged into the guards’ grip. He had tried everything he knew how to do, and he could tell himself that over and over again for the rest of his life, but it hadn’t been enough.
Ulam backpedaled out of the room, and Hesh strode into the corridor. John tensed, waiting for the gang leader to fly into a rage.
“Biggie, guard Tayven’s room. Make sure no one goes in.” Hesh’s voice was eerily calm. Biggie jerked, scrambling to obey and looking terrified. Hesh pointed to John next but didn’t look at him. “Bring him to the office.”
He strode forward, leading the way. Thugs One and Two glanced at each other, then Ulam, who shrugged back. They followed Hesh, moving too fast for John’s hobbling gait. John hopped and dragged his injured leg as best he could, gritting his teeth against the urge to cry out. He felt the weight of the two scalpels in his pockets and wished he’d thought of grabbing more, but he couldn’t reach them anyway, not with the thugs holding his arms. Besides that, with his gimpy leg, he wouldn’t get very far running away.
Hesh’s office looked the same as it had the first night, except that the table full of papers had been shoved against a wall. Hesh stood near an open, glass-less window, his back to them as the thugs dragged John to the middle of the room. Behind him, Ulam came in and shut the door.
“Hesh,” John started, then stopped. What the hell was he supposed to say to the guy? Sorry your little brother’s dead? Sorry I’m not the giver I claimed to be?
Hesh turned slowly, his face white. “Do you know what this room is?”
John frowned at the unexpected question and shook his head.
“My father’s office. He worked here every day for sixteen years. I used to stop in and visit when I was a kid, and he’d take me down to the sweets shop on the first floor.”
“I’m sorry about your family.”
“He was killed in a bomb blast when the civil war hit the city, and then a few months later, my mother was shot in the gut. She didn’t die right away. She lived for four days, but she knew she was dying. Tayven was tiny then, barely able to walk. She begged me to take care of him, look out for him.”
The muscles in face rippled as he fought to keep his composure, and then he looked up at John, meeting his gaze. “I promised her I would protect him. I promised.” His face was gaining color again, flushing a dark red, bordering on purple. The thin scar along his temple and around his eyes was a stark white line. He held up a shaking finger, pointing at John.
“I promised my mother I would take care of my brother. The last thing I ever said to her.”
Thug One tightened his grip, but Thug Two had almost let go and John let his arm drop a little closer to his side. His hand was inches away from the scalpels in the pocket, and his mind raced at his options. If he moved fast enough, maybe he could take our one of the thugs, but the others would be on him in seconds.
“My brother is dead,” Hesh whispered, and now his whole body was shaking. “Dead. ”
John shook his head, the guilt in his chest spreading like ice water over his skin. “I’m sorry-”
Hesh launched himself at John, kicking out a leg and planting a foot in his stomach. John felt the hands on his arms scratch his skin as he was ripped from their grasp, and then he slammed into the wall. Light flashed across his vision as his head connected, and then he was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling in shock, his entire body numb.
“You killed him,” Hesh roared. He grabbed John by the t-shirt and threw him to the other side of the room. John rolled, moaning when his shoulder slammed into the opposite wall.
“You will pay for his death.”
The pain slammed into him then, a throbbing bruise in his stomach from Hesh’s initial kick, and static bursts along the nerves in his back and head where’d he hit the wall. Spots danced across his vision and he sucked in a deep breath, feeling a twinge of agony in his lower ribs. His knee hurt, but it was an old familiar ache compared to the new pain ripping through him now.
Hesh picked him up again, but this time he threw him against the wall next to the window, pinning him by the throat. John choked, flailing as blood and oxygen was suddenly cut off.
“I will watch every last breath you take, and then I will throw your body out into the street, to be ripped apart by dogs.”
“Hesh,” John rasped. He banged his fists against the gang leader’s arm to no avail. His head throbbed like he was hanging upside down and all the blood was rushing to his brain, but he knew it was the opposite, that Hesh’s grip was stopping the blood flow.
He choked, and Hesh pressed harder against his throat in response. Just as dark spots began to fill his vision, he felt the wall against his back shake, then the concussive blast of a nearby explosion. Ulam and the thugs ran out of the room, and Hesh spun around in confusion.
John dropped to the ground, coughing and choking and clawing at the ground as he tried to pull in desperately needed oxygen. There were shouts out in the hallway, then stampeding boots, then another, closer explosion.
Now! John thought, catching a glimpse of Hesh running out of the office. He heaved himself up to one knee, then grabbed onto the window sill. There was only one door, now open and full of panicked members of Hesh’s gang as they ran back and forth, shouting and screaming.
Hide. He had to hide. There were no closets or other exits besides the window. He heaved his weight up and over the sill before he could change his mind, hoping there would be a ledge or something that he could hold onto. His fingers tightened on the edge as his body swung out into open air, but he was still gasping for air. He pressed his head against the smooth brick wall, scrambling for a foothold almost a hundred feet above street level.
Nothing. He was hanging out of a fifth-story window with one bad leg in a splint and no traction for the other one. His fingers tingled, growing numb as he tightened his grip on the window’s edge.
“Where did he go?” Hesh’s voice roared above him. “I’m gonna kill him!”
Familiar gunfire sounded in the hallway above him and far below in the streets. P90s. John closed his eyes, willing his people to reach him soon. He dragged in another heaving breath, hearing the air wheeze past his raw throat. Footsteps pounded out of the room, then a door slammed. A moment of silence passed before wood cracked and the door crashed open.
“Nothing,” a voice called out.
Ronon.
“Ronon,” John yelled, except that his voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. He drew in a deep breath. “Ronon!”
A face suddenly appeared above him, dreadlocks falling around his shoulders.
“Sheppard!” Ronon’s eyes went wide, and he scrambled to grab John’s arms, dragging his dead weight up and back into the room. They collapsed into a pile, but John was too exhausted and in too much pain to extract himself from the tangle of limbs.
“I got Sheppard,” he roared into a radio.
John flinched, then moaned, and a moment later he felt hands rolling him onto his back and straightening out his arms and legs.
“Hey, buddy,” Ronon said, a grin splitting across his face despite the worry still present in his eyes.
John coughed, too spent to say anything. He was still having a hard time breathing, like his throat was starting to swell shut. Ronon’s smile fell as he took in John’s condition, and his face flushed with anger. “Sorry it took us so long,” he said.
John reached up, patting one of his arms. Within minutes, he saw the black boots and cargo pants of his Marines march into the room, and then they were shifting him to a stretcher, hooking up an IV, slapping an oxygen mask over his face. He managed to hold onto consciousness for the journey down the stairs and out into the street, finally letting go as he was loaded onto a waiting jumper and whisked home.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
John woke up to a near painlessness and the quiet murmur of voices hovering around him. He blinked, and saw a man in scrubs snipping his dirty clothes away-a former Army medic and now a nurse on Atlantis. Carson was near his injured knee, talking to another doctor and lightly poking the swollen tissue. Another nurse with short brown hair patted his arm, and he smiled back at her, feeling a little sloppy and loose, like he just might slide off the bed into a puddle on the floor.
“Doctor Beckett,” she called out.
Carson moved to the head of the bed, looking a little fuzzy. John blinked, trying to keep it together. The bed or the floor-or maybe just him-were rolling gently, and he could almost hear the ocean waves a few hundred feet beneath him.
“John, how are you doing?”
He smiled at Carson’s question, then stopped, suddenly feeling like a grin was an inappropriate reaction. How was he feeling? He felt… floaty, fuzzy, kind of numb. Carson patted his shoulder.
“Rhetorical question. Don’t try to talk-your larynx is badly bruised.”
John blinked again, feeling a slight throbbing pressure along his windpipe, now that Carson mentioned it. His knee was ice cold and he shivered. The doctor said something else, and people moved around him. The last of his clothing was stripped away, taking with it the stench of sweat and dirt and illness. Of Tayven.
He frowned, closing his eyes. Tayven. An image of the boy lying on the bed flashed through his mind, the memory all jagged edges and hammer blows dispelling the fog around him. The numbness receded a little further, and pain buzzed through his body, like someone turning the volume up on a radio. A blanket was tucked in around him and someone-Carson maybe?-urged him to rest, assuring him that he’d feel better later.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The drugged stupor didn’t last, but John wasn’t sure he wanted the numbing feeling again. He lay in the darkened infirmary, staring at the shadows playing against the walls on the other side of the room. His knee ached, feeling hot and swollen despite the ice pack and the visible evidence that it was almost back to normal size. The nurses had come by twice already, asking if he needed anything for the pain or to help him sleep, but he’d been adamant in his refusal.
When he heard footsteps approaching, he assumed it was another nurse, and he wasn’t sure he could hold out much longer against the pain if she asked again. His knee hurt like hell without question, and his stomach was badly bruised and cramping every time he squirmed just a little bit. The infirmary staff had sworn his ribs weren’t broken-not even cracked-but it didn’t feel like that at the moment. Every twinge was a stabbing pain through his side.
His throat was the worst-it hurt to breathe, to talk, to swallow, to turn his head in any direction. The accumulated exhaustion of the last few days had taken root in his skull, pulsing in agony with every heartbeat.
“You’re not going to get much rest if you don’t take something for the pain,” Carson said, padding into the curtained area around his bed. “And without rest, you won’t heal.”
John frowned, feeling a bruise on his cheekbone pull with the motion. One more thing to add to the list.
“Are you thirsty at all? Can I get you some water?”
Why the hell not? He gave Carson a quick nod, wincing at the movement. He took the glass from the doctor a minute later, scowling at the ache in his arm as he tightened his grip on the cup. He heard Carson sigh, but he sipped slowly, letting the water trickle down the back of his throat. It was slightly less painful that way.
Carson pulled up a chair and planted himself next to him, waiting. John took another slow sip of water, but by then his hand was starting to shake and he didn’t hide his relief when the doctor took the glass from him. He scrunched back in the bed, hissing in pain. Carson was watching him, but John refused to look over. The movement hurt his neck.
Carson sighed. “The swelling in your knee is going down nicely, and there’s no indication of blood vessel or nerve damage. The ligaments, on the other hand…”
His voice trailed off, but John was in no mood for a conversation. He would worry about his knee later.
“I know you’re tired, but if you’re feeling up to it, I can give you the latest update on Lieutenant Glazner’s condition.”
That got John’s attention. He jerked, lifting his head up a little then dropping it with a groan as pain ignited down his neck and back and across his chest and stomach. Damn. He’d forgotten all about Glazner-and Stackhouse’s team-and he felt his cheeks burn in anger and regret.
“How…?” he croaked out, his voice nearly nonexistent.
Carson rubbed a hand over his face. “He’s alive, barely. The injuries were severe, though. I’m afraid his military career is over.”
“Will he walk?”
“Aye, most likely-with a lot of physical therapy. It was close, though. Another millimeter or two over and…” He shook his head, not finishing the sentence. “I was sorry to hear about Paulsen. He was a good man.”
“Never…saw it…coming,” John whispered. “Stackhouse?”
“They found him and his team a few hours after you were taken. They’re all fine-a little roughed up but nothing they won’t heal from after a few days. Some gang of boys was holding them captive, trying to figure out who they were and what to do with them.”
They sat in silence for a minute, and then Carson pulled out a crinkled paper and held it up in the dim light over John’s bed. “Found this in your pocket.”
John’s gaze slid to the paper, and the pain in his body crested. He closed his eyes, fighting back the onslaught.
A warm hand pressed against his arm. “These vitals were bad. There was nothing you could have done to help. I’m not even sure I could have helped with a fully stocked infirmary.”
“He was… little kid,” John choked out.
“Oh, dear Lord.”
He heard Carson lean forward, the chair creaking. A black hole of guilt opened up in John’s chest, and he felt himself sliding into it. He rubbed at the pounding headache behind his eyes.
“He was sick. His brother… wanted me… cure him.”
“John, look at me.”
He ignored the doctor, sensing more than seeing him stand and grab the railing.
“Annalise.”
John shifted his gaze over to Carson and saw the doctor staring off across the infirmary, his attention focused inward. “What?”
“Annalise-she was the first patient I ever lost. I was barely out of med school, still a new resident. I thought she was old at the time, but now… Doesn’t seem like she was very old at all.”
“What happened?”
Carson sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Came in complaining of indigestion. Turned out she was having a massive heart attack. We worked on her for hours but…”
His voice trailed off and he shook himself, drawing his attention back to John. John looked away, feeling the guilt and grief gnawing at him, the pain growing worse than any physical injury he had accrued over the last couple of days.
“I know there’s not a whole lot I can say right now that will make you feel any better, but I’ve been there, son,” Carson said, breaking the heavy silence. “I know what it feels like to lose a patient, and when it’s a child… That is infinitely harder to deal with.”
He blew out a breath. John glanced at him quickly and saw the doctor’s eyes lose focus again. He imagined a flood of memories rushing through his friend’s mind, and he jerked his gaze away, focusing on the dark shadows across the room.
“Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, it’s not enough. It hurts, but with time, it gets… easier.”
“Could never be… doctor,” John rasped out, but the black hole around him had shrunk a little as he realized this was one of the few times when someone else did understand exactly what he was feeling, exactly what he had gone through on that planet caring for Tayven.
“And I could never be the military commander of Atlantis,” Carson said, smiling slightly. “You’re in pain, John. Let me help.”
John nodded, not sure if he meant the pain of his injuries or the pain of losing a patient. Maybe he meant both. Carson pulled out a syringe and injected it, and John sighed at the relief spreading through him. He squirmed again as his eyes grew heavy.
“Rest, and if you want to talk about what happened when you’re feeling a little better, I’ll be here.”
The pain had abated enough that John rolled his head toward the doctor without a wince and gave him a short nod, a small ember of hope flaring in his chest at his friend’s words. The experience would leave scars, like all experiences, but he would heal enough to bear them.
“I know, Doc,” he mumbled. “Thanks.”
END
Part 3
Tayven was awake when John returned to the room, with Hesh sitting next to him and trying to coax him into drinking a glass of water. Thugs One and Two supported John about three feet into the room then let him go and retreated, leaving John to hobble the rest of the way to the armchair at the foot of the bed.
His head was pounding, and flames licked up and down his leg with every ounce of weight he was forced to put on it. By the time he reached the chair, he was panting. He eased himself into the chair, forcing shaking arms to lower himself in a controlled collapse. He used his hands to lift the dead weight of his leg and straighten it out as much as possible.
“He won’t drink the water.” Hesh’s voice cut through the thrumming roar in John’s head, but John refused to look up at him. He hunched over, holding his head in his hands and breathing slowly through the pain bursting from his knee.
“I said he won’t drink,” Hesh snarled, standing and slamming his glass on the dresser next to the bed.
“Just a second,” John whispered. He really needed to lie down for a few minutes. No, he needed to drink some water and eat a full meal. Then he needed to lie down.
He also needed to be rescued. He’d take that before the eating, drinking, and lying down-
“You’re here to fix my brother!”
John looked up, intent on screaming back at the gang leader as his patience finally snapped out of existence, but instead he caught a blur of movement as Hesh swung his leg backward then forward, the toe of his boot catching John directly on his injured knee.
John screamed, throwing his head back into the chair. The pain was all encompassing, spreading up his leg to wrap around his chest and stomach, squeezing the air out of him. He gasped and leaned forward, reaching out instinctively for the raw, throbbing burn, the center of the pain. As his lungs refilled, he wanted to scream again, but he clenched his jaw shut to cut it off. A moaning whimper deep in the back of his throat finally clawed its way out, and he pushed back into the chair again, straightening out.
He wanted to curl up around the injured knee, protect it from any more of Hesh’s abuse, but he couldn’t do that and keep the leg straight-the least painful position. He was reduced to squirming and writhing in the armchair. He bent forward again, banging his forehead against the armrest as another cry of pain whimpered out of him. He realized tears were now streaking down his cheeks, and he rubbed a hand over his face to wipe them away.
Breathe, just breathe. You can do this, John. Breathe through the pain. His heart pounded in his chest, but gradually, the fireball in his knee pulled back into a more manageable, raw screaming agony.
You are in serious shit here, my friend.
“Stop crying!”
John pushed himself up slowly, feeling wrung out and sick, and was surprised to see the ‘stop crying’ comment was not directed at him, but at Tayven.
The boy was still lying limp on the bed, still pale and sickly. He was staring up at Hesh with wide eyes though, and tears were leaking out of the corners of his eyes and into his clipped hair. John saw the boy bite his lip and screw up his face, maybe in an attempt to stop, but the tears continued to flow.
Hesh opened his mouth to say something else, but John beat him to it.
“Back off, Hesh,” he growled.
Hesh spun around, raising his fist. Anger warred across the young man’s face, carving deep lines into his brow and around his mouth. The scar near his eye blanched into a stark, jagged white line. John raised his chin, maintaining eye contact and trying to look as tough and intimidating as possible confined to the armchair.
“Don’t tell me what to do, giver.”
“That’s right, Hesh. I’m the giver. You brought me here to help your brother. That’s what I’m doing. You want me to help him, you leave. Right now.”
Hesh’s face had flushed red, almost purple, and John could see the muscles in his cheeks twitching. His arm was shaking as well, like the thread of control holding back his fist was stretched almost to breaking point. Any second now, Hesh would lose the minute handle he had on his emotions and unleash his fury on John, and there would be little John could do to protect himself sitting in the chair with a screwed-up knee.
Tayven sniffed, the sound just barely audible in the dead silence of the room, but Hesh blinked in response. He held John’s gaze for another second, but John saw the red of his face pull back, the skin returning to a more normal tone. He lowered his arm slowly, but kept his hand curled into a fist.
“Fix him,” he hissed, then he spun on his heel and stomped out of the room. Thug Two had dropped John’s medical bag near the door, and Hesh stopped in front of it. He scooped down and picked it up, then hurled it at John’s head.
John caught the bag, wincing when the edge hit him in the cheek. He’d almost forgotten the collapsible stretcher was in the bottom pocket, but he was painfully reminded of it now. Hesh slammed the door shut, rattling the lamp and the dresser on which it sat, and John heaved the bag across his body to set it down on the mattress, at Tayven’s feet.
Tayven was watching him now, and he hadn’t lost the wide-eyed look of panic. He was shaking as well. With a groan, John pushed himself up out of the chair and slid over to the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress. He moved his leg again, straightening it out and wincing at the bite of pain that caused.
The water bucket was still sitting next to the bed. John looked around for the washcloth and saw it wadded up in a ball above Tayven’s head. He scooted closer to the boy, but froze when the kid flinched and tried to squirm away from him.
“Hey, it’s okay, kid-Tayven,” John said, keeping his voice low and calm. “I’m not going to hurt you. Your brother, Hesh, brought me in to help you. He said you’ve been very sick.”
Tayven continued to stare at John, but his face gradually drooped into one of sickly exhaustion as the panicked fear ran its course and oozed out of him. He had stopped crying, but his cheeks and temples were still wet where the tears had tracked back into his hair.
John leaned forward and grabbed the washcloth, then dropped it into the bucket next to him. Tayven tracked him with his eyes the entire time, wrapping his arms around his small chest. When John pressed his fingers against Tayven’s forehead and cheek, the boy tensed but didn’t cry out or try to move out of the way.
His skin was still hot, his cheeks still flushed red. John wrung out the washcloth and wiped Tayven’s face and neck, including the tear tracks. Tayven moaned and turned into the cloth, letting his eyes drift closed. John dipped the cloth in the bucket again then folded it into thirds and spread it out over the kid’s forehead. He twisted around, digging through the bag until he found the thermometer and stethoscope. The IV bag still had plenty of fluid left, and he pulled his makeshift chart out of his pocket, scanning it and glancing at his watch as he mentally calculated when he’d last given the kid an antibiotic shot. He could wait a little longer on that, he decided. The fever was the thing worrying him the most now.
“Tayven? My name is John. I’m a…” his voice faltered. A giver. That’s what he’d been about to say, but it was a lie. It was one thing to tell Hesh he was a giver, especially when Hesh was standing over him with a gun or bashing his knee in. His choice had been lie or be killed. But Tayven… The kid was innocent in all of this.
He shook his head. Maybe Tayven needed to believe he was a giver, too. There was a mental component to healing that John had experienced enough times in the past.
“I’m…” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t do it-couldn’t tell this boy he was something he was not. He watched the boy for any kind of reaction, but Tayven merely blinked at him. John held up the thermometer. “I need to take your temperature with this. It won’t hurt at all.”
Tayven jerked a little as John pressed the end of the thermometer into his ear, but he grew still quickly when nothing else happened. A second later, the thermometer beeped and John held it up, scowling at the numbers. The kid’s high temperature had remained the same since he’d arrived, and it was showing no signs of letting up. He tossed it back into the bag and then fitted the stethoscope to his ears. He rubbed the chest piece again with his palm, this time expecting the brushing sound that traveled up the eartubes.
“Don’t worry, kid,” he said as he pressed the end of the chestpiece against Tayven’s chest. He listened to the heart first, then the lungs. He still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be listening for, but the sound had definitely changed. He frowned at the wheezing, congested crackling sound around the bottom of Tayven’s ribcage.
“Dammit,” he snapped.
Tayven squirmed, looking suddenly scared and John bit his lip. He glanced down at the stethoscope then back to the boy, latching onto the idea suddenly flitting through his mind. “Hey, would you like to hear your heart?”
Tayven stopped moving, and John pulled the stethoscope off. He moved slowly, holding it out to Tayven and fitting the eartubes into the boy’s ears. “You can hear your heartbeat with this,” he explained. “Have you ever heard your heartbeat?”
Tayven watched as John moved the chestpiece and pressed it against his ribs. A second later, he blinked, jerking his eyes up to John.
“Can you hear it?”
Tayven gave a small nod, and John moved the chestpiece to his own ribs, directly over his heart. “How about that? Can you hear my heart, too?”
Tayven smiled, and John felt relief flush through him at the kid’s expression. It was followed a second later by biting guilt. He was playing doctor with Tayven’s life. He didn’t have much choice in the matter, but now the kid was looking at him with total trust.
He pulled the stethoscope away and shoved it into the bag. Fever-he had to concentrate on the fever. He pulled out the other two washcloths and dropped them into the bucket of water, but as he reached down to grab them, he winced at the sharp lance of pain that shot up his leg. He should grab the new chemical ice pack and some Ibuprofen for himself, and he still hadn’t eaten or drank anything. It would be easy to lose himself in caring for Tayven, then collapse from dehydration or hunger.
“Ibuprofen!” he said out loud. “Why didn’t I think of that sooner?” He had the sudden urge to smack himself in the forehead. “Focus, John. Use your head,” he muttered. He dug through the bag again, pulling out the different packets of medication. One of them was a syringe of Ibuprofen, and he injected roughly half of it into Tayven’s IV.
“This should help, kiddo,” he said.
Tayven was blinking again, close to falling back asleep. John downed two Ibuprofen pills and half of a water bottle, then went through the painful process of loosening the knee brace. He was about to fit the new ice pack against his knee when he glanced over at Tayven. His knee hurt like hell and was still swollen, but it wasn’t life-threatening. The kid’s fever was. With a sigh, he covered it in bandages to mitigate the ice cold now burning through the thin plastic cover and slid it under Tayven’s upper back. He then set to work on cooling the kid down, wiping his chest down and hoping the moisture evaporating off his skin would take some of the heat with it.
Tayven moaned and grabbed on to one of John’s hands.
“I know this doesn’t feel great. Just hang in there.”
Tayven’s grip relaxed a few minutes later, his hand falling to the bed as he sank back into a deep sleep. John continued to wipe him down, pausing once to inhale a powerbar. After an hour, he checked his temperature again, and almost whooped for joy at the readout. Tayven still had a fever, but it was lower than it had been for the first time since John had arrived.
It was mid-morning now, and John was exhausted. He inched his way back along the bed and slumped into the chair. It wouldn’t be that much longer until his people found him. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. If the kids he’d treated that morning were back on the street, they were bound to talk, and one of the recon team members would pick up on the chatter, then figure out they were talking about John. Tayven just had to hold on for a few more hours, and then a real doctor could step in and give him the care he needed.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
John woke up abruptly to the sound of someone coughing. He sat up in the chair, stretching his neck and back and looking around. Tayven coughed again, and John launched himself out of the chair as quickly as his busted knee would allow. He rested a hand on the boy’s chest, feeling heat burning the skin.
“Shit,” he whispered. Tayven’s fever had shot up again. John glanced at his watch and saw that he’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. He injected the rest of the Ibuprofen syringe, then switched the empty IV bag to a new one. That left one bag of saline left, and then he was out of supplies. The washcloths were still wet, but warm to the touch. John rinsed them out and began the process of wiping the kid down again.
Tayven coughed and writhed as he worked, and no prodding on John’s part could draw him out of the fitful sleep. His breathing was worse as well. John could hear the wheeze now without the need for a stethoscope. He unfolded the chart from his pocket and took meticulous notes at the change in the boy’s condition, all the time wondering if it was an exercise in futility.
By mid-afternoon, Tayven’s face had grown sallow and his breaths rattled through his chest. The circles around his eyes had grown darker as well, and the fever hung on, burying itself into the boy’s body. No amount of prodding and shaking would wake the child either. John’s headache was back, a pulsing throb directly behind his eyes that almost washed out the persistent pain in his knee. John gave Tayven as much medicine as he dared, hoping that would stem the tide of the disease ravaging him, but it felt a little too much like using a piece of chewing gum to plug a hole in the Hoover Dam.
When Tayven began coughing almost continuously, John broke out the collapsible stretcher and used it to prop the boy up, but even sitting up at an angle seemed to bring little relief. Between coughing fits, his breathing became deep and slow, and his ribs rose and sank as if every square inch of his lungs were struggling to pull in oxygen.
John had done everything he knew how to do. He flipped through the first aid manual for the seven hundredth time, looking for anything that might help him, but slammed it shut in frustration and tossed it across the room. The book slammed against the wall next to the door and slid to the ground.
“Sorry, kid,” John whispered, grabbing Tayven’s limp hand. He had never felt so completely helpless in his life.
The door flipped open, and Water Boy popped his head in.
“What’s going on?”
John sighed pinching the bridge of his nose, then looking up at the guard with resignation. “Get Hesh down here. Tell him to hurry.”
Water Boy’s eyes drifted over to Tayven and widened in surprise. He nodded once, then shut the door.
This was it. When the gang leader came, and John told him there was nothing else he could do for his brother, it was over. Hesh would finally lose it completely and do to John what he’d apparently wanted to do all along. John turned suddenly to the medical bag and dug out the scalpels, slipping two of them into his pocket. He was hurt and hungry and tired, but he would not go down without a fight.
Hesh arrived within minutes with his entourage-Ulam, Biggie, and Thugs One and Two. John pushed himself out of the chair, carefully balancing on his good leg and knowing all hell was about to break loose. Tayven’s breathing was deeper, growing ever slower.
“What?” Hesh spat out as he strode into the room, and then his eyes shifted to his brother. For a moment, the years of war and survival stripped away, and John saw a desperate, scared young man about to lose his only remaining family, but then the hardness set in, his expression turning to granite.
“I’m sorry,” John started, holding his hands out. “I’ve done everything I can but I don’t know…”
Hesh spun suddenly, lashing an arm out. He caught John on the side of the head. It wasn’t a hard hit, but John’s balance was already precarious. He swayed backward, flailing as he fell over the side of the chair and crashed to the ground. His knee exploded in agony and he screamed.
“Get him out of here.”
Through the haze of pain in his leg, John heard the order and felt hands grab him and drag him roughly from the room. Thug One and Two heaved him to his feet once they were in the corridor, holding him upright as John panted against the throb in his knee. Biggie paced around them, his face pale as he glanced between John and what was happening in Tayven’s room. Ulam stood in the door frame, almost protectively, giving Hesh a moment of privacy.
The moment came quietly, what was happening in the room reflected in the corridor when Ulam flinched and Biggie froze. The thugs holding on to John’s arms tightened their grips. There was no scream from inside, no cry of pain or wail of grief from Hesh. Just silence-a vacuum after the rattling breaths and desperate coughs from before. John felt a deep pain rip across his chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs.
He’d failed. He’d claimed to be a giver to save himself, and now a child was dead. The throbbing in his knee shifted to his head and he sagged into the guards’ grip. He had tried everything he knew how to do, and he could tell himself that over and over again for the rest of his life, but it hadn’t been enough.
Ulam backpedaled out of the room, and Hesh strode into the corridor. John tensed, waiting for the gang leader to fly into a rage.
“Biggie, guard Tayven’s room. Make sure no one goes in.” Hesh’s voice was eerily calm. Biggie jerked, scrambling to obey and looking terrified. Hesh pointed to John next but didn’t look at him. “Bring him to the office.”
He strode forward, leading the way. Thugs One and Two glanced at each other, then Ulam, who shrugged back. They followed Hesh, moving too fast for John’s hobbling gait. John hopped and dragged his injured leg as best he could, gritting his teeth against the urge to cry out. He felt the weight of the two scalpels in his pockets and wished he’d thought of grabbing more, but he couldn’t reach them anyway, not with the thugs holding his arms. Besides that, with his gimpy leg, he wouldn’t get very far running away.
Hesh’s office looked the same as it had the first night, except that the table full of papers had been shoved against a wall. Hesh stood near an open, glass-less window, his back to them as the thugs dragged John to the middle of the room. Behind him, Ulam came in and shut the door.
“Hesh,” John started, then stopped. What the hell was he supposed to say to the guy? Sorry your little brother’s dead? Sorry I’m not the giver I claimed to be?
Hesh turned slowly, his face white. “Do you know what this room is?”
John frowned at the unexpected question and shook his head.
“My father’s office. He worked here every day for sixteen years. I used to stop in and visit when I was a kid, and he’d take me down to the sweets shop on the first floor.”
“I’m sorry about your family.”
“He was killed in a bomb blast when the civil war hit the city, and then a few months later, my mother was shot in the gut. She didn’t die right away. She lived for four days, but she knew she was dying. Tayven was tiny then, barely able to walk. She begged me to take care of him, look out for him.”
The muscles in face rippled as he fought to keep his composure, and then he looked up at John, meeting his gaze. “I promised her I would protect him. I promised.” His face was gaining color again, flushing a dark red, bordering on purple. The thin scar along his temple and around his eyes was a stark white line. He held up a shaking finger, pointing at John.
“I promised my mother I would take care of my brother. The last thing I ever said to her.”
Thug One tightened his grip, but Thug Two had almost let go and John let his arm drop a little closer to his side. His hand was inches away from the scalpels in the pocket, and his mind raced at his options. If he moved fast enough, maybe he could take our one of the thugs, but the others would be on him in seconds.
“My brother is dead,” Hesh whispered, and now his whole body was shaking. “Dead. ”
John shook his head, the guilt in his chest spreading like ice water over his skin. “I’m sorry-”
Hesh launched himself at John, kicking out a leg and planting a foot in his stomach. John felt the hands on his arms scratch his skin as he was ripped from their grasp, and then he slammed into the wall. Light flashed across his vision as his head connected, and then he was lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling in shock, his entire body numb.
“You killed him,” Hesh roared. He grabbed John by the t-shirt and threw him to the other side of the room. John rolled, moaning when his shoulder slammed into the opposite wall.
“You will pay for his death.”
The pain slammed into him then, a throbbing bruise in his stomach from Hesh’s initial kick, and static bursts along the nerves in his back and head where’d he hit the wall. Spots danced across his vision and he sucked in a deep breath, feeling a twinge of agony in his lower ribs. His knee hurt, but it was an old familiar ache compared to the new pain ripping through him now.
Hesh picked him up again, but this time he threw him against the wall next to the window, pinning him by the throat. John choked, flailing as blood and oxygen was suddenly cut off.
“I will watch every last breath you take, and then I will throw your body out into the street, to be ripped apart by dogs.”
“Hesh,” John rasped. He banged his fists against the gang leader’s arm to no avail. His head throbbed like he was hanging upside down and all the blood was rushing to his brain, but he knew it was the opposite, that Hesh’s grip was stopping the blood flow.
He choked, and Hesh pressed harder against his throat in response. Just as dark spots began to fill his vision, he felt the wall against his back shake, then the concussive blast of a nearby explosion. Ulam and the thugs ran out of the room, and Hesh spun around in confusion.
John dropped to the ground, coughing and choking and clawing at the ground as he tried to pull in desperately needed oxygen. There were shouts out in the hallway, then stampeding boots, then another, closer explosion.
Now! John thought, catching a glimpse of Hesh running out of the office. He heaved himself up to one knee, then grabbed onto the window sill. There was only one door, now open and full of panicked members of Hesh’s gang as they ran back and forth, shouting and screaming.
Hide. He had to hide. There were no closets or other exits besides the window. He heaved his weight up and over the sill before he could change his mind, hoping there would be a ledge or something that he could hold onto. His fingers tightened on the edge as his body swung out into open air, but he was still gasping for air. He pressed his head against the smooth brick wall, scrambling for a foothold almost a hundred feet above street level.
Nothing. He was hanging out of a fifth-story window with one bad leg in a splint and no traction for the other one. His fingers tingled, growing numb as he tightened his grip on the window’s edge.
“Where did he go?” Hesh’s voice roared above him. “I’m gonna kill him!”
Familiar gunfire sounded in the hallway above him and far below in the streets. P90s. John closed his eyes, willing his people to reach him soon. He dragged in another heaving breath, hearing the air wheeze past his raw throat. Footsteps pounded out of the room, then a door slammed. A moment of silence passed before wood cracked and the door crashed open.
“Nothing,” a voice called out.
Ronon.
“Ronon,” John yelled, except that his voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. He drew in a deep breath. “Ronon!”
A face suddenly appeared above him, dreadlocks falling around his shoulders.
“Sheppard!” Ronon’s eyes went wide, and he scrambled to grab John’s arms, dragging his dead weight up and back into the room. They collapsed into a pile, but John was too exhausted and in too much pain to extract himself from the tangle of limbs.
“I got Sheppard,” he roared into a radio.
John flinched, then moaned, and a moment later he felt hands rolling him onto his back and straightening out his arms and legs.
“Hey, buddy,” Ronon said, a grin splitting across his face despite the worry still present in his eyes.
John coughed, too spent to say anything. He was still having a hard time breathing, like his throat was starting to swell shut. Ronon’s smile fell as he took in John’s condition, and his face flushed with anger. “Sorry it took us so long,” he said.
John reached up, patting one of his arms. Within minutes, he saw the black boots and cargo pants of his Marines march into the room, and then they were shifting him to a stretcher, hooking up an IV, slapping an oxygen mask over his face. He managed to hold onto consciousness for the journey down the stairs and out into the street, finally letting go as he was loaded onto a waiting jumper and whisked home.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
John woke up to a near painlessness and the quiet murmur of voices hovering around him. He blinked, and saw a man in scrubs snipping his dirty clothes away-a former Army medic and now a nurse on Atlantis. Carson was near his injured knee, talking to another doctor and lightly poking the swollen tissue. Another nurse with short brown hair patted his arm, and he smiled back at her, feeling a little sloppy and loose, like he just might slide off the bed into a puddle on the floor.
“Doctor Beckett,” she called out.
Carson moved to the head of the bed, looking a little fuzzy. John blinked, trying to keep it together. The bed or the floor-or maybe just him-were rolling gently, and he could almost hear the ocean waves a few hundred feet beneath him.
“John, how are you doing?”
He smiled at Carson’s question, then stopped, suddenly feeling like a grin was an inappropriate reaction. How was he feeling? He felt… floaty, fuzzy, kind of numb. Carson patted his shoulder.
“Rhetorical question. Don’t try to talk-your larynx is badly bruised.”
John blinked again, feeling a slight throbbing pressure along his windpipe, now that Carson mentioned it. His knee was ice cold and he shivered. The doctor said something else, and people moved around him. The last of his clothing was stripped away, taking with it the stench of sweat and dirt and illness. Of Tayven.
He frowned, closing his eyes. Tayven. An image of the boy lying on the bed flashed through his mind, the memory all jagged edges and hammer blows dispelling the fog around him. The numbness receded a little further, and pain buzzed through his body, like someone turning the volume up on a radio. A blanket was tucked in around him and someone-Carson maybe?-urged him to rest, assuring him that he’d feel better later.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The drugged stupor didn’t last, but John wasn’t sure he wanted the numbing feeling again. He lay in the darkened infirmary, staring at the shadows playing against the walls on the other side of the room. His knee ached, feeling hot and swollen despite the ice pack and the visible evidence that it was almost back to normal size. The nurses had come by twice already, asking if he needed anything for the pain or to help him sleep, but he’d been adamant in his refusal.
When he heard footsteps approaching, he assumed it was another nurse, and he wasn’t sure he could hold out much longer against the pain if she asked again. His knee hurt like hell without question, and his stomach was badly bruised and cramping every time he squirmed just a little bit. The infirmary staff had sworn his ribs weren’t broken-not even cracked-but it didn’t feel like that at the moment. Every twinge was a stabbing pain through his side.
His throat was the worst-it hurt to breathe, to talk, to swallow, to turn his head in any direction. The accumulated exhaustion of the last few days had taken root in his skull, pulsing in agony with every heartbeat.
“You’re not going to get much rest if you don’t take something for the pain,” Carson said, padding into the curtained area around his bed. “And without rest, you won’t heal.”
John frowned, feeling a bruise on his cheekbone pull with the motion. One more thing to add to the list.
“Are you thirsty at all? Can I get you some water?”
Why the hell not? He gave Carson a quick nod, wincing at the movement. He took the glass from the doctor a minute later, scowling at the ache in his arm as he tightened his grip on the cup. He heard Carson sigh, but he sipped slowly, letting the water trickle down the back of his throat. It was slightly less painful that way.
Carson pulled up a chair and planted himself next to him, waiting. John took another slow sip of water, but by then his hand was starting to shake and he didn’t hide his relief when the doctor took the glass from him. He scrunched back in the bed, hissing in pain. Carson was watching him, but John refused to look over. The movement hurt his neck.
Carson sighed. “The swelling in your knee is going down nicely, and there’s no indication of blood vessel or nerve damage. The ligaments, on the other hand…”
His voice trailed off, but John was in no mood for a conversation. He would worry about his knee later.
“I know you’re tired, but if you’re feeling up to it, I can give you the latest update on Lieutenant Glazner’s condition.”
That got John’s attention. He jerked, lifting his head up a little then dropping it with a groan as pain ignited down his neck and back and across his chest and stomach. Damn. He’d forgotten all about Glazner-and Stackhouse’s team-and he felt his cheeks burn in anger and regret.
“How…?” he croaked out, his voice nearly nonexistent.
Carson rubbed a hand over his face. “He’s alive, barely. The injuries were severe, though. I’m afraid his military career is over.”
“Will he walk?”
“Aye, most likely-with a lot of physical therapy. It was close, though. Another millimeter or two over and…” He shook his head, not finishing the sentence. “I was sorry to hear about Paulsen. He was a good man.”
“Never…saw it…coming,” John whispered. “Stackhouse?”
“They found him and his team a few hours after you were taken. They’re all fine-a little roughed up but nothing they won’t heal from after a few days. Some gang of boys was holding them captive, trying to figure out who they were and what to do with them.”
They sat in silence for a minute, and then Carson pulled out a crinkled paper and held it up in the dim light over John’s bed. “Found this in your pocket.”
John’s gaze slid to the paper, and the pain in his body crested. He closed his eyes, fighting back the onslaught.
A warm hand pressed against his arm. “These vitals were bad. There was nothing you could have done to help. I’m not even sure I could have helped with a fully stocked infirmary.”
“He was… little kid,” John choked out.
“Oh, dear Lord.”
He heard Carson lean forward, the chair creaking. A black hole of guilt opened up in John’s chest, and he felt himself sliding into it. He rubbed at the pounding headache behind his eyes.
“He was sick. His brother… wanted me… cure him.”
“John, look at me.”
He ignored the doctor, sensing more than seeing him stand and grab the railing.
“Annalise.”
John shifted his gaze over to Carson and saw the doctor staring off across the infirmary, his attention focused inward. “What?”
“Annalise-she was the first patient I ever lost. I was barely out of med school, still a new resident. I thought she was old at the time, but now… Doesn’t seem like she was very old at all.”
“What happened?”
Carson sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Came in complaining of indigestion. Turned out she was having a massive heart attack. We worked on her for hours but…”
His voice trailed off and he shook himself, drawing his attention back to John. John looked away, feeling the guilt and grief gnawing at him, the pain growing worse than any physical injury he had accrued over the last couple of days.
“I know there’s not a whole lot I can say right now that will make you feel any better, but I’ve been there, son,” Carson said, breaking the heavy silence. “I know what it feels like to lose a patient, and when it’s a child… That is infinitely harder to deal with.”
He blew out a breath. John glanced at him quickly and saw the doctor’s eyes lose focus again. He imagined a flood of memories rushing through his friend’s mind, and he jerked his gaze away, focusing on the dark shadows across the room.
“Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, it’s not enough. It hurts, but with time, it gets… easier.”
“Could never be… doctor,” John rasped out, but the black hole around him had shrunk a little as he realized this was one of the few times when someone else did understand exactly what he was feeling, exactly what he had gone through on that planet caring for Tayven.
“And I could never be the military commander of Atlantis,” Carson said, smiling slightly. “You’re in pain, John. Let me help.”
John nodded, not sure if he meant the pain of his injuries or the pain of losing a patient. Maybe he meant both. Carson pulled out a syringe and injected it, and John sighed at the relief spreading through him. He squirmed again as his eyes grew heavy.
“Rest, and if you want to talk about what happened when you’re feeling a little better, I’ll be here.”
The pain had abated enough that John rolled his head toward the doctor without a wince and gave him a short nod, a small ember of hope flaring in his chest at his friend’s words. The experience would leave scars, like all experiences, but he would heal enough to bear them.
“I know, Doc,” he mumbled. “Thanks.”
END