Fic- No Matter Where You Go, There You Are (1/2)
Title: No Matter Where You Go, There You Are
Word Count: 10,000-
Rating: T
Genre: Gen
Spoilers/Warnings: Set Post EATG
Summary: John decides that Ronon and Teyla need to see the USA. Their road trip makes an unexpected detour. Whole team plus one.
Written for coolbreeze1 for the sheppard_hc Summer Exchange.
“Easy on the gas, big guy.”
Ronon glanced down at the dial on the dashboard in front of him and frowned. “McKay said you were allowed to drive five miles an hour over the limit. It was a rule.”
“Yeah, sorta. An unwritten one. But in weather like this you need to take it down a notch- or ten.” John squirmed a little uncomfortably in the passenger seat and tugged at his seatbelt.
Slush clattered loudly on the big SUV’s undercarriage as fat, wet flakes splatted against the windshield. Ronon grunted but eased off on the gas and turned the wipers up a little faster.
“Is traction control on?”
“Yes.”
“Four wheel drive-?”
“Yes! Thought you were supposed to be sleeping?”
John’s foot was twitching in the passenger well in front of him. “Afraid it’ll be a nap I don’t wake up from, Ronon, if you don’t -” His foot stamped on the phantom brake in front of him again.
“It’s a little snow, John. You’ve flown the jumper through way worse.”
“Yeah, well, where we fly we’re pretty much the only ones on the road.” An eighteen-wheeler barreled past them, kicking up a spray of exhaust-darkened slush against the side of the SUV and rocking the vehicle with the gale of its wake.
John sighed and jabbed a finger at the view through the smeary windshield. “No semis in space! The 90 is one of the most heavily traveled roads in the country, even in craptastic weather like this.”
Ronon rolled his eyes and huffed a little but let up on the gas some more. Although reluctant to admit it, he was a little rattled by the road conditions. He’d been driving, more off than on, since their first return to Earth. They’d had vehicles more comparable to motorcycles on Sateda - two wheels, gears and a motor-and he’d adapted to the enclosed automatic transmissions of modern Earth cars with relative ease. He’d even driven in snow- it was on the ground almost year round in some parts of Colorado- but the heavy traffic and increasingly heavier snowfall was enough to have him straightening in his seat and gripping the wheel a little tighter.
The three of them had been taking turns driving as they made their way across America. It had been John’s idea. Ronon had expressed surprise that they wouldn’t be flying but John had just shook his head and told them the “road trip” was something not to be missed.
They could’ve missed the giant ball of twine in Kansas - in fact, they could’ve missed a great swath of the middle of the country. Sateda had had vast plains covered in fields of food grains and farmland, but no one ever chose to travel through them for entertainment.
But, Teyla had enjoyed it, and she kept them entertained with stories of her youth on Athos, helping her father bring in the harvest with the rest of the community. And John had stared out at the golden stalks with a placid smile on his face. It had eased some of the lines around his eyes that had deepened with every meeting back at the SGC.
This was another thing that Earth and Sateda had in common: bureaucracy. They called it red tape here for reasons that had never been explained to him but it meant the same thing. Layers of control, jobs seemingly created just to employ someone higher up’s friend or family member. Even in the military-- sometimes more so.
There’d been a lot of talking and not much doing where it came to decision-making about Atlantis. And it seemed like most of those working their jaws had no business making decisions that affected the fates of two galaxies.
So, when John had decided he’d had enough - McKay said it was actually more a forceful recommendation by General O’Neill - they’d piled into this rented truck and headed out to ‘see America.’ McKay had backed out, muttering about getting carsick and finally having a chance to run high-level diagnostics without threat of Wraith attack; Ronon had initially breathed a sigh of relief at not being trapped in a vehicle smaller than a jumper for weeks on end with the physicist. While he would take the admission to his grave, after the prolonged absence, he had to admit he missed having McKay around. At times.
This would not be one of those times. Ronon’s nerves were already on edge with the increasingly bad weather. Fall in the Midwest had been nothing more than fallow fields and roadside stands selling pumpkins and dead cornstalks bunched together in sheaves. John had said people decorated their homes with them but, when pressed, couldn’t really explain why. As the drive took them further north the woods they passed were painted in red and gold and the truck was rimed with frost when they left their motel rooms on their usual early morning starts.
Now, an hour or so from their destination, an early snowstorm was on them. The pines that ran along the highway were heavy with snow cover. A quickening wind was blowing clumps of snow from the branches, mixing it in to the still falling flakes. Late afternoon seemed to have completely skipped dusk; the feeble setting sun’s rays were no match for the gray clouds overhead and the sky was almost completely dark. No starlight broke through, and even though the constellations of Earth were alien to him, the blank blackness above was unsettling.
He was considering that it might be wisest to admit his anxiety and let John take over driving when the long, angry blat of a truck horn filled the truck. Ronon darted a glance at the snow-covered road in front of him and confirmed he was within his lane but he moved further right, allowing a semi to blow past them at high speed. The rumble of uneven pavement under the SUV’s tires told him he was too far over and he quickly centered the vehicle back in his lane, muttering curses in Satedan and English, and finishing with a particularly nasty Czech one he’d picked up from Zelenka.
“Perhaps we should consider pulling over for the night.”
Ronon glanced in the rearview and saw that the semi’s horn blast had awakened Teyla who had been napping in the back. She rubbed her fingers over one eye then subtly wiped at moisture that had gathered on her cheek.
John looked over his seat and quirked a smile at her. “Sorry for the rude awakening, Sleeping Beauty. Long haul truckers don’t tend to have the best of manners when they’re on a deadline.”
“Even in weather such as this?”
“Especially in weather such as this.”
Ronon saw Teyla’s eyes meet his in the mirror. Her gaze narrowed as she took in his white-knuckled grip on the wheel. “And my suggestion to stop for the night?”
John sighed and sat back in his seat. “Is a good one, if there were some place for us to stop. Nearest rest area is still almost fifty miles away, on the outskirts of Buffalo. No place to stop on the Thruway where we don’t get mowed down by a snowplow. And speaking of, I wonder where the hell the plows are?”
“You said weather like this is very early for this time of year. Perhaps they were caught unprepared?”
“Looks like bureaucracy and budget cuts aren’t limited to the SGC,” John muttered. He cast a quick look at the speedometer and what he saw seemed to calm him some because he closed his eyes and settled back against the headrest. “You got this, Big Guy. Slow and steady wins the race.”
“No it doesn’t,” Ronon retorted. “Fast and fearless does.”
“Remind me to tell you the story about the tortoise and the hare sometime, Ronon,” was the laconic reply.
“Tortoise and hare?”
“You probably know them better as turtle and bunny. But it doesn’t read the same that way. Just keep the pedal off the metal and we’ll be in Buffalo just in time to get snowed in completely.”
“Will we still get to see the Falls you spoke about?” Teyla asked.
“Oh, sure. They know a little something about snow in Buffalo. It’ll probably be business as usual there… unless it winds up turning into a full on blizzard. There was this storm in 1977…”
Ronon kept his eyes flicking back and forth between the dashboard readings and peering through the windshield at the flakes that filled his field of vision. The wipers beat a slow and steady cadence behind John’s story of the storm that paralyzed the eastern portion of the US back before his parents had even met on Sateda.
The way the snowflakes seemed to rush at the windshield reminded Ronon of the way stars looked through the observation windows of the Ancient ships. They were hypnotic. Between that and the measured thunk-thwap of the wipers he felt his eyes glazing over. The SUV was warm, the heater sucking the air desert-dry. He cracked his window and breathed in the crisp, moist air that tumbled over the open edge.
Teyla pulled the zipper of her fleece jacket up but she smiled as the cool air brushed the hair from her forehead. John leaned over to the climate control button and bumped the heat up a notch for the back.
Traffic had thinned to the point that they were alone on the highway - running in the other direction too. Ronon hadn’t seen a set of headlights through the trees between the two roads in several minutes.
Eventually, a semi came rumbling up the left lane, its lights filling the rearview mirror. Ronon flipped the mirror so the lights darkened and moved over a little to allow the roaring beast safer passage.
The truck rolled up along side him, a green cab with a happy, smiling red fruit proclaiming New York State’s yummiest apples were on board. As the trailer was just clearing them the final set of wheels caught in the thick snow cover. The massive silver box swung out as the trailer fishtailed, catching the front corner of the SUV and knocking it hard to the right.
Ronon fought with the wheel as the tires bogged down where snow had drifted into deeper piles along the roadside. He braked, pulled hard to the left, felt the rear of the SUV swing out right.
John shouted, “Steer into it! Steer left!” But Ronon’s initial instinct was to correct the swing by yanking the wheel to the right. It was too late. There was a roar as the back wheels spun in the snowdrift then the sickening feeling of the truck tipping over.
He heard Teyla cry out as the passenger side hit the incline as it fell off the shoulder. There was a loud metallic crunching as the truck continued its roll over onto the roof and the clatter of things falling - takeout bags, books, water bottles. The truck slid on its roof further, with the shriek of rending metal, before coming to a rest.
Like a turtle on its back, the vehicle rocked side to side. Struts and seams groaned. Then there was silence save for the hiss of snow hitting the undercarriage and the tick of the engine cooling.
In the first few seconds of shaky breaths and pounding heart, Ronon’s eyes scrambled to fix on a set point to orient himself. It dawned on him, slowly, that something hot and wet was spreading through the thigh of his jeans. With a trembling hand he reached down, touched it, hissed as a drop of something hot hit the back of his thumb. He looked up, which was down, and as his eyes adjusted he saw Sheppard’s travel coffee mug, still stuck in the middle console, dripping hot coffee from the opening.
Sheppard. Teyla.
He shook off the last of his daze, recognized within that initial clarity that he was still strapped in by his belt and apparently unhurt. He heard Teyla moan from the back seat, looked in the rearview to see she was still in her seat behind him. She met his eyes in the mirror, nodded as she gently moved a hand to rub at her neck.
He saw the glint of her eyes go round as she looked up front.
John was unconscious. Slumped and hanging from his seat and shoulder belt. A dark stain coated the spider web-cracked window next to his head.
Ronon reached out a hand to shake him- his fingertips were barely brushing the fleece pullover when they stilled. Wary of spinal injury, Ronon tried waking him. “Sheppard!”
Teyla’s cry joined his. Ronon made himself calm, watched in the dim for signs of life with breath held.
“Ronon! Is he--?”
There. John’s chest was still rising and falling. But too slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s still alive.”
Reaching for his own seat belt buckle he stole another glance in the mirror. “Can you move?”
Teyla nodded, moved one arm stiffly as she wrestled with her own buckle.
“You all right?”
She grimaced as she struggled to press the button. “I believe I may have injured my shoulder, but I am otherwise unharmed.” She smiled grimly at him in the mirror. “I am thankful now for my decision to put the belt on when the weather turned bad.”
Guilt stabbed at him. “I shouldn’t have been driving.” Bracing one hand on the roof of the truck he finally managed to press the button with the other. The belt disengaged, he crawled his way down the dash onto the ceiling.
His hand fumbled in the dark at the door for the controls. After a few almost panicked passes of his hand over unfamiliar metal and plastic he reached out, planted one hand on cold glass. Then he forced his fingers slowly up, creeping until he felt the armrest and his fingers clicked the locks open. The handle was another agonizing slow search. He hooked a finger under the cool metal and pulled. The overhead light came on, glowed warmly yellow from near his feet. It cast odd shadows, lending an added surrealism to the upended compartment.
Now with the light he reached up and laid a hand on John’s neck, careful to barely place two fingers over his carotid. The pulse under it was strong and slow. When he pulled his hand away it was red.
Teyla had freed herself and she eased her head and shoulders through the space between the two seats. She noticed the blood. “Is it yours or--?”
“Head wound, I think. Looks like he hit the window.”
“We need help. John’s phone?”
Ronon nodded, cursing the shock that muddied his thoughts. The phone was a lifeline. He remembered seeing John putting it in the pocket of his door.
“Yeah, I think I know where it is.”
He planted his booted feet on his door and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. He reared his knees back, and fumbled for leverage in his awkward position. He pushed again, then began to kick wildly, beating his boots on the door, growling out his frustration.
“Ronon!”
“What?”
The truck rocked on its back. Metal groaned and screeched. A thin rivulet of silver ran from one corner of the windshield as a crack grew and wended its way to the other side of the frame.
“We do not know where the vehicle came to rest, Ronon,” Teyla replied evenly, her tone speaking of forced calmness. “When it overturned the frame became compressed. The door will not likely open and your efforts could send us further down the embankment.”
Squatting on the roof, the seats and gearbox pressing down over his head, Ronon battled a sudden rush of claustrophobia. He pulled his arms in around his knees, took in some centering breaths. The vehicle was already growing colder with the heat off and his exhales were a silver mist.
“The phone. It was in Sheppard’s door. Can you reach it?”
Teyla’s only answer was to drop into place next to him on the ceiling, her left arm held close to her body. She crabbed her way over to the passenger side of the rear compartment, the vehicle rocking even with her slow and deliberate approach. Her lithe form was barely able to fit in the space between the headrest and the door.
She reached through, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, and ran her hand between John’s body and the door. Straining, stretching her arm as far as it would go, she finally pulled back with a sigh. “I cannot feel it. We need to explore other options.” She held her hand up. It was coated with blood.
The blood was warm on her hand but the cold was already making it feel tacky. She rubbed it on the back of the seat, leaving a dark smear on the gray leather.
She knew from experience that head wounds bled terribly. But until they could actually see what was wrong with John, they had no way of knowing if that’s where it was all coming from. She returned her hand to the window, felt the impression in the glass where his head had impacted. The glass had fragmented into tiny blue diamonds, but they stayed meshed together, still in the frame. She ran her hand up the door panel, slowly, cautiously, looking for jagged metal or anything else that could account for the blood loss.
Satisfied, she sat back on her heels. “The door and window seem to be intact. I do not feel anything has impaled or cut him.”
“First good news,” Ronon grunted in reply. He eyed the space between the headrests, even tried passing both arms between, but his outsized frame would never fit. “I need to get out- get help.”
“Perhaps we can find something to break a window?”
“I’ll use my fists if I have to.”
She shook her head. “This glass is not easily shattered. We need something with a sharp point--”
Before she could finish her sentence, Ronon had a ten-inch long knife poised with its point on the driver’s window. With a growl he pounded the hilt of the blade with the heel of his palm. A tiny hole formed, cracks trailing from it in all directions.
Knowing her teammate’s stubbornness and his oftentimes short fuse, without a word she passed him up a long woolen scarf she’d worn at their last rest stop.
Ronon wound the fabric around his hand, wrapping it tightly before striking the window over the weak spot. It took several hits and he had to wait through the rocking of the truck each time, waiting for it to still before landing another punch. When a sizable hole had been created he began pulling chunks of shattered glass from the frame.
Cold wind and snow billowed in as he cleared the last of the glass. After a quick glance back at John’s pale form, Ronon shoved his head and arm through the opening, groaned as he squeezed his other arm though and pushed off hard.
Teyla’s breath caught as the truck rocked hard and slid sideways with another metallic groan. Ronon’s hand shot through and grabbed the window frame. His knuckles whitened while Teyla remained still as a child hiding from the Wraith.
He stuck his head in, his face as pale as the hand that gripped the frame. “You need to move over,” he said quietly. “More weight on that side.”
With the shortest of nods in acknowledgment, she inched her way to what had been the passenger side and crouched down below John’s hanging form, as small as she could to center her gravity.
Ronon released his grip, one finger at a time. When the truck stayed put he met her gaze. “The incline continues but the grade’s not too steep. If you don’t move around too much,,,”
“I will keep watch over John. Go.”
Ronon whirled about and was lost in snow-filled darkness.
Teyla was just tucking in the blanket she’d used for her nap in the back seat over John when he began to stir. His one blinked open and stared down at her dazedly before whispering, “What-- ?”
“--You are okay, John. Just try not to move. Ronon is bringing help.”
“You?”
“I am fine,” she assured him with a smile. “And you will be fine soon.”
“Where are you?”
She went colder than the winter chill. “Can… can you not see me, John?”
“Yeah - but. Why are you…?” He reached a hand down and brushed her hair. “Where are you?”
“You are just disoriented. There was an accident, and we turned over.”
“Jumper?”
Her pulse quickened with his continued confusion. “No, John. The SUV. We were in an accident.”
“Ronon?”
“Is getting help. He is not hurt.”
“Rodney?”
She shook her head, chanced reaching up her own hand to rest on his chest. His breathing had quickened but the timing was uneven. She ran her fingers over the seatbelt; it was cutting into his neck and sternum. Constricting his breathing.
“Rodney was not with us. Please relax, John. You must remain calm. Ronon is bringing help.” And maybe if she said it enough times it would become true.
Before she could stop him he was lifting his head from the window. The right side of his head was gory with blood. It smeared over his ear, his chin and dripped down his neck.
“HUD’s not working,” he slurred as he lifted his hand to the dash in front of him. “We take fire? McKay?”
She rose from her crouch, pressed both hands on his shoulders and pushed him back in his seat. His one eye was dancing crazily about the compartment, the other closed with clotted blood. “John,” she said firmly, trying to catch his gaze and pin it down. “We are not in the jumper, we are in an SUV, on Earth. Rodney is not here, and Ronon is bringing help. But you must remain still.”
As if on cue, the groan of settling metal echoed around them. The truck moved several inches, the snowpack squeaking as they slid over it.
She saw John’s hand drop to his waist, begin fumbling at his hip. His fingers caught in the seatbelt and he struggled weakly to free them. “Gun. Where’s my …”
“John, you have no need for a gun. We are safe.” As he continued to scrabble she grabbed his fingers and stilled them, then took his hand fully in hers and squeezed gently. Ran the pad of her thumb over his knuckles. He quieted, closed his eye and gave a short nod. He went limp once more, the weight of his body suspended by the mesh fabric belt. Soon the only sound in the compartment was his harsh breathing over the tick of the undercarriage still cooling in the snowfall. The world outside was a black void; the remaining windows reflected back the inside of the truck in the dome light. That shut off seconds later and she was left in pitch darkness, still clinging to John’s hand.
Long hours spent hiding in the dark were nothing new to Teyla. She’d hidden in caves, root cellars and under fallen logs. Crammed in with others or utterly alone. With the tickle of insects on her neck, in her hair. Rocks cutting into her knees. Through it all she’d learned to remain completely still and silent, waiting for the sounds of the cullings to pass.
She couldn’t sit without releasing John’s hand- something she was afraid to do, superstitious foolishness or not. So she remained crouched on her heels, her calves cramping with the strain. She watched snowflakes falling, blowing in through the broken window. They drifted into piles, danced where breezes caught them. Melted when they landed on her.
They were both soon shaking with cold. She’d found the scarf Ronon had abandoned and wrapped it around John’s neck, tucked it into the collar of his fleece hoodie.
Time was measured with his slow, ragged breaths. She’d seen lights passing by, up where the highway would be, had heard the sound of engines passing by, the spattering of snow churned up by tires. But no help came.
Brief, macabre scenarios darkened her thoughts. Ronon falling as he climbed the embankment. Being struck by a vehicle he’d tried to wave down. Somehow getting turned around in the storm and wandering through the woods. Falling to his knees, succumbing to the cold.
The sound of another car passing by almost had her choking out a laugh. Ronon getting lost twenty feet from the road could not be more improbable. But any trace of humor was wiped away as she counted through a hundred more breaths and still no help came.
By her accounting, almost an hour had passed. She had no idea what had gone wrong, and was readying to leave the truck and go for help herself when she saw a flash of red.
Up the embankment, bursts of red light pierced the darkness, lit up the trees, reflected off the snow.
But Ronon had left his blaster at the SGC. She remembered the argument vividly. “You don’t need your light saber, Chewie. You’ve got a lead foot- you wanna try explaining your energy blaster to a Trooper when he pulls you over?”
She was still staring at the strobing light when a second light, yellow-white and strong, came bobbing down the embankment towards the car.
It grew brighter as it approached, came through the shattered passenger window. John’s face glowed pale white under its beam.
Something knocked, loudly, on the window near her head and she gasped. Moved back instinctually. The truck rocked and she heard a voice yell, “Hold on! Don’t move!”
The beam lowered and she saw a tall form, dark against the darker night. He lifted the beam and held it under his face. The light cast odd shadows but she could see he was clean-shaven with a strong jaw. He put a gloved hand on the undercarriage of the truck and stopped the sway.
He moved in closer and swept his gaze around the inside compartment. The window muffled his words, but she heard, “Trooper Haskins, ma’am. Help is on the way.” She saw him turn his chin to his shoulder, say something she couldn’t hear. Then he turned his attention back to her.
One hand gripping tightly on the undercarriage, the Trooper pointed at her. “You need to move to the other side of the truck.”
“But the weight -“
“I’ve got the truck, ma’am. It’s not going anywhere. But I need to break this window.”
She scrabbled her way backwards and raised a sleeve-covered arm to protect her face.
She heard the sound of something heavy hitting the window and the crack of glass. Several more strikes and cold wind drafted in, cutting straight through the two open windows. She lowered her arm in time to see him clearing the remaining glass from the frame with the flashlight handle.
He poked his head in the open window and scanned her up and down. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“I am fine. But John -“
The Trooper nodded and looked up at John. “We’ve got a rescue team coming. Just be a few minutes. Has he regained consciousness at all?”
“For a few minutes, but he was confused. He has lost a lot of blood.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Haskins sighed. The sound of multiple sirens dopplered closer and he smiled. “But that’s the cavalry. We’ll have you outa there in no time. Just sit tight.”
As promised, men in heavy coats, bright with reflector tape were soon teeming down the embankment. They carried tools and ropes and soon had the truck tied down and secured.
One passed a heavy quilted blanket through the empty window frame to her. “You need to put this over you. We’re getting the door open.”
“But the frame-“
With a grin he showed her the massive piece of heavy equipment he carried. “Cut through it like butter, ma’am. You need to let go of his hand now and cover the two of you up.”
She looked up dazedly to see she was still holding John’s hand in hers.
Ronon paced on the side of the road. He’d refused offers of medical assistance and growled at a helpful EMT when she tried to give him a blanket. Every sinew in his body was poised to take off down the embankment and aid in the rescue effort, Troopers with guns or not. But as he heard the whine of metal slicing metal and saw the blue-white sparks arcing through the trees, saw the team of men hauling stretchers and equipment, he realized he’d just be in the way.
The road was filled with cars and trucks of all shapes and sizes, each with their own strobing red, yellow and blue lights.
He’d made it to the road and waited for someone to come by to flag down for help. When a lone sedan came barreling down the highway he’d stepped out, waved his arms for their attention. But the car drove on by without pause. Two more trucks passed by and his attempts were still ignored.
When the next car came by he stepped out into the road, willing at that point to take a hit if it meant it might stop. The headlights blinded him as it approached. He threw his hands in the air and yelled for help. But the car swerved at the last possible moment; he caught sight of an older female driver, her mouth an ‘oh’ of fear and surprise, as she righted the car and drove off out of sight.
Desperate, he took to the trees at the side of the road and began hacking at a thick branch, his plan to block the road if need be.
So intent on his task, he almost missed the nearly silent approach of another vehicle. He whirled about to get a face full of bright, hot light. He flung his hand up to shield his eyes as flashing red joined the spotlight.
Haskins, the Trooper initially on the scene, walked up to where he paced.
“What’s going on with my friends?”
The Trooper pulled his hat off and wiped a hand over a buzzed-blonde head. “The lady in the back- ?”
“Teyla.”
“She’s okay. They already have her out but they’re having a little difficulty getting her to clear the scene.”
Ronon nodded. “Sounds about right. And Sheppard?”
“That the guy in the front passenger seat? He’s… medics say he’s not doing too good. But they’re taking care of him.”
“All those people who drove by…” Ronon felt his hands ball into fists. “Why wouldn’t any of them stop?”
Haskins shook his head ruefully. “We got two maximum-security prisons within a twenty-mile radius of this location. Everybody knows not to pull over for nobody. We got calls about a man on the highway - hitchhiking’s illegal but in this economy, we been seeing it more often. Wasn’t until we got a call from a lady claiming she seen Bigfoot that they radioed me out here.”
He cocked his head and looked at Ronon’s jeans and sweatshirt-clad body, shook his head again. “That lady’s crazy but I’ll put it down to the storm and nerves. Besides… she may have saved your friend’s life.”
Another uniformed officer, this one clad in tan and wearing a gold star that said Erie County Sheriffs on his uniform approached. “Ray, we got Mercy in ten.”
“Roger that, Tim. Thanks.”
Before Ronon could ask what that meant, four men bearing John on a blanket-covered stretcher cleared the embankment. Two more men supported Teyla, following behind.
He rushed over, glared at the man on Teyla’s right until he got the picture. Taking her weight, Ronon could feel tremors wracking her body. He lifted her in his arms and strode up onto the shoulder of the road, placing her in the open bay of a waiting ambulance.
The paramedics dropped the wheels on John’s stretcher once they hit the road, taking vitals and shouting out numbers. But making no move to put him in the ambulance.
Ronon grabbed the arm of a man in turnout coat. “What are we waiting for?”
The man lifted an arm to the sky. “That.”
A blinking blue pinpoint of light could barely be seen through the snowfall.
“Nearest trauma center’s in Buffalo. Mercy Flight’ll get him there quicker than any bus in this weather.”
Teyla was set, being worked on by a man and woman team of medics. He strode over to where the men continued working on John.
“How’s he doing?” he asked when he managed to catch an eye.
The medic dropped a stethoscope around his neck. “You in the truck?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s my friend. How’s he doing?”
“He’s lost a lot of blood. One pupil’s a little sluggish - could be brain trauma. Docs’ll be able to tell you more at ECTC. He’s come around a little. He’s a little agitated - you wanna talk to him? See if you can get him to calm down a little.”
Ronon elbowed his way through to the side of the stretcher. John was strapped to a backboard, a heavy padded collar around his neck. A medic held a thick pad of gauze against the wound on his head and a blood-smeared oxygen mask had been clamped over his mouth. One eye was still closed with dark, clotted blood, but the other was saucer-wide and darting about.
Ronon planted a hand on John’s shoulder and put his face close. He could see rapid breaths fogging the inside of the plastic. “Sheppard, it’s Ronon. You gotta relax.”
John’s lips were moving inside the mask. Ronon nudged a medic setting up an IV, gestured at the mask. “Can he talk to me?”
The paramedic checked a Blackberry then nodded. “Sats aren’t too bad. And if it’ll get him to calm down…”
Ronon eased the mask off and lowered his head to John’s mouth.
“What happened?”
“Run off the road. You hit your head pretty good but they said you’re gonna be fine.”
“You radio Atlantis?”
The paramedic holding the gauze pad turned his head and stared. Ronon put on a wan smile and shook his head. “Guess his head’s scrambled pretty bad. No, John. We’re going to a hospital.”
The sound of chopper blades filled the night sky. The paramedics closed in on the stretcher, covering John with their bodies as the rotors churned up an icy, stinging wind.
A man in a white and blue jumpsuit strode over, punched the stats shouted to him over the whine of the chopper into a datapad as the team picked up the stretcher and carried it over to the open chopper bay.
Teyla got up from her seat on the back of the ambulance and rushed over, her arm in a fabric sling. She grabbed John’s hand and gave the airman a challenging look.
The Mercy Flight medic gave her an up and down scan and laughed. “Yeah, you’re injured; you can come along.” Then he looked up at Ronon. “I can have a Trooper drive you in, lights and sirens the whole way. But I have no room for you, big man.”
Then he turned his attention to John. Gave him a quick once over, re-checking his eyes and blood pressure. He squeezed John’s shoulder gently. “My name’s Paul Leitner. I’m an air medic. We’re gonna get you to a hospital by helicopter, sir. You okay with that?”
He leaned in as John said something too softly to hear over the rotors. Whatever he said made the medic chuff out another laugh. “Yeah, it is a BK117.”
He listened through John’s reply and patted his shoulder with a smile. Yeah, she’s older than me but she’s in good shape.” He popped the oxygen mask back into place and signaled for a second jump-suited man to pull the stretcher into the waiting bay.
Ronon watched the doors shut, crouched down and backed away as the chopper lifted off, and watched as it disappeared, once more becoming a blue spark of light in the night sky.
Conclusion
Word Count: 10,000-
Rating: T
Genre: Gen
Spoilers/Warnings: Set Post EATG
Summary: John decides that Ronon and Teyla need to see the USA. Their road trip makes an unexpected detour. Whole team plus one.
Written for coolbreeze1 for the sheppard_hc Summer Exchange.
“Easy on the gas, big guy.”
Ronon glanced down at the dial on the dashboard in front of him and frowned. “McKay said you were allowed to drive five miles an hour over the limit. It was a rule.”
“Yeah, sorta. An unwritten one. But in weather like this you need to take it down a notch- or ten.” John squirmed a little uncomfortably in the passenger seat and tugged at his seatbelt.
Slush clattered loudly on the big SUV’s undercarriage as fat, wet flakes splatted against the windshield. Ronon grunted but eased off on the gas and turned the wipers up a little faster.
“Is traction control on?”
“Yes.”
“Four wheel drive-?”
“Yes! Thought you were supposed to be sleeping?”
John’s foot was twitching in the passenger well in front of him. “Afraid it’ll be a nap I don’t wake up from, Ronon, if you don’t -” His foot stamped on the phantom brake in front of him again.
“It’s a little snow, John. You’ve flown the jumper through way worse.”
“Yeah, well, where we fly we’re pretty much the only ones on the road.” An eighteen-wheeler barreled past them, kicking up a spray of exhaust-darkened slush against the side of the SUV and rocking the vehicle with the gale of its wake.
John sighed and jabbed a finger at the view through the smeary windshield. “No semis in space! The 90 is one of the most heavily traveled roads in the country, even in craptastic weather like this.”
Ronon rolled his eyes and huffed a little but let up on the gas some more. Although reluctant to admit it, he was a little rattled by the road conditions. He’d been driving, more off than on, since their first return to Earth. They’d had vehicles more comparable to motorcycles on Sateda - two wheels, gears and a motor-and he’d adapted to the enclosed automatic transmissions of modern Earth cars with relative ease. He’d even driven in snow- it was on the ground almost year round in some parts of Colorado- but the heavy traffic and increasingly heavier snowfall was enough to have him straightening in his seat and gripping the wheel a little tighter.
The three of them had been taking turns driving as they made their way across America. It had been John’s idea. Ronon had expressed surprise that they wouldn’t be flying but John had just shook his head and told them the “road trip” was something not to be missed.
They could’ve missed the giant ball of twine in Kansas - in fact, they could’ve missed a great swath of the middle of the country. Sateda had had vast plains covered in fields of food grains and farmland, but no one ever chose to travel through them for entertainment.
But, Teyla had enjoyed it, and she kept them entertained with stories of her youth on Athos, helping her father bring in the harvest with the rest of the community. And John had stared out at the golden stalks with a placid smile on his face. It had eased some of the lines around his eyes that had deepened with every meeting back at the SGC.
This was another thing that Earth and Sateda had in common: bureaucracy. They called it red tape here for reasons that had never been explained to him but it meant the same thing. Layers of control, jobs seemingly created just to employ someone higher up’s friend or family member. Even in the military-- sometimes more so.
There’d been a lot of talking and not much doing where it came to decision-making about Atlantis. And it seemed like most of those working their jaws had no business making decisions that affected the fates of two galaxies.
So, when John had decided he’d had enough - McKay said it was actually more a forceful recommendation by General O’Neill - they’d piled into this rented truck and headed out to ‘see America.’ McKay had backed out, muttering about getting carsick and finally having a chance to run high-level diagnostics without threat of Wraith attack; Ronon had initially breathed a sigh of relief at not being trapped in a vehicle smaller than a jumper for weeks on end with the physicist. While he would take the admission to his grave, after the prolonged absence, he had to admit he missed having McKay around. At times.
This would not be one of those times. Ronon’s nerves were already on edge with the increasingly bad weather. Fall in the Midwest had been nothing more than fallow fields and roadside stands selling pumpkins and dead cornstalks bunched together in sheaves. John had said people decorated their homes with them but, when pressed, couldn’t really explain why. As the drive took them further north the woods they passed were painted in red and gold and the truck was rimed with frost when they left their motel rooms on their usual early morning starts.
Now, an hour or so from their destination, an early snowstorm was on them. The pines that ran along the highway were heavy with snow cover. A quickening wind was blowing clumps of snow from the branches, mixing it in to the still falling flakes. Late afternoon seemed to have completely skipped dusk; the feeble setting sun’s rays were no match for the gray clouds overhead and the sky was almost completely dark. No starlight broke through, and even though the constellations of Earth were alien to him, the blank blackness above was unsettling.
He was considering that it might be wisest to admit his anxiety and let John take over driving when the long, angry blat of a truck horn filled the truck. Ronon darted a glance at the snow-covered road in front of him and confirmed he was within his lane but he moved further right, allowing a semi to blow past them at high speed. The rumble of uneven pavement under the SUV’s tires told him he was too far over and he quickly centered the vehicle back in his lane, muttering curses in Satedan and English, and finishing with a particularly nasty Czech one he’d picked up from Zelenka.
“Perhaps we should consider pulling over for the night.”
Ronon glanced in the rearview and saw that the semi’s horn blast had awakened Teyla who had been napping in the back. She rubbed her fingers over one eye then subtly wiped at moisture that had gathered on her cheek.
John looked over his seat and quirked a smile at her. “Sorry for the rude awakening, Sleeping Beauty. Long haul truckers don’t tend to have the best of manners when they’re on a deadline.”
“Even in weather such as this?”
“Especially in weather such as this.”
Ronon saw Teyla’s eyes meet his in the mirror. Her gaze narrowed as she took in his white-knuckled grip on the wheel. “And my suggestion to stop for the night?”
John sighed and sat back in his seat. “Is a good one, if there were some place for us to stop. Nearest rest area is still almost fifty miles away, on the outskirts of Buffalo. No place to stop on the Thruway where we don’t get mowed down by a snowplow. And speaking of, I wonder where the hell the plows are?”
“You said weather like this is very early for this time of year. Perhaps they were caught unprepared?”
“Looks like bureaucracy and budget cuts aren’t limited to the SGC,” John muttered. He cast a quick look at the speedometer and what he saw seemed to calm him some because he closed his eyes and settled back against the headrest. “You got this, Big Guy. Slow and steady wins the race.”
“No it doesn’t,” Ronon retorted. “Fast and fearless does.”
“Remind me to tell you the story about the tortoise and the hare sometime, Ronon,” was the laconic reply.
“Tortoise and hare?”
“You probably know them better as turtle and bunny. But it doesn’t read the same that way. Just keep the pedal off the metal and we’ll be in Buffalo just in time to get snowed in completely.”
“Will we still get to see the Falls you spoke about?” Teyla asked.
“Oh, sure. They know a little something about snow in Buffalo. It’ll probably be business as usual there… unless it winds up turning into a full on blizzard. There was this storm in 1977…”
Ronon kept his eyes flicking back and forth between the dashboard readings and peering through the windshield at the flakes that filled his field of vision. The wipers beat a slow and steady cadence behind John’s story of the storm that paralyzed the eastern portion of the US back before his parents had even met on Sateda.
The way the snowflakes seemed to rush at the windshield reminded Ronon of the way stars looked through the observation windows of the Ancient ships. They were hypnotic. Between that and the measured thunk-thwap of the wipers he felt his eyes glazing over. The SUV was warm, the heater sucking the air desert-dry. He cracked his window and breathed in the crisp, moist air that tumbled over the open edge.
Teyla pulled the zipper of her fleece jacket up but she smiled as the cool air brushed the hair from her forehead. John leaned over to the climate control button and bumped the heat up a notch for the back.
Traffic had thinned to the point that they were alone on the highway - running in the other direction too. Ronon hadn’t seen a set of headlights through the trees between the two roads in several minutes.
Eventually, a semi came rumbling up the left lane, its lights filling the rearview mirror. Ronon flipped the mirror so the lights darkened and moved over a little to allow the roaring beast safer passage.
The truck rolled up along side him, a green cab with a happy, smiling red fruit proclaiming New York State’s yummiest apples were on board. As the trailer was just clearing them the final set of wheels caught in the thick snow cover. The massive silver box swung out as the trailer fishtailed, catching the front corner of the SUV and knocking it hard to the right.
Ronon fought with the wheel as the tires bogged down where snow had drifted into deeper piles along the roadside. He braked, pulled hard to the left, felt the rear of the SUV swing out right.
John shouted, “Steer into it! Steer left!” But Ronon’s initial instinct was to correct the swing by yanking the wheel to the right. It was too late. There was a roar as the back wheels spun in the snowdrift then the sickening feeling of the truck tipping over.
He heard Teyla cry out as the passenger side hit the incline as it fell off the shoulder. There was a loud metallic crunching as the truck continued its roll over onto the roof and the clatter of things falling - takeout bags, books, water bottles. The truck slid on its roof further, with the shriek of rending metal, before coming to a rest.
Like a turtle on its back, the vehicle rocked side to side. Struts and seams groaned. Then there was silence save for the hiss of snow hitting the undercarriage and the tick of the engine cooling.
In the first few seconds of shaky breaths and pounding heart, Ronon’s eyes scrambled to fix on a set point to orient himself. It dawned on him, slowly, that something hot and wet was spreading through the thigh of his jeans. With a trembling hand he reached down, touched it, hissed as a drop of something hot hit the back of his thumb. He looked up, which was down, and as his eyes adjusted he saw Sheppard’s travel coffee mug, still stuck in the middle console, dripping hot coffee from the opening.
Sheppard. Teyla.
He shook off the last of his daze, recognized within that initial clarity that he was still strapped in by his belt and apparently unhurt. He heard Teyla moan from the back seat, looked in the rearview to see she was still in her seat behind him. She met his eyes in the mirror, nodded as she gently moved a hand to rub at her neck.
He saw the glint of her eyes go round as she looked up front.
John was unconscious. Slumped and hanging from his seat and shoulder belt. A dark stain coated the spider web-cracked window next to his head.
Ronon reached out a hand to shake him- his fingertips were barely brushing the fleece pullover when they stilled. Wary of spinal injury, Ronon tried waking him. “Sheppard!”
Teyla’s cry joined his. Ronon made himself calm, watched in the dim for signs of life with breath held.
“Ronon! Is he--?”
There. John’s chest was still rising and falling. But too slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, he’s still alive.”
Reaching for his own seat belt buckle he stole another glance in the mirror. “Can you move?”
Teyla nodded, moved one arm stiffly as she wrestled with her own buckle.
“You all right?”
She grimaced as she struggled to press the button. “I believe I may have injured my shoulder, but I am otherwise unharmed.” She smiled grimly at him in the mirror. “I am thankful now for my decision to put the belt on when the weather turned bad.”
Guilt stabbed at him. “I shouldn’t have been driving.” Bracing one hand on the roof of the truck he finally managed to press the button with the other. The belt disengaged, he crawled his way down the dash onto the ceiling.
His hand fumbled in the dark at the door for the controls. After a few almost panicked passes of his hand over unfamiliar metal and plastic he reached out, planted one hand on cold glass. Then he forced his fingers slowly up, creeping until he felt the armrest and his fingers clicked the locks open. The handle was another agonizing slow search. He hooked a finger under the cool metal and pulled. The overhead light came on, glowed warmly yellow from near his feet. It cast odd shadows, lending an added surrealism to the upended compartment.
Now with the light he reached up and laid a hand on John’s neck, careful to barely place two fingers over his carotid. The pulse under it was strong and slow. When he pulled his hand away it was red.
Teyla had freed herself and she eased her head and shoulders through the space between the two seats. She noticed the blood. “Is it yours or--?”
“Head wound, I think. Looks like he hit the window.”
“We need help. John’s phone?”
Ronon nodded, cursing the shock that muddied his thoughts. The phone was a lifeline. He remembered seeing John putting it in the pocket of his door.
“Yeah, I think I know where it is.”
He planted his booted feet on his door and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. He reared his knees back, and fumbled for leverage in his awkward position. He pushed again, then began to kick wildly, beating his boots on the door, growling out his frustration.
“Ronon!”
“What?”
The truck rocked on its back. Metal groaned and screeched. A thin rivulet of silver ran from one corner of the windshield as a crack grew and wended its way to the other side of the frame.
“We do not know where the vehicle came to rest, Ronon,” Teyla replied evenly, her tone speaking of forced calmness. “When it overturned the frame became compressed. The door will not likely open and your efforts could send us further down the embankment.”
Squatting on the roof, the seats and gearbox pressing down over his head, Ronon battled a sudden rush of claustrophobia. He pulled his arms in around his knees, took in some centering breaths. The vehicle was already growing colder with the heat off and his exhales were a silver mist.
“The phone. It was in Sheppard’s door. Can you reach it?”
Teyla’s only answer was to drop into place next to him on the ceiling, her left arm held close to her body. She crabbed her way over to the passenger side of the rear compartment, the vehicle rocking even with her slow and deliberate approach. Her lithe form was barely able to fit in the space between the headrest and the door.
She reached through, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, and ran her hand between John’s body and the door. Straining, stretching her arm as far as it would go, she finally pulled back with a sigh. “I cannot feel it. We need to explore other options.” She held her hand up. It was coated with blood.
The blood was warm on her hand but the cold was already making it feel tacky. She rubbed it on the back of the seat, leaving a dark smear on the gray leather.
She knew from experience that head wounds bled terribly. But until they could actually see what was wrong with John, they had no way of knowing if that’s where it was all coming from. She returned her hand to the window, felt the impression in the glass where his head had impacted. The glass had fragmented into tiny blue diamonds, but they stayed meshed together, still in the frame. She ran her hand up the door panel, slowly, cautiously, looking for jagged metal or anything else that could account for the blood loss.
Satisfied, she sat back on her heels. “The door and window seem to be intact. I do not feel anything has impaled or cut him.”
“First good news,” Ronon grunted in reply. He eyed the space between the headrests, even tried passing both arms between, but his outsized frame would never fit. “I need to get out- get help.”
“Perhaps we can find something to break a window?”
“I’ll use my fists if I have to.”
She shook her head. “This glass is not easily shattered. We need something with a sharp point--”
Before she could finish her sentence, Ronon had a ten-inch long knife poised with its point on the driver’s window. With a growl he pounded the hilt of the blade with the heel of his palm. A tiny hole formed, cracks trailing from it in all directions.
Knowing her teammate’s stubbornness and his oftentimes short fuse, without a word she passed him up a long woolen scarf she’d worn at their last rest stop.
Ronon wound the fabric around his hand, wrapping it tightly before striking the window over the weak spot. It took several hits and he had to wait through the rocking of the truck each time, waiting for it to still before landing another punch. When a sizable hole had been created he began pulling chunks of shattered glass from the frame.
Cold wind and snow billowed in as he cleared the last of the glass. After a quick glance back at John’s pale form, Ronon shoved his head and arm through the opening, groaned as he squeezed his other arm though and pushed off hard.
Teyla’s breath caught as the truck rocked hard and slid sideways with another metallic groan. Ronon’s hand shot through and grabbed the window frame. His knuckles whitened while Teyla remained still as a child hiding from the Wraith.
He stuck his head in, his face as pale as the hand that gripped the frame. “You need to move over,” he said quietly. “More weight on that side.”
With the shortest of nods in acknowledgment, she inched her way to what had been the passenger side and crouched down below John’s hanging form, as small as she could to center her gravity.
Ronon released his grip, one finger at a time. When the truck stayed put he met her gaze. “The incline continues but the grade’s not too steep. If you don’t move around too much,,,”
“I will keep watch over John. Go.”
Ronon whirled about and was lost in snow-filled darkness.
Teyla was just tucking in the blanket she’d used for her nap in the back seat over John when he began to stir. His one blinked open and stared down at her dazedly before whispering, “What-- ?”
“--You are okay, John. Just try not to move. Ronon is bringing help.”
“You?”
“I am fine,” she assured him with a smile. “And you will be fine soon.”
“Where are you?”
She went colder than the winter chill. “Can… can you not see me, John?”
“Yeah - but. Why are you…?” He reached a hand down and brushed her hair. “Where are you?”
“You are just disoriented. There was an accident, and we turned over.”
“Jumper?”
Her pulse quickened with his continued confusion. “No, John. The SUV. We were in an accident.”
“Ronon?”
“Is getting help. He is not hurt.”
“Rodney?”
She shook her head, chanced reaching up her own hand to rest on his chest. His breathing had quickened but the timing was uneven. She ran her fingers over the seatbelt; it was cutting into his neck and sternum. Constricting his breathing.
“Rodney was not with us. Please relax, John. You must remain calm. Ronon is bringing help.” And maybe if she said it enough times it would become true.
Before she could stop him he was lifting his head from the window. The right side of his head was gory with blood. It smeared over his ear, his chin and dripped down his neck.
“HUD’s not working,” he slurred as he lifted his hand to the dash in front of him. “We take fire? McKay?”
She rose from her crouch, pressed both hands on his shoulders and pushed him back in his seat. His one eye was dancing crazily about the compartment, the other closed with clotted blood. “John,” she said firmly, trying to catch his gaze and pin it down. “We are not in the jumper, we are in an SUV, on Earth. Rodney is not here, and Ronon is bringing help. But you must remain still.”
As if on cue, the groan of settling metal echoed around them. The truck moved several inches, the snowpack squeaking as they slid over it.
She saw John’s hand drop to his waist, begin fumbling at his hip. His fingers caught in the seatbelt and he struggled weakly to free them. “Gun. Where’s my …”
“John, you have no need for a gun. We are safe.” As he continued to scrabble she grabbed his fingers and stilled them, then took his hand fully in hers and squeezed gently. Ran the pad of her thumb over his knuckles. He quieted, closed his eye and gave a short nod. He went limp once more, the weight of his body suspended by the mesh fabric belt. Soon the only sound in the compartment was his harsh breathing over the tick of the undercarriage still cooling in the snowfall. The world outside was a black void; the remaining windows reflected back the inside of the truck in the dome light. That shut off seconds later and she was left in pitch darkness, still clinging to John’s hand.
Long hours spent hiding in the dark were nothing new to Teyla. She’d hidden in caves, root cellars and under fallen logs. Crammed in with others or utterly alone. With the tickle of insects on her neck, in her hair. Rocks cutting into her knees. Through it all she’d learned to remain completely still and silent, waiting for the sounds of the cullings to pass.
She couldn’t sit without releasing John’s hand- something she was afraid to do, superstitious foolishness or not. So she remained crouched on her heels, her calves cramping with the strain. She watched snowflakes falling, blowing in through the broken window. They drifted into piles, danced where breezes caught them. Melted when they landed on her.
They were both soon shaking with cold. She’d found the scarf Ronon had abandoned and wrapped it around John’s neck, tucked it into the collar of his fleece hoodie.
Time was measured with his slow, ragged breaths. She’d seen lights passing by, up where the highway would be, had heard the sound of engines passing by, the spattering of snow churned up by tires. But no help came.
Brief, macabre scenarios darkened her thoughts. Ronon falling as he climbed the embankment. Being struck by a vehicle he’d tried to wave down. Somehow getting turned around in the storm and wandering through the woods. Falling to his knees, succumbing to the cold.
The sound of another car passing by almost had her choking out a laugh. Ronon getting lost twenty feet from the road could not be more improbable. But any trace of humor was wiped away as she counted through a hundred more breaths and still no help came.
By her accounting, almost an hour had passed. She had no idea what had gone wrong, and was readying to leave the truck and go for help herself when she saw a flash of red.
Up the embankment, bursts of red light pierced the darkness, lit up the trees, reflected off the snow.
But Ronon had left his blaster at the SGC. She remembered the argument vividly. “You don’t need your light saber, Chewie. You’ve got a lead foot- you wanna try explaining your energy blaster to a Trooper when he pulls you over?”
She was still staring at the strobing light when a second light, yellow-white and strong, came bobbing down the embankment towards the car.
It grew brighter as it approached, came through the shattered passenger window. John’s face glowed pale white under its beam.
Something knocked, loudly, on the window near her head and she gasped. Moved back instinctually. The truck rocked and she heard a voice yell, “Hold on! Don’t move!”
The beam lowered and she saw a tall form, dark against the darker night. He lifted the beam and held it under his face. The light cast odd shadows but she could see he was clean-shaven with a strong jaw. He put a gloved hand on the undercarriage of the truck and stopped the sway.
He moved in closer and swept his gaze around the inside compartment. The window muffled his words, but she heard, “Trooper Haskins, ma’am. Help is on the way.” She saw him turn his chin to his shoulder, say something she couldn’t hear. Then he turned his attention back to her.
One hand gripping tightly on the undercarriage, the Trooper pointed at her. “You need to move to the other side of the truck.”
“But the weight -“
“I’ve got the truck, ma’am. It’s not going anywhere. But I need to break this window.”
She scrabbled her way backwards and raised a sleeve-covered arm to protect her face.
She heard the sound of something heavy hitting the window and the crack of glass. Several more strikes and cold wind drafted in, cutting straight through the two open windows. She lowered her arm in time to see him clearing the remaining glass from the frame with the flashlight handle.
He poked his head in the open window and scanned her up and down. “Are you all right, ma’am?”
“I am fine. But John -“
The Trooper nodded and looked up at John. “We’ve got a rescue team coming. Just be a few minutes. Has he regained consciousness at all?”
“For a few minutes, but he was confused. He has lost a lot of blood.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Haskins sighed. The sound of multiple sirens dopplered closer and he smiled. “But that’s the cavalry. We’ll have you outa there in no time. Just sit tight.”
As promised, men in heavy coats, bright with reflector tape were soon teeming down the embankment. They carried tools and ropes and soon had the truck tied down and secured.
One passed a heavy quilted blanket through the empty window frame to her. “You need to put this over you. We’re getting the door open.”
“But the frame-“
With a grin he showed her the massive piece of heavy equipment he carried. “Cut through it like butter, ma’am. You need to let go of his hand now and cover the two of you up.”
She looked up dazedly to see she was still holding John’s hand in hers.
Ronon paced on the side of the road. He’d refused offers of medical assistance and growled at a helpful EMT when she tried to give him a blanket. Every sinew in his body was poised to take off down the embankment and aid in the rescue effort, Troopers with guns or not. But as he heard the whine of metal slicing metal and saw the blue-white sparks arcing through the trees, saw the team of men hauling stretchers and equipment, he realized he’d just be in the way.
The road was filled with cars and trucks of all shapes and sizes, each with their own strobing red, yellow and blue lights.
He’d made it to the road and waited for someone to come by to flag down for help. When a lone sedan came barreling down the highway he’d stepped out, waved his arms for their attention. But the car drove on by without pause. Two more trucks passed by and his attempts were still ignored.
When the next car came by he stepped out into the road, willing at that point to take a hit if it meant it might stop. The headlights blinded him as it approached. He threw his hands in the air and yelled for help. But the car swerved at the last possible moment; he caught sight of an older female driver, her mouth an ‘oh’ of fear and surprise, as she righted the car and drove off out of sight.
Desperate, he took to the trees at the side of the road and began hacking at a thick branch, his plan to block the road if need be.
So intent on his task, he almost missed the nearly silent approach of another vehicle. He whirled about to get a face full of bright, hot light. He flung his hand up to shield his eyes as flashing red joined the spotlight.
Haskins, the Trooper initially on the scene, walked up to where he paced.
“What’s going on with my friends?”
The Trooper pulled his hat off and wiped a hand over a buzzed-blonde head. “The lady in the back- ?”
“Teyla.”
“She’s okay. They already have her out but they’re having a little difficulty getting her to clear the scene.”
Ronon nodded. “Sounds about right. And Sheppard?”
“That the guy in the front passenger seat? He’s… medics say he’s not doing too good. But they’re taking care of him.”
“All those people who drove by…” Ronon felt his hands ball into fists. “Why wouldn’t any of them stop?”
Haskins shook his head ruefully. “We got two maximum-security prisons within a twenty-mile radius of this location. Everybody knows not to pull over for nobody. We got calls about a man on the highway - hitchhiking’s illegal but in this economy, we been seeing it more often. Wasn’t until we got a call from a lady claiming she seen Bigfoot that they radioed me out here.”
He cocked his head and looked at Ronon’s jeans and sweatshirt-clad body, shook his head again. “That lady’s crazy but I’ll put it down to the storm and nerves. Besides… she may have saved your friend’s life.”
Another uniformed officer, this one clad in tan and wearing a gold star that said Erie County Sheriffs on his uniform approached. “Ray, we got Mercy in ten.”
“Roger that, Tim. Thanks.”
Before Ronon could ask what that meant, four men bearing John on a blanket-covered stretcher cleared the embankment. Two more men supported Teyla, following behind.
He rushed over, glared at the man on Teyla’s right until he got the picture. Taking her weight, Ronon could feel tremors wracking her body. He lifted her in his arms and strode up onto the shoulder of the road, placing her in the open bay of a waiting ambulance.
The paramedics dropped the wheels on John’s stretcher once they hit the road, taking vitals and shouting out numbers. But making no move to put him in the ambulance.
Ronon grabbed the arm of a man in turnout coat. “What are we waiting for?”
The man lifted an arm to the sky. “That.”
A blinking blue pinpoint of light could barely be seen through the snowfall.
“Nearest trauma center’s in Buffalo. Mercy Flight’ll get him there quicker than any bus in this weather.”
Teyla was set, being worked on by a man and woman team of medics. He strode over to where the men continued working on John.
“How’s he doing?” he asked when he managed to catch an eye.
The medic dropped a stethoscope around his neck. “You in the truck?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s my friend. How’s he doing?”
“He’s lost a lot of blood. One pupil’s a little sluggish - could be brain trauma. Docs’ll be able to tell you more at ECTC. He’s come around a little. He’s a little agitated - you wanna talk to him? See if you can get him to calm down a little.”
Ronon elbowed his way through to the side of the stretcher. John was strapped to a backboard, a heavy padded collar around his neck. A medic held a thick pad of gauze against the wound on his head and a blood-smeared oxygen mask had been clamped over his mouth. One eye was still closed with dark, clotted blood, but the other was saucer-wide and darting about.
Ronon planted a hand on John’s shoulder and put his face close. He could see rapid breaths fogging the inside of the plastic. “Sheppard, it’s Ronon. You gotta relax.”
John’s lips were moving inside the mask. Ronon nudged a medic setting up an IV, gestured at the mask. “Can he talk to me?”
The paramedic checked a Blackberry then nodded. “Sats aren’t too bad. And if it’ll get him to calm down…”
Ronon eased the mask off and lowered his head to John’s mouth.
“What happened?”
“Run off the road. You hit your head pretty good but they said you’re gonna be fine.”
“You radio Atlantis?”
The paramedic holding the gauze pad turned his head and stared. Ronon put on a wan smile and shook his head. “Guess his head’s scrambled pretty bad. No, John. We’re going to a hospital.”
The sound of chopper blades filled the night sky. The paramedics closed in on the stretcher, covering John with their bodies as the rotors churned up an icy, stinging wind.
A man in a white and blue jumpsuit strode over, punched the stats shouted to him over the whine of the chopper into a datapad as the team picked up the stretcher and carried it over to the open chopper bay.
Teyla got up from her seat on the back of the ambulance and rushed over, her arm in a fabric sling. She grabbed John’s hand and gave the airman a challenging look.
The Mercy Flight medic gave her an up and down scan and laughed. “Yeah, you’re injured; you can come along.” Then he looked up at Ronon. “I can have a Trooper drive you in, lights and sirens the whole way. But I have no room for you, big man.”
Then he turned his attention to John. Gave him a quick once over, re-checking his eyes and blood pressure. He squeezed John’s shoulder gently. “My name’s Paul Leitner. I’m an air medic. We’re gonna get you to a hospital by helicopter, sir. You okay with that?”
He leaned in as John said something too softly to hear over the rotors. Whatever he said made the medic chuff out another laugh. “Yeah, it is a BK117.”
He listened through John’s reply and patted his shoulder with a smile. Yeah, she’s older than me but she’s in good shape.” He popped the oxygen mask back into place and signaled for a second jump-suited man to pull the stretcher into the waiting bay.
Ronon watched the doors shut, crouched down and backed away as the chopper lifted off, and watched as it disappeared, once more becoming a blue spark of light in the night sky.
Conclusion