Red Door
In a valiant (but probably vain) attempt to keep the momentum going here:
The Red Door
(or, a Postmodern Prometheus)
Previous Chapter
Chapter 13
Bag End
For his second session in the garden room, the only thing Rodney did differently was to wear an extra T-shirt. It got annoyingly cold in there.
John had brought his own chair and was sitting on it backwards, keeping up a stream of not-very-interesting patter about yesterday's reconstruction trial while Carson attached monitors to Rodney's body under his double layer of T-shirts. Zelenka was going over the controls for the hundredth or the thousandth time, though it wasn't like any of them had more than the vaguest notions what the garden room actually did. Rodney thought he should probably doublecheck his work, but he couldn't force himself to move.
Carson had predicted he would build up a tolerance to the sleeping pills, but it sure as hell hadn't happened yet. Rodney had spent most of yesterday napping in his quarters, and today he felt sodden-brained and hopelessly fumble-fingered. His tongue was so thick in his mouth he hardly trusted himself to speak, and keeping gracefully quiet was not one of his talents. He sat on the gurney and glowered, silently daring anyone to speak to him.
Carson was the bravest. "If you want to turn around and stretch out, I'll show the Colonel your range of motion exercise for your shoulder."
"I'm sure he's already seen it," Rodney snarled back. "That's probably good enough even for Sheppard. It's not exactly rocket science."
But Carson just looked concerned, which, Rodney thought irritably, he certainly could have predicted if he'd been thinking straight. "Are you sure you're up to this today, lad? There's no need to rush, especially if you're a touch under the weather."
"I'm fine," Rodney said quickly, because waiting on this? No. Not an option. "Never felt better." He rolled carefully on his hip and stretched out full length on his stomach.
"He's just a little cranky because the reconstruction trial went so well yesterday," Sheppard said in an easy drawl. He came to stand next to Rodney. "I think I remember this one. You let your arm hang down off the gurney like this, right?
Gentle hands touched Rodney's forearm, then his shoulder, helping him straighten his tight left arm. Furiously clinched muscles stretched unwillingly. "I don't hear Radek dancing and singing over the trial," Rodney groused. "He can just about kiss the cyclic heat engine goodbye if the test data pans out." Still, it was hard to muster the requisite aggravation with Sheppard's strong fingers massaging his upper arm.
"Yes, Atlantis may lose some megawatts that would have run quite a few laptops for quite some time." Zelenka sounded annoying unperturbed at the prospect. "But it may actually be possible to repair all of the damage from the Wraith attacks, not to mention flooding from the storm. Even the damage sustained during the rising. It is not a prospect to throw away lightly. I have completed my checks, Dr. Beckett, if you're ready."
"What you want to do, John, is help Rodney swing his arm forward and back. Gently, without forcing anything." He positioned John's hands around Rodney's arm. "Don't let him use his neck muscles. Ideally, that stretch will tell this room what we want to repair today." Then Carson actually looked around the tremendous space as if the garden room itself were a slightly dimwitted nurse's aide. "We'll go three minutes, just like last time."
"Oh, you can't be serious!" Rodney interrupted. "We already talked about this."
"Aye, we did," Carson agreed maddeningly. "And we said in view of your physical exhaustion after the last time, it made no sense to push."
"There you go," Sheppard put in, as if anyone had asked his opinion.
Zelenka said, "The panic button is there by Rodney's right arm." And being more obliging than he actually felt, Rodney drummed his fingers beside the laptop to demonstrate for Sheppard. "Two minute warning like last time?" Zelenka continued.
"Works for me." Sheppard was in a fine mood this morning. Rodney simply rolled his eyes, which everyone seemed to take as his assent. Carson and Radek's footsteps were flat, empty slaps as they walked away, no echo at all in the vast space.
"You comfortable?" Sheppard asked.
"Like it matters, the three minutes Carson is allowing me here."
Sheppard was undeterred. "Is Carson right? Is it really the exercise you do that triggers the garden room?"
"Oh, like we have the faintest idea," Rodney snorted. "We've got relatively clean translations of the conditions that called for sessions in the garden room, and one rather startlingly plain description of recovery. Elizabeth thinks it may have been a child's composition exercise. But what's actually going on? Take your pick of down-the-rabbit-hole hypotheses. Oh, and in case you were wondering, our hallucinations in here don't clarify anything. Essential part of the treatment? Wonky side effect because we're not really Ancients? No idea."
"How can it have been an hallucination when we both saw the same thing?"
Before Rodney could even begin on that one, he felt the warm, slightly damp puff of air like someone was blowing in his face. He had time to think that couldn't have been the two minutes Radek had promised, and if something as basic as turning the mechanism on wasn't under their control, then what was?-- when the unforgiving little flat mattress on the gurney became the marginally more forgiving mattress in Radek's quarters.
"My bed next time," Rodney said promptly, as he turned his head on Radek's pillow. "My back can't take this."
"Fine, your bed next time," Sheppard agreed, bending over him to drop a single perfect kiss halfway down his spine. "Let's work on that shoulder while we're here, though.
"You crazy romantic," Rodney grumbled, but he did as Sheppard asked, allowing him to straighten his left arm, then gently set it swaying straight as a pendulum. "Is Radek around?" Rodney finally thought to ask lazily. "Is he going to mind that we're using his room?"
"No. I don't know. Probably not," Sheppard said. "Want to get some dinner?"
Definitely. Rodney rolled to his side and sat up. "How's the shoulder?" Sheppard pestered. Rodney straightened his elbow and then began to lift his arm. At shoulder-height, he burst into a helpless grin. "Pretty smooth," Sheppard approved. "Tell you what. Tonight, the Jell-o's on me."
"Don't strain yourself," Rodney groused in reply, but he couldn't stop smiling. Leaving Radek's quarters, they started across a field of wildflowers. Panicles of indigo petals bobbed at waist-height. After a few steps, Sheppard slowed to a stop, frowning. "What?" Rodney demanded.
"I don't know." Sheppard reached out and stroked one of the blossoms. "Does anything seem different to you?"
"Different how? And watch it, you're liable to get a bee sting fondling the flowers like that."
Sheppard drew his hand back. "I don't know."
"Then let's get to the mess hall before Ronon takes the last of the dinner rolls. Someone needs to warn that galoot about that walks like a man about excessive carbohydrates."
They crossed a log footbridge over a brook, and from there the meadow began to rise and fall in a series of low, rolling hills. It was late afternoon, sun slanting thick and golden through the tall grasses. A wooden door was set into the lee of one hillside. Inside candles were burning, and the glow shone through the round glass window. Rodney felt a moment of concern when he realized he didn't know if the door would open for him, but the handle turned easily under his hand.
He and Sheppard both had to duck under the rounded lintel. Inside, the dirt walls were smooth and dry. The floor was covered with thick rugs that were soft under the soles of Rodney's shoes. "Snug as a hobbit hole," Rodney approved. "I don't think I ever noticed that about Atlantis before."
Sheppard's face was golden in the candlelight. He smiled at Rodney before leading the way deeper under the hillside.
After a while the cloth rugs became straw, and then bare dirt. There were no more pictures on the walls, and fewer and fewer of the little round windows punched deep into the earth with grass-level views of the setting sun. Candles flickered on wall sconces at ever-increasing intervals. The only break in the smooth earthen walls were the occasional doors. Less than five feet tall, heavily barred as though to keep something in. Or possibly out. Either way, the prospect disturbed Rodney. He surreptitiously laid his palm against the panels of the next one they passed. Just for a moment, but it was long enough to imagine he felt a low shudder vibrating the wood.
"Which was the moment, of course, that Sheppard looked over his shoulder. "Everything all right?"
"Of course it is." Rodney snatched his hand away. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"I don't know," Sheppard said thoughtfully, though he had the same half-puzzled expression on his face as he'd had outside among the flowers. "It's just something."
"Let me know when you can be a little more obscure," Rodney snapped back, his own nerves making him short tempered.
The tunnel took a sharp bend, and suddenly they came upon Radek Zelenka. He was sitting on the dirt floor in front of one of the little wooden doors, and he was surrounded by instruments. One of the iron hinges had been partially disassembled. Where the metal sank into the earth, Rodney could see the blue glitter of half-buried control crystals. Zelenka barely acknowledged Rodney's and Sheppard's approach.
"What are you doing?" Rodney asked.
Zelenka didn't look up. "Attempting to secure the door. What does it look like? Now, please, no more talking unless you can assist."
"Of course I can assist!" Rodney was already getting to his knees, sudden panic beating a cold tattoo behind his forehead. "Why didn't you ask for my help to begin with?"
Sheppard was following the next bend in the tunnel. "Hey," he called back suddenly. "Here's a door that's already open."
Rodney lurched clumsily to his feet as Radek muttered without looking up from his work, "The red door is why."
"What did you say?" Rodney screamed down at Zelenka, but he couldn't wait for an answer. He ran after Sheppard, finding him with his hand on the frame of a heavy wooden door with frayed leather hinges.
The panels were painted bright red.
"Get away from there!" Rodney shrieked, just as his weak leg folded under him and Carson said, "Easy, lad. we're just going to start an IV here, see if we can't get your blood pressure down on the way to the infirmary."
"What went wrong?" John was demanding angrily. "Is McKay all right?"
"Just a stick now," Carson said calmly. Rodney felt the needle in his arm. "Colonel, I need you to step back and allow me to attend to my patient."
"What's happening?" McKay asked muzzily. He tried to turn his head to see Sheppard.
"Nothing's happening." Carson lied, apparently without shame. "Your heart rate and blood pressure are a tad elevated."
"No, the Colonel," Rodney demanded in weak frustration. "Is Sheppard all right?"
A warm hand came down on his shoulder. "I'm here, Rodney. I'm OK," Sheppard said gently, but his voice changed almost at once. "And what the hell happened to your three minutes, Carson?"
"It was three minutes." Radek was the one who answered. "No longer."
"That's not possible," Sheppard said, voicing Rodney's thoughts. "That had to have been an hour or more."
"No, it was not," Radek contradicted him politely, then cried out, "John!"
"Careful," Carson said, still impossibly calm. "Watch his head."
This time Rodney finally managed to get his arms under himself so he could turn to see what was going on. Zelenka and Beckett were lowering Sheppard to the floor. Sheppard was still conscious and complaining but his voice was very faint. "I'm fine. Just a little dizzy. Oh, shit, my head."
"Since you're so fine, just take it easy for a moment and put your head down," Carson urged, and Sheppard unhappily lay back on the floor with his head resting on Zelenka's wadded up jacket.
A moment later, the backup medical team had reached them and Rodney lost his view of Sheppard behind the orderly press of people. He tried to sit up, but strong hands restrained him. The door was still here, red seeping through the windows of the garden room, so he fought until his strength gave out. Radek bent over him, red-eyed with concern, and said, "Dr. Beckett is going to help you, Rodney, you and John both, but you must calm down." Rodney had no choice, so he turned his face away and did his best to swallow the tears of frustration.
When he woke and found himself in the infirmary, he was so disappointed
he wanted to weep again, but he wiped his eyes roughly and demanded, "Where's Carson?"
Corporal Brandstetter checked the readouts on the instrumentation beside Rodney's bed before answering, apparently just to torture him. "I'll tell Dr. Beckett you're awake."
"And that I want to see him!" Rodney added loudly. "Is Colonel Sheppard all right?"
"He was discharged several hours ago."
Well, thank god for small mercies Rodney thought. Or actually, pretty fucking huge mercies. When he'd seen Sheppard standing by the red door, he'd thought --
Well, he'd thought things he didn't want to dwell on anymore
He strained around to check his readouts, since Brandstetter hadn't bothered to share. Nothing too scary. Maybe Carson would let him out today, too.
He figited, looking to see if anyone had been thoughtful enough to leave his laptop within reach. Nothing but a plastic cup of water from which the ice had long since melted. Goddamn Radek, anyway. You'd think he'd know Rodney would need his computer when he woke up.
Radek had been there, Rodney suddenly remembered. He'd been in the garden room's little fantasy land, and he'd known about the red door. Rodney could hardly breathe, his chest was so tight. When Carson finally showed up, bright-eyed as a man without a care in the world, Rodney wanted to shake him.
"Well, then, how are we feeling?"
"I need to see Heightmeyer. Right away."
"Rodney? What's the matter?"
Rodney huffed impatiently. Sometimes the stress of being surrounded by well-meaning idiots was more than flesh and blood could bear. He had to restrain himself from pitching the cup of water at Carson in sheer frustration. "It's my own damn nightmares," he said, trying to speak very slowly and clearly for the sake of morons. "That's what went wrong in the garden room today."
"What do you mean?"
Christ.
"I mean Sheppard and I both ended up in the middle of the recurring nightmare I've been having since I got back from Silicis. Well, not that long. But since the sleepwalking started. The garden room plucked my own private horror show out of my head and made it real. I've got to get Heightmeyer to scrub my brains before either one of us can risk using the garden room again."
"All right, settle down. No one is proposing to toss you and John back in there any time soon. It's clear in retrospect that forty-eight hours wasn't nearly enough time to allow your bodies to recover from the initial exposure. The stress caused what I hope was simple vasovagal syncope in John's case --"
"Oh, fine. I faint, he has a syncope. How is that fair?"
"--while you experienced elevated heart rate and blood pressure. I'm sure Kate will be glad to see you, Rodney, but I suspect your nightmare was caused by the physical effects of the garden room, not the other way around."
"Is the Colonel all right? He is, isn't he? You probably need to have a word with Corporal Brandstetter. Trying to get a straight answer out of that woman isn't a job for the weak and infirm. No doubt why she's assigned to the infirmary."
"John's fine."
"And Radek?" A sudden, cold worry pierced Rodney. "Why isn't he here? Did something happen to him?"
"What would have happened to Dr. Zelenka?" Then Carson nodded sagely. "Ah, I see. He was in your nightmare too, wasn't he? No, he's fine. Dreams are just dreams, Rodney, whether you're in your bed or the Ancients' garden room."
~~~
Next Chapter
The Red Door
(or, a Postmodern Prometheus)
Previous Chapter
Chapter 13
Bag End
For his second session in the garden room, the only thing Rodney did differently was to wear an extra T-shirt. It got annoyingly cold in there.
John had brought his own chair and was sitting on it backwards, keeping up a stream of not-very-interesting patter about yesterday's reconstruction trial while Carson attached monitors to Rodney's body under his double layer of T-shirts. Zelenka was going over the controls for the hundredth or the thousandth time, though it wasn't like any of them had more than the vaguest notions what the garden room actually did. Rodney thought he should probably doublecheck his work, but he couldn't force himself to move.
Carson had predicted he would build up a tolerance to the sleeping pills, but it sure as hell hadn't happened yet. Rodney had spent most of yesterday napping in his quarters, and today he felt sodden-brained and hopelessly fumble-fingered. His tongue was so thick in his mouth he hardly trusted himself to speak, and keeping gracefully quiet was not one of his talents. He sat on the gurney and glowered, silently daring anyone to speak to him.
Carson was the bravest. "If you want to turn around and stretch out, I'll show the Colonel your range of motion exercise for your shoulder."
"I'm sure he's already seen it," Rodney snarled back. "That's probably good enough even for Sheppard. It's not exactly rocket science."
But Carson just looked concerned, which, Rodney thought irritably, he certainly could have predicted if he'd been thinking straight. "Are you sure you're up to this today, lad? There's no need to rush, especially if you're a touch under the weather."
"I'm fine," Rodney said quickly, because waiting on this? No. Not an option. "Never felt better." He rolled carefully on his hip and stretched out full length on his stomach.
"He's just a little cranky because the reconstruction trial went so well yesterday," Sheppard said in an easy drawl. He came to stand next to Rodney. "I think I remember this one. You let your arm hang down off the gurney like this, right?
Gentle hands touched Rodney's forearm, then his shoulder, helping him straighten his tight left arm. Furiously clinched muscles stretched unwillingly. "I don't hear Radek dancing and singing over the trial," Rodney groused. "He can just about kiss the cyclic heat engine goodbye if the test data pans out." Still, it was hard to muster the requisite aggravation with Sheppard's strong fingers massaging his upper arm.
"Yes, Atlantis may lose some megawatts that would have run quite a few laptops for quite some time." Zelenka sounded annoying unperturbed at the prospect. "But it may actually be possible to repair all of the damage from the Wraith attacks, not to mention flooding from the storm. Even the damage sustained during the rising. It is not a prospect to throw away lightly. I have completed my checks, Dr. Beckett, if you're ready."
"What you want to do, John, is help Rodney swing his arm forward and back. Gently, without forcing anything." He positioned John's hands around Rodney's arm. "Don't let him use his neck muscles. Ideally, that stretch will tell this room what we want to repair today." Then Carson actually looked around the tremendous space as if the garden room itself were a slightly dimwitted nurse's aide. "We'll go three minutes, just like last time."
"Oh, you can't be serious!" Rodney interrupted. "We already talked about this."
"Aye, we did," Carson agreed maddeningly. "And we said in view of your physical exhaustion after the last time, it made no sense to push."
"There you go," Sheppard put in, as if anyone had asked his opinion.
Zelenka said, "The panic button is there by Rodney's right arm." And being more obliging than he actually felt, Rodney drummed his fingers beside the laptop to demonstrate for Sheppard. "Two minute warning like last time?" Zelenka continued.
"Works for me." Sheppard was in a fine mood this morning. Rodney simply rolled his eyes, which everyone seemed to take as his assent. Carson and Radek's footsteps were flat, empty slaps as they walked away, no echo at all in the vast space.
"You comfortable?" Sheppard asked.
"Like it matters, the three minutes Carson is allowing me here."
Sheppard was undeterred. "Is Carson right? Is it really the exercise you do that triggers the garden room?"
"Oh, like we have the faintest idea," Rodney snorted. "We've got relatively clean translations of the conditions that called for sessions in the garden room, and one rather startlingly plain description of recovery. Elizabeth thinks it may have been a child's composition exercise. But what's actually going on? Take your pick of down-the-rabbit-hole hypotheses. Oh, and in case you were wondering, our hallucinations in here don't clarify anything. Essential part of the treatment? Wonky side effect because we're not really Ancients? No idea."
"How can it have been an hallucination when we both saw the same thing?"
Before Rodney could even begin on that one, he felt the warm, slightly damp puff of air like someone was blowing in his face. He had time to think that couldn't have been the two minutes Radek had promised, and if something as basic as turning the mechanism on wasn't under their control, then what was?-- when the unforgiving little flat mattress on the gurney became the marginally more forgiving mattress in Radek's quarters.
"My bed next time," Rodney said promptly, as he turned his head on Radek's pillow. "My back can't take this."
"Fine, your bed next time," Sheppard agreed, bending over him to drop a single perfect kiss halfway down his spine. "Let's work on that shoulder while we're here, though.
"You crazy romantic," Rodney grumbled, but he did as Sheppard asked, allowing him to straighten his left arm, then gently set it swaying straight as a pendulum. "Is Radek around?" Rodney finally thought to ask lazily. "Is he going to mind that we're using his room?"
"No. I don't know. Probably not," Sheppard said. "Want to get some dinner?"
Definitely. Rodney rolled to his side and sat up. "How's the shoulder?" Sheppard pestered. Rodney straightened his elbow and then began to lift his arm. At shoulder-height, he burst into a helpless grin. "Pretty smooth," Sheppard approved. "Tell you what. Tonight, the Jell-o's on me."
"Don't strain yourself," Rodney groused in reply, but he couldn't stop smiling. Leaving Radek's quarters, they started across a field of wildflowers. Panicles of indigo petals bobbed at waist-height. After a few steps, Sheppard slowed to a stop, frowning. "What?" Rodney demanded.
"I don't know." Sheppard reached out and stroked one of the blossoms. "Does anything seem different to you?"
"Different how? And watch it, you're liable to get a bee sting fondling the flowers like that."
Sheppard drew his hand back. "I don't know."
"Then let's get to the mess hall before Ronon takes the last of the dinner rolls. Someone needs to warn that galoot about that walks like a man about excessive carbohydrates."
They crossed a log footbridge over a brook, and from there the meadow began to rise and fall in a series of low, rolling hills. It was late afternoon, sun slanting thick and golden through the tall grasses. A wooden door was set into the lee of one hillside. Inside candles were burning, and the glow shone through the round glass window. Rodney felt a moment of concern when he realized he didn't know if the door would open for him, but the handle turned easily under his hand.
He and Sheppard both had to duck under the rounded lintel. Inside, the dirt walls were smooth and dry. The floor was covered with thick rugs that were soft under the soles of Rodney's shoes. "Snug as a hobbit hole," Rodney approved. "I don't think I ever noticed that about Atlantis before."
Sheppard's face was golden in the candlelight. He smiled at Rodney before leading the way deeper under the hillside.
After a while the cloth rugs became straw, and then bare dirt. There were no more pictures on the walls, and fewer and fewer of the little round windows punched deep into the earth with grass-level views of the setting sun. Candles flickered on wall sconces at ever-increasing intervals. The only break in the smooth earthen walls were the occasional doors. Less than five feet tall, heavily barred as though to keep something in. Or possibly out. Either way, the prospect disturbed Rodney. He surreptitiously laid his palm against the panels of the next one they passed. Just for a moment, but it was long enough to imagine he felt a low shudder vibrating the wood.
"Which was the moment, of course, that Sheppard looked over his shoulder. "Everything all right?"
"Of course it is." Rodney snatched his hand away. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"I don't know," Sheppard said thoughtfully, though he had the same half-puzzled expression on his face as he'd had outside among the flowers. "It's just something."
"Let me know when you can be a little more obscure," Rodney snapped back, his own nerves making him short tempered.
The tunnel took a sharp bend, and suddenly they came upon Radek Zelenka. He was sitting on the dirt floor in front of one of the little wooden doors, and he was surrounded by instruments. One of the iron hinges had been partially disassembled. Where the metal sank into the earth, Rodney could see the blue glitter of half-buried control crystals. Zelenka barely acknowledged Rodney's and Sheppard's approach.
"What are you doing?" Rodney asked.
Zelenka didn't look up. "Attempting to secure the door. What does it look like? Now, please, no more talking unless you can assist."
"Of course I can assist!" Rodney was already getting to his knees, sudden panic beating a cold tattoo behind his forehead. "Why didn't you ask for my help to begin with?"
Sheppard was following the next bend in the tunnel. "Hey," he called back suddenly. "Here's a door that's already open."
Rodney lurched clumsily to his feet as Radek muttered without looking up from his work, "The red door is why."
"What did you say?" Rodney screamed down at Zelenka, but he couldn't wait for an answer. He ran after Sheppard, finding him with his hand on the frame of a heavy wooden door with frayed leather hinges.
The panels were painted bright red.
"Get away from there!" Rodney shrieked, just as his weak leg folded under him and Carson said, "Easy, lad. we're just going to start an IV here, see if we can't get your blood pressure down on the way to the infirmary."
"What went wrong?" John was demanding angrily. "Is McKay all right?"
"Just a stick now," Carson said calmly. Rodney felt the needle in his arm. "Colonel, I need you to step back and allow me to attend to my patient."
"What's happening?" McKay asked muzzily. He tried to turn his head to see Sheppard.
"Nothing's happening." Carson lied, apparently without shame. "Your heart rate and blood pressure are a tad elevated."
"No, the Colonel," Rodney demanded in weak frustration. "Is Sheppard all right?"
A warm hand came down on his shoulder. "I'm here, Rodney. I'm OK," Sheppard said gently, but his voice changed almost at once. "And what the hell happened to your three minutes, Carson?"
"It was three minutes." Radek was the one who answered. "No longer."
"That's not possible," Sheppard said, voicing Rodney's thoughts. "That had to have been an hour or more."
"No, it was not," Radek contradicted him politely, then cried out, "John!"
"Careful," Carson said, still impossibly calm. "Watch his head."
This time Rodney finally managed to get his arms under himself so he could turn to see what was going on. Zelenka and Beckett were lowering Sheppard to the floor. Sheppard was still conscious and complaining but his voice was very faint. "I'm fine. Just a little dizzy. Oh, shit, my head."
"Since you're so fine, just take it easy for a moment and put your head down," Carson urged, and Sheppard unhappily lay back on the floor with his head resting on Zelenka's wadded up jacket.
A moment later, the backup medical team had reached them and Rodney lost his view of Sheppard behind the orderly press of people. He tried to sit up, but strong hands restrained him. The door was still here, red seeping through the windows of the garden room, so he fought until his strength gave out. Radek bent over him, red-eyed with concern, and said, "Dr. Beckett is going to help you, Rodney, you and John both, but you must calm down." Rodney had no choice, so he turned his face away and did his best to swallow the tears of frustration.
When he woke and found himself in the infirmary, he was so disappointed
he wanted to weep again, but he wiped his eyes roughly and demanded, "Where's Carson?"
Corporal Brandstetter checked the readouts on the instrumentation beside Rodney's bed before answering, apparently just to torture him. "I'll tell Dr. Beckett you're awake."
"And that I want to see him!" Rodney added loudly. "Is Colonel Sheppard all right?"
"He was discharged several hours ago."
Well, thank god for small mercies Rodney thought. Or actually, pretty fucking huge mercies. When he'd seen Sheppard standing by the red door, he'd thought --
Well, he'd thought things he didn't want to dwell on anymore
He strained around to check his readouts, since Brandstetter hadn't bothered to share. Nothing too scary. Maybe Carson would let him out today, too.
He figited, looking to see if anyone had been thoughtful enough to leave his laptop within reach. Nothing but a plastic cup of water from which the ice had long since melted. Goddamn Radek, anyway. You'd think he'd know Rodney would need his computer when he woke up.
Radek had been there, Rodney suddenly remembered. He'd been in the garden room's little fantasy land, and he'd known about the red door. Rodney could hardly breathe, his chest was so tight. When Carson finally showed up, bright-eyed as a man without a care in the world, Rodney wanted to shake him.
"Well, then, how are we feeling?"
"I need to see Heightmeyer. Right away."
"Rodney? What's the matter?"
Rodney huffed impatiently. Sometimes the stress of being surrounded by well-meaning idiots was more than flesh and blood could bear. He had to restrain himself from pitching the cup of water at Carson in sheer frustration. "It's my own damn nightmares," he said, trying to speak very slowly and clearly for the sake of morons. "That's what went wrong in the garden room today."
"What do you mean?"
Christ.
"I mean Sheppard and I both ended up in the middle of the recurring nightmare I've been having since I got back from Silicis. Well, not that long. But since the sleepwalking started. The garden room plucked my own private horror show out of my head and made it real. I've got to get Heightmeyer to scrub my brains before either one of us can risk using the garden room again."
"All right, settle down. No one is proposing to toss you and John back in there any time soon. It's clear in retrospect that forty-eight hours wasn't nearly enough time to allow your bodies to recover from the initial exposure. The stress caused what I hope was simple vasovagal syncope in John's case --"
"Oh, fine. I faint, he has a syncope. How is that fair?"
"--while you experienced elevated heart rate and blood pressure. I'm sure Kate will be glad to see you, Rodney, but I suspect your nightmare was caused by the physical effects of the garden room, not the other way around."
"Is the Colonel all right? He is, isn't he? You probably need to have a word with Corporal Brandstetter. Trying to get a straight answer out of that woman isn't a job for the weak and infirm. No doubt why she's assigned to the infirmary."
"John's fine."
"And Radek?" A sudden, cold worry pierced Rodney. "Why isn't he here? Did something happen to him?"
"What would have happened to Dr. Zelenka?" Then Carson nodded sagely. "Ah, I see. He was in your nightmare too, wasn't he? No, he's fine. Dreams are just dreams, Rodney, whether you're in your bed or the Ancients' garden room."
~~~
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