Stopgap by liketheriver (first aid challenge)
Title: Stopgap
Category: Gen, team, h/c
Word Count: ~ 4,800
Rating: T
Characters: Team plus some Keller
Spoilers: Anything up through Season 4 and a few teeny tiny spoilers for Season 5 but really, if you don't know where babies come from you're too young to be reading this fic anyway.
A/N: I actually started this fic for another challenge months ago, got distracted with another deadline, got distracted again, then it dawned on me... CPR is a form of first aid! So I dusted it off and here we are. Thanks as always to Koschka for the beta.
Summary: Behind him he could hear Ronon still coughing. Given how long the Satedan had been submerged going into the icy waters after Sheppard, Rodney was actually surprised he hadn’t had to choose which of his teammates he would perform CPR on first..
Stopgap
by liketheriver
Rodney had first learned CPR when he was twelve years old. With one child with deadly allergies and another with epilepsy, his mother had made sure the entire family was trained in a myriad of life saving skills. He remembered the instructor of the class pointing out that it was common to break ribs, particularly if the victim was elderly, if you were using the correct technique, and that you shouldn’t worry about those pesky popping and cracking sounds with each compression. You also shouldn’t blame yourself if you couldn’t revive the person, because, the fact was, if it was necessary to perform CPR then the person was already dead. Rodney knew, even then, they were only saying that so you wouldn’t feel bad when you failed. But the thing was, Rodney wasn’t the sort of person who felt bad when he failed. He got angry. He got annoyed. He got pissed.
Kind of like he was now.
“Breathe, you son of a bitch, breathe.”
Behind him he could hear Ronon still coughing. Given how long the Satedan had been submerged going into the icy waters after Sheppard, Rodney was actually surprised he hadn’t had to choose which of his teammates he would perform CPR on first.
“Rodney?” Teyla’s free hand landed on his shoulder and Rodney ignored it, refusing to let it slow his rhythm of chest compressions. Her other hand pressed a bandage over the gash on Sheppard’s forehead to slow the excessive flow of blood that always seemed to accompany a head wound regardless of the severity.
“Not now; I’m trying to count,” Rodney snapped returning to the cadence of five-and-six-and-seven-and-eight he was mumbling under his breath.
“You are tiring,” she pointed out gently. “I can take over if you wish.”
“Not yet,” he told her before tipping Sheppard’s head back and delivering two more breathes.
How long had it been? A few minutes? A few days? Hell, he didn’t even know. All Rodney knew was that he wasn’t giving up. Because he wasn’t going to fail, Sheppard wasn’t going to die, because no matter what that woman had said all those years ago, Rodney refused to believe that John was already dead.
Sheppard wasn’t dead yet. How could he be when Ronon and Rodney and Teyla were all still here breathing with a pulse? John was one of them, a part of them, and with three quarters of his team still alive and kicking, there was no way Rodney was going to let John slack off on pulling his fair share.
Not dead yet. Not until Rodney gave up and that… that wasn’t going to happen. Because when Rodney got pissed, he also got stubborn.
“Where… the fuck… is the medical… team?” Rodney practically panted the demand, his own breathing taking on the staccato tempo of the compressions.
“The closest transporter was several minutes away,” Teyla reminded. “But Radek should have reached it by now.”
This stupid goddamn city with its stupid goddamn glitches. City wide communications had gone down the night before and the technical team had traced the problem to a relay tower out on the east pier. Rodney and Radek had headed out right after breakfast to try to repair the outage and Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon had volunteered to go with them. Rodney wasn’t exactly sure why his entire team had decided to come along on what would usually be a simple maintenance call with no one but technical staff, but he had a pretty good idea what the primary driver was… boredom. Ronon and Rodney had both come down with symptoms of a viral infection common in the Pegasus Galaxy after their last mission. Not nearly as devastating as the last run in with a Pegasus bug that had wiped the memories of all the Earth-born members of the expedition, this one simply resulted in a rash and low-grade fever. But it was enough to have the entire team grounded from offworld travel until the virus ran its course, which apparently took about three weeks for the rash to fade completely.
You might think three weeks stuck in Atlantis wouldn’t be that big of a deal. It was the damn City of the Ancients, for Christ’s sake. How could that ever get dull? And for Rodney, it hadn’t. It seemed the science staff never ran out of work and McKay had actually had a chance to catch up on a backlog of data and diagnostics he’d been meaning to look at for months now. But for the other three, cabin fever was evidently setting in. Apparently there is only so much time you can spend beating the shit out of each other in the gym or meditating or bonding with your son or whacking golf balls into the ocean or completing the backlog of mission reports for the SGC. After the first two weeks, Ronon and Sheppard had started taking any opportunity to go in the field, even if the field was nothing more than a water distribution center that sat three levels below the cafeteria. By the beginning of the third week, even Teyla was willing to join them for short assignments while the baby took his nap.
When McKay had mentioned the planned repairs on the docks for the com system in passing at dinner the night before, his teammates had been practically tripping over each other to get out there with him, which just went to show how desperate the situation had become. Ronon and Sheppard had even thrown a game of rock, paper, scissors to see which of them would be the lucky one to strap on the fall protection harness and climb the tower to replace the battery unit on the relay system. Rodney and Radek had just sat back and let them considering they usually played a round to see who had to climb the damn thing…Rodney often insisting on best three out of five, then five out of seven when things weren’t going his way.
Zelenka had watched as Sheppard scrambled easily up the tower, shaking his head even as he lifted it to follow the colonel’s ascent. “It is like watching oversized spider monkey.”
“Oversized and undergroomed,” Rodney commented also watching his teammate climb.
“I heard that, McKay,” Sheppard called down, stopping long enough to reconnect his tether line and lean out from the metal frame to hitch a hand in invitation. “Sure you don’t want to join me?”
Rodney waved off the summons. “No, no, I’m good, thanks. You just go ahead and have fun defying death on your own.”
Radek tsked at the broad grin on Sheppard’s face as he started up once more. “Is sad, really, to see such nice man who is obviously insane beyond all reason.”
McKay shrugged. “His lack of rational thought serves a purpose from time to time. Like now, for example.”
John was a good seven meters up by then and he leaned out once more to call down, “You two just don’t know what fun is.”
That’s when they realized the problem wasn’t with the battery in the relay, but a faulty connection brought on by a weak bracing in the tower. Unfortunately, the break in the tower wouldn’t support Sheppard’s weight and he, along with the top five meters or so of the spire, tumbled into the sea.
Rodney’s exclamation of, “Shit!” accompanied a Czech curse and Teyla’s alarmed, “John!” Ronon simply dove into the water after him, realizing quicker than anyone else that Sheppard was still coupled to the metal structure by his harness. Ronon surfaced almost three minutes later with a limp and nonresponsive Sheppard who he rolled onto the edge of the pier before nearly sinking back under the rippling waves himself. It had been a one shot deal for Ronon. Given the gash and goose egg on his forehead, John had apparently been struck in the head and rendered unconscious by the same piece of tower that had been sinking like an anchor and taking him with it. If Ronon hadn’t reached Sheppard on his first dive there would have been no chance he would have been able to surface, take another breath, and go down after him again. The way the Satedan was sputtering and coughing up water even as he fought to hold onto the pier only proved that Ronon was more than aware of that limitation when he went after his friend.
Without being able to tie into the city system, radio transmissions were limited in range and there was no way they could call a medical team to their location, so McKay had sent Radek for help while Teyla held tight to Ronon and managed to haul him out of the drink. After a stomach thrust that produced a burble of seawater from John’s throat and mouth, Rodney set to work on trying to get Sheppard’s heart and lungs to start doing their goddamn job again. Not that he really expected much of a response seeing as Rodney had learned something else in those CPR classes of his youth… CPR alone rarely restarted a stopped heart; sometimes you needed epinephrine and a defibrillator and a shitload of luck to do that. No, all he could manage was a stopgap measure to keep enough blood pumping and oxygen flowing to John’s brain until the life-saving help could arrive and hope like hell it would be enough to keep Sheppard’s mental capacity from diminishing to the level of the small simian he had been mimicking when he fell.
The irony was that most of his life since meeting Sheppard had been one long line of stopgaps. It was rare Rodney ever had a chance to fix anything properly, to do it right. It always seemed to come down to doing it good enough to keep them alive, to get the team or the city out of imminent danger, and leave the fine tuning until the threat was over and they could all take a collective breath of relief. And here he was providing his own breath until John would respond to the rescue breathing and chest compressions, not to mention the internal pleading going on inside Rodney’s head for Sheppard to take that collective breath for all of them.
In the past, Rodney had created life in the form of Fran out of little more than an amorphous block of replicator base materials. He had brought life into this world, held a tiny baby as he drew his first breath and cried in Rodney’s arms. After those incredible feats, surely getting Sheppard to breathe on his own should be a piece of cake. After all, the man had been doing just that a few minutes before. Just one breath. One goddamn breath. Was that too much to ask? Given the way John completely ignored the two Rodney blew into his lungs, apparently it was. Growling in frustration at Sheppard’s lack of cooperation, McKay started up on the chest compressions once more.
Seriously, the man was a total pain in the ass sometimes.
“Rodney,” Teyla tried again, this time with a little more force. “Let me take over.”
McKay’s shoulders burned from the exertion of maintaining the proper position over John’s chest and he was beyond the ability to speak, but he still shook his head no. This may have been nothing more than his typical temporary solution to a problem, but the fact remained, Rodney had never failed in his responsibilities to find that short term fix when needed. How many times had he rerouted power from one system to another to keep the Jumper airborne? How many times had he converted one component to serve the purpose of another more critical one that they needed for the situation at hand? This was no different. If Sheppard’s heart wouldn’t beat, then Rodney’s hands would provide the mechanism to keep it going. If John’s lungs wouldn’t provide the oxygen his brain so desperately needed, then Rodney would substitute his own for the job. Reroute, reallocate, redistribute… it didn’t matter if it was the city or a human body; McKay knew what was needed to get the job done.
But the next hand that gripped his shoulder wasn’t as gentle as Teyla’s had been, and the strong arm behind it pulled Rodney away to land sprawled on his back looking up into its owners face. Water still dripped from Ronon, and Rodney flinched away from the drop landing on his cheek as much as he did the tone the Satedan used when he ordered, “Stand down, McKay. Teyla can take it from here.”
A broad palm splayed across Rodney’s chest to pin him in place and McKay’s first thought was that Ronon’s hand position was fine but he wasn’t using the correct grip of one hand interlocked over the other if he planned to administer CPR. Because, for a split second, Rodney couldn’t remember who was the one who needed the first aid to begin with. But then he lifted his head enough to see Teyla counting out the compressions and remembered it was Sheppard who was on the verge of death this time. On the verge, but not dead. Not fucking dead… at least not yet.
Rodney let his head fall back on the pier and gulped air, feeling the exhaustion seep into his muscles now that they had nothing to do. Above him, the sun was shining high and warm and bright enough to have him squinting but not enough to look away. They said you saw a bright light when you died, dazzling and warm and inviting, and Rodney couldn’t help but wonder if he was the one dying after all. Never mind he could feel his heart pounding against his chest and his lungs pulling in ragged liters of air, a part of him was dying, a tall, lanky part with dark unruly hair and a sardonic smile framing sarcastic barbs that were tempered by an underlying current of something McKay hadn’t experienced a lot of in his life… friendship, companionship, caring. John was someone who genuinely cared about Rodney’s well being as a person, as a friend, and not just an asset to the expedition. And if that part of Rodney, that part of his team, that part of his life, crossed over into the beckoning light, there would always be a gaping hole no matter what Rodney tried to fill it with.
He’d nearly lost it before− Teyla went missing for months then Sheppard was just… gone. He’d walked through a gate and just vanished for a few weeks only to return with a story of an alternate timeline where he and Teyla never returned to Atlantis alive and others were lost until that other Rodney could do nothing but mourn and hide in his work and in the process he had found a way to make it right for the version of himself currently staring up at the sun on the pier. His alternate self had done what Rodney did best, he’d found another stopgap, bought this reality a little time to find a permanent solution, and McKay would be damned if he let that second chance go to waste because Sheppard fell off a glorified jungle gym.
Peeling his eyes from the sun, Rodney looked back up at Ronon, not even bothering to blink away the flashbulb effect that obscured his vision. “Can I at least sit up?”
“Depends. Are you going to let Teyla work?”
“I guess that depends on how good of a job she does,” Rodney countered.
Ronon took in the stubborn set of McKay’s jaw and Rodney could tell he was weighing the request carefully. But before Ronon made up his mind, the arrival of the medical team had them both looking up anxiously. Ronon did let Rodney sit up then, and McKay was vaguely aware of water soaking into his pant leg from the spreading puddle being formed by Ronon as he knelt by Rodney’s side. Teyla moved out of the medical team’s way and crawled to sit on Rodney’s other side and the three watched anxiously as the medical team worked.
One of the medics cut away Sheppard’s sodden t-shirt and positioned a series of electrodes as another placed an ambu bag over his face and Keller took a quick check of Sheppard’s vitals, or lack thereof, on the portable monitor. She gave a studious nod at the results. “Okay, he’s in v-fib. Let’s set the gel packs and charge to three hundred joules.”
Jennifer waiting until her team completed their assigned duties before taking up the paddles. “Charged. Clear.”
John’s body tensed, lifted slightly as the current ran through him, then returned to rest on the pier. Keller watched the monitor readings for any sign that the jolt had worked then frowned in frustration. “Charge again.”
Rodney sat as still as John lay on the ground, completely mesmerized by the activity taking place. The world seemed to condense down to the small scene playing out before him. He could feel the press of shoulders on either side, feel the presence of his two teammates, but more than that, he could feel the absence of the third one. He could feel it in his aching shoulders and clenched jaw and burning lungs that seemed set on not drawing breath again until Sheppard finally did. He could feel it in the jolt that once more passed through John’s body, a current that had the three teammates recoiling in unison with the way Sheppard’s torso lifted and fell like one of the waves heaving against the pier. And then he felt that sense of loss vanish when Sheppard tugged in a rasping breath that filled not only his lungs but those of his team as the erratic heart rhythm on the monitor was replaced by a slow but steady beat.
The medics rolled Sheppard to his side when he started coughing and puking up salt water and Teyla let out a relieved sound that was a cross between a laugh and a sob as she slumped into McKay a little more. Rodney waited until Jennifer looked over from where she was helping support John and gave them an encouraged smile before he pulled his knees up and dropped his forehead there, not lifting it even when Ronon wrapped an arm around both Rodney and Teyla’s backs and gave a happy shake. No, Rodney was more than content to sit there with his eyes squeezed shut and a lump in his throat as he fought to even out his breathing while listening to John cough and retch a couple of meters away. It was ranking up there as one of the most beautiful sounds he’d ever heard, even better than the hum of a particle accelerator or the whir of a coffee grinder. And McKay didn’t lift his head until Keller started asking Sheppard a few standard questions and he heard the murmured responses.
“Let’s get you to the infirmary,” Jennifer told her patient with a doctorly smile and pat to his arm when one of the medics finished putting a clean dressing on John’s forehead.
Sheppard’s team wasted no time gathering around the gurney as soon as the medics had him loaded and John’s lips curled hazily when he looked up at them through half-masted eyes. Teyla smiled down on him. “How are you feeling?”
“Been better,” he admitted in a hoarse whisper from behind the oxygen mask. “Headache. Chest hurts a little.”
“Gee, I wonder why?” Rodney snorted.
Two slivers of hazel took in McKay and John asked, “Did I fix it?”
“Hardly. More like you owe me a new relay tower seeing as you completely destroyed the old one as you were plummeting into the sea with all the grace and buoyancy of an Acme anvil.”
“Not my fault,” John justified weakly.
“Acme anvil,” Rodney reiterated, as if John was not only responsible for the collapse of the tower but also for scaring the shit out of McKay… which he had. But he was breathing now, breathing and talking and holy shit, the CPR had worked! It had really fucking worked!
Finally letting his eyelids slide shut, Sheppard exhaled heavily. “Days like today, I feel less spider monkey and more Wile E. Coyote.”
Ronon crinkled his brow in irritation as he noted, “I don’t understand that show. Why doesn’t he just shoot the damn bird? Forget the flying suits and painted cliff walls; buy a decent sidearm.”
“That’s kind of the point, big guy,” Sheppard tried to reason with his eyes till closed as the gurney started on its journey to the medical facility and the others maintained their position next to John.
Ronon just frowned more in disbelief. “So being an incompetent hunter is the point of the show?”
“I believe the character’s many failures are meant to be the source of humor in the situation,” Teyla pointed out, not sounding the least bit convinced. “At least that is how Major Lorne explained it to me. Although, I am even more baffled by the purpose of talking livestock with speech impediments.”
“Earth humor is stupid,” Ronon observed with a shake of his head.
“Yes, apparently we don’t have the subtlety to grasp the hilarity of drunken disembowelment that is the cornerstone of Satedan comedy,” Rodney noted in return, wondering how in the hell they had gone from near death to conversations about the cultural diversity of humor in the universe. And yet, the familiarity of the banter between his teammates had the absolute terror from a few minutes before thankfully fading.
Keller spoke up then, probably to keep Ronon from personally demonstrating on Rodney how hilarious a disembowelment could be. “Well, see, there you go. Satedan and Earth humor aren’t that far apart. It’s like that quote about the essence of comedy being pain.”
“Huh,” Rodney considered what Jennifer had said. “All this time we’ve been living out a comedy and here I thought we were in some freakish sci-fi horror scenario like Aliens.”
“Now that is a funny movie,” Ronon assured them with a broad grin, having finally seen the film.
Sheppard’s attempt to chuckle had a new wave of coughing starting and the smiles on his teammate’s faces vanishing when John finally leaned back with his face screwed in pain. “Ow,” he grunted, one hand going to his chest.
“You may have a few cracked ribs, Colonel,” Keller told him. “That’s not uncommon after undergoing CPR for as long as you did.”
John’s eyes widened at the news before narrowing. “How long?”
“It was probably seven or eight minutes from the time Dr. Zelenka left to bring help until we relieved Teyla,” Keller informed him.
“You did it for that long?” John asked Teyla in amazement.
“No, only for the last minute or two,” she corrected.
“Who…?” Sheppard’s eyes landed on Ronon, who was still dripping water and realization slowly dawned on John on what his team really had done for him. “You’re wet.”
“Of course he is,” Rodney scoffed. “It’s not like you swam back to the surface on your own before collapsing.”
John fingered the severed end of the harness he still wore; the one Ronon had cut away underwater to keep the section of tower from pulling him to the very bottom of the ocean. “You could have drowned.”
Ronon shrugged, before stating definitively, “You would have drowned.”
“So that means…”
Rodney saw the way John was looking at him in disbelief and gratitude and he suddenly felt awkward about the whole thing. It was one thing for McKay to make Sheppard feel obligated to him when Rodney, say, gave up the second piece of chocolate cake on his tray because the colonel was running late to dinner and missed out, or when Rodney fixed John’s laptop for the third time in one week. But today, Rodney didn’t want thanks, mainly because he was biting his tongue to keep himself from thanking Sheppard for not dying on him in the first place.
“It means you both smell like low tide on a hot day,” Rodney cut him off with a crinkle of his nose in disgust. “Although, some might consider that an improvement over your typical Aqua Velva. Me, I’d have to say it’s a toss up. So, let’s get you to the infirmary so Ronon can go shower and you can…”
Sheppard’s hand landed on Rodney’s forearm, the long fingers still icy cold and sickly pale, but the grip had a strength behind that removed whatever lingering doubt Rodney might have that John really was going to be okay. “McKay?”
Oh, God, Sheppard was going to get emotional. Sure, it was to be expected considering how the man had nearly died and was, no doubt, still suffering from the effects of a decreased oxygen supply to the brain. But Rodney really wished he could come up with a stopgap measure to avoid this sort of public schmaltziness because he just wasn’t any good with it.
“Look, Sheppard, I know you think you owe me your life and, technically, you do. But you don’t have to feel obligated to say or do anything to thank me or recognize my efforts… although, if you feel compelled to put my name forward for some sort of civilian medal or commendation I would understand perfectly and would, obviously, accept it with…”
“Rodney,” John cut him off, tugging on Rodney’s arm to pull him a little closer. When McKay leaned in, Sheppard lifted his oxygen mask enough to tell him, “If you’ve infected me with that goddamn virus that’s had us grounded for so long, I’m going to kick your ass.”
Rodney blinked at the threat before recognizing the out Sheppard had given him and straightened with a droll expression. “I’m sorry if I inadvertently spread my cooties to you, Colonel.”
“You had your reasons,” John dismissed with a small shrug.
Rodney frowned at the nonchalance. “You’re welcome, by the way. Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t,” Sheppard promised, releasing Rodney’s arm as they entered the transporter.
The fact of the matter was that Sheppard didn’t need to mention it; that lingering grip on Rodney’s arm had said it all. For a man who avoided physical contact with others almost as much as McKay, Sheppard’s touches conveyed a great deal, for the express reason that they were so rare. An encouragement to, “keep at it,” when Rodney was flustered with a technical problem he just couldn’t seem to solve had a silent, “but not too long because you need some sleep,” added to it when John gave a friendly slap on the back as he left the lab. A whack to McKay’s chest to shut him up when Rodney was running off at the mouth to an adversary actually conveyed the thought, “I can’t watch your back if you keep making yourself a target.” And when John sat next to Rodney in a rowboat, so close their shoulders brushed with every stroke of the oars, it said, “We’re in this together. I’m not leaving you, no matter what.” It didn’t matter that it had taken place in a dream, the sentiment had been real, more real than just about anything Rodney had experienced in his life.
For years, family had meant nothing more than genetics, friend had been a grandiose word for coworker, and home had been stipulated by a lease agreement and security deposit. But then had come Atlantis and his team and Rodney finally understood why terms like “family ties” and “homesick” actually existed when he experienced them firsthand. They were concepts worth fighting for and the people who embodied them were worth dying for. The problem was, they felt the same way, and it often fell to Rodney to figure out how to keep them alive. So he’d continue to reroute and scavenge parts and come up with ways to accomplish the impossible as long as they needed him to, because as annoying and exhausting and terrifying as it could be, Atlantis, the expedition, and his team made up for every bit of it.
Yeah, Sheppard and the others were worth every damn stopgap he could come up with.
As the doors to the transporter slid shut, Rodney locked his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels with a grumble meant for John, “You still owe me a new tower.”
Sure, they might be worth it, but there was no need to get all overly sentimental about it.
The End
Category: Gen, team, h/c
Word Count: ~ 4,800
Rating: T
Characters: Team plus some Keller
Spoilers: Anything up through Season 4 and a few teeny tiny spoilers for Season 5 but really, if you don't know where babies come from you're too young to be reading this fic anyway.
A/N: I actually started this fic for another challenge months ago, got distracted with another deadline, got distracted again, then it dawned on me... CPR is a form of first aid! So I dusted it off and here we are. Thanks as always to Koschka for the beta.
Summary: Behind him he could hear Ronon still coughing. Given how long the Satedan had been submerged going into the icy waters after Sheppard, Rodney was actually surprised he hadn’t had to choose which of his teammates he would perform CPR on first..
Stopgap
by liketheriver
Rodney had first learned CPR when he was twelve years old. With one child with deadly allergies and another with epilepsy, his mother had made sure the entire family was trained in a myriad of life saving skills. He remembered the instructor of the class pointing out that it was common to break ribs, particularly if the victim was elderly, if you were using the correct technique, and that you shouldn’t worry about those pesky popping and cracking sounds with each compression. You also shouldn’t blame yourself if you couldn’t revive the person, because, the fact was, if it was necessary to perform CPR then the person was already dead. Rodney knew, even then, they were only saying that so you wouldn’t feel bad when you failed. But the thing was, Rodney wasn’t the sort of person who felt bad when he failed. He got angry. He got annoyed. He got pissed.
Kind of like he was now.
“Breathe, you son of a bitch, breathe.”
Behind him he could hear Ronon still coughing. Given how long the Satedan had been submerged going into the icy waters after Sheppard, Rodney was actually surprised he hadn’t had to choose which of his teammates he would perform CPR on first.
“Rodney?” Teyla’s free hand landed on his shoulder and Rodney ignored it, refusing to let it slow his rhythm of chest compressions. Her other hand pressed a bandage over the gash on Sheppard’s forehead to slow the excessive flow of blood that always seemed to accompany a head wound regardless of the severity.
“Not now; I’m trying to count,” Rodney snapped returning to the cadence of five-and-six-and-seven-and-eight he was mumbling under his breath.
“You are tiring,” she pointed out gently. “I can take over if you wish.”
“Not yet,” he told her before tipping Sheppard’s head back and delivering two more breathes.
How long had it been? A few minutes? A few days? Hell, he didn’t even know. All Rodney knew was that he wasn’t giving up. Because he wasn’t going to fail, Sheppard wasn’t going to die, because no matter what that woman had said all those years ago, Rodney refused to believe that John was already dead.
Sheppard wasn’t dead yet. How could he be when Ronon and Rodney and Teyla were all still here breathing with a pulse? John was one of them, a part of them, and with three quarters of his team still alive and kicking, there was no way Rodney was going to let John slack off on pulling his fair share.
Not dead yet. Not until Rodney gave up and that… that wasn’t going to happen. Because when Rodney got pissed, he also got stubborn.
“Where… the fuck… is the medical… team?” Rodney practically panted the demand, his own breathing taking on the staccato tempo of the compressions.
“The closest transporter was several minutes away,” Teyla reminded. “But Radek should have reached it by now.”
This stupid goddamn city with its stupid goddamn glitches. City wide communications had gone down the night before and the technical team had traced the problem to a relay tower out on the east pier. Rodney and Radek had headed out right after breakfast to try to repair the outage and Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon had volunteered to go with them. Rodney wasn’t exactly sure why his entire team had decided to come along on what would usually be a simple maintenance call with no one but technical staff, but he had a pretty good idea what the primary driver was… boredom. Ronon and Rodney had both come down with symptoms of a viral infection common in the Pegasus Galaxy after their last mission. Not nearly as devastating as the last run in with a Pegasus bug that had wiped the memories of all the Earth-born members of the expedition, this one simply resulted in a rash and low-grade fever. But it was enough to have the entire team grounded from offworld travel until the virus ran its course, which apparently took about three weeks for the rash to fade completely.
You might think three weeks stuck in Atlantis wouldn’t be that big of a deal. It was the damn City of the Ancients, for Christ’s sake. How could that ever get dull? And for Rodney, it hadn’t. It seemed the science staff never ran out of work and McKay had actually had a chance to catch up on a backlog of data and diagnostics he’d been meaning to look at for months now. But for the other three, cabin fever was evidently setting in. Apparently there is only so much time you can spend beating the shit out of each other in the gym or meditating or bonding with your son or whacking golf balls into the ocean or completing the backlog of mission reports for the SGC. After the first two weeks, Ronon and Sheppard had started taking any opportunity to go in the field, even if the field was nothing more than a water distribution center that sat three levels below the cafeteria. By the beginning of the third week, even Teyla was willing to join them for short assignments while the baby took his nap.
When McKay had mentioned the planned repairs on the docks for the com system in passing at dinner the night before, his teammates had been practically tripping over each other to get out there with him, which just went to show how desperate the situation had become. Ronon and Sheppard had even thrown a game of rock, paper, scissors to see which of them would be the lucky one to strap on the fall protection harness and climb the tower to replace the battery unit on the relay system. Rodney and Radek had just sat back and let them considering they usually played a round to see who had to climb the damn thing…Rodney often insisting on best three out of five, then five out of seven when things weren’t going his way.
Zelenka had watched as Sheppard scrambled easily up the tower, shaking his head even as he lifted it to follow the colonel’s ascent. “It is like watching oversized spider monkey.”
“Oversized and undergroomed,” Rodney commented also watching his teammate climb.
“I heard that, McKay,” Sheppard called down, stopping long enough to reconnect his tether line and lean out from the metal frame to hitch a hand in invitation. “Sure you don’t want to join me?”
Rodney waved off the summons. “No, no, I’m good, thanks. You just go ahead and have fun defying death on your own.”
Radek tsked at the broad grin on Sheppard’s face as he started up once more. “Is sad, really, to see such nice man who is obviously insane beyond all reason.”
McKay shrugged. “His lack of rational thought serves a purpose from time to time. Like now, for example.”
John was a good seven meters up by then and he leaned out once more to call down, “You two just don’t know what fun is.”
That’s when they realized the problem wasn’t with the battery in the relay, but a faulty connection brought on by a weak bracing in the tower. Unfortunately, the break in the tower wouldn’t support Sheppard’s weight and he, along with the top five meters or so of the spire, tumbled into the sea.
Rodney’s exclamation of, “Shit!” accompanied a Czech curse and Teyla’s alarmed, “John!” Ronon simply dove into the water after him, realizing quicker than anyone else that Sheppard was still coupled to the metal structure by his harness. Ronon surfaced almost three minutes later with a limp and nonresponsive Sheppard who he rolled onto the edge of the pier before nearly sinking back under the rippling waves himself. It had been a one shot deal for Ronon. Given the gash and goose egg on his forehead, John had apparently been struck in the head and rendered unconscious by the same piece of tower that had been sinking like an anchor and taking him with it. If Ronon hadn’t reached Sheppard on his first dive there would have been no chance he would have been able to surface, take another breath, and go down after him again. The way the Satedan was sputtering and coughing up water even as he fought to hold onto the pier only proved that Ronon was more than aware of that limitation when he went after his friend.
Without being able to tie into the city system, radio transmissions were limited in range and there was no way they could call a medical team to their location, so McKay had sent Radek for help while Teyla held tight to Ronon and managed to haul him out of the drink. After a stomach thrust that produced a burble of seawater from John’s throat and mouth, Rodney set to work on trying to get Sheppard’s heart and lungs to start doing their goddamn job again. Not that he really expected much of a response seeing as Rodney had learned something else in those CPR classes of his youth… CPR alone rarely restarted a stopped heart; sometimes you needed epinephrine and a defibrillator and a shitload of luck to do that. No, all he could manage was a stopgap measure to keep enough blood pumping and oxygen flowing to John’s brain until the life-saving help could arrive and hope like hell it would be enough to keep Sheppard’s mental capacity from diminishing to the level of the small simian he had been mimicking when he fell.
The irony was that most of his life since meeting Sheppard had been one long line of stopgaps. It was rare Rodney ever had a chance to fix anything properly, to do it right. It always seemed to come down to doing it good enough to keep them alive, to get the team or the city out of imminent danger, and leave the fine tuning until the threat was over and they could all take a collective breath of relief. And here he was providing his own breath until John would respond to the rescue breathing and chest compressions, not to mention the internal pleading going on inside Rodney’s head for Sheppard to take that collective breath for all of them.
In the past, Rodney had created life in the form of Fran out of little more than an amorphous block of replicator base materials. He had brought life into this world, held a tiny baby as he drew his first breath and cried in Rodney’s arms. After those incredible feats, surely getting Sheppard to breathe on his own should be a piece of cake. After all, the man had been doing just that a few minutes before. Just one breath. One goddamn breath. Was that too much to ask? Given the way John completely ignored the two Rodney blew into his lungs, apparently it was. Growling in frustration at Sheppard’s lack of cooperation, McKay started up on the chest compressions once more.
Seriously, the man was a total pain in the ass sometimes.
“Rodney,” Teyla tried again, this time with a little more force. “Let me take over.”
McKay’s shoulders burned from the exertion of maintaining the proper position over John’s chest and he was beyond the ability to speak, but he still shook his head no. This may have been nothing more than his typical temporary solution to a problem, but the fact remained, Rodney had never failed in his responsibilities to find that short term fix when needed. How many times had he rerouted power from one system to another to keep the Jumper airborne? How many times had he converted one component to serve the purpose of another more critical one that they needed for the situation at hand? This was no different. If Sheppard’s heart wouldn’t beat, then Rodney’s hands would provide the mechanism to keep it going. If John’s lungs wouldn’t provide the oxygen his brain so desperately needed, then Rodney would substitute his own for the job. Reroute, reallocate, redistribute… it didn’t matter if it was the city or a human body; McKay knew what was needed to get the job done.
But the next hand that gripped his shoulder wasn’t as gentle as Teyla’s had been, and the strong arm behind it pulled Rodney away to land sprawled on his back looking up into its owners face. Water still dripped from Ronon, and Rodney flinched away from the drop landing on his cheek as much as he did the tone the Satedan used when he ordered, “Stand down, McKay. Teyla can take it from here.”
A broad palm splayed across Rodney’s chest to pin him in place and McKay’s first thought was that Ronon’s hand position was fine but he wasn’t using the correct grip of one hand interlocked over the other if he planned to administer CPR. Because, for a split second, Rodney couldn’t remember who was the one who needed the first aid to begin with. But then he lifted his head enough to see Teyla counting out the compressions and remembered it was Sheppard who was on the verge of death this time. On the verge, but not dead. Not fucking dead… at least not yet.
Rodney let his head fall back on the pier and gulped air, feeling the exhaustion seep into his muscles now that they had nothing to do. Above him, the sun was shining high and warm and bright enough to have him squinting but not enough to look away. They said you saw a bright light when you died, dazzling and warm and inviting, and Rodney couldn’t help but wonder if he was the one dying after all. Never mind he could feel his heart pounding against his chest and his lungs pulling in ragged liters of air, a part of him was dying, a tall, lanky part with dark unruly hair and a sardonic smile framing sarcastic barbs that were tempered by an underlying current of something McKay hadn’t experienced a lot of in his life… friendship, companionship, caring. John was someone who genuinely cared about Rodney’s well being as a person, as a friend, and not just an asset to the expedition. And if that part of Rodney, that part of his team, that part of his life, crossed over into the beckoning light, there would always be a gaping hole no matter what Rodney tried to fill it with.
He’d nearly lost it before− Teyla went missing for months then Sheppard was just… gone. He’d walked through a gate and just vanished for a few weeks only to return with a story of an alternate timeline where he and Teyla never returned to Atlantis alive and others were lost until that other Rodney could do nothing but mourn and hide in his work and in the process he had found a way to make it right for the version of himself currently staring up at the sun on the pier. His alternate self had done what Rodney did best, he’d found another stopgap, bought this reality a little time to find a permanent solution, and McKay would be damned if he let that second chance go to waste because Sheppard fell off a glorified jungle gym.
Peeling his eyes from the sun, Rodney looked back up at Ronon, not even bothering to blink away the flashbulb effect that obscured his vision. “Can I at least sit up?”
“Depends. Are you going to let Teyla work?”
“I guess that depends on how good of a job she does,” Rodney countered.
Ronon took in the stubborn set of McKay’s jaw and Rodney could tell he was weighing the request carefully. But before Ronon made up his mind, the arrival of the medical team had them both looking up anxiously. Ronon did let Rodney sit up then, and McKay was vaguely aware of water soaking into his pant leg from the spreading puddle being formed by Ronon as he knelt by Rodney’s side. Teyla moved out of the medical team’s way and crawled to sit on Rodney’s other side and the three watched anxiously as the medical team worked.
One of the medics cut away Sheppard’s sodden t-shirt and positioned a series of electrodes as another placed an ambu bag over his face and Keller took a quick check of Sheppard’s vitals, or lack thereof, on the portable monitor. She gave a studious nod at the results. “Okay, he’s in v-fib. Let’s set the gel packs and charge to three hundred joules.”
Jennifer waiting until her team completed their assigned duties before taking up the paddles. “Charged. Clear.”
John’s body tensed, lifted slightly as the current ran through him, then returned to rest on the pier. Keller watched the monitor readings for any sign that the jolt had worked then frowned in frustration. “Charge again.”
Rodney sat as still as John lay on the ground, completely mesmerized by the activity taking place. The world seemed to condense down to the small scene playing out before him. He could feel the press of shoulders on either side, feel the presence of his two teammates, but more than that, he could feel the absence of the third one. He could feel it in his aching shoulders and clenched jaw and burning lungs that seemed set on not drawing breath again until Sheppard finally did. He could feel it in the jolt that once more passed through John’s body, a current that had the three teammates recoiling in unison with the way Sheppard’s torso lifted and fell like one of the waves heaving against the pier. And then he felt that sense of loss vanish when Sheppard tugged in a rasping breath that filled not only his lungs but those of his team as the erratic heart rhythm on the monitor was replaced by a slow but steady beat.
The medics rolled Sheppard to his side when he started coughing and puking up salt water and Teyla let out a relieved sound that was a cross between a laugh and a sob as she slumped into McKay a little more. Rodney waited until Jennifer looked over from where she was helping support John and gave them an encouraged smile before he pulled his knees up and dropped his forehead there, not lifting it even when Ronon wrapped an arm around both Rodney and Teyla’s backs and gave a happy shake. No, Rodney was more than content to sit there with his eyes squeezed shut and a lump in his throat as he fought to even out his breathing while listening to John cough and retch a couple of meters away. It was ranking up there as one of the most beautiful sounds he’d ever heard, even better than the hum of a particle accelerator or the whir of a coffee grinder. And McKay didn’t lift his head until Keller started asking Sheppard a few standard questions and he heard the murmured responses.
“Let’s get you to the infirmary,” Jennifer told her patient with a doctorly smile and pat to his arm when one of the medics finished putting a clean dressing on John’s forehead.
Sheppard’s team wasted no time gathering around the gurney as soon as the medics had him loaded and John’s lips curled hazily when he looked up at them through half-masted eyes. Teyla smiled down on him. “How are you feeling?”
“Been better,” he admitted in a hoarse whisper from behind the oxygen mask. “Headache. Chest hurts a little.”
“Gee, I wonder why?” Rodney snorted.
Two slivers of hazel took in McKay and John asked, “Did I fix it?”
“Hardly. More like you owe me a new relay tower seeing as you completely destroyed the old one as you were plummeting into the sea with all the grace and buoyancy of an Acme anvil.”
“Not my fault,” John justified weakly.
“Acme anvil,” Rodney reiterated, as if John was not only responsible for the collapse of the tower but also for scaring the shit out of McKay… which he had. But he was breathing now, breathing and talking and holy shit, the CPR had worked! It had really fucking worked!
Finally letting his eyelids slide shut, Sheppard exhaled heavily. “Days like today, I feel less spider monkey and more Wile E. Coyote.”
Ronon crinkled his brow in irritation as he noted, “I don’t understand that show. Why doesn’t he just shoot the damn bird? Forget the flying suits and painted cliff walls; buy a decent sidearm.”
“That’s kind of the point, big guy,” Sheppard tried to reason with his eyes till closed as the gurney started on its journey to the medical facility and the others maintained their position next to John.
Ronon just frowned more in disbelief. “So being an incompetent hunter is the point of the show?”
“I believe the character’s many failures are meant to be the source of humor in the situation,” Teyla pointed out, not sounding the least bit convinced. “At least that is how Major Lorne explained it to me. Although, I am even more baffled by the purpose of talking livestock with speech impediments.”
“Earth humor is stupid,” Ronon observed with a shake of his head.
“Yes, apparently we don’t have the subtlety to grasp the hilarity of drunken disembowelment that is the cornerstone of Satedan comedy,” Rodney noted in return, wondering how in the hell they had gone from near death to conversations about the cultural diversity of humor in the universe. And yet, the familiarity of the banter between his teammates had the absolute terror from a few minutes before thankfully fading.
Keller spoke up then, probably to keep Ronon from personally demonstrating on Rodney how hilarious a disembowelment could be. “Well, see, there you go. Satedan and Earth humor aren’t that far apart. It’s like that quote about the essence of comedy being pain.”
“Huh,” Rodney considered what Jennifer had said. “All this time we’ve been living out a comedy and here I thought we were in some freakish sci-fi horror scenario like Aliens.”
“Now that is a funny movie,” Ronon assured them with a broad grin, having finally seen the film.
Sheppard’s attempt to chuckle had a new wave of coughing starting and the smiles on his teammate’s faces vanishing when John finally leaned back with his face screwed in pain. “Ow,” he grunted, one hand going to his chest.
“You may have a few cracked ribs, Colonel,” Keller told him. “That’s not uncommon after undergoing CPR for as long as you did.”
John’s eyes widened at the news before narrowing. “How long?”
“It was probably seven or eight minutes from the time Dr. Zelenka left to bring help until we relieved Teyla,” Keller informed him.
“You did it for that long?” John asked Teyla in amazement.
“No, only for the last minute or two,” she corrected.
“Who…?” Sheppard’s eyes landed on Ronon, who was still dripping water and realization slowly dawned on John on what his team really had done for him. “You’re wet.”
“Of course he is,” Rodney scoffed. “It’s not like you swam back to the surface on your own before collapsing.”
John fingered the severed end of the harness he still wore; the one Ronon had cut away underwater to keep the section of tower from pulling him to the very bottom of the ocean. “You could have drowned.”
Ronon shrugged, before stating definitively, “You would have drowned.”
“So that means…”
Rodney saw the way John was looking at him in disbelief and gratitude and he suddenly felt awkward about the whole thing. It was one thing for McKay to make Sheppard feel obligated to him when Rodney, say, gave up the second piece of chocolate cake on his tray because the colonel was running late to dinner and missed out, or when Rodney fixed John’s laptop for the third time in one week. But today, Rodney didn’t want thanks, mainly because he was biting his tongue to keep himself from thanking Sheppard for not dying on him in the first place.
“It means you both smell like low tide on a hot day,” Rodney cut him off with a crinkle of his nose in disgust. “Although, some might consider that an improvement over your typical Aqua Velva. Me, I’d have to say it’s a toss up. So, let’s get you to the infirmary so Ronon can go shower and you can…”
Sheppard’s hand landed on Rodney’s forearm, the long fingers still icy cold and sickly pale, but the grip had a strength behind that removed whatever lingering doubt Rodney might have that John really was going to be okay. “McKay?”
Oh, God, Sheppard was going to get emotional. Sure, it was to be expected considering how the man had nearly died and was, no doubt, still suffering from the effects of a decreased oxygen supply to the brain. But Rodney really wished he could come up with a stopgap measure to avoid this sort of public schmaltziness because he just wasn’t any good with it.
“Look, Sheppard, I know you think you owe me your life and, technically, you do. But you don’t have to feel obligated to say or do anything to thank me or recognize my efforts… although, if you feel compelled to put my name forward for some sort of civilian medal or commendation I would understand perfectly and would, obviously, accept it with…”
“Rodney,” John cut him off, tugging on Rodney’s arm to pull him a little closer. When McKay leaned in, Sheppard lifted his oxygen mask enough to tell him, “If you’ve infected me with that goddamn virus that’s had us grounded for so long, I’m going to kick your ass.”
Rodney blinked at the threat before recognizing the out Sheppard had given him and straightened with a droll expression. “I’m sorry if I inadvertently spread my cooties to you, Colonel.”
“You had your reasons,” John dismissed with a small shrug.
Rodney frowned at the nonchalance. “You’re welcome, by the way. Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t,” Sheppard promised, releasing Rodney’s arm as they entered the transporter.
The fact of the matter was that Sheppard didn’t need to mention it; that lingering grip on Rodney’s arm had said it all. For a man who avoided physical contact with others almost as much as McKay, Sheppard’s touches conveyed a great deal, for the express reason that they were so rare. An encouragement to, “keep at it,” when Rodney was flustered with a technical problem he just couldn’t seem to solve had a silent, “but not too long because you need some sleep,” added to it when John gave a friendly slap on the back as he left the lab. A whack to McKay’s chest to shut him up when Rodney was running off at the mouth to an adversary actually conveyed the thought, “I can’t watch your back if you keep making yourself a target.” And when John sat next to Rodney in a rowboat, so close their shoulders brushed with every stroke of the oars, it said, “We’re in this together. I’m not leaving you, no matter what.” It didn’t matter that it had taken place in a dream, the sentiment had been real, more real than just about anything Rodney had experienced in his life.
For years, family had meant nothing more than genetics, friend had been a grandiose word for coworker, and home had been stipulated by a lease agreement and security deposit. But then had come Atlantis and his team and Rodney finally understood why terms like “family ties” and “homesick” actually existed when he experienced them firsthand. They were concepts worth fighting for and the people who embodied them were worth dying for. The problem was, they felt the same way, and it often fell to Rodney to figure out how to keep them alive. So he’d continue to reroute and scavenge parts and come up with ways to accomplish the impossible as long as they needed him to, because as annoying and exhausting and terrifying as it could be, Atlantis, the expedition, and his team made up for every bit of it.
Yeah, Sheppard and the others were worth every damn stopgap he could come up with.
As the doors to the transporter slid shut, Rodney locked his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels with a grumble meant for John, “You still owe me a new tower.”
Sure, they might be worth it, but there was no need to get all overly sentimental about it.
The End