The Human Body VIII: Getting Under Your Skin, Part 7
Title: The Human Body VIII: Getting Under Your Skin, Part 7
Author: smallwaldo
Rating: R
Pairing: Sheppard/Beckett
Words: 3519 (this part)
A/N: This is both the "Instinct" and "Conversion" chapter of the series. This part beta'd by kyrdwyn. Thanks! :)
Summary: "He turned me into a [bug]! ... I got better."
John had had two MRIs while back on Earth. One on his head and one a kidney that had been badly bruised in - of all things - a damn bar fight in the O Club back when he’d been a Captain. He’d hated them both. He wasn’t claustrophobic by nature, but he was sure that those things were designed to make you feel that way even if you weren’t naturally. And they were loud. He hated that even more than being sucked into a giant tube where he couldn’t even see his own toes, let alone the literal light at the end of the tunnel.
Which meant that the Ancient scanner was his absolute favorite of their inventions. Well… other than the puddlejumpers, he amended his thoughts. The scanner was silent and passed over a small part of him at a time. It even had real time position sensors that allowed him to wiggle a little when he was stuck on the table for a long time without screwing up the results and having to start everything over. And he was even more grateful for that as the retrovirus made him antsy and the anxiety over the whole thing made him want to toss and turn.
He was reasonably sure he’d donated his pint of blood for the month by the time Carson had taken all the vials he needed for this round of tests. As each test came in, John watched Carson’s face fall a little further.
John found himself poking at his scales, hoping they’d pop off like a scab or burst like a blister. He tried to tell himself firmly that it was his imagination, his own trepidation, that caused him to think that in the two hours since he’d noticed the patch on his arm it had gotten noticeably bigger.
Carson helped him to stand and walk back over to the bed he’d been sitting on earlier. “You can change back into your clothes if you want, but I think at this point I’m going to need to ask you to stay here for a bit while we synthesize all these test results.”
“What aren’t you saying?” John asked as he pulled his pants back on.
Carson indicated for John to have a seat on the bed and pulled up the stool for himself. “We’d hoped that your own immune system would recognize the retrovirus as foreign and begin to break it down. When you didn’t show any of the immediate or severe symptoms Ellia showed, we thought perhaps it was doing just that.”
“But…” John asked pulling the gown off and grabbing his t-shirt.
“The retrovirus is reproducing. It’s starting to look like the viral load had to reach a critical mass before we started seeing symptoms. It’s why your arm bled for so long before just sealing itself up. It’s why there was no mark before, but now you have that thick, discolored skin. And why that discoloration is spreading so fast.”
Discoloration, John mused. That’s what Carson was calling him developing an exoskeleton like a bug.
“It’s probably also why your attention span shrinks and then recovers and then shrinks again. Your brain is trying to combat the effects of the virus. It’s also probably one of the factors in your headaches.” With the curtain still pulled, Carson gave in to his impulse to reach up and brush John’s hair back. “It’s also why you’re having trouble controlling some of your… baser instincts.”
John shrugged in apology for that mishap again.
“Dr. Biro is working on a few tests to see which of several viral inhibitors might work to at least slow the progress, especially with regards to your concentration and impulse control. We’ll see what that does for you as we keep working.”
John nodded. “Why am I tired now?”
“Don’t you remember me telling you that I was giving a mild sedative to help you hold still for the scan?” Carson studied John’s face, waiting to see if he’d recall the brief conversation.
“I thought it was okay to move in that thing,” John countered instead.
“Aye, a little shifting or repositioning your weight, but you’ve been bouncing your knees and moving around so much lately that I’m starting to think there are ants in your pants. You truly don’t remember me telling you that I was giving you a low dose of diazepam?”
John shook his head. “Alright, we’ll make a note of it, but it could just be another manifestation of your short attention span.” Carson gave him a friendly grin, “Which was never really all that long to begin with.” He squeezed John’s arm and then his hand as he stood up. “I’m going to go see where Carolyn is with that anti-viral, then I’m going to need to call Elizabeth down to let her know where we are.”
John nodded and pulled his feet up to slide them under the sheet. “After that, Carson, seriously, get a few hours sleep yourself. Have you slept since we got back?”
Carson gave him a weak smile, “Don’t worry about me. I have an entire staff who think they’re my mum, making sure I eat and sleep and all of that.”
John nodded, hoping that that was true, that Carson wasn’t just saying that for his sake, then he closed his eyes, hoping that the drug in his system would see to it that he didn’t have the whacked out dreams he’d had the last time he’d slept. Though somehow, after the day’s events, he sincerely doubted it.
~~~***~~~***~~~
John was dozing fitfully when Carson returned and sat bolt upright when Carson laid his hand over John’s.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
John shrugged. “I wasn’t sleeping very well anyway.” He sat quietly for a minute before saying earnestly, “You know… this is starting to suck.”
Carson squeezed John’s arm. “I know. I just need to find a way to stop this before you start to suck.”
John raised his eyebrows again.
“No, John, not like that.” Carson tapped him on the shoulder. For some reason it still heartened him when John made jokes or bad puns. “How are you feeling now?”
“Awake. Jittery. My eyes are doing that thing again.”
Carson pulled a syringe out of his lab coat pocket and showed it to him. “This is a viral inhibitor.”
“Like a vaccine?” John asked hopefully.
“Not exactly. This one is having the effect of slowing down the rate of reproduction of the retrovirus. It isn’t stopping it completely and it isn’t killing off the cells that are already there. But it will slow the progression of the symptoms while we find a way to destroy the retrovirus and its effects.”
John nodded. “Sounds like a good start,” he said stoically.
“I hope so,” Carson said as he tied a tourniquet around John’s arm.
Once again, John didn’t flinch and the hole where the needle went in sealed instantly. “Elizabeth’s on her way down. I’ll talk to her. Why don’t you try and rest a little more?”
John leaned back against the pillow. “Okay.”
~~~***~~~***~~~
Carson took his chart to the small desk on the far side of the ward. He ran over the results again, trying to plan out how he’d explain this to Elizabeth. The current batch of blood work didn’t show anything of promise. A higher concentration of mutated cells, DNA and RNA strands the computer couldn’t readily identify, and though he hadn’t looked closely, his quick glance at John’s arm showed a larger surface area of scaly skin.
He already had two doctors, beside himself, who were more than just conversant in genetics working on how to unravel the retrovirus DNA from John’s DNA. Dr. Biro was working on refining the inhibitor to more effectively keep the retrovirus from replicating. He even had someone from xenozoology studying the few slivers of remains from the Iratus bug that they’d pulled out John’s neck a year ago to see if there was anything new.
The speed that the retrovirus was changing the human DNA into Iratus DNA was staggering. If the transformation rate didn’t slow down, John wouldn’t be John anymore inside of a week. And he couldn’t imagine anything - even something fortified with Iratus healing powers - surviving having a complete DNA mutation twice.
He talked Elizabeth into talking to John once he’d explained what they knew, but that hadn’t gone well at all. For a diplomat, she couldn’t do bedside manner for crap. Carson had pretended to be working, but he’d been eavesdropping on their conversation. He knew what John meant by the fact that not being worried was what worried him the most. It was the cognitive changes that were the most unsettling for them both.
The only good news they had on that front was that since nervous system cells didn’t reproduce or repair at anything near the rate that skin cells or other systemic cells did, the retrovirus would affect his mind a lot slower than it did his body.
Carson tapped his stylus on the screen a few times pulling up the latest set of DNA test results. More and more he wasn’t seeing anything he recognized as human.
He pulled up another simulation and tried yet another strain of human RNA to see what would happen. Nothing good. He was starting to feel like beating his head into the computer might yield the best results he’d seen all day.
He stood up and stretched. John had settled down for a few minutes once Elizabeth had left and he was loathe to wake him, but he was starting to wonder if their time alone together was rapidly coming to an end. He started thinking that he may need to eek out every last minute he could while John was still John and still lucid.
Almost as if John could hear him thinking, one green eye opened and studied him.
“Hello there,” Carson said with as much false cheer as he could muster.
“Hey,” John answered simply.
“How are you feeling?” Carson stepped to his bedside and gently brushed John’s hair back.
“I can’t sleep. I think that’s making me cranky.”
“I think you have more than a few reasons to feel a little cranky,” Carson said sliding his hand down to rest it on John’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about that.”
John reached up to take Carson’s hand in his, but almost immediately shoved it back under the sheet. He’d been subliminally aware that his hand felt odd, but it wasn’t until he saw the thickened, graying skin that he realized how much the mutation had spread. It was completely down that arm and spreading over the back of his hand and thumb now.
Carson frowned and gently pulled John’s arm out again. “Let me see; it’s all right.”
John looked very disquieted by the idea of showing Carson the mutated skin, but he let Carson take his hand.
Carson probed gently around the periphery of the change and then pulled up the sleeve of John’s t-shirt to see how far it had gone up his arm. He sighed. The rate of change had to have been increasing exponentially. “Take off your shirt, love; let me see how far this has gone.”
“Carson…” John protested.
“I know, you aren’t keen on anyone seeing this, but it has to be done if we want to be able to undo it.” He squeezed the greenish hand in his.
John sighed and then quickly, fatalistically, pulled his shirt off over his head.
Carson gently traced the edge of the change where it met the unmarred skin on his shoulder, not yet spreading down his chest. “Sit up,” he told John and looked to see if it had started moving down his back. He frowned at where it had crept up over his armpit and down over his shoulder blade and started spreading down his ribs just a little. “I’m going to get the camera.” As John opened his mouth to object, Carson settled a hand over the scaly shoulder. “I know, John, I do. But this has to be done. And a few pictures has to be better than half my team coming in every few minutes to check out what changes we’re seeing.”
John had to agree with that. “This sucks,” he said petulantly anyway.
“I know,” Carson said and kissed his forehead before stepping away.
John clutched his t-shirt to his chest. He figured he ought to be cold, but wasn’t. He figured he should be a lot of things that he wasn’t. Fortunately he was still sane enough to know what was normal and what wasn’t, but he wasn’t all that sure how long he’d stay that way.
Carson came back with the camera and another shot of inhibitor. John hadn’t paid too much attention the last time, but he swore there had been about half the amount of amber liquid in the syringe the first time. He didn’t like what that implied.
He stoically allowed Carson to get his pictures, but then pulled on his shirt as fast as he could. “Hey Carson… I’m a little chilly,” he patently lied. “Any chance someone could grab me a long sleeve shirt?” And a glove and scarf to hide the rest of it, he added mentally. Though, he reasoned internally, he was going to need a ski mask soon at the rate things were going. Of course, by then he might be too far gone to care.
Carson didn’t call him on the lie, even though he knew it was one. “Look, I have two tests running that are going to need at least another hour before I can get any meaningful results for them. And I’m starved. Why don’t we go for a walk. We can stop by your quarters and you can change clothes then we can go get some dinner from the mess.”
John nodded eagerly, wanting to get out of the infirmary, even if only for a bit. And getting Carson alone for a few minutes would be even better. He had a feeling that he wouldn’t care about Carson or anyone else for much longer and he was starting to dread losing those feelings and those connections.
~~~***~~~***~~~
John borrowed Carson’s gray jacket to get back to his quarters without people staring at his hideous looking arm. Carson kept a hand at John’s back while they walked, still concerned that John wasn’t processing the compound images he was seeing.
When they got to John’s quarters John collapsed on the edge of the bed and hung his head. Carson sat next to him and wrapped his arms around John’s waist. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. I promise you,” he whispered.
John nodded. “I know. I believe you, it’s just… the stuff going through my head lately… It’s very bizarre. And every time I look at myself, I’m less and less… me.”
“You’re still you, green scales and all,” Carson consoled, stroking John’s hair.
John just nodded, not sure what else to say.
They sat like that for a while. John eventually put one foot on the bed and turned to hold Carson against his chest. He realized that under normal biological circumstances he might have cried thinking that this was very possibly the last chance he’d get to hold Carson like this or be held by him. He tried to be glad he was being saved from an overly morose display of emotion by the fact that he could no longer produce the kind of tears that the situation called for. His eyes didn’t feel dry, so he clearly was producing something that lubricated his eyeballs, but he couldn’t cry. And unsurprisingly, he didn’t care about that as much as he should have.
After a few minutes the restlessness took hold again. He shifted a few times, not wanting to let go of Carson until Carson wanted to move, but eventually Carson noticed that he couldn’t stay still anymore. “Where’re your shirts?” Carson asked, wiping his face surreptitiously.
John pointed to the top drawer of the low dresser across the room and let Carson grab him a shirt, thinking that at least he wasn’t being a total fool for feeling like this might have been the good-bye that neither of them wanted to admit it was.
John changed into the long sleeved black tee Carson handed him and then stood up quickly, trying to escape the depressing mood of the moment. “I’m going to go wash my face. Be right back.”
Once in the bathroom he splashed cold water on his skin and scrubbed at his face with his palms. He noticed how rough and sandpaper-like his hands felt as they traveled over his skin. He looked down at them and noticed that the mutation had crept down his hand and gone up to his second knuckle on his left hand. His right hand still seemed normal enough, but as he closed his fists he noticed that despite the creeping crud, his left hand felt stronger than his right. As he was right handed, that didn’t feel right at all.
He dried his face on a towel and then pulled the neckline of his shirt back to see that the mottling was climbing up his neck. He lifted the bottom of the shirt to see how far down it’d had gone, but he found that with his eyes having seemingly gone complex permanently, he couldn’t see well enough around the fabric, so he pulled the shirt back off again. He twisted and turned in the mirror seeing what Carson had seen before. His whole left arm, except his fingertips, his left shoulder and down his back a bit and down from his armpit to the side of his ribcage. He sighed at what he saw, knowing that he should be a lot more upset than he was about what was clearly likely to become his impending death.
He was pulling his shirt back on when Carson rapped on the door. “John, you okay in there?”
John headed for the door and damn near ran into it when it failed to open to his mental command. He took a deep breath and steadied himself as he waved his hand over the control crystals. Another change to chalk up to this grotesqueness.
Carson could see something was wrong as soon as John opened the door. “What? What’s wrong?”
John gave him a grim smile, “I can’t use the gene anymore. I tried to command the door open and when it didn’t move I about walked into it.”
Carson reached up to gently pet John’s hair. “Let’s get you back to the infirmary, alright?”
“Food,” John said suddenly. “You wanted to get food.”
“We’ll get something and bring it back to the infirmary,” Carson agreed. “You should eat too.”
“I’m not really hungry,” John protested.
“I know, but we need to keep your body working as properly as we can.” Carson put his hand on John’s lower back and propelled him to the door. He didn’t say, ‘I want you to at least look and act like a normal human for as long as I can keep you that way.’
~~~***~~~***~~~
Carson gave John another tranquilizer with his evening dose of the inhibitor, hoping that he’d get some sleep, or at least be a little less restless. He’d convinced him to eat a little chicken salad and a biscuit at dinner and then gotten him to drink half a bottle of Gatorade before he went to sleep.
Carson continued to work until nearly two when Dr. Biro threatened to sedate him if he didn’t get at least four hours of sleep. She’d already seen to it that everyone was scheduled to get enough rest and still have people working around-the-clock. Carson was scheduled to be off from two until eight, but she said she wouldn’t raise hell if he came back on at six if he didn’t argue with her about going to bed immediately. He told her to send out a memo to have everyone working on this project in any way meet in the conference room at oh-eight-hundred ready to present their findings so they could start to work on a cure that covered all the aspects of this infection. She agreed to do so and then in an absolutely no nonsense tone, ordered him to bed.
Carson just shook his head at the commanding tone she took with her own boss, but silently trudged off and pulled himself up on the bed next to John’s and let himself crash for four hours. He made sure the alarm on his watch was set before he closed his eyes.
He wondered if anyone would find it odd that he was sleeping next to his patient instead of in his own quarters or even on the couch in his office. But he was long past the point of caring. If things didn’t change drastically and soon, there wouldn’t be a relationship for anyone to talk about.