FIC: Heaven Is A Place On Earth 3/6
Headers and such in part 1.
Heaven Is A Place On Earth 3/6
+++
John, Rodney soon discovered, owned a truck.
He rarely used it in the city, he said, preferring to walk or run, taking a cab when the distance was a bit farther. This occasion, whatever it was, evidently merited the truck.
John headed directly for the Bay Bridge, crossing into Oakland without a word, or at least, without a word about where he was going. He entered Oakland, turning down avenues and streets, finally driving through the hills and winding roads.
“Why are you taking me into the wild?” said Rodney, bored after forty minutes of John cryptically not saying a thing.
“It’s Oakland, Rodney. Hardly the wild,” he said absently, trying to see the turn in between the trees lining the way.
“You know, that’s rather sub - oh.”
Rodney stopped talking as John pulled into the parking lot of the Chabot Space and Science Center, his eyes all but plastered to the window like a kid’s at Disneyworld as he watched the dome, imagining the planetarium and all it could show him.
“I’m not going to drive all the way to the open country,” said John as he stopped the truck. “But I thought this might do.”
Rodney got out of the truck (there was no need to open a door) and was hardly able to tear his eyes out of the dome to look back at John. “Why are you being civil to me?” he asked, as if John had been ignoring him the past few days.
John leaned against his truck, hands in pockets. “We just spent an entire day talking to people and going through the apartment, and you’re nowhere. We can’t find even a surname. I thought you deserved a break.”
Rodney chuckled mirthlessly and nodded a bit. He looked at the dome and then back at John. “I’m just…” He sighed. “I’m trying not to think about the fact that I maybe dead. This helps.”
John frowned. “No, no come on.”
Rodney nodded as he slowly stepped towards the entrance. “Yes, yes. I think you befriended a dead man.”
“Rodney, no,” said John, voice getting harsher with everything Rodney said. “You’re not dead. Until I see otherwise, I won’t believe it.”
“Oh come on, the evidence -”
“Rodney!” he said, and raised his voice in such a way Rodney stopped talking and looked at him. John’s hands hovered near Rodney’s shoulders, aching to touch something solid, to shake him. “I’m only going to say this once, okay? I was military. I was a Major in the USAF. I learnt not to leave people behind, I learnt it the hard way. I never left anyone behind and I’m not going to start now.”
Startled by John’s vehemence and determinedness, Rodney could only nod. “Okay.”
John nodded his approval and headed towards the entrance.
“Sheppard,” started calling Rodney, trying to grab his arm and, of course, going through it completely. “John, John!”
“What, what?” he asked, expecting to find nothing short of a meteorite hurtling towards them.
Rodney was pointing off in the far distance. “Radek!”
John looked towards where Rodney was pointing, but only saw cars and people. “What?”
Rodney was pointing towards a little man carrying a big stack of folders, hair wild from the wind, glasses a bit askew from the evident hurry he was in. “Radek Zelenka. I know him!”
John walked back to the truck, half hiding behind it so people wouldn’t think him insane as he looked like he was talking into thin air. “You do? What, you worked together or -”
Rodney shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t work here, neither does he, he works at a college. But I know him.” He looked at John. “Go talk to him.”
“What do I say?” asked John even as he was already walking towards Zelenka, step hurried as he saw the man was about to get into a car.
“Whatever, just ask about me!” said Rodney, smiling gleefully.
“I don’t even know your surname,” hissed John, and then extended a hand towards Zelenka. “Hi. Radek Zelenka?”
The guy looked warily at John, pushing his glasses up the nose, balancing the folders with the other hand as he shook John’s hand. “Yes?”
“I was wondering if you knew a Rodney. I’m, um, looking for him,” he said, constructing the cover story in his head as he spoke.
Zelenka frowned, his expression changing from wary to something else altogether. “Rodney? Rodney McKay?”
Rodney bounced on the heels of his feet. “Yes, yes that’s me! I know it!”
“Yes, McKay,” said John.
Zelenka opened the back door of his car and the tossed the folders in there. Rodney stuck his head through the car to spy the spines of the folders. “I need to know who is asking,” said Zelenka.
“Something close,” said Rodney from the car. “Invent some close relationship or he won’t tell you.”
John’s brain worked at the speed of light. If Rodney and this guy had been closed, then brother and a simple and vague ‘friend’ wouldn’t work, acquaintance wasn’t close enough...
“I’m - Rodney’s boyfriend,” he ended up saying, bravely not wincing at the lousy cover story. His former CO’s would’ve busted his ass by now.
Rodney emerged from Zelenka’s car and all but killed John with the glare. “What? Are you an idiot? I could be married for all we know!”
“You are Rodney’s boyfriend….” Said Zelenka slowly, as if he was having trouble with the concept of someone like John being with someone like Rodney.
John nodded brightly. “Yes. I’ve been away for work.”
Rodney was still hung on Zelenka’s tone of voice, though. “What’s with the voice?” he said to Zelenka, as if the guy could hear him.
Zelenka winced a bit. “I mean - he -”
“What?” asked John.
“Well, whenever he wasn’t at work, he was with me at the university. He practically lived there. And he never mentioned you.” He cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up his nose again. “Or that he liked guys, for that matter.”
John took a shot in the dark. “I see. He’s the sharing kind,” he grinned. Rodney rolled his eyes.
Zelenka returned the grin. “Well, no. Okay, I see your point. Anyway - if you’ve been away… you don’t know about the accident…”
Rodney’s face, if possible, went paler.
John stopped grinning. “What accident?”
Zelenka took a sigh. He looked in pain. “It happened almost three months ago. He’s at St. Matthews hospital in San Francisco. Ask for Dr. Jennifer Keller, she’ll explain better.”
“What…?”
Zelenka raised a hand. “Please.”
John nodded. “Okay. Thank you,” he said, exchanging pleasantries with the man before walking back to the truck.
“That has me very nervous,” said Rodney, still looking wide-eyed and scared.
“I know,” nodded John.
“Why are you nervous?” asked Rodney, nervousness gone, now looking simply confused.
John looked at him. “What if you’re dead?”
Rodney ignored the fact that he’d been saying that for the past week. “And I’ve been at their morgue for the past three months? What am I, cooling it off there?”
John chuckled mirthlessly. “Good point.”
A tall brunette walked by them, looking at John as if he’d seen his face in ‘America’s Most Wanted.’ John winced. “You know, this thing with people thinking I’m insane is getting old. Fast.”
Rodney shrugged and got on the truck. “Maybe it’ll be over soon,”
*
The ride that had taken them forty minutes on their way to Oakland, took them over an hour on the way back to San Francisco, both of them growing impatient and short-tempered as the minutes rolled by and they were still stuck in traffic.
John silently appreciated that Rodney stayed with him when he could’ve easily disappeared and gone to the hospital on his own, though John suspected it had more to do with the inability to communicate with other people than anything else.
John left the truck parked badly, not really caring if he got towed and went inside the hospital. He was almost instantly sent to the third floor when he asked for Dr. Keller.
Luckily, Dr. Keller was easy to locate. He repeated at the woman in the nurses’ station the same story he had told Zelenka, and not five minutes later she saw Dr. Keller coming at them - at John, rather - with a look perfectly schooled to not give anything away.
“John Sheppard?” she said, stretching a hand and shaking John’s vigorously. “I understand you’re asking about Rodney McKay.”
John didn’t need to act too much to look nervous. “Yes, I’ve been away, and nobody wanted to tell me a thing, he’s here?”
Keller nodded. “We have him just down the hall,” she said. John absently noticed Rodney was mysteriously gone. “Mr. Sheppard, your boyfriend was involved in an accident three months ago. He crashed against a truck, head on collision. I’m sorry to say he’s in a coma. Has been for the past three months.”
“Jesus,” said John, looking at the floor, not really knowing how to react.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Have you been together long?”
“Um, no, not long,” he said, wincing a bit at how quick he had answered.
Keller pointed down one hallway, walking with him. “It’s so sad. A friend of his, this little man with wild hair, glasses…” she said, making motions around her head to indicate what she was saying.
John grinned even while feeling slightly numb. “Radek.”
“That's him. He told me he was going to be offered some big job by the government not two days after the accident.”
John frowned, inquiring - he had an inkling Rodney would like to know. “What job?”
She shrugged. “Some sort of deal, the government people didn't specify. They said they were time pressed, and it was this once in a lifetime opportunity.” She chuckled, pointing at the door Rodney was in. “Funny thing is I’ve been at the hospital about the same time as your boyfriend has. I’m told the previous physician, Dr. Beckett, was offered the same job with the government Rodney here was about to be offered. Talk about coincidences.”
John nodded. He wanted to see Rodney - both the body in a coma and the one which talked back to him - and didn’t quite know how to wave the doctor off without looking rude.
Keller opened the door to Rodney’s room, peeking inside to see if everything was okay and looked back at John. “I’m making an exception so you can stay for a while, but I can’t leave you here unattended. I’m going to have to cut your stay short in a while.”
John nodded, he was surprised they were letting him in at all. “It’s okay. I just - want a while with him.”
Keller nodded. “Of course. Ask at the nurses’ station if you need me,” she said, nodding once in goodbye and going back the way they had come from.
Rodney’s room was wide, open and probably very sunny during the day, everything you didn’t relate to the idea of a hospital. Half the wall opposite to him was window, with white curtains that evened out the streetlight coming into the room. There were pictures and drawings up on the window ledge, showing a pretty blonde woman, a little girl with her same face and another man. Rodney appeared every once in a while, grinning or looking like he’d been talking or grumbling when the picture had been taken.
Rodney - the actual body, the actual person and, oh, all of this was real, wasn’t it? - was lying in a bed in the middle of the room, hooked up to three different machines and to a ventilator, which pumped air into his lungs evenly. In, out, in, out.
Rodney himself was standing on one side of the bed, looking down at himself, oblivious to anything else.
“Jesus, Rodney. It’s you,” John said, coming to stand besides the bed, alternating between looking at the body in the bed and at the spirit Rodney standing in front of him.
“I’m in a coma,” he said matter-of-factly. “It does explain all of this,” he said, waving his hand around and going through the machines to emphasize his point.
John didn’t want to know how weird it must feel to look at yourself in a hospital, not waking up, able to do nothing except talk to this strange person you’d just met. He looked at Rodney. “Can you remember anything now?”
Rodney nodded and smiled slightly. “John, I can remember everything. My work, my childhood, my birthday, my first girlfriend. I’m Canadian!” he said with the glee of a six-year-old. “I wanted to be an astrophysicist but I ended up heading a dot-com company. I have a sister, a niece,” he said, pointing at the pictures behind them. “I can remember the accident,” he said a bit more quietly.
John’s eyes couldn’t leave Rodney’s body on the bed, the reality of the past days crushing down on him. “That doctor said you crashed against a truck.”
Rodney nodded. “I was tired, and I needed to catch a flight to go visit Jeannie. My sister,” he said in answer to John’s frown. “I had been driving by the planetarium, and… I think I forgot I was driving,” he said, wincing a bit. He chuckled mirthlessly. “Never drive when extremely tired, don’t they say that? I always dismissed it.”
“Look, Rodney. That doctor’s not going to leave me here alone for too long, we need to do something,” he said, checking to see the door was really closed.
Rodney frowned. “Something?”
He pointed at Rodney’s body. “There must be a way for you to get back to your body, to wake up. Maybe if you jumped inside… you,” he said, waving a hand at Rodney’s body.
Rodney looked at John like he was mentally impaired. “I’m not a swimming pool!” He shrugged, “and I already tried it when you were talking to the doctor. Won’t work.”
John kept looking at Rodney’s body, the ventilator making his chest go up and down and looking way too good and healthy for someone in a coma. “Turn around,” said John suddenly.
“What?”
“Just turn around, I want to try something,” he said, making twirling motions with his fingers.
Rodney’s frowned deepened. “What?”
“Rodney!” said John, exasperated.
“Fine, fine,” he grumbled, turning around and facing the opposite direction.
John looked down to Rodney’s body, softly taking his right hand into his, holding it with both his hands and then looking at the Rodney that was turned around in front of him.
Rodney unlocked his arms, staring at his right hand as if contained the answers to the universe. He turned to look at John, absolutely puzzled.
“You feel this,” said John, grinning.
“Yes,” said Rodney, still holding his hand up.
John kept playing with Rodney’s hand, poking the palm and interlacing fingers. “You feel any of this?”
“I feel all of it,” he said. “Like my hand’s asleep, pins and needles or something.”
John dropped the hand and walked to him. “Then you and your body are still connected. You’re not dead and you’re not dying,” he stressed.
Rodney snorted, looking at the monitors beeping above his body on the bed. “Yes, well…”
“Can you read those?” said John, nodding towards them.
“Well, I’m no MD,” he said, getting closer to the monitors. “Speaking strictly from the common sense of a genius here though,” he said, making John roll his eyes. “It doesn’t look good.”
Keller poked her head into them room then, looking vaguely guilty for even being there. “Mr. Sheppard, I’ve got an appointment and I can’t leave you here.”
John nodded. “Of course,” he said, looked at Rodney once and then back at Keller. “Um, can you tell me… how is he doing?”
Keller walked slowly into the room. “Well, he’s healed from all his injuries - the ones from the crash, I mean, he was rather in a bad shape when he arrived.”
Rodney snorted as he walked to them. “Against a truck, I must’ve looked like Freddy sharpened his glove on me.”
John tried really, really hard not to smile - which made him look he was trying not to cry. “But he’s still in a coma,” he said.
Keller, nodded, putting a hand on his arm in comfort. “A prolonged coma. People have woken up from this type of thing before, even longer ones but… with every moment that passes, he’s less likely to wake up,” she said softly.
John nodded, sobered up. “I see. I, um, I’ll be right out. I want to say goodbye,” he said, nodding at the bed.
Keller nodded and left the room. John turned to Rodney instantly.
“Stop making me laugh when I’m talking to people, or they’ll take me away to the psych ward!”
Rodney shrugged, smiling. “Yes, well, a visit won’t hurt you.”
“Hilarious,” he said, looking at Rodney’s body again and then back at Rodney himself. “Oh, before I came here, that doctor said the government had been about to offer you some job.”
“What job?” asked Rodney, suddenly interested.
“Zelenka commented to the doctor, but apparently they didn’t say much about it,” he said, looking back at the door and then at Rodney.
Rodney frowned as he thought out loud. “Zelenka and I submitted some work on wormhole theories, they must’ve… oh, great!” he said, voice climbing in volume. “My big break in astrophysics and I sleep it away!”
John frowned. “I thought you hadn’t studied astro -”
“I didn’t, I’m self taught. Zelenka and I met when I went to criticize some of his work. I was right, of course. We’ve been collaborating ever since.”
John’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re self-taught in astrophysics?”
Rodney huffed. “Did I ever mention how very smart I am?”
“Of course,” nodded John. “Listen, I’m going to have to leave soon,” he said.
Rodney sobered up instantly. “Oh, right,” he said, as if the idea of John leaving was totally foreign to him. “Um. Well, I’m going to stay here. I - where else am I gonna go?”
John shrugged. “You can come back to your apartment. I mean, it is yours, so…”
Rodney looked at himself and then back at John. “I’m going to stay here,” he nodded.
John nodded, and suddenly all he ever wanted to do was to stay in that room. “Sure. Well…”
Keller appeared again, looking mortified to bother the grieving boyfriend. “Mr. Sheppard, I’m so sorry to bother you…”
“It’s okay,” said John, nodding. He looked at Rodney - the real one, the one looking back at him. “Bye, Rodney.”
He left before Rodney said anything, trailed by Keller, hands in his pocket, feeling like he had told Rodney a more definite goodbye than the one he wanted to.
***
Rodney got bored after fifteen minutes. With just his unresponsive body as company, and without John to talk to, Rodney started roaming the hospital, feeling vaguely like a criminal as he spied people.
He avoided the patients’ room, of course, because it was not only creepy and gross, but also because he wasn’t totally sure he couldn’t get some horrible disease in his present state. He entered the nurses and doctor’s cafeteria, supply closets and ‘Personnel Only’ rooms.
If it wasn’t because he was in a coma, this thing would be the coolest ever.
And then, roaming the halls of his floor while seriously thinking going back to the apartment, he saw Madison.
Rodney hurried after the little girl, calling out to his niece to no avail. Jeannie was hurrying after her, too, calling out so she’d stop running in a hospital.
“Jeannie!” said Rodney, walking besides his sister as she walked inside Rodney’s room. “Jeannie. Oh, good, maybe you can feel me, or see me or get me out of this. I mean, you're moderately smart, you're not me, but...” Rodney stopped as Jeannie dropped her bag over a chair, renewed the flowers on the windowsill, threw away the old ones. “You can't see me or feel me at all, can you? Oh, great,” said Rodney, trying to be peeved at his sister, but logically knowing there was no point in it.
Madison climbed her uncle’s bed, whispering things to his ear, pulling from one of his hand, leaning on a shoulder. Rodney felt nothing of it, not even remotely like he’d felt when John had held his hand.
“Madison, didn't you have something to give to your uncle?” said Jeannie, opening her bag and waving a sheet of paper.
Madison jumped from the bed and returned to it holding a drawing she’d made. “Uncle Rodney, I mades you this! It's you and me, and mom and…” Madison continued to describe all that she’d drawn as Jeannie took the drawing and taped it on the window next to a previous one Madison had made.
She then brought the chair to Rodney’s bedside and sat down, Rodney silent as he watched. He was accustomed to his sister being critical, caustic and overly maudlin. Silent and grieving, he could not deal with. “Hi, Rodney,” she said.
Rodney physically reeled back, looking at Jeannie with his brow as deeply frowned as it could go. It was the first time in their lives that Jeannie used the name he preferred and not his actual first one.
She took Rodney’s hand in hers, the same hand John had taken. And still Rodney couldn’t feel her the way she’d felt John. “Mad and I went to eat out at that little place up on Fisherman's Wharf that you liked, thought we'd stop by on the way back. Caleb's in Vancouver this week. Pesky work and all that,” she chuckled.
“Mrs. Miller?”
Jeannie and Rodney turned to find Dr. Keller behind them. Rodney rolled his eyes. He was a bit tired of this woman interrupting everything.
“Hi, how are you doing?” asked Keller.
Jeannie stood up and went to her, deliberately getting away from Madison so she could talk to Keller. “Oh, you know,” she smiled mirthlessly. “More of the same.”
“You know it's funny,” said Keller. “You just missed his boyfriend for a few minutes, only.”
Rodney winced.
“Whose boyfriend?” said Jeannie, confused.
Keller chuckled. “Your brother's. He was just here.”
Jeannie laughed. “Oh, my brother doesn't have a boyfriend. Must’ve been someone else’s.”
Rodney frowned at her. “Why is it so impossible for me to be involved with someone?”
Keller nodded at Jeannie. “He does. I mean… he told me he'd been away, that it was vaguely recent.” She grimaced. “Oh, tell me I didn’t just out your brother to you.”
Jeannie grinned and waved a hand. “No, no, don't worry, I've known for years now.”
Rodney’s eyes opened like saucers. “What?! Since when?”
“But, boyfriend?” said Jeannie.
“Tall, cute, odd hair on top,” she said, making motions with her hands to indicate tall and John’s hair. “Really cute. Rakish. No?”
Jeannie shrugged. “It must've been very recent,” she said, not convinced.
“About as recent as three hours or so,” said Rodney smirking.
“Anyway,” said Keller, putting a hand on Jeannie’s arm and getting her outside the room. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”
Jeannie looked at Madison, warned her not to touch anything and looked back at Keller. “Sure.”
Keller sighed. “This is never easy. You see, your brother had a living will.”
Jeannie got a hand to her mouth. “Oh god.”
“His company just found it and forward it to us,” she said, handing Jeannie some papers.
Rodney groaned. “Idiots. They can’t find a legal document to send to Washington to save their butts but they can sure find a living will make sure my butt isn’t safe.”
“Did you know where you brother stood on artificially prolonging life?” asked Keller softly.
Jeannie nodded, her eyes going red. "Yes."
Rodney waved his hands about, going through both women several times. “Yes, well I'm totally different now. You just keep me there, and alive and everything will be fine.”
Keller handed Jeannie more papers. “You know his situation. It's up you.”
“Jeannie…” said Rodney, uselessly pleading.
“I’ll think about it,” said Jeannie, sighing.
***
On to part 4
Heaven Is A Place On Earth 3/6
+++
John, Rodney soon discovered, owned a truck.
He rarely used it in the city, he said, preferring to walk or run, taking a cab when the distance was a bit farther. This occasion, whatever it was, evidently merited the truck.
John headed directly for the Bay Bridge, crossing into Oakland without a word, or at least, without a word about where he was going. He entered Oakland, turning down avenues and streets, finally driving through the hills and winding roads.
“Why are you taking me into the wild?” said Rodney, bored after forty minutes of John cryptically not saying a thing.
“It’s Oakland, Rodney. Hardly the wild,” he said absently, trying to see the turn in between the trees lining the way.
“You know, that’s rather sub - oh.”
Rodney stopped talking as John pulled into the parking lot of the Chabot Space and Science Center, his eyes all but plastered to the window like a kid’s at Disneyworld as he watched the dome, imagining the planetarium and all it could show him.
“I’m not going to drive all the way to the open country,” said John as he stopped the truck. “But I thought this might do.”
Rodney got out of the truck (there was no need to open a door) and was hardly able to tear his eyes out of the dome to look back at John. “Why are you being civil to me?” he asked, as if John had been ignoring him the past few days.
John leaned against his truck, hands in pockets. “We just spent an entire day talking to people and going through the apartment, and you’re nowhere. We can’t find even a surname. I thought you deserved a break.”
Rodney chuckled mirthlessly and nodded a bit. He looked at the dome and then back at John. “I’m just…” He sighed. “I’m trying not to think about the fact that I maybe dead. This helps.”
John frowned. “No, no come on.”
Rodney nodded as he slowly stepped towards the entrance. “Yes, yes. I think you befriended a dead man.”
“Rodney, no,” said John, voice getting harsher with everything Rodney said. “You’re not dead. Until I see otherwise, I won’t believe it.”
“Oh come on, the evidence -”
“Rodney!” he said, and raised his voice in such a way Rodney stopped talking and looked at him. John’s hands hovered near Rodney’s shoulders, aching to touch something solid, to shake him. “I’m only going to say this once, okay? I was military. I was a Major in the USAF. I learnt not to leave people behind, I learnt it the hard way. I never left anyone behind and I’m not going to start now.”
Startled by John’s vehemence and determinedness, Rodney could only nod. “Okay.”
John nodded his approval and headed towards the entrance.
“Sheppard,” started calling Rodney, trying to grab his arm and, of course, going through it completely. “John, John!”
“What, what?” he asked, expecting to find nothing short of a meteorite hurtling towards them.
Rodney was pointing off in the far distance. “Radek!”
John looked towards where Rodney was pointing, but only saw cars and people. “What?”
Rodney was pointing towards a little man carrying a big stack of folders, hair wild from the wind, glasses a bit askew from the evident hurry he was in. “Radek Zelenka. I know him!”
John walked back to the truck, half hiding behind it so people wouldn’t think him insane as he looked like he was talking into thin air. “You do? What, you worked together or -”
Rodney shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t work here, neither does he, he works at a college. But I know him.” He looked at John. “Go talk to him.”
“What do I say?” asked John even as he was already walking towards Zelenka, step hurried as he saw the man was about to get into a car.
“Whatever, just ask about me!” said Rodney, smiling gleefully.
“I don’t even know your surname,” hissed John, and then extended a hand towards Zelenka. “Hi. Radek Zelenka?”
The guy looked warily at John, pushing his glasses up the nose, balancing the folders with the other hand as he shook John’s hand. “Yes?”
“I was wondering if you knew a Rodney. I’m, um, looking for him,” he said, constructing the cover story in his head as he spoke.
Zelenka frowned, his expression changing from wary to something else altogether. “Rodney? Rodney McKay?”
Rodney bounced on the heels of his feet. “Yes, yes that’s me! I know it!”
“Yes, McKay,” said John.
Zelenka opened the back door of his car and the tossed the folders in there. Rodney stuck his head through the car to spy the spines of the folders. “I need to know who is asking,” said Zelenka.
“Something close,” said Rodney from the car. “Invent some close relationship or he won’t tell you.”
John’s brain worked at the speed of light. If Rodney and this guy had been closed, then brother and a simple and vague ‘friend’ wouldn’t work, acquaintance wasn’t close enough...
“I’m - Rodney’s boyfriend,” he ended up saying, bravely not wincing at the lousy cover story. His former CO’s would’ve busted his ass by now.
Rodney emerged from Zelenka’s car and all but killed John with the glare. “What? Are you an idiot? I could be married for all we know!”
“You are Rodney’s boyfriend….” Said Zelenka slowly, as if he was having trouble with the concept of someone like John being with someone like Rodney.
John nodded brightly. “Yes. I’ve been away for work.”
Rodney was still hung on Zelenka’s tone of voice, though. “What’s with the voice?” he said to Zelenka, as if the guy could hear him.
Zelenka winced a bit. “I mean - he -”
“What?” asked John.
“Well, whenever he wasn’t at work, he was with me at the university. He practically lived there. And he never mentioned you.” He cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up his nose again. “Or that he liked guys, for that matter.”
John took a shot in the dark. “I see. He’s the sharing kind,” he grinned. Rodney rolled his eyes.
Zelenka returned the grin. “Well, no. Okay, I see your point. Anyway - if you’ve been away… you don’t know about the accident…”
Rodney’s face, if possible, went paler.
John stopped grinning. “What accident?”
Zelenka took a sigh. He looked in pain. “It happened almost three months ago. He’s at St. Matthews hospital in San Francisco. Ask for Dr. Jennifer Keller, she’ll explain better.”
“What…?”
Zelenka raised a hand. “Please.”
John nodded. “Okay. Thank you,” he said, exchanging pleasantries with the man before walking back to the truck.
“That has me very nervous,” said Rodney, still looking wide-eyed and scared.
“I know,” nodded John.
“Why are you nervous?” asked Rodney, nervousness gone, now looking simply confused.
John looked at him. “What if you’re dead?”
Rodney ignored the fact that he’d been saying that for the past week. “And I’ve been at their morgue for the past three months? What am I, cooling it off there?”
John chuckled mirthlessly. “Good point.”
A tall brunette walked by them, looking at John as if he’d seen his face in ‘America’s Most Wanted.’ John winced. “You know, this thing with people thinking I’m insane is getting old. Fast.”
Rodney shrugged and got on the truck. “Maybe it’ll be over soon,”
*
The ride that had taken them forty minutes on their way to Oakland, took them over an hour on the way back to San Francisco, both of them growing impatient and short-tempered as the minutes rolled by and they were still stuck in traffic.
John silently appreciated that Rodney stayed with him when he could’ve easily disappeared and gone to the hospital on his own, though John suspected it had more to do with the inability to communicate with other people than anything else.
John left the truck parked badly, not really caring if he got towed and went inside the hospital. He was almost instantly sent to the third floor when he asked for Dr. Keller.
Luckily, Dr. Keller was easy to locate. He repeated at the woman in the nurses’ station the same story he had told Zelenka, and not five minutes later she saw Dr. Keller coming at them - at John, rather - with a look perfectly schooled to not give anything away.
“John Sheppard?” she said, stretching a hand and shaking John’s vigorously. “I understand you’re asking about Rodney McKay.”
John didn’t need to act too much to look nervous. “Yes, I’ve been away, and nobody wanted to tell me a thing, he’s here?”
Keller nodded. “We have him just down the hall,” she said. John absently noticed Rodney was mysteriously gone. “Mr. Sheppard, your boyfriend was involved in an accident three months ago. He crashed against a truck, head on collision. I’m sorry to say he’s in a coma. Has been for the past three months.”
“Jesus,” said John, looking at the floor, not really knowing how to react.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Have you been together long?”
“Um, no, not long,” he said, wincing a bit at how quick he had answered.
Keller pointed down one hallway, walking with him. “It’s so sad. A friend of his, this little man with wild hair, glasses…” she said, making motions around her head to indicate what she was saying.
John grinned even while feeling slightly numb. “Radek.”
“That's him. He told me he was going to be offered some big job by the government not two days after the accident.”
John frowned, inquiring - he had an inkling Rodney would like to know. “What job?”
She shrugged. “Some sort of deal, the government people didn't specify. They said they were time pressed, and it was this once in a lifetime opportunity.” She chuckled, pointing at the door Rodney was in. “Funny thing is I’ve been at the hospital about the same time as your boyfriend has. I’m told the previous physician, Dr. Beckett, was offered the same job with the government Rodney here was about to be offered. Talk about coincidences.”
John nodded. He wanted to see Rodney - both the body in a coma and the one which talked back to him - and didn’t quite know how to wave the doctor off without looking rude.
Keller opened the door to Rodney’s room, peeking inside to see if everything was okay and looked back at John. “I’m making an exception so you can stay for a while, but I can’t leave you here unattended. I’m going to have to cut your stay short in a while.”
John nodded, he was surprised they were letting him in at all. “It’s okay. I just - want a while with him.”
Keller nodded. “Of course. Ask at the nurses’ station if you need me,” she said, nodding once in goodbye and going back the way they had come from.
Rodney’s room was wide, open and probably very sunny during the day, everything you didn’t relate to the idea of a hospital. Half the wall opposite to him was window, with white curtains that evened out the streetlight coming into the room. There were pictures and drawings up on the window ledge, showing a pretty blonde woman, a little girl with her same face and another man. Rodney appeared every once in a while, grinning or looking like he’d been talking or grumbling when the picture had been taken.
Rodney - the actual body, the actual person and, oh, all of this was real, wasn’t it? - was lying in a bed in the middle of the room, hooked up to three different machines and to a ventilator, which pumped air into his lungs evenly. In, out, in, out.
Rodney himself was standing on one side of the bed, looking down at himself, oblivious to anything else.
“Jesus, Rodney. It’s you,” John said, coming to stand besides the bed, alternating between looking at the body in the bed and at the spirit Rodney standing in front of him.
“I’m in a coma,” he said matter-of-factly. “It does explain all of this,” he said, waving his hand around and going through the machines to emphasize his point.
John didn’t want to know how weird it must feel to look at yourself in a hospital, not waking up, able to do nothing except talk to this strange person you’d just met. He looked at Rodney. “Can you remember anything now?”
Rodney nodded and smiled slightly. “John, I can remember everything. My work, my childhood, my birthday, my first girlfriend. I’m Canadian!” he said with the glee of a six-year-old. “I wanted to be an astrophysicist but I ended up heading a dot-com company. I have a sister, a niece,” he said, pointing at the pictures behind them. “I can remember the accident,” he said a bit more quietly.
John’s eyes couldn’t leave Rodney’s body on the bed, the reality of the past days crushing down on him. “That doctor said you crashed against a truck.”
Rodney nodded. “I was tired, and I needed to catch a flight to go visit Jeannie. My sister,” he said in answer to John’s frown. “I had been driving by the planetarium, and… I think I forgot I was driving,” he said, wincing a bit. He chuckled mirthlessly. “Never drive when extremely tired, don’t they say that? I always dismissed it.”
“Look, Rodney. That doctor’s not going to leave me here alone for too long, we need to do something,” he said, checking to see the door was really closed.
Rodney frowned. “Something?”
He pointed at Rodney’s body. “There must be a way for you to get back to your body, to wake up. Maybe if you jumped inside… you,” he said, waving a hand at Rodney’s body.
Rodney looked at John like he was mentally impaired. “I’m not a swimming pool!” He shrugged, “and I already tried it when you were talking to the doctor. Won’t work.”
John kept looking at Rodney’s body, the ventilator making his chest go up and down and looking way too good and healthy for someone in a coma. “Turn around,” said John suddenly.
“What?”
“Just turn around, I want to try something,” he said, making twirling motions with his fingers.
Rodney’s frowned deepened. “What?”
“Rodney!” said John, exasperated.
“Fine, fine,” he grumbled, turning around and facing the opposite direction.
John looked down to Rodney’s body, softly taking his right hand into his, holding it with both his hands and then looking at the Rodney that was turned around in front of him.
Rodney unlocked his arms, staring at his right hand as if contained the answers to the universe. He turned to look at John, absolutely puzzled.
“You feel this,” said John, grinning.
“Yes,” said Rodney, still holding his hand up.
John kept playing with Rodney’s hand, poking the palm and interlacing fingers. “You feel any of this?”
“I feel all of it,” he said. “Like my hand’s asleep, pins and needles or something.”
John dropped the hand and walked to him. “Then you and your body are still connected. You’re not dead and you’re not dying,” he stressed.
Rodney snorted, looking at the monitors beeping above his body on the bed. “Yes, well…”
“Can you read those?” said John, nodding towards them.
“Well, I’m no MD,” he said, getting closer to the monitors. “Speaking strictly from the common sense of a genius here though,” he said, making John roll his eyes. “It doesn’t look good.”
Keller poked her head into them room then, looking vaguely guilty for even being there. “Mr. Sheppard, I’ve got an appointment and I can’t leave you here.”
John nodded. “Of course,” he said, looked at Rodney once and then back at Keller. “Um, can you tell me… how is he doing?”
Keller walked slowly into the room. “Well, he’s healed from all his injuries - the ones from the crash, I mean, he was rather in a bad shape when he arrived.”
Rodney snorted as he walked to them. “Against a truck, I must’ve looked like Freddy sharpened his glove on me.”
John tried really, really hard not to smile - which made him look he was trying not to cry. “But he’s still in a coma,” he said.
Keller, nodded, putting a hand on his arm in comfort. “A prolonged coma. People have woken up from this type of thing before, even longer ones but… with every moment that passes, he’s less likely to wake up,” she said softly.
John nodded, sobered up. “I see. I, um, I’ll be right out. I want to say goodbye,” he said, nodding at the bed.
Keller nodded and left the room. John turned to Rodney instantly.
“Stop making me laugh when I’m talking to people, or they’ll take me away to the psych ward!”
Rodney shrugged, smiling. “Yes, well, a visit won’t hurt you.”
“Hilarious,” he said, looking at Rodney’s body again and then back at Rodney himself. “Oh, before I came here, that doctor said the government had been about to offer you some job.”
“What job?” asked Rodney, suddenly interested.
“Zelenka commented to the doctor, but apparently they didn’t say much about it,” he said, looking back at the door and then at Rodney.
Rodney frowned as he thought out loud. “Zelenka and I submitted some work on wormhole theories, they must’ve… oh, great!” he said, voice climbing in volume. “My big break in astrophysics and I sleep it away!”
John frowned. “I thought you hadn’t studied astro -”
“I didn’t, I’m self taught. Zelenka and I met when I went to criticize some of his work. I was right, of course. We’ve been collaborating ever since.”
John’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re self-taught in astrophysics?”
Rodney huffed. “Did I ever mention how very smart I am?”
“Of course,” nodded John. “Listen, I’m going to have to leave soon,” he said.
Rodney sobered up instantly. “Oh, right,” he said, as if the idea of John leaving was totally foreign to him. “Um. Well, I’m going to stay here. I - where else am I gonna go?”
John shrugged. “You can come back to your apartment. I mean, it is yours, so…”
Rodney looked at himself and then back at John. “I’m going to stay here,” he nodded.
John nodded, and suddenly all he ever wanted to do was to stay in that room. “Sure. Well…”
Keller appeared again, looking mortified to bother the grieving boyfriend. “Mr. Sheppard, I’m so sorry to bother you…”
“It’s okay,” said John, nodding. He looked at Rodney - the real one, the one looking back at him. “Bye, Rodney.”
He left before Rodney said anything, trailed by Keller, hands in his pocket, feeling like he had told Rodney a more definite goodbye than the one he wanted to.
***
Rodney got bored after fifteen minutes. With just his unresponsive body as company, and without John to talk to, Rodney started roaming the hospital, feeling vaguely like a criminal as he spied people.
He avoided the patients’ room, of course, because it was not only creepy and gross, but also because he wasn’t totally sure he couldn’t get some horrible disease in his present state. He entered the nurses and doctor’s cafeteria, supply closets and ‘Personnel Only’ rooms.
If it wasn’t because he was in a coma, this thing would be the coolest ever.
And then, roaming the halls of his floor while seriously thinking going back to the apartment, he saw Madison.
Rodney hurried after the little girl, calling out to his niece to no avail. Jeannie was hurrying after her, too, calling out so she’d stop running in a hospital.
“Jeannie!” said Rodney, walking besides his sister as she walked inside Rodney’s room. “Jeannie. Oh, good, maybe you can feel me, or see me or get me out of this. I mean, you're moderately smart, you're not me, but...” Rodney stopped as Jeannie dropped her bag over a chair, renewed the flowers on the windowsill, threw away the old ones. “You can't see me or feel me at all, can you? Oh, great,” said Rodney, trying to be peeved at his sister, but logically knowing there was no point in it.
Madison climbed her uncle’s bed, whispering things to his ear, pulling from one of his hand, leaning on a shoulder. Rodney felt nothing of it, not even remotely like he’d felt when John had held his hand.
“Madison, didn't you have something to give to your uncle?” said Jeannie, opening her bag and waving a sheet of paper.
Madison jumped from the bed and returned to it holding a drawing she’d made. “Uncle Rodney, I mades you this! It's you and me, and mom and…” Madison continued to describe all that she’d drawn as Jeannie took the drawing and taped it on the window next to a previous one Madison had made.
She then brought the chair to Rodney’s bedside and sat down, Rodney silent as he watched. He was accustomed to his sister being critical, caustic and overly maudlin. Silent and grieving, he could not deal with. “Hi, Rodney,” she said.
Rodney physically reeled back, looking at Jeannie with his brow as deeply frowned as it could go. It was the first time in their lives that Jeannie used the name he preferred and not his actual first one.
She took Rodney’s hand in hers, the same hand John had taken. And still Rodney couldn’t feel her the way she’d felt John. “Mad and I went to eat out at that little place up on Fisherman's Wharf that you liked, thought we'd stop by on the way back. Caleb's in Vancouver this week. Pesky work and all that,” she chuckled.
“Mrs. Miller?”
Jeannie and Rodney turned to find Dr. Keller behind them. Rodney rolled his eyes. He was a bit tired of this woman interrupting everything.
“Hi, how are you doing?” asked Keller.
Jeannie stood up and went to her, deliberately getting away from Madison so she could talk to Keller. “Oh, you know,” she smiled mirthlessly. “More of the same.”
“You know it's funny,” said Keller. “You just missed his boyfriend for a few minutes, only.”
Rodney winced.
“Whose boyfriend?” said Jeannie, confused.
Keller chuckled. “Your brother's. He was just here.”
Jeannie laughed. “Oh, my brother doesn't have a boyfriend. Must’ve been someone else’s.”
Rodney frowned at her. “Why is it so impossible for me to be involved with someone?”
Keller nodded at Jeannie. “He does. I mean… he told me he'd been away, that it was vaguely recent.” She grimaced. “Oh, tell me I didn’t just out your brother to you.”
Jeannie grinned and waved a hand. “No, no, don't worry, I've known for years now.”
Rodney’s eyes opened like saucers. “What?! Since when?”
“But, boyfriend?” said Jeannie.
“Tall, cute, odd hair on top,” she said, making motions with her hands to indicate tall and John’s hair. “Really cute. Rakish. No?”
Jeannie shrugged. “It must've been very recent,” she said, not convinced.
“About as recent as three hours or so,” said Rodney smirking.
“Anyway,” said Keller, putting a hand on Jeannie’s arm and getting her outside the room. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”
Jeannie looked at Madison, warned her not to touch anything and looked back at Keller. “Sure.”
Keller sighed. “This is never easy. You see, your brother had a living will.”
Jeannie got a hand to her mouth. “Oh god.”
“His company just found it and forward it to us,” she said, handing Jeannie some papers.
Rodney groaned. “Idiots. They can’t find a legal document to send to Washington to save their butts but they can sure find a living will make sure my butt isn’t safe.”
“Did you know where you brother stood on artificially prolonging life?” asked Keller softly.
Jeannie nodded, her eyes going red. "Yes."
Rodney waved his hands about, going through both women several times. “Yes, well I'm totally different now. You just keep me there, and alive and everything will be fine.”
Keller handed Jeannie more papers. “You know his situation. It's up you.”
“Jeannie…” said Rodney, uselessly pleading.
“I’ll think about it,” said Jeannie, sighing.
***
On to part 4