By Kellyanne Lynch
13 September 2006, app 11:00am ET – 25 September 2006, 10:30pm PT
Beta-Reader: LJ users domtheknight, gaughanracing, fugaciouslove, and mantypants
Disclaimer: This is an unauthorised tale from the Pegasus Galaxy, created to entertain myself and fellow fans of the television show Stargate Atlantis . I am not making any money out of this deal; this is what we call fun. I do not own any part of the Stargate franchise. The characters belong to Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, as well as to MGM, to the Sci-Fi Channel, and to the cast and crew and production peeps. I am not affiliated with any of these entities.
Summary: My assignment for the 2006 Weir/McKay Ficathon - Post-episode for "Grace Under Pressure"; Elizabeth and Rodney talking together afterwards. Go as shippy/friendshippy as you prefer. (Do not include OOC, fluff) Issued by Margaret.
Rating: PG-13, for a dirty word. Find Waldo!
Warning: Spoilers for the season two episode "Grace Under Pressure"
Please e-mail dearjoan@mikeypower.com with questions, comments, theories, complaints, or words of wisdom.
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Elizabeth Weir paced Atlantis’ control tower, pursing her lips and wringing her hands. Scientists and technicians surrounded her, chatting amongst themselves and smiling. All the while, the expedition’s military leader and one of the city’s most brilliant scientists were out rescuing two of their own – two of her own.
She glanced at her watch. Colonel John Sheppard really should have checked in by now. He should have already reported that he and Dr. Radek Zelenka had recovered the sunken puddle jumper and the two expedition members inside: Captain Robert Griffin and Dr. Rodney McKay. That is, if Griffin and McKay had managed to seal themselves in the rear compartment before the cockpit flooded.
“They made it!” Sheppard’s emphatic voice echoed through Elizabeth’s memory.
Sheppard and Zelenka’s jumper had ducked beneath the planet’s waves nearly an hour ago. Surely, with all the energy necessary to convert the vehicle’s cloak into a shield, they could not possibly have more than a half hour to grapple the second jumper and to tow it back to the surface, if that were enough time…
Laughter burst through Elizabeth’s thoughts, halting her steps and drawing her gaze to two technicians. One leaned against a control console. The other lounged in a chair. The first slapped his colleague’s shoulder, and both were grinning from ear to ear. Elizabeth closed her eyes. She pivoted on the ball of her left foot, and strode out of the room. The pleasant hum of Ancient technology that resounded as she retreated to the tower’s balcony was not enough to soothe her ragged nerves.
Elizabeth’s gaze fell immediately to the Atlantian ocean, to the waters that occupied much of the planet. Her hands grasped the railing, and she leaned over its edge. She stared into the waves that splashed against the walls of the city, as the sun set and the waters darkened. Squinting, she peered through the depths of the ocean.
Images of the Titanic played across her mind’s eye. She could picture its rusted iron skeleton thirteen thousand feet beneath the surface, debris dispersed across the scene, pale red and green bacteria and algae clinging to its railings and decks. Those barnacles feasted on the demise of that once grand ocean liner. She had heard that the ones back home at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean had already consumed roughly one half of those remains.
The Titanic faded into an image of two puddle jumpers, one dead and corroded at the bottom of those murky waters. The other descended the depths, headlights gleaming in the muck. Those headlights flickered. They flickered again, and they faded to black. That second jumper sank, and her sights drifted down… down… down…
“Atlantis, this is Sheppard.”
Gasping, Elizabeth jolted. “John!” she exclaimed, her hand scrambling to her ear. She promptly flicked off the device. Stunned, she watched its descent as it plopped into the Atlantian waters. “Damn!” she breathed, as she turned on her heels and ran for the control room door. She tripped over her feet and cried out as she hit the deck. Elizabeth rose, wiped the dust from the back of her black tailored slacks, and rushed inside the tower. The doors parted as she reached them, and she looked to the Canadian technician who stood at the console.
“Yes, sir,” the tech spoke into his communicator. “We’ll have a medical team standing by.”
“What’s the news?” Elizabeth demanded.
The Canadian tech turned to his superiour and stood at ease. “Colonel Sheppard and Dr. Zelenka have recovered Dr. McKay,” he reported. “He is in stable condition, but they believe he is suffering from moderate hypothermia, a concussion, and something the Colonel described as trench foot . Captain Griffin did not survive. They are on their way back to the city.”
Elizabeth’s breath hitched in her throat. “Thank you,” she croaked. Kneading the palm of one hand with the other’s thumb, she furrowed her brow and paced two circuits. She stopped in her tracks. “I will meet them at the infirmary,” she murmured. Turning to the technician who was still leaning against the console at the rear of the room, Elizabeth extended an outstretched palm. “I’ll need to borrow your communicator.”
The tech unhooked the device from his ear and handed it to the expedition leader. “Yes, Dr. Weir.”
Elizabeth slipped the communicator onto her left ear and marched out of the control tower. As she headed for the nearest transporter, she tightened and released her fists at her sides and took in deep, dizzying breathes.
Captain Robert Griffin was a good man. One of her contacts at the United Nations, who had declined the offer to come to Atlantis, had recommended him. In December of 1992, Griffin was a member of one of the first United States platoon to deliver relief supplies to starvation-stricken Somalia. What Elizabeth found particularly touching was the photo that her contact had showed her of Griffin, with a smile on his face and his arms around a young Somalian couple. She struggled to remember specifics of her initial interview with the Captain. Except for the fact that he had handed her a bag of tomatoes from his backyard garden, she could recall nothing.
She could not remember speaking with Griffin since their arrival on Atlantis. Considering the fact that only a few hundred people lived in the city – and that she was their leader – she kept telling herself that she needed to make time to sit down with each and every member of her expedition and to get to know them personally. Her interest in people and her entrenched desire to help others drove her professional life from the time she was a teenager to now. She could not imagine her motives ever changing. Getting to know others – listening to their hopes and dreams, appreciating each person’s unique contributions to humanity and encouraging individuals to unite for the greater good of all – made her feel alive. The Wraith wreaked more destruction than even she realised sometimes. She should not have been so distracted with the enemy, but rather more connected to her allies.
On the other hand, of all the expedition members she did know, the one she probably understood the best was Dr. Rodney McKay.
“OW!” a howl echoed through the corridor. “Could you jostle this stretcher any worse? Aren’t steady hands in your job description?”
“Rodney,” followed the reply from Dr. Carson Beckett. The chief medical doctor’s voice was one octave higher than necessary. “We need to get you into a bath, the sooner the better! Now can’t you just lay still?”
“I would, if your people weren’t flipping me into the air like a damn flap jack!”
Elizabeth rounded the corner, and stepped out of Beckett’s path seconds before the chief medical doctor would have collided with her. He was walking backwards, carrying one end of a stretcher. Several med techs grasped at corners. In the centre of the stretcher, rocking from side to side, was a large, blue, cylindrical bundle. Dr. Zelenka trotted behind the stretcher, and Colonel Sheppard took up the rear.
A corner of the Colonel’s lips curled. “More like a pig in a blanket.” He made eye contact with Elizabeth, raising an amused brow. She fell into line beside Sheppard and followed the entourage to the infirmary.
“Oh, har har! Sure! Let’s all laugh at the expense of the human burrito!”
Elizabeth’s gaze swept to the end of the bundle closest to Carson. Her eyes widened as her sights locked onto the startlingly blue eyes of Dr. Rodney McKay. Blood drenched a bandage on his right temple, and Elizabeth winced. His face was the only part of him visible - rosy cheeks stark against pale skin - as her chief scientific advisor was wrapped in that great blue metallic blanket, like a papoose.
“Look!” McKay continued, glaring at Sheppard. “You’re the one who went a little overboard with the first aid!”
Sheppard snorted, and he furrowed his brow. “Overboard! What did you expect me to do? You were claiming Colonel Carter was with you in the jumper! Confusion tends to set off red flags for a pretty bad case of hypothermia.”
“We should have known delusional thinking is normal for him,” Zelenka mumbled.
“I was struck upon the head!” McKay protested. Shifting his sights to Sheppard, he asked, “Did you have to wrap me so tightly? I can’t feel my feet.”
“I didn’t cause that,” Sheppard shook his head. “That’s the trench foot. Now hold still! Carson needs to take care of you, and he can’t do that if you go rolling away.”
The medical team guided the stretcher around a corner, into the infirmary. Med techs took hold of the bundle and transferred McKay to the bed closest to the door. Peeling away the aluminum shell, they unveiled an olive drab military issue sleeping bag. The techs pulled aside the top of the sleeping bag and pulled heat packs from beneath McKay’s bare underarms.
Sheppard grimaced. He turned to Elizabeth and Zelenka. Cringing, he motioned his thumb to the door. “I think we ought to wait outside. We don’t need to watch this.”
“I would have preferred not to have been made privy to his fantasies either,” Zelenka retorted, holding a hand to the side of his face and scurrying for the door.
“Shut up, Radek!” Elizabeth heard McKay’s voice at her back.
The Ancient doors hummed shut behind her, Zelenka and Sheppard. As Elizabeth lowered her sights, her gaze snagged on the slate gray jacket in the colonel’s hand. She shivered at the blood that streaked its shoulder and one blue panel on the front. Sheppard hid the jacket behind his back, as Elizabeth looked up, meeting his stare.
“So,” Elizabeth rasped. She cleared her throat. “So I take it your magnetic grapple and wench system worked.”
“Ah… no,” Sheppard shook his head. “The jumper had taken on too much water. Not only was the cockpit flooded, but the rear compartment was over halfway full by the time we reached McKay. He’d said that impact with the ocean’s floor had caused stress fractures in the hull.”
“Micro fissures,” Zelenka corrected.
Sheppard shot the scientist a narrowed sideways glance. “Whatever,” he shrugged. He nudged his head in Zelenka’s direction. “He came up with the idea to extend the shield to the second jumper and to just walk across and extract McKay.”
Elizabeth smiled at Zelenka. “Nice work, Radek! I knew Rodney could count on you.”
Zelenka blushed. “Thank you, Elizabeth,” he whispered. The corners of the Czech’s lips curved upwards.
Elizabeth patted Zelenka’s shoulder. Her smile faded as she glanced over her shoulder at the door to the infirmary. She turned to Sheppard and looked him in the eye. “So how is Rodney?”
Sheppard sighed. “He’s pretty banged up,” he reported. “That abrasion on his forehead looks pretty nasty, and you know how shitty Rodney is with first aid. I don’t think he even attempted to clean the wound before he slapped on a dressing. He actually had one right on top of the other. It was a mess. I swear, if the threat of drowning or of losing life support weren’t enough, McKay had to throw in gangrene. Any chance we can enroll him in first aid training?”
“I’d consider it… if I thought Rodney would actually attend,” Elizabeth replied. Smirking, she added, “You know how he feels about biology.”
Sheppard raised a corner of his lips. “True. In any case, he’s definitely got a concussion. He was out cold for an hour. It’s hard to say which symptoms are results of that and which are due to hypothermia. His confusions could have been either… or both.”
Elizabeth folded her arms across her chest. “You’d said something about him thinking he’d seen Colonel Carter?” She raised an eyebrow.
Sheppard nodded, and also crossed his arms. A pair of Marines marched down the hallway, approaching the trio. Sheppard stepped closer to Elizabeth and Zelenka, his gaze trailing the soldiers. “Yeah,” he whispered, drawing Elizabeth one step nearer. “Like when Zelenka took his temperature and told him he had hypothermia –“
“His temperature was 35.9 degrees,” Zelenka interjected. “Or, rather, it was 96.7 degrees Fahrenheit.”
“- He didn’t believe me. McKay said that Carter had figured on him having a few more minutes before he reached that point, so that couldn’t be right. He said something about her trying to talk him out of a bad plan. By the time we were airborne, he had asked me all kinds of questions. He’d asked if I thought he and Carter had worked well together. He’d praised her for being wise.” Lifting a hand to Elizabeth, he raised his eyebrows. “He’d also recognised your wisdom, and your ‘respectable intelligence’, by the way.”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she took a step back.
“He’d asked me about Griffin, about what I knew about him. He kept repeating that Griffin was a good man, and that he’d treated him badly and how he should have listened to Carter. At that point, I was thinking McKay needed something stronger than that wrap. A straight jacket would have been more appropriate. Unfortunately, we don’t carry those in the jumpers.”
“That Carter talk didn’t concern me so much,” Zelenka spoke in a hushed tone. Elizabeth looked to him. “Rodney must be in pain. That blow to the head was not pretty. At the very least, Rodney has headache, or is more likely the case, multiple injuries. He did not complain once while flying home. He only started when med team arrived. And b that /b is what I find troubling. Rodney certainly does not suffer silently… well, physical pain.” Glancing at the infirmary door, Zelenka heaved a sigh. “It’s tough to see Rodney like this.”
Elizabeth put a hand on Zelenka’s shoulder and leaned closer to the scientist. “He’s going to be okay, Radek. He has definitely been through a lot, but I think the fact that you overcame your fears to rescue him will help in the healing process.” She pressed her other hand into Sheppard’s shoulder and looked from the Colonel to Zelenka and back again. “Having friends like the two of you will do him a world of good.”
Breaking eye contact, Sheppard nodded. Beside him, Zelenka shuffled his feet and looked to the floor. Elizabeth tightened her grip on each of the men’s shoulders.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Now I know this has been rough. I just want to let you both know that I’m proud of you for what you did today. You brought Rodney back, safe and sound.”
Sheppard’s sights locked onto Elizabeth, and he smirked. “He just needs to thaw out.”
Elizabeth grinned. She patted each man on the back. “Why don’t you both get some rest while he does? You can check in on him in the morning.”
Both men nodded. Zelenka shuffled down the corridor while Sheppard headed for the infirmary. The doors parted, and the colonel disappeared from Elizabeth’s sight.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she could hear Sheppard’s voice from the other room. “Good night, McKay! Be sure to set a timer so we’ll know when you’ve defrosted and are ready to get cooking.”
“Clever.” McKay’s response reached the corridor.
Sheppard emerged from the infirmary with a smile on his face. He raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth as he passed. “Good night, boss.”
Elizabeth listened as Sheppard’s footsteps faded into silence. She drew a deep breath. Pursing her lips, she walked into the infirmary. Seeing a nude McKay in a steel basin filled with water drew her two steps backwards. “Oh! Um…,” she stammered. She averted her gaze to Beckett, who sat at the head of the basin with a Dell notepad in hand. He was now staring at her. “I just wanted to see how we’re doing,” she explained.
“Oh,” McKay smiled. Nudging his head in the direction of the chair beside Beckett, he added, “Have a seat, Elizabeth. We were just discussing my coffee rations.”
Beckett shook his head. With his sights fixed on the notepad, he informed Elizabeth, “Rodney seems to think that his mild hypothermia warrants a doctor’s order to triple his coffee rations for the next month.”
“Hey, tripling my coffee rations for the next few months would not be totally unreasonable,” McKay argued. “After all, I’m going to need time to recuperate. I need to get my strength back – not to mention the heat in my body. Hot beverages in large quantities should do the trick, hmm? And what do you mean mild ? Wasn’t my condition moderate when I got here?”
“Dr. Zelenka and Colonel Sheppard may have done a lovely job attending to you upon your rescue, but neither is a medical doctor,” Beckett reminded McKay. “That was their educated guess.”
McKay smirked. “And isn’t that all medical science is anyway? Alleged educated guessing?” he retorted. Snapping his fingers, he demanded, “Look, just give me the computer, and I’ll enter the order myself.”
“No, b you /b look, Rodney!” Beckett exclaimed. Elizabeth put a hand over her mouth and covered a smile. “I am not going to put in that order! That’s just silly, and it’s downright unprofessional. Now I will get you all the coffee you want during your stay in the infirmary, but that is all I will do. Now would you sit back and relax? Are you in any pain?”
“Did I not just mention that my feet are on fire? Might I add that coffee would help?”
Beckett dropped the notepad onto his desk and jumped out of his chair. “Fine!” he waved his arms. “I’ll go get you some bloody coffee, if that will calm you down, and if you won’t carry on about this rations business any further!” He headed for the door.
McKay smiled. “Thank you, dear! Two sugars, no cream… Well, maybe just a little cream… and a third sugar…”
“Don’t push it, Rodney!” Beckett pointed his finger at his patient, and he left the infirmary.
McKay rubbed his hands together, his grin widening. “Now, Elizabeth, if you would be so kind as to pass over that computer…”
Elizabeth narrowed her sights at the scientist. “You do that, and I’ll tack on an order to cut your current coffee rations in half.”
Pursing his lips, McKay looked to the door. “I’ll just wait for Beckett to get back with that coffee,” he conceded. He leaned his back into the basin. Silence reigned.
“So,” Elizabeth spoke, producing a wry smile. “The jumpers are submersible after all, just as you’d hypothesised.”
“Yeah,” McKay snorted. His gaze drifted into the water. “Although I wouldn’t recommend we take them beyond 4,000 yards below sea level, unless we’re prepared to drain a substantial amount of power converting the jumper’s cloak into a shield.” He looked to Elizabeth. “Excellent idea, by the way. Whose was it?”
“John thought of it,” she informed him, “Although he needed Radek to make it happen. They made the changes while they were looking for you.”
“While they were…,” McKay trailed off. He cleared his throat. “Well, um, yes. We can definitely use this knowledge in the future, especially if we encounter any underwater cities, hmm?”
The doors to the infirmary opened, and Beckett rushed into the room. He was handling a mug with both hands. “Here you go, Rodney,” he offered.
McKay’s eyes brightened. “Thank you, Carson,” he spoke quietly as he accepted the mug from the doctor’s hands. He sipped the beverage, and snarled. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s decaf,” Beckett explained. “I can’t let you have caffeine. Stimulants send cold blood from your extremities back to your heart and can cause your body temperature to drop further. You’re going to have to settle for decaf.”
Closing his eyes, McKay nodded. He took another sip. Elizabeth exchanged glances with Beckett, who furrowed his brow. The medical doctor retrieved a bottle from a cabinet. He popped the top, extracted two pills, and handed them to McKay.
“Take these,” he advised. “You’re going to feel pain as your body restores heat, if you don’t feel it already.”
McKay accepted the pills. “And this is…”
“Ibuprofen.”
The scientist nodded, and swallowed the pills with a swig of coffee.
“So what’s the prognosis?” Elizabeth asked, crossing her arms over her stomach. She looked to Beckett.
The doctor swept the laptop into his arms. A few key strokes later, he said, “Well, Rodney is not exactly hypothermic anymore. His temperature is up to 97.8 degrees. He was in the 97 range when he arrived; Radek and John had already assisted in the re-warming process quite nicely. Once his temperature stabilises in the mid 98 range, which should be shortly, he’s coming out of the water.
“The next obstacle will be healing from the immersion foot,” Beckett continued. He narrowed his gaze upon McKay’s and winced. “I’m afraid that you have it in both feet. They were under water for quite some time, and in those conditions, you lose heat at twenty-five times the rate you would under dry circumstances. Blood flow to your feet was restricted for a significant period of time, and as a result, skin tissue had begun to die. It’s a fairly mild case, but it’s nothing to be taken lightly. I’m ordering you off your feet for at least a week. You will need to keep your feet wrapped and elevated. Now this is important, Rodney, because walking when you’re in this condition could cause further harm. If you comply, you’ll be as good as new within a few weeks. So what do you say, lad? Do we have an understanding?”
All eyes fell to McKay, who raised his eyebrows and grimaced. “I guess I don’t exactly have a choice. Elizabeth will enforce your decision, I take it.”
She nodded.
“Okay,” McKay conceded. He rubbed his hands together. “That will give me plenty of time to assess the malfunction in jumper 6’s drive pod – fix Zelenka’s mistakes – and to review the data gathered during our little impromptu jumper submersion trial. I am certain I can cut the power requirements to convert the jumper’s cloak into a shield in half, at the very least. Meanwhile, I’ve got a few projects I’ve been putting on hold. That should keep me busy for at least the first couple of days.”
Elizabeth grinned. “I’m sure you have plenty of work you could be doing, but how about adding rest to that itinerary?”
“What?” McKay shifted his eyes from side to side. “You don’t find data analysis relaxing?”
Elizabeth glanced at Beckett, who shrugged. The two looked again to McKay as the scientist stared into the water. Elizabeth and Beckett’s eyes met again.
“I’ll give you two a moment,” the doctor whispered to Elizabeth. McKay raised his head. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you, Rodney. Elizabeth will be with you in the meantime. If you need anything – anything at all – just have me paged.”
McKay nodded. Beckett clasped Elizabeth’s shoulder before slipping out of the room. The expedition leader looked to the floor, closed her eyes, and then looked to the scientist. McKay was staring at the foot of the basin.
“So, um,” his voice cracked. “Griffin. He was a good man, wasn’t he? You knew him, right?”
Elizabeth sighed. “No,” she breathed. “Unfortunately, I really didn’t. I wish that I had. I don’t recall talking with him since our arrival in Atlantis.”
Grimacing, McKay commented, “I guess we’ve all had our regrets since coming to Atlantis.” He tightened one side of his lips. ‘Not that we didn’t have regrets before leaving our home galaxy. I don’t know about everybody else, but I viewed coming to Atlantis as a fresh start.” McKay straightened his back. “Of course, I knew that this expedition desperately needed me, what, with my being the foremost expert in Ancient technology in the galaxy, and now in two.”
Elizabeth smiled.
Releasing a heavy breath, McKay shifted his eyes from side to side, and increasingly downward. “But I also knew this was my chance to change. Brilliance aside, I knew I wasn’t in line for employee of the month at the SGC or at Area 51. You know more than anyone else here the reputation I left behind.” He raised his eyebrows and looked to the Elizabeth. “I’ve never thanked you for not saying anything about that incident at the SGC to the rest of my team, by the way.”
“We all deserve a clean slate, Rodney,” Elizabeth voiced.
“Yes, yes,” McKay murmured. Grimacing, he conceded, “Well, as it turns out, I haven’t done the best job with mine. Even my subconscious recognises that I’m reliving past mistakes.”
“Rodney…”
“Please, Elizabeth,” McKay interjected, closing his eyes. “This isn’t easy for me to say. It’s just that, after watching Griffin risk and lose his life to save mine – after the way I treated him – I owe him this. Elizabeth…” McKay’s sights locked onto hers, and then broke away. He laughed. “Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to exercise genius and articulacy in matters of astrophysics but to struggle with something so…”
Furrowing her brow, Elizabeth leaned forward in her chair.
“I… may… come off badly. I may act like I’m better than everyone else, because I truly am the most intelligent, but I do…” McKay put a hand over his face.
Elizabeth brushed her fingers against the other hand, which rested along the rim of the basin. “Rodney, I know,” she whispered. “I know that you care about everyone on your team, and while you may not always show this through conventional means, you’ve let us all know it, in your own way. You may have struggled to fit in at the SGC, but you know what? So did I! They have their own family, and, well, this is ours. We may not have belonged at the SGC – and I promise you, Rodney, I felt that as much or even more than you did – but you and I, we belong here.” Her eyes widened. “You should have seen how frantic this place got when your jumper went down!” She smiled. “Everyone – all your friends – scrambled to locate it and to device a way to save you. Zelenka subjected himself to going underwater in a jumper and stepped well outside his comfort zone to rescue you. He and Sheppard did it knowing full well that you’d do the same for them – and that you have.”
Leaning closer, Elizabeth continued. “I will never forget how you stood in front of a gun for me, or how you threw that Naquadah battery through the gate to lure away the darkness being. So if your regrets lie in never telling your friends that you care about them, they are unfounded. We know.”
Widening his eyes, McKay sat up straight in the bath. “Oh. Well… In that case… I guess I’ve said what I’ve needed to say… Or you’ve said it…”
“Believe me, Rodney, you’ve said it.”
McKay smiled. “Well, um, thank you, Elizabeth, for reiterating my sentiments so eloquently.”
Elizabeth patted his shoulder.
The doors opened, and Beckett re-entered the room. Elizabeth leaned back in her seat, and she and McKay exchanged a smile.
“How are we doing here?” Beckett glanced at his notepad. “Now then,” he grinned. “It looks like you’re ready to come out of the water; you’re all warmed up. How are you feeling?”
McKay smiled at the doctor. “Carson, I couldn’t be better.”
DAS ENDE