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It was all wrong and bizarre. He was in the desert cave with Holland Teyla, holding a twisted root power cable for the hallucination device, and staring down the muzzle of Ronon's an Afghan's blaster AK-47, which was probably not set on safety stun.
John shook his head in bewilderment. Why was Teyla disconnecting the Wraith machine? "Where the hell's McKay?" he muttered. And Beckett, for that matter, and his wounded men? A chill seeped through John as he realized how close he'd come to following in Major Leonard's footsteps.
Teyla was breathing hard through clenched teeth. "He was injured, lying just before the entrance to the cave. Ronon, you did not do anything to him, did you?"
Ronon looked over his shoulder, as baffled as John. "In front of the cave? All's I saw was a dead Wraith."
Teyla stiffened. "Dead?" She swayed and caught herself on the coils of the device.
The turbaned man lies gasping on the sand, blood frothing his lips --
John couldn't get the sticky cables out of his way fast enough. "Ronon, take care of her!" he snapped as he ran for the front of the cave.
Brasso slumped in the outer chamber, gray-faced and cold, but no one else was there. John stumbled through the narrow passage to the outside.
Rodney was sprawled on the ground, wide eyes fixed on John as he emerged. He was obviously alive, drawing quick shallow breaths, but the bloody dirt beneath him didn't say much for his continuing chances.
The man's Kalashnikov is out of reach, so there's no need to give him a mercy bullet. Damn Holland anyway for ruining that first shot, but John's willing to let the bastard suffer a while before finishing him.
There was no rifle. Rodney's nine-mil was untouched in its holster. Only the bullet wound was the same. John had shot a friend, and would have killed him if not for Holland Teyla.
The Afghan tribesman levels his rifle and snarls with rage --
But no, it hadn't been like that, not really. Rodney was unarmed, and he must have looked . . . what, confused? Terrified? Betrayed?
John went to his knees beside the scientist, but Rodney flinched back and lifted his hands to guard himself.
John froze. "Rodney, it's okay." It wasn't okay. "Teyla unplugged the, the thing. It's over."
Rodney lowered his hands slowly. His eyes were impossibly blue -- constricted pupils, John realized, and wondered what that meant. "You shot me!" he croaked.
There was nothing to say to that; 'I'm sorry' was completely inadequate. "Yeah. I thought you were . . ." No, that didn't help either. "How bad is it?"
"You shot me!" Rodney repeated. Great, he was going into shock.
John pressed him back and checked the site of the wound. The bullet had entered the fighter's chest an inside pocket of Rodney's jacket and then diverted downward. It must have hit something in the pocket. John tugged up the velcro and pulled out an Ancient scanner with a score on the casing, but no chunks missing. Good -- that meant no extra shrapnel, either. He just hoped the bullet hadn't fragmented.
"Gotta love that Ancient construction, huh?" he quipped weakly, flashing the scanner at Rodney to show it still worked. Carefully, he pulled the jacket aside.
The bloody mess underneath was nasty enough; he didn't even want to think what the exit wound must look like. The shot had gone in below the ribs, so the scanner had saved Rodney from lung damage. What else might be involved -- stomach, kidney, intestines? Guts, that was all John knew. Important organs were everywhere in there, and all of them were bad to have a bullet hole in.
He felt dizzy and realized he was beginning to match Rodney's panicked gasps. "Okay, it's okay," he said firmly. "You'll be okay." He had no idea if he was lying. "Where's Carson?"
Rodney shook his head, forcing words out in clumps. "Don't know. He was falling apart, I couldn't help . . . then the device overloaded . . . it was going to blow up -- no, that was a hallucination . . . I ran, I looked for Carson, but he was gone. Then you, you . . ."
The confusion in his voice was too familiar, too much like what John was feeling. "I gotta find Carson. He can help you. You'll be okay here, for just a minute?"
Rodney stared, his bloody hand alternately clutching and pushing at John. "I -- I . . ."
"I'll watch him." Ronon ducked out of the cave. "Teyla's okay," he offered. "She's lying down. Leg's almost stopped bleeding." He squatted next to Rodney and jerked his chin at the wound. "Leonard do that?"
"No, I --" John couldn't say it. "Leonard shot Teyla." He grabbed up the scanner again.
"Thought that was a Wraith," Ronon said.
"Wraith don't normally carry P-90s," John said, feeling himself steady in the face of Ronon's calm. "There's two life signs off that way." He pointed. "Gotta be Carson and . . . Kagan? I thought he was nearly dead."
"Not as bad as Carson thought," Rodney panted. "And Brasso . . . he was worse."
"That thing messed with all of us," Ronon said grimly.
"Except Teyla. She kept her head."
Damn, Holland's talking nuts again. Is it early infection or just heat stroke?
But Holland -- Teyla -- had been telling the truth. John swiped a hand through his hair, realizing too late that it was covered in blood. "Okay, you two hang on. I'll have Carson back here in a minute." He just hoped no one had shot the doctor. He'd lost track of how many Afghanis and Wraith had been taken out of the fight.
"Winged him in the arm," John says regretfully, lowering his M-4.
That must have been Ronon.
First one supply truck, then the other goes up in flames as they do their three-legged race down the side of the dune.
Had he really blown something up? If so, what?
Forcing himself to focus on reality, on the scanner, John found Carson, helped him carry Kagan (unconscious but stable) back to the cave, and brought him whatever he asked for to tend to Rodney. Working on autopilot, John checked on Teyla and rebandaged Ronon's arm.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, their radios came to life with Elizabeth's voice demanding news. John passed on Carson's request for specific medical supplies. Elizabeth wanted to send more people, but even with the Wraith device deactivated, John felt sick at the thought of bringing more men into this killing ground. He told her they'd wait for the Daedalus and tried to make light of Rodney's repeated accusations.
When Elizabeth said they had sent everything through and were ready to close the wormhole, John hurried to retrieve the medical supplies. He laid them out as Carson told him to, then headed back to the Gate.
Leonard's dead teammates, along with Chen, were still lying near the ruined DHD. The rest of the supplies from Atlantis waited in front of the Gate. John sorted out the pile of body bags -- each one tagged for the Asgard beaming device, since there wouldn't be any life signs to latch on to. There were eight bags, two more than he'd told Elizabeth to send. John told himself they wouldn't be needed, but a chill went down his spine at the thought that Rodney might be wrapped in one of these by morning.
Once he had four bags filled and laid out respectfully by the Gate, he took two more to the cave. Carson, bending over Teyla's leg, flinched at the sight but didn't say anything since Rodney, half asleep, hadn't seen what John was carrying.
Ronon followed him into the cave and helped muscle Brasso -- unfortunately stiffened in a sitting position -- into a fifth bag. John hesitated over where to put him. Carson had his patients outside in the fresh air right now, but they would probably move back into the cave for the night. John settled for tucking the body into a back alcove.
Carrying the sixth bag outside again, John hesitated behind Carson's bent form. "How's she doing, Doc?"
Holland is going pale under his tan, sheened with sweat and barely able to hobble. If he doesn't get real medical care soon, he might not make it -- and all because of John's lousy sense of direction.
But that memory was from the real Afghanistan, not the hallucination. Teyla had never stopped fighting, and she'd saved them all in the end.
Carson didn't look up from his work. "It's not too bad, a through-and-through with no bone involvement. I've had to clamp one bleeder -- that'll take surgery when we reach the Daedalus, if we don't want the circulation in the rest of her leg affected. But I don't think she needs a transfusion; saline should be enough for now. There's plenty of blood handy if we need it, for any of them."
Teyla gave John a tight-lipped nod. She, like Holland, was pale and sweating -- but from the pain of the examination, instead of severe shock. At least, John hoped that was all.
"Glad to hear it," he said. He looked toward Rodney, but he couldn't bring himself to ask just yet. Carson seemed no more stressed than he had been since they found the first bodies; that meant Rodney was going to be okay, right? Kagan appeared to be holding on, too. John forced himself to breathe. "Teyla, can you remember where, uh . . . where we left Major Leonard?"
It was a good thing Ronon was there to hear Teyla's directions, because John would have gone astray again without him. And it was a good thing he wasn't alone to collect the remains scattered around the tiny clearing. Even with the crazy-making machine turned off, a grisly job like this brought up too many ghosts.
The Afghan raises his rifle with a snarl -- the bullet takes him in the lower chest -- he gasps, staring at John, his lips flecked with blood --
"You're not like Leonard," Ronon said, patiently picking a long red something off the thorns of a low bush.
"No, I'm American," John said absently, looking over a blood-soaked clump of leaves. And so much for the IOA's experiment in adding UN troops to the expedition; the first of those 'highly trained and experienced' teams had only made it through three missions offworld before coming to this hell-hole. He couldn't tell if there was anything more solid than blood on the leaves. Maybe he should just shove the whole lot in the body bag to be sent back to the Major's family.
"I mean, you didn't kill us."
John's stomach lurched, and he ducked behind the tree Leonard had stood against, the nearest unspattered patch of ground.
"Gonna throw up?"
"Shut up," John snapped, hunching with one hand on the tree. "I'm not sure." He swallowed again and again, his mouth watering as if the meat all around had made him hungry. And that thought did it; he emptied his stomach on the dirt in long, painful heaves.
"Here." Ronon held out his canteen.
John stripped off his gory gloves before taking the canteen. He rinsed and spat, rinsed and spat, rinsed and swallowed, then tipped his head back, wishing for one breath that didn't smell like a toilet in a slaughterhouse.
"You didn't kill us," Ronon repeated as he kicked some leaves over John's mess. "We're fine."
John glared at him. "McKay's not fine."
"He will be."
"I shot him. In the fucking chest. If it hadn't been for Teyla and all the fucking junk he hauls around in his pockets --"
"He'll be fine."
John looked down, concentrating on pulling the filthy gloves back on. No need for a fresh pair, since Leonard had nothing to fear from infections anymore. "Let's finish this before the sun goes down." He went back to looking for smaller and smaller pieces of bone and flesh.
When they hauled this last and most pitiful bag back to the cave, Rodney and Teyla were both lying quietly, maybe asleep. Carson had IVs set up for all three of his patients -- blood for Kagan and Rodney, saline for Teyla -- and was taking a breather while he watched them.
John sent Ronon into the cave to set Leonard next to Brasso. "How bad is it?" he asked Carson at last.
Carson flicked an eyebrow at him. "Well, of the eight of us who came through the gate, we've got two dead and four wounded -- and that's not even counting Major Leonard's team. You and I are the only ones unhurt, so to speak." He rubbed his jacket cuff across his forehead as if he'd forgotten his hands were clean and ungloved. "I'd say that's fairly bad."
John's jaw ached. "I meant Rodney. How bad is he?"
Carson's expression lightened fractionally. "Ach, well, he was lucky there. The bullet didn't fragment, and it seems to have gone through without hitting any vital organs."
John frowned. "They say that in movies sometimes, but it isn't really possible, is it? I mean, there's a hell of a lot of important -- stuff -- in there." Including some stuff he'd just picked up off the forest floor.
Carson straightened. "It's all down to cavitation, I expect. Y'see, a bullet traveling faster than the speed of sound through human flesh creates a shockwave that tends to push things out of the way. It can't push them far, so a bullet headed square on for the heart is still going to hit it. But if ye're lucky enough that, say, a laser beam on the same path would only catch the edge of certain organs, then it's possible for a bullet to miss them entirely."
"Oh," said John. The explanation sounded vaguely familiar, but he wasn't sure if he'd heard about it in training or on the Discovery Channel.
"Now mind, it's not a Get Out of Jail Free card. That shockwave can cause some nasty bruising along the way and sometimes even rupture organs in its own right."
"Bullet-slap." John remembered the bruise that had purpled half his upper arm when Rodney winged him -- Thaelan -- last year. The same darkness was spreading over Ronon's arm today.
"Aye. I think his spleen may have taken some bruising that way. So I'm still concerned about bleeding, but it doesn't look too bad. With transfusions I think we can keep him stable until he can have surgery in a proper sterile environment."
"But you won't have to remove his spleen or anything?"
"I shouldn't think so. There'd be a deal more blood if the spleen were that badly damaged. And fortunately, by the smell -- or lack of it -- I'm certain his intestines are still intact. That'll make it easier to stay ahead of any infection. He'll be right miserable for a few weeks, and likely make us all feel his pain as well, but I think he'll be fine."
John eased back from his tense squat and released a slow breath of relief. Movement at the corner of his vision made him turn, to see Ronon watching him.
The Satedan nodded slowly, then turned to Carson. "Sun'll be down soon. Want to move them inside?"
John didn't sleep that night, volunteering instead to watch the patients and wake Carson at intervals to check them himself. He knew he wouldn't have slept anyway; every time he closed his eyes he saw that Afghan raising his Kalashnikov.
Sometimes the man had blue eyes.
And yet, for all his worrying about what that damn bullet had done to Rodney's guts, all his worrying about what firing it had done to his own blackened soul, or twisted psyche, or whatever . . . Despite all that, John overlooked the worst damage it had done. He didn't get it until they were on the Daedalus, most of the way back to Atlantis, when Rodney awoke again after the surgery.
His first words: "You shot me."
And though John retorted at once, "Well, you shot me last year!" his heart still sank.
Rodney's spleen would heal. John would remember how to sleep again. But the fragile thing that had been growing between them, the thing John had nourished and treasured and been afraid even to name -- one shot had ripped that tenuous connection apart and left a hollow space in its wake. And John had no idea how to fix it.