John blinked the spots in his eyes away as Carson finished checking his pupils. The doctor stood back, “There's nothing wrong with you, far as I can see. You're perfectly healthy.” John nodded once. “The headaches still botherin' you?”
The pilot shook his head, “Not since I passed out.” He jumped off the bed and looked at Carson with a smile, “Maybe I'll get some real sleep tonight. Thanks, Doc.” Beckett smiled back with a nod, “Aye.” Carson smiled again before watching John leave the Infirmary. It didn't make sense to him that the Colonel would pass out while on a simple mission. True, he hadn't been sleeping well because of his headaches, but that problem seemed to have taken care of itself.
Carson, however, was well aware that nothing was ever that simple in Atlantis.
SGASGASGASGA
He felt better, odd as it sounded. He head wasn't splitting open, and he could think clearly. It was refreshing to say the least. Of course, now that he could think clearly, there was yet another distraction.
Lunch. He realized that he didn't really get much of a breakfast, so it would only stand to reason that five hours later, he would need food. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he became aware of footfalls coming behind him, so he turned – to find no one behind him. He frowned and looked around, the sound came again, but this time he saw McKay coming up to him. That was weird. Rodney stopped short at the look on his friend's face, “You okay?”
“Y-yeah. Just.... nevermind.” He turned on his heel and started back towards the mess, dimly aware of Rodney coming up and matching his pace, “Headed to get some lunch?”
“Yeah... you?”
“Mm,” he hummed in agreement, “So, ah, Millar's team was sent to, 566 to start trade negotiations, since ...we never got there.”
“Yeah.”
Rodney frowned slightly, “You sure your okay?”
John looked over at him, “Yeah. I'm fine. In fact,” he started up the stairs to the mess, “I feel better now, than when we left for 566.”
“Really? Cause you seem kinda...”
John spun to face him, “What?”
“I don't know, out of it?”
“Out of it?”
“Yeah.”
“I'm fine, Rodney. I'll feel even better after I get something to eat.”
Rubbing his hands together, McKay nodded in agreement, “Yeah, I know that feeling.”
SGASGASGASGA
Groaning as he peeled his jacket off, John reminisced that perhaps getting into a tense sparring match with Ronon hadn't been the brightest of ideas. Plopping down on his bed, he tenderly pressed a finger to the cut over his left eyebrow. It wasn't huge, and didn't need stitches, but it still stung. He winced and pulled his hand away, letting it fall into his lap. Sighing, he pulled the radio's ear piece out and laid in on the nightstand before removing his boots and killing the lights. He suddenly felt tired and more drained than he ever had been in his life. A dull throb at the back of his skull caught his attention just moments before passing out, lucky enough for his head to hit the pillow before he was dead to the world.
SGASGASGASGA
“Colonel Sheppard, respond.” Doctor Weir folded her hands in front of her as she waited for a response for the fifth time in the past ten minutes. It was already 09:00 hours and John's duty shift had started over a half hour ago, and while his track record for following orders wasn't great in past, he'd never been late for duty. Elizabeth looked over to Chuck, who was sitting at the Stargate Operations console, “Give me city wide.”
The Canadian gave a curt nod before hitting the PA system for the city and nodded again at Weir. She waited a second before speaking, “John? Please respond.” She waited a few moments, and then shook her head at Chuck who turned the PA off.
Lifting a hand to her ear piece, she clicked the radio on, but never got the chance to say anything before a voice over took the frequency, Ronon's voice, “Medical team to Sheppard's quarters.”
When Elizabeth arrived, Carson was already hard at work, and Ronon was standing to the side, “What happened?”
Shrugging, Ronan answered, “We had a sparring match this morning. He never showed, thought he just slept in. I came lookin' for him when I heard you on the radio. I couldn't wake him.”
Weir nodded and her gaze shifted to Beckett, “Carson?”
The doctor ignored her for a moment, addressing the other three medical staff in the room, “Get him to the Infirmary.” Carson sighed and walked over the Elizabeth and Ronon. “He's non-responsive, a comatose state. I'll need to run tests to find out why.”
“Alright, Carson. Keep us updated.”
“Aye.”
SGASGASGASGA
Two hours later.
The Atlantis Infirmary was quiet, and still. It was nearly midday, and most of the medical staff had gone to lunch – except Carson Beckett – who was sitting at his desk looking at a laptop. The screen showed several brain scans of Colonel Sheppard, all of them taken after returning from his previous mission. Carson wasn't too worried when they had first arrived; Sheppard had come out of worse scraps no worse for wear, but now, looking at these scans….
Carson leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his strained eyes. He clamped down on the bridge of his nose for a second as a headache threatened to come crashing in. He turned his head toward Sheppard's bed, and sighed worriedly. The Doctor closed the lid of his laptop, stood and moseyed over to the right of the Colonel's bedside, just opposite of the Heart monitor and EEG machine. He checked the connections, and looked at the monitors: Heart rate was 73 beats per second. But his brain was incredibly active – this only confirming the Scotsman's reason for worry.
He looked down at the Colonel. He had been changed out of his uniform, which he had obviously fallen asleep in, and into the white scrubs he now wore. He had taken a blood test soon after Ronon had called the Med Team to the Colonel's quarters, but he was still waiting for the results. Judging by the abnormal amount of activity in his brain – Doctor Beckett doubted that the tests would turn anything up. In fact he doubted that he would get any answers at all, from any test. There were no leads, no ideas, no theories that would point to a reason this had happened. Carson was well aware of John's lack of sleep thanks to the headaches that had been plaguing him. Could this simply be his body forcing him down to finally rest? Maybe. Carson thought back on John statement just after returning from his last mission. The cruel irony of it was too much, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose thinking of all the reasons this could be happening.
“Carson?” The doctor turned to see Elizabeth, Rodney, Ronon and Teyla walking up to him, “How is he?”
“No change,” Carson said looking back at John's prone form. He then pointed to the monitors across the bed, “His vitals are all okay, the only thing that troubles me is his heightened brain activity. It's as if he's going about his daily life, while playing several advanced level Chess games at once.” He allowed that to sink in only for a moment before continuing, “Also, Ronon got him in the head during last night's sparring match.”
The four pairs of eyes rounded on the Satendan, and Ronon defended himself, “I didn't hit him that hard.”
“Aye, he didn't. I cleaned the wound myself.” All eyes returned to Beckett, “but look over his left eye,” he motioned toward John and Ronon looked for himself.
“There's nothing there.”
“Aye. The wound is completely healed.”
“How--?” McKay backed up a bit, “He doesn't have any Nanites... does he?”
Carson shook his head, “No. I already scanned him.”
A young nurse entered the scene with a tablet PC in hand, “Doctor? Colonel Sheppard's blood tests.”
Carson took the tablet and dismissed the nurse, “Thank ya, love.” As she left, the doctor looked over the results, “And there is no sign of the Retro-virus in his system. Perfectly healthy.”
“Well, aside from the mysterious coma,” Elizabeth commented, and then paused to think. “Is it possible that something on A5X-566 caused this?”
Rodney was the first to speak, “Um, possibly?”
“Take a science team. Find out.”
McKay nodded, “Right,” and walked out of the Infirmary with Ronon and Teyla close behind. Weir tapped her earpiece and contacted a small military team to accompany them to the planet.
SGASGASGASGA
“Unscheduled off world activation!”
Weir jumper to her feet, and fast walked to the Stargate Ops from her office. Elizabeth looked down at the technician who had made known the activation, “Do we have an IDC, Chuck?”
The Canadian looked down at a laptop to his right as an identification code came in and announced the user, “Yes, ma'am. It's Doctor McKay's IDC.”
“They're early,” she said to herself, then looked back at Chuck, “Let them in.”
“They're early,” she said to herself, then looked back at Chuck, “Let them in.”
The technician nodded, and lowered the force field covering the event horizon. Weir headed around the the various Ancient consoles and down the stairs as McKay's research team, Teyla and Ronon, and the small military team walked through the gate. McKay set down his equipment and the two teams behind him dispersed, taking equipment and weapons back to their proper places. Weir, Teyla and Ronon walked right up to Rodney, and Weir was the first to speak, “Find anything?”
Rodney looked down at his fingers and rubbed three of his fingers together, “Aside from the,” he held his hands you to the three some to see the light dusting of green on them, “four inches of Alien moss on most every tree? No.” He lightly rubbed his hands together in an attempt to get the moss of them, “We didn't find anything even remotely useful or helpful. There's way too much interference from the multiple power sources, and before that energy had spiked. Now it's just... sitting idle.” An uncomfortable silence ensued until Rodney decided to cut through it, “How is he?”
Elizabeth pursed her lips together and folded her hands in front of her, “No change.”
“Um… does Carson know what's wrong with him yet?”
Weir shook her head softly, “No, not yet,” before she heard a Scottish brogue over her radio.
“Dr. Weir?”
She lifted a hand up to activate her radio, “Yes, Carson?”
“He's awake.”
The four pairs of eyes met in understanding and Elizabeth responded swiftly, “On our way.”
TBC
A/N: chapter 2 wordcount: 1857
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