"Thicker Than Water"
by Maisie (maisierita@comcast.net)
Pairing: McShep (all I do, it seems)
Rating: R, for language and imagery
Summary: She'd run all the way to the jumper bay, and then when she'd gotten
there she'd had to stop for a minute to catch her breath, and immediately wished
she hadn't, because with every gulp of air she could smell it. The blood.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Not a happy fic! Not exactly a darkfic, but definitely not a happy
fic. And it's, err, bloody.
Blood is thicker than water, she thought numbly. It ran through her head over
and over as she stood at the sink and scrubbed compulsively, nearly abrading her
skin with the soap and scalding water; obsessively scouring her hands and wrists
and forearms, everywhere she'd touched John. Blood is thicker than water, but
water can wash away blood, if you scrub hard enough ...
There'd been so much blood, thick and sticky. He'd been covered in it, and
there'd been no way to touch him without getting covered in it herself, but
she'd touched him anyway, because he’d needed the contact. Or maybe she had.
The gate had activated three hours ahead of schedule -- never a good sign -- and
the sick feeling in her stomach had only gotten sicker when she'd heard Ford's
voice calling for a med team to meet them in the jumper bay. She'd run all the
way there, the sound of her breath harsh and panicked in her ears because there
had been fear in Ford's voice, and Ford didn't get scared. Not unless things
were really scary.
She'd run all the way to the jumper bay, and then when she'd gotten there she'd
had to stop for a minute to catch her breath, and immediately wished she hadn't,
because with every gulp of air she could smell it. The blood.
John had been drenched in it. His hands, his arms, his shirt, from his
fingertips to his shoulders, even up his neck. His face was smeared with it,
vivid red splashed angrily across his cheeks, but the skin underneath was pale
and bloodless, and his eyes were vacant with shock and general ... absence of
awareness. The medical team had been flitting around like gnats, but she'd
managed to grab his hand and hold it tight, even though his palm was slick with
blood.
He hadn't returned the pressure of her fingers on his.
Between one moment and the next, the medical team ghosted away, gently carrying
the stretcher, an inert form draped limply on canvas, blood-soaked bandages red
and white across the shattered chest. Everyone else ghosted away too, leaving
her alone in the jumper bay with Sergeant Bates, standing awkwardly at parade
rest.
Elizabeth took a step toward nowhere and lost her balance, slipping on the
floor, shiny and wet with spilt blood. Bates was there to catch her, arms
strong and secure around her tilting body. Wordlessly, he led her to the
jumper, easing her down onto the ramp.
"I'll get a crew in here to clean up," he said, calm and professional as ever,
and for a second, just a second, Elizabeth hated him.
Then she saw him glance into the jumper itself; saw him go pale and swallow
hard, then look away, and Elizabeth felt an instant of vindictive satisfaction
that he'd had his composure shaken, if only for a moment. But then she wondered
what he'd seen, what was in the jumper that was bad enough to make Bates pale,
when all the blood on the jumper bay floor wasn't enough. She decided she didn’t
need to look.
"I think you'll want to wash up, ma'am," Bates said finally, shifting restlessly
on his heels and looking anywhere but the open jumper, and for the first time,
Elizabeth looked down at herself and saw the blood on her clothes, and on her
hands.
"Yes," she said dazedly. "I think I'll do that."
She stopped by the infirmary after cleaning up, but there was no news to be had;
it would be hours yet. She couldn't stay there, with the smell of blood so
strong in the air, mixing nauseatingly with alcohol and antiseptic, so she went
to her office and stared at the walls, thinking of what she'd seen in the jumper
bay. Thinking of what it meant.
The call didn't come for eight hours, and then all Carson would say was that
they’d finished surgery if she wanted to come down. Really, all she wanted to
do was stay in her office, because Carson sounded bleak and resigned and she
didn't think she could face up to this loss now, but of course staying in her
office wasn't a choice, so she walked down to the infirmary, stomach clenched,
and Carson met her at the door.
"He's resting,” he said wearily. “We've made him as comfortable as we could."
"Is he conscious?"
"No. And won't be for a while, if I've anything to do with it."
She nodded, then asked the question she didn’t really want the answer to because
she suspected she knew it. "Will he live?"
Carson rubbed his eyes and looked down at the floor, not meeting her gaze.
"It’s too soon to say. There was a lot of damage. The bullet exploded in his
chest. He lost a lot of blood." He rubbed at his eyes again. "A lot of
blood."
She swallowed, shivering, and rubbed at her hands, memory flashing red for an
instant. "Can I see him?"
Carson shrugged tiredly. "I don't see why not."
Elizabeth walked around the privacy curtain, steeling herself with each hesitant
step, stopping short at her first sight of John.
He sat in the chair next to the bed, deathly pale and with that same absent look
in his eyes, still covered in Rodney’s blood. He was holding one of Rodney's
hands, the limp fingers clenched tightly between his own, and his vacant gaze
was fixed on Rodney’s chest, which rose and fell in time with the soft whoosh of
the heart and lung machine to which he was tethered.
Everything she thought she'd seen in the jumper bay was still there in John's
face, all the pain and fear and confusion and love, and his expression was so
grim and desolate that it made her heart ache.
She kneeled at his feet and placed a hand on his knee, waiting patiently for the
minutes it took for him to recognize he was no longer alone.
"Elizabeth," he said, and dear god, everything in his face was there in his
voice, magnified a hundred times.
"I'm so sorry," she said, eyes focused on his, trying desperately to keep him
here, to keep that awful absent look from returning. She didn't dare
look at Rodney’s still form on the bed, covered with bandages and tubes and
monitors. "I didn't realize."
John laughed, a choked little laugh that wasn’t funny at all. "It's okay.
Neither did I." He shuddered and dropped his head into hands for a second.
She squeezed his leg for comfort, and through the blood-soaked fabric felt him
shaking. "John-"
"What am I supposed to do about it now?" he said, voice muffled. He raised his
head, and his eyes were there, focused, but the price for that
awareness was pain, and Elizabeth briefly wondered if it was really worth it, if
she'd been right to force it. "What the fuck am I supposed to do about it now?
I can't even tell him."
"He might make it," she said, voice catching because she knew the odds were
desperately slim. But he was still alive, so there was a chance, even if the
odds were against it. Rodney had beaten the odds before. "Don't give up on him
yet, John. He's strong."
But John was shaking his head listlessly. "No. No. You didn't see … God,
Elizabeth, you didn't see his chest, what it was like … there was so much blood.
We tried to stop it, but it just kept coming, no matter what we did. It just
kept coming." The tremor in his body was echoed in his voice. "I thought he
was going to die right there. And then I knew, I finally got it, and everything
made sense all of a sudden." He stared dully at Rodney's still form. "Let me
tell you, deathbed epiphanies really suck."
She squeezed his leg again, then sat back on the floor, pulling her knees up to
her chest, not saying a word. There really wasn't anything to say.