(no title) (original) (raw)
Title: The Program, Part 1/7
Rating: All
Character: McKay, Sheppard
Category: General, Action Adventure maybe? Intrigue? Mystery? Oh no, suspense, that fits!
Summary: Meet Doctor Rodney McKay M.D. & Detective John Sheppard. Sheppard ends up in hospital from a gunshot wound on a failed raid with colleagues Lorne&Dex & finds himself under Dr. McKay's care. Both are experiencing strange flashbacks & memories. Not AU
Archived on AO3
The Program - Part One
Rodney glanced up from his breakfast to look around the room as a sudden feeling of... wrongness, overwhelmed him. He blinked in confusion at the room before him, confused at the feeling that this was a place that he simply shouldn’t be.
As he glanced around the room seemed to melt around him into a completely different place altogether. Another cafeteria to be precise. This one however was completely different to the one he’d been in. Admittedly it was still full of his colleagues, bleary eyed and reaching for the coffee, but they were all dressed in different uniforms and clothes.
The architecture of the place was also widely different. His surroundings slowly morphed back into how they’d been moments earlier. He ran his hands over his face. It seemed that days without sleep and endless shifts even got to him eventually.
Rodney took a compulsive gulp of his now barely lukewarm coffee and sighed. He was going to have to get some sleep soon, he was truly beginning to worry about his sanity. It looked like a visit to Heightmeyer was on the horizon, he would put it off for as long as he could though.
The powers that be kept a close eye on the health of their employees, mental as well as physical, especially in this job. Too many visits and he’d likely be up for an official psychological review. That would only happen over his dead body and his dead body only, because if it did happen he was so completely and totally screwed. Not to mention out of a job.
He glared at the depths of his coffee cup, before heaving himself out of his chair for another day’s work.
John Sheppard was not having a good day. He and his team had been conducting a raid, a well planned raid, where absolutely nothing could go wrong…
And it had been just that type of thinking that ended up with him laying on the ground of a now empty warehouse, alone, and bleeding from a gunshot wound. His day really couldn’t get much better… except that things just seemed to get freakier by the minute. A whiny internal voice gave him a mental earful for using a word like ‘freakier’ but he ignored it, because it was his damn head and he could think however he wanted.
The reason things were freaky, more than usual, was that when Ronon had run off to pursue the bad guys who had shot him - and ow damnit that was still hurting like a bitch - John had momentarily hallucinated him wearing a completely different outfit. Which was just… weird, even for a hallucination. Because really, if your going to hallucinate it should be about something a little weirder than clothes, like dancing pink elephants or scary mutant vampires or rooms lighting up like Christmas trees when you entered them… not your colleague in dress-up.
And hell, here he came, still in his weird hallucinated gear, which seemed to suit him a lot more than it should.
“Sheppard!” Ronon spoke sharply, his voice laced with concern.
“Hey Ronon,” John smiled lazily, because the pain was changing into an interesting drifty feeling. “What’s with the clothes?” he asked, because it might just be that Ronon had changed when John wasn’t looking.
“Sheppard, the medics are on their way,” Ronon told him, ignoring his question completely. John frowned in irritation.
“Hey, didn’t answer me,” he said, or maybe slurred, he wasn’t sure.
“Stay with us, sir,” he distantly heard a voice say. Was that Lorne? It didn’t matter right now though, now he had to figure out what was with Ronon and his oddly appropriate costume.
“‘nd wa’s witall t’ ‘ifes,” was the last thing he said before he passed out.
Rodney idly pored over John Sheppard’s chart as he sipped his coffee. He could just about hear Carson talking to Lorne and Dex outside of the private room Sheppard had been placed in; reassuring them that the surgery went well and that Sheppard should be waking up within the next twelve hours. Rodney snorted and took several strides so that he was standing at Carson’s side opposite Lorne and Dex.
“That’s a bit of a optimistic estimate don’t you think?” he said.
“No I don’t actually, his surgery went very well, swimmingly even-”
“Nonetheless,” Rodney interrupted with a superior smirk, “He has suffered a major trauma and it could in fact be days before he regains consciousness,” he finished, losing the smirk, because really it wouldn’t do to make Lorne and Dex think he was pleased about it. They looked like men who could seriously hurt him if provoked.
“And you are?” Lorne asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Ah yes, this is one of our Attendings in the ER, Doctor Rodney McKay,” Carson told them.
“We’ve met,” Dex said shortly.
“We have?” Rodney frowned and scanned his mind for all the faces of his patients. “Oh yes, knife in your calf, healed disturbingly fast,” he said eventually.
“If you work in the ER what are you doing up here?” Lorne asked suspiciously.
“Rodney is actually an expert in various medical fields,” Carson said lightly.
“And I can multitask,” he said with a crooked smile. “I’ll be overseeing your colleague’s recovery on a daily basis, whereas Doctor Beckett will only be monitoring him on a weekly basis to make sure he did his job and stitched your friend up properly.”
“And it could really be days before he wakes up?” Lorne asked, a hint of concern creeping into his cool demeanour.
“Well, that’s more of a conservative estimate,” Carson began, Rodney shot him a look. “But it’s possible it could take that long, yes.”
“Damn, Caldwell’s not gonna’ be happy,” Ronon said.
“I don’t know about that,” Lorne answered, eyebrows raised. Rodney had a distinct feeling they were missing an in joke, and for some unimaginable reason -because he’d just met these people and obviously he wouldn’t know what they were talking about- it irritated him.
“He’s still gonna’ be down a man,” Ronon answered, Lorne shrugged his agreement.
“We better get back and report in,” he said. Ronon nodded his agreement.
“We’ll be back,” he told the two doctors solemnly before they departed.
“Do you think he practises that in front of the mirror?” Rodney asked snidely.
“Naturally,” Carson said with a smile before leaving to continue on his rounds. Rodney scowled at his retreating back before going back inside Sheppard’s room.
Everything was rather dark when John woke up. It took him a few minutes before he realised that that was probably because his eyes were closed. It seemed like too much of an effort to bother opening them, so he lay there quietly with his eyes closed.
His peace and quiet was intruded upon not long later by a pair of voices that sounded vaguely familiar.
“But it’s Cadman!” the male voice said in an outraged and horrified tone.
“They seem to be very well suited,” the female voice said diplomatically.
“She’s the human incarnation of all that is wrong with the world!” he exclaimed. John thought that this guy had to be over exaggerating a bit, a character trait which when coupled with the voice seemed even more familiar. “And now we’re going to have to socialise with her! Don’t you get it, they’ll be attached at the hip, being all love-dovey,” he sounded thoroughly disgusted, and if John wasn’t pretending to be unconscious right now he would have laughed.
“Sshh,” the woman admonished.
“Don’t be ridiculous Teyla, the man’s unconscious,” he said dismissively.
“It is quite likely that he has risen from unconsciousness and is merely sleeping, as you well know,” she said authoritatively.
“If that was the case then he has been sleeping for far too long, indicating that he is quite possibly one of the laziest people I’ve ever come in contact with. And considering that I work in this place that’s really saying something. But then again considering his profession it wouldn’t really be that surprising.”
Man, that guy could talk! It took a few seconds for John to process all that information and realise that there were a few well placed insults about him in there. He, who this man thought to be unconscious. And that really wasn’t fair at all was it?
So with substantial effort he managed to pry his eyelids open, unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and croak an indignant, “Hey!”
John missed the look of shock on their faces, for as soon as he laid eyes on the man, he was assaulted with a reel of images. Throwing him off a balcony…walking through a sandy and barren landscape with a supportive hand on his back…a hastily bandaged arm over a tan coloured jacket sleeve…hanging upside-down from a tree in a bright orange suit…shivering and wet with congealed blood on the side of his head…
Suddenly he was blinded by a white light, when it was gone he blinked into their concerned faces.
“Back with us?” the man asked as he pocketed his penlight. John nodded slowly, glancing between the two. “Good,” he said shortly. “This is one of our nurses, Teyla,” he said, indicating the woman on John’s right who smiled pleasantly at him. “And I’m Doctor McKay,” he said. John flinched as his internal voice practically screamed a name at him. He sternly told it that whether it had gone crazy or gained some kind of telepathic powers, he didn’t want to know.
“Do you remember what happened?” Teyla asked gently.
“Er, yeah,” he answered, or tried to.
“Water,” McKay said with a snap of his fingers, and Teyla brought some over for John to take a few sips from. “As you were saying?”
“Yeah, we were on a raid and I was shot,” he paused and his eyes widened. “I was shot!” he repeated and pulled down the sheet and lifted up the shirt of the white scrubs he’d been dressed in (he wondered if Teyla had done that) to see a white bandage covering the right side of his abdomen. He reached out a finger to poke it, but his hand was grabbed by McKay.
“Don’t poke it you idiot!” he exclaimed. John narrowed his eyes.
“Did you learn that bedside manner at med. school or is it just a natural talent?” he asked sarcastically. There was a lengthy silent pause before McKay responded.
“Well as you’re making oh-so-witty comebacks so early after regaining consciousness, I’m sure you’re going to be fine,” he said shortly. “I’ll be back later,” he said, before swiftly departing.
“Was it something I said?” John asked the nurse innocently.
“I think he is just not used to his patients biting back,” she said with a smile.