SquidgeWorld Archive

Put Your Head on My Shoulder
by Waldo.

Carson groaned inwardly. It wasn't that he especially disliked Rodney McKay, but he really wasn't up to dealing with the possibility of one of McKay's social faux pas. Not today. Not here and not now.

"Hey Carson."

Carson plastered on a smile that he definitely didn't feel, but given the occasion, he was sure Rodney wouldn't notice. "Hello, Rodney. How are you?" He was sick of asking people that. Sick of people asking him that.

Rodney shrugged, "You know, same as everyone. Not good, but getting better. On the other hand, he doesn't look so good."

Carson followed Rodney's finger across the wide balcony, currently serving as a make-shift reception area, to where John Sheppard was sitting on a bench near the wall, ramrod straight, his eyes closed against the setting sun. "Aye. Maybe you should go see if he's alright. He is your teammate after all."

Rodney rolled his eyes and shifted his weight in a way that Carson knew meant Rodney was going to point out something he felt was utterly obvious. "I think we both know that's not really my forte."

Carson had to admit that Rodney had a point. And he had to give Rodney credit for at least recognizing that he wasn't at his best in these situations. He nodded. "Fine."

~~~

Carson deliberately sat close enough to John that their legs brushed together. He didn't say anything, just waited silently until John opened one eye to see who was daring to disturb him.

"I didn't figure it was one of my guys over here," Sheppard finally muttered, shutting his eye again. "I overhear that I've been damn difficult to live with this past week."

Carson shrugged. "I don't know that any of us have been at our best lately."

Carson shifted back on the wide cement bench and leaned against the wall, pulling his knees up, determined to wait John out. He'd either talk or walk away. Carson was willing to let him choose.

After several long, silent minutes, John shifted to mirror Carson's pose, deliberately moving back in such a way that would put them shoulder-to-shoulder. "Elizabeth wanted to know if I wanted to include Ford."

Carson nodded. The mass funeral had been taxing on them all, but now he could see that what was eating John far more was the funeral they didn't have. He didn't know what to say. It ate at him too. He should have had Ford in hard restraints; he should have risked higher doses of sedative; he should have done something.

"I can't give up on him," John continued, saving Carson from having to find a way to choose between supporting Elizabeth or John. "He's twenty-five years old. This is a kid who had spent six months going through the Stargate before I'd even heard of the damn thing. He's been on more planets than anyone on this base. He was so blasé about it that when we left the SGC, he jumped through the gate backwards. I always figured he had to have landed on his ass when he got through the other side, but I'm sure he thought it was worth it - he was giving me shit at the time because I was a little nervous about going through the gate. Told it me hurt like hell before he jumped in like a ten year old jumping into a pool."

Carson smiled, for the first time remembering the young Marine the way he'd been before the Wraith attack a week ago instead of how he'd been after they'd found him in the ocean attached to his attacker. "Sounds like something the lad would do."

Both were silent again, just sharing the quiet and reflecting on a day where they had laid to rest nineteen of Altantis' own. Victims of the Wraith attack on the city. The three-day siege that had left nineteen dead and everyone else exhausted, sick and stunned.

After a few minutes John crossed his legs and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "I gotta pull it together," he muttered. "My men are going to offer me as the first meal for the next Wraith we catch."

"This has been difficult on us all. There's not a one of us that hasn't been deeply affected by what we just survived. It's not surprising if we're all a little snappish, a little depressed. We just buried nineteen of our own and the infirmary's so full we're treating the walking wounded in their quarters. Right now we're all hurting in one way or another. It's no wonder we're all finding our fuses are a wee bit shorter than they usually are. We'll all find our balance soon enough," Carson consoled.

John turned his head to look Carson dead-on for the first time. "What about you?"

Carson smiled, finding it a little easier to smile at John than it had been at Rodney. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit," John muttered.

"I beg your pardon," Carson asked, affronted.

"You give me all this crap about how it's okay to be pissed and how we're all hurting, but when I ask about you, you give me this 'I'm fine,' bullshit." John clenched his hands. He hadn't meant to snap at Carson

Carson nodded, sadly. "Come on," he said sliding off the bench.

John looked up again from where he'd begun picking at the seam on his pants. He didn't move and he didn't say anything.

"Come on," Carson said again.

Not really wanting to, John finally stood up and followed the doctor back into the city.

Both were silent as John followed Carson through the halls. He really wasn't looking at where they were going and almost bumped into Carson when he stopped in front of a door, waving it open.

Carson stepped aside and let John enter. John stopped just far enough in that Carson could follow him in and the door could close behind them. He realized that in over a year on Atlantis, he'd never been in the other man's quarters.

"Have a seat," Carson said waving at the small sofa.

John moved further in but didn't sit.

Carson moved to the closet where he rummaged around in the back, finally pulling out a blanket and then unrolling it to reveal an amber bottle.

He poured John a healthy dose and handed him the glass. "Consider it a prescription if you like. Just don't tell anyone I have this."

John shrugged. "We're going home in a few days. I'll buy you a new bottle." He finally sat on the end of the sofa.

Carson nodded. He'd hoarded his one bottle of really good scotch for so long that he was finding breaking the habit hard. He poured himself a much smaller drink, just wanting to keep John company. He took the one chair in the room and moved it next to where John had sat, wanting to be near-by but not crowd the other man. He straddled the chair and wrapped his arms around the back.

They both drank in silence for a few minutes before Carson finally said, "You were right out there, and I'm sorry. That was pretty hypocritical. Honestly, I'm tired. I didn't catch myself from asking where Jenny was when I started my last medical staff meeting yesterday and everyone looked at me like I'd gone completely daft. When I realized what I'd said… I think that was the first time I really realized that she was gone. I had to dismiss everyone and reconvene when I'd calmed down. I have nightmares, but I'm sure we all do."

John nodded, remembering how tightly Carson had held himself when the Eulogy for Sergeant Jenny Richards had been read. Jenny was a Marine, but as a medic she had worked under Carson's supervision far more than his own. She'd been twenty-eight years old when she'd arrived on Atlantis. She looked to be a hundred and eight when they buried her today. Caught and fed on by the Wraith while she was out bringing the injured to the infirmary during the siege.

John hung his head, staring into his drink as if he could divine some meaning of it all in the ripples. Ripples. Damn he was shaking again. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Either from exhaustion or lack of food or emotion. He suspected that it was quite possibly all three by now. He felt a little guilty for forcing Carson to confide in him, but he had to admit that he was finding the idea of presenting a less than stoic facade to someone a little less daunting knowing that Carson wouldn't judge. He sighed. Who was he fooling? Carson never judged anyone. It was one of the things that drew John to him. He didn't have the automatic deference the airmen and marines who served under him had and he didn't have that innate disdain for the military most of the scientists had. With Carson, John was just John and being a soldier was just his day job.

John shifted back into the cushions as he realized that he hadn't really been waiting for an opportunity to talk as much as he'd been dreading running out of excuses not to. With Carson being dead honest with him, he had no choice but to respond in kind. He took a healthy swallow of the scotch, letting it warm him on it's way down.

"When we go home next week, we'll be bringing back eleven bodies. The other eight... we could never explain how healthy men and women who were in the prime of their lives were turned into old corpses without the families having security clearance. And that doesn't even take into account Markham and Gaul and all the others we'd already lost. So some military chaplin is going to be stuck going to knock on the door of some poor, unsuspecting family to lie to them - only he won't know he's lying because he doesn't have security clearance - and tell them that we either couldn't recover the body or that it was destroyed." John took another drink.

"And I don't know what the hell I'm going to say to Ford's family." He finished his glass. Carson reached over and poured him another drink. John held up a hand, "If that's all you've got -"

"We're going home soon. I can get more, remember?" Carson continued to pour.

"Right. Thanks."

There was another long silence before John finally started speaking again, finding himself more grateful to have someone to pour his soul out to than he ever thought he would be. He'd been trying to stay strong for his men and going to Elizabeth was out because she was already carrying so much weight, so much responsibility. He realized that he could have gone to Heightmeyer, but the idea of actually going to a shrink made him nervous. What if she actually found that something was wrong with him? He wondered why he hadn't thought to talk to Carson sooner. And to see if he had someone to talk to.

"I don't want to die," John said quietly when he realized Carson was waiting for him to say something. "I took an oath to lay down my life for my men and for the mission, and if it came down to it, I would. But I don't want to die. And yet, sometimes it seems like survivor guilt can get so overwhelming. And knowing what it is doesn't make it go away."

Carson finished his own drink on that remark. "No, no it doesn't." He poured himself another few ounces. "We were sure you were dead," Carson managed to get out before his throat closed up. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced another swallow of scotch down.

John reached out and grabbed Carson's wrist. "Hey. I'm right here."

Carson nodded. "I know. I know; it was just..." he didn't have any idea how he planned to finish that sentence without losing it. "I know," he said again instead.

John tugged on the arm he was holding, "Come here."

Carson squinted at him in confusion, but got out of the chair and let John pull him around to the sofa and sat next to him. John slung his arm over Carson's shoulders. "I think maybe we've all been through hell and we've all been trying to deal with it on our own."

Carson nodded, "Aye. Perhaps we have." He tried not to think about much better a little human contact made him feel. He resisted the urge to lean his head on John's shoulder to remind himself of John's reality.

"I may not have the whole doctor/patient confidentiality thing going for me, but if there's anything you want to talk about..." John was genuinely concerned, but he was also ready for the conversation to be about someone else for a while.

Carson shrugged, "The hell of it is that everyone knows. It seems somewhat pointless to explain to someone how shaken up things are around here due to a Wraith attack we spent two weeks waiting for and three days enduring and the past week recovering from. Everyone knows that; what's to be said?"

John nodded knowing the feeling exactly. "Yeah."

John felt the beginnings of an unpleasant idea forming. He set his glass on the table and leaned forward, his hands over his face as the idea coalesced. He groaned.

"For everyone else it was over when McKay cloaked the city. For you, it just started then, didn't it?" He peered out through his fingers at the doctor who simply sat there, studying him. "McKay and Zelenka passed out less than half an hour after we dropped the cloak. Me and my guys did a check of critical areas; but mostly we relied on the sensors to tell us the city was clear. Caldwell sent down enough fresh troops that I could put anyone who'd been on Atlantis during the siege on standdown about three hours after the shield went down. How many hours was it before you got any sleep? By the time you rounded up all the dead and injured, treated everyone, managed to get McKay to quit puking and shaking from all the speed you gave him... how long was it before you and your staff got to rest? And who came to make sure you were okay?"

Carson turned to face his agitated friend. "John, it's alright."

Feeling himself get far more worked up than he should have been, John dropped his hands and glared at Carson. "You know what? It's not all right. It's not okay that it never occurred to anyone to check in with you guys. You either had me come to the infirmary or you came and found me every day to be sure I wasn't suffering any kind of radiation sickness from sharing close quarters with a tactical nuke. How long was it before someone thought to check on you? Before you got to sleep? How long after they dropped the cloak?"

Carson wanted to be touched that John was that concerned for him, but he knew that it was just a question of being a convenient target for John's generalized concern. He was fairly certain that if Elizabeth or Teyla had been the first to give him a quiet place to vent that he'd have been finding reasons to get suddenly protective of them. Still, it was a nice passing thought that John might be worried for him.

Carson reached out and rested a hand on John's forearm. "It is okay. Everyone has their assigned duties. Those are ours." He knew John wouldn't let go of the question of how long it had been before he'd gotten his first rest after the three-day siege, so he simply told him the truth. "I honestly don't know how long it was before we were able to slow down in the infirmary. I know that once we got through the initial deluge we went to four-hours-on, four hours-off-rotations. It was probably a day and a half, two days before we went back onto a normal schedule. There were a fair number of injured to be tended to. And with having to move people onto and off of the Daedalus we lost track of time."

John scrubbed his fingers through his hair. "I'm not saying you're lying, or anything, but it seems to me you docs are always looking at the time. How can you not know how long you were working?"

"Sure, we check the time if someone's heart stops or to find out if someone's due for their next round of meds, but it's all just for reference. If their heart stops at nine-thirty you have until nine-thirty-five to get it going again before there's certain to be some brain damage. So you're only marking the time as a point of reference for a given event. Not counting the hours you've been on duty. I suppose if I went back and checked the charts I could figure it out, but honestly, I don't think I want to know."

John squeezed his eyes shut, wondering why the hell this was bothering him so much. He'd been in the military his entire adult life, he'd seen the aftermath of battles - the medics working long after the battles had been fought. There had been times that he'd fought in those battles and then flown med-evac right after and he'd never thought twice about it. He couldn't understand why it was so important, so damn infuriating, that the medical staff in Atlantis had been the last ones to get any sleep.

"John," Carson said slowly, "I'm okay. My staff is okay." He paused before asking, "When was the last time you got any real sleep?" He held up a hand when John was quick to answer, "Not 'when was the last time you lay in bed and stared at the ceiling for a few hours before getting up to wander the halls?' When did you sleep?"

"A while," he admitted quietly. John sighed but didn't answer for a long time. When he did, it was to tell Carson something that no one else knew for fear that it could screw up his military career even more than he'd already done. "I can't take sleeping pills." He let out a self-depreciating snort. "I'm scared to death of the things, and no matter how tired I feel during the day I can't get to sleep at night," he confided quietly.

Carson leaned forward, matching Sheppard's pose. "There's a note in your medical file to avoid giving you sedatives when at all possible, but there's no explanation for why." He deliberately didn't ask, just carefully left an opening if John wanted to tell him.

"When I got re-assed to Germany to do some advanced training on Blackhawks - helicopters, big ones," he explained at Carson's puzzled look, "I was having some trouble with my ears ringing a lot. We wear noise-reducers when we're flying, but you spend a lot of time just out around the things and they're loud. Anyway, I mentioned to the doc there that it was bothering me, keeping me up at night, so he gave me some pills. I should have known something wasn't right when he said that they wouldn't make the ringing stop, but I wouldn't care anymore." John shrugged, knowing with perfect twenty-twenty hindsight how stupid it was not to follow his gut reaction which was to ask the doc if he was nuts and then tell him where to shove his pills.

Carson pursed his lips, wondering what kind of lunatic would do something like that. "What did he have you on?"

"Xanex," John said. "It worked for a while. He was right; the ringing didn't bother me. In fact almost nothing bothered me. But then I got stupid if I thought I'd end up spending the night somewhere and I didn't have them with me. After ... after a particularly stupid stunt, I threw 'em out and didn't look back. After being so mellow for three months, I was an absolute asshole for the two weeks it took me to get them out of my system and learn to sleep without them again. I eventually just learned to live with the ringing. But no more tranquilizers... Just... just a bad idea."

Carson nodded. "Fair enough. But I don't think it's a bit of tinnitus that's keeping you awake lately."

Seemingly out of nowhere, John asked, "Will Ford ever see out of that eye again?"

Carson shifted and laid his hand in the middle of John's back, starting to understand the depth of emotion that that John had been suppressing about all of this. The loss of his men, and the others, not knowing what had happened to Ford, almost dying several times and, he realized, an overwhelming fear that his best efforts, even his death, wouldn't be enough to keep Atlantis safe.

"I doubt it," Carson finally answered. "The pupil is blown. The Wraith enzyme seems to be healing most of his injuries, so I can't be sure that it won't eventually heal if he remains on the enzyme long enough, but I think the collateral damage of staying on the enzyme for any more time than necessary will far outweigh the chances of it repairing that eye." He knew it was nothing but bad news, but he also knew that the only thing that would let John rest would be honesty and as much information as he could get.

"I keep thinking of the last time I saw someone the Wraith hadn't quite finished with. I tell myself that the situations aren't the same, but I can't tell if that's just to make myself feel better. I'm not sure I'll be able to pull the trigger on Ford." John said quietly.

"I'm praying you don't have to."

"Colonel Everett's going to die."

"Not immediately. I'd say he could still have a couple of years left." Carson knew it wasn't enough, but it was all he could offer.

There was a long pause before Carson said, quietly, "Look, John, I'll not deny that things have been bad. We've lost people. Lost friends. But we're still here. Atlantis is whole and the Wraith are gone. None of which would be true if you hadn't saved us -"

"McKay was the one-" John cut him off.

Carson cut him off in return, "Yes, yes, the shield, as he loves to remind us. But we couldn't have taken that bombardment for long. You getting that bomb out there was what kept the Wraith away. And despite all your training and your brave face, you were probably scared to death. You said it yourself; you don't want to die. And you were sure that you were going to. And then you had to go through all that again when the second batch came. It all takes a toll."

John's brain kept replaying the last conversation he'd had with Everett. When Everett had all but asked John to put him out of his misery. Where he had been absolved, in the other man's eyes, for the shooting of Sumner. He just wished he knew whom he had failed. Sumner for shooting him or Everett for not. Which left him with no idea what to do when he encountered Ford next. He clenched his hands around his glass, silently cursing the Wraith for forcing him to decide time and again which good men, from his own side should live and which should die. It was one thing to kill the enemy, but John found that he was being confronted with having to shoot his own time and again and that wasn't something he felt equipped to handle. John looked over at Carson. "Have you ever had to perform a mercy killing, Doc?"

Caraon shook his head. "If you mean technical euthanasia, administering medication to cause death, no. But before I was asked to join the group in Antarctica, I was working in a genetics clinic. Most of my patients were children with rare, and usually lethal genetic abnormalities. In some of the cases, the patient could be kept alive through procedure after procedure - most often painful and usually only a temporary gap-filler until something else went wrong. In most of those cases the parents would eventually decide that a peaceful passing was more merciful than a continued life of pain and illness and they'd discontinue treatment."

John tried to imagine Carson spending all day treating kids he knew were going to die anyway. He supposed Antarctica would be, at the least, a nice reprieve from that.

"Ever have one you couldn't let go of?"

"Aye. A few. But in the end it wasn't up to me."

John wondered if that made Carson the only person in Atlantis who might have an inkling of what he was feeling. He was surprised how much just knowing that there was someone who could empathize with him in even the slightest way made him feel better about the predicament.

John nodded, and then squeezed his eyes closed as everything that had happened in the past month caught up to him all at once. He leaned forward, one elbow on his knee, his face in his hand. He bit his lip, but it wasn't enough to keep the first tear from hitting his knees.

John didn't pretend he was okay or protest when the hand on his back wrapped around his shoulders and Carson tipped his head onto his shoulder and held him as he cried silently. Finally.

And Carson knew that John would finally sleep that night.

end