It’s 3 a.m. — Atlantean time — and he’s standing in her doorway, shadows under his eyes and on his cheeks. The odor of his unwashed body is strong and sour. There are stimulants in the wash of his heavy breath and the tremor of his large hands.
“ I need — I wanted — ” His voice breaks and he covers his mouth with a dry palm, looking away. The other arm is wrapped around his torso, grasping tightly the unraveling pieces of himself.
There are coffee stains on his dark BDUs and his hair is disheveled above his receding hairline. His breathing is labored and she can almost hear the scattered heartbeats spurred onwards by dextroamphetamine.1
It’s 3 a.m. and she’s standing in her doorway watching him crumble.
She knows the wanting and the naming as intimately as she knows the line of his forearm or the slant of his thin lips.
“Come in, Rodney.”
# # #
The first time they’d met was in Antarctica. She was wild inside. Ice and white and snow — there was a barely contained buzz of electric excitement under her skin. She shook hands that were attached to faces with names and histories that she’d read later in a military–issue bed, unable to sleep for the thrill. Papers were signed, but if it were by her hand, then she couldn’t for the life of her remember. There were machines, voices, things — people. At the end of the day, when the lights dimmed and the surging tides of noise had receded, she’d stumbled out of her quarters, unable to contain herself in the silence. Walking, tripping, spinning to see everything, to take in everything, she careened into him like a drunken snow rabbit.
“Watch it!”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She stared at the sheaf of documents scattered across the dark metal floors around their feet.
“. . . Terrific.”
There was a brief flash of blue eyes and orange fleece before he was down on his knees, gathering the sheets.
“Here, let me help you with that.” She followed him, grabbing at the papers behind him.
“It’s the least you could do after plowing into me in the middle of a very wide — and might I add — very deserted hallway. Were you aiming for me? Or just suffering from general stupidity?” His voice was sharp and slightly nasal, a born public speaker with his well–modulated tones.
She smiled, snatching up the pieces of what looked like a lengthy technical report.
“Sorry. I admit that was careless of me.” She was facing away from him, the last few pieces within reach.
“Careless and frankly, dangerous. You could have seriously injured me. I’ve always had poor bone density.”
She stood up quickly and began sorting the papers, blood rushing uncomfortably around her brain.
“Do these need to be in a specific order — oh, stupid question. The pages are numbered.” She started shuffling them into a general order.
“Ah, so you do possess sensory and observational faculties. Do employ them in the future, for all our sakes.”
He snatched them out of her hands before she could finish and began to walk away. She got a good look at him for the first time — a solidly built man with short, thinning hair and crooked, thinned lips.
“Wait. I’m just — I’m Doctor Kate Heightmeyer,” she called out after him. He paused — turned a quarter turn, huffing an annoyed breath.
“Doctor Rodney McKay — Astrophysics and Engineering.”
Kate was unaccountably pleased.
“It’s nice to meet you, Doctor McKay.”
Doctor McKay grimaced.
“Right. Whatever. Goodnight, Dr. Heightmeyer.” He spun swiftly on his heel and disappeared down the hall
“Goodnight, Dr. McKay,” she called into the dim corridor.
Walking back to her room, not tilting and whirling now, but finally caught by some quiet force, Kate landed in bed.
# # #
His hands are calloused; the dry, rough hands of a doctor too long away from electron microscopes and x–ray crystallography models and PCR machines. They are a practitioner’s hands, typing orders and checking charts. They are hands remembering forgotten skills, unsteadily setting a cast, hesitating over the wiring of a standard heart monitor. They fit in her own — soft hands, small hands that recall neither the shape of human fingers nor the feeling of warm, damp, sweaty palm pressed against sweaty palm.
He likes to lace his fingers into hers, twining together like complementary quaternary structures, the alpha and beta chains of hemoglobin molecules rushing through her thudding ventricle. She listens through her fingertips, trying to catch the rhythm of his pulse. There is nothing, and she tightens her fingers around his, traces the back of his hand with her thumb, begging him to remind her of all the things she’s forgotten.
# # #
The second person she met on Atlantis was Carson.
The infirmary was controlled chaos after Atlantis rose in thunder and glass from the sea. A tall, Egyptian nurse practitioner was triaging the injuries that streamed in — lacerations on a muscled thigh, fractured wrist wrapped in streams of Russian swearing, asthmatic episode whose fear smelt like urine and sweat.
They had only just moved the medical equipment to the infirmary when it was time to move it out to the non–existent alpha site. Nothing was anywhere. Bandages, steroidal anti–inflammatory inhalers, braces and analgesics — all lost in pockets of space–time.
“STOP. STOP!” A musical, masculine brogue halted the din, the panic, the frantic search, scatter, find.
“Okay, I want you and Camara to take care of the serious injuries. Move them into the other room.” Two people, a tall African woman and a blunt–featured nurse deployed before the order left his mouth.
“Biro and Werner can deal with intermediate cases here.” A small, bespectacled woman and a stocky man began assigning beds.
“I’ll go with you,” this punctuated with a finger pointed at her, a finger attached to a handsome, graying face, “and we’ll take the superficial injuries in the lobby. The rest of you search and distribute medical equipment and supplies. Now, people!”
He moved like a speeding train, every gesture contained economy. Kate’s feet and hands followed, falling into a harmonic rhythm of support, lift, exchange, switch. He cleaned a laceration while she tore open packages of antiseptic. She braced a dislocated shoulder as he thrust it back into its socket. They whirled in harmony, two thundering, staccato rhythms of channeled panic and purpose.
In the aftermath, empty of borrowed momentum, Kate sat on a trunk with her feet propped on a medical box. Bags of IV serum lay scattered around her ankles and she held a syringe loosely in her hands, not knowing how it got there.
“You did a great job back there.” A steaming, Styrofoam cup of tea appeared in her field of vision, offered by the same pointing hands and handsome face.
“Thanks.” She accepted the gift and Earl Grey wafted into her nostrils and her hair and curled warmly on her scalp.
“I’m Carson Beckett by the way. Genetics research.” He sat down beside her on the trunk, leaning wearily against the wall where she slumped.
“Kate Heightmeyer. Clinical psychiatry.” She sipped her tea and watched him cradle his between outstretched legs.
“I know. That’s why I had you come help me. I couldn’t guarantee that either of us remembered how to put on a plaster, let alone set a fracture.” She laughed and felt his rumbling mirth through the trunk on her thighs.
“For a bench rat and a head–shrinker, I think we did pretty well.” She smiles into her tea.
“Aye, we did at that.”
They lapsed into silence, buoyed on the temporary calm.
# # #
Kelsey laughs like a lunatic, her head thrown back, mouth wide, laughing with her whole body. She’s the best roommate Kate’s ever had and Kate hasn’t seen her in years. But she’s here — now — in the room they shared and the hours and secrets that girls keep together have not faded with time. She’s young again, younger — but it’s not really her and this is not really Kelsey, because Kelsey is long dead from alcohol and a car that couldn’t stop.
The world, it shifts suddenly and Kelsey is gone. Where she was sitting on the Atlantean couch is an orange hazmat suit and the sirens begin in earnest now. Kate fumbles with the suit; it’s heavier, lighter and harder to handle than she remembers.
The doors finally slide open and she’s running, sliding, morphing down the hallway and Carson’s at her side, but she can’t understand what he’s saying. Quarantine. Nanovirus. Electromagnetic pulse.
Rodney’s pushing her clumsy hands away, heavy, helpless, hazmat hands. And he’s screaming, always screaming like the others — head thrown back, mouth agape, eyes bulging, the muscles corded in his neck because the terror is trying to claw its way up his throat. She’s gasping in the metallic recycled air and sobbing, sweating, weeping precious fear–adrenaline while holding him down, because holding onto him is all that she can do. Then as suddenly as the screaming begins, he goes limp like a string snapped.
She looks up and Carson’s suit is torn too.
That’s usually when she wakes up.
# # #
Rodney was a strange sort of man.
Kate sat at her desk, keys firing away under her fingers. She didn’t notice him come in until he spoke.
“Docter Heigh — you!”
She looked up.
“Doctor Rodney McKay — Astrophysics and Engineering.”
Kate felt her face stretch into a broad smile that crinkled her eyes and lifted her cheeks. Doctor McKay began to back away slowly as she rose from her desk.
“You’re the shrink?”
She nodded, lacing her fingers together in front of her stomach, pleasure curling the tips of her hair.
“I am the base psychiatrist, yes.”
“Uh — um — maybe–maybe this counseling thing isn’t–isn’t such a good idea.” The words fell out rapid–fire and he was by the door. He turned and was ready to flee, but she raised her hand called out.
“Wait–wait. You just got here. Give me a chance.” He paused and turned back around, looking at her uncertainly. She walked over to the simple, stuffed chairs and sat down, gesturing for him to join her.
“Come on. It’s my free period. There’s no harm in just trying it out.”
He hesitated, lingering by the door and abruptly crossed the distance to the chair, collapsing into it in an explosion of motion.
“I know. I checked your schedule.”
She cocked her head, puzzled.
“My schedule’s not posted. It’s on my computer.”
“For others, that might be a challenge. For me, it was simply a matter of hacking into it from the network.”
There was a long, long moment of silence and her laptop began to whir in the background as it started the virus scan.
“I’m going to ask you not to do that anymore.”
“Yeah–yeah–yeah — medical ethics and all that. Look, that’s not the point. It’s not like I’m going to read anybody’s file. I mean, who cares what’s wrong with anyone else. We’re talking about me here. A simple encryption like that never stopped me, anyway.”
His shoulders hunched defensively and his voice rumbled exasperation–condescension.
“Regardless,” she answered patiently, staring at him steadily. He didn’t look at her.
“Well, how am I supposed to know when you’re free?”
“You could make an appointment,” Kate suggested.
He whuffed an annoyed breath of air.
“If I do that, they’ll see me.” This said as if explaining to a child.
“Who’ll see you?”
“My staff. They’ll think I’m nuts or something.”
She resisted the urge to smile.
“They’re not going to think you’re nuts.”
“No, because you’re just going to have to find another way for us to meet.”
Kate blinked.
“We could have a preset time that I set aside just for you every week.”
“You may not have heard, but I’m on Sheppard’s team now and I can’t predict when I’ll be off–world.”
He crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair, the thought seeming to both satisfy and terrify him.
“Well, what would you suggest?”
“I don’t know. If I knew I wouldn’t be asking you.” He looked at her pointedly.
She didn’t answer.
“You know what? Fine. Why don’t I just drop by when I’m around. If you’re free, I’ll come in. If not, I’ll come back later. How’s that?”
It wasn’t ideal. Not in the least, but Kate let him dictate the terms of his therapy.
“Alright. That’s fine.”
“Okay.” He nodded, satisfied.
“Well then let’s get started. What do you want to talk about?” She looked pointedly at him. He glared back.
“Doctor Heightmeyer, I don’t know what hack program you got your degree at, but this is not the way therapy works.”
“Just call me Kate. I did my residency at Johns–Hopkins. And how do you expect therapy to work?”
“Well, where are the tests?”
“What tests?”
“Word association, Rorschach — the tests!” He waved his hands around, indicating the bare shelves and uncluttered tables.
“Rodney — if may call you Rodney? At this point in our relationship, you probably don’t need tests. We just need to get to know each other first. We can always employ them later.”
He looked at her dubiously, but acquiesced.
“Okay — um — well — I’ve diagnosed myself with intimacy issues, lack of confidence, dissociation, avoidance behaviors, stress disorder —”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Stop right there.”
Kate waved her hands to halt the torrent of diagnoses.
“What?”
“Just — talk to me like I’m anyone else.”
“What? You’re not just anyone else.”
“For argument’s sake. Let’s start with — um — what did you have for breakfast this morning?” She stabbed blindly in the dark.
“A powerbar. And I would have had it with coffee, but they’re rationing.”
“Oka–“
“And eggs! They ran out of eggs! Bread! Cheese! Everything! All they’ve got left is oatmeal and those strange little Athosian fruits that look like caterpillars. There’s nothing to eat. I’m going to starve to death and I’ll never get to finish my Unified Theory of Physics.”
“Go on.”
“I can’t eat, because there’s no food. I can’t sleep, because — well, I can’t sleep. It’s a wonder that I keep this place running as well as it does.”
“You haven’t been sleeping well?”
“No. Usually I’m out like a light as soon as my head hits the pillow, which I must reiterate that these military issue supplies are completely inadequate.”
“When did this start?”
“Just a couple weeks ago, right after —” He made a face briefly and stopped.
“Right after what?”
“Nothing–nothing. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, the point is, I carry a tremendous amount of responsibility. Is it too much to ask to get a decent meal and a night’s rest?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Exactly.”
Kate switched topics, looking for a pattern in what he would not say.
“So you’ve been working much harder lately than before?”
“Have you actually been living on this base or not? We’re running out of supplies. There’s not enough power to keep the auxiliary systems running. The staff we have are completely inadequate for the task of maintaining Atlantis. I mean, besides their being incompetent, there’s just too much to do.”
“Your team has been searching for a ZPM. How’s that going?”
“How do you think? There’s nothing out there. It’s completely hopeless.”
“Didn’t you find some kind of satellite or orbital platform on the last mission?”
Rodney snorted dismissively, waving away her question.
“Yeah. A dead one. It’s as useful as a flashlight without a battery. Not to mention we lost a puddle jumper on the planet surface.”
“You also lost two men,” Kate pointed out softly, “Doctors Abrams and Gall.”
“Yeah.” He looked away, at the floor, the ceiling, the table, fidgeting and shifting in the chair. She waited for him to settle and then pressed in.
“That has to be hard, losing two more of your staff. Did you know them very well?”
“No. Abrams was a whiner and Gall — well, they’re dead.”
He didn’t continue and Kate waited for him to elaborate.
“What? You want me to cry? I didn’t know them. I wasn’t their friend. Gall hated me. In point of fact, he accused me of professional jealousy — completely ludicrous of course — and said I was trying to keep the discovery of zero–point energy to myself.”
“Are you?” It wasn’t kind, she knew. Provocation usually worked well.
“Of course not!” Rodney sat straight up, “What kind of question is that? At this point, I don’t care who figures it out! Zelenka could do it for all that it matters — not that it’s likely. The point is, if we had the technology to re–power the ZedPM, we wouldn’t be trapped in this miserable galaxy with life–sucking, goth vampires and Gall wouldn’t be dead!”
He turned his head, staring out the window, shoulders hunched, vibrating his anger.
“You feel responsible for Doctor Gall’s death, don’t you Rodney,” she stated after a long silence.
“I —” He made a brief whining noise and collapsed back into the chair, burying his head in his hands.
She leaned forward.
“His death wasn’t your fault. The records say he took his own life.”
“And who do you think gave him the gun?” Rodney mumbled into his fingers.
“You couldn’t have known he’d use it on himself.”
“I should have. I gave him the stupid mirror. I wanted to go check on Major Sheppard. Gall kept telling me to go, but I couldn’t leave him. He knew — he knew I wouldn’t leave him.”
“That was a choice that Doctor Gall made. You didn’t pull the trigger.”
“I should have been paying more attention.”
“No. He made a judgment call and a sacrifice. It was very noble of him, but you are not responsible for his actions.”
“There had to have been another way — to save them both.”
“Rodney. Rodney, look at me.” Kate leaned over and tugged at one of his wrists and he finally raised his head.
“From what I read in the mission report, there was nothing you could have done. You saved Major Sheppard. Doctor Gall’s loss affects us all, but his choices don’t belong to you. To second guess — to think that you could have stopped him is to disrespect — no look at me, Rodney — to second guess him is to disrespect the fact that he saved you. Brendan Gall saved. Your. Life. And Major Sheppard’s. Don’t take that heroism away from him and make him a victim of your ego. He saved you.”
“I — what if you’re wrong?”
“Do you feel that I’m wrong?”
“What if it’s just an excuse?”
“Sometimes we’re a little too close to the situation to see clearly. You have to come to terms with this yourself.”
“How can I possibly do that?”
“You can. I promise you.”
# # #
Thunder and lightning and gunfire and Kate knows that it’s time to die.
Her lungs are burning and her chest hurts, tears, burns like the stitch in her side. Her breaths are coming out in short gasps, high sobbing pants in her ears. She’s running, fear and the staccato beat of war echo in her head until it drives the thoughts from her mind, until only that face loops endlessly in her optic nerve.
The African doctor’s face is serene in Kate’s memory, her dark skin not wax pale, not slack–muscled. The bed dips under Kate’s weight and Camara rolls limply at the intrusion. There is no pulse under Kate’s fingertips, little heat in the cooling cheek, no breath from the regal nose where just hours, moments before there was a mischievous grin and understanding that crossed distances unnamed. A vial of small red pills rolls from her limp hands, rigor mortis not quite set. The sound rattles the silence around Kate. Suddenly angry, she snatches up the vial — it’s oxycotin2, she knows without looking — ready to hurl it at Camara’s serene, traitor–quiet face. Instead, she shoves it into her pocket and runs from the room, the world tilting under her feet as the rage–pain spurs her forward.
Pound, pound, pound — her heart, her feet, she’s one pulse, one rhythm. The rail guns flash and red, dashed–lines tear across the black expanse of starless sky. The starbursts of rockets explode under Kate’s eyelids and she can’t remember what she’s running from.
# # #
The end starts in despair and innocent misery.
Kate slammed the drawer shut in her rush, the coffee cup full of pencils rattled across the width of the desk. She shoved the medication, the first aid kit and her laptop into a duffle. There was no time left.
The door hissed open suddenly and Kate whirled around, heart thudding–thudding in her throat. Carson stopped mid–rush, held his hands up as if to calm a frightened animal, a snow rabbit caught in a sinking metal cage.
“Carson! What are you doing here?”
The ambient Atlantean lights are kind on his haggard face, the unshaven stubble and the dull eyes.
“Sorry, Kate. I came to fetch the meds for Rodney and Zelenka.”
“What? More?”
She hugged the duffle to her chest, a vain hope against desperate measures. Carson shakes his head.
“I know.”
“They’ll die before the Wraith even get here at this rate.”
Kate slung the strap across her chest. The duffle dangled at her hip, an uncomfortable weight on her shoulders.
“They’re working on nuclear weapons. We’ll all die before the Wraith get here if they don’t stay awake.”
His logic was at times compelling and inescapable and she caved against her professional instincts. Reaching into the bag, Kate fished out a rattling white bottle.
“Dextroamphetamine. Nothing stronger. Every six hours on that dose or as necessary. Let Rodney have his earlier than Zelenka. He’s heavier.”
Carson nodded and pocketed the light–tight bottle in his voluminous white coat. Kate missed the white coat suddenly, a useless barrier to care in her profession.
“The medical team’s evacuating to the infirmary.”
Yeah, I’m almost done here.”
She shifted the bag higher on her hip.
“Have you seen Camara?”
“She isn’t in the infirmary already?”
The African doctor was never late.
“No, I haven’t seen her in while.”
“She said that she was heading back to her rooms to fetch spare meds.”
Camara had drifted past her earlier, serene in the chaos.
“What’s she doing with spare meds in her room?”
“No idea.”
Carson shook his head impatiently.
“Look, I’ve got to get going. I’ll meet you in the infirmary. They say the fighting’s going to start soon.”
Kate nodded and walked with him to the door.
“Okay. I’ll stop by Camara’s rooms before I head down.”
“It’s in the opposite direction.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be quick. Used to run track in high school.”
He laughed.
“That was a long time ago.”
“For you maybe, but not so distant for me.”
“No cheek from you, lass.”
“No, sir.”
He smiled his charming Scottish–doctor smile and turned in the opposite direction.
“Wait, Carson. “
“Yeah?”
He stopped and turned back. Kate ran up to him and reached into his pocket for the bottle of stimulants. Carson pulled away in surprise, but she had them in her hand before he could move. With practiced ease, she twisted off the cap and removed two orange, heart–shaped, compressed tablets. SKF E19 was scored on the surface of each side.
She weighed them briefly in her hand before offering him one.
“Here. Too little too late, but something at least.”
Carson stared at the tablets in her palm, little valentine hearts full of irregular heart palpitations and desperation. He took one with his blunt–nailed fingers. They shared a silent look before both dry–swallowing the pills together in a deserted corridor of a dying city. In equal silence they departed, running in opposite directions towards the end.
# # #
The sky didn’t fall.
She’s not dead.
It’s probably a good thing.
# # #
Three weeks pass since the end of the siege and Kate finally sits down to do the housecleaning.
She settles in her chair, a cup of tea by her elbow and a free afternoon on the horizon. The clock ticks slow and measured on the wall. Cloud shadows sweep across her floor and she is reminded of the storm that nearly destroyed Atlantis. Her thoughts skirt around the stories of gunfire in the halls as the rain came down, of knife wounds and Genii. Kate shakes the images away, of Carson in darkened halls and Rodney in the rain, and turns to her computer.
The calendar comes first. She calls it up on the desktop and scrolls through the pages for each day. Near the end, there were no appointments, no niceties, no order. One by one they drifted in and out of Kate’s office, human debris on a galactic current. Clearing the calendar is the easy part. She scrolls her mouse over that day’s schedule and stops part way down. She was supposed to see Kavanaugh today. Right now in fact. Her eyes flicker to the time on her toolbar.
“This is unacceptable.”
“What’s unacceptable?”
“This! This mission, this place — these people! First it’s the military commandeering the Atlantis mission when it should have been a purely civilian effort in the beginning.”
“Doctor Kavanaugh, we are a civilian mission.”
“If you believe that then you are incredibly naïve. Did you think that the US military would allow someone like Doctor Weir head up a mission like this? It was always clear to the SGC personnel that Colonel Sumner was the head of the expedition. It is only providence that he died and Major Sheppard’s appalling lack of responsibility that Weir retained control of Atlantis.”
She wonders now if he was correct. The senior staff is back on Earth even as she lingers at her computer. Kate picks up a pen between her fingers and twirls it, wondering if they’ll bring back with them more than supplies and scientists and soldiers.
“This expedition was poorly designed from the start. I lodged multiple complaints and suggestions to General O’Neill but he persisted in letting Doctor Weir dictate the terms of the mission.”
“What did you suggest that they chose not to follow?”
“For one, eliminating non–essential personnel like the anthropology and linguistics teams.”
“You don’t think having their expertise would be important in navigating an alien galaxy?”
“We were heading to Atlantis, a city built by the Ancients. Logically, that would mean a city with incredibly complex systems of technology. We should have brought more practical members.”
“How do you feel about that? About the ‘non–essential’ personnel?”
“How do you think? The safety of the entire expedition rests on the menial work I perform while my research languishes. They are unable to contribute to the defense and maintenance of this city or its people. They take up essential resources and demand allocations of power we don’t have. While we risk our lives, all they can do is wait for us to save them, which is not my job.”
Kate leans back in her chair and stares out the window at the sun rippling off the water. He was right. There wasn’t anything she could do during the siege but wait to be saved. Wait in the infirmary and bind wounds and triage patients until what came had come and passed.
She turned back to the computer and finally deleted his name from the schedule. One by one, she removed the names that no longer haunted the halls and the labs and the mess to make room for those left standing.
For Kate, the work had only just begun and she was sorry that Kavanaugh wouldn’t be here to see it.
# # #
They’re sitting together, flush up against each other, back to the wall, legs drawn up and pressed thigh to thigh. Their postures are twin, arms resting on knees and they stare out over the ocean as the sun sets. His white coat is orange where it’s flung over the balcony railing; a faint breeze carries salt–sea air that makes her hair flutter gold–hypnotic.
“It must be nice,” he begins softly, “you know everyone on this base. Everyone comes to you, even Elizabeth.”
“I know everyone, yeah.”
As the sun sets, the light hits the face of his watch and it flashes metallic beautiful lights around the balcony.
“All their secrets. Their problems. Their desires. They lay themselves bare for you.”
He twitches his hand and the light scatter–dances, spinning distraction.
“Sometimes.”
She’s that light.
“It’s like you’re the most popular person on Atlantis.”
And she has no reply to that — not one that he’d understand.
# # #
She’s waiting for him, but she can’t wait any longer. Her eyes burn and she can hardly see the numbers blinking on the clock by her bed. There’s a slight pressure that’s beginning to throb in her brain, dryness in her mouth that tastes sour. He said that he would try to stop by tonight, that he had something to tell her.
She leans her head forward and wraps her arms around her knees. Waiting, because he doesn’t always arrive flush–faced and winded when he asks her to stay up. He doesn’t always arrive until nights and nights have passed and she’s groggy with sleep and he’s humming with discontent and the light is too bright even at a quarter–luminance.
He accuses her of lacking professionalism and she’s too tired to argue. So she sits with him as he trips through his words and tells her about his dreams and no one asks why she has circles under her eyes in the morning that no amount of concealer will fade.
No one asks.
She doesn’t tell.
And if she has to take a stimulant in the morning, if her heartbeat scatters sometimes when someone drops a tray, if her hands shake when she cradles a cup of tea in her fingers, then it’s alright because she doesn’t have to dream of him dying when he’s sitting there in the half dark of her room, telling her stories of alien shores.
# # #
Rodney kissed her, clumsy, dry, disjointed, like he didn’t know what he was doing.
“Go out with me?”
She blinked stupidly. He didn’t come last night, but he stood in front of her now, the rising sun blazing past his shoulder through the hall window.
“Whuh?”
He made a half–scowling face.
“Will you. Go out. With me?”
She still had not brushed her teeth and her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth.
“It’s not a rhetorical question or even a difficult one, Kate,” he said impatiently, shooting nervous glances up and down the hallway.
She squinted at him and finally stepped back, motioning for him to come in. He did so gratefully, automatically collapsing into his usual chair by the corner, tapping his hands rapidly on his knees. Kate sat down in hers, yawning, rubbing her face as if scrubbing hard enough would sand away the dullness in her mind.
“What time is it?”
“It’s seven in the morning. Why were you still asleep?”
She inhaled, a deep breath, and looked up suddenly.
“Rodney, did you just kiss me and then ask me to go out with you?”
“Are you comatose? Yes — yes I did.”
“Oh.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
He was nervous and discomfited. She realized with a pang that he probably hadn’t asked anyone out in a long time.
“It is only seven in the morning,” she replied, trying to smile.
“That’s not funny.”
“No, nothing’s funny anymore.”
He gave her a strange look, his head slightly tilted, lips pursed and crooked.
“Nevermind. Um — god — what do I say?” she muttered to herself, pressing the heel of her to her eyes. Her head was throbbing already.
“’Yes’ would be an ideal answer.”
“Um. No.” Kate shook her head, leaning back in her chair.
“’No,’ it’s not an ideal answer, or ‘no’ you won’t go out with me?” he asked.
“Both.”
“Oh.”
“Just — look, Rodney. I’m your therapist.”
“Well, not officially.”
It was too early and everything was too bright and this was not the conversation Kate wanted to have.
“Officially or not, I’m still your therapist. You talk. I listen. That makes me your therapist.”
“If we did it in another context you could be my girlfriend,” he offered, half–hopefully, half–defeated.
“Rodney–”
“Kate–”
She cut him off.
“I’m a professional, Rodney. I’m a doctor. This is not ethical. It’s inappropriate and a gross abuse of the doctor–patient relationship.”
“How would it be an abuse?” he demanded.
“I know all of your fears,” Kate said, tried not to sigh, “You tell me things you would never tell a girlfriend. When you’re talking to me, you’re not talking to just another woman. I’m your doctor. We are bound by a fiduciary3 relationship which began when I accepted you as my patient and it is well above and beyond anything resembling normal.”
“But–“
“No.”
“Kate–“
She was so tired, so god–awful tired and he was making her headache throb in earnest now.
“Look, Rodney — I know the whole thing with Cadman has you shaken up. It must have been extremely difficult for you–”
“Difficult? I could have died from a seizure and Cadman could have disappeared. I don’t think difficult covers it!”
“No, it doesn’t. But as trying an experience as it was, you are just displacing your anxiety about your masculinity on me.”
“I don’t understand. How are you getting this? I just asked you out on a date.”
Kate paused, heart suddenly in her throat and her empty stomach churned.
“Rodney, are you honestly attracted to me?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re blonde, beautiful, smarter than the average Barbie — although I seriously question your faculties sometimes.”
And she was angry — angry and tired and her eyes were burning from more than sleep deprivation and she blinks rapidly, staring at the floor for a long moment. Kate never had control of this — their relationship, professional or otherwise — to begin with and her jaw tightened, grinding.
“My faculties aside, the fact remains. You lost control of something very fundamental over yourself — the control of your body. You had to share headspace with a woman who, as you said yourself, wouldn’t even trust you to kiss Doctor Brown without help. Lieutenant Cadman has shaken your trust in your masculinity and you are taking it back by demonstrating that you can perform with a woman. I will not be that woman, Rodney.”
He went very still and she saw the line she had stepped over as the last word left her lips. Her heart was sinking into her feet before he even got up.
“Rodney–”
He stalked out of her quarters, mouth thinned, spine so straight it could snap in half and Kate’s afraid for him and the silence he’ll carry with himself because there will be no more late nights and certainly no talking.
“Wait — I’m sorry. Rodney!”
And she was alone again, sun pooling around her feet and the clock only just read 7:28 a.m.
# # #
“Kate!”
“What?” she snaps. Whirling around she feels like her heart is going to explode — there’s a pressure in her chest that’s inflating, stretching her to bursting and she just wants to hit whoever’s calling her name so very much. Carson backs away, surprised, one hand up as if to ward a blow and she realizes her hands are fisted tight, her nails cutting into her palm.
She falters and the anger’s gone, deflating and her chest is so hollow. His brows are raised, his eyes wide and looking at him makes her gut twist.
“Oh — oh. Sorry, I — Sorry.”
She raises her hand jerkily, haltingly, reaching, flattens her fingers out almost to touch him but let’s it drop heavily to her side instead. Carson moves closer, eyes roaming over her face she realizes, and she turns away.
“Are you alright? I’ve been calling your name for the last five minutes.”
Kate shrugs. Her eyes feel gritty and she rubs her face with one hand.
“I’m just really tired, I guess.”
“Well you look like hell.”
Kate just shakes her head, draws her shoulders in and crosses her arms. She doesn’t hear him approach and she jerks away wildly when a cool hand touches her forehead, backing into the wall. It thuds hard against her hip and she stares at him wildly, injury forgotten because her heart is hammering so painfully right now, the pressure in her head so immense she barely hears what he’s saying.
“Calm down, Kate. Calm — for the love of — you’re burning up!”
The thudding–roaring is filling her ears and she’s gasping for breath.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
# # #
She was a coward.
The halls were empty this late and Kate slipped back to her room without being seen. Only a nurse — a new one, her uniform still crisp, the threads shiny — had been on duty when Carson carried her in, shouting about cardiac arrhythmia and arrest. As he laid her on a bed, she wanted to reach out, to tug his sleeve, to tell him that she wasn’t going to arrest, but nothing but a gasp came out. He slipped her feeble grasp and rushed off to save her life.
Kate had been right. She hadn’t been in danger and if Carson had not panicked, he would have known that too. But he hadn’t stayed calm and he would be angry when he came back to the infirmary with Doctor Weir and found her bed empty. She couldn’t stay — couldn’t wait for the crease in his brow and the tightness around his eyes.
She was lying on her bed, facing the door, when he came looking for her in fury and panic.
“Kate? Kate! What are you doing here?”
He rushed over to the bed and immediately she felt cool fingers pressed firmly against the pulse in her neck. She shivered under the contact, but otherwise did not move.
“What did you think you were doing? I nearly had a heart attack when I couldn’t find you. You’re a doctor. You should know better than to leave the infirmary without being discharged.”
He was shouting at her, but the sound is fuzzy and her eyes so heavy.
“––Worse than Colonal Sheppard. Look, Kate, I need to get you back for observation. Kate? Kate.” He shook her shoulder lightly but she was sound asleep for the first time in over a year.
When she woke he was still there, sitting in her chair, which he’d moved by the bed to watch her sleep. Leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, Carson looked steadily past her when she opened her eyes. She didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
Neither was willing to break the silence.
And so they stared at everything but each other.
Kate finally sat up, crossing her legs and faced him. She felt so heavy, but she would at least do this properly, this one thing.
“You don’t want to go back to the infirmary, do you?” he asked quietly.
Kate shook her head. Doctors often forgot how terrible it was to be ill, alone and faceless amongst the machines and linens. Carson inhaled, rubbing his face with a hand. Kate wondered how long he had sat with her.
“You’re exhausted, but not sick — not like that,” Carson said, eyes focused on something just past her left shoulder, “If you promise not to go gallivanting about, I’ll let you stay here for the time being.”
His voice is stiff with disapproval and Kate held her breath, waiting.
“But I’m taking these with me.”
He gestured to her coffee table and there they were — neat lines of white bottles, little regiments of stimulants, depressants, mood–stabilizers — an army of answers to unasked questions. He even removed the unopened cartons in her office and found the sleeping pills in her lingerie drawer. Kate stared, hypnotized and detached. She should feel violated — her possessions searched while she slept.
She could only muster relief.
“You won’t be needing to prescribe any in the near future,” Carson continued, “because I’m putting you on mandatory medical leave.”
And so the other shoe dropped.
Kate found that it hurt, the regret swimming in her throat, but she merely nodded, staring at her hands. It was procedure. Personnel found committing gross violations were remanded to the authority of the military medical board for further investigation or dismissal.
She was going to miss Atlantis.
“In two weeks, when you’re better, we’ll see if you’re well enough to go back on duty.”
Kate’s head snapped up, staring at Carson. He stood up, hands in his pockets, looking out the window.
“Doctor Weir and I have decided to keep this situation between the three of us. She’ll inform the base personnel that you’re exhausted and will be taking sick leave for the next two weeks. No one will bother you.”
He turned silently and gathered all the medications into an empty box. She watched him fit the cartons together, sweeping the bottles on top. He walked to the door and paused before leaving, and spoke without turning around.
“If,” Carson paused, shifting the box in his arms, “If there’s anything you want to say . . .” But he didn’t finish the sentence, didn’t look at her and the door whooshed close silently behind him.
Kate rubbed her dry hands together and wondered what she was feeling right then.
# # #
He’s sitting by himself, alone at the end of a long table, finishing his coffee and tapping away at a computer screen. It’s the lull right before dinner and her feet carried her here in aimless distraction. His face is thinner lately and his hair shorter.
Her breath seizes in her chest and the silence around her was suddenly too much. She stumbles forward, little catching steps. The apology is burning in her throat, even if his pride won’t forgive her, even if he’ll never come back to her office at strange, intermittent times. Even so, Kate could only offer this one thing.
She’s closer to him now, a few paces, close enough to call his name before he can run away.
“Rodney!”
Their heads both jerk up at the intrusion.
Colonel Sheppard leans in the doorway of the mess, carrying his gear.
“We gotta head back out. Come on, let’s go.”
Rodney nods, gathering up his things with a suppressed enthusiasm that Kate’s never seen before. Coffee is gulped with disregard, plates are shoved aside and papers gathered quickly.
The sun is setting as he walks away, the light awash in red and orange on the sea horizon, casting attenuated silhouettes on the floor. She can see Colonel Sheppard smile at him, a small twitch of his lips and Rodney’s shoulders lift a little. His steps are hurried, tripping faster towards the man waiting by the door and the only shadow between them is hers.
Kate wondered hollowly if planets cast shadows as they orbited around stars in the sky.
# # #
The staff smiled and nodded incuriously at Kate as she walked through the infirmary, going about business as usual. Carson’s office was at the far end. Today was paperwork day according to this schedule and he always did it in the office where he could close the door.
Kate hesitated in front of the metal panels before knocking. The door swung open under her knuckles before they even touch.
“Come in.”
Carson’s back was to her, leaning over a laptop, a sheaf of papers in his left hand. He tossed them down on the desk and turned.
“What can I–“ he trailed off when he saw Kate, who shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.
The door hissed shut behind her.
“Kate.”
“Carson.”
He didn’t invite her to speak and she did not know how to start.
She tried anyway.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
His voice was gunmetal gray. She could taste the flavor of disappointment in his words.
“For not sending me back. For giving me a chance.”
He said nothing, merely looking away. She nodded, understanding this space between them.
Kate hesitated for a moment and turned to leave.
“I just want to know one thing.”
His voice caught her. Kate looked back.
“When did you start abusing the stimulants?” Carson asked, not moving. His face was still, shuttered. He did not say her name.
“A month after the Daedalus came back the first time.”
She couldn’t look at him, stared instead past him at the color–enhanced pictures of virion particles under electron microscopy in his office.
“How often?”
“Once or twice a month at the beginning, whenever I needed to be alert during the day. More these last few weeks.”
Carson was quiet, looking for the questions that lead to the answer he wanted.
“Were you taking them leading up to the Wraith assault?”
“No.”
“You only started using them after we were safe.”
“Yeah.”
He was silent for a long time and the vent kicked on silently in the office.
“Why? I’d understand needing them when there was all that work to do, but why now?”
Kate looked down, stared at her hands, the torn, ragged nails and cracked skin.
“Your work comes first. My work is after — after and always.”
“What are you — Oh. Oh . . .”
He was quiet and there was nothing to say.
“Why didn’t you just tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Carson got up, moved to stand in front of her. He laid a hand on her shoulder, tightening helplessly.
“We could have helped you.”
“But who would have helped that person?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m the only one, Carson.”
She reached up and clutched his hand and he tightened his grip further.
“The only what?”
“The only therapist — the only one trained to listen — god, even Elizabeth is my patient.”
“Kate–“
“People come to me even if they’re not seeing me in sessions,” she said, her voice trembled, “They come to me when I’m eating in the mess, when I’m running in the morning, at night when I’m sleeping. I’m the only one who can even remotely deal with these problems. I’m the only one trained to do this. There’s no one else, Carson!”
Kate was shouting and she didn’t care. The tears were falling now and she knew that it wouldn’t stop — that she couldn’t stop and he had his arms around her and it was finally — finally — her turn to cry.
Two weeks of medical leave became two months of late nights and early mornings together. He came by every night to make sure she slept and somehow he always ended up staying until dawn broke over the ocean. They talked in tangled whispers until words trailed off into deep breathing. In between cool sheets, his hands twined in hers.
Kate shifted slightly in bed, rolling over to face him.
“Carson, do you think I’m weak for — for abusing the stimulants?”
She felt him pause in the darkness.
“No. Not at all.”
“But you did.”
He reached out and laid a hand on her waist.
“At first.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, his thumb rubbing circles in her exposed skin where her shirt rode up.
“I was afraid that you’d — that you were doing it because you — like Camara.”
His hand stilled and Kate could see Camara’s face even now.
“Oh.”
“I didn’t want to think that you were trying to escape your problems with the meds. It — I just never took you for the workaholic–doctor type.”
Kate laughed, shaking the mattress. She could feel his smile and he pulled her closer, arm encircling her waist.
“Was that why you were so angry?”
“Yeah.”
His breath is warm on her face. She placed a palm on his chest, feeling for his heartbeat, live and strong under her hand.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said quietly, “I kept having nightmares, kept waking up afraid that everyone was gone.”
His arm was heavy and comforting around her.
“I dreamt that you died. That Rodney and Elizabeth were dead and all the people I’d lost had come back — my grandmother, my friend Kelsey. At first, I’d try to sleep, but later — it just seemed better to stay awake. Then people began to come by. Mostly in the early evening, but it kept going and I didn’t stop them — didn’t want to stop them, because if they were sitting there with me, they were still alive as long as I was awake.”
His distress was apparent in the tightening of his arms and she buried her face against his chest, looping arms around neck. He touched lips against her hair and breathed.
“I’m here now and I’ll be here when you wake. I promise.”
# # #
He’s hunched over a microscope, brows furrowed, dexterous fingers twitching the knobs in tiny increments. The lights are bright, but night is dark behind the bank of windows and he sits alone in the lab, surrounded by sleeping equipment and dead samples. New journals from Earth lie scattered — in stacks, opened, annotated, highlighted — all about him, a ring of meteoric debris about the swirling body of Saturn.
“Hey.”
His head snaps up, his whole body jerking and she smiles that she’s surprised him.
“Oh, it’s you, Kate. Are you trying to take the years off my life?”
He presses a hand to his heart, as if to keep it safe in his chest.
“Only one or two.”
There is less stubble on his face now and his hair is not so gray when he shakes his head, the laugh lines crinkling about his eyes. She puts the Styrofoam cup of tea on the table.
“Here, I thought you could use this.”
His shoulders rise and fall as he inhales the scent before drinking, his hands dwarfing the cup. When he finishes, his eyes are closed and she thinks he’s waiting for the tea to steep through him until it reaches the tips of his fingers and toes.
“Oh, aye, that’s lovely. Where did you get it?”
His eyes are half–lidded, serene, satisfied.
“From your office.”
# # #
Kate’s getting better now. She can feel the pieces shifting back into place, the boxes fitting, the modules re–aligning and clicking into grooves.
Her eyes don’t sting, aren’t gritty this morning and she’s lying in bed, stretched out comfortably on sateen, Egyptian cotton sheets the Daedalus brought as a late birthday gift to herself. The laptop is humming–humming in the background, running the tail end of the nightly maintenance and the clock blinks–blinks by her head.
It’s warm and hazy here, on the edge of sleep–wake and she holds onto it for a little longer. Names in black and white time slots wait for her in her office, but for now — for now there’s time enough for everything.
It’s good this thing — this health. The only missing piece is the warm body at her back, breath tickling her ear and morning stubble scratching her neck. That had stopped weeks ago — had stopped when the bags under her eyes disappeared, when things were back to as normal as it got and they had decided that she didn’t need him anymore.
It’s true — she didn’t.
But needing isn’t the same as wanting and Kate wondered when normal had stopped being enough.
# # #
Rodney came back for therapy after weeks of absence, long after Kate was reinstated with Elizabeth’s full approval.
And for the first time, he had an appointment.
Of course, he had to access her computer through the network to adjust the calendar and sign himself up for Thursdays at 4 p.m., but Kate couldn’t bring herself to mind.
Thursday afternoon arrived and so did he, hurtling into the office and touching down on the chair like a Martian lander. He began speaking before she can say hello.
“When Cadman — when we were sharing my body, I thought to myself: God, Rodney, is this the closest you’re ever going to get to someone?”
Kate stared at him open–mouthed. He leaned forward in his seat, elbow braced on his knee and chin in hand. He stared at the bowl of fruit on her coffee table, his other arm gestured in circles.
“Then when she left — when we were normal again, I tried to talk to her. I mean — you spend days cohabitating with someone in the worst way — it’s polite to say hello. And you know what I found out?”
Rodney sat up and looked at her.
“Uh — what did you find out, Rodney?” she asked.
“Cadman drives me crazy.”
Kate blinked. And shook her head slowly. Rodney huffed an impatient breath and tried again.
“No, it’s like this. You’re — you’re around someone a lot and it’s because you have to be. It doesn’t matter if you like them or not, you just begin to feel close to them because you begin to know them. Like learning their habits and stuff. See–see, that’s where the problem starts. You begin to think crazy thoughts about them because they’re the only person around.”
He paused here to check if she was still following. Kate nodded again.
“Okay, go on.”
“But it’s convenience, see? Proximity. It’s not that–that there’s something there that wasn’t there before. You’re just imagining it, because you want them to be someone for you. And snap! When they’re gone you realize you were just being a jackass the whole time.”
The stream of words halted and Rodney waited, waiting expectantly for her reaction. Kate stared at him. He fidgeted, tugging on the zipper pull of his jacket.
Then Kate smiled.
“I forgive you, Rodney.”
He grinned, a relieved sigh escaping his body and he melted back into the couch.
“And I apologize for yelling at you the last time. It was out of line.”
“Whatever. I deserved it.”
Kate shook her head, laughing, also leaning back in her chair, relaxing.
“So what else have you learned in these past few weeks?”
Rodney looked out the window at Atlantis’s central towers before answering.
“It’s not really about who’s there when you turn around. It’s about who you seek out when they’re not there.” He rubbed his hands together absently. “Does that make sense?”
Kate stared at him again, at a loss for words.
“Yeah . . . Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”
# # #
It’s 3 a.m. — Atlantean time — and he’s standing in her doorway, shadows under his eyes and on his cheeks. The white lab coat hangs looser on his shoulders and his clothes are sleep rumpled.
“How are you, Kate?”
She leans against the doorframe, arms wrapped around herself to contain that familiar wanting, that centripetal pull of the soft lilting in his night–voice.
“I’ve been getting better, thanks.”
He nods, runs fingers through his hair and she can almost feel the dry rub of his palm and smell the product that he puts in his hair.
“I haven’t seen you around lately.”
He stands awkwardly in the dark hall, hands shoved in the voluminous pockets of his lab coat, head tilted, eyes downcast. It’s been weeks and she can still feel the weight of his arm on her waist, weeks since she’s twined her fingers in his and it aches like a phantom limb.
“I’ve been busy.”
They’re circling around each other, this desperate orbit.
“That’s good. Busy’s good.”
She nods, but doesn’t speak. She just stares at him, shifting from foot to foot, memorizing the curve of his jaw in darkness.
This spinning in her heart is free–falling — the endless vertigo of plummeting too far, too fast into him and she’ll willingly burn to pieces entering the atmosphere. But she doesn’t know how to reach him through this distance now, though he’s standing there in her silence, soft moon shadows trailing up a coat sleeve, sleepy blinking lights whisper in the floor around his feet.
He only nods, not looking at her, unable to hear what the void swallows.
“I’m glad to hear you’re doing well,” he stops to rub the back of his head, hesitating, waiting for her to say the things she doesn’t know how to say.
“Well, goodnight then.”
He walks away slowly, reluctantly she hopes. He’s getting farther away now and that interminable distance between them is growing ever larger. The rubber soles of his shoes make no noise on the metal floors, but Kate can feel each step reverberating like a star collapsing in her chest. He’s almost to the end of the hall when finally the silence stretches so far inside of Kate that it snaps in half.
“Carson!”
And she’s that hurtling comet across their distance, thudding into his solid body, into his arms like these last few weeks have not existed. She’s crying and he’s murmuring her name over and over again, squeezing the air out of her lungs, but she doesn’t care and it doesn’t matter because she’s back home like she’s never left it and it has to be what this is — this gravitation.
1 Divadeenam, Krishna, MD. July 21, 2005. “Stimulants.” eMedicine.com. Common Stimulants Dextroamphetamine was a common stimulant prescribed to WWII soldiers to increase alertness. I’m not sure that they still use this medically, but it seemed like the most logical option on a semi–military outpost.
2 Oxy–cotin is an extremely strong opiate that is prescribed for pain — severe pain like for cancer patients, etc. It's very easy to overdose on this drug and it’s a favorite of prescription drug junkies. There have been cases in Philadelphia where kids sniffed ground oxy–cotin and died from overdose on as little as half a pill.
3 Fiduciary means something held in trust. Doctor–patient relationships are often legally described as fiduciary, denoting that it goes above and beyond a normal contractual relationship. A doctor has a great deal more medical knowledge and we, as patients, are “abjectly dependent” on them for judgments about our well–being. Thus, the responsibility that a doctor owes us once we enter a relationship with them is profoundly greater than most. Given how young Kate is — approximately 32, like her actress, Claire Rankin — she’s a very new doctor. She takes this responsibility incredibly seriously.
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