Fic: The Zebra Problem

[melyanna]

Title: The Zebra Problem
Author: Melyanna
Pairings: Ellie/Lorne, John/Elizabeth
Summary: Rule number one is that people die. Rule number two is that doctors can't change rule number one.
Notes: This one came from a viewing of West Wing's "Ellie" and way too much Scrubs.


Ellie Bartlet was sitting in front of Elizabeth Weir’s desk, taking notes on her handheld while the other woman rattled off the morning’s activities. It was a little frightening that she’d gotten used to the ever-present weight of the device in her palm so quickly. She had expected it to take her at least three months to get used to all the trappings of her new position. It had only been six weeks since her promotion, and already being without the silly thing was like forgetting to put her watch on.

Standing up in front of Elizabeth’s desk, Ellie closed it up. “I’ll round up those summaries for you by dinner,” she said.

Elizabeth sipped at her water and waved her hand. “Please, don’t rush yourself,” she replied. “I won’t be able to get to any of it before noon tomorrow.”

Ellie smiled just a little. “Yes, but I’ve got a full docket tomorrow morning, and Marcus is scheduled to return this evening.”

“Ah, planning a romantic tryst tonight,” Elizabeth said, getting up and heading toward the door to the hallway.

“Something like that,” Ellie replied, following her out of the office. “Truthfully, I’ll just be happy to see him again.”

Elizabeth shook her head, smiling. “Not to sound too much like my mother - well, like your mother, actually - but are you two thinking about getting married?”

Ellie shrugged, trying not to blush. “It’s come up. While we were in Norway.”

“If he’s reticent about the whole idea, I could have John talk some sense into him.”

Laughing, Ellie said, “Thanks, but that’s not really necessary. I know we’ve been together for most of the last two years and that sounds like a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it. We spend a lot of time together, but we’re not alone all that often.” She paused for a moment. “You didn’t talk to my mom on the Norway trip, did you?”

“Not much. Why?”

“She told Marcus that she’d been under the impression for the last few years that I’m a lesbian.”

Elizabeth laughed outright. “Oh, Abbey.”

They walked past a junction in the corridors, and out of the corner of her eye Ellie saw someone rushing toward them. “Elizabeth!” Carson Beckett called. “Elizabeth, I need to borrow Ellie for a moment.”

“We’ve got a meeting with the heads of the research divisions in a few minutes,” Elizabeth explained.

“I may need her longer than that.”

“What is it, Carson?” Ellie asked.

“I need you to take a look at this.”

He handed over the tablet in his hand, and Ellie found herself looking at a liver scan. She froze, understanding why Carson had come for her. There was a spot on the organ. “This is a tumor,” she blurted out.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t agree with me,” he replied.

“Wait,” Elizabeth interrupted, “whose scan is that?” The two medical doctors looked at her, and she held up her hand. “I’m sorry. I know you can’t tell me who unless that person gives permission, but does someone here have cancer?”

“We can’t tell from a scan like this,” Ellie said. She turned back to Beckett. “Have someone biopsy the mass. Quickly.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Carson replied, taking the tablet back.

He headed off with a nod, and the women turned back down the corridor toward their meeting, though at a slower pace now. “I guess we haven’t replaced you on the medical staff yet, have we?” Elizabeth asked quietly.

Ellie just shrugged. “I don’t know that there’s a pressing need to. We have a terrific team of diagnostics specialists here, and they can handle this kind of thing. I came here to research cancer, not treat it, and if someone on Atlantis does develop cancer, we’d send them back to Earth for treatment anyway.”

“Then why did Carson come to you for a consultation?” Elizabeth asked pointedly.

“Well, if you’ve got an oncologist in the neighborhood, you might as well ask for her opinion,” Ellie replied.

They arrived at the conference room at that point, and as soon as they walked in, McKay started into a verbal barrage of facts and figures. But as the meeting progressed, Ellie found herself distracted.

She’d intended to stop by the infirmary for just a couple minutes when the meeting was over, but when she got there she was informed that the results of the biopsy would be ready in about fifteen minutes. Instead of going on to get the reports Elizabeth had requested, she stayed in the infirmary near the entrance, waiting.

That was where John Sheppard found her.

“You know,” he said in her ear, making her jump. She hadn’t heard him approach. “You don’t work here anymore.”

Ellie looked up at him and smiled briefly. He was standing over her, hands on his hips. “It isn’t nostalgia,” she replied, anticipating his next remark.

“Didn’t think so,” he said. “You never particularly enjoyed being on call in the infirmary, as I remember it.”

“I got pulled in for a consultation,” Ellie said quietly. “Waiting for the results of a biopsy on a mass in someone’s liver.”

“That sounds. . . bad.”

“Yeah.”

John stood there with her for a while, until Carson approached them. Ellie knew the results before he handed the tablet over. If it had been good, he would have said something.

Ellie looked over the results and sighed. “I was afraid of this.”

“How bad is it?” John asked.

“The mass is malignant,” she explained, then turned to Carson. “Have you talked to him yet?”

“No. I’m about to.”

“Let me, okay?” Ellie replied. “It’s just that this is my field and I’m probably more up on the latest treatments than you are.”

“Go right ahead, love,” Carson said.

Ellie nodded to both the men as she walked off. The patient, whose bed was surrounded by privacy screens, was Eric Hall, a thirty-seven-year-old biologist who’d come to Atlantis about a year after Ellie had. They’d worked together on a project once. She came around the screens with the tablet in her hands, and Eric’s eyes grew wide. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Ellie, but you’re not the person I wanted to see,” he said.

“Yeah, no one ever wants to see the oncologist,” she replied quietly. She hadn’t had to do this in a really long time. “I’m sorry, Eric. The mass in your liver is malignant.”

He let out the breath he’d been holding and shook his head. “What would have caused this?” he asked. “Up until three months ago I was a perfectly healthy guy.”

Ellie took a deep breath. “Well, cirrhosis of the liver can lead to cancer, but there was no evidence of that kind of scarring on your scans,” she explained. “There’s some evidence back on Earth that a certain toxin found in Africa and Asia can cause it. It’s possible that you came in contact with something here in the Pegasus galaxy that increased your risk of developing hepatoma.”

“So what do we do?”

Looking at his face, Ellie was reminded of why she went into research. She’d gone into oncology because she wanted to help people, but working with actual patients as an oncologist was heartbreaking. She’d learned that during her residency. “Surgery is the most likely option,” she said. “There’s just the one mass in your liver, and it’s in a position where it can be removed without too much difficulty. But we’re going to have to do some more tests first before we can determine what’s best for you. The tumor may be small enough that there are better options than surgery.”

Eric nodded. “Are you going to be taking care of me?” he asked. “I know it’s not really your job anymore.”

Ellie wanted to point out that this had never been her job in Atlantis, but she held her tongue. “I’ll do as much as I can, Eric,” she replied, patting his arm.

He grasped her hand. “Thank you.”

She forced herself to smile, but couldn’t bring herself to say that everything was going to be fine.

To Ellie’s surprise, John followed her out of the infirmary.

They got into a transporter together, and he continued following her when she stepped out of it. “Don’t you have work to do?” she asked, not looking at him.

“Are you kidding?” he replied. “I’m just a figurehead.”

Ellie turned then, walking backwards while he followed. “I’ve been in meetings with you,” she said. “If that’s what you call a figurehead I’d hate to see your impression of a dictator.”

John caught up with her then, letting her face the right way. “Elizabeth’s in meetings all afternoon,” he explained, “and my one remaining task for today she gave to you.”

“Which task was that? I’ll give it back.”

“Harassing people for requisition summaries.”

Ellie winced. “Sorry, John, can’t give that one back. Elizabeth actually wants it done at some point.”

“Hey!”

“You get two people to turn them in,” she replied smoothly, “and then you stop off to harass McKay or something goes kaboom and you forget to get the rest of them.”

“If that wasn’t so true I’d be offended,” he said, giving her his best hurt look.

Ellie smiled. “The puppy eyes may work on Elizabeth, but they don’t work on me.”

“No, you tend to fall for dimples,” John teased.

She considered that for a moment. “True.”

They stopped off in a lab, where Ellie watched as the person finished filling out the requisition summary for the botany department and got it loaded onto Ellie’s handheld. John stood around and played with a plant, oddly enough, and departed when Ellie did. She was tempted to ask if he just wanted to pretend he was mafia muscle for the day, but on their way to the next location he said, “Hey, speaking of Colonel Dimples, you never did tell me how meeting dear old Dad went.”

She pretended to be absorbed with the screen of her handheld. “His father liked me just fine,” she said.

“Ellie,” John replied, “you know I was talking about Lorne and Jed.”

Ellie sighed then and stopped just short of her destination. “Mom and Dad both really seemed to like him,” she said. “There weren’t any jabs about his hair or his job or - well, Dad did take issue with him being a Republican, but that wasn’t a big deal.”

John blinked. “Ellie, your dad was the most liberal President in at least twenty years.”

“True, but Marcus was an altar boy and still goes to mass when he’s on Earth.”

He looked as though he had a smart remark on the tip of his tongue, but Ellie looked up at him with big eyes and he lost his nerve. “Don’t tell Elizabeth this,” he said, “but the puppy eyes are my weakness too.”

“Are you kidding?” Ellie asked as she walked into the lab. “She already knows.”

Ellie had finished gathering requisition summaries by the time Marcus and his team returned from their mission, and he found her hanging out with Kate and Laura in Kate’s quarters. He came up behind Ellie and kissed the top of her head, his hands on her shoulders. “Anyone else would walk in here and see three beautiful women,” he said. “Fortunately I know better. I’m looking at three beautiful masterminds.”

“Hello, Colonel,” Laura said. “We’re just planning the next phase of the ongoing McKay-Cadman war.”

“Well, wouldn’t want to miss out on that.” He looked down at Ellie. “Hey, are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine, Marcus,” she said, taking his hand. “I’m just tired.”

“You’ve been tired all evening,” Kate pointed out. “It looks more like you’re a little depressed. I’m no expert, but wait, I am.”

In a very mature fashion, Ellie stuck her tongue out at Kate while Marcus came around to sit next to her on the couch. She looked at him and said, “I had a weird day.”

“Well, of course you did,” he replied. “I’d been gone for days.”

Ellie laughed outright at that. “You have an incredible ego.”

For that, he pinched her side.

Kate, on the other hand, leaned forward. “Ellie, you’ve been quiet even by your standards for hours,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

Ellie sighed and leaned against Marcus, and he put his arm around her shoulders. “I had to tell someone today that he has cancer.”

Laura’s eyebrows went up. “Wow. Wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yeah, neither was I,” Ellie said. “I can’t get it out of my head, either. Something’s just not right.”

“Given that he’s here and we all get physicals so regularly, you probably caught it early,” Kate said. “He’ll probably be fine.”

Ellie made a noncommittal noise. Marcus rubbed his hand up and down her shoulder while Laura busied herself with flipping a pen around in between her fingers. She claimed it was a dexterity exercise, but Ellie had always thought she was just showing off. Then suddenly Kate looked at her watch and said, “Oh, I have an appointment.”

She hurriedly said goodbye to them and rushed out of the room. Laura looked frustrated. “You know, she’s worked every evening this week.”

“Are you kidding?” Marcus asked. “I bet she’s off to meet Zelenka.”

“Zelenka?”

“They’ve been seeing each other since before we all went to Norway, Captain,” he replied. “You didn’t find out right away, so I think it became a bit of a game to keep that information away from you.”

“Zelenka?” Laura repeated in disbelief.

“I hear he’s a terribly sweet guy,” Marcus teased.

“Oh, I’m going to kill her. Kate!” she yelled, running out after her friend.

Marcus chuckled and Ellie snuggled closer to him. “Well, that’s one way to get rid of them,” he remarked.

“Is it true?” Ellie asked. “About Kate and Zelenka?”

“I live next door to Zelenka, and, well, I don’t generally mention this in front of you, but I know what Kate sounds like in bed.” He kissed her temple. “So what do you want to do tonight?”

She let out a long breath. “Honestly, I want to go over this case,” she said. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but. . .”

“Your brain wouldn’t be with me anyway.”

“So. . .”

“Go ahead. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my mission report filed on time for once.”

“I won’t hold my breath.” Ellie stretched up and kissed him softly. “Thanks.”

As she left, Marcus let his head fall back against the sofa back. So much for a romantic evening.

By the time John and Elizabeth got around to dinner, their boys were in bed already, watched by Teyla as the pair had dinner alone in a deserted mess hall. When they realized the opportunity they had, Elizabeth had located a couple candles and John had gotten into a Tupperware container marked “lab experiments” in the back of the freezer. No one was actually stupid enough to store any kind of lab experiment in the kitchen, and the lack of anything containing citrus suggested that the box was McKay’s secret dessert stash. John took a carton of ice cream.

As they got into the ice cream, John gestured to the candles with his spoon. “Aren’t those the emergency candles?”

Elizabeth slowly licked her spoon in a way that still made him want to jump her, right on the table if need be. “We get them by the gross. I figure we can spare a couple,” she explained. “Besides, how long has it been since we had something resembling a date? If that doesn’t count as an emergency I don’t know what does.”

John raised a brow at her. “Does this mean I get to do mouth-to-mouth on you later?”

She gave him a devilish grin. “Only if you come up with a better pickup line than that.”

“Well,” he replied, “you know I like a challenge.”

“Hmm. That gives me something to look forward to.” She was quiet for a minute as they both continued with the ice cream. “John, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“I’d like you to keep an eye on Ellie for a couple days,” she said. “This thing with one of Carson’s patients came up today, and afterward she seemed pretty distracted.”

“I spent about an hour this afternoon harassing her for no good reason, and she seemed fine,” he said. “You think she’s going to let this eat at her?”

Elizabeth sighed. “She’s her father’s daughter. And when he can’t fix something, he tends to dwell on it.”

“So what, you want me to distract her?” he asked. She raised a brow at him, and he added, “Not like that. She has a boyfriend for that. And I have a hot wife who needs me for her political career.”

Maturely, she stuck her tongue out.

John just smiled. “Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on her. I like her a lot too, you know.”

“Only because she delivered your son.”

“No, that was when I decided we could keep her.”

“Ah, right.”

By then they were getting down toward the bottom of the ice cream container, and Elizabeth said, “So how mad will Rodney be that we finished this off?”

“Eh, I figure he’ll be his usual level of Rodney-ness,” John replied. “I’ll blame it on Cadman. Or she’ll have done something worse by the time he finds the ice cream’s missing.” He scooped up the last spoonful and stuck it in Elizabeth’s mouth. “Come on, sweetheart. Time for bed.”

He closed up the container and tossed it across the room, landing it right in a trash can. As he stood, he extinguished the candles and picked them up to dispose of them too. Elizabeth, meanwhile, slowly pulled the spoon out of her mouth. “I’m not tired,” she informed him.

“Good,” he replied, leaning down to kiss her soundly. “Neither am I.”

It was getting close to lunchtime the next day when Ellie, having reached to get something out of her desk drawer, sat up straight to find John sitting in front of her desk when he hadn’t been in the room at all when she’d last looked. She nearly jumped out of her skin at his appearance. She dropped the stack of papers she’d just retrieved, and when he laughed she narrowed her eyes. “I hate you, you know that?”

“Story of my life,” he replied. “I just wanted to let you know that you missed someone in your quest to round up those summaries.”

“Who?” Ellie asked, frowning.

John smirked. “Me. But don’t worry, I’ve already left it on Elizabeth’s desk with a note saying you forgot to ask me for it.”

She sat back in her chair and tapped her pen against the armrest. “Did you run out of ways to torment McKay and decide to turn your annoyance on me?”

“No, I’m tormenting you both now,” he replied. “He’s going crazy expecting me to do something while I poke at you for a while.”

Ellie sighed. “Is there anything else?”

“Yeah,” John said, turning serious in a heartbeat. “I wanted to ask how Doctor Hall is doing.”

“I haven’t spoken to him today,” Ellie replied. “He’ll be going back to Earth for a surgical consult and whatever treatment he decides on in a few days.”

“How old is he, thirty-five?” he asked.

“Thirty-seven,” she corrected. “Still, way too young for liver cancer.”

She drifted off, reminded of something else for a moment, until John called her attention back. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking about when Eric joined the expedition,” she said. “We worked on a project together shortly after he got here, but it wasn’t his project originally. He’d switched with someone to work with me.”

John smiled a little. “Had a crush on you, did he?”

“As it happened, yes,” Ellie replied, feeling her cheeks turn a little pink. “He didn’t know about Marcus until after we started working on the project.” She paused for a moment, looking down. “He’s a sweet guy. I hate that he’s going through this.”

“You’d hate it even if it was someone you don’t like going through this,” John said. “Listen, Ellie, just don’t let yourself get too bogged down in this, okay?”

She frowned a little. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Just keep your head above water.”

Two days later, something was still bothering Ellie about Eric’s condition. There were too many things that just weren’t adding up about it all. Marcus left her alone mostly, not that he was upset with her, but because he recognized when Ellie was in this state of mind and knew it was an opportunity to get his own work done without distraction.

Finally, early in the morning she had something of an epiphany and rushed into the infirmary to check out if her suspicion was correct. That was why Carson found her hunched over a microscope in her pajamas when he came in. “Ellie,” he said, “not only do you not work here anymore, you don’t work the night shift here anymore.”

“Hang on a minute,” she said.

“Listen, I appreciate the effort you’re throwing at the Hall matter,” he replied, “but please tell me you didn’t pull an all-nighter.”

“No, I just got here an hour ago,” Ellie said. “Not that I really slept much anyway.”

Carson sighed. “Well, what have you got?”

“Nothing good.” She grabbed her nearby tablet and pulled up Eric’s history. “I started thinking about what could have caused him to develop liver cancer. As a primary cancer it’s pretty rare, at least in Western countries.”

“Aye, but Eric does a lot of work off-world,” Carson replied. “And there are environmental factors he could have come in contact with.”

“I know,” Ellie said. “So I started looking at his symptoms. These later ones - the jaundice, the fatigue, the weight loss - those are all normal for cancer of the liver. But as far as I know, the one he originally came to the infirmary for is not.”

“What was it?” he asked, looking over her shoulder.

“He presented with back pain,” she replied. “Sporadic but severe back pain. He came in for either a sedative or an analgesic because the pain was so bad when he tried to lie down that he couldn’t sleep.”

“And what conclusion does that bring us to, Doctor?”

Ellie turned the microscope so he could look down it. “I’d have one of your diagnosticians look at it,” she said, “but I’m almost positive that that’s pancreatic cancer. It’s certainly not liver cancer, so whatever we’re dealing with is a cancer that’s already metastasized. This is a whole different ballgame now.”

Carson sighed heavily as he pulled back from the microscope. “I’ll get another opinion, but I think you may be right.” He looked at her intently. “What do we do next?”

“We verify the diagnosis and we tell him,” Ellie replied. “What else would we do?”

“No, I meant as far as treatment goes.”

“Oh.” Ellie leaned back. “We send him back to Earth. Even if we put together a setup for chemotherapy or radiation or whatever treatment, Atlantis is no place for a sick person. And it’s certainly not a place for a person who’s terminally ill.”

Carson looked down at the floor. “You think this is terminal?”

“It’s pancreatic cancer,” she said softly. “It almost always is.”

While Ellie ran back to her room to shower and change, the infirmary staff brought Eric in for another scan. Ellie came back just in time to take a look at it, and to get the result from one of the diagnosticians. Unfortunately, she’d been right.

She’d been a resident the last time she’d had to do this. As she remembered it, telling a person he had cancer was different than telling a person he had cancer and very little chance of surviving it. But Johns Hopkins and her internship and her residency seemed so long ago now.

Eric was waiting for her in a secluded corner of the infirmary, and when he saw her his face blanched. “This isn’t good, is it?” he asked.

Ellie swallowed hard and shook her head. “I looked some more at the symptoms you were presenting, and at the tissue from the biopsy,” she explained. “The scans confirmed what I was starting to suspect. It’s not liver cancer. It’s pancreatic.”

“But the tumor was in the liver. . .”

“There’s another in the pancreas,” she said quietly. “It’s already spread.”

He looked fairly desperate by that point. “What chance of survival do I have?”

Ellie pressed her lips together briefly. “Probably less than a fifteen-percent chance of surviving for a year.”

He cursed and turned away, and Ellie had to force herself to stand still. “Eric,” she said, “there’s been a lot of promising research in the last fifteen years. It’s possible that you’ll respond well to treatment.”

“But more likely that I won’t.” His voice was cold.

Much as she didn’t want to admit it, she had to tell the truth. “Yes.”

He sat down on the nearby hospital bed and rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t get it,” he said. “How do I go from a healthy guy with some back pain to dying in three months?”

“I’m afraid that’s the nature of the beast,” Ellie replied. “Pancreatic cancer moves quickly and quietly.”

“So what do I do now?”

“I have friends and colleagues back on Earth,” she said. “Some of the best oncologists in the world. I promise, you’ll get the best care possible.”

Eric just nodded, so Ellie put her arm around his shoulders, a little awkwardly. After a while, she just rubbed his back, not knowing what else to do.

Carson came in soon enough with Elizabeth, and the two of them took over talking to Eric about his options. Ellie slipped out, feeling like she needed to blow her nose if nothing else, so she stepped into the scrub room to wash her face.

As she came out, she heard voices that she recognized as a few of the diagnosticians on the medical staff. She knew she should have kept walking, but ever since she was little she’d had a bad habit of listening when she stumbled upon conversations. But this time, she felt herself flush all over with something other than embarrassment. They were talking about Eric Hall.

“Pancreatic cancer,” one of them was saying. “Can you believe it?”

“No kidding. Never would have guessed that in a guy his age.”

“I’m not sure I would have guessed cancer at all. Surprised the hell out of me when we found the mass in his liver and it turned out malignant.”

“Would have sworn he picked up a bug on his last trip off-world.”

“Or with all the back pain, that he had an infarction and necrosis.”

At that, Ellie had to step into their conversation. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. “Well, I suppose if you’d looked into fatty necrosis you might have thrown a dart near the right organ,” she said.

The four of them looked at her. The team leader, a balding man named Reed, said, “What do you mean, Ellie?”

“Fatty necrosis can be caused by acute pancreatitis,” she recited. “Though I suppose you would have looked at muscle death, not fat cell death, and I’m not strong enough in internal medicine to tell you where that would have landed you.”

“Look,” Reed said, obviously aware that she was annoyed, “none of us are cancer specialists. There’s no need for an oncologist in diagnostics when what we’re dealing with most of the time are alien viruses and the occasional case of appendicitis.”

Ellie crossed her arms over herself and stared at him dangerously. “I think Doctor Hall would disagree,” she said. “Honestly, what diagnostics specialist looks at a man with back pain but no sign of trauma or strain and doesn’t even think to look for tumors right away?”

More than one of the doctors in front of her tried to defend their actions, but she was having none of it. “If the four of you had done this on Earth, he would have sued you for malpractice,” she continued, her voice rising. “And he probably would have won. Maybe he didn’t have much of a chance to survive in the first place, but you four sure as hell didn’t help him any. This is a med school mistake, and you’re supposed to be some of the best doctors Earth has produced.”

“Ellie,” Reed tried to begin, but she cut him off.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you about zebras?” she asked. “The man presented with classic signs of pancreatic cancer, just not in the right order, and you went off looking for an interesting answer instead of the right one.”

Ellie saw motion out of the corner of her eye then, and she glanced away to see that Elizabeth was slowly approaching. She hadn’t realized how much she had raised her voice, but it was apparently enough to have drawn an audience. The sight of Elizabeth made her huff in frustration, and she set her hands on her hips. “Damn it,” she said. “You people are going to turn me into my mother.”

The way they all looked at her in shock would have been comical in other circumstances. Now, it just made Ellie want to hide somewhere as she stalked off.

Ellie retreated to the secluded pier where she and Marcus had shared quite a few romantic evenings over the course of the last two years. She sat on the ground with her knees hugged to her chest, trying not to think and failing miserably.

Not surprisingly, Marcus found her out there. “Hey,” he said when she looked over her shoulder, having heard his footsteps. “Doctor Weir told me you might want to talk to someone.”

“I really don’t,” she replied, turning away.

He came up and settled next to her anyway. “What’s wrong, Ellie?”

She took a deep breath. “You know how Carson asked me to consult on that patient?”

Marcus nodded. “What of it?”

“I solved my mystery,” she said. “It wasn’t liver cancer like I thought at first. It’s pancreatic cancer. I doubt he’ll live another six months.”

Marcus was quiet for a while after that, obviously pondering. Eric was actually younger than him by a couple years.

Ellie looked back out over the city before them. “Did Elizabeth tell you what I did?”

He frowned. “No, what did you do?”

“I yelled at the diagnostics team,” she replied. “Just completely lost my temper.”

“Because they missed this?”

“Because they never went looking for it.” Ellie sighed. “Have you ever heard of a zebra?”

“Petted one at a zoo once,” Marcus replied with a small smile.

Ellie leaned against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. “You sometimes see common conditions present with uncommon symptoms,” she explained. “The temptation can be to look for an exotic disease. What they tell you in medical school is that when you hear hoof-beats, you should look for horses, not zebras, because you’re probably going to find a horse, not a zebra.”

“So you’re saying the diagnostics team went looking for a zebra?”

“I’m not sure they were even looking for something with hoofs.” Ellie pulled away from him and stood. “I don’t know, Marcus. I’m starting to wonder if I should have taken this promotion. Maybe I should have stayed on the medical team.”

“The research team,” he corrected, standing up too. “If they didn’t stumble upon a tumor until this week, they still wouldn’t have talked to you before now.”

Ellie shook her head and turned away. Resting her hands on the railing of the pier, she said, “Marcus, why did you join the military?”

He came up next to her, leaning against the railing and facing the other way. “I wanted to serve my country,” he said. “Why’d you become a doctor?”

“I wanted to help people,” she replied. “Save lives if I could.”

“Do you not think you can do that in this job?” he asked.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

Marcus crossed his arms over his chest. “Then I’d have you talk to Laura,” he replied. Ellie looked at him, a little confused, and he continued, “Three months ago you saved her life, and it wasn’t in the infirmary, and it wasn’t because you found the cure to a disease. You did it by talking.”

Ellie was quiet for a minute. “You called her Laura.”

He shrugged. “It slips every once in a while.” He turned then and pulled her into a tight embrace. “You know why I love you?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in denial,” he said.

She looked up at him sharply. “What?”

“You think you can save the world,” Marcus said, reaching to push her hair back from her face. “It’s endearing.”

Ellie frowned. “I never said I thought I could save the world.”

“No, but you do.” He leaned in and kissed her. “And who knows, maybe you will. But you can’t win them all.”

Marcus continued to hold her for a while longer as she finally calmed down enough to be productive during the day. But even with what he’d said, she couldn’t shake the feeling that if things had been just a little different, maybe she would have been able to help Eric after all.

Eric went back to Earth within the week and began treatment. A few back in Atlantis got sporadic letters. Ellie was one of them.

Three months after Eric’s departure, Ellie got a letter saying that Eric had died.

It was late in the afternoon when she read it, and she wandered into her old lab without thinking about it. Thankfully, its new occupant wasn’t there, and she was able to sit in the room and simply ponder what had happened. A lot of things had happened in the last three months. She’d been kidnapped briefly during a trade negotiation. Marcus had been shot in the leg during firearms training. Kate and Zelenka had broken up and gotten back together again.

It seemed strange to think that while they’d been going on with such things in Atlantis, Eric was back on Earth, dying inch by inch.

While she read the letter for the twentieth time, a small person with John Sheppard’s wild black hair had toddled into the lab and up to the bench where she was sitting. Josiah Sheppard was wearing denim overalls with little orange airplanes embroidered on the bib. “Ellie?” he said. “You’re sad.”

Ellie folded the letter back up and put it in her pocket. “Yeah, I am,” she told him.

With some difficulty, Siah climbed onto the bench and then onto her lap. Ellie steadied him and then looked up. John was standing in the doorway. “Elizabeth got word of it too,” he said without preamble. “I thought you might need a hug. He’s usually good for a cuddle.”

She looked down at Siah and then back at his father. “He was with his family when he passed on,” she said quietly. “From the sound of it, he spent the last three months wisely. He even reconciled with his ex-wife. She’s the one who wrote to me.”

“Sounds like he was at peace,” John replied. “Most of us won’t have that luxury.”

Ellie nodded. It seemed incredibly appropriate coming from him, given how many times he had skirted death.

He must have heard something, because he suddenly looked into the hallway. A few moments later, Carson appeared in the doorway. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said. “I take it you’ve heard?”

Ellie nodded again, knowing that if things kept up like this all evening she was going to start crying. “I just wish I could have done something more, you know?”

“Well,” Carson said, “it seems like you’ve already forgotten the first two rules of being a doctor.” When Ellie raised a brow, he said, “Rule number one is that people die. Rule number two is that doctors can’t change rule number one.”

“Carson,” John said, but Carson didn’t let him finish a thought.

“You did everything you could, love,” he continued. “Don’t fool yourself into believing there was something more you could have done. You’ll kill yourself that way.”

After giving her a stern look and a few seconds of pointed silence, Carson went off the way he came. When he was gone, John beckoned her toward the door. “Come have dinner with Siah and me,” he said. “You can tell me more about Eric.”