Fic: Crazy Glue
Title: Crazy Glue
Category: Gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~3000
Spoilers: General S4 spoilers
Summary: Rodney works through a medical crisis with the help of his friends.
A/N: Sequel to Shattered
Sam hovered at the edge of the critical care area, quietly observing Sheppard. He was slumped in a chair next to Rodney’s bed, elbows on knees and head bowed. He seemed oblivious to the nurse moving silently around him notating a chart as she checked McKay’s vitals. Turning away, Carter entered the lab in search of Dr. Keller. Nodding to a couple of techs preparing blood samples, she made her way to the table where Jennifer was working.
“Hey.”
Keller glanced up from her computer. “Hi, Sam.”
“Any change?”
“Not so far.”
“Why the restraints?”
Jennifer grimaced. “I hated to do that, but even drugged he was thrashing around so much he pulled out his IVs.”
“What does Rodriguez say?” Carter asked.
“He’s still studying the brain scans. He isn’t as familiar with Rodney as Kate was.”
“Has Sheppard been here the entire time?”
“For two days now.” Keller leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. “I doubt I could make him leave if I wanted to. I had to threaten Ronon with sedation if he didn’t go get something for them to eat.”
“When do you think you’ll know something?”
Keller’s gaze slid to her computer and back. “Soon. I want to check one last thing.”
“Let me know as soon as you can.”
Sam headed back to the patient area to stand next to Sheppard. She’d sat this vigil enough times to know that nothing she said would assuage his guilt and fear, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.
“How are you, John?”
He laughed mirthlessly. “Me? Never better.”
“This isn’t your fault, you know.”
“Rodney is my responsibility. I should have seen this coming.” Sheppard’s voice was saturated with self-recrimination.
Carter moved to see him better, leaning against the bedside table. “You couldn’t have prevented this. Whatever this is.”
John glanced at her sharply. “What are you saying?”
“I’ve known Rodney for a long time. Maybe not as well as you do, but enough to know he isn’t mentally unstable. My team walked a similar path once with Daniel. It almost killed us to watch him fall apart. We thought we’d failed him, especially Ja- General O’Neill. But Daniel wasn’t insane. He was suffering a side effect of an alien device inside him.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “You think something alien is making McKay crazy?”
“I think anything’s possible. This might really be a psychotic break. If it is, we’ll get him the best care available.”
“You mean send him back to Earth.”
“If that’s what it takes for him to recover, yes.”
“Recover?” Sheppard scoffed. “You think Rodney’s going to spend some quality time in a rubber room with a white coat that ties in the back and recover? He may find his way back to reality one day, but life as he knows it will be over, and that will kill him.”
“We have a long way to go before we get there, Colonel,” Sam reminded him calmly. “Let’s see what the doctors have to say.”
“I knew he was having a hard time dealing with Carson’s… condition. I-”
“John,” Carter interrupted sternly. “I understand your need to protect your team. I really do. But you have to accept the fact that sometimes shit happens. You can’t always be in control of every situation.” She squeezed his shoulder gently. “McKay is as much my responsibility as he is yours. Stop hogging all the blame.”
The taut muscles under her hand relaxed slightly as his chin dipped further.
“She’s right.” Keller said, moving around them to inject something into McKay’s IV. “This isn’t your fault. Or anyone else’s here for that matter. I don’t think Rodney cracked under the pressure. I think he’s having a reaction.”
“A reaction? To what?” Sheppard asked.
Jennifer massaged her temples and stared at the floor for a second before meeting their eyes. “The last time McKay went to the new Athosian settlement, he came back with a rash, like poison ivy, on his hands and arms. We tried several different treatments to clear it up, but nothing worked so I prescribed Prednisone.”
Carter glanced down at his arms. “It seems to have been effective. What does that have to do with anything?”
“He has ten times the dosage in his system. The manufacturer mislabeled the medication. Instead of five milligram tablets, he’s been taking fifty milligrams. Twice a day.”
Sam arched a skeptical brow. “And that made him detach from reality?”
“Have you heard of ’Roid Rage? Prednisone is a corticosteroid. He was supposed to be on a very low dosage for a short amount of time. Psychosis is a rare side-effect, but it does happen, especially with large doses. It manifests in different ways, but it can include delusions, memory impairment, depression, agitation, anxiety, and insomnia. To be honest, as bad as what happened was, it could have been so much worse.”
Sheppard ran his hands through his hair. “Will he get better?”
“Ninety percent recover completely. We’ve started him on a low dose of Mellaril which should speed up the process.”
“How long?” he asked.
Jennifer shrugged. “Anywhere from a week to a month. Maybe longer. The delusions should be the first to go, but the other symptoms may linger. I’m going to leave him sedated for the next couple of days to give the medicine a chance to work.” She looked at John seriously. “You need sleep. Nothing is going to happen here in the next few hours. Go. Now.”
He turned to Carter who smiled and said, “That’s an order.”
A mutinous expression flickered then faded. “Fine,” he huffed as he stood and stretched. “Doc, if-”
“I’ll notify you immediately if anything changes, Colonel. And tell Ronon I don’t want to see him in here either for at least eight hours.”
Sheppard nodded wearily and headed out. Sam watched him go then looked at Keller. “Think that will work?”
“Nope. They’ll come back bruised and bleeding from beating the crap out of each other in the gym. But maybe it will be cathartic in that guy kind of way so they can accept what happened and move on.”
“Is Rodney really going to recover?”
“As stubborn as that man is?” Jennifer responded with a grin. “He’s a lot tougher than he lets on.” She glanced at the door that John had exited through. “And he has a great team.”
“Sometimes that makes all the difference.”
oOo
When he was a small child, he had found a cocoon in his backyard. He studied it, examined it at the same time each day to see if his teacher had really known what she was talking about. One day, the cocoon began to wiggle and split apart as the butterfly inside struggled to get out. Rodney had never considered himself to be a butterfly, but he was beginning to understand why it had taken so long for it to escape. His mind seemed to be wrapped in layers, smothering under the weight of… something he couldn’t identify. As soon as he fought through one layer, he was trapped by another.
His sense of time was gone. He didn’t know whether he’d been fighting for hours or days or months. When he tired, he stopped. But boredom, restlessness, a sense of needing to do pushed him to keep trying. And then his hearing returned.
“Nothing new from any of our contacts.” The voice was a low rumble, familiar but flitted just outside his grasp. “Did the Doc say how much longer?”
“Damnit. Where can he have taken her?” This voice was more familiar, sadder. “Keller decreased the sedation. He should wake up in a day or two.”
The layers were snatching at him again, and he was so tired. He let them catch him and drag him under.
xxx
He kicked at the cocoon holding him and floated upward. A strong sterile scent greeted him, and slowly his brain supplied a word: infirmary. A sound he eventually recognized as snoring gave him something to latch onto, and he pulled himself toward it, bit by bit until his eyelids cracked open. A man who hadn’t seen a razor in a while was sprawled in a chair next to him, wild hair sticking up in every direction. Bruises around one eye were fading, and the lines on his forehead and around his eyes and mouth were pronounced. McKay concentrated until a name popped in his head.
“Sheppard?”
The man jerked awake and gaped at him. “Rodney?” A big grin split his face. “Hey, buddy. How are you feeling?”
McKay blinked slowly at him, swiping at the mental cobwebs that threatened to pull him under again. “What happened?”
A muscle in John’s jaw jumped. “You had a reaction to a drug. What do you remember?”
“Um, not much. Everything’s fuzzy.”
“Your words are slurring. Let me get Keller before you fall asleep again.”
He leapt up and disappeared around a corner, shouting. In a moment, he returned with a pretty woman in tow. Her gaze flicked over the monitors then settled on him.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fuzzy. Like I told him.” His nose began to throb, but when he tried to reach for his face, his arm wouldn’t move. Glancing down, he found black bands around his wrists. Heart pounding, he tugged for all he was worth, which wasn’t much at the moment. The woman traded a glance with John then grabbed at the restraints.
“Let me take these off.”
“Why were they on?”
That secretive glance again. “What do you remember?”
The cobwebs were gaining on him. “What is this? Twenty questions?”
They both laughed, and a weight seemed to lift from John. “It’s one question, McKay.”
“I’ve already answered it.” He was losing the fight and finally surrendered. He fell asleep still trying to figure out who the woman was.
xxx
Surfacing was easier every time he did it, the layers thinner and fewer, the gaps in his memory smaller, and he didn’t have to struggle for names anymore. And every time he woke up, a familiar face was sitting next to him. Sometimes that was the only thing that kept him going because wakefulness had its downside as well - anxiety attacks so fierce he hyperventilated until he passed out, deep depression one minute and hypomania the next. Sometimes Carson and Elizabeth would drop by and chat for hours only to vanish before his eyes, leaving someone - typically Sheppard or Keller - gazing sadly at him.
He knew they were keeping something from him. When he asked why he was in the infirmary, he received vague answers about a bad reaction to a drug, never specifics. John’s black eye was almost gone as was the bruising on his own face yet when he asked what had happened, that secretive glance reappeared.
His brain might not be firing on all cylinders, but he was still Meredith Rodney McKay, PhD times two and certified genius. One night when his insomnia was particularly bad, he crept into the infirmary office area and absconded with Keller’s laptop. Scuttling to a supply closet, he locked himself in and started hacking. Pleased that his brilliance was still intact, he cracked her password in forty-three seconds and skimmed effortlessly through her files until he located a personal log with his name in parentheses.
Day Eight
Canceled suicide watch. No delusions in twenty-four hours.
Suicide watch? Him? He scrolled back a few pages.
Day Four
Today’s hallucination lasted three hours followed by a massive anxiety attack which resulted in a deep depressive state.
All this from a drug reaction? What had actually happened? He scanned down until he found the first entry.
Day One
Med team called to stasis chamber at 17:00. Patient found in altered state, paranoid and violent.
Panic fluttered in his chest, not the irrational, debilitating kind of the past few days, but the more familiar I-am-so-screwed type. Checking the date and time again, he logged on to the network and brought up the security feed from the stasis chamber.
And stared in horror.
He looked insane - wild-eyed, frantic, clothes and hair in disarray, appearing much like he had when he had returned hyped up on Wraith enzyme. Thankfully this was video only because he really didn’t want to know what he had said to make John flinch like that. When the fighting started, he shut down the feed, returned the computer, and crawled back in bed. Rolling onto his side, he curled into a fetal position and pulled the sheet over his head.
But the depression he had been expecting didn’t come. After the shock of seeing himself like that dissipated, he got mad. Royally, unequivocally pissed that they would dare to hide his obvious meltdown from him. He would have given them a piece of his mind, but he didn’t have any left to give.
They had to send him back to Earth. Someone who had lost his grip on reality couldn’t possibly be entrusted with the safety and security of Atlantis. He would be locked away and referred to as the Crazy Canadian who Cracked under the Pressure. Jeannie might visit, but otherwise he would be alone in a small white room with no windows and no freedom, and he was suddenly terrified. Did they know he was claustrophobic? Would they care?
The heart monitor beeped erratically as scenarios bounced around in his head, each one worse than the last. How could this have happened? Why him? Why why why why WHY?
“McKay?”
He squealed, in a manly way, and bolted upright when Ronon called his name.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Me? Nothing. Not a thing. What would make you think something was wrong with me? Just because I lost my mind and attacked Sheppard in the middle of the stasis chamber?” The anger had returned and brought shouting with it.
Ronon regarded him silently for a moment then slouched in a chair and propped his feet on the bed. “Heard about that.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“Yeah.”
“You realize what this means, right?”
“You finally got the chance to beat the crap out of Sheppard without him hitting back?”
“That’s not funny,” Rodney snapped.
“And you haven’t lost your mind. The drug made you do it.”
“What do you know about it?”
Ronon folded his arms. “I had Keller explain it to me. It caused the chemicals in your brain to not work right, but she gave you something to fix it.”
“You- you didn’t see what I did.” McKay squeezed his eyes shut as the image replayed in his mind. “I watched the security feed.”
“Did the Doc or Sheppard know about that?”
“No,” Rodney huffed, “and there’s no reason for you to tell them. I have to be crazy. Why else would they hide it from me?”
“They wanted to wait until you had recovered enough to know the truth. Sheppard has been trying to figure out how to tell you. He blames himself.”
“What? Why?”
“Ask him.”
“Yeah, because he’s always so forthcoming.” McKay paused. “He really thinks this is his fault?”
“Yeah. Just like he thinks Teyla going missing is his fault.”
“Ah. Atlas syndrome.”
Ronon quirked a brow. “Atlas?”
“Mythological story of a guy who was condemned to carry the world on his shoulders. Sheppard has a tendency to do the same.”
“And you don’t?”
“Of course not, well, maybe sometimes, but only when…. Damn.”
Chuckling, Ronon pushed the chair away and clapped Rodney on the shoulder. “You aren’t crazy, well, not any crazier than you were before. Get some sleep. And stop hiding in the supply closet.”
“How did you know-” But the doors slid shut behind him.
McKay stared at the ceiling until the first rays of dawn began to filter in.
Xxx
He had planned to ask Keller about what had happened, but when he woke up late in the day, Sheppard was sitting beside him, munching on a sandwich while he pecked at a keyboard. It had taken a bit of time, but Rodney had finally learned how to read John. And either the past year had taken so much out of Sheppard that he’d lost the ability to hide what he really thought or he had grown comfortable enough around his team to let them see.
“Hey.”
John glanced up in surprise. “Hey yourself. Did you get enough beauty sleep?”
“You’re one to talk. When was the last time you actually saw your quarters?”
With a tired grin, Sheppard handed him a tray with a sandwich and a cup of water. “Sometime last year, I think. Hungry?”
Grabbing the bed controls, McKay raised the head until he was sitting upright. “Starved.” He took a huge, wonderful bite. “What are you doing?”
“Rotating the teams going to the worlds where the Hoffan drug has been released. I don’t want anyone spending too much time around it.”
“Any news on Teyla?”
“No,” John said glumly. “Wherever Michael took her, he really covered his tracks.”
“We’ll find her.”
“I don’t think we have a lot of time left.” Sheppard closed the laptop. “How are you feeling?”
Rodney put his food down and looked John in the eye. “Did I really have a reaction to a drug?”
Sheppard’s head tilted, and his brows drew together in confusion. “As opposed to?”
“Having a nervous breakdown.”
“Ah.” John met his gaze, eyes clear. “Yes. You really had a drug reaction.”
“OK.” He took another bite of his sandwich. “Wanna play chess?”
“Sure.”
xxx
The next few days flew by. Ronon and Sheppard were off-world following a lead on Teyla when McKay was released to his quarters. By the time they returned, he was buried in a gate operating system update filled with glitches. He and Sheppard met in the mess hall when they could to continue their never-ending chess match.
“What did you just do?” Rodney demanded.
“Beat you again,” John retorted with a grin.
“Kamikaze chess? Do you understand the concept behind this game?”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”
“Once. Never again.”
McKay set up the pieces, and John glanced at his watch.
“I’ve got to go. A Genii contact wants to meet on M4S-587. He claims to have intel on Teyla.”
“Keller hasn’t released me to go off-world yet, and Ronon’s gone to Belka to talk to Mattas again.”
Sheppard stood. “I know. Lorne’s team is backing me up.”
“But it’s the Genii.”
“It’s for Teyla.”
Rodney heaved a sigh. “You’re right. Good luck.”
John waved. “See you later.”
McKay finished setting up the chess pieces and wandered to the control room. Plenty of time to play chess when Sheppard came back.