Written for the first aid challenge at sga_flashfic. Many thanks to malnpudl for the beta! PG-13.
"Oh god, oh god, oh shit."
Rodney struggled to touch his radio. It wasn't there. He was flat on his back in the dirt and—god. Gunfire exploded somewhere close. Light staccato bursts against single booms. He didn't have any cover. Man down, he thought. Mayday, m'aidez.
Rodney felt a trickle of blood begin to well in the back of his throat. He swallowed, and it was like a burst of fire. Except it blinked out midway down his chest. He couldn't feel—
"McKay!"
Dimly he heard the yell. He noticed the guns had stopped.
Then, "Rodney!" from first Teyla, and then John, louder and more panicked. John fell into a crouch at Rodney's left side and—he couldn't follow what John and Teyla were doing. Their hands were smears of color.
"Oh, Rodney," Teyla said. John was groping under Rodney's back. Rodney couldn't—he couldn't—
The sky above them was pink—it was pink before but he'd been too focused on his scanner to pay it any mind. Too focused.
A knot of gray streaked across Rodney's vision; it left a wake that didn't vanish. He had a mouthful of pennies. Why did children always put coins in their mouths? Who was it who buried their dead with coins under their tongues? Not the Greeks—that was on the eyelids, wasn't it? Elizabeth would know, but Elizabeth was—
"Rodney!" John shouted into his face. Rodney's eyes flew open. John was right there—close enough to kiss, eyes huge and terrified. "Breathe in!"
It hurt too much. His body didn't want to. They had opened his tac vest so it lay to the sides of his body like butterfly wings. Lumpy black wings baring a gray cotton body. Rodney could barely see them. He couldn't see John's hand at the hem of his shirt. The cotton was scarlet and wet.
"Oh god," he whispered.
"Breathe in, McKay!" John half-snarled. Then Rodney screamed as something slammed into his ribs. He gasped for breath purely from reflex and tears streamed down the sides of his face. Heading straight toward his ears, and he'd always hated the creepy-crawly feeling of tears in his ears. It reminded him of The Twilight Zone, the old original one that his mum said he was too young to watch but he did anyway. And of bawling newborns.
There was loud yelling. It took several minutes, it seemed like, and Teyla's intercession, for Rodney to realize it was him doing the screaming, keening with the knife-slice pain of breathing and the enormous pressure crushing the left side of his chest.
Then John was talking Teyla through the administration of morphine. Rodney didn't know why John wasn't doing it himself. And where had Ronon disappeared to? Was he okay? Above him, John's eyes were big and green and dark against the pale pink sky.
"Stay with me," John said. Rodney wanted to say kiss me. He might've said, "Kiss me."
He didn't, maybe? His attention followed John's chin to the right—Teyla's lips were the color of the sky. Rodney looked down, following her worried gaze along the length of John's arms. John's watchband and wristband were dripping.
Rodney could see one stark white end of a field dressing—then a wet stripe of red, and then part of John's glistening hand. Rodney's gut churned. He turned his head to the side and spat a penny-flavored gobbet onto the ground. The end dribbled down his cheek toward his ear. John didn't move. Teyla dabbed at Rodney's face with a bloody wet-wipe.
John said, "Breathe, Rodney."
Rodney swallowed hard and inhaled a little. If he tried to vomit, he knew, he'd die. Where the hell was Ronon? "Oh god," he whimpered.
"You're going to be all right," John said. He was starting to get blurry. Rodney wanted to snap back a scathing remark, or just laugh. Laughing might kill him, too. "Just hang on," John was saying, repeating it over and over.
Teyla's hand brushed cool over his forehead and the ground swallowed Rodney up to the sides of his face. It was soft and firm, like his prescription mattress. He wondered if the sky tasted like cotton candy. He opened his mouth slightly. He wanted to taste it.
He came back when John said, "This is Sheppard, go ahead," and shifted his weight where he knelt. Rodney didn't have breath to scream. He might've done it anyway. There was a blur of pinks and grays—a high "Oh no!" from Teyla—a gush of liquid pennies from his mouth.
"Oh shit, shit! Sorry, buddy," said John, resituating himself with care. Rodney could feel every shift as if he were the one moving. It was new. He'd never in any of his various hospitalizations felt like this before. Had Teyla used too much morphine? The pain and pressure were there, right there, separated from him by a gauzy curtain. Things were harder to focus on. Like John, distracted by his radio. Like Teyla, moving in and out of his peripheral vision.
"John," he said. He needed...air, words, something.
"Right here," John said from too far away.
"Don't leave," Rodney murmured.
John laughed hoarsely. "No chance of that, buddy."
There was a brief increase in pressure somewhere. Rodney blinked hard several times and looked down his body. Looked at John's hand. Wrist. The back of John's left hand. No fingers. No knuckles.
"You're inside me," he whispered, simultaneously amazed and grossed out.
John nodded. "Just for a little longer. Second team's on the way, and once they get you stable, we'll fly you straight to Keller."
Rodney's left hand was lying by John's knee. It didn't want to move when Rodney told it to, but he managed a feeble swipe at John's leg. It took a moment for John to figure out what Rodney wanted, and then their hands joined. Rodney held on tight.
John blinked several times fast. "You're going to make it, you hear me? You're going to be fine. Tell him, Teyla."
Rodney had forgotten she was there, sort of. She was the warm presence on his right, but she was keeping alert for new dangers while John—
"Teyla," he whispered. He moved some fingers on his right hand. The armor plate in the right butterfly half of his vest lay heavy on his arm. Tomorrow he'd complain to the Pentagon. Tomorrow.
But Teyla was enfolding his hand in hers. "Stay with us, Rodney," she said. Her eyes were dark, tightly focused on his.
"You're going to get through this," John said, and now his voice brooked no argument.
"Okay," Rodney mouthed. He'd meant for there to be sound, but it didn't work.
"Breathe!" John yelled.
Their radios chirped. Teyla said, "Yes, please hurry!" The whine of jumper engines filled the air. And noise. Human noise. John squeezed his hand.
"Dr. Keller has the OR ready," someone said. A large black medical kit fell open where Teyla wasn't anymore. A mask descended over Rodney's face and air forced its way into his chest. Rodney wheezed and tried to spit blood.
"Corpsman?" someone said.
"The shot punctured his lung. Get a tube in so he won't drown."
Rodney wondered why he was still conscious. Now would be an excellent time to pass out. Really excellent.
He felt a cold wipe swab down his side. He felt the scalpel jab him between two ribs. It was surprisingly not terrible. Then he felt the corpsman begin to twist the tube in. Twist-twist-twist, deeper and deeper—nothing like John's fist in his chest holding his life in.
John still held his hand, Rodney realized.
Rodney squeezed it once, and let the morphine carry him away.