Work Text:
“Rodney?”
He had been trying to read, some report or something from Zelenka, but really his eyes kept straying from his tablet to the bed. When Keller spoke to him, he gave a distracted ‘yes’ but otherwise didn’t acknowledge her presence.
“Maybe you should get some sleep.”
“I’m fine.” He could work just as well from next to Carson’s bed as his own quarters. And he had promised Carson they’d spend some time together. He had promised him.
“You can’t do anything being here”, Keller said, his voice becoming softer. What did she know? Medicine was barely a legitimate science. There were all sorts of stories of what people experienced while they were in a coma. “Get some rest.”
“I’m fine”, Rodney repeated. There was something reassuring yet wrong about watching Carson breathe. He was still alive but Carson didn’t sleep on his back, at least not in all the times Rodney had seen him sleep. He curled up on his side.
“Carson wouldn’t want – “
He turned sharply, fixing her with a glare. “Carson wanted to go fishing with me. And I didn’t. I promised him but I didn’t go. And now he’s lying in a coma.”
His voice had grown progressively louder until he was nearly shouting. Keller didn’t flinch.
“What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“I’m the most brilliant mind of our lifetime, I know the facts”, Rodney said as he turned back to watching Carson, his voice hard. “I know when something is my fault.”
She sighed but Rodney had stopped paying attention to her. Carson was still breathing and as long as Rodney was watching, he wouldn’t stop.
/
He woke up from an alarm blaring in his ears. That and movement next to him. Not the good kind of movement. Carson was thrashing in his bed, body convulsing as if he was possessed.
“Help!” Rodney yelled, stumbling to his feet. What could he do? “Help, please?”
Two people rushed past him, pushing him out of the way. He watched, helplessly, as they threw terms at each other. One shone a light into Carson’s eyes while the other injected him with something.
Seconds turned into hours or so it seemed before Carson calmed down. Rodney stared at him, willed him to get better. He had never felt so useless.
“What’s wrong with him?” He asked when the situation seemed to be under control.
“He’s had a seizure.”
Rodney wanted to reply that he knew that, he had eyes after all but he was too scared they might throw him out.
“I’ll take another scan, make sure there isn’t more pressure built up”, the other medic said. Rodney should know their names but he could never remember them except for Carson and lately Keller.
That didn’t sound good. Rodney cursed himself for not paying more attention to medicine. Maybe if he had studied it, he could help Carson now instead of standing around, just watching.
“No signs of pressure built up according to the scan”, the medic announced. The other one nodded but Rodney felt ill at ease. What if the scan was wrong? Much of the tech they were using was Ancient and they did not have the greatest track record. He should look into that, make the technology better and more reliable. Not as exciting as breaking the laws of physics but Rodney couldn’t think of anything he wanted less than more excitement.
He just wanted Carson back.
The medics at least didn’t try to argue with him about staying by Carson’s side. They were barely paying him any attention at all. Carson was their patient, not Rodney. Once they had made sure that Carson wouldn’t have another seizure and wasn’t actively dying, they left them alone again.
Adrenaline was still coursing through Rodney’s veins. His tablet had cluttered to the ground at some point during the night and someone had stepped on it but the screen was only cracked, not broken. Still good for work.
Rodney tried to make sense of the report, he did but every few seconds his eyes strayed back to Carson. He couldn’t lose him. Carson was his friend. His best friend. For a long time, he had been Rodney’s only friend. That was why he had never said anything.
“I’ll…I’ll go fishing with you”, Rodney said, even his whispers sounding loud in the quiet of the night. “I promise. I won’t back out. We’ll get on a jumper, fly to the mainland and I’ll sit there and be quiet. I promise. Just come back.” He took Carson’s hand between his. “Please come back.”
/
Eventually he did have to leave Carson’s side. As much as he loathed to admit it, but he couldn’t stay indefinitely and Carson wasn’t getting better. He wasn’t getting worse, either, Keller assured them, but at the moment they could do nothing except wait.
Rodney had always been bad at waiting. He excused himself from the away missions and put Zelenka in charge of whatever was being concocted in the labs while he busied himself reading medical textbooks. The expedition had brought quite a few of them but Rodney found them frustratingly vague. There were too many variables, too much was unknown. Medicine was voodoo for a reason and nothing he read was useful to helping Carson.
This went on for an entire month before out of the blue, Keller texted him.
“He’s awake.”
Rodney sprinted down the corridors, not caring that he pushed multiple people out of the way until he arrived in the infirmary. Carson was half sitting, half leaning on his bed, talking to Keller. There was still a bandage around his head but his eyes were open.
Over her shoulder, Carson looked at him and Rodney stopped dead in his tracks. Seeing Carson’s eyes was like seeing the sky for the first time. His hands began to shake.
“Hey Rodney.” Carson said in his familiar dialect, turning Rodney’s name into something else. Something sacred.
“Hey Carson.” He tried for nonchalance and missed it by a mile. Slowly he walked closer as if drawn to Carson by gravity.
“You look pretty bad Rodney, have you not been taking care of yourself?”
Rodney couldn’t stop himself any more than the moon could stop orbiting the earth. He closed the distance between them and threw his arms around Carson’s neck. He was warm under his touch, alive, beautiful.
“I’ll go fishing with you.”