That Voodoo That You Do by Mad Maudlin
Aug. 6th, 2007 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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sga_flashficTitle: That Voodoo That You Do
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG
Length: 6,000
Spoilers: Lots of little ones through the end of S3
Warnings: Kind of gross, in the end.
Summary: John leaned on the end of the bed, eyebrows up. "You know, McKay, I think Stephen King wrote a book like that."
A/N: I don't know where this idea came from, but it's had hold of me since the beginning of the challenge. Rodney paraphrases Mark Twain, and the Stephen King book it real, but John's actually thinking of the TV-movie version that he (like me) only saw part of.
That Voodoo that You Do
by Mad Maudlin
Things with the Odai had been, well, not okay, because they had the collective IQ of a mushy banana and their technology was antiquated even by rest-of-Earth standards—and he had Colonel Ooh-Look-At-The-Cowboys to thank for whoring out his brain to another planet of congenital morons—things hadn't been okay, but Rodney didn't think they would actually try to kill him. He did basically rebuild their pumping station from scratch, after all, and even got them enough spare electricity from the solar cell to have lights. Weren't primitive people supposed to be in awe of lights? And the Odai had been nice to Lorne's team, who were babysitting the soft scientists at the ruins—Lorne's team got tea, soft cheeses, and knitted goods made from the local llama-things that Ronon had cooed over (and that was so disturbing to watch). Lorne got cheese, and Rodney got death, and the Odai wouldn't even explain what he did. Or anything, really.
"They rarely speak in the presence of outsiders," Teyla told them. "It is a very old taboo."
"Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it," Rodney had muttered at the time.
"So they like the strong, silent type," Sheppard had said. "I can appreciate that." And he tapped on his sunglasses and struck a pose and Rodney had to remind him, again, that he wasn't actually Johnny Cash.
But then the Odai turned out to be cowboys—cowboys!—with tall boots and wide hats and big horned saddles on their llama-things. And apparently cowboys are cool in every galaxy, because Ronon went gaga for the llama-things, and Teyla accepted the gift of a hat, and Sheppard went from "strong and silent" to "sure, we'll let you kidnap our scientist and use him for slave labor, can I be your friend?" So Rodney spent a week of fun and lead poisoning bringing their pumping station into the current century, so they could have water and light (light! Who doesn't appreciate light?), despite the best efforts of the local mechanics who didn't even seem to comprehend what he meant when he told them he wouldn't trust them with anything more complicated than string. Short strings. They just looked at him with solemn eyes under their stupid hats and then offered him wrenches without even saying anything.
But he had to fix the pumping station so the soft scientists could look at the ruins (too ruined to have any good technology left, and thus in Rodney's book a huge waste of time) and when the station was fixed, and the ruins looked at, and Lorne and his team had got cheese, they were finally allowed to go back to Atlantis where all the real science was. John and Teyla both had cowboy hats by that point and Ronon had to say goodbye to a llama because Elizabeth wouldn't let him bring it home. Rodney was categorically disgusted.
"I'm disgusted with all of you," he told them, in case he hadn't properly communicated that nonverbally. "You're shameless, you know that?"
Sheppard was admiring Lorne's llama mittens. "C'mon, McKay, didn't you ever play cowboys and Indians as a kid?"
"Of course not," Rodney declared. "Why should I have anything to do with a romanticized image of American imperialism? Also, we call them First Nations."
"Cowboys are cool," Sheppard said, and put on his hat as if that proved it.
"If you're looking for role models in this bunch of degenerate, heat-addled Neanderthals, who need explicit written instructions on how to operate a lever, assuming of course they can even read—"
"Someone's coming," Ronon said abruptly.
"What? Where?" Rodney looked down the road that lead from the gate to the village, but unlike most westerns there was no artful plume of dust visible for miles over the open prairie. Instead, there were hills, and Rodney couldn't hear anything but the hideously annoying birds that had kept him awake every night they'd stayed in the Odai village. "I don't see anything."
Sheppard said, "Just finish checking your gear, McKay," but he was staring down the road, too. He even took his hat off. Rodney opened his mouth to argue, because clearly there was nothing there, but then he asked himself whether he'd trust Ronon's spidey-sense over hard empirical evidence and realized, yeah, Ronon kind of wins.
And five minutes later a load of Odai rode up in a llama-drawn wagon, weaving between the hills. They weren't waving pitchforks and torches, but Rodney wasn't about to take chances, and thus stepped behind the laden FRED, which had optimal hiding-place potential. Sheppard and Ronon stood on either side of the road, looking rather cowboyish themselves, but the wagon stopped a good distance back, and the Odai approached on foot. One of them was carrying an enormous covered platter, which probably couldn't be used as a weapon. Probably.
"Hi," Sheppard said.
The woman in charge of the village—who looked kind of like Angela Landsbury, except for the whole cowboy thing—said, "Hello." Then she waved at the platter thing. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Sheppard said, and Lorne accepted the platter. Rodney decided it probably didn't contain a bomb, because you don't blow up the same person you give mittens and cheese to, and he edged around the FRED to see what was under the lid as Teyla lifted it off.
Then he shrieked. In his defense, it was a very manly shriek.
"It's...lovely," Teyla said.
"You people are insane, aren't you?" Rodney demanded. "Completely and utterly psychotic! This is all some kind of vicious cowboy voodoo plot, isn't it? Ow!" He glared at Teyla, who had just kicked him in the shin. "What, you don't find this the least bit disturbing?"
"It's kinda cool, actually," Sheppard said. "Er, nice work. Very accurate."
"You helped us," Angela Landsbury said, and nodded at the platter, which contained a waxy and eerily accurate effigy of one Dr. Rodney McKay, complete with a tiny replica of the wrench he'd used to single-handedly rebuild the plumbing station, laying in blank-eyed repose. "Thanks," she said again.
"You are—welcome," the real Rodney said, but only because Teyla threatened to kick him again. "Er. What are we supposed to do with it?"
Another of the Odai took the platter back from Lorne, and Angela Landsbury drew an enormous, viciously serrated knife. Rodney took another step backwards, bumped into the FRED, and raised his hands in self-defense. (Ronon's hand was also twitching towards his gun, so Rodney absolutely was not alone in his interpretation of events.) She advanced on the mini-Rodney with the knife, which flashed ominously in the sun, and without batting an eye she stabbed into the effigy's head, sawing off the top at the level of the little painted eyebrows.
Then she put it on a plate, stuck a fork in it, and offered it to Sheppard. "Hey, cool," Sheppard said, accepting it. "McKake."
"You're not seriously going to eat that," Rodney said, and then watched with rising indignation as Sheppard did. Lorne got the next slice, and then someone passed Rodney one, and he was deeply torn between the soft, golden baked good and the fact that it was shaped like his own neck. "I'm pretty sure this has never happened to Sam Carter."
"I believe it is good manners to eat the cake," Teyla said, taking her own piece (left shoulder).
"It's me," he protested. "I'm eating myself."
"You taste pretty good," Lorne said. "You know, in cake form."
Ronon stuffed his piece of cake (solar plexus) into his mouth in one bite. Rodney took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and put the first tiny bite in his mouth. The frosting was a weird texture and there was too much of it, but the cake underneath was just as moist and rich as it had appeared. It was dense like a pound cake and tasted of something that wasn't quite vanilla and wasn't quite almond. "Okay," he said, "okay, so maybe the cake is good. That doesn't mean it's not also creepy as hell."
"I think it is very thoughtful of them," Teyla said.
"Yeah," Sheppard said. "Especially since you accused them of feeding their children lead-based paint."
Rodney was suddenly struck by a horrible thought. "There's no citrus in this, is there? Hey! Hey, you! Does this cake contain citrus fruit?"
The cake didn't have any citrus in it, to the extent that the Odai even understood what Rodney meant by "citrus" ("Brightly-colored, somewhat sour fruit that occasionally kills people?") and they managed to cut the cake small enough for almost everyone to get a piece. A little girl collected everyone's dishes, Teyla and Angela Landsbury bowed to each other, and everyone headed home satisfied. And in Rodney's case, really creeped out.
At the debriefing, Sheppard showed Elizabeth his hat, and Lorne offered to share his cheese, and Rodney explained about the cake. "I admit it was delicious, but it also had my face, which you can understand was a little off-putting."
"I wish you'd gotten pictures, actually," Elizabeth said. "Teyla, do the Odai usually make cakes in the image of their guests?"
"It is not something I had heard of before," Teyla admitted. "However, it was clearly intended a gesture of goodwill."
"Easy for you to say, you weren't the one being eaten in effigy," Rodney muttered, but nobody paid attention to him. Fine; be that way. He was beginning to suspect that overexposure to cowboys was giving him heartburn.
When the social scientists uncovered a concert hall on the northwest pier, Radek obediently relayed their report to Rodney. Rodney completely ignored it until he heard about the advanced sound-wave manipulation technology, at which point he immediately had to take it apart, and drag Radek along with him.
"Dr. Arroyo will not be pleased with this," Radek warned him as they escorted fourteen laptop, eight different kinds of cables, five microphones and a tuba into the room of soaring windows and gently curving steps.
"Arroyo needs to suck it up," Rodney declared with a little wave. "Besides, he's not even a real scientist. What's his degree in?"
"Ethnomusicology, I believe."
"Exactly. He totally made that up."
They spent all day locating emitters, examining crystals, and temporarily rerouting all the power in that particular building. Rodney terrorized one of the newer engineers into fetching brunch, lunch, a box of band-aids and a mid-afternoon snack, in that order, while Radek actually oversaw the investigation of the room. By dinner time they'd reduced a complex and ancient piece of technology to a jumble of crystals, cables and softly glowing laptop screens, every part identified, catalogued and organized into a (mostly) functional whole. Rodney had his head in the ceiling, reinstalling the last bank of crystals, when Colonel Sheppard wandered in and looked around with a little scowl.
Radek helpfully pointed out Rodney. Sheppard nodded to him, then began pounding on the leg of the ladder with a screwdriver. "Hey, McKay," he called up, "you wanna explain why you asked Elizabeth to reschedule our next mission?"
"Busy," Rodney snapped from above. "Ask Zelenka."
"I am not your messaging service," Radek shot back, checking the configuration of the software they had stolen from Linguistics (and largely re-written, which made it only a venial sin).
"Fine," Rodney said, and started down the ladder. Partway down, however, he suddenly paused, paling, and pressed his forehead against a rung.
"Rodney?" Radek asked. When he didn't respond right away, Radek climbed to his knees and raised his voice. "Hello, Rodney?"
"McKay?" Sheppard asked.
"Fine," Rodney said, and made his way to the bottom of the ladder. As soon as both feet hit the ground, he produced a power bar from one pocket. "Uh, the mission, right—obviously I can't go anywhere until I've finished here, and that might take the rest of the week, if not longer."
"And what is here, exactly?" Sheppard asked, looking around. In the opposite corner, Chuck was tuning his tuba, while Miko attached a microphone to the edge of the bell.
"Concert hall, we think," Radek explained. "Possibly a form of community theatre."
"Community theatre with the best sound system in the galaxy," Rodney added around a mouthful of his power bar, "and the potential to make Sam Carter's anti-Prior sound weapon useful again, if we can replicate some of the focusing effects. I think we can all agree that saving the Milky Way from the Ori is worth delaying a visit to yet another set of charming mud huts, hmm?"
Radek scowled, and shielded his laptop from any rogue crumbs. "Chew with your mouth closed, disgusting man."
"I'm sorry, did I make it your job to mind my manners?"
"Clearly someone must," Radek muttered, but he found it difficult to maintain irritation; Rodney's face was still quite pale, and he had a thin sheen of sweat over his forehead.
Sheppard, apparently, noticed it, too. "You feeling all right, McKay?" he asked.
"Of course not," Rodney said, and then thankfully swallowed. "I haven't eaten in over four hours and the brain burns glucose at an alarming right. Make yourself useful and tell Olsen to bring us dinner."
Sheppard glanced at Radek, who could only shrug. "You're telling me you skipped a meal, McKay?" the colonel asked.
Rodney waved him away. "This isn't skipping. Did I say I was skipping? I was merely distracted by the salvation of multiple galaxies over here, thank you. If you're not bringing me food, then go away."
"Right," Sheppard said. "Oh, and we're not rescheduling the mission."
"Yes, we are, and Elizabeth will totally agree with me. Now shoo." Rodney crouched down to read over Radek's shoulder for a moment, and when he stood again the motion wasn't entirely smooth. "And somebody get me a sandwich!"
John didn't think he'd done anything particularly wicked in a former life, though it would certainly explain a few things about his current one. For instance, why he had to carry McKay back to the gate in a driving rainstorm, listening to him bitch the entire time. "I'm fine," McKay said for about the fifth time as Teyla dialed up ahead of them. "It's a hypoglycemic reaction."
"You puked," Ronon said.
"I know that."
"Twice."
"Play nice, kids," John told them, then turned on his radio as the wormhole established. "Atlantis, this is Sheppard, we have a medical emergency."
"What's the situation, Colonel?"
McKay tried to speak into John's earpiece and ended up grabbing a fistful of hair. "I need a Snickers bar and two pieces of that pie stuff from lunch in the gate room, stat!" he shouted. Ronon pulled him off.
"Say again, Colonel?"
"McKay's not feeling so hot, Sergeant. If you could alert Dr. Beckett that we're on our way..."
"It's just my blood sugar," Rodney said sulkily.
"Blood sugar," John said, "and the big ol' cut on your head."
"What? What?"
A corpsman was waiting for them on the other side of the gate, and McKay immediately staggered away from John towards him. "I need medical attention!" he shouted. "Stitches, anesthetic, transfusion! I think my brain is bleeding!"
The horrified corpsman caught McKay before he pirouetted to the floor, and John helped hauled him back to his feet. "C'mon, buddy, let's get some dessert into you."
"But I'm bleeding," McKay said. "You said I'm bleeding."
"You hit your head when you fell," John said. "That doesn't mean you have an aneurysm."
"But I'm bleeding."
Beckett appeared with a bag in hand, speeding up a bit when he saw McKay's pallor and the oozing cut on his forehead. "What's happened to you, then?"
"Blood sugar," John, Teyla and Ronon said in unison.
McKay batted everyone away from him and stood, wobbly, on his own. "Yes, thank you, I've only been telling you that for half hour. My hypoglycemia kicked in, I fell—and thank you so much for not mentioning a head injury to me, Colonel—"
"We gave him food, but he puked," Ronon said helpfully. "Twice."
Beckett frowned, and flashed a light into McKay's eyes. "Rodney, I saw you eat right before the mission."
"I had one doughnut because Colonel Bright-And-Early insisted on departing at the crack of dawn," McKay declared. "Anyway, my blood sugar always crashes when I'm under stress."
John snorted. "We left at oh-eight-hundred. You telling me you're scared of thunder?"
"Of course not, but clearly if we'd stayed at that outpost any longer the risk of flash flooding—"
"That's enough, Rodney." Carson opened up his bag and fished out a roll of glucose tablets. "Eat these," he said, "and we'll check your sugar while we do the rest of your post-mission check-up."
"I don't want these," McKay muttered. "They're just glorified Pez. If I'm eating anything, I want a cheeseburger."
"You can get your own cheeseburger when you can walk straight," John said. "Promise."
"Don't patronize me," McKay said with a scowl, and explored the small cut on his forehead. "Is anyone actually concerned about my possibly cranial trauma?"
"Aye," Beckett said, "which is why I recommend you get yourself down to the infirmary, so I can have a proper look at you."
"Witch doctor." McKay picked at the wrapped of the tablets. "What if I pass out again and my brain swells up and I die?"
Ronon took him by the arm and pulled him towards the transporter. "I'll drag you the rest of the way."
"Oh, that's so reassuring..."
John dumped his soaked gear, changed into dry clothes, checked in his weapons at the armory, reported to Elizabeth, bothered Lorne, and with nothing else left to do, headed back to the infirmary. Teyla was just finishing her check-up, and McKay was laying down with one arm over his face. "He okay?" John asked Teyla quietly as the nurse finished drawing blood.
"He's fine, thank you," McKay announced. "He is merely nauseated, dizzy and now missing a few pints of blood thanks to our sheep-fondling bloodsucker-in-chief."
"Carson is doing his best to help you, Rodney," Teyla said tightly, pressing a cotton ball into her elbow.
To John's surprise, McKay didn't snap at her; he just grumbled and lowered his arm to rub his eyes. His color had improved, and the tray table next to his bed was festooned with the shredded remnants of the glucose tablet wrapper. "You're still sick?" John asked.
"Not so much, actually," he admitted. "It's mostly just a broad-spectrum annoyance right now."
John leaned against Rodney's bed and poked the band-aid on his forehead. "McKay, you were sick and injured. Normally you'd be the first person to demand we go home and get you fixed instead of sticking around to watch the rivers rise."
"Well, yes," he said, sitting up a bit. "But, you know, the potential for coma and death aside, I do know how to handle a hypoglycemic event. I'm positive the third power bar would've stayed down."
John looked at Teyla, because while he liked to think he'd have noticed if McKay were swapped for a pod person, it was always helpful to get a second opinion. Teyla, however, managed the ghost of a smile. "Rodney, there is no need to be embarrassed," she said.
McKay huffed. "Embarrassed? Don’t be ridiculous, I have a perfectly legitimate medical condition—"
He was cut off by the return of Carson, who was carrying a small ampule and a syringe. "Well, Rodney, your sugar was definitely low, but I'm also concerned about your iron."
"Iron?" McKay said blankly. "Are you saying I'm anemic?"
"Not quite," Carson said, "but you're on the low end of normal, and that's not normal, if you catch my meaning. What have you been eating lately?"
"I don't know, the same things everyone else has," McKay said. "I don't have liver failure, do I?"
"No, your liver's fine, and so are your bones, your spleen, and everything else you're planning to ask about." Carson filled the syringe. "I'm going to give you a B12 injection, and I want you to watch your diet very carefully over the next few days. Let me know if you're still feeling poorly, you understand?"
"Right, right." Rodney shrugged off his jacket and pushed up his sleeve for the shot. "But you're sure it's not liver failure?"
John patted McKay's back. "Look on the bright side, buddy. This has to be the first time Carson's ever nagged you about eating more, right?"
"Aye," Carson said, "though it's also the first time he's actually lost any weight at a check-up, either."
Rodney gave him another black look. "Are we all done defaming my eating habits here? Because if I don't get some protein relatively soon I'm going to be flat on my back again."
"You're done here." Carson slapped a band-aid on the injection site. "Teyla, would you walk with him to the cafeteria, just to be on the safe side?"
"I can do it," John offered.
"No," Carson said, "you can sit down and get your check-up done."
McKay smirked at John as he stood up without any sign of dizziness. John stuck his tongue out at him, and sat on a bed, offering Carson his arm.
Elizabeth hated to call staff meetings on Friday afternoons—even if weekends didn't actually mean much on Atlantis, there was a certain psychological cachet to the day and time that made people restless. Still, sometimes enough niggling little issues piled up that it was just most efficient to call all the department heads together in one place to hash them out.
Of course, it always helped when all the department heads actually showed up.
They'd been waiting on Rodney in the staff meeting room for over fifteen minutes, and what little focus anyone had was starting to degrade—Radek hadn't looked up from his laptop for ages, and John and Major Lorne were engaged in a marathon game of hangman. She was about to try to radio Rodney when Carson's radio suddenly came to life. Only his end of the conversation was really audible. "Beckett here. Go ahead, love....Is he stable now? All right, keep Ronon down there, I'm on my way."
"What's the problem, Carson?" Elizabeth asked.
"I'm afraid Rodney won't be able to join us," he said, standing. "Ronon brought him to the infirmary a few minutes ago, saying he fainted."
Almost everyone had heard about the circumstances of his team's early exit from their last mission, and they all sat up a little straighter at the news; Elizabeth's stomach sank. "It's not his blood sugar again, is it?" John asked.
"I'll tell you when I know," Carson said. "Excuse me, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth looked at John, Teyla and Zelenka in turn, the three most likely to have spent time with Rodney over the last few days. "I was under the impression that Rodney was fine again after what happened on P3T-920."
"He was," John said. "Hasn't bitched about hypoglycemia in days."
"He cannot possibly, the way he is eating," Zelenka said. "He breaks his own rule about food in the labs, always snacking."
Teyla just shrugged. "I noticed he was not at lunch at his usual time today, but if he has been eating in his lab..."
Elizabeth frowned. Rodney was fastidious to the point of paranoid about crumbs around his equipment, and he almost always ate at the same time every day, right when the cafeteria started serving each meal. Perhaps something unexpected had delayed him today, perhaps he trusted himself not to make a mess with his food, but still...
"What I want to know," Lorne said, to general agreement, "is how he goes three years without any kind of blood sugar problem and then passes out twice in a week."
They couldn't have a staff meeting without staff members, so Elizabeth had an excuse to adjourn early. John followed her to the infirmary, and they found Ronon waiting outside, twirling a wooden sword despite the stern frowns of the nurses. "McKay's still sick," he informed them.
"So we heard," Elizabeth said. "What happened?"
Ronon shrugged. "Passed out in the gym. Couldn't get back up. He didn't puke, though."
She looked at John, because she had never quite understood what Rodney and Ronon did in the gym, except to guarantee that it was fully consensual and nobody was getting seriously hurt. John just shrugged, and Elizabeth bit her lip, wondering if—once again—they were facing a medical mystery with a friend's life hanging in the balance.
She wasn't much comforted when a nurse escorted her and John into the back of the infirmary. Rodney was laying down, and he had an IV; his face was very white and sheened with sweat, and his pupils were blown wide. "I actually feel pretty good," he was saying, with a slight slur. "Not, you know, walking around good, but compared to other times I've almost died, this is practically pleasant."
"You're not dying, Rodney," Carson said; he was peering at a laptop screen, but he straightened up when he saw her and John. "Colonel. Elizabeth. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of answers yet."
"Dy-ing," Rodney said, sing-song.
"Is it blood sugar or not?" John asked. "'Cause I don't think it's possible for him to eat any more often and still, you know, sleep and work."
Elizabeth sighed, though she knew it was just one of John's quirks. Rodney didn't even seem offended; in fact, he nodded enthusiastically. "He's right. I mean, not right right, but I've been really good about eating whenever I started to feel woozy, and you know what? Not actually helping."
"And yet somehow, you've managed to lose six kilos in the last five days," Carson muttered.
Rodney stabbed a finger at him. "Cancer. Unexplained weight loss means cancer. I need to update my will."
Carson sighed, and turned his back on his patient to address John and Elizabeth. "The intravenous glucose is bringing his blood sugar back up, but it's just a stopgap while we try to figure out what's depressing it to begin with."
"Pancreatic cancer," Rodney suggested.
"You don't have cancer, you daft bugger!"
"Carson," Elizabeth said, before they could get sidetracked, "aside from pancreatic cancer, what could be causing these symptoms?"
He ran his fingers through his hair and grimaced helplessly. "I've ordered a complete battery of blood tests, but his white count isn't elevated, so it's not likely an infection. He hasn't mentioned any other GI abnormalities, he's anemic, he's got mild peritonitis—"
Rodney suddenly sat up in bed, and then nearly fell out of it. "Voodoo!" he shouted. "It's cowboy voodoo!"
"What are you talking about?" Elizabeth asked, as Carson tried to force him back down.
"The cowboy voodoo cake!" he insisted. "Remember? Sheppard, you remember the cake?"
"The Odai cake, yeah," John said. "What's that got to do with your pancreas?"
"It was voodoo," Rodney said feverishly. "They wanted to kill me because I wasn't impressed by their cowboy ways, so they fed us evil cake under false pretenses."
Elizabeth looked at Carson, who just frowned. John leaned on the end of the bed, eyebrows up. "You know, McKay, I think Stephen King wrote a book like that."
"Okay, so I don't mean actual voodoo," Rodney said. "But obviously it was a ceremonial death cake of some kind. I bet it was poisoned. With cancer."
"If the cake was poisoned, how come the rest of us aren't sick?"
"That's actually a good question," Carson said suddenly. "Rodney's symptoms started shortly after the mission to the Odai, so it stands to reason that if there's an external cause, that's where he was exposed to it."
"So we go back and ask the nice cowboys if they make death cakes?" John said. "Because I recommend sending Lorne for that. They like him. He got cheese."
"I was thinking more of testing the environment for pathogens," Carson said, "but yes, I'd like someone to go back. And everyone who went on the first mission should get a physical, as well."
John's face fell at that, but Elizabeth felt a glimmer of something like relief; they were moving towards an answer, even if they couldn't see it yet. "I'll contact the archaeologists who went on the Odai dig," she said. "Is there a team besides yours and Major Lorne's that could escort Dr. Beckett, Colonel?"
"I think Captain Radner's still in the city," John said, and keyed his radio over to the military channel. Elizabeth adjusted her own radio to the channel reserved for social science, but before she stepped away to talk she reached across the bed and patted Rodney's hand.
"Cowboy voodoo cancer cake," he said, but gave her a thumbs-up. She supposed that was about the best she could expect.
Rodney McKay had suffered many indignities in his life, most of them since coming to Atlantis. He had been tortured, kidnapped, dangled upside down, drugged, stalked by whales, shown up by his own doppelganger and granted superpowers with the biggest "gotcha" ever. At the moment, he was curled into a fetal position on an infirmary bed with the stomach ache from hell, one not improved by a recent bout of dry heaves; he was sweaty and dizzy and a headache cinched him from temple to temple; he had an IV in one arm and a set of track marks on the other from blood draws and vitamin shots.
And now, this.
"You've got to be kidding me," he said weakly.
Carson sighed, but it was a deep, satisfied sigh that made Rodney hate him a little. "It's a rapidly-growing beasty with some way of suppressing an immune response that also tricked the medical scanners, at least initially," he said. "And your hypoglycemia confounded the usual symptoms."
Lorne, who still had band-aids on his arm, squinted at the image on the screen. "Kinda looks like a Goa'uld," he opined.
"Don't even joke about that," Rodney snapped.
Sheppard patted him briskly on the shoulder. "Congratulations, McKay. What are you going to name your tapeworm?" Rodney buried his face in the pillow rather than dignifying that with a response. "Gotta admit, it's better than pancreatic cancer."
Elizabeth, thank god, returned them to the topic at hand. "So he picked this up from the Odai?"
"Aye," Carson said. "We found eggs in the dropping of their animals, and also in the cheese that Major Lorne brought back with him."
Lorne's face went ashy, and Sheppard leaned forward suddenly. "Wait a minute. So do the rest of us—?"
Carson shrugged. "We'll review the scans, but it seems quite likely."
"Ha," Rodney said, thrusting a finger in Sheppard's general direction. "Name your own damn tapeworm, Colonel."
"But none of us are sick," Lorne protested. "How come we're not flailing around with McKay?"
Carson shrugged. "There are lots of factors, Major. In particular, I suspect certain microbes in the cheese would normally kill the mature parasite before it could attach—but since none of you ate more that a few pieces of it..."
"And McKay didn't eat any, because the Odai hated him," Sheppard added.
"...those microbes didn't build up in your intestines, so you merely slowed the thing down."
"So the cake was evil," Rodney protested. "It was symbolic of the tapeworm."
"Right, Rodney," Sheppard said, and patted him slowly on the shoulder. "It's all a vicious plot." Rodney glared at him, because this was serious business. The Odai had withheld the healing cheese and given him voodoo cake as part of some weird silent cowboy joke. It was practically biological warfare. Why weren't they discussing retaliation?
"This is treatable, isn't it, Carson?" Elizabeth asked, before Rodney could explain this to the room at large.
"Oh, aye," Carson said. "We've several ways to kill the parasite, and once it detaches from the intestinal wall it should, ah, pass fairly painlessly."
With a surge of horror, Rodney pushed himself up as much as his aching stomach would allow, revenge forgotten. "Fairly painlessly? Only fairly?"
"Still better than cancer," Sheppard muttered, but his heart wasn't in it.
And that should've been the worst part, surely, getting tucked in by a nurse for a night of abdominal cramps and parasite expulsion. The fact that everyone else who'd visited the Odai was bedding down alongside him didn't lessen the intense humiliation one bit, not after Carson explained the need for "specimen collection." (Rodney had briefly considered smothering himself with a pillow after that conversation.)
But no, the worst was yet to come. The worst took the form two cooks who came down with an array of covered plates, and talked their way past Carson into the Tapeworm Ward. "Perfect," Sheppard said when he saw them. "You pulled it off?"
"Yes, sir," said one of the cooks, and put a plate on the little table next to Rodney's bed.
Rodney eyed it with intense suspicion. "What exactly is this, Colonel?"
Sheppard just smirked. "Just a little midnight snack I ordered up. Check it out yourself."
Rodney peeked until the cover, looking for potential booby-traps. There were none. He glanced around, but most other people were ignoring their plates, more concerned with getting comfortable for the night (and next day, if Carson's combination of drugs and fiber drinks didn't work its black magic right away). He eyed Sheppard again, but Sheppard was reclining on his bed, looking innocent, which meant something awful was definitely going to happen.
Holding his breath, he lifted the cover off.
Somehow, somewhere, the kitchen staff had gotten hold of green food coloring, and painted a Twinkie with it. One end of the snack cake had been decorated with green gumdrops, mounted on toothpicks, above a little smiling face piped on in brown icing. The smile just happened to have fangs.
"Oh, very funny, Colonel," Rodney groaned.
Sheppard beamed at him. "Just trying a little voodoo of our own."
Author:
mad_maudlinRating: PG
Length: 6,000
Spoilers: Lots of little ones through the end of S3
Warnings: Kind of gross, in the end.
Summary: John leaned on the end of the bed, eyebrows up. "You know, McKay, I think Stephen King wrote a book like that."
A/N: I don't know where this idea came from, but it's had hold of me since the beginning of the challenge. Rodney paraphrases Mark Twain, and the Stephen King book it real, but John's actually thinking of the TV-movie version that he (like me) only saw part of.
That Voodoo that You Do
by Mad Maudlin
Day One
Things with the Odai had been, well, not okay, because they had the collective IQ of a mushy banana and their technology was antiquated even by rest-of-Earth standards—and he had Colonel Ooh-Look-At-The-Cowboys to thank for whoring out his brain to another planet of congenital morons—things hadn't been okay, but Rodney didn't think they would actually try to kill him. He did basically rebuild their pumping station from scratch, after all, and even got them enough spare electricity from the solar cell to have lights. Weren't primitive people supposed to be in awe of lights? And the Odai had been nice to Lorne's team, who were babysitting the soft scientists at the ruins—Lorne's team got tea, soft cheeses, and knitted goods made from the local llama-things that Ronon had cooed over (and that was so disturbing to watch). Lorne got cheese, and Rodney got death, and the Odai wouldn't even explain what he did. Or anything, really.
"They rarely speak in the presence of outsiders," Teyla told them. "It is a very old taboo."
"Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it," Rodney had muttered at the time.
"So they like the strong, silent type," Sheppard had said. "I can appreciate that." And he tapped on his sunglasses and struck a pose and Rodney had to remind him, again, that he wasn't actually Johnny Cash.
But then the Odai turned out to be cowboys—cowboys!—with tall boots and wide hats and big horned saddles on their llama-things. And apparently cowboys are cool in every galaxy, because Ronon went gaga for the llama-things, and Teyla accepted the gift of a hat, and Sheppard went from "strong and silent" to "sure, we'll let you kidnap our scientist and use him for slave labor, can I be your friend?" So Rodney spent a week of fun and lead poisoning bringing their pumping station into the current century, so they could have water and light (light! Who doesn't appreciate light?), despite the best efforts of the local mechanics who didn't even seem to comprehend what he meant when he told them he wouldn't trust them with anything more complicated than string. Short strings. They just looked at him with solemn eyes under their stupid hats and then offered him wrenches without even saying anything.
But he had to fix the pumping station so the soft scientists could look at the ruins (too ruined to have any good technology left, and thus in Rodney's book a huge waste of time) and when the station was fixed, and the ruins looked at, and Lorne and his team had got cheese, they were finally allowed to go back to Atlantis where all the real science was. John and Teyla both had cowboy hats by that point and Ronon had to say goodbye to a llama because Elizabeth wouldn't let him bring it home. Rodney was categorically disgusted.
"I'm disgusted with all of you," he told them, in case he hadn't properly communicated that nonverbally. "You're shameless, you know that?"
Sheppard was admiring Lorne's llama mittens. "C'mon, McKay, didn't you ever play cowboys and Indians as a kid?"
"Of course not," Rodney declared. "Why should I have anything to do with a romanticized image of American imperialism? Also, we call them First Nations."
"Cowboys are cool," Sheppard said, and put on his hat as if that proved it.
"If you're looking for role models in this bunch of degenerate, heat-addled Neanderthals, who need explicit written instructions on how to operate a lever, assuming of course they can even read—"
"Someone's coming," Ronon said abruptly.
"What? Where?" Rodney looked down the road that lead from the gate to the village, but unlike most westerns there was no artful plume of dust visible for miles over the open prairie. Instead, there were hills, and Rodney couldn't hear anything but the hideously annoying birds that had kept him awake every night they'd stayed in the Odai village. "I don't see anything."
Sheppard said, "Just finish checking your gear, McKay," but he was staring down the road, too. He even took his hat off. Rodney opened his mouth to argue, because clearly there was nothing there, but then he asked himself whether he'd trust Ronon's spidey-sense over hard empirical evidence and realized, yeah, Ronon kind of wins.
And five minutes later a load of Odai rode up in a llama-drawn wagon, weaving between the hills. They weren't waving pitchforks and torches, but Rodney wasn't about to take chances, and thus stepped behind the laden FRED, which had optimal hiding-place potential. Sheppard and Ronon stood on either side of the road, looking rather cowboyish themselves, but the wagon stopped a good distance back, and the Odai approached on foot. One of them was carrying an enormous covered platter, which probably couldn't be used as a weapon. Probably.
"Hi," Sheppard said.
The woman in charge of the village—who looked kind of like Angela Landsbury, except for the whole cowboy thing—said, "Hello." Then she waved at the platter thing. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," Sheppard said, and Lorne accepted the platter. Rodney decided it probably didn't contain a bomb, because you don't blow up the same person you give mittens and cheese to, and he edged around the FRED to see what was under the lid as Teyla lifted it off.
Then he shrieked. In his defense, it was a very manly shriek.
"It's...lovely," Teyla said.
"You people are insane, aren't you?" Rodney demanded. "Completely and utterly psychotic! This is all some kind of vicious cowboy voodoo plot, isn't it? Ow!" He glared at Teyla, who had just kicked him in the shin. "What, you don't find this the least bit disturbing?"
"It's kinda cool, actually," Sheppard said. "Er, nice work. Very accurate."
"You helped us," Angela Landsbury said, and nodded at the platter, which contained a waxy and eerily accurate effigy of one Dr. Rodney McKay, complete with a tiny replica of the wrench he'd used to single-handedly rebuild the plumbing station, laying in blank-eyed repose. "Thanks," she said again.
"You are—welcome," the real Rodney said, but only because Teyla threatened to kick him again. "Er. What are we supposed to do with it?"
Another of the Odai took the platter back from Lorne, and Angela Landsbury drew an enormous, viciously serrated knife. Rodney took another step backwards, bumped into the FRED, and raised his hands in self-defense. (Ronon's hand was also twitching towards his gun, so Rodney absolutely was not alone in his interpretation of events.) She advanced on the mini-Rodney with the knife, which flashed ominously in the sun, and without batting an eye she stabbed into the effigy's head, sawing off the top at the level of the little painted eyebrows.
Then she put it on a plate, stuck a fork in it, and offered it to Sheppard. "Hey, cool," Sheppard said, accepting it. "McKake."
"You're not seriously going to eat that," Rodney said, and then watched with rising indignation as Sheppard did. Lorne got the next slice, and then someone passed Rodney one, and he was deeply torn between the soft, golden baked good and the fact that it was shaped like his own neck. "I'm pretty sure this has never happened to Sam Carter."
"I believe it is good manners to eat the cake," Teyla said, taking her own piece (left shoulder).
"It's me," he protested. "I'm eating myself."
"You taste pretty good," Lorne said. "You know, in cake form."
Ronon stuffed his piece of cake (solar plexus) into his mouth in one bite. Rodney took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and put the first tiny bite in his mouth. The frosting was a weird texture and there was too much of it, but the cake underneath was just as moist and rich as it had appeared. It was dense like a pound cake and tasted of something that wasn't quite vanilla and wasn't quite almond. "Okay," he said, "okay, so maybe the cake is good. That doesn't mean it's not also creepy as hell."
"I think it is very thoughtful of them," Teyla said.
"Yeah," Sheppard said. "Especially since you accused them of feeding their children lead-based paint."
Rodney was suddenly struck by a horrible thought. "There's no citrus in this, is there? Hey! Hey, you! Does this cake contain citrus fruit?"
The cake didn't have any citrus in it, to the extent that the Odai even understood what Rodney meant by "citrus" ("Brightly-colored, somewhat sour fruit that occasionally kills people?") and they managed to cut the cake small enough for almost everyone to get a piece. A little girl collected everyone's dishes, Teyla and Angela Landsbury bowed to each other, and everyone headed home satisfied. And in Rodney's case, really creeped out.
At the debriefing, Sheppard showed Elizabeth his hat, and Lorne offered to share his cheese, and Rodney explained about the cake. "I admit it was delicious, but it also had my face, which you can understand was a little off-putting."
"I wish you'd gotten pictures, actually," Elizabeth said. "Teyla, do the Odai usually make cakes in the image of their guests?"
"It is not something I had heard of before," Teyla admitted. "However, it was clearly intended a gesture of goodwill."
"Easy for you to say, you weren't the one being eaten in effigy," Rodney muttered, but nobody paid attention to him. Fine; be that way. He was beginning to suspect that overexposure to cowboys was giving him heartburn.
Day Ten
When the social scientists uncovered a concert hall on the northwest pier, Radek obediently relayed their report to Rodney. Rodney completely ignored it until he heard about the advanced sound-wave manipulation technology, at which point he immediately had to take it apart, and drag Radek along with him.
"Dr. Arroyo will not be pleased with this," Radek warned him as they escorted fourteen laptop, eight different kinds of cables, five microphones and a tuba into the room of soaring windows and gently curving steps.
"Arroyo needs to suck it up," Rodney declared with a little wave. "Besides, he's not even a real scientist. What's his degree in?"
"Ethnomusicology, I believe."
"Exactly. He totally made that up."
They spent all day locating emitters, examining crystals, and temporarily rerouting all the power in that particular building. Rodney terrorized one of the newer engineers into fetching brunch, lunch, a box of band-aids and a mid-afternoon snack, in that order, while Radek actually oversaw the investigation of the room. By dinner time they'd reduced a complex and ancient piece of technology to a jumble of crystals, cables and softly glowing laptop screens, every part identified, catalogued and organized into a (mostly) functional whole. Rodney had his head in the ceiling, reinstalling the last bank of crystals, when Colonel Sheppard wandered in and looked around with a little scowl.
Radek helpfully pointed out Rodney. Sheppard nodded to him, then began pounding on the leg of the ladder with a screwdriver. "Hey, McKay," he called up, "you wanna explain why you asked Elizabeth to reschedule our next mission?"
"Busy," Rodney snapped from above. "Ask Zelenka."
"I am not your messaging service," Radek shot back, checking the configuration of the software they had stolen from Linguistics (and largely re-written, which made it only a venial sin).
"Fine," Rodney said, and started down the ladder. Partway down, however, he suddenly paused, paling, and pressed his forehead against a rung.
"Rodney?" Radek asked. When he didn't respond right away, Radek climbed to his knees and raised his voice. "Hello, Rodney?"
"McKay?" Sheppard asked.
"Fine," Rodney said, and made his way to the bottom of the ladder. As soon as both feet hit the ground, he produced a power bar from one pocket. "Uh, the mission, right—obviously I can't go anywhere until I've finished here, and that might take the rest of the week, if not longer."
"And what is here, exactly?" Sheppard asked, looking around. In the opposite corner, Chuck was tuning his tuba, while Miko attached a microphone to the edge of the bell.
"Concert hall, we think," Radek explained. "Possibly a form of community theatre."
"Community theatre with the best sound system in the galaxy," Rodney added around a mouthful of his power bar, "and the potential to make Sam Carter's anti-Prior sound weapon useful again, if we can replicate some of the focusing effects. I think we can all agree that saving the Milky Way from the Ori is worth delaying a visit to yet another set of charming mud huts, hmm?"
Radek scowled, and shielded his laptop from any rogue crumbs. "Chew with your mouth closed, disgusting man."
"I'm sorry, did I make it your job to mind my manners?"
"Clearly someone must," Radek muttered, but he found it difficult to maintain irritation; Rodney's face was still quite pale, and he had a thin sheen of sweat over his forehead.
Sheppard, apparently, noticed it, too. "You feeling all right, McKay?" he asked.
"Of course not," Rodney said, and then thankfully swallowed. "I haven't eaten in over four hours and the brain burns glucose at an alarming right. Make yourself useful and tell Olsen to bring us dinner."
Sheppard glanced at Radek, who could only shrug. "You're telling me you skipped a meal, McKay?" the colonel asked.
Rodney waved him away. "This isn't skipping. Did I say I was skipping? I was merely distracted by the salvation of multiple galaxies over here, thank you. If you're not bringing me food, then go away."
"Right," Sheppard said. "Oh, and we're not rescheduling the mission."
"Yes, we are, and Elizabeth will totally agree with me. Now shoo." Rodney crouched down to read over Radek's shoulder for a moment, and when he stood again the motion wasn't entirely smooth. "And somebody get me a sandwich!"
Day Twenty-One
John didn't think he'd done anything particularly wicked in a former life, though it would certainly explain a few things about his current one. For instance, why he had to carry McKay back to the gate in a driving rainstorm, listening to him bitch the entire time. "I'm fine," McKay said for about the fifth time as Teyla dialed up ahead of them. "It's a hypoglycemic reaction."
"You puked," Ronon said.
"I know that."
"Twice."
"Play nice, kids," John told them, then turned on his radio as the wormhole established. "Atlantis, this is Sheppard, we have a medical emergency."
"What's the situation, Colonel?"
McKay tried to speak into John's earpiece and ended up grabbing a fistful of hair. "I need a Snickers bar and two pieces of that pie stuff from lunch in the gate room, stat!" he shouted. Ronon pulled him off.
"Say again, Colonel?"
"McKay's not feeling so hot, Sergeant. If you could alert Dr. Beckett that we're on our way..."
"It's just my blood sugar," Rodney said sulkily.
"Blood sugar," John said, "and the big ol' cut on your head."
"What? What?"
A corpsman was waiting for them on the other side of the gate, and McKay immediately staggered away from John towards him. "I need medical attention!" he shouted. "Stitches, anesthetic, transfusion! I think my brain is bleeding!"
The horrified corpsman caught McKay before he pirouetted to the floor, and John helped hauled him back to his feet. "C'mon, buddy, let's get some dessert into you."
"But I'm bleeding," McKay said. "You said I'm bleeding."
"You hit your head when you fell," John said. "That doesn't mean you have an aneurysm."
"But I'm bleeding."
Beckett appeared with a bag in hand, speeding up a bit when he saw McKay's pallor and the oozing cut on his forehead. "What's happened to you, then?"
"Blood sugar," John, Teyla and Ronon said in unison.
McKay batted everyone away from him and stood, wobbly, on his own. "Yes, thank you, I've only been telling you that for half hour. My hypoglycemia kicked in, I fell—and thank you so much for not mentioning a head injury to me, Colonel—"
"We gave him food, but he puked," Ronon said helpfully. "Twice."
Beckett frowned, and flashed a light into McKay's eyes. "Rodney, I saw you eat right before the mission."
"I had one doughnut because Colonel Bright-And-Early insisted on departing at the crack of dawn," McKay declared. "Anyway, my blood sugar always crashes when I'm under stress."
John snorted. "We left at oh-eight-hundred. You telling me you're scared of thunder?"
"Of course not, but clearly if we'd stayed at that outpost any longer the risk of flash flooding—"
"That's enough, Rodney." Carson opened up his bag and fished out a roll of glucose tablets. "Eat these," he said, "and we'll check your sugar while we do the rest of your post-mission check-up."
"I don't want these," McKay muttered. "They're just glorified Pez. If I'm eating anything, I want a cheeseburger."
"You can get your own cheeseburger when you can walk straight," John said. "Promise."
"Don't patronize me," McKay said with a scowl, and explored the small cut on his forehead. "Is anyone actually concerned about my possibly cranial trauma?"
"Aye," Beckett said, "which is why I recommend you get yourself down to the infirmary, so I can have a proper look at you."
"Witch doctor." McKay picked at the wrapped of the tablets. "What if I pass out again and my brain swells up and I die?"
Ronon took him by the arm and pulled him towards the transporter. "I'll drag you the rest of the way."
"Oh, that's so reassuring..."
John dumped his soaked gear, changed into dry clothes, checked in his weapons at the armory, reported to Elizabeth, bothered Lorne, and with nothing else left to do, headed back to the infirmary. Teyla was just finishing her check-up, and McKay was laying down with one arm over his face. "He okay?" John asked Teyla quietly as the nurse finished drawing blood.
"He's fine, thank you," McKay announced. "He is merely nauseated, dizzy and now missing a few pints of blood thanks to our sheep-fondling bloodsucker-in-chief."
"Carson is doing his best to help you, Rodney," Teyla said tightly, pressing a cotton ball into her elbow.
To John's surprise, McKay didn't snap at her; he just grumbled and lowered his arm to rub his eyes. His color had improved, and the tray table next to his bed was festooned with the shredded remnants of the glucose tablet wrapper. "You're still sick?" John asked.
"Not so much, actually," he admitted. "It's mostly just a broad-spectrum annoyance right now."
John leaned against Rodney's bed and poked the band-aid on his forehead. "McKay, you were sick and injured. Normally you'd be the first person to demand we go home and get you fixed instead of sticking around to watch the rivers rise."
"Well, yes," he said, sitting up a bit. "But, you know, the potential for coma and death aside, I do know how to handle a hypoglycemic event. I'm positive the third power bar would've stayed down."
John looked at Teyla, because while he liked to think he'd have noticed if McKay were swapped for a pod person, it was always helpful to get a second opinion. Teyla, however, managed the ghost of a smile. "Rodney, there is no need to be embarrassed," she said.
McKay huffed. "Embarrassed? Don’t be ridiculous, I have a perfectly legitimate medical condition—"
He was cut off by the return of Carson, who was carrying a small ampule and a syringe. "Well, Rodney, your sugar was definitely low, but I'm also concerned about your iron."
"Iron?" McKay said blankly. "Are you saying I'm anemic?"
"Not quite," Carson said, "but you're on the low end of normal, and that's not normal, if you catch my meaning. What have you been eating lately?"
"I don't know, the same things everyone else has," McKay said. "I don't have liver failure, do I?"
"No, your liver's fine, and so are your bones, your spleen, and everything else you're planning to ask about." Carson filled the syringe. "I'm going to give you a B12 injection, and I want you to watch your diet very carefully over the next few days. Let me know if you're still feeling poorly, you understand?"
"Right, right." Rodney shrugged off his jacket and pushed up his sleeve for the shot. "But you're sure it's not liver failure?"
John patted McKay's back. "Look on the bright side, buddy. This has to be the first time Carson's ever nagged you about eating more, right?"
"Aye," Carson said, "though it's also the first time he's actually lost any weight at a check-up, either."
Rodney gave him another black look. "Are we all done defaming my eating habits here? Because if I don't get some protein relatively soon I'm going to be flat on my back again."
"You're done here." Carson slapped a band-aid on the injection site. "Teyla, would you walk with him to the cafeteria, just to be on the safe side?"
"I can do it," John offered.
"No," Carson said, "you can sit down and get your check-up done."
McKay smirked at John as he stood up without any sign of dizziness. John stuck his tongue out at him, and sat on a bed, offering Carson his arm.
Day Twenty-Six
Elizabeth hated to call staff meetings on Friday afternoons—even if weekends didn't actually mean much on Atlantis, there was a certain psychological cachet to the day and time that made people restless. Still, sometimes enough niggling little issues piled up that it was just most efficient to call all the department heads together in one place to hash them out.
Of course, it always helped when all the department heads actually showed up.
They'd been waiting on Rodney in the staff meeting room for over fifteen minutes, and what little focus anyone had was starting to degrade—Radek hadn't looked up from his laptop for ages, and John and Major Lorne were engaged in a marathon game of hangman. She was about to try to radio Rodney when Carson's radio suddenly came to life. Only his end of the conversation was really audible. "Beckett here. Go ahead, love....Is he stable now? All right, keep Ronon down there, I'm on my way."
"What's the problem, Carson?" Elizabeth asked.
"I'm afraid Rodney won't be able to join us," he said, standing. "Ronon brought him to the infirmary a few minutes ago, saying he fainted."
Almost everyone had heard about the circumstances of his team's early exit from their last mission, and they all sat up a little straighter at the news; Elizabeth's stomach sank. "It's not his blood sugar again, is it?" John asked.
"I'll tell you when I know," Carson said. "Excuse me, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth looked at John, Teyla and Zelenka in turn, the three most likely to have spent time with Rodney over the last few days. "I was under the impression that Rodney was fine again after what happened on P3T-920."
"He was," John said. "Hasn't bitched about hypoglycemia in days."
"He cannot possibly, the way he is eating," Zelenka said. "He breaks his own rule about food in the labs, always snacking."
Teyla just shrugged. "I noticed he was not at lunch at his usual time today, but if he has been eating in his lab..."
Elizabeth frowned. Rodney was fastidious to the point of paranoid about crumbs around his equipment, and he almost always ate at the same time every day, right when the cafeteria started serving each meal. Perhaps something unexpected had delayed him today, perhaps he trusted himself not to make a mess with his food, but still...
"What I want to know," Lorne said, to general agreement, "is how he goes three years without any kind of blood sugar problem and then passes out twice in a week."
They couldn't have a staff meeting without staff members, so Elizabeth had an excuse to adjourn early. John followed her to the infirmary, and they found Ronon waiting outside, twirling a wooden sword despite the stern frowns of the nurses. "McKay's still sick," he informed them.
"So we heard," Elizabeth said. "What happened?"
Ronon shrugged. "Passed out in the gym. Couldn't get back up. He didn't puke, though."
She looked at John, because she had never quite understood what Rodney and Ronon did in the gym, except to guarantee that it was fully consensual and nobody was getting seriously hurt. John just shrugged, and Elizabeth bit her lip, wondering if—once again—they were facing a medical mystery with a friend's life hanging in the balance.
She wasn't much comforted when a nurse escorted her and John into the back of the infirmary. Rodney was laying down, and he had an IV; his face was very white and sheened with sweat, and his pupils were blown wide. "I actually feel pretty good," he was saying, with a slight slur. "Not, you know, walking around good, but compared to other times I've almost died, this is practically pleasant."
"You're not dying, Rodney," Carson said; he was peering at a laptop screen, but he straightened up when he saw her and John. "Colonel. Elizabeth. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of answers yet."
"Dy-ing," Rodney said, sing-song.
"Is it blood sugar or not?" John asked. "'Cause I don't think it's possible for him to eat any more often and still, you know, sleep and work."
Elizabeth sighed, though she knew it was just one of John's quirks. Rodney didn't even seem offended; in fact, he nodded enthusiastically. "He's right. I mean, not right right, but I've been really good about eating whenever I started to feel woozy, and you know what? Not actually helping."
"And yet somehow, you've managed to lose six kilos in the last five days," Carson muttered.
Rodney stabbed a finger at him. "Cancer. Unexplained weight loss means cancer. I need to update my will."
Carson sighed, and turned his back on his patient to address John and Elizabeth. "The intravenous glucose is bringing his blood sugar back up, but it's just a stopgap while we try to figure out what's depressing it to begin with."
"Pancreatic cancer," Rodney suggested.
"You don't have cancer, you daft bugger!"
"Carson," Elizabeth said, before they could get sidetracked, "aside from pancreatic cancer, what could be causing these symptoms?"
He ran his fingers through his hair and grimaced helplessly. "I've ordered a complete battery of blood tests, but his white count isn't elevated, so it's not likely an infection. He hasn't mentioned any other GI abnormalities, he's anemic, he's got mild peritonitis—"
Rodney suddenly sat up in bed, and then nearly fell out of it. "Voodoo!" he shouted. "It's cowboy voodoo!"
"What are you talking about?" Elizabeth asked, as Carson tried to force him back down.
"The cowboy voodoo cake!" he insisted. "Remember? Sheppard, you remember the cake?"
"The Odai cake, yeah," John said. "What's that got to do with your pancreas?"
"It was voodoo," Rodney said feverishly. "They wanted to kill me because I wasn't impressed by their cowboy ways, so they fed us evil cake under false pretenses."
Elizabeth looked at Carson, who just frowned. John leaned on the end of the bed, eyebrows up. "You know, McKay, I think Stephen King wrote a book like that."
"Okay, so I don't mean actual voodoo," Rodney said. "But obviously it was a ceremonial death cake of some kind. I bet it was poisoned. With cancer."
"If the cake was poisoned, how come the rest of us aren't sick?"
"That's actually a good question," Carson said suddenly. "Rodney's symptoms started shortly after the mission to the Odai, so it stands to reason that if there's an external cause, that's where he was exposed to it."
"So we go back and ask the nice cowboys if they make death cakes?" John said. "Because I recommend sending Lorne for that. They like him. He got cheese."
"I was thinking more of testing the environment for pathogens," Carson said, "but yes, I'd like someone to go back. And everyone who went on the first mission should get a physical, as well."
John's face fell at that, but Elizabeth felt a glimmer of something like relief; they were moving towards an answer, even if they couldn't see it yet. "I'll contact the archaeologists who went on the Odai dig," she said. "Is there a team besides yours and Major Lorne's that could escort Dr. Beckett, Colonel?"
"I think Captain Radner's still in the city," John said, and keyed his radio over to the military channel. Elizabeth adjusted her own radio to the channel reserved for social science, but before she stepped away to talk she reached across the bed and patted Rodney's hand.
"Cowboy voodoo cancer cake," he said, but gave her a thumbs-up. She supposed that was about the best she could expect.
Day Twenty-Eight
Rodney McKay had suffered many indignities in his life, most of them since coming to Atlantis. He had been tortured, kidnapped, dangled upside down, drugged, stalked by whales, shown up by his own doppelganger and granted superpowers with the biggest "gotcha" ever. At the moment, he was curled into a fetal position on an infirmary bed with the stomach ache from hell, one not improved by a recent bout of dry heaves; he was sweaty and dizzy and a headache cinched him from temple to temple; he had an IV in one arm and a set of track marks on the other from blood draws and vitamin shots.
And now, this.
"You've got to be kidding me," he said weakly.
Carson sighed, but it was a deep, satisfied sigh that made Rodney hate him a little. "It's a rapidly-growing beasty with some way of suppressing an immune response that also tricked the medical scanners, at least initially," he said. "And your hypoglycemia confounded the usual symptoms."
Lorne, who still had band-aids on his arm, squinted at the image on the screen. "Kinda looks like a Goa'uld," he opined.
"Don't even joke about that," Rodney snapped.
Sheppard patted him briskly on the shoulder. "Congratulations, McKay. What are you going to name your tapeworm?" Rodney buried his face in the pillow rather than dignifying that with a response. "Gotta admit, it's better than pancreatic cancer."
Elizabeth, thank god, returned them to the topic at hand. "So he picked this up from the Odai?"
"Aye," Carson said. "We found eggs in the dropping of their animals, and also in the cheese that Major Lorne brought back with him."
Lorne's face went ashy, and Sheppard leaned forward suddenly. "Wait a minute. So do the rest of us—?"
Carson shrugged. "We'll review the scans, but it seems quite likely."
"Ha," Rodney said, thrusting a finger in Sheppard's general direction. "Name your own damn tapeworm, Colonel."
"But none of us are sick," Lorne protested. "How come we're not flailing around with McKay?"
Carson shrugged. "There are lots of factors, Major. In particular, I suspect certain microbes in the cheese would normally kill the mature parasite before it could attach—but since none of you ate more that a few pieces of it..."
"And McKay didn't eat any, because the Odai hated him," Sheppard added.
"...those microbes didn't build up in your intestines, so you merely slowed the thing down."
"So the cake was evil," Rodney protested. "It was symbolic of the tapeworm."
"Right, Rodney," Sheppard said, and patted him slowly on the shoulder. "It's all a vicious plot." Rodney glared at him, because this was serious business. The Odai had withheld the healing cheese and given him voodoo cake as part of some weird silent cowboy joke. It was practically biological warfare. Why weren't they discussing retaliation?
"This is treatable, isn't it, Carson?" Elizabeth asked, before Rodney could explain this to the room at large.
"Oh, aye," Carson said. "We've several ways to kill the parasite, and once it detaches from the intestinal wall it should, ah, pass fairly painlessly."
With a surge of horror, Rodney pushed himself up as much as his aching stomach would allow, revenge forgotten. "Fairly painlessly? Only fairly?"
"Still better than cancer," Sheppard muttered, but his heart wasn't in it.
And that should've been the worst part, surely, getting tucked in by a nurse for a night of abdominal cramps and parasite expulsion. The fact that everyone else who'd visited the Odai was bedding down alongside him didn't lessen the intense humiliation one bit, not after Carson explained the need for "specimen collection." (Rodney had briefly considered smothering himself with a pillow after that conversation.)
But no, the worst was yet to come. The worst took the form two cooks who came down with an array of covered plates, and talked their way past Carson into the Tapeworm Ward. "Perfect," Sheppard said when he saw them. "You pulled it off?"
"Yes, sir," said one of the cooks, and put a plate on the little table next to Rodney's bed.
Rodney eyed it with intense suspicion. "What exactly is this, Colonel?"
Sheppard just smirked. "Just a little midnight snack I ordered up. Check it out yourself."
Rodney peeked until the cover, looking for potential booby-traps. There were none. He glanced around, but most other people were ignoring their plates, more concerned with getting comfortable for the night (and next day, if Carson's combination of drugs and fiber drinks didn't work its black magic right away). He eyed Sheppard again, but Sheppard was reclining on his bed, looking innocent, which meant something awful was definitely going to happen.
Holding his breath, he lifted the cover off.
Somehow, somewhere, the kitchen staff had gotten hold of green food coloring, and painted a Twinkie with it. One end of the snack cake had been decorated with green gumdrops, mounted on toothpicks, above a little smiling face piped on in brown icing. The smile just happened to have fangs.
"Oh, very funny, Colonel," Rodney groaned.
Sheppard beamed at him. "Just trying a little voodoo of our own."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 04:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 08:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-07 12:40 am (UTC)Mee too.
Date: 2007-08-07 06:13 pm (UTC)ROFL!!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:05 pm (UTC)this was very fun.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 08:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 05:36 pm (UTC)Incidentally, this was a very good fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-07 06:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-07 04:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-08 11:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-08 11:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 07:17 pm (UTC)Great stuff, thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 08:19 pm (UTC)Good job!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-06 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-07 02:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-07 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-07 03:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-07 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-08 12:55 am (UTC)Omg, I ought to have known. I was just thinking (really!) the other night that I hadn't seen a lot of Atlantis parasite fic. And it seems such an obvious thing, given the variety of cultures Team Sheppard meets up with. *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-08 05:56 am (UTC)Thanks for reading my fic!
That Voodoo That You Do
Date: 2007-08-08 01:13 am (UTC)A/N: the Stephen King book it [is] real,
Story: brain burns glucose at an alarming right [rate]
Re: That Voodoo That You Do
Date: 2007-08-08 05:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-10 10:10 am (UTC)Poor Rodney, hee. But the whole gang's been so nice to him. :)
Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-04 01:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-22 09:29 pm (UTC)That was a brilliant story! The dialog was just spot on and hilarious. Your style and pacing were great. And "McKake!" Hahahahahahaha.