So Long and Thanks for All the Charcoal

Posted on Fri Feb 22nd, 2019 @ 6:48am by Staff Sergeant Jeremiah Corvus & Civillian Shae

Mission: A Brand New Day
Location: SGC Infirmary
Timeline: Next Morning after "I Wanna Hold Your Paw"

Jeremy picked up the clipboard and made a notation before sticking the bags into his pack. He did the same with several large rolls of gauze and then some anticoagulant powders. He stopped and stared at the open cabinet before him. He still hadn't even placed a too offworld and here he was, trying to decide what supplies he'd need to stock for their upcoming Op. It wasn't as easy as he first thought. Antibiotics, bandages, gauze, emergency first aid supplies but what else? Would he need Qualaquin to treat malaria? What about antifungals? Anti-venoms? The Major said the Goulds were snakes, were they venomous? Was this even convered in the material he still hadn't finished? He put the clipboard down and just stared into the cabinet. He wanted to dump the whole thing into his bag just to make sure he's prepared for everything.

What about insulin? No one on the team was diabetic, but it had other uses. This was, well, not impossible but highly improbable. He finally selected a bottle of Qualaquin and wrote it on his inventory sheet. He was about to move on to the narcotic pain meds when he heard the door open.

"Patient Shae's vitals look stable, her BP is within normal parameters, at least for a human of her gender and condition, pulse rate is down. But, she's getting antsy to leave. Says it's too much like a cage."

"Thank you, nurse," Jeremy said. SGC really needed to get a full time doctor. He didn't want to go in there and face the woman again. The idea of seeing her was...frightening. But, he zipped up his bag and left the clipboard under it. He would finish 'shopping' after he finished with Shae. The nurse handed him the tablet with her chart, as well as real time vitals. Jeremy looked them over.

The nurse was right. They looked normal. For a human. Who knew what was normal for a hundred pound foxhuman crossbreed?

He grabbed his stethoscope from his side pocket and put it around his neck as he went to the recover room. "How are you feeling?" he asked, keeping his gaze on the tablet.

"Much better," Shae answered, not realizing that he was attempting to avoid looking at her. "The man, um, Asher, he had some food brought up, that helped a lot," she continued, nodding towards the half-eaten tray of food from breakfast. "Oh, and the lady took the thing out of my arm," she added, raising her arm to show him where the bandage was.

"That's good," Jeremy said as he compared the tablet readings to the machines in the room. He entered a code that would save the information. "Any more bouts of nausea?" He asked, while making a few more notes. "Or any further...." he stopped before he blurted out changes into a giant, hairy, rabid monster. "...muscle spasms?" he asked.

"No, I think I'm okay," Shae said optimistically. "My stomach was a little achy when I woke, but eating fixed that, and no cramps, no pain." She paused to try to think of anything else that might be bothering her, but she couldn't think of anything and simply shrugged.

"Good, good," Jeremy said, just staring at the screen. Unfortunately, he ran out of things he could do without actually doing anything. With a heavy sigh he put down the tablet and moved the stethoscope around his neck. First, though, he felt her lymph nodes on her neck, just under her jawline. "Any residual pain from..." he didn't feel any abnormalities there and so let his hands drop. "It looked incredibly painful when you..." He shook his head and pretended to make a note so he didn't have to finish the sentence.

Shae was finally starting to notice that he was having trouble just being around her, but she didn't know what to say to him or if she even had a right to say anything; what had happened to her was embarrassing, shameful, it was no wonder at all that he was disgusted with her!

"It wasn't pleasant," Shae admitted. "Especially after you forced that stuff down my throat, I thought I would never stop heaving after that came up! It hurts just thinking about it." Now that she was thinking about it, the muscles in her abdomen were still a bit tender, but it was nothing she couldn't handle. "I sorry you had to see me like that, not just sick but changing as well... Being what I am now is my shifting at work, I guess my reaction forced me into my natural state. I've been sick before, but nothing has ever forced me to revert like that."

"You mean, you remember what happens when you're...an...a..." how did he finish this sentence without being completely rude? "When you're an animal? You remember?" he put the stethoscope around his neck again and picked up the tablet and stared at it. "Even when I..." he shook his head, his grip too tight on the device. "Even that I was going to kill you?" His jaw clenched as he said it. It was bad enough he thought of her as a monster, but he didn't even hesitate to pick up a conference room chair and prepare to smash it down on her head.

"You were going to what?" Shae asked, aghast at this revelation. She was suddenly wary of being tended to by this man and she started to inch away from him on the bed. "I didn't notice..." she said uneasily. She was looking for exits and escape routes, she didn't want to be near him any longer. That thing around his neck, he kept toying with it, was he planning on using it to kill her now? "I didn't mean anyone harm, I swear! I'll- I'll go, you won't ever have to see me again, please, just don't kill me," she pleaded, sounding genuinely frightened, and the machines confirmed that fear with the racing of her heart.

"I didn't know!" he said, shaking his head. "That's not an excuse, I know, but I didn't know. They told me we'd be fighting alien monsters trying to kill us all and...I..." he wiped his face with his hand. "How was I supposed to know that you're not a monster? You're the first alien I've ever met and...I...I'm a bad person because I just judged you to be a monster when..." he leaned against a counter, moving slightly away from her. "I'm the monster. I didn't even stop to think about what happened in the meeting before. I just saw something different from me and...it's okay, I'm not staying here. They're not going to let me. I don't deserve to be here. Not with my prejudices. I'm just not good enough."

He glanced at the ceiling trying to keep his emotions in check. "I deserve to be stranded on some planet somewhere. I just wish...I want to be able to say goodbye to my family first but, I don't think that can happen."

"You people would really leave on some strange world for such a mistake?" Shae asked, even more horrified. "I don't think I want to be here anymore!" Shae drew her knees to her chest, feeling so overwhelmed that she just wanted to cry. "You've hidden the sky, it smells awful here, and the food is trying to kill me, and people want to kill me, and how can your people be so heartless to you?! People make mistakes, and they want me to work with them, but how can I trust them if they're just going to abandon me if I make a mistake?!"

"A mistake?" Jeremy asked, staring at her with disbelief. "No, ma'am, a mistake is I put on my PT socks with my uniform. Murder is unforgiveable, especially when it's against someone that isn't a threat! We hold life sacred here, it's one of our most holy beliefs, that life is sacred. And I was ready to violate that sanctity just because you looked different. I deserve..." He hung his head. "I deserve the punishment. My parents tried to teach me better. How could I grow up to be the kind of person who thinks someone different deserves to die? The Major tried to tell me but..." he shrugged. "What would be heartless would be to let me continue spreading my hateful infection. I'm the reason the Stargate has to be secret. Because...because I'm a monster and I deserve the punishment. Not anyone else."

Shae sniffled, but didn't look at him, she just sobbed into her knees, holding her legs tightly to her body. She felt so lost and confused, she could barely even hear what the man had been trying to say. "I want to go home, I want to see the sky..." she finally said in a small voice.

"You ever been skiing?" he asked, not sure why, except, yeah, he wanted to see the sky too. He wanted to have one last good memory to cherish before they banished him from his home. And, he doubt he'd be allowed to take skis with him so, why the heck not? One last trip and, if she wanted to see the sky then a small act of contrition on his part.

"I don't know what that is," Shae said, still crying softly. "You Tau'ri, your words are so familiar, yet so complicated; I can speak more languages than I can count, yet I can barely understand half the things you people say..."

"You've never been skiing?" Jeremy asked, incredulous. How was that even possible? "It's just one of the best things ever! You get a pair of skis and then, I personally like downhill the best but cross country can be fun as well. A sure fire workout, I'll tell you that much. You want to see the sky and trees and snow and stuff? Then skiing would be a great thing to do."

"First you want to kill me, now you want to take me out for this ski-thing; I don't know where I stand with you, Tau'ri," Shae replied bluntly, still upset and sniffling. "I am from another world, everything I see here is new and strange to me."

"No, no," Jeremy said shaking his head vigorously. "I'm Jeremy, or Staff Sergeant Corvus, if you really want to hate me, I'm not this Tory person you think I am and I didn't want to kill you....just..." he finished his thought with a whisper, realizing how stupid it sounded, "...the monster I thought you were. But I thought you wanted to see the sky?"

"Tau'ri is what your people are, the world from whence all humans came, populating the gated worlds by the will of the false gods, the Goa'uld," Shae said as she laid down on her side, her head aching from crying. "And right now I just want to go back to what is familiar, and there is nothing familiar to me about Earth."

"Well, okay then," Jeremy said, "but regs say you gotta have medical clearance before you can leave the infirmary, so let's get that done then, I guess you can go wherever you want."

"Do what you have to, then leave me alone," Shae said, closing her eyes.

"Okay then," he said, letting out a deep sigh. "But you need to sit up on the bed here," he said, tapping the edge of the bed. "And be still when I do some of the tests."

With a begrudging sigh, Shae sat back up and moved to the edge of the bed as he indicated. "What are you checking?" she asked, only vaguely curious about the answer.

"Start by checking your vitals, you know, heart rate, oxygen levels, blood pressure, temperature. We'll have to do an EKG and some blood gas panels, check for lymph abnormalities and see if anything else leads to deeper probes. But," he picked up the tablet again and stared at it, it was easier than seeing her stare at him with such hate. No matter how much he deserved it. "Your chart looks good. Temperature spiked around the time of the incident then seems to settle in at a range slightly higher than human. Heart rate remained steady as well. Seems you might have recovered well. Have you ever peed in a cup before?"

Shae looked up at him, a mixture of shock and horror on her face. "You... you mean you want me to... Oh, that is disgusting, what possible need could you have for that?!"

Jeremy shrugged, by now he was inured to the idea of processing waste products for their forensic value. "It's the fastest way to check for kidney dysfunction," he said as he grabbed a cup from the cabinet. "If you want to go the less 'disgusting' route then we'll do it as part of a CBC, but those results will take longer to return. Since I don't recall see any lab techs here to run the tests. The sample will have to be couriered from this base, down to the city and the medical facility there, put in the queue there and wait to be processed, then the results faxed back. Could take hours. Days if they're experiencing new training flights." He tapped the cup against his shoulder while he looked directly at her. "Which is it to be, disgusting or slow?"

Much of that she couldn't follow, but Shae understood enough to know that it would be an inconvenience and a possible delay, and since she wasn't prepared to wait days to get out of the infirmary, she held her hand out for the cup. "Let's just get this over with," she said, taking the cup. "I don't have to do this in front of you, do I?" there were quite a few things for which Shae had no shame, like getting naked so she could change her shape, but relieving herself in a cup and in front of someone was more than she could bear.

Jeremy blushed at the question, actually looking away. If only Andrews had... but he shut down that thought quickly, he had a job to finish here before he, himself, was finished. "I'd prefer not," he said, pointing to a door to the left. "There's a restroom there. Please don't flush the toilet, turn on the sink or wash your hands before you bring the sample out." He turned his back, rooting in the cabinets for gloves.

Thankfully, Shae already knew where the restrooms were and how to use them, the nurse had shown her earlier when she shifted back, so she was able to get in there and figure things out fairly quickly, and once her business was done and her hands were washed, she returned to her bed without a word, her face tinged with a noticeable shade of embarrassment.

Jeremy took the cup from her and promptly poured a measure into three slender, tube like containers. Once satisfied he had evened out the sample, he dropped a test strip into each one then rolled the prepped tray to the edge of the bed. As he brought the tray over, he pulled out the BP cuff and asked for her arm. "Sit up straight and keep your feet as still as you can," he said, noticing she didn't reach the floor from the edge of the bed. "Otherwise you may skew the results." He began pumping the cuff until it squeezed tightly against her arm. Then, putting the ends of the stethoscope in his ears, he placed the other end just under the cuff and moved it slightly until he was satisfied. Then, slowly, he released the pressure, watching the gauge. He murmured some numbers then released the cuff. Placing the stethoscope on her upper right side, he told her to take a deep breath, repeating the process for each quadrant.

Before writing the results on the chart with the tablet's pen, he placed a small, square device on her right index finger. The rest of the tests went quickly - checking lymph nodes, pupilary reactions, autonomic reactions and a few others, he finally stepped back. "So far so good, but I need to draw blood. How are you with needles?"

"Needles? Like the thing that was in my arm?" Shae asked. He needed to 'draw blood' but not with a weapon, so she guess that these needles involved keeping everything contained, and the one giving her fluids in her arm hadn't hurt, so it shouldn't be too bad... Right? "If you must, then go ahead," she finally said. Whatever got her out of here sooner...

"Good, squeeze this," he said, handing her a foam ball inside a latex glove. Tying off her arm, he waited to find a vein "popping" then inserted the needle. He filled four bottles, each with a different colored cap. Shaking them, he placed them on the tray.

Subject Shae appears to have physically recovered from her unintentional food poisoning he wrote as he checked the test strips. However, subject exhibits signs of avoidance, depression and anhedonia. Subject physically fit for duty but recommend psychiatric workup/counseling.

"Okay, you're good to go," he said, filing the physical report into her file.

"So when Asher returns, I can go?" Shae asked, rubbing at her arm where he had stuck her.

He grabbed the arm rubbing her other one. "Don't rub the site," he said shaking his head. "I swear I'll slap a Cone of Shame on you in no time flat!" Of course he didn't realize she'd not have any clue bout the reference, or that it was an attempt at humor on his part. But those were thoughts he wouldn't normally have and exocultural sensitivity classes weren't formed yet. "You may leave whenever you wish."

"This Cone of Shame sounds unpleasant," Shae replied, unconsciously trying to draw away from him. "I think I will just wait for Asher to come back," she said, then laid back down and turning away from him.

Jeremy shook his head as he cleared the tablet's screen and went back to the medical supply room and finished his 'shopping' for what he thought he might need for the upcoming mission. He secured the items in his pack and left the infirmary, headed to stow his gear in the staging area. The least she could have done, he thought, was thank him for what he did to help save her life. Didn't that mean anything?