Plague by Constellation

Plague von Constellation

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Plague

Major John Sheppard had seen many disturbing things in his military career. When he had arrived in the Pegasus Galaxy and met the Wraith, he had thought they were the be-all and end-all of disturbing. The previous day's encounter with a life-sucking bug had proved him wrong. He couldn't imagine anything getting much worse than that.

Not until now, at least.

"Major?"

Waking up with your doctor looking at you with the expression Dr. Carson Beckett currently wore was the very definition of disturbing.

"Morning, Doc," Sheppard croaked, surprised to find that he felt even worse than he had the night before. "What's new?"

Beckett sighed. "I'm afraid I have some good news and bad news, Major."

"Bad compared to what? Not yesterday; nothing's all that bad compared to yesterday."

Beckett's face was grim.

Sheppard closed his eyes and let his head fall back onto the pillow. "You said I'd be fine in a few days."

"Yeah. I did." Beckett rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

"But?"

"But I may have been a bit. . . premature in the prognosis. I just got the results from your blood test. . ."

"Did I pass?" Sheppard quipped.

Beckett stared at his sternly. "Very funny, Major." Then his expression softened. "Along with whatever else that creature did to you, it really did a number on your immune system."

That really didn't sound good. Sheppard tried a halfhearted attempt at a joke. "Really? Which one? Seventeen's my lucky number."

Despite the seriousness of the major's condition, the corner of Beckett's mouth twitched. "Cute, John. In terms you'd understand, the number is two."

What? Sheppard stared at him blankly; he hadn't expected an answer. After a few seconds, though, it occurred to him that the phrase "number two" was a euphemism for. . . "Aw, shit. So this means. . .?"

"It means you're going to catch every damn bug that goes through this place until your body can rebuild its defenses."

Sheppard winced. "Don't say 'bug'. I'll be having nightmares for the rest of my life as it is."

"Sorry. What I'm trying to say is, you're going to be sick as a dog for a few weeks. And that's the good news."

"You've gotta be kidding me. The good news is that I'll be sick for weeks? How bad is the -"

Beckett shook his head. "No, John. The good news is that you have weeks."

Sheppard felt a chill. "That's the second time you called me by my first name; you never call me by my first name. What's going on? What's the bad news?"

Beckett touched a few buttons on a console, and a pulsating image appeared on a monitor. "This is a scan of your heart. It's like the Ancients' version of a sonogram, only more advanced."

Sheppard sat up for a better view. "So. . . what am I looking at?"

"The human heart has four chambers," Beckett said, "right atrium, right ventricle, left atrium, left ventricle." He indicated each region in turn. "Oxygenated blood from the lungs travels to the heart via the pulmonary artery, and enters the left -"

Sheppard raised one hand. "Spare me the biology lecture and tell me what the problem is."

Beckett pointed to a corner of the image. "See this mass in the right ventricle? It's, ah, not supposed to be there."

The implication felt like a physical blow. "Well, can you get it out?"

"I doubt it. Even if I could, in your condition, open-heart surgery of that nature would almost certainly kill you. And if, by some miracle, you did survive, with your immune system shot to hell, post-op infection would be inevitable -"

" -so I'd die of that instead," Sheppard finished. He laughed mirthlessly. "I don't believe it. Does anyone else see the irony in this? That Wraith bug didn't kill me, so I'm going to die of cancer instead."

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Plague von Constellation

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