With loads of thanks to Tomy for beta reading at the drop of a hat, and for understanding.
 

Just Breathe...
by elfin
 

Blood pressure too low, temperature too high.

He’d been anaesthetised during the eight-hour surgery.  And usually, in case of such terrible injury, Stephen would have kept his patient under for some time, for days.  But he didn’t want to pump any more drugs than utterly necessary into an already stressed out body.

The patient had partial liver failure.  His intestines were badly infected.  His stomach lining had been almost decimated.  There were burns at the back of his throat and all the way down his oesophagus that matched injuries to the roof of his mouth.

Six of his fingers had been smashed, obviously near the start of his ordeal for they had begun to mend in the disfigured mess they were in.

The bones in his left arm, just below his wrist, had been snapped and twisted.

Seventy percent of his body was covered by bruising, some telling of deep, internal bleeding.  His skin had been cut then the wounds torn by further abuse.

The lack of hygiene he’d been subjected to had caused infections in his wounds, external and internal.
 

Stephen had set up IV lines, blood transfusions, cardiac and neurological monitors.  They’d had applied as many regen packs as he dare but there was so much damage.

It was late now.  The station was quiet, had been since Sheridan had been brought aboard.  Almost as if… it knew.

They’d worked for almost ten hours, putting John back together piece by piece.

Reaching out, Stephen stroked his fingertips over the dark skin on the back of John’s right hand, avoiding the IV valve and the braces and regen packs around his shattered fingers.  Ten hours, and they hadn’t yet had time to rebuild the digits.

The doctor more than needed the physical contact.  At least feeling the warmth of John’s skin he knew the man was still alive, beyond the simple readings being taken by the medical equipment all around them.

Technically, realistically, John was free.  But mentally, emotionally, physically, Stephen didn’t want to begin to imagine how long he’d be locked in his personal prison for.

The EKG spiked suddenly, and Stephen watched carefully as John’s eyes flickered.  He was coming around from the anaesthetic.  The doctor hoped, for a moment, that he was doing the right thing.

Very carefully, Stephen took John’s right thumb in his own fingers and stroked gently.  He waited, let John come around in his own time.

A few minutes later, grey eyes circled by black rings swept over Stephen’s face.  Fear and suspicion were clearly framed in those pools.

“You’re all right, John, you’re safe.  You’re on Babylon 5.”

John looked about him, moving only his eyes.  Each time he glanced at Stephen, he looked… sad.

And a minute or so after, he closed his eyes again.

Stephen wasn’t sure what had just happened.  There had been evidence that probes had been inserted into John’s mind through tiny holes drilled through his skull.  Stephen hoped to the Gods that Sheridan had been out of it when that had been done.

Those probes may well have been used to deliver false images to the brain.  To convince John that he was somewhere different, perhaps free and back on the station.  It was a particularly cruel and demoralising technique, in Stephen’s opinion.  But he’d known it used, and knew the probes often used memories to construct the scenes.  Maybe… they’d used his face to lull John into a false sense of security.

Stephen couldn’t even begin to analyse his feelings about that.
 

Reaching back, Franklin pulled up a chair and down at John’s side, still loosely holding his thumb – one of the only parts of his body that was uninjured.

After a few minutes, John opened his eyes again.

This time, he met Stephen’s and held it.

“Hey, John.  You’re okay, you’re on Babylon 5.”  Sheridan remained silent and still.  “Do you want some water?”

A long hesitation, and then John’s lips moved.  But the only sound to come out was a rough grunt.

Stephen got to his feet, leaning over John.  “You have a badly injured throat, John.  Do you want some water?”

John’s head moved, up and down once, slightly.

The doctor took a glass from the table along with the straw he’d left there.  Carefully, he placed the straw between John’s lips.

With some effort, John sipped the water, still wary but in such desperate need.

When he began to cough, Stephen put the glass back on the table and very gently lifted John’s head.  “Easy, now.  Just relax.  You’re okay.”

John calmed and Stephen lowered his head back to the pillow, sitting down and again taking John’s thumb into his fingers.

“You were rescued,” he started simply.  “You were… on Mars for two weeks.”  He watched the grey eyes studying him.  “I know you think I’m lying, that I’m not me, I’m some… image placed in your head.  And I don’t know how to convince you.  I think time will do that.”

Those eyes flicked away from him for a moment to again take in his surroundings.

“You’re in an IC unit in MedLab One on Babylon Five.  You’ve been badly hurt and you’re very ill.  But I won’t let you die and I promise, I’ll do everything I can to make your recovery as painless as possible.”

Stephen wasn’t sure what else he could say.  That terrible fear hadn’t left John’s eyes.
 

A bleep interrupted his train of thought and he pressed the comm button on his link.

“Franklin, go ahead.”

“Stephen, you wanted to be informed when the Cortez docked.”

“Yeah.  Thanks.”

“No problems, and the White Star fleet isn’t too far behind her.  Susan should be back aboard any time now.”

*

“Dr Franklin.”  Captain Jack Maynard shook Stephen’s offered hand before his eyes wondered over to the observation window into the IC unit.  “Jeez… how is he?”

Stephen opened his mouth, but he didn’t know where to start.  In the end, he just shrugged.  “It’s bad.”

Jack’s brow furrowed.  “He’s gonna make it, though, right?”

“Yeah.  He’s gonna make it because I’m not gonna let him go.  But it isn’t going to be easy.”

Gowning up, Jack followed the doctor into the isolated unit.

“He’s in quarantine?”

Stephen shook his head.  “He needs to be kept calm and quiet.  All the rushing about that goes on around here would just panic him.  As well as that, we think he’s been denied… silence.  There’s damage to his eardrums.”

Jack stopped next to the bed.

“Oh, God, Johnny….”  Every physical injury was mapped as a crease in his face.  He’d lost more weight than he could spare.  His lips were dry and cracked.  Black rings surrounded his eyes.

Stephen had him in one of the special beds.  They were used for coma patients usually.  They were softer and wider than the usual MedLab beds.  And instead of a sheet, John had been given a light, warm quilt that he had pulled up under his chin.  His disfigured left fist clenched in the soft material at his shoulder.

Jack reached down and surrounded John’s right thumb with his hand, as Stephen had done.

He took a deep breath.

“If this is your idea of taking care of yourself, Swampy, you are so off the mark.”

John opened his eyes and stared straight up at Jack.  For a long time, he seemed to be trying to work something out.  And then, eyelids slipped closed.

Stephen glanced from his patient to Jack and saw the gentle smile touch the man’s lips.

“What?”  Franklin let his gaze travel down to Jack’s hand.

John’s thumb had tightened against the fingers holding it.

*

By o-nine-hundred-hours, John had two guardians.

Jack hadn’t left John’s side since the night before.  He was sitting in a chair by the bed, numb fingers still clasped between John’s thumb and the side of his hand.

Susan had arrived back on the White Star and despite Marcus’ urging that she needed rest, she’d taken up residence in two chairs in the corner of the IC unit and had fallen asleep there.

Stephen had also slept in a chair, with his feet on his desk.

When the shift change occurred at o-six-hundred-hours, Stephen was woken but the other two weren’t.

He went in quietly to check on his illest patient.

There were so many tubes running into and out of John’s body, so many medical monitors hooked to him, ready to raise alarms at the slightest change… Stephen hated that there was so much need for invasion into John’s already overshocked system.

Physically there was no change.

Blood pressure still too low, temperature too high.

Stephen wished that were the worst of his worries.
 

At nine that morning, Marcus arrived to extricate Susan and Jack and take them for breakfast.  Neither complained too loudly and it gave Stephen a chance to do a more thorough investigation into his patient’s progress.

His very personal examination disturbed John’s sleep and when he looked up, he saw grey eyes watching him in barely disguised fear.

“I’m sorry, John.  It’ll be over in a minute, I promise.”  He glanced over John’s half-covered body and saw his patient’s thumb tapping lightly, shakily on the mattress.  “Jack’s gone for some food.  He’ll be back soon.”

Stephen finished his examination and covered Sheridan back up, tucking the edges of the large quilt around him to keep him warm.

“You want some water?”

John nodded once, not trying to speak this time around.

Stephen helped him with the water the same way he had done the previous night.  When John had had enough, he eased himself down to sit on the edge of the bed.

“This is real, John, you do believe me, don’t you?”  Those haunting grey eyes watched him steadily.  “I know they had needles in you in the cell.  The IV line is feeding you saline, nutrients, trying to replace what you’ve lost, as well as counteragents to the toxins they’ve fed you.  We’re transfusing your blood because of all the drugs they’ve pumped into you.”

John blinked once and closed his eyes.

“The tube in your wrist is draining fluid from a very bad break, we’ll take that out as soon as possible.  I’m pumping antibiotics into you as fast as I dare, you just have to trust me.  You will get better, it’s just gonna take time.”

It was enough for now, Stephen decided.  He sat with his patient for a while before going back to his desk.

*

“Don’t.  Even.  Breathe.”

Stephen heard Garibaldi catch his breath as he pressed the thick metal of a PPG barrel into the back of the man’s head.

“Stephen,” Michael swallowed hard.  “Just tell me he’s alive.”

“Why the hell should you care?”

“Stephen, it wasn’t my fault.  You have to believe me.  Just… tell me he’s alive!  Please!”

Franklin paused.  “He’s alive,” he murmured reluctantly.

“Thank Gods….”  Michael let out a deep, trembling breath.  “You have to hear me out, Stephen.”

“Give me one good reason.”  Emotion filled the so-familiar voice, sending a painful shudder down Garibaldi’s spine.  “And don’t you dare suggest it should have anything to do with friendship.”

“Because I’m the reason John’s lying there now.”

“Oh, I know that.  You betrayed him to Clarke’s agents.”

“I didn’t mean….”  Michael realised he was shaking.  “I got him out of there, Stephen.  I rescued him and got him on board a Centauri shuttle from Mars.”

Stephen snorted.  “Tell me why I should believe a word that you say.”

Michael hesitated.  “I know he’s got… a ring of electrical burns around his neck from the collar they had on him.  His skin’s raw around his wrists and ankles where they had him shackled into that chair.  He can’t talk because of the burns at the back of his throat from the pain-stick they rammed in his mouth every time he screamed.  And when he looks at you… there’s a fear in his eyes that tells you he doesn’t believe that any of this is real.”

Stephen’s hand shook in anger.  “The only way you could know all that was if you’d been there.”

“Or if I’d rescued him from it.  Please, Stephen!  You have to believe me!”

Stephen drew his PPG away, stepping around the man he’d once called friend to face him.  Michael lowered his hands from where he’d instinctively raised them.

From where they were standing, several feet inside MedLab, they couldn’t see John, just the frame of the observation window into the IC unit.

“You’re the reason he’s in the state he’s in,” Stephen hissed.  “He’s alive, but only just.”

Michael looked into Stephen’s eyes and saw a look he recognised.  The doctor was caring for a critically ill patient and now he was face to face with the one who might as well have inflicted the damage.

“Stephen… please.  We were friends once….”

“Don’t!  Don’t push it, Michael.”

“Please!!!  You know how I felt about John, you know… you must know something was wrong for me to do that to him!”

“So who are you blaming?”

“Bester….  That… fucking bastard reprogrammed me, made me turn against Sheridan, against you all!….  Lyta.  Get Lyta to scan me!”

“Michael….”

“Stephen, please!  It’s the only way you’ll believe me!  Let her scan me.  She’ll tell you the truth, you know she will.”

*

Lyta hadn’t seen Sheridan since he’d been brought aboard.  She wasn’t as emotionally involved with what Stephen had referred to several times as his betrayal by his best friend.

She agreed to scan Garibaldi.

It was a mess, and she had to push.  But suddenly the truth hidden in his head flashed into her consciousness like a bad movie.

She bit back a cry, but allowed the images to flood her.  It was only a matter of seconds, but it felt like forever and when she pulled out as gently as she could, there were tears in her eyes mirrored in Michael’s.

“He’s telling the truth.”

Michael opened his eyes through the pounding headache and glanced at Stephen, an ironic smile twisting his lips.

“He doesn’t believe you.”

Stephen sighed, head tipping to one side where he sat on the sofa.  He looked from one to the other.  And caught Lyta’s cold smile.

 “You don’t have to believe me,” she murmured.  “Believe yourself.”

In the next moment, she broadcast a scene from the godawful movie in Michael’s mind into Stephen’s.

Suddenly the doctor was standing in a dingy bar, eyes frozen open, forced to watch as Captain Sheridan fought a useless battle against a group of Clarke’s agents.  In the background, the soundtrack to the scene was Bester’s voice calmly explaining to Michael what had been done to him and why.  And underlying it all was a silent scream that Stephen could only feel.

In the next moment, the scene switched.  Stephen caught his own moan in his throat.  He was standing in a dark cell.  He knew, without knowing, that the man curled on his side in the dark corner of the cold room was John Sheridan.  The only sounds now were those of quiet vomiting.  John vomiting.  Stephen spun when the door of the cell came crashing open and Michael was standing breathless in the rectangle of light.

Stephen blinked.

They were sitting in Lyta’s quarters aboard Babylon 5.  Michael had his head in his hands and Lyta was watching Franklin carefully.

“Now do you believe him?”

Stephen nodded once.  “Yes.  I….”

The station was rocked by an explosion.  Then another.  And another.

Franklin’s link blipped once.  He didn’t have to answer it to know he was needed.  He was only aware that Michael had followed him when he got back to MedLab.
 

MedLab One went from peaceful quiet to chaos in a matter of seconds.  Stephen started issuing orders, supervising other doctors and nurses, assessing patients as they were brought in.

The place started to fill up, and as it did, Hobbs opened the IC unit doors in a desperate effort to find more space.

John awoke to the havoc surrounding him.  Patients moaning, calling out.  Medical staff moving quickly from one gurney to the next, prioritising, field dressing minor wounds.

To the staff of the station’s MedLab facility, this was business as usual.  Sabotage had been expected in the weeks proceeding the rebellion and the war.  They were ready for this.

John was slammed back into hell.

Stephen caught his patient’s movements as he looked up.  Activating his link, he paged Susan, asking her to send Jack Maynard back to MedLab.  In the next moment, Stephen saw Michael move out of the corner of his eye.  He moved quickly around three gurneys to place himself in the man’s path.

“You go near him and I swear, I’ll space you.”

“Stephen, he’s probably flashing back, probably thinks they’re playing their fucking mindgames again!  He’s freaking out, damnit!”

“I know!”  Stephen dropped the volume of his voice a little.  “I know.  But you will scare him even more!”

“I rescued him!”

“Do you think he remembers that?  He was in their hands for two weeks, Michael!  Fourteen days to spend wondering where the hell he’d gone wrong, why his best friend had betrayed him.  What do you think stuck in his mind the most, Michael?  The months you spent putting him in there or the minutes you spent getting him out?”

Franklin drew in a deep breath, watching while Michael processed what he’d said.  He watched the man’s face fall, and he knew he’d been too harsh.  Hadn’t Lyta just shown him whose fault it had really been?

“Look, I’m sorry.”

But Michael shook his head, once, side to side.  “No,” he stated steadily.  “You’re not.  And the shouldn’t be.  You’re right.  Seeing me would probably send him on a one-way course straight into cuckoo land.”

Stephen let the smile touch his lips.  “Jack Maynard’s aboard, I’ve paged him.  I don’t think they used his image in their games because last night, John seemed to trust him out of any of us.”

The whine of a PPG powering up caused both of them to turn.

“Susan!”

“Garibaldi, I swore if I ever saw you again, I’d blow your brains all over space.”  She aimed the weapon, expression deadly serious.  “MedLab will do.”

Stephen stepped between Michael and the bad end of the PPG.

“Susan, listen to me.”

“No!  Get out of the way, Stephen.”

Michael, instead, stepped out from behind the doctor, and she swung the weapon to point directly at her target.

“Susan, there are a million reasons why you shouldn’t listen to me, but please, you have to trust me this one time.”

“Trust you?!  Have you seen him?”  A tear formed in the corner of her eye.  “Have you any idea of the damage you’ve caused?”

“It wasn’t me.  Susan… it was Bester.  He used me.  He took me and reprogrammed me.  I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing.  You have to believe me!”

“Ha!”  Her eyes flashed.  “Why the hell should I believe anything you say to me?  You told John you knew where his father was being kept…”

“I did know!”

“…and that you would take him to him, help get him out.  Instead, you drug your own friend – the man who used to share your bed, Michael, for Christ’s sake!!!  You stand back and let Clarke’s agents beat the crap out of him, and then watch as they drag him away to be tortured and interrogated.”

Mirroring tears slid from the corners of his eyes.  “I didn’t know what I was doing!”  He raised his voice, trying desperately to push the point across.  Not because he was frightened that she would shoot him, that didn’t matter one iota.  Because he was terrified that he’d lose her forever.  She was the closest thing to family that he still had left.  Her and Stephen.  And John.

He thought about his captain for a fleeting moment.  What state must he be in to have caused such hysteria amongst the command staff now?

And then Susan started up again, having taken his momentary silence as acknowledgement of the truths she was spurting.

Despite the death and injury all around him, Stephen thought for an insane moment that he might laugh.  He covered his mouth in case any humour escaped him.

In the midst of the gurneys and the medical staff, Susan and Michael stood yelling at one another.
 

Jack had crossed the chaos in silence and stopped beside John’s bed.  Slowly, he placed his fingers over the fretting patient’s thumb and lowered his hand.

“Ssh, Johnny.  You’re safe.  You’re on Babylon 5.”

Sheridan’s crumpled, terrified expression relaxed slightly.  His lips moved, and Jack would have sworn he heard a murmur of his nickname.  ‘Stinky’.

“Yeah, John, it’s me.  You’re on Babylon 5.  There’s been an explosion, several explosions,” he smiled as he corrected himself.  “Business as usual, ay, Johnny?”

Dark, grey eyes flitted back and forth, from Jack’s face to the chaos around him.  Jack perched himself up on the edge of the wide bed.

Very gently, Jack touched his other hand to John’s temple, stroking his thumb over the greying hair there.

“Relax, Swampy.  You’re okay.  Everything’s okay.”

He kept up the light strokes of his thumb over John’s hair, giving him something to concentrate on.  And slowly, John’s eyes closed.
 

Susan and Michael paused for breath.  They looked around.

Chaos was subsiding.  All casualties had been brought in from the three explosions and Stephen had everything under control.  As usual.

As Garibaldi glanced at him, he saw Stephen look up from his patient across the lab through the open door into the IC unit.  Michael followed that gaze and saw Jack sitting up on a bed, leaning slightly over their calmed ward.

Susan sucked in a deep breath and turned her attention back to Garibaldi, ready to restart their furious argument.  He had his back to her now and she’d totally lost him to whatever else had grabbed him.

In a moment, she’d weighed up whether or not to just shoot him and decided against it.  Instead, she grabbed his arm.

He looked at her, but the anger and desperation was gone from his face.  A second later, he had pulled his limb out of her grasp and was walking through the now organized chaos to the IC unit observation window.

As he walked around, John came into view from where he’d been obscured by Jack’s seated form.

Michael bit back a sound from his heart.  “Oh, John….”

In amongst a host of monitors, wires and tubes, Sheridan lay back, head on the grey and white pillow, covered by a matching grey and white quilt.

He looked more vulnerable now than he’d ever looked, even when he’d been shackled into that damn chair in the cell on Mars.

Jack’s hold of his hand and touch at the side of his head was infinitely gentle.

Garibaldi rubbed his face.  He stood, mind working a million times a minute.

He started when a hand landed on his shoulder.

“Stephen….”

But there was no anger or threat in the doctor’s expression.  “He’s very ill, Michael.”

“I know.  And I’m to blame.”

“Don’t.  I remember John telling me once… there’s enough guilt in the universe already.  He was carrying most of it.  Don’t take any more.”  He sighed softly.  “I’m sorry – about before.  But he… he’s been through hell.  I can’t bare to see him go through any more.”

“I understand.  Really.”  Raising a trembling hand, Michael pressed his palm against the glass.  “I think about the two years I spent protecting him….  In the end, it was me he needed protection from.”

Stephen squeezed Garibaldi’s shoulder.  “It’s gonna take time, Michael.  For him, and for you.  For now… let’s just all take a step back and… just breathe.”
 

fin
elfin