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Medical Considerations:Solitudes

If I may borrow a charming term from an equally charming Colonel of our acquaintance:

Waiting sucks.

I know. As the doctor, I could have insisted on going with them. But once the word came through that the rescue team had located the other half of SG1, well. There's only so much room in a helicopter, and nothing short of a general anaesthetic was going to stop Daniel and Teal'c and the General from rushing off to make sure nobody accidentally dropped Jack or Sam during the extraction. I didn't have the heart to pull rank on them. Besides. Phil Waites, the McMurdo Rescue team EMT, was perfectly competent and I was only a radio wave away and there were all the preparations to be made.

I've gotten used to not having to worry about security considerations. At SGC my patients can babble all they want about goa'uld and jaffa and stargates and aliens and wormholes. Who's to care? But McMurdo is a different matter. McMurdo is not a secure facility. Not what we call secure, anyway. That's why I'd been brought along, of course. Not just because of my extraordinary medical skill, but for containment purposes.

Dr Roger Abbot wasn't too sure. Dr Roger Abbot seemed to think my presence implied that he wasn't good enough to take care of our people. Dr Roger Abbot is one of those irritating types who think that 'Classified' applies to other people. What? Did we think he couldn't keep a secret?

Well, yes. That was the general idea.

George Hammond is a dedicated, intelligent, articulate, caring, compassionate man who can halt a Jack O'Neill tirade in mid-flight with the lift of one eyebrow. One eyebrow.

Roger Abbot didn't stand a chance.

He sulked as we waited for Rescue Team Charlie to come in from the cold. Spare me. If I hadn't needed his surgical skills I would have found something else for him to do. But I did, so I was stuck with him. Terrific. Just what I really wanted with yet another O'Neill inspired crisis heading my way at Mach 2.

Coma. Hypothermia. Head injury. Fractured tib/fib and ribs. Internal injuries. Bleeding. Frostbite. Hell's bells and buckets of blood.

Buckets. I just prayed that Jack hadn't spilled more than he could spare. Him being so clumsy, and all. I'd brought more with me, of course. Lots of little red baggies of AB neg. Couldn't risk McMurdo running out and didn't want to deplete their stores, anyway. The OR was ready, the blankets and saline were warming, the crash cart and portable x-ray machine were standing by and my little heart was going pitter-pitter-pat.

We could lose this one. This is bad. He's been deteriorating for seventy two hours. He may be strong, he may be the toughest sonofabitch you've ever met, but it's been three days and he's a mess.

Roger Abbot said, "This is an excellent facility, Doctor. And it has excellent staff. You don't have to worry about that." The scowl was gone, replaced by something approaching compassion.

"I know," I said, more snappily that I should have. Either he was more perceptive than I'd given him credit for, or I wasn't camouflaging as well I should have been. Damn. I bit my lip, took a deep breath. "Sorry. This has nothing to do with your competence, Doctor. It really hasn't. When the General said National Security, he wasn't kidding. Do yourself a favour and give your curiosity the day off."

Easier said than done. I could see all the unasked questions and speculations rampaging behind his eyes. He smiled. "That's a tall order."

"I know," I said. "But this is no joking matter. Everyone here will have to be debriefed once the emergency is over, and I promise you, it's not going to be any kind of a routine chat session. You're playing in the Major League, now."

He nodded. Said, "So. I guess these people are pretty important, then?"

Pretty important. Cassie burst into tears when I told her where I was going, and why. And yes, I did tell her. She already knew they were missing. I don't believe in lying to children. They know when something's wrong, they know when you're deeply distressed. Telling them that nothing's the matter is a betrayal of trust. Besides. Cass is no ordinary child. And she loves Jack as much as she must have loved her real father, when he was alive. Loves Sam like the big sister she'd never had. She wouldn't have thanked me for lying. She gave me two paintings, one for each of them, to sticky tape beside their beds. Paintings that she'd done the day before in school. Sam's was a roller coaster. I think it was a hint. Jack's involved lots of dogs. Well. I'm almost sure they were dogs. They had four legs, anyway. The paintings were in my bag. I was looking forward to Jack's face when he saw his.

And, by God, he was going to see it.

"Yes," I said to Roger Abbot. "They're pretty important."

The radio squawked and spluttered. We both jumped. "Rescue Charlie to base, do you copy?"

Abbot reached for the handset. "This is McMurdo, Rescue Charlie, we copy."

"McMurdo, our ETA is five minutes," EMT Waites said over a crash of background noise. "Updated vitals are as follows: O'Neill, BP 70/40, pulse 24, resps 6 and shallow, temp 82.5 degrees. Carter, BP 110/70, pulse 76, resps 14, temp 93."

"Copy that, Rescue Charlie. See you topside in five."

"Don't be late, McMurdo," Waites replied, and not even the background eggbeating of the chopper blades or the radio wave distortion of his voice could disguise his concern. "Rescue Charlie out." Abbot pulled a face. "Let's suit up and get out there. It's rude to keep guests waiting."

"God forbid we should forget our manners," I agreed. Thinking, 70/40, 6 and shallow, 82.5. Oh, shit.

I still find it hard to believe that Jack watches ER. You'd think he had enough crises in his life without inflicting more on himself in the name of relaxation. He says that watching someone else's disasters makes a nice change from living his own. Clearly Jack subscribes to the 'I bang my head against a brick wall because it feels so good when I stop' school of recreation.

I don't.

Besides. It's all hyped up for the purposes of ratings: God forbid they let the medical facts get in the way of a good story. No real ER has that many unusual incidents every day, and nobody races around the corridors bellowing 'Emergency! Get out of my way' in a real hospital.

Having said that, if the producers had seen the way I rocketed over to the helicopter as they unloaded Jack onto a gurney, they would have hired me on the spot.

82.5 degrees. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? I mean, that's only ten degrees or so below normal. What's the big deal?

Well. The big deal is that the human body is a perplexing kaleidoscope of inter-connected checks and balances. And there's very little leeway for error. 82.5 degrees meant that Jack's body was almost too cold to function. That the proteins and hormones and neurotransmitters that keep us alive, that keep the marvellous machine ticking, were on the brink of breakdown. At 82.5 degrees the heart can barely pump. It develops arrhythmias. It starts to fibrillate.

You die.

Sam was fine. A couple of nasty lacerations on the right cheek that would need plastic surgery once we were back home. Assorted bumps and bruises, a little touch of frostbite here and there, hypothermia, of course, but mild, compared to Jack. Nothing life threatening. Sam was fine. Sam could wait.

But Jack? Oh, Jack.

Naming no names, there are some people at SGC who think that my feelings for Jack O'Neill have strayed a tad past the professional. Which is nonsense. I am his physician, and by definition know more intimate things about him than anybody else alive, including his wife. I have to. It's my responsibility to put him back together again after an excursion's gone sour.

If, when SG1 returns from a mission and there's been some kind of medical compromise, if I tend to check him out first, it's for a reason. I've read his full medical file, and you haven't.

I'll bet you didn't know that an entire military medical seminar was devoted to discussing his survival of a top secret mission into Iraq that went wrong back in ... well, let's just say the eighties, shall we?

Twelve of the military's finest surgeons, four top psychiatrists, two behavioural psychologists and assorted Generals, Colonels and Staff Sergeants, every one an expert in survival trainng, all trying to work out how Jack O'Neill managed to crawl across the desert for nine days with a fractured skull, a smashed arm, blown knee, broken collar bone, fractured cheekbone, assorted broken ribs, dehydration, malnutrition, sunburn and heat exhaustion. They thought perhaps there might be a few things they could incorporate into their Special Forces training programmes. Things that could help another soldier should a similar accident occur again sometime in the future.

Unfortunately, Jack's particular brand of bloody-mindedness doesn't come in vaccine form, and he wasn't really amenable to the idea of Sara marrying anybody else.

He still isn't, but that's another story.

In the end, the seminar was a bust. They attached the notes and the slide show to his permanent medical file, though. I just wish someone had warned me about that before I sat down to read it over lunch.

What's more, the Iraq thing isn't the only hair raising item in Jack's medical file. Oh, no. So if I tend to get a little concerned when Jack O'Neill returns from a mission with more holes in him than when he left, I have good reason. Jack used up his last Get Out Of Trouble Free card a long, long time ago.

But it's not just his physical well being I worry about. It's also my job to keep an eye on his emotional barometer, and take action if there's a storm brewing. Jack's sustained some pretty savage blows in that department, too, over the years. He hasn't always handled them well. If you look closely, past the self-assured sarcasm and the aura of invincibility ... you can see the cracks.

The bottom line is ... I'm the logical one for him to talk to. I'm his doctor. I've already done a headcount of all the skeletons in his closet, so there's not much he needs to explain. I'm not in his direct chain of command, up or down. Even though he's a Colonel and I'm a Captain, the fact that I have the medical authority to ground anybody, up to and including Hammond, means that we're on a strange kind of equal footing. He knows he can trust me. And in his line of work, that's rare.

So please. Enough with the raised eyebrows and the knowing looks, okay? We're friends. End of story.

Doctor Roger Abbot took one look at my friend and said, "Oh, shit." We were wheeling him down the corridor towards the McMurdo Infirmary like he was made of spun glass. Like sneezing too close would shatter him.

Bodies suffering from extreme hypothermia are fragile. It doesn't take much to shut them down completely. Treating them is tightrope medicine, you don't get a safety-net .... and more often than not, one end of that tightrope is unravelling as you go.

It was going to take every ounce of skill I possessed to stop Jack from falling. I left Phil Waites and his team to take care of Sam in the second treatment room. They knew what they were doing, they had fluids in her and heat pads round her. She was in no danger of dying.

We couldn't say the same for Jack.

There's a kind of rhythm to dealing with an emergency. After a while it becomes second nature, and even if you've never worked with a particular team before, if they've danced the dance then it doesn't take long to get into sync. Within seconds, Roger Abbot and I were dancing up a storm.

"Onto the table on three," he said. "One, two, three." And delicately we swung Jack off the gurney and onto the exam table. Intubated him. Started him on warmed humidified oxygen. Hooked up more ivs, poured a few units more blood and warmed fluids into him, attached the EKG patches, took blood for screening, re-checked his vitals. I was peripherally aware of Daniel and Teal'c and the General hugging the wall opposite, still bundled in their snow gear, silent and staring and scared. They shouldn't have been there, really, but when Roger opened his mouth to clear the room, I shook my head. To his credit, he didn't argue, just shrugged and continued hunting for another vein. After the first glance I ignored them. Couldn't afford to be distracted by their distress.

"Scissors," I snapped, and snatched them from someone, and began cutting off Jack's clothes. Where's a nurse when you need one? Damn military issue fatigues. My wrist and fingers were killing me by the end, but at last he was naked and we could get an accurate picture of what we were dealing with.

He looked like an extra in a horror movie. His eyes were sunken, his lips blue. What little of his body that remained unbruised was dead white, plastic and unyielding like a refrigerated corpse.

"Christ on a bicycle," Roger Abbot said in disgust, bending over Jack's chest with a stethescope. "Decreased breath sounds on the right, with rolls. The lung's collapsed. I need a chest tube, now."

I kept half an eye on what he was doing as I ran my fingers lightly over Jack's cold body, testing for give where it should be strong, rigidity where I wanted give. Roger inserted the chest tube, hooked up the suction. Pulled back to remove the invading air. The syringe filled with blood.

"Dammit," said Roger. "We're looking at pneumonia for sure, here." Discarded the syringe and listened again to Jack's lungs. "Nope. No reinflation. I think it's perforated. What about you?"

My discoveries were no better. Three ribs definitely gone. The right leg. Maybe some bleeding into the belly. Bruising around the right occipital that may or may not indicate a hairline fracture. He needed exploratory surgery. He needed an orthopod. He needed a fully equipped ICU. He needed a miracle.

"What's his temp now?" Roger said.

I checked. "85."

"We've gotta heat him up or anything else we do'll be a waste of time."

I nodded. "We'll put him on heat pads and pack him with blankets. Continue the warm fluids and oxygen."

"What?" Roger said. "That's not enough. He needs a peritoneal lavage. Blood dialysis, even."

"No," I said. "That'll raise the core temp too fast."

"Too fast?" said Roger, belligerent. "The man is a popsicle, Dr Fraiser!"

"I know that!" I snapped. "Look. His medical history is -- unorthodox. His body is subjected to unusual biomechanical stresses on a weekly basis. They've resulted in some chemical changes. There's no telling what affect optimal reheating will have. I'd rather play it safe. Lavage and dialysis as a last resort."

"That'll mean maybe three hours before we can risk a general anaesthetic," Roger pointed out. "I'm not sure he's got that long. Are you?"

I looked up, then. Straight at Daniel, and Teal'c, and the General. "He's tough," I said. "You'll never know how tough. My decision stands."

Roger wasn't happy. "Fine," he said. "It's your call. Let's just hope it's not his funeral, too."

We took pictures of Jack's skull and chest and leg. Passed them down the hall to be developed. Slid heat pads underneath him, laid heated blankets on top of him. Poured more blood into his starved body. Rechecked his vitals. Stepped back for a moment to breathe, just breathe, and wipe the chilly sweat from our faces.

He arrested. I didn't want to think about what was happening to his abused body as I shocked him with 200 joules, then 300, then 360. As I screamed at the monitor to blip, you bastard, blip, don't you dare give up on me O'Neill, don't you dare, don't you think you can walk away from this, I promised Cassie you'd be all right, you sonofabitch, you sonofabitch, don't you make a liar out of me!

I got him back.

Roger and I looked at the pictures, then. They weren't pretty, but they could have been worse. No second skull fracture. No facial fractures. If he'd hit his head an inch more to the right he'd have shattered the fragile bone beneath the temple. That would have killed him outright. The ribs had broken cleanly but yes, one jagged edge had perforated his lung. As for the tib/fib fractures, they were clean too, but heavily displaced. Definitely a case for surgical reduction.

"Might as well move him into the OR," I told Roger. "I'll be right with you." Then I turned and faced the others.

I don't know what it will take to disturb Teal'c's extraordinary composure. He's like no one I've ever known. Only a fool would have said he was indifferent to the situation, and my momma never raised no fools. But it was so contained, his fear, his pain, so completely within his control that the only clue was in the enormous stillness of his face.

General Hammond echoed him, though less completely. He was frowning, biting his lip, and his hands were fisted tight enough to interrupt the blood flow to his fingers. But still a soldier. Still strong.

Not like Daniel. There were tears in Daniel's eyes, drying on his cheeks. His arms were wrapped around his chest, he was cradling himself, and he rocked on his feet in the ancient rythm of human distress.

"He was dead, Doctor Fraiser, wasn't he ? Just then. Jack was dead."

I had to clear my throat. "His heart stopped. We started it again. Now we need to stabilise him before we can fly him back home to the ICU at SGC. I'm afraid that's going to take some time."

"Is he out of danger?" The general. Unflinching. Shoulders braced against enemy fire.

"No," I said. "He's not."

"What can be done to assist you, Doctor?"

"Right now, Teal'c, nothing. I'll be monitoring him constantly until he's ready for surgery. Once that's done, and he's good to travel, we'll be out of here."

"Well, can we at least sit with Sam? I mean, she's not critical, is she? Can we sit with her?"

I patted Daniel's arm. Could easily have hugged him, he looked so lost, so helpless. What can I say? He brings out the maternal in me. It must be the hair and the glasses. "Sure," I said. "You go sit with Sam. She'll be all the better for a few friendly faces to wake up to."

"And you'll keep us informed?"

I nodded. It was an order, not a request. "Of course, General. Now, please excuse me."

The weight of their fear, their trust, my promise, staggered me as I walked away. I had to touch fingertip to door knob to steady myself as I left the treatment room and headed for the OR, where Jack was waiting for me to somehow keep him going long enough to put him back together again.

Long story short, as a mutually acquainted archeologist would say. Between us, and with some generous intervention from the Surgeon Upstairs, Roger and I managed to keep Jack with us. Re-heated him like a tv dinner, syphoned out the loose blood, rearranged his rib cage into a nice xylophone effect, gave him a matching pair of lungs, straightened out his leg -- don't give up your day job, Sam, my dear-- and put a temporary cast on it. We both agreed that it was a pin and plate job for someone with more rivetting experience than we had.

In other words, by God, we put Humpty together again.

So there. Don't go believing everything you read.

Then we pumped him full of painkillers and antibiotics and staggered off to a dark corner to sleep. Well. Roger did. I went to check on Sam and let the others know that they could relax, everything was going to be all right, barring complications, pretended not to hear the question 'what do you mean, complications?', and advised them all to get some rest.

Then I scrounged coffee and a sandwich, inhaled them, and went back to sit with Jack. Only to find my chair already overflowing with Jaffa, perched at something approaching parade rest while sitting down. Not easy, but he managed it.

"It's okay, Teal'c," I said, closing the door behind me. "I can sit with him." Teal'c just looked at me. I should have known better, of course. According to Bill Warner, he'd not moved from Daniel's side after the inbound Stargate accident that had started all this. Not until Daniel had opened his eyes and was pronounced sound in wind and limb. Now he was on guard again, on duty. I'd be wasting my time trying to get him to leave.

So I found another chair and parked it on the other side of the bed. Checked Jack's vitals, listened to his chest, made a medication note on the chart, and settled in for the long haul. He was still unconscious. I had no idea when he'd wake up. Head injuries, hypothermia and anaesthetic aren't an ideal mix, but desperados can't be choosers. The good news was that his pressure was up, his temperature was back to normal and his heart beat, echoing electronically in the small room, beeped a steady sixty two beats per minute. On the high side, for him, but music to my ears.

I really needed to sit down. The hairline tremor that denotes exhaustion was thrumming all the way to my bones, and I was starting to see double. So I let myself fold at the knees until I was safely in the chair. Propped my elbows on the side of the bed and indulged myself in the sight of Jack O'Neill, breathing.

I fell asleep. When I woke, I found myself on a camp bed placed along one wall of Jack's room. Covered in a light blanket, a pillow beneath my head and my shoes placed neatly to one side. Yawning, blinking, I sat up. It didn't take three guesses to know who was responsible for the Sleeping Beauty trick.

"Thank you, Teal'c," I said.

He inclined his head, graciously. You know, for a former slave he acts a lot like a prince. "You are welcome, Doctor Fraiser."

According to my watch, it was 1522. I'd been asleep for nearly five hours. I clambered off the camp bed, rearranged my clothes and stuck my feet back into my shoes. Stared at Jack, so peaceful beneath his blankets. "You've been here the whole time?" Another regal nod. "Any change?"

"Yes," said Teal'c. "Approximately one and one half hours ago, Colonel O'Neill opened his eyes and, upon seeing me, spoke my name. He then fell asleep once more. I immediately informed Doctor Abbot, who seemed most relieved. I asked him if it was appropriate for you to be woken at that point, but he said that it was not. I hope I have done the right thing."

I blinked. "Just ... run that past me again, would you, Teal'c? An hour and a half ago Colonel O'Neill regained consciousness, demonstrated lucidity, then relapsed into a normal sleep? Is that correct?"

"It is."

"Thank God," I breathed, and had to press my lips tight to stop them from trembling. Reached out to my sleeping friend and touched his cheek. Just once. Just lightly. To celebrate the pliability of warm flesh beneath my fingers. The bruising around his right eye was savage, ripened now into all its glory. But the marks, both visible and hidden, would fade soon enough, as would the memories of this disastrous mission, and life would go on. I had, by God, kept my promise to Cassandra.

"What about Sam?" I said, still not taking my eyes from the bed.

"I do not know. I believe that General Hammond and Daniel Jackson are still with her."

"I'd better go see how she's doing," I said. "You're all right to stay here? You don't need anything?"

Teal'c shook his head. "Thank you, no. I am content."

So I left him there, stone still by Jack's bedside, as immense and as deep as any ocean.

Sam was awake. Propped up in bed, her cheek swathed in gauze and sticking plaster, dark shadows beneath her eyes, a drip still plugged into her arm. She looked tired. She looked shaky. She was alive: she looked great. Daniel sat back to front on a chair pulled close to the bedside. General Hammond sat a little further away. Everything about him bespoke a profound contentment. I knew he was a friend of Sam's father. I could only imagine the depth of his relief at not having to make that final, terrible phone call.

"Hey, there," I said as I entered the room. "Still in bed? Did you know there's a word for people like you?"

"Yeah," said Daniel, his face as vivid as a sunrise. "Lucky. Look, Doc. She's okay."

"She certainly is," I agreed, giving the chart at the end of her bed a quick glance. "Mind if I confirm the diagnosis myself?"

Sam smiled, but it was a little hesitant for my liking, a little strained. There were shadows in her eyes as well as below them. She said, "Sure. Why not?" And suffered in silence as I poked and prodded and generally convinced myself she really was in one piece. "So," I said when I was finished. "How do you feel?"

"Warm," she said, and shivered. "I never thought I'd feel anything but frozen again."

"No, well, hypothermia will do that to you," I agreed.

"What about Jack? I mean, the Colonel? How's he doing?"

"Well," I said, "he seems to be doing okay. His vital signs are holding steady, he's in a natural sleep. All things considered, I'm guardedly optomistic."

She was frowning. "But his leg. What about his leg?"

"It's broken. But not too badly. Provided we chain him to a bed long enough for it to heal properly, I don't see why he should have any trouble with it in the future." I grinned. "Despite the truly terrible set and splint job."

As a joke, it backfired. Her eyes filled with tears and, knees pulled close to her chest, she hugged herself. "I tried. I did, honestly. But I'd never had to set a broken bone before, and my hands were so cold, and --"

"Hey!" I said. "Hey, it's all right. I was kidding. The splint was fine, Sam. It was fine. The Colonel is fine. It's all right."

Beside her, Daniel reached for her hand and held it tight. "Please don't cry, Sam. It's all over now. You're safe, Jack's safe. It's over."

She nodded, eased her hand free. "I know. I'm okay."

Daniel said, "Do you feel up to telling us what happened? So long as Doc Fraiser says it's all right?"

The General looked at me. "Is it all right, Doctor?"

I looked at her. Sooner or later she'd have to talk about it ... and I'm a big believer in sooner. Bottling up trauma doesn't help anyone. I said, "Sure. As long as Captain Carter's comfortable with it."

"Yeah," she said. "I guess."

I eased myself into a convenient shadow. Perched on the edge of an empty bed, and settled myself down to listen. To be honest, I was dying of curiosity.

Softly, a little hesitantly, Sam told us what happened. How, along with the rest of the team, she'd fled the enemy attack on P7C225. Leapt through the gate two paces ahead of Jack. Awoke twenty minutes later to find herself sprawled beside his unconscious body at the bottom of a deep glacial crevasse. How she'd checked him for injury, searched without success for Daniel and Teal'c, for the DHD, for some kind of clue to their location. Waited for Jack to wake up, and slowly, terribly, absorbed the frightening implications of their situation.

"When the Colonel finally regained consciousness, he seemed all right, at first," she said. "I mean, he was in pain. His leg --" She faltered. Took a deep breath. Let it out. "But apart from that, he was ... the Colonel. Cracking jokes. Keeping me focussed. Making me concentrate on fixing the Gate and getting us home. At first, I thought he wasn't too badly hurt. But then after a few hours he started to ... drift."

"How do you mean, drift?" said Daniel. His arms were folded along the back of the chair, and he'd lowered his chin to rest on them. His hair, overdue for a cut again, flopped into his eyes. He looked like a college kid, not a married double PhD university lecturer come archeological pathfinder come space explorer.

Sam frowned. "I think he knew, almost from the beginning, that he was in trouble. When he thought I wasn't looking there'd be this weird expression on his face, like he was staring inside of himself, calculating the damage and how long he could last."

"He probably was," said the General quietly.

"Mmm," said Sam, white as her sheets. "Anyway."

It all went rapidly downhill from there. The laboured breathing. The coughing up blood. The increased lethargy, and lapses into unconsciousness. The body slowly but surely shutting down. She said, "I tried so hard to make the Gate work. I was his only hope, he was counting on me to save his life. He never put any pressure on me, he never criticised me once for being so useless, but I could see in his eyes that he was getting scared, that he thought he was going to die. It was all down to me and I couldn't do it, I couldn't make the damned thing work, and I didn't know why !"

Again Daniel reached for her hand, folded his fingers around hers. This time she didn't pull away. "Easy, Sam," he said. "It wasn't your fault."

"I couldn't believe it when you told me we'd been on Earth the whole time!" she cried. "How could I have missed that? It was an obvious conclusion, how could I have been so stupid?"

Daniel grinned, anxiously, trying to calm her down. "Hey, go easy on the stupid thing, will you? I mean, it took me three days to figure it out."

"Yes, but you're not an astrophysicist, Daniel," she said impatiently. "I am. I should have known. I should have thought."

"You did everything you could, Sam," the General said. "There's no call for self-reproach."

She said, "Or I could have tried dialling a different destination, a friendly world. But I was so fixated on getting him back to Earth that didn't occur to me, either! If I'd thought of that at the start we would have been home days ago, I could have spared him -- spared him --" She pressed her hands to her face, breathing tremulously.

Daniel said, "You're being too hard on yourself, Sam. You kept him alive. You activated a stargate that's been buried in ice for God knows how many thousands of years. You were freezing. Hungry. Injured. You --"

"Injured?" she spat, snatching her hands away. "I had a couple of lousy scratches and a headache, Daniel! I got worse than that in basic training. Stop making excuses for me, okay? I screwed up. End of story."

The General said, "We might just agree to disagree on that point, Captain. What happened next?"

"I abandoned him," she said. "I left him to die."

All three of us stared at each other. Me, Daniel, the General.

Daniel said, "Sam --"

Hammond said, "Captain Carter --"

I said, "Bullshit."

So then they all stared at me. I got off the bed. Stepped out of the shadow. I've never been so sure of anything in my life. "He knew he was dying. He didn't want you to see it. He didn't want you to die, too. So he ordered you to leave him, and save yourself."

"How do you --" Daniel began.

"Because I know him, Daniel. So do you." I looked at the General. "And you do, too, sir."

The General was nodding. His expression sad and admiring. "Yes. Yes, I do."

Sam said, "He begged me." She was staring into the past. Pain rising in her until it overflowed her eyes and ran down her cheeks. "He said, 'I'm dying.' And he told me to go. He said, 'It was an honour serving with you.' He was in pain. Afraid. Dying. And I abandoned him."

Gently, the General said, "You were following orders, Captain."

"I abandoned him," she repeated. "I failed him, and then I abandoned him."

"But you went back," said Daniel. "You were together when we found you. That's not abandoning him, is it?"

She was shaking. "He didn't know where we were, at the end. He thought I was --- someone else. He trusted me to get us out of there, and I didn't. I failed him." Her voice broke, and she sobbed. Pressed her knuckles to her mouth, eyes wide and appalled. Soldiers don't cry. Soldiers are tough. Detached. Always in control.

Yeah. Right.

I opened my mouth to clear the room, then. Give her the privacy she desperately needed, and a shoulder to cry on if she wanted one.

Daniel beat me to it.

"Sam, Sam, don't, please, Sam, come on, don't do this to yourself," he pleaded. His own voice breaking. Lunging out of the chair and onto the bed, gathering Sam in his arms and gentling her face to his chest, one hand smoothing her hair. "It's okay, it's okay, Sam, it's okay," he crooned, over and over.

"Oh, God," she wailed, muffled into his sweater. And wept without restraint, like a child.

Irrationally, as I watched Daniel comfort her, I thought of my own unlamented ex and his inability to so much as say 'poor you'. And I envied Sha're, the wife I'd never met, her brief love of this extraordinary man, her husband. Better brief than never is what I say.

It was good she was crying. Tears are a normal, healthy response to traumatic events, and if more soldiers gave themselves permission to cry on a friend's shoulder when they needed to, instead of bottling up their feelings and pretending that everything was okay when it wasn't, we'd have fewer suicides and mental health discharges in the US Military. Not to mention divorces, chronic depression and non-specific malaise.

Do I need to mention names?

I glanced at the General. He was frowning, eyes downcast. Uncomfortable. Another damned soldier. Thank God for Daniel.

"Listen to me," he said, when she'd cried herself out and eased free of his embrace. "It was an accident. All of it. If you want to blame someone, blame whoever it was that started firing on us and overloaded the gate in the first place. There was no reason for you to think you'd come through a second gate on Earth. And I only figured it out because you got that second gate working and set up a reaction in ours. If you hadn't, we never would have found you. So you see? You did save him, Sam. You did."

"Listen to Doctor Jackson, Captain," the General said. "He's right."

Sam nodded. "Yes, sir."

Yes, sir. In other words, I'm tired sir and I don't want to talk about this any more. I know you mean well, I know you think you understand, but you don't, and nothing you or Daniel can say will change what happened or how I feel about it.

"Okay," I said. "Time to let the Captain rest."

Once they were gone, I re-checked her vitals. Settled her in the bed. Plumped the pillows and straightened the blankets, all the little touches that Cass likes when she's not feeling well.

"Janet?"

I looked up from making another note on her chart. "Yes?"

Her eyes looked enormous. Bruised. "Is he really going to be all right?"

I replaced her chart. Perched on the side of the bed. "I think so. I won't lie to you, Sam. It was close. Another half hour and he would have been DOA. And you wouldn't have been far behind. But that didn't happen."

"He screamed," she whispered. "When I was setting his leg. I never -- he's always so --" She bit her lip. "I made him scream."

I sighed. "Sam. Any human being not paralysed from the waist down is going to scream when you set their tib/fib fractures without so much as an aspirin to distract them. Even Jack. So don't take it personally, okay?" She didn't look convinced. "Look," I said. "Between you and me and the bedpan, I've made him yelp a few times myself. I know how you feel. Hurting people is never pleasant. But sometimes you have to, and that's all there is to it."

She didn't look much older than Cass, huddled under the blankets. "He wouldn't let me near him, after I'd set his leg," she said. "Even after -- when he coughed up -- he kept saying he was fine. I knew he wasn't."

"So?" I said. "Once you'd set the leg, what more was there for you to do?"

"I could have got him out of there!" she retorted. "I could have thought things through properly, worked out we were on Earth, or dialled another world!"

Dear oh dear. Time for a sedative. She protested. I ignored her.

"Sleep," I said severely, capping the hypodermic. "And when you wake up, use the brains God gave you. What you did or didn't do is now irrelevant. The Colonel is alive, and so are you. Stop pulling out the gift horse's teeth, and take a moment to appreciate the miracle."

She blinked. Drowsily. "Yes, ma'am."

I waited till her eyes closed, and her breathing slowed. Tip toed out of the room and closed the door behind me.

Daniel was hovering. "Is she okay? God, I've never seen her so upset, ever. Is she okay?"

Dear Daniel. "No, I wouldn't say she's okay, exactly," I told him. "It's been a bad three days."

"It wasn't her fault," said Daniel, eyes wide and worried behind the glasses. "I meant what I said. We never would have find them without her."

I patted his arm. "You know that. I know that. The General knows it, too. But for Sam to know it, she'll have to hear it from the Colonel. And that's not going to be for a while, I'm afraid."

"So what do we do?"

"Give her space. Let her feel whatever she feels. Don't argue with her. Just be there."

Daniel smiled. "Always."

Always. Ah, yes. Love is indeed a many splendoured thing.

"I have some test results to check," I told him. "Get some rest. I'll see you later."

Late that night Jack woke up properly. I gave him Cassie's painting, and he laughed, painfully, so I declared him fit to travel. The next day we packed up our bits and our pieces and thanked the staff at McMurdo, who really had been great, yes, even Roger Abbot.

He eyed me with resigned speculation. "You know this whole business is going to itch me for the rest of my life, don't you?"

"Yeah," I said, grinning.

"You could at least pretend you were sorry!"

I shrugged. "I keep my beside manner for them who needs it."

"And a hell of a bedside manner it is, too," he replied. Watched the EMTs wheeling Jack down the corridor, towards the waiting helicopter. Smiled at the two-man escort party, one silent, one voluble, as they hurried to open the double doors. "You were right. He's .... tough. Just who the hell is he, anyway?"

It was the first time he'd asked. I shook my head. "A good man," I said. "A friend."

"Then he's lucky as well as tough," said Roger Abbot. And shocked us both by kissing my cheek. "See ya, Doc," he added, walking away. "It's been ... different."

The long flight home was uneventful. Jack slept through most of it. Sam met with the plastic surgeon, and was assured there'd be no scarring. Once I was convinced he truly was out of danger I transferred Jack to the USAF Academy hospital, where he had the extra surgery on his leg to pin and plate the bones, and he came through it just fine. A few days after that, when the worst of the pain was gone from his chest and ribs and leg, the pneumonia dwindled to slight breathlessness, and we were able to cut his medication by half, Bill Warner and I teamed up to tell him the bad news about his convalesence. Bad news as in it was going to take a minimum of three months of healing and physiotherapy to get him back to operational status.

Four if you don't stop swearing, Colonel.

Two days after that came school holidays. I took Cass into work with me every day, and she spent most of her time in Jack's room. Reading. Chattering. Painting. I was afraid she'd tire him out, or maybe even stir things that seemed to be sleeping pretty well, these days, but he said it was fine, he didn't mind. Very nonchalant, very offhand ... but watching him with her was like watching desert flowers bloom after rain.

Yes, all right. It's a sloppy, sentimental comparison. But I saw it. You didn't. He glowed.

On the last day of her mid term break, as I was passing his door on the way to a quick coffee break, I poked my head in to say hi. He had another visitor aside from Cass: Sam. She was in civvies, jeans and a tee shirt. I'd been busy, hadn't seen her for over a week. According to Daniel, who made it a point to visit Jack every day and always found me to say hi, she'd stopped beating herself up over what happened in Antarctica ... in public, anyway ... and seemed back to her old self.

Looking at her, though, I wasn't entirely convinced. There was something ... but I couldn't have told you what, exactly. Just .... something.

None of them noticed me standing there. Sam was sprawled in a chair, reading 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' aloud. Jack was watching Cass, who was camped on his bed. And Cass?

Cass was painting his cast.

Sam had reached the end of the story. "'-- And don't talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don't mention it to anyone else unless you find that they've had adventures of the same sort themselves. What's that? How will you know? Oh, you'll know all right. Odd things they say -- even their looks -- will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?

"'And that is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right it was only the beginning of the adventures in Narnia.'" She closed the book. "The End."

Cass, her tongue peeking out between her lips, daubed a particularly lurid shade of green around the border of the cast at Jack's toes. "Just like us. Sort of."

"I'm sorry?" said Sam.

Cass made an impatient noise. Ah, the slowness of grownups. "You know. The wardrobe and Narnia. That's the Stargate and all the places you go. And I'm Lucy."

Sam flicked a quick grin at Jack, who raised his eyebrows. "And who is the Colonel?"

Cass screwed up her nose, thinking. "The Colonel is Mr Beaver, and Janet is Mrs Beaver," she said gravely, after due consideration. "Because they work so hard at making everything right for me."

Sam was having a hard time keeping her face straight. "Really?" she said, and stared round eyed at Jack. "Mr Beaver, hey?"

"Watch it, Captain," Jack growled. "I may not be able to reach you right now, but I have a long, long memory." Sam mimed terror, grinning. Jack sneered and said to Cass, "Okay, Miss Smartypants. Who's Captain Carter, then?"

"Oh, that's easy," said Cass, waving the paintbrush airily. "She's Aslan."

"Aslan?"

"Of course," said Cass. How can you be so slow?

"Any particular reason?" said Jack.

Cass rolled her eyes. "Well, because she is. Sam stood up for me. She took care of me when I was sick, even when it was dangerous. She was going to let herself die with me. Of course she's Aslan. Who else could she be?"

Electric silence. Sam stared at her fingernails. Jack stared at Sam.

"You're quite right, Cass," he said, eventually. "Who else, indeed."

Sam looked up, then. Eyes bright. Bottom lip quivering. "Colonel, I --"

He lifted a finger. "Ah. No arguments. Arguments make my temperature go up. For some strange reason they've got a prejudice against that kind of thing around here."

"Yes, but --"

"I said ah! You're Aslan. End of discussion." He was smiling as he said it, but his eyes were solemn and a shadow of memory lay over him like gauze.

I watched Sam think about it. Memories shifted across her face, too. Darkened her eyes and tightened her fingers on the book. At length she nodded. Swallowed. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

Jack shook his head. Shivered. "No. Thank you."

"Hey," said Cassandra. "Should I make this dog purple or yellow?"

"What?" said Jack. "What the heck are you doing to me, woman?"

Sam put the book under her chair and leaned in for a closer look. "Wow, that's a neat dog, Cass. It even looks a little bit like the Colonel. Paint it purple. With pink spots."

"What?" Jack bellowed. "What is it with you two? First I'm a beaver and now I'm a dog?"

Cass grinned across the bed at Sam. "I've got another paint brush. You want to help?"

"Gee," said Sam, very carefully not looking at Jack. "Thanks, Cass. I don't mind if I do."

Jack groaned. "Captain, I'm going to get you for this. Don't think I'm not going to get you for this."

Sam reached for the spare paint brush. "Oh, I'm sure you are, sir." She smiled at him. Sweetly. "But not for another four months. Pass the paint, Cass."

I left them to it.

Some days, I swear, it's just so damned good to be alive.

© 1998 The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp.
The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters
who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names,
titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television,
Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd.
Partnership.
This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and
solely meant for entertainment.
All other characters, the story idea and the story itself
are the sole property of the author.

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