Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me. I'm just playing in the Stargate sandbox.
Established Ships: Jack/Sam, Daniel/Janet, Daniel/Vala
Timeline: Spring/Summer 2010
Spoilers: All seasons, plus Savarna – a Stargate SG-1 audio drama from Big Finish Productions.
o o o
Singularity:
one
the mathematical representation of a black hole
two
a position where subsequent behavior cannot be predicted
three
the quality of being singular: extraordinary, remarkable, exceptional
o o o
A Kind of Singularity
Chapter One
Cassie
Cassandra Fraiser jogged from the Anchutz Medical Center parking lot to the University Hospital entrance. Students lined the low walls protecting dewy flower beds and filled picnic tables scattered around the yard. A few professors with briefcases in hand hurried across the pavement to their lecture halls. Pages of medical textbooks and anatomy charts fluttered in the chilly morning breeze, and the rising sun cast the quad in blinding orange light. It was shaping up to be a beautiful Rocky Mountain day.
The automatic doors hissed open, and Cassie rushed from the sharp chill outside into the warm hospital lobby so quickly her cheeks stung. Ducking her head and picking up the pace, she darted past the Emergency waiting room before the patients could notice the powder blue scrubs peeking out from under her pea coat. A nurse held the elevator door, flashed a knowing smirk in Cassie's direction, and returned to the patient chart in her hands.
On the way up to the third floor, Cassie surreptitiously checked her appearance in the highly polished elevator doors. Her square face looked oddly elongated in the metal, but she could make out a tired, harried expression. Her deep brown eyes held a hint of weariness known only to medical interns and insomniacs. She remained undecided about the new hairstyle. She'd never worn her hair short before, and the reddish brown locks looked decidedly windswept.
In the changing rooms, Cassie stored her coat and pulled on the white lab coat bearing her name, attached her ID badge, and slammed the locker door shut. More clanging echoed her locker door. The interns filed out of the room and headed to the nurse's station en masse. Ten pairs of tennis shoes squeaked against the waxed floor, and ten lab coats rustled in the breeze of their rapid clip.
"Good morning, interns."
Dr. Mariam Horner was a tall, imposing woman whose sardonic smile held direct contradiction to her words. As she did every morning, the resident doctor inspected the appearance of each intern, as if she could judge their skill this way. Her watery blue eyes rested a moment longer than usual on Cassie's new disordered hairstyle.
Horner began handing out assignments, some of which were the same as the previous day and others brand new. "Adams and Wye, Dr. Singh is waiting for you in the ER …"
Cassie had completed nearly all of her clerkship in Orthopedics, and she already knew she would split her time between running tests, doing pre-ops in Emergency, and post-ops on the fourth floor. Before Horner could give the assignment, Cassie's pager sounded.
"It's Dr. Denby," she announced, looking at her resident for approval to leave. With a nod from Horner, Cassie broke away from the herd of interns and raced down two flights of stairs to the ER where Dr. Alicia Denby, an orthopedics resident in her final year, would be waiting with a new patient.
At first glance, one might assume Alicia Denby looked as delicate as the porcelain doll she resembled. The top of her head came to Cassie's shoulder. The diminutive doctor stood at the nurse's station scribbling on a patient chart.
"Good morning, Dr. Denby," Cassie said warmly.
She didn't plan to specialize in orthopedics, but Denby had made it a pleasurable and immensely beneficial rotation. Cassie's clerkships, and her future residency, had been built around one goal – to join the medical staff at Stargate Command where she would research human physiology and evolution in a lab full of alien specimens.
Sam had asked her once, and Jack had asked separately, why not attend the Air Force Academy and fast-track her research? With a word from Jack, a residency would have been set up for her in the SGC. Instead, Cassie had gone the civilian route. She'd earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology from University of Colorado in Denver and then applied to the medical school at the Aurora campus. She had another three-and-half years minimum before Jack could even consider bringing her into the SGC.
Cassie didn't have a good reason except that she didn't feel compelled to join the Air Force. Earth, and the United States specifically, had been her home for thirteen years, and yet Hanka had been home for nearly as long. To join the armed forces felt like permanently switching her allegiance. She loved Earth and its people, but she had loved Hanka and its people too. At eighteen, Cassie hadn't been ready to make such an irreversible decision. At twenty-five, she still wasn't ready.
"We have a patient waiting in bed three," Dr. Denby said, finally looking up from the chart and passing it off to the ER nurse. "Eason will be joining us, but I'll let you take point since you got here first."
Denby didn't wait for Eason to arrive. She handed over the chart to Cassie and pulled back the blue curtain that had been blocking the patient from view. Cassie caught a glimpse of a handsome young man with a shadowy square jaw, curly jet black hair, and eyes as dark as coal before Dr. Denby prompted her to begin the interview.
"Good morning …" Cassie searched the chart for a name. Marco Beyash. "I'm Dr. Cassandra Fraiser, and this is Dr. Alicia Denby. You came in early this morning complaining of a pain in your foot, is that right?"
"That's right, doctor."
Marco spoke with a soft, lilting accent not unlike some Irish celebrities, but there was a quality about it that Cassie couldn't identify – something that made it decidedly not British. She had a momentary image of Marco Beyash as a Roma, a gypsy, collecting accents from a dozen regions and shaping them into something new. His eclectic clothing did nothing to refute that idea.
"When did you first notice the pain, Mr. Beyash?"
"Please call me Marco." He stared at her with those coal black eyes, like he knew her and expected her to remember him too. Cassie shifted her weight from left to right foot, but the principles of bedside manner refused to let her unease show on her face. "And I noticed it yesterday afternoon, but it got worse overnight."
"Okay, Marco. I'm going to examine your foot." Cassie glanced at his swollen, bruised right foot. She pulled on a pair of gloves and gently lifted his ankle off the bed. "This will hurt a little, but I'll make it quick."
"I'm no stranger to pain," Marco said, though he winced as Cassie bent two of his toes. "I was shot once a long time ago and had a … what do you call it when your brain is bleedi—?"
"Hematoma," Cassie blurted. She flushed a slightly. "Sorry, it's a habit. They ingrain that into you in medical school. When someone asks a medical question, shout out the answer before a classmate does."
Marco gave a slow, easy smile. "Well, it's good to know you're a sharp one, Dr. Fraiser."
Something about the way he said 'Dr. Fraiser' sent a thrill through Cassie's heart. It felt like being separated from a dear friend for many years, running into them on the street, and only then realizing you'd forgotten all about them. Dr. Denby pointedly cleared her throat, and Cassie realized she'd been staring at Marco, trying to place him.
"Your suggested course of treatment, Dr. Fraiser?"
"Oh, umm … I would order an x-ray." She preempted the next question by adding, "Because Mr. – Marco is twenty-years-old and experienced the pain only recently, but can still walk, the most likely diagnosis is hairline fracture of the metatarsals. An x-ray will confirm."
"Good," Dr. Denby said, "Do it."
o o o
The radiologist wheeled Marco's bed into the x-ray lab and left Cassie waiting in the hallway with his chart. She flipped through it idly, wondering if there were any clues about who he might be or why she thought he knew her. Some things did jump out, like the fact that Marco didn't have medical insurance and that his address was Colorado Springs.
Was that how she knew him? She wracked her brain pulling up mental images of classmates before it occurred to her that Marco was five years younger than her. Even if they'd both gone to Cheyenne Mountain High School, they wouldn't have been there at the same time.
The vibrating cell phone interrupted Cassie's thoughts. She pulled out the BlackBerry from her pocket and peered at the Caller ID. NORAD. As far as she knew, Sam was still on board the General Hammond scouting for other Icarus bases, and when Jack called, the ID always read Pentagon. Cassie hesitated for just a moment. It might be Vala wanting directions on using Twitter again.
"Hello," Cassie answered, prepared to feign a sudden and unexpected emergency situation if it was Vala.
There was a pause. "You sound like you're cringing. Who were you expecting?"
"Sam!" Cassie breathed a sigh of relief. "I didn't think you would be back on Ear – home for another month or two." A passing nurse threw her a quizzical look, and she turned her back to the corridor to finish the conversation privately.
"The Sun Tzu is having problems with its main weapons systems, and with our other ships on missions, Earth is defenseless at the moment," Sam explained. "The George Hammond was closest to Earth, so General O'Neill recalled us."
Cassie shook her head slightly. How did they keep up this ruse? General O'Neill? The regulations alone were another reason to avoid the armed forces. Some people found comfort in stricture, but to Cassie it had only ever felt like a bleak road to a sad, lonely ending. The first twelve years of her life had been spent under the thumb of Nirrti – the Hankan 'god' – and even thirteen years later Cassie itched to do exactly as she pleased, when she pleased.
"Anyway, I wondered if you were free for lunch tomorrow. I could beam down and meet you at our usual table," Sam continued.
"That would be great, Sam! I have so much to tell you. I finished my neurology clerkship, and I've moved on to orthopedics. Oh, and I taught an old dog a new trick." Cassie laughed lightly and wished she'd saved that line for Jack. "Homer can finally fetch the newspaper for me! Although it might be that he's too old and tired to chew it up first."
Homer had been a puppy when Jack gave him to her, but he was going on fourteen now and not getting around so well. She dreaded to think of the coming day when he would get too old. Homer had been her pet for as long as she'd been on Earth. He'd become inextricably linked to her identity on the planet since Jack told her about the Earth 'rule' that every kid had to have a dog.
"I look forward to hearing all about it. I'll beam down at noon."
Cassie had no sooner slid the phone back into her pocket than the door opened and the radiologist beckoned her to come in. Two sets of developed x-rays hung on the lightboard. The three fractures in the metatarsals were apparent at once, but there was something very wrong about these images.
"These are Marco's?" she demanded.
The radiologist – his ID badge declared him 'Stephen Sibley' – nodded. "I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't taken the x-ray, but it's definitely his foot."
Cassie chewed her bottom lip as her eyes darted over the black and white film. She instructed Stephen Sibley to page Dr. Denby, took the x-rays down, and wheeled Marco back to the ER. Her mind dwelled on the condition of Marco's bones. She'd never seen anything like it in such a young man, but maybe Dr. Denby had.
When she had seen Marco to the small room just off the pit, Cassie hovered by the nurse's station waiting for Dr. Denby with the x-ray films in their protective slips tucked under her arm.
"What is it?" Denby asked in an irritated sort of voice that told Cassie she'd just pulled her resident out of surgery. She rushed to answer the question.
"My patient – Marco Beyash – just had x-rays done for possible metatarsal fractures. I can see the fractures, but … well …" Cassie pulled out the first x-ray and held it up to the light for Denby. "They look like fragility fractures. You can see more here and here, in the cuboid and navicular. It's like he took a step and his whole foot … cracked."
"Let's go talk to Marco Beyash."
Cassie stood back and let Dr. Denby do this patient interview. There was a time to let interns run wild and time for interns to stay quiet and listen. When a patient's foot cracked like glass because he took a step, it was time to listen. As Denby went through a litany of questions, Cassie noticed how Marco's eyes kept straying in her direction. She had again the inexplicable sensation that he knew her. It was all she could do not to blurt out the question between Denby's medical queries.
"Dr. Fraiser, what are possible causes of bone deterioration?" Dr. Denby asked suddenly.
Cassie knew the answer by rote. "Excessive alcohol consumption, vitamin D deficiency, tobacco, malnutrition, excessive exertion, and exposure to heavy metals."
"Good. Perform the tests to eliminate each possibility and page me again when you have the results."
The resident swept from the room, leaving Cassie alone with Marco. He turned his full attention on her now, and she felt that he was searching her in the same way Dr. Horner searched the interns every morning. Rallying herself, Cassie forced a smile.
"Looks like we're going to be getting to know each other pretty well, Marco."
"I'd like that, Dr. Fraiser," he replied.
His lilting words and easy smiles did nothing to alleviate Cassie's unease. There was something more to Marco Beyash; something she didn't think a battery of medical tests would reveal.