Acknowledging it had been a long day, Doctor Janet Fraiser sunk gratefully down into the padded seat across from her superior officer. She noticed one of her reports open on his desk. "They were what you were looking for, Sir?" she asked, nodding toward the report.
General George Hammond nodded. "Very well done, Doctor. I've already forwarded them up to the Joint Chiefs."
At that, the image of Major Paul Davis came to Janet's mind. "Sir, I spoke with Major Davis about the funding-"
The nearly bald general shook his head. "Not now. Save it for our briefing in the morning." He leaned companionably forward in his chair. "So, how are things, Doctor?" he asked.
The indentation between Janet's brows deepened slightly.
Yes, how were things, she wondered. She hadn't really had much time to think all day, let alone rate it.
After a long weekend spent with her daughter, Cassandra, she'd entered the infirmary to find SG-13 occupying every available bed. Apparently the team had barely stepped foot onto PX2-468 when they'd been struck by a horrible need to itch. After hives rapidly developed on their uncovered skin, Colonel Dixon had immediately aborted the mission, and he and his team had been whisked off to the infirmary upon arrival. Balinsky was suffering the worst, his large welts glowing brighter red than the hair on his head.
Cortisone creams had been liberally applied, blood drawn, and prescription-strength antihistamines ingested. Her immediate diagnosis was generalized pruritis, but she'd have to wait for the results to come back before she could determine a cause beyond an airborne contagion. When she announced they would need to supply stool samples within the hour to check for microscopic parasites, the team had protested even louder than they had the week's precautionary quarantine she'd also imposed on them.
Well, she didn't make the rules, she just implemented them. As she passed the written paperwork containing her orders to the head nurse, she smiled. Come to think of it, here she actually did make them.
---------------------------------
She'd barely had time to grab a cup of coffee and make it back to her desk before Dr. Daniel Jackson of SG-1 had met up with her.
"Lunch?" he asked.
"No, thanks, just coffee for breakfast today," she said, lifting her mug to her lips.
"No, our follow-up appointment," he said.
Janet winced. Thanks to the long weekend off and SG-13's emergent needs, she'd forgotten to check her schedule first thing like she normally did. She made a mental note to check it just as soon as she finished her coffee.
"Do you want to do it now?" Daniel asked.
Janet choked slightly on her sip of coffee. "Pardon?" she asked, raising a brow.
"Our appointment," Daniel explained. "It won't take long, right? If we can do it now, you'll have more free time and that way I can start the project that SG…."
Daniel halted his rapid fire delivery and gave her a sheepish look. "But only if you have the time."
"No time like the present time," Janet said, willing the coffee to clear her head of innuendo and clicking on the scheduling program. Three reports Hammond assigned her an hour ago were due to him four hours from now. Colonel O'Neill was also due at any time for his appointment.
She looked up at Daniel who stood tentatively off to the side of her desk. "That means I'm free," she said, pulling a folder from the hanging files in the nearby rolling cart. She may not have remembered her schedule, but her assistant, God love her, made it her business to know it. She flipped through lab results and her own notes that had yet to be transcribed. She looked up at Daniel and smiled. "You're fine."
"That's it?" he asked, sitting down in the chair next to her desk. "I mean, really?"
She nodded and closed the folder. "For want of a better cliché, you're as healthy as a horse, Dr. Jackson."
A slow smile crept over his face. "I am?"
She returned the smile. "Really."
"Daniel giving you trouble, Doc?"
Janet and Daniel turned toward the doorway that Colonel Jack O'Neill had just sauntered through.
"Jack!" Daniel protested.
Janet rested her hand on Daniel's arm for a moment and shook her head. "Of course not, Colonel," Janet chided Jack. "He's the perfect patient, unlike some people I know."
Jack grimaced at her. "Wonder who that could be?"
Janet didn't answer.
"Ready, Colonel?" she asked as Daniel left the infirmary. Jack wasn't particularly fond of repeat visits to P89-898 since the planet harbored a biological agent that everyone was required to be inoculated against prior to each visit. Not hearing him respond, she unlocked the white metal cabinet and removed a serum bottle.
Reaching for the closest unused syringe, she called over her shoulder, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, Colonel O'Neill. Could you speak up a little?"
"Ready as I'll never be," was his muffled response from between his legs, his tone full of cocky challenge.
Janet turned around to find Jack mooning her. "Colonel!" she said, removing her thumb from the plunger to keep the serum from squirting out.
"Thought you might like a selection of cheeks to choose from," he said.
Cheeky cuss, Janet thought, shaking her head emphatically. "Colonel O'Neill. I'm afraid I only need one, please."
"Look, Doctor, if I'm not going to be able to sit down for the next twenty-four hours on one cheek, then you might as well just shoot 'em both up while you're at it."
Janet bit back a laugh. "Are you suggesting I ignore protocol?" she asked him firmly, giving him a hard glare.
"Sure," he answered, angling his head around to view her approach upside down.
Janet eyed his bottom. She was tempted, very tempted, but she couldn't and wouldn't.
"Up, Colonel."
"But-"
Janet eyed the clock. She might be able to get the reports done to her satisfaction if she could get Jack out of there quickly. "Now, Colonel," she ordered.
Jack quickly stood at attention, hiking his fatigues up a bit. His face was flushed a deep pink from bending over, and he glared at the needle in her hand.
Janet ignored him and, smoothing a portion of the fattier part of his buttocks flat, she jabbed him.
"Hey!" Jack grunted. "That's no bedside manner!"
Janet shrugged as she put the syringe in the nearest bio-waste container. "You don't appear to be in bed."
Frowning, Jack zipped up his fatigues. "I guess you're going to tell me no painkillers this time either?"
"Since you asked - no." She picked up the mission folders and the binder with the budget numbers that she needed to crunch for two of the three reports. "Same as before. Nothing for twelve hours."
"Do you ever get these shots?" Jack asked as he moved toward the door.
Janet smiled sweetly at him. "All the time, Colonel. All the time."
She swore she heard him hiss, "Masochist!" under his breath as he exited into the corridor.
C'est la vie, Janet thought, taking a deep breath and rolling her head around to stretch her neck and shoulder muscles. Okay, maybe now she could get finally get a free moment to get those reports done. She sat down at her desk and then got back up again, remembering that she needed to check with the science lab about the alien virus she'd isolated in Captain Albierto. Personally checking on it would emphasize to the lab techs how important it was that they analyze it quickly. Albierto was starting to go stir crazy after a weekend spent in quarantine.
She thought about Dixon and SG-13 now occupying the room next to Albierto. All the more reason to lean on the lab techs. Smoothing her hair behind her ears, she started for the door.
"Ma'm?"
Janet skidded to a quick halt to keep from running into Sergeant Siler. The tall man looked singed and sorrowful as he flinched back to keep her from touching the arm he was cradling up close to his chest.
She squinted at his face. Had he burned his eyebrows off? It was hard to tell with the black grit that coated his face. "Sergeant – what happened?"
He nodded toward the metal stool nearby and ambled slowly over to the stool. As he eased down onto it, Janet reached for the injured arm, carefully stretching it out and examining the large hole in his shirtsleeve. The raw red skin beneath didn't look terribly bad, but she didn't like feel of his bones beneath the shirt.
She lifted her eyes to meet his. "You weren't helping Dr. Lee again, were you?" she asked, feeling both frustrated that Siler had been burned again and weary of Dr. Lee's "safe" experiments that were keeping her and her staff busier than they needed to be.
Siler looked down at the floor, his sorrowful expression deepening.
Janet shook her head. "Someday, Sergeant, you're really going to be seriously hurt. It is okay to tell them it's not a part of your job description."
He didn't say anything for a moment. "But it's fun," he near-whispered.
Janet stopped peeling the shirt away from the contusion, momentarily at a loss for words.
Inhaling deeply before responding, she said, "Well, Sergeant, I think you need to take a break from…helping…for a little while. Your body needs time to heal."
The Sergeant looked hopeful.
"A long while," she clarified. "A few weeks minimum."
"Oh."
Janet folded the tattered shirt up. "And I don't want to be forced to report to General Hammond some things that he might just bring himself to curtail…if you know what I mean," Janet said, arching a brow at him.
Siler looked morose.
"Lieutenant Lightner?" Janet asked.
The young nurse looked up from the supplies she was inventorying. Today was Lightner's first day at the SGC and it hit Janet that she'd scheduled a "getting to know you" meeting with the young woman for fifteen hundred hours. Internally, she winced again. She might have to reschedule.
"Can you look after Sgt. Siler?" Janet asked. "Clean up his arm and face and follow-up with Dr. Warner about the possibility of a broken ulna after you finish the x-ray."
Siler's eyes widened.
"A definite possibility, Sergeant." She nodded at him and Lightner. "Now, if you'll excuse me…."
---------------------------------
Her reports sent and her meeting with Lightner rescheduled for the following morning, Janet finally found the time mid-evening to read the Pentagon communiqué that General Hammond had routed to her. Senator Kinsey was still ruling the Senate Appropriations Committee with an iron fist and the communiqué detailed Kinsey's latest attempt to block the SGC from doing their job. She frowned. The president had asked all agencies and departments to take a two percent cut and Kinsey had apparently offered up SGC funding as the military's black budget sacrificial lamb.
Janet tapped her pen onto the paragraph that detailed the cuts to funding for necessary diagnostic equipment. The types of scanners and test kits they were developing for use by the field teams weren't cheap, but they were most definitely not the kind of thing you could just walk down to Medical-Supplies-R-Us and buy off the shelf like Kinsey apparently thought. They were custom-built which took a great deal of time and even more money.
She picked the phone receiver up and flipped her Rolodex to the letter D for Major Paul Davis' direct dial number at the Pentagon. As the phone reached the fourth ring, she realized it was probably too late in DC to reach him.
"Hello?"
She could barely hear the garbled male voice on the other side.
"Major Davis?"
There was a pause and a throat-clearing on the other end. "Yes, this is he. Dr. Fraiser, is that you?"
"Yes."
More throat-clearing. "Sorry," Major Davis said. "Was working late, eating dinner late… Hadn't expected anyone to call this late in the evening."
"I'm sure you didn't." Janet smirked as she imagined the spit-shined major scraping food scraps across his desk and into the trash can as if she had been sitting across from him.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?" he asked.
Janet circled the paragraph with her pen. "We received word this afternoon about the proposed funding cut."
"I thought you might have questions," Major Davis said matter-of-factly.
Damn right, I do, she thought, her pen leaving thick, angry lines around the offensive words.
Janet decided to not beat around the bush. "I think we both know the players, and it's late, so I won't waste your time asking why this particular cut is being made," she said quietly. "Can you - no - will you see to it that the funding remains intact? This equipment is crucial for the safety of our personnel and, by extension, the well-being of this planet."
In the long pause that followed, Janet was able to sign off on several more discharge summaries as well as the latest requisition forms that her assistant had brought to her before leaving. "Major? Hello?"
"I'm here." Major Davis cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I will see what I can do."
"Please do."
"You do understand I can't guarantee anything."
"I know the position you're in." Janet would give him that – as the mouthpiece of the Pentagon he was in the unenviable position of delivering communications down the food chain, not up it. "And we'll appreciate anything you can do for us," she added.
"Understood," Major Davis said. Janet could hear a muffled voice in the background, and the major's muffled response back. "I just received word that the Appropriations subcommittee meeting has been rescheduled," he said, lifting his hand off the receiver. "I'll have to get back to you about it on Friday."
"I look forward to your call, Major."
"Until then, Doctor," Major Davis said.
"Until then," Janet echoed, smiling as she set the receiver gently in the cradle. She knew he'd give it his all, especially since he'd experienced firsthand the kinds of extraordinary circumstances the SGC faced, the last one a few weeks prior when he'd been caught up in the foothold situation that had occurred at the SGC. She'd be happy if he was able to save even half of their funding from Senator Kinsey's tight grip. That amount would be just enough to fund the minimum number of kits they needed and the full body scanner that they hoped to install near the blast doors. She'd then leave Hammond to battle for the restoration of the remainder when he went to Washington next month.
Hammond….
---------------------------------
"Doctor?"
Janet blinked rapidly and remembered where she was. "Sir?"
"You're certain things are okay?" Hammond asked, looking more than a little concerned.
Janet glanced at the clock - twenty-two hundred hours already - and she nodded. "It's just been a very long day, Sir."
Hammond looked at the clock and nodded. "I understand," he said, pushing away from his desk. He smiled as he turned off his desk lamp. "My daughter tells me that she thought I'd be enjoying my retirement in South Florida right about now instead of being here to all hours of the night and reminds me often that I'm not seeing the girls as much," he said. "You go on home to Cassandra now. Nothing here that can't wait."
Janet smiled as she followed him out into the corridor. "Yes, Sir."
Hammond's fatherly concern for her revived bittersweet memories of her own father, long since passed. He father had wanted her to pursue a career in the medical field, but as a nurse, the only profession he thought appropriate for young women. She'd rebelled against his antiquated ideals, taking every opportunity to sneak out and do each and every thing he'd deemed inappropriate for a woman and one of her stature, including going to medical school. She smiled at the memory of some of the scrapes she'd gotten herself into and out of over the years.
That drive and determination to prove herself to everyone had shot her on the fast track that had landed her here at the SGC. She knew what her colleagues said about her behind her back; how it was a waste of her talent to be CMO for a backwater, underground base of no consequence. And of the more scathing speculations for why she'd accepted such a position. But it didn't bother her much, as it wasn't any worse than what her father would have said, and really, what did they know?
The base klaxon alarm began its loud, ear-splitting siren scream. Although halfway to the elevator shaft, she and Hammond made a u-turn without missing a beat, veering back into his office to cut through to the briefing room.
"Cassandra?" Hammond asked as they skirted the briefing room table.
"At Sam's," Janet answered as she grabbed the railing of the spiral metal staircase.
"Good."
"Leaving early, then?" Hammond called over his shoulder.
"Tomorrow, Sir."
"Permission granted," Hammond said, peering out into the gateroom as he stepped onto the control room floor.
Janet joined him at the window overlooking the gate.
If only they knew....
She smiled.
If only they knew.