Square Peg
By
Denise
Jonas walked into the infirmary, moving away from the door but staying back, his gaze riveted on the bed across the room. They'd moved Sam from the gurney to the bed and several nurses stood over her, following Doctor Fraiser's orders. He could see Sam stir a bit, responding to Janet's questions. The doctor bent over and said a few words, patting her shoulder reassuringly. She stepped away, pulling the curtains shut behind her.
She saw him and smiled slightly, walking over to him. "Jonas, are you feeling ok?"
"What? Yeah. Is she ok?" he asked, tearing his eyes away from the gently waving curtain.
"She's going to be fine, Jonas," the doctor reassured him. "She's a little groggy right now. We're going to get her into some pajamas and keep her here for observation tonight. If there are no complications, I'll release her in the morning."
"But...she died. I saw it."
"Her heart stopped, yes. Just for a few seconds," she said. "That's why we're keeping her overnight. We just want to make sure everything's ok." She reached out and laid a comforting hand on his arm. "She is going to be all right, Jonas."
"It happened just like I saw," he said. "It...I made it happen. I shouldn't have said anything. If she'd have gone with Colonel O'Neill, she'd be ok right now."
"You don't know that," Janet said. "There are Jaffa on the planet, or will be soon. Sam may have been destined to be hurt no matter where she was. Do you want me to quote you the odds on someone surviving an injury like this off world in what could only be described as basic medical conditions?" she asked.
"I guess they're not that good," he said slowly, refraining from telling her that things had happened EXACTLY like he'd seen. That his interpretation had been wrong; Sam hadn't been destined to be injured on 237 but right here, right where he'd kept her. That he was just as responsible for her injuries as if he had pulled the switch himself.
"No, they're not." She reached out and laid a hand on his arm. "Jonas, you did the right thing. Right now I'm more concerned about you than her. How is the headache?"
"What? Oh, it's the same," he said, deliberately refraining from reaching up and massaging his forehead. Actually, they were steadily getting worse, slowly growing stronger than the painkillers seemed able to handle. He'd accepted that the only way to make the pain go away was to let her cut his head open...and he still wasn't ready for that. If this change could happen it would be an incredible advantage to all of them.
His mind boggled with the thought. He could maybe prevent needless deaths and finally give them the advantage they'd been looking for for years. If he could just control the visions they stood a real chance of defeating the goa'uld for good, something that would save thousands, maybe millions of lives.
It was a risk, he knew that, but it was a risk he was willing to take.
"Sam's not going to be ready for visitors for a couple of hours at least, why don't you go lie down," Janet suggested, pulling his attention back to the present.
Not in the mood to argue with her, lest he end up in a bed next to Sam's, he simply nodded, quietly turning on his heel and walking out into the corridor. His other visions had been interrupted before he saw the end, maybe if he laid down somewhere quiet he could finish one. Maybe he could find out something useful, something important, something that would save lives instead of nearly getting one of his newfound friends killed.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sam slowly opened her eyes, blinking as the nondescript gray concrete ceiling of the infirmary swam into focus. Astonishingly enough, it looked just like the ceiling of the capacitor room on level 25, which was pretty much the last thing she remembered seeing.
Stupid, stupid mistake. She should have thought about the possibility of a power spike, it wasn't exactly the first time it'd ever happened. In fact, recent power spikes was why they were overhauling the gate generators in the first place.
"I thought it was about time for you to wake up." Sam turned her head, watching Janet pull the curtain aside a bit and step over to her bed.
"Hey."
"How do you feel?" the doctor asked, reaching out to check Sam's pulse.
"Ok, I guess." Sam started to sit up then laid back down with a groan. "Sore," she amended.
"That's to be expected," Janet said, reaching for the controls to raise the head of the bed. "According to Sly, you flew about fifteen feet or so."
"That feels about right," Sam agreed, reaching for the cup of water on the bedside table.
"You're lucky. If you'd have hit the wall just right you'd have broken your neck," the doctor chastised.
Sam sighed and remained silent, not in the mood to argue with the doctor, especially when she knew the woman was right. She was lucky, and she knew it. "How is Siler?" she asked, slowly shifting to a more comfortable position.
"He'll be fine. Just a second/third degree burn on his hand. He's got the next week off and light duty for a few more. Chances are it won't even scar. And neither will yours," she said. "There's no muscle or nerve damage, at least not that I could tell. You're probably not going to want to wear many short sleeved shirts for the next few months, but there should be minimal to no scarring."
Sam handed the water glass to the doctor and glanced down, catching sight of the wires of the EKG running through the neck of her top and attached to the sticky pads she could now feel stuck to her chest. "How long am I stuck here?"
"If the EKG comes up clean, morning," she said. Sam rolled her eyes, not fond at all of the doctor's orders, but also resigned to the fact that she couldn't change them. "Do you feel like a visitor?" Sam frowned. "Jonas," the doctor clarified.
"Is he ok?"
"Physically, he's...stable." Janet paused and stepped forward. "He feels responsible for your accident," she said in a lower voice. "As far as he's concerned, if he hadn't have said anything, you wouldn't have been here to be hurt."
"He had no way to know. I mean, given our line of work a staff weapon blast is more likely than an electrical burn," Sam said.
"Why don't you tell him that," Janet said. "He's got enough on his mind, no pun intended, without feeling guilty about not preventing the unpreventable."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Jonas walked into the infirmary cautiously looking towards the far bed. Much to his relief, he could see Sam sitting up, talking to one of the nurses. He sighed an audible sigh of relief, finally believing the doctor's words. So she really was okay.
Sam saw him and smiled, beckoning him forward. "Thanks," she said as the nurse nodded, walking away and leaving them alone. "Hey," she greeted.
"How you feeling?" he asked, a part of him still needing verbal confirmation.
"Slightly overcooked. Janet says I'll be fine," she reassured as she patted the edge of the bed, inviting him to sit down since there were no chairs nearby.
"Sam, I'm sorry," he apologized as he sat down.
"For what?" she asked.
"If I had just kept my mouth shut, you would have gone on the mission. None of this would have happened," he explained.
"Jonas..."
"I envisioned it exactly the way it happened, but I didn't understand it. I misinterpreted the vision. I won't make that same mistake again," he said, trying to make her understand. He hadn't seen a possible future or a fated future, he had seen THE future.
"Don't do this to yourself."
"I've been thinking about this a lot. Now, I've always been hyper-observant. I see details that other people miss. I see patterns. Maybe predicting the future is just an extension of that ability."
"It doesn't work that way. According to Newtonian physics, yes...if you could know the position and velocity of every particle in the universe at any given moment, you could accurately predict all of their interactions for the rest of time."
"So then, the future is predetermined. It's just a matter of having enough information to figure it out," he said.
"Yes, but quantum mechanics blows that out of the water. According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, it is impossible to look at a sub-atomic particle and know both where it is and where it's going at the same time. The more accurately you fix its position, the more uncertain you make its velocity and vice versa. The best we can do is calculate probabilities."
"Okay, so then, I'm seeing probable futures," he said, the pain in his head making the complicated theories even more difficult to understand.
"Maybe," she admitted grudgingly.
"Every vision I've had has turned out exactly the way I saw it."
"That doesn't mean they always will, Jonas." He sighed. She didn't get it. "Jonas," she said, laying her hand over his. "Are you okay?"
"Why is it so hard to believe that I'm seeing the future?" he asked, finally asking the one question that had been plaguing him since he'd had his first vision.
She looked at him for a second, frowning. "Because if you're seeing THE future, then it's time for all of us to just pack it in and go home."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if you're seeing THE future and it can't be altered, then what good are your visions?"
"Sam?"
"If the future can't be changed then where's the advantage in knowing what's to come?" she asked him.
"Unless of course you want to consider that just by knowing what's going to happen, you've already changed the future, since your reactions to a given situation may be altered by foreknowledge of that event," he said, stubbornly clinging to his hope. She had to see, it couldn't all be for nothing. His visions had to be worth something, they just had to be.
He stood there silently after saying his piece and Sam took the chance to study him, really study him. He was paler than usual, his normal easy smile replaced by a slight frown.
His face was drawn and she could see lines of pain marring his features. Pain he was doing his best to hide, pain that wasn't just physical.
In a flash she knew. She knew what he was feeling, what was pushing him to risk his life. The same feeling she'd dealt with years before. "It won't work," she said softly.
"What won't work?"
"Trying to make him accept you," she said, letting the words fall like a gauntlet.
"Sam, I don't-"
"I did the same thing--twice," she interrupted.
"Twice?" he asked, abandoning his fa?de of ignorance.
Sam nodded. "The first time was right after I was assigned to SG-1. Well, to be honest, I sort of wormed my way in." He raised his eyebrows in question. "If your father's a general and you spend time at the Pentagon, you make connections. I...used them to make sure I got assigned here," she admitted.
"What did Colonel O'Neill say about that?"
"I don't know if he knew. But he did have a bit of an issue with scientists," she said, smiling with the memory, years of friendship turning what was once a source of irritation into a fond memory.
"When did he stop seeing you as a scientist?"
"The day I disobeyed orders and did the right thing," she said, shuddering a bit with the memory of the stark emptiness of the underground room, the loud and final clang of the door, the desperate pleas of a child.
She could still feel the warmth of Cassie's body as she clung to her, letting the child's presence push aside her fear at their impending death.
"And the second time?" he asked softly, pulling her from her memories.
"What? Oh. The second time was after Jolinar," she said simply.
Comprehension flashed across his face. He knew at least the most basic facts about her blending with Jolinar. And he certainly knew exactly how Colonel O'Neill felt about the Tok'ra in general, so she knew it wasn't a far stretch to figure out how much her brush with the alien would erode his trust in her. Or, as she now knew, how much strain his perceived lack of trust had placed upon their friendship.
For about six months after Jolinar's death she'd been torn between denying what had happened and trying to plumb the bits of knowledge Jolinar had left behind to gain something useful...all the while she was trying to present the image of a perfect officer. One that was totally in control and that could still be trusted.
The strain of burning the candle at both ends had nearly pushed her over the edge until they'd reached an understanding the day he demonstrated just how much he trusted her by following her lead and basing a mission solely upon her dreams.
The Tok'ra were now a source of tension between them, but it was also something they'd agreed to disagree on.
"He will warm up to you," she said softly.
Jonas shook his head, revealing for the first time just how much the colonel's cool attitude had hurt. "I don't think so."
"Jonas, if he didn't trust you, he would have already cooked up a reason to transfer you to another team." He met her eyes, clearly not believing her. "You just have to give him time," she said, instantly regretting her words.
Time was the one thing he didn't have.
"I should go," he said, sliding off the bed. "Before Doctor Fraiser kicks me out."
"Jonas-"
"I'm glad you're okay," he said, ignoring her and easily evading her questing hand. "I'll see you in the morning."
Sam watched him go, cursing the tubes and wires that effectively tied her to the bed.
Frowning with frustration, she leaned back against the pillows. She and the colonel were going to have a nice long talk when he got back...if she had to sit on him to accomplish it.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Jonas walked slowly back to his office, wincing as the klaxons announcing a team's return set off waves of pain in his brain.
'You just have to give him time.'
Sam's words echoed in his brain. He silently shook his head. Even if he wasn't dying, there'd never be enough time to get the colonel to accept him. That was a pipe dream, like his fantasy that he'd ever see his home planet again, or even go home again...and just as unattainable.
No. He'd never go home. And he'd never earn Colonel O'Neill's acceptance. The most he could hope for was to do as much good as he could in whatever time he had left. One life, even if he could save one life, it'd be worth it.
He entered his office and turned on the light, groaning softly as the brighter light caused him pain. Feeling dizzy he reached out to steady himself, instead falling to the floor as his body refused to obey his command.
His limbs began to jerk and spasm as a seizure overtook him; his last conscious thought that at least Colonel O'Neill wouldn't have to come up with an excuse now.
Fin