SG-1 had been on downtime for four days when the call came in.
Jack O'Neill was sitting on his dock in Minnesota nursing a beer and didn't hear the phone ringing.
When he came into the house the light on the answering machine had been blinking for several hours. He had felt no need to check the phone, as everybody was under strict instructions not to disturb him unless the fate of the planet hung in the balance.
He left three days after that and headed back to Colorado Springs; got in late and although his brain registered that there were several phone messages waiting for him he was too tired to deal with them and promptly went to bed and fell asleep.
By the following morning he had forgotten all about them, and made his way to the SGC, happy to be returning to work.
He was not prepared for the sombre mood he found there. People in the corridors looked at him from behind sorrowful eyes or avoided his look altogether, exhibiting behaviour he couldn't quite place.
In the Commissary it was much the same.
"I'm sorry Sir …" a female officer with red-rimmed eyes said to him. She stared at him for a moment, her eyes brimming over with tears as she moved away quickly.
Jack started to get a very uneasy feeling.
"Do things feel a little off around here or is it just me?" he said as he swung into Daniel's lab.
"God Jack, is that all you have to say?"
Jack stared, the uneasy feeling amplifying.
"Did you not receive our verbal communications O'Neill?" Teal'c stared at him.
"Oh .." he remembered the blinking lights. "Did you leave me voicemail yesterday? Crap, I got back late and this morning I…"
"We left you ten messages Jack. Couldn't you at least have …" Daniel trailed away, his voice choking up.
He got up and left the room.
Jack turned to Teal'c.
"Care to clue me in buddy? What the hell is going on here?"
"There was an explosion in the Astrophysics lab four days ago O'Neill. Were you not aware of this?"
Jack felt his blood run cold.
"Carter?" his voice was a mere whisper.
Teal'c nodded gravely. "She and Dr Lee were working on …"
"How is she?"
"She clung to her life for many hours in spite of the severity of her injuries. It is my belief she was waiting for you. When it became apparent that you were not coming her will to live dissolved. She died last night O'Neill, in the arms of Daniel Jackson. I too was present, as were Doctor Fraiser, her father, and General Hammond."
Teal'c walked past him out of the room and left him alone.