Chapter 7: Waiting, Watching

Jack entered the infirmary sometime late in the night when he was sure Daniel and Teal'c were not around. Brightman refused to allow anyone more than a few precious minutes with her while her condition remained critical. He stealthily crept passed the late night staff to find her bed. He knew she would not wake.

His stomach turned at the sight of her. She was deathly pale. Angry cuts and bruises on her face and arms stood out against the white pallor of her skin. Plastic tubing snaked out from her body to countless medical devices crowded around her bed. A ventilator pushed air into her battered lungs. Her shattered leg was enclosed in some kind "alien" device with medal rings and rods branching from her thigh. He was unprepared to see her, so…broken. He was unprepared to feel, so…broken.

He pulled up an uncomfortable plastic chair and sat down beside her. He did not touch her though he longed to. Instead he watched the unnatural rise and fall of her chest from the ventilator and the slow, steady beep of the heart monitor. She was alive.

He did not move for the next five hours. At 5 o'clock in the morning, he stood and quietly left her side.

On the second night of his clandestine vigil, he arrived to find more tubes snaking from her body and more equipment surrounding her bed. She was suffering from acute renal failure; her kidneys unable to rid her body of the toxins produced from her muscles being crushed by the boulder; dialysis her only hope. He pulled up the same uncomfortable plastic chair and sat down beside her watching her chest rise and fall and listening to the steady beep of the heart monitor.

Each subsequent night progressed the same; waiting by her beside, watching her breath.

When Jack entered the infirmary on the sixth night, he found Teal'c standing by her bed. Her condition had been upgraded to serious so the doctor was allowing longer visitations by Daniel and Teal'c. He considered leaving, too afraid to face him after days of isolation and avoidance. He walked to her bed standing beside Teal'c. Respectable silence was maintained between the two as they watched her still form.

Minutes later Jack broke the peace. "Teal'c, what brings you down here at this time of the night? Shouldn't you be sleeping or Kelno'reeming or whatever you do now?"

"Indeed, O'Neill. I could say the same of you." Teal'c low bass voice responded without turning his gaze from Carter.

Jack winced at his words. He knew he was not fooling Teal'c about why he was here and changed the subject. "Doc Brightman said they may take Carter off the ventilator in a day or two."

"That is indeed good news."

"Yeah," he sighed.

"O'Neill, Colonel Carter will not blame you for what has happened to her."

"I'm not so sure, T."

"Colonel Carter experienced a similar sense of guilt when you were captured by Ba'al. She blamed herself for what the symbiote Kanan did without your consent as you are blaming yourself for her accident"

"It's not the same, Teal'c. If I hadn't agreed to take the snake, then I would be dead."

"Indeed." With those words, Teal'c bowed his head at Jack and left him alone.

He spoke to her for the first time on the eighth night.

"I'm sorry." His words were soft, almost a whisper as if he were afraid he would wake her up. "I'm sorry for what I said." He didn't look at her instead he focused on the tongue depressor he twisted in his hand. "I'm sorry this happened to you. It wasn't supposed to be like this."

He paused his thoughts drifting '…I'd rather die myself than lose Carter…I care about her…a lot more than I am supposed to.'

"Damn za'tarc." He muttered under his breath.

He stood and looked down into her peaceful face brushing a stray piece of hair away letting his fingers linger for one unguarded moment. He leaned down and gently kissed her on the cheek.

"You deserve better, Sam."

Jack left the infirmary and Colorado Springs for Washington the next day.