A Kind of Singularity
Chapter Eight
4,748
"Dr. Fraiser?"
Cassie's head snapped up from the patient chart cradled in her left arm. Dr. Appleby stared down at her with his inscrutable amber eyes, a frown marring his wide lips. Long before Cassie started her clerkship in psychiatry, she'd been warned that he didn't like interns who dabbled in psychiatry. She had planned to wow him with her enthusiasm, but that had gone off the rails her first morning.
"I would recommend Mr. Wyndham attend group sessions."
Appleby passed her a withering stare and rolled his eyes before he'd turned completely away. She couldn't find it in her heart to care. Since leaving the SGC in the early morning hours after Landry revoked her privileges, Cassie felt her world free falling. Everything right suddenly flipped upside down and emotions buffeted her like high altitude winds.
She left the SGC and returned home to find Homer lethargic and his food untouched. The thought of her beloved dog on his last leg, coupled with the SGC being taken away from her had been too much. She had spent several hours on the couch, clutching Homer and crying, before she fell asleep. She didn't wake until late Sunday evening and had a scant few hours to prepare for her new clerkship. Dr. Appleby had started the new rotation by grilling his interns, and Cassie had failed to measure up in his eyes. Three weeks in psychiatry and Cassie had not been able to salvage her image.
It did not escape Cassie that Dr. Appleby could help her more than anyone else in the hospital. If only she could tell him about space aliens and Stargates. But she couldn't, so she kept her head down and did everything she could to redeem herself in his eyes.
"Finish the charts," Appleby grunted, as they left Mr. Wyndham muttering by the window.
Three weeks without the SGC felt like a lifetime to Cassie. She had spoken to Vala and Daniel on the phone. Vala wanted to hear all about Marco. Daniel offered words of encouragement to Cassie without taking sides. He had even gone so far as to stretch 'top secret' to its breaking point. Thanks to Daniel, she knew Marco stayed at the SGC as a guest in the military's purest sense of the word. His hatred of the Lucian Alliance and willingness to share information kept him in Landry's good graces. He kept asking for Cassie, Daniel said. She worried what would happen when Marco gave up and tried to go home.
"Still haven't spoken to Sam?" Daniel injured.
"I've tried. I figured she's on a mission and hasn't gotten my messages."
Daniel's silence had been answer enough. Either Sam remained furious or afraid she couldn't hold a conversation without including information Cassie was no longer authorized to know about. Walter always returned Jack's messages. Being cut off from Jack and Sam left Cassie sullen and moody. It felt too much like the weeks following her parents' deaths.
o o o
The blessed darkness of the on call room lulled Cassie into sleep. Still in her scrubs and tennis shoes, she had fallen into dreams before her head hit the pillow. Less than two hours after crashing, her phone blaring Rocket Man roused her from sleep.
"Uhhe," she mumbled, and then realized she hadn't pushed the talk button yet. She tried again, "Hello?"
"Hey, kid," Jack's voice said. She woke fully in an instant. "Sorry to call so early, but you know it's the only time I have. I hope I didn't wake you."
"No, it's fine." Her voice sounded thick with sleep. She grabbed for the bottle of water on the floor. "I'm on call tonight. Two hours of sleep is unheard of. I've probably only got three minutes before I'm paged."
"Good." Jack sounded subdued. Not a good sign. "Walter told me you've left, uh, some messages." She could almost hear his sardonic expression through the line.
"Yeah. Three weeks is a long time for us to go without talking."
He sighed into the receiver and filled her ear with static. "Look, Cassie … I'm not going to lecture you …"
"Thank you, because I don't need one. I know how badly I screwed up." She couldn't keep the taint of bitterness from her voice when she added, "And I wasn't going to ask for favors. I know you can't overrule your generals for me."
"Good. So we can move on to our usual topics of conversation?"
"Not really. Most of them are classified." Jack sucked in a breath, and she knew from years of experience she'd said exactly the wrong thing. Before his patience could snap, she changed the subject. "I started my final clerkship. Psychiatry."
"How's that going?"
"I don't think I really have an affinity for it." Cassie didn't add that it was pointless now Landry had kicked her out of the SGC. When would she ever use psychiatry while studying genetics? If she even studied genetics. Her whole career had been based on mapping alien physiologies at the SGC. "But that's okay. I'm done in three weeks, and then I study for my Step II IC. Come July, knock on wood, I'll be a resident."
They chatted for a few minutes about Cassie's residency. She had applied in the surrounding states with the intention of still working in the SGC on her days off. She mentioned to Jack she'd also applied at the University of Southern California's Genetics Institute.
"You want to leave home?"
Cassie stayed quiet for several minutes. "Home. I don't even know what that is anymore. It hasn't been Colorado Springs since Sam was assigned to Atlantis. It's certainly not Denver."
"You know … There are some good programs in Maryland and Virginia."
"I thought about Johns Hopkins. Everyone thinks about Johns Hopkins, though. I don't know if I'm good enough to get in. And to be honest, I don't think the east coast will feel any more like home."
Jack made the sound again that warned Cassie she approached dangerous territory. It sparked a flare of anger in her this time.
"You know what I've been thinking about a lot lately? Time. I've been counting a lot, and there's this number that's stuck in my head. 4,748. And I keep wondering who could possibly understand why that number's in my head all the time. I guess you could, Jack. Your number would 100."
"What are you talking about, Cassie?" He sounded well and truly annoyed.
"One hundred days. You were stranded on Edora for one hundred days. I've been on Earth 4,748 days and counting. Thirteen years."
"It's not exactly the same."
"It is. I have a lot here on Earth, but I had a lot on Hanka too. I can't forget that just because my birth planet is uninhabited. It's part of who I am, but I've been pretending that it's not. It's no wonder all I can think about is the Stargate and spaceships and General Landry telling me that will never be my role in the SGC."
"It's for your protection," Jack snapped.
"My mom said that Nirrti's device broke down and was absorbed into my blood stream. I learned long ago not to question her judgment. I don't know, maybe it could form again with gate travel, but I'm willing to take the risk."
"Well, the rest of us aren't."
"Jack, you also didn't want to let go of my bicycle seat or let me steer a car on my own."
"You want to go through the Stargate. I get it. Everybody wants to go through the Stargate, but not everyone can."
"I understand that better than you know. I know why you don't want me going out into the universe. But standing there on Abydos, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged."
"Cassie –"
"Would now be a good time to pretend my pager just went off? We could talk again in three weeks if that would, somehow, make the problem go away. Except, I don't think it will." Her voice sounded high and faintly hysterical. "Because I'm going to keep remembering that you let Martin's friends and Nirrti and gods know how many other aliens leave Earth, but I'm not allowed to. I'm stranded here 4,748 days and counting all the way to forever."
A long silence fell over the telephone. Then Jack sighed deeply.
"So much for not asking for favors. Hank is not going to be happy about this, Cassie, so don't you dare do anything to piss him off more."
o o o
In the coming days, Cassie began to feel ashamed of herself for losing control on the phone and manipulating Jack into giving her exactly what she wanted. When she told her fellow interns about it over lunch – without classified details, of course – Tasha had laughed it off, "Sounds like every parent and child in existence."
That had only made Cassie feel worse. She had known for a long time, ever since examining the picture of Charlie in Jack's office, that they would have been the same age. That Jack would have bought Charlie a dog, would have taught Charlie to drive. When she next spoke to Daniel, she asked if she should apologize to Jack. His 'No! God, no!' came so emphatically, it startled Cassie.
On the fourth Tuesday after losing her access and security clearance, the doorbell of Cassie's Colorado Springs house chimed. She carefully pushed Homer off her lap and set aside her textbooks before running to answer the door.
"Sam!"
Her godmother stood on the front steps in her dress uniform, and the shiny BMW waited in the driveway. Cassie didn't allow the awkward moment to fester. She threw her arms around Sam and squeezed for all she was worth. When she pulled away again, Sam had tears in her eyes.
"Come on. I volunteered to take you to the SGC so General Landry can give you new credentials."
In the car, Cassie let Sam take the lead. They'd repaired their relationship in a fraction of the time as Cassie and Jack but there were still things to talk about. Sam would not let her off without a lecture.
"I was so worried, Cassie. I was halfway around the planet when the hyperspace window opened. We've almost lost you so many times. I thought I'd let you slip through my fingers for good. Then you showed up acting like nothing was wrong when I spent every second of those twelve hours a complete wreck and pretending to hold it together for my crew …"
"I'm sorry, Sam. I –"
"I talked to Jack." She threw a sheepish smile at Cassie who let the familiarity pass without comment. "He told me what you said. Believe it or not, I understand. After I was host to Jolinar, I felt so different. It took a long time to find anyone who understood, and when I did …."
Sam pulled into the base parking lot and led the way to the access elevator with Cassie in tow. A thrill of excitement passed through Cassie's toes and up her spine. The familiarity of the naquadah in the mountain showered her with warmth. She could sense Sam beside her, Vala and Teal'c deep beneath the rock, and like a lighthouse in a storm, the Stargate.
"I'll leave you here," Sam said, outside General Landry's office. "I'm going to Bill's lab to talk about our latest project, and I think Vala has been going stir crazy without you to text all the time. She's in the infirmary waiting to see if she's been cleared for active duty."
Cassie waited until Sam departed, then took a deep breath and knocked on General Landry's door. He bade her enter. When he glanced up from his paperwork, only the smallest fraction of irritation showed on his face.
"General Landry, if I can ask … the men who went off world to search for me … did they all get back safely?"
He stayed silent for a moment, and then picked up a security pass and ID tag from his inbox and held them out to Cassie. "You run toward explosions and go into space with strangers and interrupt Generals. I really am getting to know you, Dr. Fraiser. Yes, all my men returned home safely."
Cassie left the General's office and turned a right at the end of the corridor. She would go see Vala in the infirmary as requested, but first she wanted to see Marco. Daniel had only given her sketchy information. She paused in front of the door guarded by two SFs and flashed her ID badge.
"Cassie," Marco exclaimed. He looked the way she felt – sullen, restless, stranded. His eclectic clothes had been traded for a blue base uniform that made his skin look even paler than usual.
"Mind if I come in?" The door closed behind Cassie with a snap. "You want to go first? Or should I?"
Cassie filled Marco in on what had happened after they landed at Peterson. She kept the details to a minimum. Marco then gave the Cassie the barebones of the past month.
"It was like you said, they wanted to talk about where I'd been and what I'd seen on Earth. I told them everything because I didn't figure I'd been anywhere or seen anything particularly interesting to them. Then they wanted to compare my story of that day to yours, but that all matched up, of course."
"So why didn't they let you go home?"
Marco harrumphed. "They agreed that I could leave, only they didn't want to give up the tel'tac, and I've no other way off the planet except the Stargate. Lemora has a Stargate, of course, but then I'd be stuck in Percivia. The Kaldarri aren't welcome there, and I don't fancy rotting in my grandfather's estate ever again. I'm not going back to Percivia. I told General Landry I'd rather stay on Earth, so here I am."
"Daniel told me you've been giving them information about the Lucian Alliance."
"Ah, yeah, any chance to take a dig at the vultures. I don't know how much more useful I'll be. My people try to avoid them whenever we can."
"So you've been stuck underground without being able to see the sky," Cassie observed sadly. "Kind of like me, kept away from the SGC."
"Only I've had that television everyone on Earth loves so much. They have a channel all about space, you know. N.A.S.A."
"NASA," Cassie corrected. "We also have a Weather Channel. When Jonas Quinn was here, he really loved that one."
Silence fell while both tried to avoid the subject that had to be discussed. Cassie braved the topic first.
"Any idea how you'll get back to the Savarna?"
"I figure, eventually, I'll give them all the information I've got, and they'll give up the tel'tac so I can go home. Like I said, I really don't think I have much more for them. When I go back to the Kaldarri will I be going alone?"
Cassie took a breath. "No. At least, I don't think so. One trip in space wasn't enough for me." Some of her old animated warmth returned to her voice. "I want to see more, but it was a huge concession just to be let back into the SGC, and I'm not particularly proud of how I managed that one. What I want to do, I can't here. But just as important as seeing the galaxy is to me, so is becoming a doctor …."
"We've got a doctor on the Savarna now," Marco rushed. "She's a great doctor, Tasia. She'll be able to teach you anything you don't already know."
"That's good to hear." She smiled genuinely. "The thing is, I plan to be back here at the SGC someday. It's a long story, but I have to be here far in the future so the past can happen." While Marco tried to work that one out, Cassie went on. "I have three weeks of my internship left, then a week to study for my last test. I'm not a qualified doctor on Earth until then."
Marco searched her with his black eyes, brow furrowed, but lips smiling. "All right, then, Cassie. I can do one more month of gloomy underground tunnels and commissary food. If you'll come with me …"
Cassie beamed. "Twenty eight days and counting down."
