"Colonel O'Neill, please come to the infirmary, Colonel O'Neill, please report to the infirmary," the voice over the loudspeaker demands in a voice that is way too calm for Jack's liking. When someone is giving you news that shakes you this much you want them to be feeling at least a little bit of emotions as they do it.
He starts calling her name when he gets off the elevator on that level. So, Janet meets him before he even gets into the infirmary, "She's fine."
"Thirty-two weeks. That's a week before the average for triplets, and most of them have be in intensive care," he points out.
"Everything is going to be fine. I gave her something that will hopefully stop the labor. It's a bit early to know if it worked or not yet, but I'm sure it will be fine."
He looks past her clearly not willing to believe it until he sees it with his own eyes. Janet leads him to the bed where Sam is laying in the recovery position, doing the pain reduction breathing she learned at Lamaze. It's not exactly a comforting sight to him.
She holds out her hand, "I'm sorry they told you like that. If I knew you were going to panic I just would have had get an Airman to go look for you. She tried calling your office, but…"
"You know I'm rarely in my office," he scolds.
"I know, and you weren't in the gym either."
"I need a pager," he grumbles.
"I'm on bedrest," she says with a sigh. "I'm going to be eating up my maternity leave before these babies even enter the word."
"It's okay Sam, we'll figure out the whole child care thing," he comforts.
"I wanted to be with them Jack. I wanted the first month and a half to be mine," she whines.
He sits down next to her, "You could use up all the leave you've saved up. I know you never went on vacations before we were together. That's got to be a fair amount."
She nods, "Still, I'll hopefully be on bedrest for weeks before they come, and any way you slice it that turns out being less time with my kids."
"Sam, you are going to be spending so much time with the kids. I mean nights, weekends, those random days off you get when you work 24 hours day after day on one of those long missions. They are going to be our whole lives so soon. You're going to be glad to have a chance to get a little break from them."
"I am going to be so bored just lying in bed for weeks!' she exclaims in despair.
"That's why I moved the TV into our bedroom weeks ago. So, you wouldn't have to be bored!" he explains helpfully.
"I won't be able to work. I won't be able to ride my motorcycle…"
He opens his mouth to point out that she hasn't done that since she'd gotten pregnant, but a glare from his wife quickly freezes the words on his mouth.
"I'm not even going to be able to clean the house! The babies are going to come home to a house that looks like it has been hit by a hurricane."
"I'll clean the house, Sam."
"Yeah, right, you never clean."
"I clean when it results in my wife being happy or my babies being safe. It's going to be just fine. You just make a list of things you want me to do, and…"
"You should be able to figure out what needs to be cleaned in a house without someone having to make you a list. Honestly, you did live on your own before you met me."
"Yes, but only for a couple of years. You've met my mother right? She didn't exactly teach me how to do a lot of chores when I was a boy. I mean, can you image how scandalized she'd be by a teenage boy actually doing housework? Then Sara came along, and she told me what I was supposed to do. At first she yelled it at me when we were in the middle of a fight, but then after we'd figured out this was one of our main issues she started writing it down. Besides Sam, you're pretty particular, and if you don't give me a list I am pretty sure that I'm not going to do things exactly how you want them done."
"Fine, I'll make you a list," she says crossly.
"Good, it will give you something to do all those hours when you are in bed with nothing to do," he teases.
She wants to shoot him another glare, she really does, but she can't. Damn him anyway, he managed to cheer her up against her will.
-0-
"And we have breakfast in bed!" Jack declares carrying a tray into the bedroom. His attempt to place the tray over her stomach doesn't end well however. "Well, I made a mistake in buying that," he mutters.
"It's fine. It will work for all the many breakfasts in bed you bring me after the babies born," she teases taking the tray from him to set up beside herself, and giving him a quick kiss.
"I've got another surprise for you before I head off to work," he says disappearing out the door, and returning a few seconds later.
"Movies?" she asks looking at the covers of the DVDs, "Please tell me you didn't just bring your Simpson's seasons in here."
"No, but it wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit if you did watch them," he says, "I got you really bad science fiction."
"Umm…. Thank you?" she says not quite understanding.
"I thought you could make a list of all the things that they got wrong in the movies," he offers with a grin on his face, "It might even feel like work if you try hard enough."
"You're so sweet," she says in a mildly sarcastic voice.
"I know," he chirps, "Is there anything else I can get you?"
She shakes her head.
"I'm going to stop in at lunch to check on you, and make you food."
"You know I am allowed to get out of bed every now and again, this whole b-rest thing doesn't have to be kept to religiously."
"I know, but the better job you do of it the longer it will probably be until the babies are born, so let's both try the best we can."
"Way to put on the pressure and the guilt," she mutters.
"I'm sorry. Sam, I know that you don't really have control over when these babies are born. We are taking all of these precautions to try to make it be later, but if they come now it wouldn't be because we'd done anything wrong."
"I know," she says smiling.
The he leans forward to talk to her stomach, "Now, you listen to your mother, and remember that you are grounded until you at least pass that full-term line. I mean it, not leaving that womb for any reason."
Sam muses that she's glad laugher isn't a labor trigger.