Jack heard the ringing, but he couldn't understand why there was ringing going on in his poker game. Teal'c was going 'all in' against Mr. Burns, and Homer was simply not happy about it. Blinking his eyes open, Jack realized he had been dreaming, and that his cell phone was ringing. He looked up at the clock on the bedside table. It was 3:02 in the morning. He wasn't on-call tonight, but it was not uncommon for him to be called in when the evening piled up with emergencies. Picking up the phone, he saw Sam's name on the screen, and immediately panicked. He hadn't heard from her in two months, something was either very wrong, or finally, very right. He picked up. "Sam?"

"Jack! It's Sophie. She, she..."

Very wrong, then. "Sam? What's wrong with her?" Jack was already out of bed and reaching for his pants.

"She's sick. She's coughing and she can't breathe! I don't know what to do!" Sam sounded hysterical.

"Okay, Sam. Calm down." He tried.

"Jack! She's wheezing. She's coughing. She coughed so much she threw up. She's taking in huge gulps of air when she can. What do I do?" Jack could hear Sam's desperation, her strain. He slipped his feet into the first pair of shoes he could find.

"Take her to the bathroom. Turn the bath water on as hot as you can and sit with her in the steam."

"Okay!" He could hear her tears.

"Close the door to the bathroom so the steam stays in the room." He said and tried to listen, "I'll be there as soon as I can." He was grabbing supplies from a closet in his house.

"Sam?" He said loudly into the phone piece, when she didn't respond.

"I'm here. I'm getting her. Just… hurry."

"I will. Sam, listen!" He spoke into the phone.

"I'm here."

"You have to calm down. She's watching you and your reaction. Sit with her and be calm. Tell her everything will be okay. Encourage her to breathe when you breathe."

"Okay." She said, and he could hear her turning the water on.

"If she sees you freaking out, she's gonna freak out too."

"Jack!"

"Tell her I'm coming," he said, unlocking the door to his car.

"I will."

"Bye, Sam."

"Bye." She said, and hung up.

He sped through town. He dialed the pharmacy and requested the prescription. On the phone, he described the emergency and how he was an on-call physician, and the pharmacist said they would have it ready at the drive-through window within five minutes. He made it there in four and waited as they quickly rushed him the bag of medicines and swiped his credit card in record time.

It was another six minutes' drive to Sam's house. Jack was sweating and cursing as he sped through the stop signs leading to her house. His tires screeched as he pulled in and parked. He rushed to the front door, going for the lock with his keys. In his hurry, he fumbled with the key and packages he carried and the keys fell to the floor. Cursing, he bent to retrieve them and then quickly put the right key to the lock. Opening the door, he called out:

"Sam! I'm here." He didn't want to startle her.

Walking quickly through the foyer and living room, he made his way to the hallway where the bedrooms and girls' bathroom were. The first room down the hall belonged to the girls, and as soon as he entered the hallway, he saw Emma standing in her doorway, startled and worried.

"Hi, Em," Jack said, stooping down to her level. God, he missed her.

"Mommy needs you, Jack," she said in a shaky voice, "something's wrong with Sophie."

"I'm here, baby. You go on back to bed." He said, picking her up and carrying her to the bed he knew was hers. "Sophie's going to be just fine." He kissed her on the head and headed for the bathroom.

The door was closed and Jack could see the light spilling into the dark hallway from under the door. Opening it, he walked in and froze. The bathroom was full of steam but devoid of Sam or Sophie. He could hear the shower and see the water spraying onto the bathroom floor. Sam's blue pajama pants, her favorite, he knew, were in a pile by the wet floor.

"Sam?" he called out.

"Jack?" he heard, and turned immediately to the bathtub. Moving the shower curtain aside, he found Sam, sitting on the bathtub floor, cradling Sophie on her lap like a mother does an infant, two green towels wrapped around Sophie's shoulders. Tears were streaming down Sam's face, and Jack could see she had a death grip on Sophie's little body. He had not seen her in over two months, and to see her now, like this, undid him in so many ways.

Jack moved quickly toward them, kneeling on the hard, wet tile and moving the hair away from Sophie's face. He checked her pulse and watched her torso to count her breathing. It was labored and her pulse was fast. Just as he removed his hands, Sophie started coughing and Jack could hear the deep bark. Sam made shushing noises and rubbed her back. Jack reached for the faucet and turned the water off. Reaching into his bag, he pulled out his stethoscope and put the earpieces to his ears. He brought the chest piece to Sophie's front and listened as she breathed, then coughed.

Jack pulled back and put his stethoscope away. Getting up, he picked up all the packages he had brought in and made his way out of the bathroom. Sam followed him with her eyes but didn't ask any questions. A moment later he was back, and he moved to lift Sophie from Sam's arms, but she tightened her hold on the child.

"Sam," Jack said, "Let me take her. It's okay."

She nodded and let go of her hold on Sophie. Jack gently lifted the child from Sam and made his way to the door. There, he paused and turned to Sam. "Come on, she's gonna want you."

Snapping out of her daze, she quickly got up and followed him out of the bathroom. He had made it into her bedroom, and was sitting with Sophie on her bed, stripping her of her damp clothing.

"Sam, go get her some clean pajamas," he said calmly, running the towel down Sophie's back and drying her off. When Jack looked up and saw Sam frozen in place, he spoke up in a command tone, "Sam! I need you to go and get Sophie some pajamas. Right now."

She turned immediately and went down the hall. When she returned, she saw Sophie propped up on two pillows on Sam's bed, and Jack connecting a machine to an outlet on her wall. She made her way to Sophie and began dressing her.

"What is that?" she asked Jack.

"It's a nebulizer." He looked back at her. "Sam," he made a motion up and down her body, "you need to get dressed too."

Looking down at herself, Sam realized she was in a pair of tank-top and panties. A very wet pair of tank-top and panties. She had forgotten that in her haste to get Sophie into the steam, she had quickly shed her pants and sat on the cold tub floor so that Sophie wouldn't have to. The steam and sprays of water had gotten her completely soaked. Looking back up at him, Sam's face and body were flushed with embarrassment, and she quickly moved to her drawer to retrieve some clean pajamas. She moved to her bathroom to change and caught the slight quirk of his lips. Nothing he hasn't seen, she thought to herself.

When she came back out, he was opening a package from the pharmacy and getting out a clear vial from a foil pouch. "A nebulizer vaporizes the medicine so that it goes directly into the lungs," he explained. Twisting the vial open, he poured the liquid into a cup attached to a mouthpiece. "It was good that she threw up. She probably expelled a lot of mucus." Turning the machine on, he put the mouthpiece towards Sophie's mouth and encouraged her to breathe normally. Sophie's eyes widened, but then was distracted by the smoke-like vapors coming from the other end of the tube. Jack sat next to her and talked softly to her, running his hands down her hair and occasionally checking her pulse on her wrist.

Sam watched them, sitting on the end of the bed, praying for Sophie's recovery. The machine looked older, the edges of the white plastic had begun to turn yellow, and from her spot on the bed Sam could make out the yellowed words on a label, near the bottom of the front, "Charlie O'Neill." Sam closed her eyes. Oh, Jack. She ducked her head and put her hand over her mouth. This was his son's. The son she had taken away from him. The son Jonas had killed with his drunken godliness. She tried to breathe deeply and school her features. The little machine was just another reminder of how unworthy she was to even be near this man. She had taken his son from him.

Sam had no illusions as to how misguided her thinking was. Well… She was just so good at this defacing, destructive behavior, she wondered if one day the people that still cared for her would finally stop calling her on it. It'll be too late then… She looked Jack over as he cared for Sophie. She had missed his face, his body, his smell. She traced his facial features with her eyes and something crashed in the pit of her stomach. She loved him so much, too much. She wanted to give him the world, yet she felt that she could give him nothing.

Soon the vapors from the machine died down, and Jack turned it off. Moving to stand, Jack grabbed for his bag and Sam made her way to Sophie, sitting next to her on the opposite side of Jack. He listened to her breathing for several more minutes, then opened another white package from the pharmacy. It was a syrup bottle, and Jack opened the dropper and twisted the top of the bottle off. Measuring the correct amount onto the dropper, he brought it to Sophie's lips.

"Have some of this, Sweetheart." Sophie took the medicine without complaint.

"She can go back to sleep now, Sam. She's going to be fine." He looked from mother to daughter and could see Sam's shoulder deflate, the desperation receding into plain old worry. "I'll let you put her to bed. I'll be out in the kitchen when you're done," he said, and kissing Sophie on the head, moved out of Sam's bedroom.

sSsSsSsSs

Sam walked into the kitchen where Jack was, sitting at the kitchen table. For the first time, she noticed he was wearing sweat pants and two different shoes. And he looked very tired.

She walked up to him and he looked at her, his body stiffening. "Thank you for coming."

He nodded. "Thank you for calling me."

She walked over and sat down, near him.

"When did her symptoms start?" Jack asked her, his voice rough.

"A couple of days ago," she answered looking down.

He looked up at her with an intense face. "With the coughing?"

She didn't react well to his accusatory glance. "They both had symptoms of a common cold." Her tone had dropped and hardened.

Jack bit his lip, tilting his face. The girls weren't his, but he loved them and seeing Sophie's condition had affected him greatly. "Why didn't you bring her in today? It could've been worse, Sam."

Exasperated, Sam replied, "I did! I took her in, ok? She saw a doctor, dammit."

"What?" Jack barked.

"Dr. Vaugh! I took her to a Dr. Vaugh on Union Boulevard." He looked like she had slapped him.

"You took them somewhere else?" Jack could not hold back the animosity in his tone.

"Yes, ok?" Sam stood up. "He said they just had a viral thing. That it would get better with time…" She ran her hands through her hair.

His expression changed. His eyes went from shock to bitterness. Turning from her, he rummaged through her desk looking for paper and a pen, and started jotting something down.

"What are you doing?" she asked nervously.

He thrust the paper into her hands and walked towards the door. "Don't take them back to that idiot. If you won't bring them to me anymore then take them there." Sam looked at the paper, the name and number of a doctor were written in his physician's scrawl. "He's the best in town."

She made a humorless laugh. "You're the best in town and you know it."

He looked back into her eyes, dark with fury. "Take them there." He commanded her. "I've called in another prescription for Soph. Pick it up in the morning and give it to her twice a day for ten days. I put the vials in the fridge. Do a breathing treatment every 8 hours." He finished his sentence and left, slamming the front door behind himself.

Sam watched him leave from her spot at the kitchen and heard the door slam shut. Backing up until her body hit the wall, Sam sank to the floor and wept.

Author's Note:

Don't kill the author, OK? She's the only one that can fix this. Frustration reviews are inevitable, I know... but happy reviews are also welcome!

Betaed by SAMnJACK ALWAYS.