Never in a million years would Janet Fraiser have believed it if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. The sight before her was so surprising that she stopped dead just three steps outside her office.

The ward was quiet. It was the middle of the night and the night nurse had finished her rounds quickly an hour ago. There was only one patient in the infirmary at the moment. Jack O'Neill was sitting up in bed. His right leg propped out in front of him encased in a soft cast around his ankle. The fact that he was awake in the middle of the night wasn't surprising. Nor was the fact that he had a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. What was surprising was what he was looking at through the glasses.

Jack O'Neill, one of the toughest men she had ever met, was propped up in bed knitting.

A soft curse emanated from his direction. She watched as his face, which was currently a motley shade of purple down the right side punctuated by a neat line of stitches, turned down in a scowl. He started counting under his breath.

"Shit."

That time she could hear him clearly. She saw him carefully start to slip a neat row of bright pink knots off of one of the needles. Janet chuckled and started walking towards her star patient's bed.

Jack's head snapped up at the sound and she could swear he turned the color of his yarn.

"Couldn't sleep Colonel?"

To his credit he didn't try to hide the project. He just shrugged as the tips of his ears turned pink.

"I heard you swearing. Everything okay?" She couldn't help but tease him a bit.

He muttered something under his breath.

"What was that Colonel?"

"Added a stitch somehow," He reached up and ran a hand through his hair and winced when he touched the sore spot on the side of his head. The one that was the reason he was in the infirmary overnight for observation. He glared at the rows of pink fabric in his hand. "Don't even know how it keeps happening. Got 15 stitches then all of a sudden 16. Then 17." He huffed out a sigh of frustration. "They're multiplying like bunnies." His voice sounded like the knitting needles had personally offended him. Like they had added the stitches on their own to spite him.

Janet smiled at his consternation but quickly went into doctor mode. "Colonel, you're supposed to be resting," she looked at his face more closely. "And you have a headache."

The petite doctor reached forward and set a hand on top of his stilling their movement.

He glanced up at her and despite the knitting and the reading glasses and the silver hair he looked for all the world like a small child. "Couldn't sleep."

She sighed. The latest mission had been rough for the Colonel. It had started with him being separated from his team and ended with a broken ankle, broken ribs and a concussion. The hostile aliens they had encountered had taken exception to SG-1's presence and Jack had led them away from his team while SG-1 circled back to the Stargate. Two days later his team found him and had executed a rescue but the Colonel had been a bit worse for wear upon his return.

Janet pulled up a stool. She knew he was prone to nightmares and understood that 2 days in captivity was likely to bring up bad memories. She also knew he didn't really want to talk about it.

"Why knitting?" Pulling up a stool behind her she propped her elbows on the edge of his bed.

"S'your fault," he sounded like a petulant child but for some reason it made Janet smile. "You had the flu a few months ago and Cassie crashed in the spare bedroom so you wouldn't get her sick."

Janet remembered Cassie returning from the Colonel's house rhapsodising about a blanket. It was apparently an O'Neill family heirloom knitted by Jack's grandmother. It had reminded her of Hanka. A few weeks later knitting needles and piles of yarn had appeared in the teenager's bedroom.

"Forgot how much I liked it. Keeps the hands busy."

"Wait, you were the one who taught Cassie?"

He shrugged sheepishly. "Grandma O'Neill taught me but it's been a while."

Janet stood up from her stool. She knew all the things he didn't say. She knew that when he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep that the repetitive motion was relaxing. She knew that one of the things he missed most about being a father was teaching his son. More than anything she knew that if it was in his power to make Cassie even an ounce happier he would do it even if it made his ears turn the color of his yarn.

Leaning over the side of the bed Janet brushed his hair away from his forehead and pressed a gentle kiss on it. "Thank you Jack." Then she turned and walked back to her office the quiet clacking of the needles and soft cursing making her smile.