Chapter 3: Fear of emptiness
"So tough to stay with this thing 'Cos if I follow through I face what I denied I'll get those hooks out of me And I'll take out the hooks that I sunk deep in your side Kill that fear of emptiness, that loneliness I hide"
(Peter Gabriel ~ Washing of the water)
The enticing promise of sleep is pulling Jack O'Neill away from consciousness. In the back of his mind he is aware of his surroundings. He isn't any longer in the dark, damp prison cell where he had spend the last... how long was it? Too long, for sure but he doesn't need to think about it anymore. Finally, after nearly giving up hope he is home again. Right now even the infirmary and Doctor Fraiser with her needles sounds like heaven to him. The mattress is softer than anything he could remember, whispering him to just let go and give in to the sedative he had received. But he resists, his mind telling him that there is something he had to do first.
"Colonel?" A soft voice standing near his bed is trying to find out how much asleep he already is. It takes a lot of willpower but he forces his eyes open. For a second everything is blurry and his eyelids weigh heavy, demanding him to get back to sleep. Like the Colonel he is of course he doesn't give in and slowly the face sharpens. "You have some visitors." Fraiser informs him smiling gently.
There is a shuffling sound coming from the other side of the bed and as fast as he can, which apparently isn't fast at all, Jack turns his head to find out who is there. All his muscles should be aching but whatever the Doc had given him earlier was doing a pretty good job and kept the sensation numb.
"Hey, Jack." Although Daniel whispers the words, the enthusiasm and eagerness is undoubtedly present.
Jack feels a warm feeling wash over his exhausted body. It is so good to see his friend again. "Daniel." He is a bit surprised at how rough his voice sounds.
"God, it's good to see you." Daniel exclaims with relief and pulls of his glasses, wiping at his eyes. Then without thinking he leans in and embraces his supposedly-dead-friend as tightly as he can. The rush movement hurts Jack but he doesn't show it. So what if even Colonel Jack O'Neill needed a hug once in a while?
"Daniel, careful." Fraiser warns the archaeologist. Apparently she hasn't changed at all and like a hawk is aware of everything that is going on with her patients.
"Ah, sorry." Daniel pulls back a bit embarrassed and puts his glasses back on. Still, a big broad smile is lightening up his face and by the looks of it Jack doesn't think it will be going away soon. He feels just the same and would probably be grinning as stupidly if he just didn't feel so tired.
A dark and firm hand comes to rest on Daniel's shoulder and its owner takes a step forward, drawing Jack's attention to the impressive Jaffa.
"I am pleased to see you, O'Neill. You were severely missed by everyone at the SGC." Teal'c announces solemnly and Jack blames it on the sedative because he would just swear that the normally so composed Jaffa was smiling as broadly as Daniel.
"I agree with Teal'c and Daniel. I'm glad to have you back, son." General Hammond declared, not as solemn as Teal'c but more like a father who finally found his lost son again.
"Thank you, sir." Jack answers, giving them all the best smile he can manage. His eyes go over every person again and then he realises one particular face is missing. A smile he had been longing for even more than he allowed himself to know. He turns his head and scans the whole infirmary but can't see her. Right away his heart sinks and a fear takes control of him. Had he dreamt her presence at the stargate? "Where's Carter?" He croaks weakly, cursing inwardly at how vulnerable he sounds.
"Sam?" Daniel frowns and turns around. "She was right behind us." He walks away from the bed and disappears into the hall. A couple of seconds later he is back again and shrugs. "She was right here... maybe she had some work to do." He suggests but the frown on his face betrays that he doesn't really believe that himself.
Jack just nods. "I'm sure, Carter is always busy with something." His voice is under more under control again and he is sure that they can't hear the disappointment in it. He had been gone for... "How long was I away?" He asks wanting to know for sure.
"One year, eight months, two weeks and three days." Doctor Fraiser and Daniel answer at once as if they both have been keeping score.
For a second it is like he had no painkillers or sedative at all. He knew he had been long for a long time but he had hoped that somehow it wasn't as long as it had felt. Time didn't really fly by when you were... He abruptly cuts of those thoughts, not wanting to go into it. He lost more than a year and a half to a hell hole. Everything around him went spinning and he shuts his eyes tightly. Even after all this time Carter apparently didn't seem to have missed him as she was off in her lab, taking apart god knows what doohickey. All these months her face and smile had kept him going and now he was back he realised he had been holding on to an illusion.
"Son," the gently voice of Hammond cuts through Jack's thoughts. "You have been gone for a long time and I'm sure you're as curious about everything that happened here as we are about what happened to you." He waits for a moment for Jack to reply but he just can't bring himself to it. His body is torn with emotions he just can't control and speaking now would make him crack for good. So he just nods and Hammond continues. "I'm sure SG-1 will be more than happy to bring you back up to speed. But you also know that when the time is right, you will have to tell us what happened to you. Only when you're ready of course."
Jack nods again, still not opening his eyes. He knows Hammond will have to get a report from him and that there is information he should give them but right now he doesn't want to think about it. He is home, finally after one year, eight months, two weeks and three days and the last thing he wants to think about right now is that... place.
A soft hand comes to rest on his shoulder. "I think the Colonel should get some rest now." Fraiser tells his visitors. "You can all come back tomorrow." She squeezes his shoulder reassuringly and Jack knows that no matter how good he is at hiding his feelings, Janet is really good at recognising them. Her hand moves away again leaving him strangely cold behind. There is shuffling around his bed as Teal'c, Hammond and Daniel say their goodbyes and tell him they will see him tomorrow. Jack nods and returns the greetings, only vaguely aware of what he is saying. He kids himself that it's just his tiredness that is blurting everything, that it isn't the pain and disappointment of not finding the face he had been dreaming about.
Daniel doesn't give him a lot of time to kid himself though. "I'm sure Sam will drop by tomorrow as well." He assures Jack. "Night." With that he is gone, leaving Jack nearly gasping for air.
Did he really mean so little to her that she couldn't be bothered to put aside her paperwork or doohickey or whatever to come and see him? The question painfully stays with him until the sedative forces him to give up his silent torture and give in to the bittersweet darkness of sedative induced sleep.
***
Sam wasn't sure how she got here, the drive from Cheyenne Mountain to Jack's house is nothing more than a hazy blur in her mind. She vaguely is aware of the fact that she shouldn't drive at all in this condition but she just had to get out of there. So now here she is, sitting in the chair on top of O'Neill's roof.
It's a cold but clear night and Sam is sure that she can see more stars than normally. Even now after being able to travel to those little points of light, she still could watch them with the same naïve kind of awe a child possesses. The stars make her feel humble and insignificant and right now that is how she wants to feel. She wants to trample down her own feelings, ignore she even has them.
*Oh god, he's back.*
The cause of this avalanche of feelings pops up in her mind, not wanting to be suppressed. It's everything she wanted for so long. That somehow this nightmare where she got stuck in the moment she stepped through the stargate without her CO, would end. She wanted to wake up and have somebody tell her it was a dream and that the last year hadn't happened at all. She would gladly have given up her new rank if she only just could serve under Jack again. Now the nightmare had come to an end, but the relief inside her brought a bitter taste with it.
Sam draws in a sharp breath and the freezing night air fills her lungs. She shudders as the cold now becomes a part of her. Rising to her feet she wraps her arms around her chest protectively. She hadn't just woken up to find it all was just a bad dream. He was home but at what price? What hell had he gone through? She closes her eyes, turning away from the beautiful night sky. In her mind she is back in the gate room, Jack O'Neill lying on the metal ramp. The dogtag glistening on his chest and only now does she allow herself to look at the skin instead of the metal. The scars, some seem fresh, others were already healed but refused to withdraw from their victims body and soul.
"Oh Jack. I'm so sorry." She whispers even if she knows he can't hear her.
In her mind it is more than clear who is responsible for those wounds. It was his rule: no one gets left behind and she had gone against it. She had turned her back on him and left him alone on the goa'uld mothership to die. Only he hadn't died and now he had gone through who knows what kind of hell.
Suddenly a name from Jack O'Neill's past came to her: Cromwell. As if it were yesterday she remembers the anger that Jack had held for this man. It had been Cromwell who had left him behind to be tortured day and night for four months in an Iraqi prison. If Jack had held such a grudge against him, how on earth would he ever be able to forgive her? She hadn't even gone looking for him. No, instead she had taken his place on SG-1. A promotion had soon followed and so she had completely replaced him. Everyone seemed to think it had only been natural that she should step forward but she soon had found out that filling Colonel O'Neill's shoes was nothing evident at all. His presence or better the lack thereof had left a hole the size of the Grand Canyon behind in the SGC. Not a day had passed by that she hadn't thought about what he would have done or how he would have reacted.
Sam reaches down under her jacket and shirt and pulls out her dogtags. The streetlight dully lights up the names on the metal plaques but not enough to make it readable. She didn't know what force had kept her from handing Jack's dogtag to General Hammond. After informing him about what happened she had left the gate room, the metal clutched in her hand. Only when she had been trying to drown herself in the showers did she realise she was still holding on to it. Without thinking she had attached it to her own dogtags and hadn't taken it off ever since. Back then it had felt like she could keep something of him close to her heart. Now, looking back at it, it seemed like that small gesture had determined what would happen next: slowly she would take up his duties and try to fill the void he left behind.
Sighing Sam sits down again in the chair, placing her heels on the seat. She rests her chin on her knees and wraps her arms around her legs, trying to preserve as much warmth as she can. But Sam wasn't so foolish not to realise that the cold really was inside her. Of course she could just go home but she knew for sure that wouldn't take away the shivers emanating from the core of her chest.
An urge to get up and drive back to Cheyenne Mountain slowly takes control of her. Sam didn't know what possessed her to just run away instead of entering the infirmary. She snorts at that thought. Of course she knows what had possessed her: Fear, with a capital F. Samantha Carter was scared that Jack would look at her and right away blame her for everything that happened to him. That like Cromwell she was first in line on his grudge list and she knows very well that Colonel Jack O'Neill rarely comes back from his decision to place you on that black list. But if she is truly honest, maybe it wasn't his accusing words that were scaring her. She knew that if she entered that room, the emotions that kept tugging at her heart, making her ache with every beat would come surging up and would refuse to lie down. So many regrets had plagued her mind over the last year and she wasn't sure that now that a chance had come up to undo them that she would refuse it like duty prescribes.
So instead of trying to make sure that the man lying in the infirmary down in Cheyenne Mountain is really her lost CO, she is sitting on the roof of that same man's house, trying with all her might to not maintain the little hold she has on herself.
***
Doctor Janet Fraiser is sitting her office, her eyes going over the last lab results that just came in from Colonel O'Neill's blood test. She smiles relieved as there doesn't seem to be any source of worry. He's a bit anaemic but she is already treating him for that and is sure he will recover from it.
Sighing she looks up at the thick medical file lying on her desk. Jack O'Neill had gone through a lot already in this lifetime, more than anyone ever should. Physically he always seemed to recover pretty well. He can thank his parents for the thick bones he inherited. But that isn't why she is worried about him right now. Next to her are lying several x-rays from every bone in his body and it seemed like about half of them had been broken at some time or another. The disturbing part is that most of them seem to have happened after he disappeared. Same counted for the scars covering his body. Some would heal fully but some nasty ones would probably stay with him for life. She just can't help but wonder how far down those scars ran.
It isn't really a hidden fact anymore to the personnel at Cheyenne Mountain that the Colonel had struggled with a depression after his son's death. What less people knew though was the depression he went through after his imprisonment in Iraq. He had crawled inside the thick walls that still surround every emotion the man holds and even his wife had hardly been able to get through to him. They had sent him to every psychiatrist in the USAF with no success at all. Apparently he even hit the last one a nice shiner. The file didn't say what got him through the depression, what broke those walls enough to give him a clean bill of health and Fraiser suspects that maybe they never did. That they had needed the best and had sent a traumatised O'Neill back into battle.
She puts the results back down and tries to think of the best way to inform O'Neill tomorrow that he would have to talk to Doctor MacKenzie. That would go down really well, she is sure.
Suddenly her eyes are drawn towards the infirmary. Maybe it's a part of your medical training but the slightest movement in that room never goes unnoticed to her.
In the scarcely lit room a figure is standing close by the door. Janet doesn't need to get closer to recognise the posture and the golden hair. She wonders what had kept Sam away from the infirmary earlier but whatever it was, it couldn't keep her away forever. Janet smiles as she remembers how the man lying in the bed Sam is staring at used to do the same. In the middle of the night he would turn up in the doorframe and stand there for ages, staring at the sleeping form of his CI2. The moment Janet would glance away and look back again he would be gone as if she had dreamt it.
She watches Sam standing there immobile, her arms hanging stiffly by her side. She shudders slightly and her arms go protectively around her chest all the while her eyes seem to be fixed unto the bed as if willing O'Neill to wake up. She takes a hesitant step forward, one more and a third finally placing her at the end of his bed. Nothing about her posture is determined anymore and the hands clutching her upper arms seem to be keeping her straight.
In the dark Sam's lips move but Janet can not hear the words she whispers. Sighing the doctor glances down at the papers in front of her and wonders if Sam will still be there if she looks up or if just like the man who's place she has taken the last year, she will disappear like a ghost.
TO BE CONTINUED
A/N: Ah, sweet, my exams are nearly over so this is a pre celebration of it I guess. I have so many ideas where I want to take this next, it's agonising to rule one out. Sometimes writing can be so cruel. Please let me know if you liked this chapter or if I'm going to slow here (personally I like slow). Thank you all for sticking with me in this story, I hope it is worth it.
"So tough to stay with this thing 'Cos if I follow through I face what I denied I'll get those hooks out of me And I'll take out the hooks that I sunk deep in your side Kill that fear of emptiness, that loneliness I hide"
(Peter Gabriel ~ Washing of the water)
The enticing promise of sleep is pulling Jack O'Neill away from consciousness. In the back of his mind he is aware of his surroundings. He isn't any longer in the dark, damp prison cell where he had spend the last... how long was it? Too long, for sure but he doesn't need to think about it anymore. Finally, after nearly giving up hope he is home again. Right now even the infirmary and Doctor Fraiser with her needles sounds like heaven to him. The mattress is softer than anything he could remember, whispering him to just let go and give in to the sedative he had received. But he resists, his mind telling him that there is something he had to do first.
"Colonel?" A soft voice standing near his bed is trying to find out how much asleep he already is. It takes a lot of willpower but he forces his eyes open. For a second everything is blurry and his eyelids weigh heavy, demanding him to get back to sleep. Like the Colonel he is of course he doesn't give in and slowly the face sharpens. "You have some visitors." Fraiser informs him smiling gently.
There is a shuffling sound coming from the other side of the bed and as fast as he can, which apparently isn't fast at all, Jack turns his head to find out who is there. All his muscles should be aching but whatever the Doc had given him earlier was doing a pretty good job and kept the sensation numb.
"Hey, Jack." Although Daniel whispers the words, the enthusiasm and eagerness is undoubtedly present.
Jack feels a warm feeling wash over his exhausted body. It is so good to see his friend again. "Daniel." He is a bit surprised at how rough his voice sounds.
"God, it's good to see you." Daniel exclaims with relief and pulls of his glasses, wiping at his eyes. Then without thinking he leans in and embraces his supposedly-dead-friend as tightly as he can. The rush movement hurts Jack but he doesn't show it. So what if even Colonel Jack O'Neill needed a hug once in a while?
"Daniel, careful." Fraiser warns the archaeologist. Apparently she hasn't changed at all and like a hawk is aware of everything that is going on with her patients.
"Ah, sorry." Daniel pulls back a bit embarrassed and puts his glasses back on. Still, a big broad smile is lightening up his face and by the looks of it Jack doesn't think it will be going away soon. He feels just the same and would probably be grinning as stupidly if he just didn't feel so tired.
A dark and firm hand comes to rest on Daniel's shoulder and its owner takes a step forward, drawing Jack's attention to the impressive Jaffa.
"I am pleased to see you, O'Neill. You were severely missed by everyone at the SGC." Teal'c announces solemnly and Jack blames it on the sedative because he would just swear that the normally so composed Jaffa was smiling as broadly as Daniel.
"I agree with Teal'c and Daniel. I'm glad to have you back, son." General Hammond declared, not as solemn as Teal'c but more like a father who finally found his lost son again.
"Thank you, sir." Jack answers, giving them all the best smile he can manage. His eyes go over every person again and then he realises one particular face is missing. A smile he had been longing for even more than he allowed himself to know. He turns his head and scans the whole infirmary but can't see her. Right away his heart sinks and a fear takes control of him. Had he dreamt her presence at the stargate? "Where's Carter?" He croaks weakly, cursing inwardly at how vulnerable he sounds.
"Sam?" Daniel frowns and turns around. "She was right behind us." He walks away from the bed and disappears into the hall. A couple of seconds later he is back again and shrugs. "She was right here... maybe she had some work to do." He suggests but the frown on his face betrays that he doesn't really believe that himself.
Jack just nods. "I'm sure, Carter is always busy with something." His voice is under more under control again and he is sure that they can't hear the disappointment in it. He had been gone for... "How long was I away?" He asks wanting to know for sure.
"One year, eight months, two weeks and three days." Doctor Fraiser and Daniel answer at once as if they both have been keeping score.
For a second it is like he had no painkillers or sedative at all. He knew he had been long for a long time but he had hoped that somehow it wasn't as long as it had felt. Time didn't really fly by when you were... He abruptly cuts of those thoughts, not wanting to go into it. He lost more than a year and a half to a hell hole. Everything around him went spinning and he shuts his eyes tightly. Even after all this time Carter apparently didn't seem to have missed him as she was off in her lab, taking apart god knows what doohickey. All these months her face and smile had kept him going and now he was back he realised he had been holding on to an illusion.
"Son," the gently voice of Hammond cuts through Jack's thoughts. "You have been gone for a long time and I'm sure you're as curious about everything that happened here as we are about what happened to you." He waits for a moment for Jack to reply but he just can't bring himself to it. His body is torn with emotions he just can't control and speaking now would make him crack for good. So he just nods and Hammond continues. "I'm sure SG-1 will be more than happy to bring you back up to speed. But you also know that when the time is right, you will have to tell us what happened to you. Only when you're ready of course."
Jack nods again, still not opening his eyes. He knows Hammond will have to get a report from him and that there is information he should give them but right now he doesn't want to think about it. He is home, finally after one year, eight months, two weeks and three days and the last thing he wants to think about right now is that... place.
A soft hand comes to rest on his shoulder. "I think the Colonel should get some rest now." Fraiser tells his visitors. "You can all come back tomorrow." She squeezes his shoulder reassuringly and Jack knows that no matter how good he is at hiding his feelings, Janet is really good at recognising them. Her hand moves away again leaving him strangely cold behind. There is shuffling around his bed as Teal'c, Hammond and Daniel say their goodbyes and tell him they will see him tomorrow. Jack nods and returns the greetings, only vaguely aware of what he is saying. He kids himself that it's just his tiredness that is blurting everything, that it isn't the pain and disappointment of not finding the face he had been dreaming about.
Daniel doesn't give him a lot of time to kid himself though. "I'm sure Sam will drop by tomorrow as well." He assures Jack. "Night." With that he is gone, leaving Jack nearly gasping for air.
Did he really mean so little to her that she couldn't be bothered to put aside her paperwork or doohickey or whatever to come and see him? The question painfully stays with him until the sedative forces him to give up his silent torture and give in to the bittersweet darkness of sedative induced sleep.
***
Sam wasn't sure how she got here, the drive from Cheyenne Mountain to Jack's house is nothing more than a hazy blur in her mind. She vaguely is aware of the fact that she shouldn't drive at all in this condition but she just had to get out of there. So now here she is, sitting in the chair on top of O'Neill's roof.
It's a cold but clear night and Sam is sure that she can see more stars than normally. Even now after being able to travel to those little points of light, she still could watch them with the same naïve kind of awe a child possesses. The stars make her feel humble and insignificant and right now that is how she wants to feel. She wants to trample down her own feelings, ignore she even has them.
*Oh god, he's back.*
The cause of this avalanche of feelings pops up in her mind, not wanting to be suppressed. It's everything she wanted for so long. That somehow this nightmare where she got stuck in the moment she stepped through the stargate without her CO, would end. She wanted to wake up and have somebody tell her it was a dream and that the last year hadn't happened at all. She would gladly have given up her new rank if she only just could serve under Jack again. Now the nightmare had come to an end, but the relief inside her brought a bitter taste with it.
Sam draws in a sharp breath and the freezing night air fills her lungs. She shudders as the cold now becomes a part of her. Rising to her feet she wraps her arms around her chest protectively. She hadn't just woken up to find it all was just a bad dream. He was home but at what price? What hell had he gone through? She closes her eyes, turning away from the beautiful night sky. In her mind she is back in the gate room, Jack O'Neill lying on the metal ramp. The dogtag glistening on his chest and only now does she allow herself to look at the skin instead of the metal. The scars, some seem fresh, others were already healed but refused to withdraw from their victims body and soul.
"Oh Jack. I'm so sorry." She whispers even if she knows he can't hear her.
In her mind it is more than clear who is responsible for those wounds. It was his rule: no one gets left behind and she had gone against it. She had turned her back on him and left him alone on the goa'uld mothership to die. Only he hadn't died and now he had gone through who knows what kind of hell.
Suddenly a name from Jack O'Neill's past came to her: Cromwell. As if it were yesterday she remembers the anger that Jack had held for this man. It had been Cromwell who had left him behind to be tortured day and night for four months in an Iraqi prison. If Jack had held such a grudge against him, how on earth would he ever be able to forgive her? She hadn't even gone looking for him. No, instead she had taken his place on SG-1. A promotion had soon followed and so she had completely replaced him. Everyone seemed to think it had only been natural that she should step forward but she soon had found out that filling Colonel O'Neill's shoes was nothing evident at all. His presence or better the lack thereof had left a hole the size of the Grand Canyon behind in the SGC. Not a day had passed by that she hadn't thought about what he would have done or how he would have reacted.
Sam reaches down under her jacket and shirt and pulls out her dogtags. The streetlight dully lights up the names on the metal plaques but not enough to make it readable. She didn't know what force had kept her from handing Jack's dogtag to General Hammond. After informing him about what happened she had left the gate room, the metal clutched in her hand. Only when she had been trying to drown herself in the showers did she realise she was still holding on to it. Without thinking she had attached it to her own dogtags and hadn't taken it off ever since. Back then it had felt like she could keep something of him close to her heart. Now, looking back at it, it seemed like that small gesture had determined what would happen next: slowly she would take up his duties and try to fill the void he left behind.
Sighing Sam sits down again in the chair, placing her heels on the seat. She rests her chin on her knees and wraps her arms around her legs, trying to preserve as much warmth as she can. But Sam wasn't so foolish not to realise that the cold really was inside her. Of course she could just go home but she knew for sure that wouldn't take away the shivers emanating from the core of her chest.
An urge to get up and drive back to Cheyenne Mountain slowly takes control of her. Sam didn't know what possessed her to just run away instead of entering the infirmary. She snorts at that thought. Of course she knows what had possessed her: Fear, with a capital F. Samantha Carter was scared that Jack would look at her and right away blame her for everything that happened to him. That like Cromwell she was first in line on his grudge list and she knows very well that Colonel Jack O'Neill rarely comes back from his decision to place you on that black list. But if she is truly honest, maybe it wasn't his accusing words that were scaring her. She knew that if she entered that room, the emotions that kept tugging at her heart, making her ache with every beat would come surging up and would refuse to lie down. So many regrets had plagued her mind over the last year and she wasn't sure that now that a chance had come up to undo them that she would refuse it like duty prescribes.
So instead of trying to make sure that the man lying in the infirmary down in Cheyenne Mountain is really her lost CO, she is sitting on the roof of that same man's house, trying with all her might to not maintain the little hold she has on herself.
***
Doctor Janet Fraiser is sitting her office, her eyes going over the last lab results that just came in from Colonel O'Neill's blood test. She smiles relieved as there doesn't seem to be any source of worry. He's a bit anaemic but she is already treating him for that and is sure he will recover from it.
Sighing she looks up at the thick medical file lying on her desk. Jack O'Neill had gone through a lot already in this lifetime, more than anyone ever should. Physically he always seemed to recover pretty well. He can thank his parents for the thick bones he inherited. But that isn't why she is worried about him right now. Next to her are lying several x-rays from every bone in his body and it seemed like about half of them had been broken at some time or another. The disturbing part is that most of them seem to have happened after he disappeared. Same counted for the scars covering his body. Some would heal fully but some nasty ones would probably stay with him for life. She just can't help but wonder how far down those scars ran.
It isn't really a hidden fact anymore to the personnel at Cheyenne Mountain that the Colonel had struggled with a depression after his son's death. What less people knew though was the depression he went through after his imprisonment in Iraq. He had crawled inside the thick walls that still surround every emotion the man holds and even his wife had hardly been able to get through to him. They had sent him to every psychiatrist in the USAF with no success at all. Apparently he even hit the last one a nice shiner. The file didn't say what got him through the depression, what broke those walls enough to give him a clean bill of health and Fraiser suspects that maybe they never did. That they had needed the best and had sent a traumatised O'Neill back into battle.
She puts the results back down and tries to think of the best way to inform O'Neill tomorrow that he would have to talk to Doctor MacKenzie. That would go down really well, she is sure.
Suddenly her eyes are drawn towards the infirmary. Maybe it's a part of your medical training but the slightest movement in that room never goes unnoticed to her.
In the scarcely lit room a figure is standing close by the door. Janet doesn't need to get closer to recognise the posture and the golden hair. She wonders what had kept Sam away from the infirmary earlier but whatever it was, it couldn't keep her away forever. Janet smiles as she remembers how the man lying in the bed Sam is staring at used to do the same. In the middle of the night he would turn up in the doorframe and stand there for ages, staring at the sleeping form of his CI2. The moment Janet would glance away and look back again he would be gone as if she had dreamt it.
She watches Sam standing there immobile, her arms hanging stiffly by her side. She shudders slightly and her arms go protectively around her chest all the while her eyes seem to be fixed unto the bed as if willing O'Neill to wake up. She takes a hesitant step forward, one more and a third finally placing her at the end of his bed. Nothing about her posture is determined anymore and the hands clutching her upper arms seem to be keeping her straight.
In the dark Sam's lips move but Janet can not hear the words she whispers. Sighing the doctor glances down at the papers in front of her and wonders if Sam will still be there if she looks up or if just like the man who's place she has taken the last year, she will disappear like a ghost.
TO BE CONTINUED
A/N: Ah, sweet, my exams are nearly over so this is a pre celebration of it I guess. I have so many ideas where I want to take this next, it's agonising to rule one out. Sometimes writing can be so cruel. Please let me know if you liked this chapter or if I'm going to slow here (personally I like slow). Thank you all for sticking with me in this story, I hope it is worth it.