Chapter 3

Daniel knocked hesitantly on the green door and on hearing the weary answer slipped inside, closing it with a quiet click. He raised an eyebrow in a wordless question at the woman sitting in front of a desk. She ran a hand through her un-brushed auburn hair in a defeated gesture and shook her head.

"No change yet, Daniel. Sam's still thrashing a bit, but doesn't appear to be coming out of it yet." She looked around, eyes unseeing for a few seconds before fixing a brighter smile on her face. "What about you? Did you get something to eat?" And the 'brisk doctor voice' was in her tone, worrying about yet another of her perennial patients.

"Yup. And some coffee." A returning tired grin lit Daniel's face. "You?"

"I've had a break in the last ten hours, you forget," she chided gently, turning back to stare at the charts in front of her. Daniel pushed his glasses back up his nose and wandered over towards the chair pushed between the only two occupied beds in the unit. Before he sank back into the familiar uncomfortable cushion, he paused to lean silently over his two friends, eyes searching their pallid faces.

Sam's face was creased in a frown and her hair was damp and ruffled against the stark sheets. Every so often a small whimper escaped her, and she tossed her head restlessly. A stiff white bandage was wound tightly across her arm and shoulder and a fading bruise still decorated her cheek. As he continued watching her Daniel unconsciously reached up to test the tender skin around his own temple. After a little while he shook his head and turned around to look over at Jack.

The Colonel's head was swathed in a rakish bandage across his forehead, but he was still, so still, in comparison with Sam. His brown arm with the IV tube lay limply on top of the covers, and his breathing was faint but calm. The heart rate monitor beeped steadily; Janet suspected possible brain damage from the staff blast and was therefore not taking any chances.

Sighing, Daniel ensconced himself back in his chair, hands folded over each other as he took up his vigil again. Teal'c was a sporadic visitor; there was trouble on Chulak, and the Jaffa struggled to split his time between his friends of the Tau'rii and of his own kind. After a little while Janet got up from her desk, heels clicking in the quiet room as she crossed over to her patients to check the IV. Coming round to Sam's side, she paused suddenly, reaching over to place a hand on her patient's face.

"What is it?" Daniel was instantly on his feet, watching Sam intently. The blonde woman turned her head restlessly, muttering something unintelligible that broke into an anguished tone before subsiding once more.

"Does this mean she's waking up?" Daniel asked in a low tone.

"It might mean that the only thing keeping her down now is the morphine," Janet replied, a faint smile gracing her face as she turned to read the chart. "We could probably start decreasing the dosage. I'm concerned about her restlessness."

"Why? Is it a bad sign?"

"It could be, and for now I'd prefer it if she didn't move that shoulder too much." The doctor reached up to unhook the IV bag, looking at it critically before replacing it and going to the phone. She requested a nurse to bring something complicated and medical that to Daniel was just a lot of meaningless words (a strange feeling for the linguist), and then returned. Whilst they waited, Sam's head moved more violently, and she briefly flickered open unseeing eyes.

"Yes Sir!" she called out clearly, before dropping back still and sleeping. Daniel caught Janet's worried gaze as he looked up. As he was about to speak Sam yelped in fear and flung her hand to clasp her injured shoulder, muttering something fiercely.

A nurse knocked and then entered quietly with several vials and another IV bag.

"Excuse me... Doctor Frasier?" he said cautiously. Janet turned around with a brief glimpse of relief and the two medical personnel started dealing efficiently with the solution dosage.

"... watch for the rings..." emerged another understandable phrase in Sam's now constant, fearful undercurrent of mumbling. Daniel closed his eyes on a sudden flashback of the planet, glancing over his shoulder just in time to see Jack and Sam snatched up by the destroyer's transporter. He wondered briefly whether Sam was reliving what had happened and he bit his lip unconsciously.

"Five Jaffa, we can take them!" Sam said suddenly and confidently, causing Janet and the nurse to look sharply over. Daniel's face took on a mask of bewilderment. "She's babbling, right?" he asked concerned, the question in part real and in part to cover the fact that Sam was talking of classified material.

"I believe so," replied Janet swiftly in a no-nonsense tone. She began to measure a dose of something, then turned and nodded with a smile to the nurse.

"Thank you for your help," she said in a friendly tone that nevertheless implied dismissal. She then waited until the man had quietly left the room before continuing to measure.

"Why...?"Daniel left the question hanging, vaguely curious. "Just because of Sam's talking?"

"That, and because of this drug. It needs precise measurements, and unfortunately high levels of naquadah in the blood stream almost double its intended dosage. The nurse might have taken that as a miscarriage of professionalism on my part and reported it."

"Oh." He had no reply to that. Janet held the hypo up critically to the light and squirted it slightly to remove the air bubbles before applying it to the IV tube. As she then reconnected the bag and smoothed the covers thoughtfully, her patient subsided slightly under her fingers. Then in a heart-stopping motion Sam stiffened, frozen still.

"Jack? Jack!" she cried in a broken tone, before falling back limp against the pillow.

The two watching over her exchanged a silent look before glancing over to where the Colonel still lay silent.

Sam slept on.

AN: Sorry about the short chapter. Revision for A-levels is mega tough when you're doing Chemistry, Physics (specialising in cosmology) and Latin. scurries back to her books