Janet didn't even know what hit her. One second she was bending over Daniel, trying to reinsert his IV, and the next fireworks exploded in her brain. Every sound around her became distorted, spots appeared in front of her eyes, and she slowly became aware of the fact that she was on the floor, crouching on her hands and knees. Her face felt like it was on fire, but she couldn't bring her thoughts into focus long enough to understand why.
"I made her scream... I hurt Janet... I'm so sorry, Janet... so sorry... forgive me!"
Daniel's panicked voice barely made it past the ringing in her ears. Forgive him? Had he done something to her?
"Doc... Doc! You okay?"
Janet blinked a few times to try to clear her vision. Once everything stopped lurching in and out of focus and the spots stopped dancing in front of her eyes, she saw that Colonel O'Neill was crouched down on the floor next to her. "C... colonel?" she squawked, raising a limp hand to her throat when her voice didn't work properly.
"How many fingers?" he asked, holding his hand in front of her face.
Janet squinted at him, willing the hand to stop moving in such a sickening way. "Three?" she said, taking a wild guess.
It was obviously the right answer, because O'Neill sighed and nodded, looking relieved.
"Somebody help me!!!"
Janet tried to scramble to her feet, but the floor seemed to sway underneath her and she sank back down again.
Colonel O'Neill gently restrained her with a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Doc," he reassured her. "Brom's guys have got it under control. They got the sedative into him. He should relax any second now. Don't try to move just yet, okay?"
"Screaming... I heard him screaming..." Her brain refused to cooperate with the rest of her body, so the words came out all slurred together. She had heard Daniel screaming, hadn't she? Why was he screaming? Why did he need help? What was going on?
"He thought he was seeing Goa'ulds," the colonel explained. He glanced up at the people standing over the bed not two feet away from them. "I think he's starting to calm down now."
Janet's brow furrowed in confusion. "Goa'ulds?" Why wasn't he making any sense?
Colonel O'Neill turned back to her and looked straight into her eyes as if to read her thoughts. He reached out a hand and gently took hold of the left side of her face, angling it in order to get a better look at the side that was hurting. "You okay?" he asked cautiously. "You took a pretty hard knock there. I think his fist just grazed your cheekbone on the way by, but it had enough force behind it to knock a Sumo wrestler flying. Looked like your head hit the floor there, too."
"Daniel... he hit me?"
She couldn't see half of the colonel's face due to the surgical mask he was wearing, but what she did see suddenly looked worried. He rose to his feet and bent down to help her up. "Come on, Doc, let's go get that looked at," he said gently.
She grasped his arm and allowed herself to be hoisted to her feet and escorted out of the room. She chanced a look over at Daniel as they walked past his bed, and the memory of the past few hours finally came flooding back. "Colonel," she said, pulling on his arm until he came to a stop, "did Daniel..."
"He was delirious, Doc. He lashed out and you took the brunt of it. Seemed to come 'round to himself for a moment afterwards, though. He seemed pretty shaken up that he'd hurt you."
Janet nodded absently, not taking her eyes away from the half-conscious man until she felt herself being guided away from him. Her face was throbbing with such pain that she didn't even bother to protest.
"So, we believe it attacks specifically the part of the brain that handles our memories, eating its way inside and causing memories a person has repressed to surface, though we're not sure how or why. This combined with the high fever causes intense hallucinations that are somewhat founded in past experiences. Each one gets worse and worse until..."
"We know all that, Dr. Holmes," Sam interrupted the woman, trying not to sound as irritable as she felt. "What we need to know is how to stop it."
Dr. Holmes looked down at her hands. "That's just it, Major. I don't think we can."
"That is not what I want to hear," Sam snapped. Ignoring the stunned looks she was getting from everyone else in the room, she continued, "We've only been at this for a few hours. It's way too early to just give up like that."
"I wasn't suggesting we give..."
"Then what were you suggesting?" Sam challenged.
Dr. Holmes looked sufficiently chastised under Sam's glare. "I guess I was suggesting that we need more information before we can go any further in our research... ma'am."
Sam took a deep breath and stood up a little straighter. "Then I'll see what I can do about finding some," she said. "Keep working."
"Yes, ma'am," Dr. Holmes said as Sam walked from the room.
She went immediately into the room across the hall, in which Dr. Flietstra was working alongside Healer Meese in performing autopsies on those who had died from the illness. Her heart broke when she saw the small figure lying on one of the tables behind the opaque quarantine curtain and recognized it as being the little girl who had first been smitten with this horrible sickness.
"Major Carter," Flietstra greeted with a nod, though he didn't stop working on the body in front of him.
"Dr. Flietstra. I hope you don't mind me coming in here, I... feel like I'm just getting under foot in there."
"Not at all, Major," he replied. "However, if you intend to come this side of the curtain..."
"No, I'll just... stay here," Sam said, trying not to betray the fact that she was feeling rather ill at the sight of the row of dead bodies laid out on tables along the length of the room. "How many now?"
Flietstra didn't even need to ask what she was referring to. "Sixteen," he answered without hesitation. His tone and expression were full of compassion, which was something Sam had always admired about him. Not every pathologist felt such empathy towards his "patients."
'Sixteen,' Sam thought. 'Sixteen people we couldn't save.' She swallowed hard as she felt bile rising in her throat. Who would be next?
"Have you found anything?" She didn't really expect an affirmative answer - after all, if they had found something everyone in the building would have known it by now.
"Not yet, Major, but we're still searching. The answer has to be here somewhere."
Sam forced a smile. "I know you'll find it if it's there," she told him.
She only wished the nagging feeling of doubt would go away.
"Just give me an ice pack and I'll be fine."
"You know the drill, Janet. Just answer the question."
Janet sighed and glared at Dr. Carmichael through her good eye. "No, I didn't lose consciousness. I don't have a concussion, Drew, I'm..." She flinched as he shone his penlight in each of her eyes. 'Now I know why Colonel O'Neill always gets so cranky when I use that thing,' she thought ruefully. "I'm fine," she finished aloud.
Carmichael glanced over at Colonel O'Neill for confirmation of her statement, and Janet did the same.
"She was pretty out of it for a second there, but I don't think she passed out, no," the colonel told him.
"Thank you, Colonel." Janet turned her attention back to her colleague. "Satisfied?"
With a heavy sigh, Carmichael took the ice pack that was handed to him by Nurse Penner and pressed it to Janet's eye. "You know I'm only worried about you, Janet," he said softly. "Colonel O'Neill said he thought you hit your head on the floor when you fell..."
"I don't remember that," she defended herself weakly.
"Well, you wouldn't if it knocked you unconscious for a second."
Janet rolled her eyes, trying not to let on how dizzy the action made her feel.
"You probably do have a slight concussion, Janet. The last thing we need right now is for you to ignore that and end up..."
"I'm fine."
He gazed at her doubtfully for a moment. "Any headache? Dizziness? Nausea? Blurred vision?"
"I've had a headache ever since I set foot on this planet," Janet mumbled.
"Janet..."
"Andrew, I'm fine. Really." She punctuated this statement by hopping down from the cot she'd been sitting on, and suppressed a wince as pain shot through her head. "Just let me get back to my patients..."
She was held back from walking out of the room by a hand suddenly clamped around her elbow. "You sure that's such a good idea, Doc?"
Her icy glare focused on the colonel, but to her annoyance, his firm expression didn't waver. "I'm needed in there, Colonel," she snapped. "Now please let me go."
"Doc, you've been going non-stop for hours, and you've been knocked off your feet twice in that time."
"Twice?" Carmichael cut in with an alarmed look on his face.
O'Neill looked reproachfully down at Janet. "You didn't tell him?"
Janet didn't answer. She suddenly felt much too tired to argue.
"Tell me what?" Carmichael demanded, his arms crossed over his chest.
"When Daniel first..." O'Neill made a vague gesture with one hand, seemingly at a loss of how to word his statement, "...he grabbed her ankle and she fell. Cracked her head against the wall on the way down. Right, Doc?"
Janet gave a slight nod, though what she really wanted to do was take a swing at the colonel for keeping her away from Daniel this long. How dare these two treat her like a child? She knew better than anyone else whether she was fit to work or not... didn't she?
"Where did you hit your head?" Andrew asked, already feeling around her scalp to see if he could find a lump.
Janet's yelp was all the answer he needed the moment he found it.
"Right there, obviously," he said. "A lump has formed, so I don't think there's cause to worry... still, you should have told someone about this, Janet. I really think you should step back for a little while - let the rest of us take care of things while you rest."
"I don't need to rest, Drew. What I need is to get back to work." She moved to leave, but once again, the colonel restrained her.
"I think you should listen to him, Doc. You've been on your feet too long. Just go sit down somewhere and let the rest of us take over for a while."
She wanted so badly to protest, but she knew it was pointless. They were right, after all. If she were the doctor in this situation and not the injured party, she would advise the same. Still, she couldn't handle the thought of Daniel going through all of this without her. There had to be some kind of compromise...
"Alright, I'll sit down and rest," she conceded. "Under one condition."
"What's that?" Andrew asked.
"That you allow me to sit wherever I want."
The two men exchanged glances and then looked back at her suspiciously. Janet would have found their synchronized movements comical if it weren't for the gravity of the situation.
"Alright," Carmichael said warily. "Just so long as you're resting."
Victory.
To be continued...