A slight scuffling sound brought Janet slowly around to consciousness. For one brief, delicious moment she thought she was home in bed, and that the vague memory she had of watching Daniel die... again... had been nothing more than a bad dream.
Without opening her eyes, she rolled over onto her side and stretched her hand out across the mattress she was lying on, hoping to feel Daniel's warm, comforting presence beside her. Instead, all she felt was the edge of the bed.
"Fraiser? You awake?"
Her heart sank at these words and the voice that spoke them. She didn't want anything to prove to her that it had all been real. She wanted to stay in her own little world of denial for just a bit longer. If Colonel O'Neill was sitting beside her, that meant that her nightmare wasn't a nightmare after all, and that Daniel really was dead.
"Doc?"
A gentle hand gripped her shoulder and turned her over onto her back. She cracked an eye open - the only eye that would open - to look at him. "Colonel?"
"Hey, Doc," he said almost casually. "How are you feeling?"
"Terrible," she replied as her eye closed again of its own accord. Her eyelid was just too heavy to lift for any amount of time.
"I bet. You passed out back there. Carmichael was pretty worried about you for a while."
Her eye finally flew open at this statement. "For a while? How long was I out?"
"About an hour."
"An hour?" She felt a wave of panic wash over her as these words sank in. If an hour had gone by, they would already have taken his body away. If they had...
"I have to see him!" she cried. She tried to sit up, but the action made the room start to spin, and she flopped helplessly back down onto her pillow.
"Whoa, easy, Doc," Colonel O'Neill soothed. "I don't think you should get up just yet."
'No kidding,' Janet thought, holding her head in both hands to stop it from floating up around the ceiling. "Daniel," she said, though it sounded more like a moan to her ears. "I need to see Daniel."
"Sure." He stood up from his chair and sat down on the edge of the bed. "He's right over there."
Janet turned her head to look in the direction he was pointing, and the relief she felt at what she saw was almost overwhelming.
Daniel was still alive. He was hooked up to a respirator, but he was still alive, and lying in the bed next to hers.
"Oh, thank God," she breathed, closing her eye again with relief and exhaustion. "What's his condition?"
"He's stable for now," the colonel informed her. "It was pretty close there for a while. We almost lost him a couple times."
"I thought I had," she murmured. She was desperate to stay awake; to shake off the dizziness and get back to Daniel's bedside where she belonged, but the temptation of sleep was too great. The last thing she heard as she drifted off once again was Colonel O'Neill's voice.
"It's okay, Doc. We're taking care of him for you. You sleep."
"I see she was awake for a minute there," Carmichael said quietly.
"Yeah," Jack replied as he settled himself back into his seat between Daniel and Fraiser's beds. "She asked about Daniel. Seemed kinda dizzy and disoriented, though. Then she fell asleep."
"Asleep is better than unconscious," Carmichael said, taking Fraiser's wrist to check her pulse.
"She gonna be okay?"
Carmichael sighed and gently lowered her hand back onto the bed. "I'm pretty sure she will, yes. When I checked her pupils a few minutes ago, they were fine. I don't think her passing out had anything to do with her concussion."
"What, then? Because she's fighting off the mind fever?"
He shook his head and pulled his mask down from his face. "The organisms in her bloodstream were dead, Colonel. We've seen no evidence that those who are immune feel any effects whatsoever, even when they have the disease in their systems."
"Stress?"
Carmichael nodded slowly. "Stress, exhaustion... I don't think she's even had anything to eat since she was on Earth. It's really not surprising that she's been so emotional, either. Her body's been through a lot these last few hours."
Jack glanced over at Daniel as Carmichael spoke, the sound of the respirator making him feel uneasy.
Carmichael noticed this and followed his gaze. "What did you tell her... about Daniel?"
"I told her he's stable for now," Jack replied, sizing the doctor up as if daring him to say anything to the contrary. "It's the truth, right?"
Carmichael looked uncomfortable at this question and suddenly seemed to find his shoes quite fascinating. "For now, yes," he said cryptically. "I still think it's a bad idea for her to be in here, though, Sir."
"And I still say she would kill us if we took her out of here now," Jack told him for the tenth time. "If anything happens to Daniel, she'd want to be with him. You know that."
Carmichael looked down at Janet again and nodded. "Just be prepared to..." His voice broke off before he could finish his sentence, and a strange look passed over his face. "Help her through it, Colonel," he finished. Then he quickly walked away.
Jack stared after him for a moment in confusion. He could have sworn the guy was much more concerned about Fraiser than about Daniel. And the way he'd looked at her... Jack couldn't explain why, but it got his hackles up. In his opinion, nobody had a right to look at Fraiser that way except Daniel.
He glanced back and forth between the sleeping forms on either side of him, wishing there was some way he could right all the wrongs that had been done to them. 'Fat chance of that,' he thought. There was nothing he could do now but wait, and be a friend they could rely on if - when - they came through this.
And they would come through it, he resolved. They had to be okay. Both of them.
He smiled slightly to himself as he remembered how ecstatic he'd been the day Daniel had sat the rest of SG-1 down and told them that he and Fraiser were getting serious. For years Jack had watched his friend mourn the loss of his wife, determined that he would never love another woman in her place. As much as Jack understood this philosophy, that sad, lonely look that so often appeared on Daniel's face had really started to get on his nerves. Not in a heartless way - far from it. He simply hated to see his friend so down, and felt helpless to do anything to make things better for him.
Not long before Daniel had ascended, it had become sort of a running joke between various members of the base personnel that Daniel's frequent trips to the infirmary were at least partially psychosomatic - that he just wanted to spend time with Fraiser any way he could. Jack had laughed at the idea at first, but when he'd actually sat and watched the two of them together, he couldn't help but notice the way Daniel's face lit up whenever the doc entered the room, nor how Fraiser's tone softened whenever she spoke to him, whether he was in trouble or not. After a while, he got so he kind of liked the idea.
To everyone's great annoyance, though, both Daniel and Fraiser seemed totally blind to the whole thing - or at least Daniel was. That was proven by the fact that Daniel chose to ascend.
When Fraiser asked for temporary leave soon after, everyone knew why, though no one said anything about it. She was mourning him, and needed to get it out of her system in private before she could handle working every day in the very room where Daniel had "died." It took her a few months, but she finally seemed to get over him and begin to move on.
Soon after Daniel returned to them, though, the "get over him" part seemed to be out the window. Daniel and Fraiser just seemed to gravitate towards each other again, even when he barely remembered who she was. Jack had just gotten wind of a betting pool some airman had set up for folks to predict how long it would take before the two of them got together, when Daniel told him the news. Seeing the two of them so happy together had warmed Jack's heart - though he would never let it show.
He'd hoped that the universe had finally decided to give Daniel a break and allow him for once in his life to be truly happy for more than a fleeting moment at a time.
Unfortunately, it hadn't. In fact, it had struck him the most devastating blow of all - it was playing him the movie of his traumatic life on his inner big screen, complete with stereo surround sound, and forcing Fraiser to watch most of it with him. Pretty soon it would completely snatch all of his memories away from him again... unless it first stole his life. At that particular moment, Jack was having a hard time deciding which option was the worse of the two.
The more he thought about all of this, the angrier he became. The longer he stared at Daniel and watched his chest rise and fall with each puff of air the respirator pumped into him, the more he wanted to beat something... anything... to a pulp.
There was only one slightly positive thing he could see at the moment, and that was that Daniel's seizures had finally stopped. Still, his muscles twitched and spasmed every now and then even though he was unconscious, and when the muscles in his chest contracted, he struggled just to breathe. None of the other mind fever victims had needed the respirator as far as Jack knew, but then again, none of the people who had it as bad as Daniel had lived this long.
Even in the time Jack had been sitting there watching his friend, he'd seen his skin gradually changing colour from a flushed, deep pink to an odd-looking shade of purple. He'd been told to expect this - the purplish rash would soon cause Daniel's skin to break and would quickly develop into oozing sores. Jack's stomach turned at the thought. He'd seen Daniel covered with bleeding lesions before, and he didn't care to see it again.
When he finally couldn't stand to watch Daniel's condition worsening anymore, he shifted in his seat slightly to focus on Fraiser. At least now he knew he didn't have to worry about going through all of this with her. It was a relief to all of them, but somehow he dreaded telling her that she was immune to this thing. Whether it was rational or not, he knew she'd feel guilty about it.
It had scared them all senseless when she'd passed out an hour earlier. Jack had somehow managed to catch her before she hit the ground and had carried her over to an empty cot, but that was as much as he was able to do. He just froze, listening to the defibrillator charging and sending yet another jolt through Daniel's lifeless body, and looking down at Fraiser, half expecting her to die on him as well. His mind couldn't process that - losing both of them at once. That would be way more than just unfair. It was downright unthinkable.
As soon as Carmichael got Daniel's heart beating again, he'd turned his attentions onto Fraiser, checking her over with great care and sending a sample of her blood off to be analyzed. When the verdict had come in that she had some of those damn organisms in her blood, they could have heard a pin drop the room got so silent so fast. Then came the news that the little buggers were dead, and it was as though the entire building gave a sigh of relief all at once. Nobody wanted to see Fraiser going through something like this. Nobody.
Too bad her immunity didn't prevent her from being affected by the disease in other ways.
He glanced over at Daniel again, just in time to see a droplet of blood appear on his rash-covered arm. Jack cursed angrily and grabbed the tube of antiseptic lotion Carmichael had left for him. As much as it made him cringe to touch Daniel's raw skin, this was a job he could do, and he was damned if he'd just keep sitting there doing nothing when he could be helping to ease his friend's suffering just a little. He smeared some of the lotion onto the fresh wound and was pleased to see that it seemed to slow its formation down a little. Then he noticed another appearing close to it and smeared some cream on it as well. Then he saw another forming, and another, and another...
"Dammit," he grumbled, throwing back Daniel's sheet and seeing that they were spreading all over his body. "Doc!"
Carmichael rushed over to him, and one glance down at Daniel told him why he had been summoned. "It's okay, Colonel, we can take it from here," he said as he took the tube from Jack's hands.
"It's happening too fast..."
"I know, Colonel, it's alright. Thank you for your help."
Jack shook his head bitterly, but didn't say aloud what he was thinking - 'Some help I've been.' He hated to leave Daniel's side, but he knew he should leave Carmichael to do his job in peace.
He stretched his neck and shrugged his shoulders as he crossed the room to change his gloves, trying to work out the kinks he now had from sitting vigil for the past hour. He was just beginning to ponder the benefits of a shoulder massage when he heard rapid footsteps approaching the ward from out in the hall.
"Colonel!" Carter said as she appeared in the doorway.
Jack glanced over at Daniel once more before going over to see what she wanted. "Carter?"
"Sir," she said as she tried to catch her breath. "I think we've found something."
Jack's heart lurched up into his throat at this announcement. "A cure?"
"Not quite yet, Sir, but... I think we've come pretty damn close."
To be continued...