DISCLAIMER: See chapter 1

After many hours Jack, Sam and Teal'c were all starting to get anxious. Sam still hadn't said anything and was instead staring straight ahead at the undecorated wall in front of them. They still hadn't heard a word from a doctor or nurse and even Teal'c was getting restless at the lack of information.

The only saving grace about the situation was that they were alone in the waiting room. They didn't have to deal with other worried families, but instead could simply be by themselves.

Hearing movement in the hall outside, Jack and Teal'c immediately rose to hear the news from the doctors they hoped was outside the door. They were sorely disappointed when the door opened and it wasn't a doctor, but instead General Hammond.

"Hello sir." Jack said dejectedly.

"Colonel, any news?" Not taking offense at the tone in Jack's voice. He'd seen SG1 with the same spirit whenever one of them was injured.

"No sir. Nothing yet." Jack said as he moved back to his position beside Sam.

Seeing the person next to Jack, General Hammond moved to the chair that Teal'c had vacated. He'd known Sam since she was a little girl and had only ever seen this look on her face twice; the first was right after her mother died and the second was when she found out her father was ill. As he sat down he ignored protocol and pulled her into a hug that he hadn't given her since she was a small child. "Sam he'll be alright. We've all seen Dr. Jackson through worse accidents than one a car can cause."

"Indeed Major Carter. DanielJackson will pull through."

Whether it was what was said or simply the closeness she felt in the hug, Sam seemed to hear the message and relax somewhat. General Hammond gently let her go but remained next to her. She returned to her former position staring at the wall but there seemed to be a slightly less haunted look on her face this time. Fortunately it wasn't long before they once again heard movement outside the door. This time all rose and when the door opened they were equally as surprised by who was behind it.

"Janet?" Sam said stepping towards her friend and breaking the silence she had embraced hours before.

"Yes, I received an emergency page for this accident. I didn't know it was Daniel until I arrived."

Sam paled and swayed slightly almost falling, except for the arm that Jack had placed once again around her waist. Sam knew that Janet was only paged for the really bad cases, and Daniel's must have been bad.

"What can you tell us doctor?" General Hammond asked, also knowing about the situations that usually resulted in his chief medical officer receiving emergency pages.

"What I can tell you is that he is lucky he was brought here to this facility. Beyond that I can tell you that he will be unconscious for a few days at the least, and probably more at that. After that, it will be a long recovery. He sustained numerous internal injuries including a punctured lung and a ruptured spleen. He also suffered a concussion and severe bruising and cuts to a large number of his body. I specifically was paged though for the spinal injuries he received in the accident."

"What were the nature of these spinal injuries doctor?" Teal'c asked immediately concerned for his injured friend.

"I'll spare you the gritty details but in the initial scans we saw that there were injuries to both the upper and lower portions of his spine. Because he was unconscious we could not test the sensations in his body at the time and the scans were not exact. During the surgery, I was able to stabilize and repair the upper injury, as it wasn't as severe as initially thought."

"But..." Jack prompted knowing that this was going somewhere they probably didn't want to hear.

"But the lower injury was severe and complete. I was able to stabilize it but..." Janet stopped unsure of how to break this news to her friends. Daniel was her friend too and this had hit her hard but she didn't know what this was going to do to them. "But, I couldn't repair the lower injury completely. We'll know the rest of the details when he wakes up but I can say that despite all my efforts, Daniel will not have feeling below his waist. He will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life."

It took a few minutes for the news to really sink in. Everyone in the room was reeling from the news and no one really knew what to make of it. Amazingly enough, Sam was the first to ask a question about Daniel. "Janet, there has to be something we can do. Something that you know of that could repair this. Maybe even one of my father's healing instruments or one of our other friends..."

Although Sam hadn't directly mentioned the Tokra healing device or any of the other alien cultures they had encountered, everyone in the room knew what she was referring to. Janet looked up to her friend's face and with tears in her eyes that she knew shouldn't be there she said, "Sam there's nothing we've encountered that could fix the damage that's been done. Your father's healing instruments may be effective in repairing some of the secondary damage and I would like to try them but they need all of the components to repair the damage in a person."

"So?" Sam asked. She wanted to know what else was going on behind this. Daniel was like her brother, even closer than her real brother and she couldn't bear to see him spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair; he didn't deserve it.

"Sam the lower half of his spine was almost shattered from the impact. I had to do radical surgery just to restore enough stability to it so that he could sit up on his own. In doing this I had to remove large amounts of broken bone and replace it with a steel rod. Unfortunately in doing this, I made it so that the device you're referring to won't work."

Sam was livid at hearing this but so was Jack and he managed to jump in before Sam this time and confront the doctor, "And why would you do this when you knew that we had something that could possibly heal him back at the base?"

Janet was now trying to keep from crying as she was confronted by her friends. She was essentially being yelled at by people she thought trusted her judgment and actions. As she spoke, tears streamed down her face. "Because I had to. The severity of the injury was causing a lack of circulation in his legs. If I hadn't acted like I did, he would have lost his legs before we could get him back to the base. As it was, he coded two times while in the operating room, he still isn't even stable enough to transport to the base. That will take at least a week."

The answer was not what they expected to hear from Janet and it surprised them all. Instead of saying anything though Sam just walked up to her friend and hugged her tightly whispering, "I'm sorry I doubted you. It was just so stressful. You did what you had to. I'm just glad it was you in there."

"I know Sam. It was a hard decision to make, he's my friend too. I didn't want to do it, but I had to. I'm so sorry."

The men in the room took in the realization that their colleague and friend would never walk again. Teal'c and General Hammond looked at the women in the center of the room and almost wished they could express they grief in the same way. Jack just sat back down and tried to come to terms with what he had just heard.