Author: MegTDJ
Category: Missing scene
Rating: PG
Pairing: Daniel/Janet friendship
Spoilers: The Broca Divide
Summary: Missing scene for The Broca Divide; Janet's first day at the SGC turns into a greater adventure than she could ever have imagined. First story in the Love Comes Softly series.
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1, its universe and its characters are not mine. The story itself is, however, so please don't archive without my permission.
Author's notes: Well, I've already written 4 of the stories in this series, but this is technically the first one, heh heh! This is where it all began - The Broca Divide! The episode that makes Daniel/Janet fans from all over the world sit up and cry, "Instant chemistry!" I hope I did the episode justice with this fic. :)
So, without further ado, may I present story #1 of the Love Comes Softly series. I hope you enjoy!
Trial By Neanderthal
Janet took a deep breath as the elevator began its descent. She'd always felt nervous on her first day at a new job or posting, but this time she was well on her way to feeling petrified.
It had been less than a week since she had been informed about alien devices that can take an object from one world to another in the blink of an eye, evil alien parasites that take humans as hosts, and more disconcerting yet, the fact that such things were right here on Earth. Less than a week ago, life had been pretty simple. Now she felt as though everything she thought she'd known about the universe had been turned upside down.
She had no idea what to expect as the new CMO of this top secret facility. Considering the fact that the man who held the position before her had been killed right here on the base by an officer who had been taken over by an alien, she knew it wasn't going to be a walk in the park.
Still, someone high up in the Air Force chain of command must have felt she was capable of handling it, or she wouldn't have been given the position.
The elevator shuddered a little as it came to a stop on Level 27. Janet took a deep, calming breath as the doors slid open. "No turning back now," she whispered to herself. She only paused a moment before she gathered up her courage and stepped out into the busy hallway.
Busy was one word for it - manic was another. She only just managed to avoid being plowed into by several 6-foot airmen who were wrestling another man toward the very elevator she had just abandoned. The man was struggling to get away from them, growling ferociously and foaming at the mouth.
"Dr. Fraiser, I presume?"
Janet whirled around to find herself face-to-face with a balding two-star general. His nametag read "Hammond" - the leader of the base and the man she had come to this level to see. "General Hammond," she said, raising her voice to be heard above the noise. "What's going on?"
"I have no idea, Doctor. We were in the middle of a debriefing when Lt. Johnson here went completely out of control. You have your work cut out for you, I'm afraid... they're taking him to your infirmary."
Janet stared, speechless, as the General turned and marched off down the hallway. "But... I just got here," she murmured in dismay.
This was going to be a long day.
"Medical team to the embarkation room!"
"What now?" Janet muttered under her breath. She'd spent the last hour trying to figure out what was wrong with Lt. Johnson with no luck. Now there was another medical emergency? What had she gotten herself into?
Taking a deep breath, she followed the medics as they grabbed their kits and ran out of the infirmary. She was glad they seemed to know where they were going, because she wasn't sure enough of her way around the base yet to take the lead.
She stared in amazement for a moment at the scene that met her eyes when she arrived at the Stargate room. First of all, the Stargate itself was absolutely magnificent. She had never seen anything like it before in her life, and knowing that this was the device that could take people across the galaxy was quite overwhelming. Then her eye was drawn to the two bodies lying on the floor covered in blood and glass, and her professionalism took control again.
"What happened here?" she asked into the air.
A man with longish hair and glasses looked up from where he was checking the pulse of one of the injured men. "They seemed to be fighting or something up in the briefing room," he said. "They fell through that window."
Janet followed his pointed finger up to a large window quite high up from the floor that was now just a gaping hole. "You'd think they'd have installed bullet proof glass in a place like this," she muttered as she began tending to the men.
"I'm pretty sure they will now," the longhaired man said.
Janet looked up at him to gauge whether or not he was joking, but he had turned his face away from her. "Listen, Mr... uh..."
He turned back to her, looking her up and down briefly before answering, "Jackson. Doctor Jackson."
Janet's ears perked up at this. "Medical?"
He shook his head. "Archaeologist, sorry."
"Daniel!" a voice from the door of the room suddenly snapped. "What the hell happened here?"
Dr. Jackson rose to his feet to talk to the man who had just marched in. "I have no idea," he said. "They just threw each other through the window. Captain Carter and I were..." His words were cut off as the man grabbed his sleeve and dragged him across the room to get out of the way of the medics that were setting up their stretchers.
Janet watched the two men out of the corner of her eye as they finished their conversation and she finished her quick examinations of the two injured officers. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she saw that the second man left the embarkation room just as she and her medics were preparing to take their new patients to the infirmary.
Dr. Jackson returned to her then, and asked, "Do you need any help, Dr...?"
"Fraiser," she finished for him. "No, thank you. I'll let everyone know once I figure out what's going on here."
It didn't occur to her until she was back in the infirmary that she must have sounded rather overconfident in her own abilities with that statement. What she should have said was, "If I can figure it out at all."
A bunch of men behaving like animals. What a way to start the day.
Janet winced as yet another patient was brought to her with the same symptoms. This time it was Captain Carter, who had apparently "attacked" Colonel O'Neill in the locker room. She tried not to laugh at the perplexed look on the colonel's face. He obviously wasn't sure whether to be disturbed or pleased by the incident.
After explaining the situation to him as thoroughly as she could, she went back to work at trying to find out what was going on. She was soon greeted with the information that her colleagues had discovered a strange organism in the victims' bloodstreams. She wasn't sure whether to be overjoyed or even more puzzled by this news.
She started examining the organism herself and was just starting to make a little bit of progress when there was a scuffling sound coming from out in the hall. A few seconds later, Colonel O'Neill was dragged into the infirmary kicking and screaming.
Janet had had about enough, and her day was far from over.
No sooner had Colonel O'Neill been sedated and strapped down than Dr. Jackson appeared at her side, holding a handkerchief to his nose.
"Please tell me you're not showing symptoms, too?" she implored.
"I'm... not showing symptoms, too," he said.
Janet smiled, noting absently that he looked sort of cute when he was confused. "Okay, then what happened?" she asked.
"Jack... Colonel O'Neill sort of... attacked me."
Janet glanced over to where Colonel O'Neill's gurney was being wheeled away. "Why does that not surprise me?" she muttered. "Okay, I'll get someone to take a look at you," she said with a sigh. "And while we're doing that, I want to run a few tests on you as well. Just in case."
Dr. Jackson reluctantly agreed, so Janet passed him over to one of her nurses and went back to her research. She had only just sat down and looked into her microscope when a large black man with a strange tattoo on his forehead entered the infirmary.
She was rather unsettled at first, as she could see that if he had this illness he would undoubtedly do quite a lot of damage to her infirmary and the people that were there, but she was soon put at ease by his calm stance and the concerned look in his eyes. He went straight over to Dr. Jackson and the two men had a brief conversation in hushed tones.
Janet knew there was no time to waste in getting to the bottom of this illness, so she quickly got back to work once she realized the man was no threat to anyone. Scarcely a minute later, however, she was interrupted yet again when one of her nurses tapped her on the shoulder.
"We have the results of those tests you wanted us to run, Dr. Fraiser," she said.
"Thank you." Janet took the folder the nurse was holding out to her and gave its contents a quick glance over. She could feel her face blanching further at each word she read. This thing was turning out to be even worse than she thought.
"Do you want us to take blood samples from Teal'c, too, Doctor?" the nurse asked.
Janet glanced over at the big man who was still standing by Dr. Jackson's side. She seemed to remember reading something about a "Teal'c" in the files she'd been given before she came to the base, but she hadn't known what he looked like. If he was one of the enemy soldiers she'd read about, she could understand why the Goa'uld were such formidable enemies. "Yes, please do," she said. "We should begin taking samples from everyone, whether they're infected or not."
"Yes, ma'am." The nurse hurried off to do her job, and Janet had just started to read more when General Hammond entered the infirmary.
'It never rains but it pours,' Janet thought ironically as she rose to her feet. Now she had to figure out how to tell General Hammond that there was a highly infectious disease on his base, and that she had no clue as yet how to cure it.
Janet was beyond exhausted by the time Captain Carter returned to her infirmary with a stab wound. She was starting to be tempted by the idea of throwing in the towel and quitting then and there when she saw Teal'c entering the infirmary out of the corner of her eye.
With a sigh of relief, she left her patient's side and went over to him. "Thank God you're back," she said.
"What happened to Captain Carter?" Teal'c asked in concern.
"She was stabbed by her roommate," Janet replied before she realized how bad that sounded. "Don't worry, it's superficial. She's going to be okay." She took his arm and guided him away from the commotion so they could talk without distraction. "We've run out of space," she told him. "We've had to start doubling up on the iso rooms."
"I have retrieved the blood sample you requested," Teal'c said, handing her a tube of blood.
"Good work, Mr. Teal'c," Janet said as she took it from him. The automatic "Mr." brought to mind Dr. Jackson's reaction when she had used it earlier. He had repeated it in a rather sarcastic way and then pointedly corrected her. "Teal'c." She'd have to get used to not using a salutation with the name.
She glanced around absently as she thought about this, and suddenly realized that she couldn't see Dr. Jackson anywhere. "Where is Dr. Jackson?" she asked.
At the stricken look that appeared in Teal'c's eyes, Janet felt her stomach sink.
"He didn't contract the disease after all, did he?" she asked anxiously. If he had, then the one thing she had to go on might just turn out to be a fluke.
"He did not," Teal'c replied. "He was taken by the Touched. According to the Untouched... he is now gone."
Janet couldn't even formulate a reply in her mind, let alone open her mouth to say it. She could only watch with sympathetic eyes as Teal'c turned and walked away, his slumped shoulders the only indication that he had just lost his friend and teammate.
She only allowed herself a moment to feel guilty for sending him back there in the first place. It was, she believed, necessary for them to have this blood sample. She mustn't let it go to waste now that a good man's life had been lost because of it.
Anti-histamines. Janet still couldn't believe the irony of it. For years she had complained about her stupid allergies, and now through some amazing twist of fate they had saved her life and the lives of everyone on this base. It was an overwhelming thought.
The adrenaline rush she'd gotten when she'd discovered the answer was beginning to wear off as she injected the last of her patients with the drug. She'd been on her feet all day long, and she couldn't wait to get home, have a nice, long bath, and sleep for twelve hours straight.
Still, no matter how tired she was, she was determined to last until SG-1 came back. They had only just left to return to the planet and give the cure to the people there. She knew that Colonel O'Neill was planning on finding Dr. Jackson and bringing him home, whether he was dead or alive. If he was alive, she might just be needed to put him back together again.
Her work was soon finished, all of her patients released, and the most important paperwork filed. She decided that some of the paperwork could either wait a little while or be passed over to one of her colleagues for them to do. All she had left to do was wait for the teams to return.
Hours passed with no word from the planet. Dr. Warner told her numerous times to go home and get some sleep, but she refused. She needed to see if Dr. Jackson was alright. It was because of her that he'd gone back to that planet and been taken. If he was injured or ill, it had to be her that treated him. That's all there was to it.
She was dozing in her chair when she heard a voice over the PA system calling for a medical team in the embarkation room. She was up and out the door before the message had even come to an end, and met up with the rest of the medical team on her way there.
Her heart finally went back to its rightful position in her chest when she saw the small crowd in the Stargate room. Dr. Jackson was among them, and he looked very much alive.
"I'm fine," he was insisting to Colonel O'Neill. "I was just tired..."
"Daniel, you passed out. I had to get Teal'c to carry you the rest of the way to the gate, for cryin' out loud."
"What happened?" Janet asked, barging in between the two men and crouching down beside Dr. Jackson who was seated on the floor at the base of the ramp. She started looking him over before another word was said.
"His allergy stuff must have worn off, Doc," Colonel O'Neill informed her. "He got the disease after all. He seemed okay once he came around to himself again, but then he collapsed on the way back to the gate."
Dr. Jackson winced as Janet touched his abdomen, and she looked at him in concern. "That hurts?" she asked.
"They beat me a little," he said. He sounded reluctant for some reason that Janet intended to look into later. "Kicked me in the ribs a few times."
Janet nodded, knowing there was much more to the story than that. "Okay, let's get you to the infirmary. I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist on a stretcher."
Dr. Jackson meekly agreed, settling himself on the stretcher the medics set down before him. The medics then picked it up and carried him out of the Stargate room, and Janet trotted along behind.
Once they reached the infirmary, Janet restricted Dr. Jackson's teammates from entering and then got down to business.
The first thing she noted as she pulled the curtain around Dr. Jackson's bed was the way his clothes were torn. His shirt and pant legs were almost shredded in places, and it looked like it had been done deliberately rather than just by bushes or twigs. She wasn't looking forward to hearing about his ordeal in detail.
"Okay, Dr. Jackson, just lie back and try to relax for a minute," she said as she pulled out a fresh chart and started jotting some information down.
"I... I lied."
She looked up at him curiously. "What?"
"I didn't want Colonel O'Neill to know how bad it really was," he confessed, looking down at his hands. "I think I have a couple cracked ribs... at the very least."
Janet took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's take a look."
She was horrified when she saw the state he was in, but she tried not to let it show. His entire body was covered in nasty bruises, various ribs had been cracked, and he was bleeding internally. When she thought about it, it wasn't surprising. The men she'd come across with this illness had the strength of five regular human men. If he'd been beaten more than once by them... she shuddered at the thought. She could hardly believe that he had gone through such a horrible experience and come out of it so well. She admired his inner strength and courage.
It took a few hours to get Dr. Jackson patched up and resting comfortably, but even then Janet didn't go home. For some reason, she felt she should stick around just a little while longer to see if he was really okay. Something about him seemed to be pleading for someone to take care of him, and that someone pretty much had to be her.
She spent some time doing more paperwork in her office until her eyes could no longer focus on the paper. Then she made her way back to the ward Dr. Jackson was in, hoping to find him fast asleep so that she could force herself to call it a day and go home.
He wasn't.
"Dr. Jackson, are you alright?" she asked in concern as she entered the ward.
He quickly wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and took a deep breath. "Yes, I'm fine," he said, but she could tell that he was anything but fine.
"Are you in pain?" she asked, unable to think of any other reason he could be lying there in a dark room crying.
"No," he answered. "The pain killers are working pretty well."
"Then what is it?"
When he didn't answer, she sat down on the edge of his bed and laid her hand on his arm. "If there's anything you need to talk about, I'm here," she said gently. "I know you probably just think of me as your doctor, but I'm perfectly capable of lending an ear as well."
Dr. Jackson forced a smile in response, but he still didn't speak. Janet just sat in silence for a minute until he finally sighed and closed his eyes. "I came so close," he said in almost a whisper. "So close to cheating on my wife. God... if Milosha hadn't played hard to get..."
Janet's heart melted at the man's obvious agony over something he had almost done under the influence of an alien illness. It made her think of her ex-husband, and how he hadn't even thought he was doing anything wrong when he had cheated on her. This was one special man indeed.
"I'm sure she'll understand," she said in an effort to ease his mind somewhat. "Not that you can tell her what happened, of course... but considering you had an alien illness that was affecting your brain and your hormones, you really had no control over your actions. It wouldn't have been 'cheating' on your wife even if you'd done something."
Dr. Jackson sighed again, but he opened his eyes and looked at her with such a sorrowful expression that it literally made Janet's heart ache. "No, I can't tell her," he murmured. "She's gone. The Goa'uld took her. I just... I promised myself I would wait for her, that I wouldn't even think about another woman, no matter how long it takes to get her back. I can't believe that I just forgot about her so easily."
Janet didn't know what to say to this. His wife had been taken by the Goa'uld? That was the most horrible thing she had ever heard.
"I'm sorry," Dr. Jackson said after a moment of tense silence. "I shouldn't be dumping all this on you."
"No, no, it's alright," Janet assured him. "I'm really sorry about your wife. I really am. I just don't think this is anything you need to feel guilty about. No one remembered anything about their lives while they were like that. You certainly weren't the only married man to go after a woman while in that condition. I had a few try to make a move on me!"
She forced her tone to stay light as she made this comment, and to her relief the ghost of a smile passed across Dr. Jackson's face. Encouraged by this, she continued, "Just the fact that you feel so badly about this shows how devoted you are to your wife. She's lucky to have such a loving husband waiting for her to come home again. I know my ex-husband wouldn't have thought twice about sleeping with every woman that came along in a situation like yours."
Dr. Jackson shot her a look of deep sympathy at that statement. "I'm sorry," he said.
Janet was taken aback for a moment. She hadn't expected to mention her ex-husband at all, let alone receive a reaction like this for it. "It... it's okay," she said. "I dumped the jerk years ago. What I'm trying to say is..."
"I get it," Dr. Jackson interrupted, reaching his hand out to touch hers. "Thank you."
Janet gave him a small smile. "You'll try not to feel guilty anymore?"
He nodded and forced a smile in return.
"Good. Try to get some sleep now." Janet rose to her feet as she spoke, and was about to walk away when he grabbed her wrist to stop her.
"Wait... there's one more thing," he said.
"What is it?"
He looked uncomfortable for a second. "I... Do you have anything that could settle my stomach?" he asked hesitantly. "I think I must have eaten something while I was out there that wasn't completely cooked. I don't even want to think about what it must have been..."
"Of course," Janet said quickly. "I'll get you something for it now, and later I can run some tests just to be sure there are no... unpleasant aftereffects."
He looked relieved to hear this. She could tell that he was thinking what she was thinking - worms or parasites from undercooked meat. She'd make sure they got rid of them if they were there, and he seemed to take comfort in that.
She brought him the medicine right away, and he swallowed it down without a word. Then he settled more comfortably in the bed and let his eyes drift closed.
"Goodnight, Dr. Jackson," she said as she arranged his covers more securely around him and turned to leave the room.
"Goodnight, Dr. Fraiser. Thank you."
Janet turned back at the door to look at him, and smiled when she realized that he was already fast asleep. In that moment she had the unexplainable feeling that this was just the beginning of her dealings with this man, and that he would bring no end of adventure into her life.
'Well,' she thought, 'I got through this, so I think I can handle pretty much anything. Bring it on.'
She smiled to herself as she left the room. She was looking forward to it.