As the mother of a teenaged daughter, Janet Fraiser was used to the phone ringing – even at all hours of the night. On school nights there was a limit to how late Cassie could receive calls, but on the weekends, Janet preferred to rely on Cassie's friends' own sense of what was too late. Usually that worked fine, since most parents didn't allow their kids to make calls all that late – even when there wasn't school the next day.
So when the phone rang at what was an ungodly hour on Saturday night, Janet rolled over with a muffled curse and grabbed blindly for it – sleepily debating whether to chew out whoever it was or allow Cassie to talk to her.
"Hello?"
A male voice responded – and it wasn't one that Janet recognized. Obviously the boy didn't recognize her voice, either.
"Is… um… Doctor Fraiser there, please?"
Janet frowned, looking at the clock on the stand by her bed once more. She wasn't an expert in voices, but it definitely sounded like a young man – and it wasn't for Cassie. Of course, very few boys called for Cassie anymore – mainly because Ian was an intimidating young man who kept most would be suitors away. Which was fine with Janet.
"This is Doctor Fraiser. Who's this?"
"Andrew Stephens."
Janet frowned again.
"Andrew?" What on earth was he calling for? "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine…"
"What do you need, honey?"
Of course to Janet, Andrew was still the little boy she'd first met so many years ago – even though she knew he was only a couple of years younger than Cassie. She hadn't seen him since Jack and Sam's wedding, though, and he'd looked young then, too.
"Um…"
Andrew hesitated, sounding a little odd, even over the phone.
"Andrew?"
"If someone was… uh… cut by a bear… would there be any reason to worry about an infection or a disease?"
"Cut by a bear?"
"Well… not so much cut as… slashed wide open… on his hand…"
"Andrew? What are you talking about?"
Was it just that it was late, or was he making no sense?
"Well, we kind of had an accident."
"Who's we?"
"Ian and me."
"Ian Brooks?"
"Yeah."
"Ian was slashed by a bear?"
"Kind of."
"Did you guys sneak into the zoo?"
That didn't seem like the kind of thing either of them would do. Janet didn't even think Ian liked animals – except dogs.
"No."
Janet frowned.
"What happened? Is Ian all right?"
"Yeah, it's just his hand."
"Tell him to come right over," Janet said, pushing back the blankets. "I'll check it out and-"
"We can't."
"What? Why not?"
"We're stuck up in the mountains."
"You were attacked by a wild bear?"
"I wasn't."
"Ian was?"
"Yeah."
"Is he bleeding?"
"Oh, yeah."
Janet was on her feet, now.
"Is he conscious?"
"It's just his hand, Doctor Fraiser. And a few scratches on his chest – but they already stopped bleeding. He says he's all right – we just need to know if we need to worry about him getting any diseases."
"Andrew, what were-"
There was a noise in the background.
"I'm sorry, Doctor Fraiser, I need to go."
The phone suddenly went dead, and Janet stared at it for a long moment, and then hit the flash button and made a call of her own. It took a few rings, but a moment later there was a very sleepy and almost unintelligible answer.
"Yeah?"
"Colonel O'Neill? Where's Ian?"
"What?"
"Ian. Where is he?"
"Ian who?"
Janet scowled, but she knew it was her own fault for trying to have a real conversation with him when she'd woken him up in the middle of the night. Especially since he and Sam hadn't been getting all that much sleep lately.
"Ian. Ian."
"Ian?"
He sounded a little more awake, now.
"Yes."
"He's with Andrew…"
"I know that, sir. Andrew just called me."
"What? Why?"
"Well, since he was asking about the side effects of being mauled by a wild bear, I-"
"A wild what?"
"Bear."
"Are there bears in Colorado?"
"Where is he, Colonel?"
"In the mountains. At the lodge."
"Can you find it? I need to get up there and check on him."
"They're stuck behind an avalanche, doc. We can't get to them until the road guys clear it out tomorrow morning. How bad is it? Did Andrew say?"
Now Jack sounded wide awake.
"He said Ian said he was fine and that it was his hand, mostly. I really need to get up there, Colonel."
Now she was in doctor mode, and that meant she had to make sure that her patient was okay.
"I'll call them and see what's going on," Jack promised her. "If it's serious, we can take a chopper up there and get them out."
"Let me know."
"I will."
The phone went dead, and Janet headed for the living room to do some checking on the Internet to find out more about bear bites.
