Unfortunately, Janet was wrong. The toast didn't stay down. And even worse, Ian had been right about how badly it'd hurt coming back up. Janet supported his head while he heaved, but there was nothing she could do for his injured ribs, and by the time Hammond arrived in the ICU room with the rest of SG-1, Ian was trembling and pale and looking a lot worse than he had when he'd been brought into the infirmary in the first place.

"Is he all right?" Hammond asked Fraiser, concerned. It was one thing to be angry with the boy, after all, but the general was still worried about him.

Janet nodded, tossing a sympathetic look over towards Ian, who was assuring the others that he was feeling better than he looked – which Janet doubted.

"He's exhausted, and his ribs are giving him some trouble – which is making him nauseous… he'll be fine, though. When you're done with him I'm going to put him on some painkillers and put him back to sleep for a while, I think."

"Is that wise?"

She shrugged.

"He won't like it, but I'd rather have him healthy – and he's not going to get better if I don't do something."

Hammond nodded and left it at that. She was the doctor, after all. He walked over to Ian's bed and waited for everyone to gather around. The infirmary wasn't the best place for a debriefing, but Ian wasn't going to be moving around any time soon from the looks of things, and now that he was awake, Hammond wanted to find out what was going on with the boy as soon as possible.

Ian looked up at him, and there was a definite look of wariness in his expression – as if the cadet was expecting him to hit him or something.

"How are you feeling, son?"

"I'm fine, General Hammond."

Well, he didn't look fine, but that was the answer he'd expected Ian to give him.

"We're all a bit curious about this ability of yours, Ian," Hammond said, figuring it was as good a place to begin as any.

Ian nodded.

"Have you always been able to do it?" Sam asked, knowing Ian would need to be coaxed a bit to get him to say anything.

"No. Just since I met the Ancients."

That, of course, opened up a can of worms – although Ian had known it was going to. Which was why he'd said it. No sense beating around the bush, after all, and since Alexander had told him he could tell the rest of them what had happened, he was going to. Gladly. He hated keeping secrets.

"Excuse me?" Daniel said. "When did you meet the Ancients?"

"When I went to the Alpha site to 'recover' after Thanksgiving."

"There were Ancients there?" Hammond asked. "We would have been told if-"

"They weren't at the Alpha site," Ian said, interrupting. "They hijacked the gate, and…" Ian shrugged, unable to think of a better way of putting it. "They kidnapped me, and sent Jack back to the SGC with a fake set of memories, thinking he'd delivered me to the Alpha site."

"The Ancients did that?" Daniel asked. "Why would-"

"Let's start at the beginning," Hammond said, interrupting Daniel. Tell us what happened."

It would be a lot better than asking him a bunch of questions, and it would save time. Although Ian was awake, he looked terrible, and the general wasn't sure he was going to stay awake all that long.

Ian nodded, and was quiet for a minute as he tried to gather his thoughts. He remembered everything, yeah, but that didn't make him a good story teller, and although Alexander had told him he could tell them everything, he had a feeling it would be better to leave the fact that the whole thing had been centered around Jack out of the picture, because he didn't want Jack to feel like any of it was his fault. Instead, he told them that it was because the Ancients had been curious about his perfect memory – which wasn't a lie.

He told them about being hijacked, and being introduced to Alexander – although he didn't tell them the relationship between Alexander and Dotty – and he told them about how the Dotty he'd met was a different one than the one that they knew. Sam had started to interrupt, obviously fascinated by the alternate reality scenario, but Hammond kept her from doing it, and Ian was grateful for it. He told them about being taken to the Ancient's city, but left out his own speculation that it was Atlantis – which would have set Daniel off on a tangent of his own that Ian didn't feel like dealing with just then – and described the place fairly well when they showed an interest.

"That's the place you took me, isn't it?" Sam asked, recognizing it from the description. "That's how you knew there was a gate there; you'd been there."

Ian nodded.

"It was the only place I could think of – since I knew the ship we were in would fit there and I knew they didn't have an iris. I'd expected there to be people, though…"

Of course, he'd been so panicked at the time that he hadn't had a lot of options.

"So they tricked you into sticking your head in their repository of knowledge?" Jack asked, intrigued.

Ian nodded.

"They told me it was a test."

"Then what happened?"

"I passed out."

"But you didn't go crazy like I did…"

"Were they doing the same thing with you that they did with Jack?" Daniel asked.

Ian shook his head.

"This one was different than the one they used on Jack, they told me. It was supposed to be gradual – which is what went wrong with yours, Jack. Your mind couldn't cope with the influx of information coming at it so suddenly. This was supposed to go slower and make it so the person – me, in this case – would be able to adapt."

"And it worked?" Sam asked.

"It's had a few side-effects. I don't know that they expected me to figure out how to heal people, for one thing."

"Wait a minute," Jack said. "How can you figure that out? Isn't it something that only Ancients can do?"

Ian shook his head.

"It's not an innate ability, Jack. It's something…" he shrugged. "I can't explain it… but anyone can do it – if they know how."

"And that was in the memory they gave you?"

He nodded.

"I don't know that it was supposed to be… but it was."

"When did you figure it out?"

"When I was with Sam." He looked over at her, apologetically. "I was floundering, really… I panicked, and it was all I could think of when I saw that she was in labor."

"And when Jake was born?" Jack asked.

Ian shook his head.

"He wasn't breathing, and I knew how important he was to you guys… I…"

"How did you learn so much about babies, though?" Janet asked, curiously. She'd been listening in on the conversation as well, and was just as flabbergasted. "In order to heal him, you'd have to understand all about the complexities of the human body, and infants – especially preemies – are so much different than adults. How did you know what to fix?"

"I didn't," Ian said. "But Jake did."

"Excuse me?"

Ian sighed. This was a digression he'd hoped to avoid until later.

"I don't have to know anything about anatomy – God knows I don't know shit about the inner workings of a woman's body when I helped Sam. Jake knew what his body was supposed to be like, though – all I had to do was supply the energy and the direction, and he took care of the rest."

"I don't understand…" Sam said. "How can-"

"I don't know, Sam." Ian admitted. "I don't do it like the Ancients do – they can heal with a touch and not wipe themselves out doing it – but it worked and I was desperate."

"Can you do it any time, then?" Daniel asked.

Ian nodded.

"After the first time, yeah…"

"But you can't heal yourself?" Janet asked.

Ian shook his head.

"I wouldn't even know where to begin if I wanted to try," he admitted. "No… I can't heal myself."

"But I can."

They all turned at the voice – a voice painfully familiar to most of them – and there was stunned silence in the room as Dotty Adams walked through the door.