Daniel had been sobbing for five minutes before Janet had finally had enough. She'd been without him for so long, and now that he was finally back, she couldn't stand to just sit there watching him crying out his pain and fear all alone. She got off her stool and perched herself beside him on the bed. "Daniel?" she whispered to him as she stroked his hair. "Please stop crying now. You're home. You don't have to be afraid."
She felt his body shudder when she touched his arm, so she quickly withdrew her hand. Was he really in so much pain that the slightest touch hurt him? She wished he would talk to them and tell them what was wrong.
"Daniel?" she tried again. "Why won't you talk to me?"
He raised his fist and slapped it against his head a few times, until Janet grabbed it and made him stop.
"Don't do that," she said. "You'll hurt yourself."
Colonel O'Neill scooted his stool closer to Daniel and pulled both of his hands down to rest on the bed. "Relax, Daniel," he said.
Daniel obviously didn't feel like relaxing. He yanked his hands away from Colonel O'Neill and started trying to turn over onto his back. Janet hopped off the bed just in time, as he would otherwise have pushed her onto the floor.
"Can you tell me where it hurts, Daniel?" she asked. "You can just whisper it to me if you want to."
Daniel's forehead wrinkled up as though he were trying to concentrate on what she was saying.
Janet figured that might be some kind of breakthrough, so she said again, "Can you tell me where it hurts?"
An anxious look came over his face then, and he patted his left arm as he'd done minutes earlier.
"Yes," Janet said, "you have a wound on your arm. Does it hurt?"
Daniel didn't answer, just started pulling at the bandage again.
"No, Daniel, I already told you that has to stay on," she said.
Colonel O'Neill sighed as he had to fight against him yet again to bring Daniel's hands down away from his arm. "Is it just me, or are we getting nowhere?" he said.
Janet shook her head. "I thought we were getting somewhere for a moment there, Sir. I know for a fact that Dr. Warner gave him something for the pain, but he didn't want to give him too high a dose before we knew what was wrong. I can't figure out whether his arm is really hurting him, or whether he just doesn't want to wear the bandage."
Colonel O'Neill looked thoughtful for a moment. "Or maybe it's something else."
"What do you mean?"
He looked grave as he met her gaze. "Maybe the memory of whatever gave him that wound is haunting him."
Janet shivered at the thought. They still hadn't a clue where Daniel had been or what had happened to him in the past month, and it was becoming abundantly clear that they wouldn't get anywhere with him until they figured it out. But where should they start?
"I think I'm going to tell Dr. Warner that we shouldn't wait for that MRI," she said, suddenly feeling desperate to find out just what was going on here. "We need to know more about his condition as soon as possible."
She went to walk away, but Daniel grabbed her arm in an iron grip. He looked on the verge of panic, but he still didn't make a sound.
Janet sighed and patted his hand. He obviously wanted her to stay with him, and she wasn't about to say no. "Colonel, could you go and fetch Dr. Warner, please?" she said.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure," she said. "We'll be fine." She gave Daniel's hand a gentle squeeze and forced a smile.
Daniel blinked in return and seemed to relax a little.
Colonel O'Neill hurried off without another word, and returned moments later with Dr. Warner in tow.
"You really think he's ready for the MRI?" Warner asked.
Janet nodded. "As ready as he'll ever be," she said. She swallowed down her raging emotions as she added, "We, uh... we should probably restrain him again, just in case."
Dr. Warner seemed reluctant, but he and Colonel O'Neill fastened the restraints on Daniel's wrists once again despite Daniel's growing panic.
"Daniel, we're just going to take you for an MRI, okay?" Janet said, trying to keep any signs of worry from her face and the tone of her voice as she attempted to calm him down. "You must remember having them before, right? Standard procedure. Nothing to be frightened of."
Whether he remembered having an MRI before or not, he was certainly afraid of them now. As soon as they wheeled his gurney into the room and he caught a glimpse of the machine, he started struggling to free himself from his bonds. No matter what Janet, Colonel O'Neill, or Dr. Warner did, he would not calm down.
"I'm going to have to sedate him," Dr. Warner said, preparing a syringe.
That was the last thing Janet had wanted to do, but she could see that there was no other choice. Daniel had to have that scan, and there was no way they'd get an accurate reading if he wouldn't keep still.
Just as Warner was approaching him with the needle, however, something happened that stopped everyone in the room dead in their tracks.
Daniel's frantic gaze fell on the syringe and then again on the MRI machine, and suddenly his entire body went rigid. Then he sucked in a deep breath and cried, "NOOOO!"
The sound echoed through the room, making it seem ten times louder than it really was. It made Janet's blood run cold, not only because it was the first sound that had come out of him since he'd come home, but also because of the intense fear and desperation that had created it.
Still, as bad as his sudden outcry had been, what came next was even more frightening. Daniel's eyes rolled back in his head, and his body started to convulse.
"He's seizing!" Janet cried.
Dr. Warner was hovering over Daniel in an instant, but to Janet's dismay, he didn't do a thing. He looked over at Janet with wide eyes after a second or two and said, "He isn't seizing, Janet."
"Then what..."
Before Janet could finish her sentence, Daniel went completely limp. Warner laid his hand on Daniel's neck and felt for a pulse.
"He's alright," he said. "But my God... we can't do this MRI."
"What? Why?" If he didn't start giving them answers soon, Janet swore she would shake them out of him.
"He just received an electric shock, Janet," Warner said in disbelief. "There must be something in him that set it off. If we do the MRI..."
"It could be ripped right out of his body," Janet finished. She could feel her face draining of colour as her stomach seemed to sink down into her shoes.
"His arm," Colonel O'Neill said, pointing to the now blood-soaked bandage.
"Oh my God," Janet breathed as she quickly removed the bandage to find that Daniel's wound had reopened. "How..."
"That's what he was trying to tell us," the colonel said with a bitter tone to his voice. "There's something in his arm. He can't talk because if he does, he gets a shock from whatever the damn thing is."
"Well... then we have to get it out of him!"
Warner nodded. "That's exactly what we'll do. I'll prep OR-1."
Janet stared at him as he all but ran from the room, and then she turned back to Daniel. He was unconscious now, but he still looked frightened and in pain even in his sleep.
Colonel O'Neill ran his hands through his hair and let out a deep breath. "What the hell kind of animals would do this to a guy?"
Janet shook her head. She didn't even want to think about it.
Sam didn't know what to do with herself while she waited for word on Daniel's condition. The last she'd heard was that he was being taken into surgery to get some kind of device removed from his arm. The messenger hadn't given any explanation of what this device was or what it had done to him, just that it was imperative that they get it out of him as quickly as possible. That didn't exactly ease her mind.
She felt much too restless to just sit there, so she tried pacing for a while. After a minute, though, she got tired of Teal'c watching her cross from one end of the room to the other like he was at a tennis match, so she sat down again and jigged her legs impatiently.
"Perhaps you should call Cassandra and inform her of Daniel Jackson's return," Teal'c said as Sam finally hopped to her feet again.
Sam could have kissed him. "Yes, good idea," she said. "She'll be getting in from school right about now. She'd want to know as soon as possible." She smiled as she passed Teal'c on her way out of the room. "Thanks, Teal'c," she said, knowing he'd offered her the task so she could feel like she was actually doing something.
Teal'c inclined his head to her - his way of saying, "You're welcome."
Sam grabbed the first phone she came across, which was on the wall in one of the infirmary hallways, and quickly dialled Janet's home phone number.
It rang three times before someone picked up, and a breathless voice said, "Hello?"
"Hey, Cassie, it's Sam."
"Oh, hey, Sam," Cassie said, not sounding overly excited to hear her voice. "I just got in from school. What's up?"
Sam took a deep breath. "Well... I have good news, and... not so good news," she said. "Are you ready?"
Cassie went quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again she sounded rather subdued, as though she were afraid of what she was about to hear. "Okay."
"Daniel's back," Sam said, opting for going straight to the point. "He's here at the SGC, and your mom is with him now."
Cassie let out a breath in a loud whoosh. "Thank God," she said. "So, what's the not so good news?"
"He's... he's in pretty rough shape, Cass. We still don't know where he was all this time or what happened to him, but whatever it was... it wasn't good. He's having surgery right now, and I think we'll know more about his condition when he gets out."
"Surgery?" Cassie's voice sounded paper thin through the phone line. "He's gonna be okay, though, right?"
"I'm sure he'll be fine," Sam said, hoping she wasn't lying to the girl. "He's got your mom and Dr. Warner looking after him now, and you know they won't let anything happen to him."
"Yeah. I know." Cassie paused for a second or two, and then asked, "Can I come see him?"
Sam chewed on the inside of her lip. "I don't know, Cass... before his surgery, only your mom and Colonel O'Neill were allowed in the room. I'm not sure how soon he'll be allowed other visitors."
"Well, can you tell him something for me when you see him?"
"Yeah, of course."
"Tell him... tell him I said hi. And that I love him... and I miss him. Okay?"
Sam's heart broke at the sincerity in the girl's words. "Yeah, I'll tell him," she said softly. "I'm sure he'll be really happy to hear that."
"Thanks, Sam."
Sam tried to make a bit of small talk after that, asking how Cassie's day at school had gone and what homework she had to do that night, but getting her to talk any more was like drawing blood from a stone. She felt bad for her, being stuck all alone at home when so much was going on at the SGC, but there wasn't much they could do about that. She was a tough kid, though, and Sam knew she could handle it. Still, she had a heavy heart when she finally hung up and left Cassie to her own devices. She knew from experience that it wasn't easy being a 'military brat,' never knowing whether your parents were going to come home at the end of the day.
Her thoughts were drawn back to the situation at hand when she returned to the waiting room. She was just in time to see Dr. Warner enter the room and announce that the surgery was finished, and that it had been a success.
"We still don't know what the device is, but..."
"Let me see it," Sam said before Warner could even finish his sentence.
Warner smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that, Major," he said, and handed her a small petrie dish with a tiny scrap of metal inside.
"How long before we can see him?" she asked as she took the dish and looked closely at the little device.
"Give it a couple of hours," he said. "He's still unconscious at the moment, and I would imagine he'll be feeling very disoriented when he comes to."
Sam nodded. "Well, I'll be in my lab if you need me," she said as she turned to go.
She was determined to find some answers before that time was up.