"Doc…"
McKenzie waited patiently, used to uncomfortable questions.
"How could we not notice?"
He'd expected the question, sooner or later, from someone. "In many respects, people see what they expect to see. They expect to see an officer doing her job, and they don't look closer." He half smiled, ruefully. "She said she tested that theory once. She was upset, crying as she walked down the hall. But she didn't want to talk about it, so she made herself smile at the same time. Passed six people without a single comment. The trick, apparently, is to hold your breath as you get next to them so they don't hear a sob or sniffle."
Jack stared at him in disbelief for a solid minute. "Unreal," he said finally.
McKenzie had thought so at first, too. It wasn't often that a patient admitted to consciously doing things like that, as if it were a lab experiment. Given that she had accepted that she had no way out, though, she'd handled things pretty well. Better than some others he'd counseled.
"Very real, Colonel. And more common than you probably realize, although not to this degree."
oOo
Jack returned to his office to think about that. About recent events with a focus on Cooper. How could he have missed it? He should have paid attention to the details.
He'd seen her take the phone call from her husband; put that down to common marital strife.
Assumed she wore long sleeves in the heat to show support for Carter. But he hadn't actually asked.
She had commiserated with the lab mice. Rodents. Shouldn't that have told him something?
She had been just as absent as Carter from the dining hall, with no evidence of carryout food. That should have been a hint, especially since by that time he was aware of every morsel that came near Carter, even the Mars bar Captain Philips had given her.
Cooper had taken the overtime without batting an eye, even knowing what would happen at home. That didn't count, he reminded himself, no one here knew the consequences.
Her happiness at being confined had been a wake up call, but he had missed it. No one was happy to be confined unless it was keeping them away from something worse than infinite boredom.
It wasn't really that obvious even now, in hindsight. But she had had a lot of practice in, and painful incentive for, covering things up. It had taken interviews with several people to piece together the details.
Fenton had known things were less than stellar between the Coopers. Had assumed that was the reason her colleague had taken the bulk of the overtime hours, despite ramifications at home. She was aware that Bob Cooper demanded Jill Cooper's full attention after working a late night, that she would tend to him to his satisfaction before sleeping. But Fenton, for whom the very idea of not fighting back was inconceivable, had never imagined that Jill's evenings entailed more than sweet-talking the man, or maybe cooking treats for him or some such other innocuous activity.
Given the evidence, Jack was pretty sure that it cost her far more than a few hours' sleep. Since she routinely accepted overtime, though, the penalty for refusal must be equal or worse than the one for doing it. Jack, from harsh experience, suspected her husband amused himself by putting her in the catch-22 situation. Refuse a supervisor's request and be punished. Come home late and be punished. It fit the man's quest for complete control. Forcing a person into no-win situations was an effective way to break their spirit.
By contrast, Majors had thought the Coopers were the model of the happy couple. He wasn't alone; there was a general ripple of disbelief throughout the base. Majors had known that Jill Cooper had stopped eating lunch when her husband decided to save up for a motorcycle. He thought it was yet another example of how the ideal wife supported her ideal husband. The fabricated two-for-one sale at Burger King had simply been an attempt to do her a favor.
Everyone knew now that her happiness at being confined to quarters after that incident had stemmed from the abuse she endured at home. Jack shook his head. Forty-eight hours of safety in exchange for striking a fellow officer; he wouldn't have blamed Cooper for smacking every officer she met.
Carter had known nothing until she had dropped by the Coopers' house that ill-fated weekend a fortnight ago to deliver Jill Cooper's watch, forgotten in the lab. Carter had seen Bob's attitude toward Jill, and confronted him about it when Jill went inside to prepare some lemonade for all three of them.
Bob goaded and leered until Carter slapped him. Bob grabbed her wrist, twisted it behind her and grabbed her throat with his other hand as he warned her to stay out of his business. He slammed her against the brick house for emphasis, her unprotected torso taking the full force. She threatened to report him, and he had laughed as he reminded her that she had started it. Reporting him would result in charges against her, not him. Carter, already humiliated at allowing herself to be captured, steamed as he told her not to worry her pretty little head since he didn't intend to dirty his hands with her again. Don't expect Jill to back her up, if she did try to go to the authorities. If he had to, he would make sure she kept quiet, a harsh twist of both hands underlining the true intent of his words. Carter was free to talk to Jill about Bob; she thought it was almost a dare to do so. But he would of course then take his turn at un-twisting – the word was accompanied by a painful twist of Carter's back – the Captain's words. It was all over but his smirking by the time Jill returned.
Carter had therefore kept it to herself, quietly looking for a way to rescue Jill and enduring her own CO's pressure-increasing pranks. She thought that as long as she kept quiet, Jill was in no more danger than she had been in all along. The donuts had been the breaking point, but not for their squishiness. They had revealed Cooper's latest injury and proven that she was not safe after all. Her gasp when she was bumped was suspicious. Her obvious pain as she struggled to lift a mere donut was too much. Carter demanded immediate action. If she hadn't tumbled down the stairs in her rush, things could have ended much differently.
Teal'c knew all sorts of things. Amazing how observant the man was. And how direct. He had noticed that Cooper wasn't eating lunch and had gone to her directly one night as she worked late. He asked her if she was fasting in support of Carter, intending to tell her it was unnecessary. She told him about her husband saving up. He had later admired her resolve in simply accepting Jack's order of confinement on top of her husband's order not to purchase food from the dining hall, even though it combined into nearly three days without sustenance. The mushroom stromboli was no accident. The man had thought carefully of a way to feed the honorable Cooper without also sabotaging Jack's efforts with Carter. The donuts, too, were judiciously chosen against Carter's preferences.
Which made it all the worse when those simple actions, small gestures to support a praiseworthy colleague, had turned horribly against him. Teal'c and Hammond had arrived at Carter's lab shortly after Jack left. When an SF said he wanted to gather evidence, Teal'c had called up the tapes from the new surveillance cameras Jack had installed in the lab. The ones with sound, intended to eavesdrop on conversations in case no visual clues presented themselves.
Jack had seen them both, now. The standard silent tape showed Teal'c's growing disbelief and rage as he watched the tape of the incident with Cooper. On that tape, he could see "the" tape, the one Hammond and Teal'c were watching. Bob Cooper walking up to his wife, the woman backing away. Her glancing up, clearly recognizing the significance of the camera directly over her head. She slowly lowered her gaze, making eye contact with her husband as well as the hidden camera. The look in her eyes alone, as she fearfully opened herself to his assault with the same motion she'd made in the infirmary, was enough to make you want to kill Bob Cooper.
Teal'c had more than seen it, he'd heard the sound. Himself wrongfully accused. The cowardly accuser confronting not Teal'c, as was proper and manly on Chulak, but the woman. And then taking retribution from her, even though she offered no resistance.
Jack couldn't blame Teal'c for going ballistic and demanding immediate vengeance. Hammond really had no choice but to lock the outraged Jaffa up to save Bob Cooper's life. Not that the General was overly concerned for Bob Cooper at that point, it was more to avoid prosecuting Teal'c for murder. When Jack had seen "the" tape of the attack itself, complete with sound, he'd been surprised that the SFs had been able to incarcerate Teal'c at all.
Well, it would all be over soon. There was no possible way the abusive man could get out of this.
If he could have seen Bob Cooper at that moment, he wouldn't have been so sure.