The sweat that beaded her forehead glistened in the midday sun. She was feverishly working on unburying the Stargate as she had for the last six weeks.
"Carter! I got lunch ready!"
She turned. He had been fishing since early that morning, and had caught something. It was pretty routine for him to catch and clean the fish that they would have for the day in the morning and for him to join her in the afternoon.
She walked down to the little make-shift work tent that they had. "Thanks, Jack." She said as she accepted the grilled fish and sat down to eat it.
Jack looked up from his own lunch. "That's sir to you." He said, instinctively.
She pursed her lips and looked defiantly into his eyes. "We're on a planet that is cut off from Earth in every way possible. I am NOT going to call you 'sir.'"
"Carter…" He warned.
"It's Sam."
"Carter, we're going to be rescued. You're going to think of some way that we can get through to Earth. Or they're going to send one of our allies to find us."
"I don't know how much longer they're going to hold out hope for us, Jack."
"Carter, I am still your commanding officer!"
"No, Jack! You're not. Because as of right now, I resign!" She yelled as she stood up, throwing her fish into the fire.
He offered her his own plate. "Sit down and eat the fish."
"No." She said, stubbornly.
"That's an order."
She gritted her teeth and then limped back out to the clearing where she was digging for the Stargate.
"Carter!"
She didn't answer.
He caught up to her. "What happened to your leg?"
"Nothing for you to concern yourself with, SIR." She said, curtly.
"Carter!"
As she reached the place where her shovel lay, she bent down to get it. She stood up, only to get dizzy and start faltering. She blinked a few times, trying to clear her sight, but her attempts were in vain.
"Carter…" He said, just before she collapsed into his arms.
--
He hurried and got her to the tent, feeling her pulse as he went. It was weak and erratic. "Carter…hang on for me! We're both going to get rescued."
He laid her on the table, clearing off the few tools that had been lying there. He felt her forehead. She was burning up. For the first time in six weeks, he wished that they had had the conveniences of modern medicine- not to mention ol' Doc Fraiser.
He looked down the road. Carter's house was not too far, and he could do a lot more from there than he could from here. He picked her up again, carrying her the two hundred yards or so to her house where he laid her on the bed. Now, he was going to try to figure out what was wrong with her. That was going to be fun, if she woke up while he was undressing her.
He pulled her jacket and boots off, then eyed her pants. He was going to have to cut them off of her. With her limp, it was safe to assume that part of her left leg was tender, so he took a deep breath and began cutting the cloth of her AF regulation uniform. Sure enough, the lower half of her left leg was one big bruise. He lifted up her leg to find a deep, infected cut that ran the length of her calf, covered by a badly wrapped strip of cloth. "Great."
It must have happened when she fell down that slope, he thought to himself. He thought she had cried out, but she told him that it was the birds that flew by frequently. She had favored the leg on the way back to her house, but within hours, she was back to work, digging up the Stargate.
He reached for the medical kit. Nothing in there was good enough for such a deep and infected wound.
The wood in the fire crackled, and he turned to find an iron poker-like device. He looked back at Sam, who was so feverish that she wasn't waking up from her faint.
"Please forgive me, Carter." He whispered. "I'm going to have to cauterize this."
Of course there was no response, and he wasn't exactly surprised. However, he was still somewhat hesitant about the procedure. What did he think he was doing? He could easily damage her leg beyond repair. He didn't know how to do this. For all he knew, he could be making it worse.
However, when faced with total seclusion on a planet that wasn't even his home world, he decided that it couldn't get any worse than this. He rolled Sam over onto her side, then reached for the poker.
--
Back at the SGC, Daniel was still frantically searching for a way to get them home. They had been declared MIA, and he was determined to get them home Even if he had to burn all of the bridges in London to do it.
"General Hammond, have we received any word from our allies?"
"Dr. Jackson, I have not had any word since you asked five minutes ago." He said, impatiently. "I understand that you don't want to leave Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter stranded on a deserted planet, and I don't feel too keen about the idea myself. However, we both need to face the fact that if the Stargate was hit by a meteor, then they are probably dead."
Daniel stood, stunned, in the Briefing room as General Hammond retreated back to his office. This was worse than the time they had been stranded in Antarctica. At least then, they were able to send help by way of helicopter. This time, they couldn't send any help for the time being.
--
Jack bustled around the tiny cottage, boiling water, cooking and cleaning. He quickly found one of the native women's cookbooks, in which he found a recipe for bread. He thought back to the night that Carter had thrown his fish into the fire, and decided to perfect the art of bread baking while she recuperated. He soon found out that baking bread from scratch, beginning with grinding one's own flour, was not as easy as it looked. Not to mention that his homemade bread tasted nothing like that of his grandmother's.
In addition to his bread-baking excursions, he tried to keep Carter's temperature down with cold compresses and ice. Luckily for him, he had found a small ice house down the road from where Carter lived, and he walked there almost everyday to find the ice that he needed for the day. Finally, after two weeks of laboring over the small kitchen stove and tending to Carter's every need, he noticed a small movement out of the corner of his eye.
"Sir?" She asked weakly. Her hands touched the coarse material of hand-spun material. What was she wearing? And how had she gotten into it?
"Carter!" He said, energetically. "Nice to have you back among the living."
"I left?" She asked, with a small laugh that resulted in a racking cough. Her head was throbbing and she felt dizzy. She vaguely remembered something about a cut on her leg. It was infected, and…she couldn't remember anything after that.
"Here," he said, bringing a small cup of water over to her. He lifted her head and allowed her to sip the cool water. "Better?"
She nodded, as she closed her eyes in exhaustion. "What happened?"
"You got a cut. It got badly infected, and you passed out from the fever. I kinda took over from there."
She opened her eyes and looked around the small cottage. "We're not in the infirmary, are we?"
"Nope."
She swallowed as she closed her eyes again.
"Take it easy. You've been feverish for the last couple of weeks. You've been in and out of consciousness."
She nodded, closing her eyes as she drifted back to sleep.
He was pleased. She hadn't ever been quite strong enough to carry on a conversation. He took this as a sign of tremendous progress. But for now, he'd let her sleep until she was ready to continue living life among the living.
--
"Dr. Jackson, may I have a word?" General Hammond asked.
"Yes, sir."
"It's been two months since we've heard from Major Carter and Colonel O'Neill. It's time that I assigned a new commander and a fourth member of SG-1. In the meantime, it's clear that the Edorans won't be returning to their planet anytime soon, since our allies have no ships available at the moment. I'd like you and Teal'c, along with SG-7, to coordinate their relocation."
"But, General…" Daniel began.
"Son, I know you want to find your missing teammates. However, my hands are tied. The Pentagon and the President want the SGC to return to normal Gate operations. That means no more teams going off in search of transportation to Edora."
"Jack and Sam single-handedly have both saved this planet more times than…"
"I know, son. But I have to concede defeat on this one. Jacob's going to keep looking into getting a small cargo ship, but I cannot continue expelling the resources of this facility to find two officers who are most likely dead."
"But…"
"Son, I think we can both trust Jacob to get our people back safely. It is, after all, his daughter that's marooned on this planet."
--
"What's that smell?" Sam asked, as she awoke.
"Bread." Was Jack's simple reply.
"Bread?"
"Yep. I learned to bake bread."
She chuckled. "Colonel Jack O'Neill, USAF- occupation: housewife."
"Ha ha. Now be nice or I won't let you have any."
Her mouth started to water for the bread. "Sir…"
"I know." He said, smiling as he brought the slice of bread to her. "I thought you might want some of this."
She tasted it. "You're good."
"Why, thank you, Carter."
"Sam." She whispered.
"Huh?"
"Nothing, sir."
"You want me to call you Sam?"
She nodded, savoring the bread again. "Sir, you make a mean broth, but…I have to tell you: this bread is good stuff."
"Colonel Jack O'Neill- gourmet chef at your service!"
"I'll be sure to tell General Hammond about your talents."
He smiled. "Oh, great. I'll be transferred off SG-1 to the commissary staff."
"Which of course begs the question…" She began.
"What question?" He asked, confused.
"Can you make pie?"
I know this seems a little disjointed, but I'm trying to run through several weeks of Sam's recuperation with little repetition. I'm also trying to show that General Hammond's hands are tied and that he's trying to do the best he can without defying orders.