Cold Lazarus

Jack was sitting on his sofa staring blankly at a television that wasn't on. Lost in the thoughts of the day. God it had been a day. He had just spent the last two hours trying to console Sara who had been understandably inconsolable.

Finally after soaking the shoulder of his shirt with her tears, her sadness had turned to anger and she had banished him from the house. He had driven home in a fog mildly grateful that he hadn't crashed his car. Not because he wouldn't have welcomed it but because he was concerned he would hit someone else and ruin yet another family with his mistakes.

So lost in his thoughts he failed to hear the knocking at the front door. He also failed to hear it swing open. In his haze he hadn't locked it behind himself. It wasn't until a diminutive doctor sat on the coffee table directly in his line of vision that he blinked hard and looked up into the dark brown, concerned eyes of Janet Fraiser.

Gently she reached out and rested her hand on his shoulder. He wanted to back away from her touch but couldn't muster the energy. "Jack." Her voice was soft and low and soothing.

He glanced up and then away not willing to maintain eye contact.

"Jack look at me." She paused waiting for a reaction that wasn't going to come. "I talked to your team. It seems like in the hospital you may have gotten a blast from the crystal. We missed your checkup after you came back. I need to take a look."

What she didn't say, what no one was willing to bring up, was that when he had walked back through the stargate after returning the crystal to its home planet Jack had not looked like the buoyant Colonel O'Neill they had all gotten to know in the past few months. The man who came back through the Stargate stared out of eyes that looked like those of the man who had gone to Abydos on that first mission. Dark and hurting and angry. Even the General hadn't thought to stop him as he walked out of the gateroom to the elevators and presumably to his ex-wife's home.

His brows furrowed in confusion. "I'm fine."

"I need to see Jack. Let me check you out real quickly and then I'll get out of your hair."

A minute shake of the head.

"Jack I know you don't want to go back to the base tonight. I talked to the General and he agreed that we checked the team when they first came back. There were no contaigens on that planet that could be transmitted. Therefore he let me come here and check you out myself but if you don't agree to the exam I'm going to have to take you back to the base for a full post-mission physical. We're already skirting the rules as it is."

She didn't want to threaten him but she knew he would cave. Despite it all he knew that Hammond was putting his neck out on the line by letting them bypass the post-offworld regulations even this much. Jack may look like he wanted to hurt himself but he would never let the General or Janet take the heat for him.

Finally a barely perceptible nod of the head.

Her arm slid down from his shoulder to his wrist. Starting gently by just taking his pulse and making a notation on the chart she had brought with her. Then, unclasping her large medical bag she coaxed him out of his camouflage overshirt and took his blood pressure.

With deft hands Janet completed as much of the physical as she could making notations as she went. Through it all Jack sat there staring off into the distance still locked in his own thoughts.

Finally she softly asked him to remove the black tee shirt. He glanced up and met her eyes. "I'm fine." The first words he had uttered since she had started her exam.

"Please Jack. We're almost done. I just need to see where the energy struck you."

Rock meet immovable object. They both stared at one another for a long moment until finally with a deep sigh Jack stiffly pulled the shirt off over his head.

The burns weren't as bad as she was expecting. The terse 'I'm fine' had initially set alarm bells ringing. However, as she applied a cream to his chest and ribs where three large blotchy burns marred his otherwise evenly tanned skin she thought that it could have been much worse. The radiation suit he had been wearing must have blocked most of the damage.

Just as she was finishing she caught sight of a bruise on the side of his ribs and asked him to turn slightly. His back looked like a swirling galaxy of blacks, blues, and purples. He softly hissed as she ran her hands over the darkest of the marks checking to ensure nothing gave where it shouldn't. Nothing was broken.

"I'm done. The General said you are off duty for the next two days. I'll let him know the physical is complete and you'll be okay to return then."

She watched him mutely pull the shirt painfully back over his bare skin.

He bowed his head and looked at his left hand running his fingers together. So quietly she almost didn't catch it she heard him mutter, "It felt just like his hand."

His shoulders started to shake and her heart broke for him. She reached out and gently ran one hand down his back. It was if she had broken open a dam. He practically lunged into her arms wrapping them tightly around her ribs as he silently sobbed into her shoulder.

"Oh Jack." She reached around and began to rub soothing circles into his back as he clung even more tightly to her.

She could not imagine the emotion of being presented with the living, breathing replica of your dead child which you could touch and talk to. She wondered what he had said to the crystal as he was returning it to its planet. Had he thanked it for the chance to see his son or cursed it for dragging up all the pain again. Then he had turned around, come back to Earth and been the strong one for Sara.

Janet held him as he grieved for his son. For the boy he had been and the man he would never get to become. She held him and rocked him and let him cry out the pain because God knew he would never let himself put this burden on Sara.

Janet was willing to take this small portion of the burden. That's what you did for the people you loved.