I do so apologise for the delay in posting – blame it on a couple of off-days. Glad to know you are still enjoying this and reviewing too! Thank you for that – I love to hear from you all.
Have A Nice Day, Jack!
by Lingren.
Previously:-
"Excellent work! Let me know when it's all done."
"Yes Sir!"
Chapter 8 – Is There Anybody There?
Sam was feeling really tired by the time she'd sat next to Jack's bed for a couple of hours. She'd had an early start to the previous day, beginning with going off-world, now almost 24 hours later, the harrowing events of the day were catching her up fast. What made this languid feeling a whole lot worse was the quiet in the room while her CO slept; apart from the soft bleeping from the machines set up to record Jack's vital life signs, the almost silence was playing havoc with her will to stay awake. Even the coffee she'd finished a few minutes ago was having little effect to keep her going.
There was no sign of Teal'c coming to relieve her as yet. She gazed drowsily at the sleeping form of her CO, still holding his hand lightly in hers, and wishing she was the one sleeping – not in here though. Without much thought to what she was doing, she settled her head onto her arms, which resting on the top of the bed and closed her eyes. It would just be for a moment she told herself even as she quickly drifted off to sleep.
Sam didn't know why she had awoken. She knew something must have woken her. At first she lay there trying to figure out where she was. Then she remembered where and why she was there, and reasoned that perhaps the Colonel must have stirred and woken her. No... it couldn't have been him, she could see he was still sound asleep. Then she heard a small noise and raised her head to look around the darkened infirmary.
Then she noticed something odd then, Something weird was happening to the IV line into the back of Jack's hand.
It was moving on it's own?
Suddenly she leapt up and tried to push the alarm button for Janet, when something crashed into her skull, knocking her senselessly to the floor.
If anyone else had been there, they would have seen her limp body drag itself behind a trolley and lay there unmoving.
OoOoOoOoO
Teal'c had finally decided that it was time he went to sit with O'Neill while he allowed Major Carter get some much needed sleep. When he was approaching the ICU, he heard a noise like the scraping of a chair across the floor, a muffled moan, then a dull thud. He waited until it was quiet, then peered cautiously round the door frame, in time to see the Major's body being dragged away, seemingly by itself. He quietly retreated down the hallway to the nearest telephone he could find.
OoOoOoOoO
Having been alerted by the sudden high pitched bleeping, Janet Fraiser woke with a start. She had fallen asleep at her desk, and she realized just what that infernal noise was, and shot out of her office, sprinting to reach Jack who was apparently in serious trouble. There was no sign of Sam or Teal'c sitting sentinel over their CO which further puzzled her.
A breathless night duty nurse arrived on the scene, somewhat dishevelled from falling asleep on duty too. Jack had obviously taken a turn for the worse and his body, for some reason that Janet couldn't see right now, had started seizing. This was something she had dreaded all along. That his body could not recover from the sheet amount of trauma it had undergone. Between the two of them they went over everything to try and find out what was wrong with their patient.
OoOoOoOoO
Teal'c had met up with the General at the armoury, he had brought several SF's with him. They quickly withdrew the TER's, that the Tok'ra had introduced to them, for fighting an invisible enemy, and a Beretta each, then made their way down to the ICU. Sweeping the way ahead with their Tok'ra weapons as they went, and sealing the doors behind them to prevent whatever it was from escaping.
They'd found nothing during their search there, and hoped that they were not too late in trying to catch the intruder. They stopped just outside the ICU and Teal'c made a slow sweep of the room with his TER.
Suddenly a human shape appeared and there he was.
The assassin quickly realized he had been discovered and fired off several shots at Teal'c and the guards who'd entered behind him. He dodged and ducked from the invisible beam that had highlighted him before he found a safe hiding place again by using his invisibility to his advantage. He knew he must not let O'Neill survive, and having been discovered, he changed targets and took aim quickly although he didn't have a clear sight, and fired a couple of shots towards the bed where Jack lay, just as a bullet punched his side, making him miss his target.
He pushed the pain aside because he had to finish this before they killed him. Thinking rapidly, he decided that if he could kill the Doctor attending O'Neill, then there would be no-one to fix him up and the man would still die. Crouching behind a trolley, hoping that he couldn't be seen, he fired once more.
Janet cried out in pain when a bullet pierced her upper arm, but because Jack needed help she carried on despite the pain and the danger, so intent was she on not losing her patient.
Another shot just missed him, but the next two bullets found him, mostly by luck than judgement, but this assassin was very determined. After Janet was hit he moved as close as he could, before levelling the gun at Jack.
Several loud shots rang out.
He never stood a chance. Several bullets had hit their target.
It was by sheer fortune that they found their way into the body.
Shooting at something that was only vaguely visible was something they were learning to deal with. As the intruder fell to the floor, a Goa'uld device fell from his lax hand and he suddenly became visible again.
The General picked it up and turned it over in his hand. He showed it to Teal'c, handing it over to the Jaffa.
"It is the same type of device that Nerrti used to make herself invisible," Teal'c declared unhappily. His eyes wandered over to the tableau over at O'Neill's bedside, hoping that he hadn't been too late to save his friend.
"I was led to believe that device was safely stored away under strict security at area 51?"
"Yeah, I thought so too Teal'c. But, I can guarantee I know of someone that knew just how to gain access to it though."
Janet and her crew, relieved that the room was declared safe again, continued working on Jack, wondering why nothing they were doing seemed to make the slightest bit of difference. Her arm was really painful now and her blood was running freely down her arm, until another nurse came in and began trying to clean it for her while she worked on the Colonel.
Sam who had so far been overlooked, began to recover from her ordeal, and sat up groaning. Looking round quickly, Teal'c and another one of the nurses helped her sit up.
"Teal'c! Wow...Holy Hannah, my head," she groaned, clasping it with both hands and shutting her eyes for a moment to stop the world from spinning.
When she's settled and was able to open them again, she saw the room full of SF's and medical personnel she wondered what on earth was going on. Then with vivid alacrity she remembered what had happened. The Colonel!
"Janet," she cried, struggling to her feet to let her friend know what had been going on. "Someone tampered with the Colonel's IV. I saw it moving on it's own. I think they must have been using an invisibility device and they used it to inject something into the Colonel."
Janet thought it over for a second, willing herbody to concentrate on the problem and not her pain. She quickly took some blood samples for analysis and sent one of the staff off to the lab, needing it back asap.
Sam took the opportunity to look around at the mess. The floor was covered in blood from what looked like a dead soldier, and there were one or two of the SF's receiving medical treatment for wounds too.
"General!" Sam suddenly realised that Hammond had been standing there waiting, and watching the whole debacle. "What? How did you know sir?"
"Teal'c was on his way to relieve you and to sit with the Colonel, when he heard your muffled yell for help. Then he saw you being dragged away by some unknown force. He retreated down the hallway and phoned me, telling me what was going on. We met up at the armoury and drew some of the TERs from the store and came straight here."
He glanced back over to the bed where a hive of activity was still going on.
"I just hope we're not too late."
Everyone in that room knew just what he meant, and seconded his thoughts.
OoOoOoOoO
"Damn! Why the hell didn't I think of that? Skin cool to the touch, seizures, now a coma. Get me some glucose quickly," shouted Janet when she received the results of Jack's blood tests. She put her slow reactions to think clearly down to her damned arm. She hadn't be able to think straight.
Janet quickly injected Jack intravenously with a glucose solution. And the room tensed in silence as they waited for some type of reaction from the man in the bed. After what felt like an eternally, his vital signs started showing a marked improvement, and Janet heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Satisfied that the panic was now over, she reset all the monitors again and smiled down at her patient. 'You did it again Colonel...must be that damned lucky Irish blood in you.' She turned to see that she had an audience who could tell by the smile on her face that Jack was going to be okay. All they wanted now was an explanation of what had gone wrong.
"Would you care to explain what happened to the Colonel, Dr. Fraiser?"
"It was insulin Sir. Luckily Major Carter noticed the IV line moving as our would be assassin injected some Insulin into the Colonel's IV line. It was enough to cause an overdose, which we call Hypoglycaemia. The Colonel would have fallen into a coma and could have died if we hadn't counteracted it with glucose." She paused to wipe a hand over her heated forehead, feeling slightly unsteady.
"The assassin, whoever he was," she continued, pointing to the filled body bag being loaded onto a gurney. "brought us all a drink last night...my guess is that it was drugged to make us fall asleep so as not notice what was happening in here. However, Sam managed to fight it off and saw what he was doing, and fortunately for the Colonel, she did Sir. If she hadn't woken up when she did... Well, who knows!"
Now that the emergency was over and the adrenalin rush had gone, Janet began to feel more light-headed and woozy. She staggered slightly and Teal'c caught her before she could fall.
"Now is a good time to get yourself sorted out Doctor." General Hammond said and summoned help from the other nurses, ordering one of them to call Dr. Warner in to take over.
"Yes Sir. I think I will." she said weakly, trying not to pass out.
TBC