Chapter 4: One of These Things Just Doesn't Belong
Somewhere in a universe not so parallel to ours...
Folding up the blood pressure cuff, the nurse stepped back and offered her patient a small smile. "The doctor will be in shortly."
Sam stared after her as the drape flipped shut and continued to swing a little – watching it was infinitely preferable to looking to her left, where not-Daniel sat staring at her with this slightly ill, concerned puppy dog expression. She hadn't failed to notice the gold band around his finger, which had led her to the somewhat frightening realization that she wore one, too. Part of her really, really wanted to take it off, but while she knew it was all fake, that seemed harsh, somehow.
"Sam? You wanna tell me what's going on?"
The voice, the subtle heel click, the way she suddenly appeared through the curtain nearly knocked Sam's breath away, rendering her stunned for the second time that morning. "Janet?" she breathed.
"Who else would it be?" the doctor answered with a concerned smile, already pulling out her penlight to check her patient's eyes.
This part of the... the vision, hallucination, dream, whatever it was, Sam could understand, for she so wanted it to be true, but she knew better. She remembered every second of that day, the chaos, the fear, the utter panic as she watched Colonel O'Neill take a staff blast straight to the torso. And the empty, aching hole in her own chest as she watched the medics carry two litters through the Gate for home – one holding her CO, the other her best friend.
She gently pushed the woman's hand away, shaking her head. "This isn't right."
"What isn't, honey?" Janet asked softly, still searching her eyes even though she'd abandoned the penlight.
"You're dead."
The doctor blinked, then raised an eyebrow. "Not last I checked."
"Don't feel too bad," Daniel spoke up dryly from his place in the corner. "She says we're not married. She thinks she's military, too, and she keeps calling me Firth."
"Fifth," Sam corrected automatically.
Janet's eyebrow crept higher. "Fifth? Who are the first four?"
"Oh, hardy har, har." Okay, so maybe it wasn't Fifth – or if it was, he'd developed significantly more patience. They were determined to keep up the charade, at any rate. "I don't understand the point of this," she grumbled.
"It's procedure, Sam," Janet explained patiently. "Especially with the types of things we come into contact with, any sort of personality change like this calls for a full physical. You know that."
Sam sighed. "And you know that wasn't what I meant." It had all been so clear the first time, with Fifth, with the torture and the visions. By positioning himself as her fiance, he'd set himself up for everything he wanted, including – and the thought still made her a little ill – sleeping together. It was his happy ending. But this...
The odds of her jumping into bed with Daniel were slim, at best.
No, the more she thought about it, the less this seemed like Fifth's handy work, after all. But it was all so real, and she was hard-pressed to think of other beings that could manage such a thing. The other human-form replicators, sure. Shifu – the harcesis. Maybe an ascended being, but she wasn't even completely convinced of that.
Come to think of it, Daniel had mentioned a similar experience with Amonet and the hand device...
And then it clicked. "Intel. You want intel."
"What?" Janet was looking at her like she was crazy, but that was to be expected, right?
"You want me to insist that this is all wrong and tell you how it should be," Sam pressed. "You want me to tell you everything I was working on, and all about the colonel, and Teal'c, and you're hoping that I'll let something important slip. Well, I won't. I'm not telling you a damn thing."
Janet pushed to her feet. "Sam... Sam, that's crazy."
Using her best friends against her was a down-low dirty trick, and it was going to be difficult to avoid revealing anything.
And then she made the mistake of looking at Daniel.
And he looked like he was about to cry.